Authentic Branding: This Changes Everything

Speaker 1 Welcome to the Proven Podcast, where it does not matter what you think, only what you can prove. Today's guest, Howard Lim, proves it's actually about billion-dollar positioning.

Speaker 1 With 37 years of experience behind campaigns like Disney's Lion King on Broadway and the LA Marathon rebrand, Howard has cracked the code on what separates million-dollar brands from billion-dollar empires.

Speaker 1 The show starts now.

Speaker 2 All right, welcome back to the show. Today we're with Howard and we're talking about branding and so many other different things.
Thank you so much for being on the show.

Speaker 3 Absolutely. Pleasure being here.

Speaker 2 So, tell tell the audience a little bit more about you. I know you've got some amazing stuff.

Speaker 2 We were talking about this off-camera about all the campaigns that you've done and all the branding you've done. Tell the audience a little bit more about you and how you're an expert.

Speaker 3 Sure, I've been doing what I've been doing, but it's evolved quite a bit over the last 37 years.

Speaker 3 And pretty much everybody's been affected by one of the things I branded, or positioned, or built over the last years.

Speaker 3 Like, for example, I helped position Lion King, you know, the Broadway show for Disney to their investors. And now it's, I think it's made over $9 billion.

Speaker 3 The UCSB Access Card, which became the standard for all campuses now, I think, if I'm not mistaken, it's about $20 billion annually across all campuses around the globe.

Speaker 3 And then they're rebranding the LA Marathon, which we had to set up participation. Now they're using that format for all LA marathons, and that drives a lot of revenue as well.

Speaker 3 I'm very much about when it comes to branding, ROI.

Speaker 3 It's all about ROI.

Speaker 2 So how did you get into this? How did you discover that you had this gift and that branding really was your thing?

Speaker 3 Really, quite honestly, some of you sound kind of weird, but when I was five years old, the first time I ever finger painted,

Speaker 3 filling the paint and back then it was like powder and mixing it with water.

Speaker 3 I just remember putting my fingers on the paper and I felt it was so magical that I was able to create wherever I chose to, whatever my imagination allowed me to do.

Speaker 3 And when I was in grade school, through junior high, through high school, the students noticed, excuse me, the teachers noticed that I was really into design and art.

Speaker 3 So I'd be always taken to the side and given special projects. And I had a chance to go to,

Speaker 3 I think, two of the best schools in the world, Cal Poly and Townless Obispo.

Speaker 3 And I majored in applied art design before design became even a major and studied packaging, photography, design, illustration. And the list went on.

Speaker 3 And then after I finished my degree there, I went to Art Center School in Pasadena. And that's like where the model of

Speaker 3 Audi TT came from, Volkswagen, some of the greatest movies you've ever seen. So I really wanted to go to that school.
And they had the first Macintosh lab in the world.

Speaker 3 And I figured out how to get things out of the computer. And that's where it really hit me hard.

Speaker 3 I was like, well, let me just do this for other companies, showing them what's possible to get really creative. And fortunately, like Fortune 500 companies understood what I was doing.

Speaker 3 So I started working representing like Apple, Xerox, and DreamWorks and started to show them what was possible.

Speaker 3 And lo and behold, by working with big brands, such as those Fortune 100 companies, I started to learn what it really took to build a brand because brand is not taught in school.

Speaker 3 And so it really hit me that it was like, well, okay, what is the makeup of branding?

Speaker 3 The essence of branding, quite honestly, if you really look at it, it's one design, which has to do with engaging and designing things that are aesthetically pleasing to engage the consumer and hit their emotions.

Speaker 3 And then advertising, which is all about positioning.

Speaker 3 And so when I was growing up, it's like, okay, my brother was in advertising and he says, you have to choose between design and advertising. I said, why can't I do both?

Speaker 3 And that's kind of evolved into branding as we know today. Now it's built with more layers, but that's the essence.

Speaker 2 So you talk a lot about how there's a difference in branding and that you've learned it and you it started with finger pranking and it all and ended up with dream works and all that, which is just wild that you go from that.

Speaker 2 What are some of the major mistakes that people do when they do branding? I mean, other than having to rename their podcast in the middle of the season.

Speaker 3 So a lot of times, quite honestly, so there's two, what I found, there's two ways to build a brand from the hip or by design. Right.

Speaker 3 What's happening is that most people are doing it from the hip without understanding the different,

Speaker 3 you could say the different principles behind branding

Speaker 3 and how could they know it? Because it has to do with a lot of schooling, like I mentioned, design and advertising and so forth and so on. That has to do with layerings of understanding and knowledge.

Speaker 3 So most people, and the other thing too, is that they're thinking that they confuse branding the same with marketing. And they're totally two different animals.

Speaker 2 Walk me through that.

Speaker 2 How do you differentiate marketing versus branding? Because I think for most people who have done this, who have scaled, we get it. But some people are like, wait, what?

Speaker 2 There's a a difference between branding and marketing. I just thought branding was underneath marketing and it's not.
How do you describe the difference between the two?

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 branding is about the long-term position of a company to build its equity, to build its position in the market, and to be understood based on, like, say, some of the core principles like, well, what's your philosophy?

Speaker 3 That's part of branding. What are the values of the company? What is its position? Who's its target market?

Speaker 3 It's a little bit about marketing, definitely, but it's more about how do you want to get known in the mind of the consumer. Because a big part of branding is not what you're saying.

Speaker 3 It's what everyone else is saying about you. The question is, how do you get everyone to say who you are? The first thing, establish who you are and what you do.
The second part to this equation

Speaker 3 now is using marketing as a, like I say, like a megaphone to broadcast who you are through the different channels, whether online and offline.

Speaker 2 I think one of the things that people never talk about is brand equity.

Speaker 2 The idea, and I'm stealing this, this is completely your example, where you sit there and say, hey, I'm going to take a warehouse that's full of Nike shoes, and I'm going to give you all the Nike shoes.

Speaker 2 They're yours, but you don't get to have the name. How valuable are those shoes?

Speaker 2 And I think that's the difference between brand equity and people just don't understand that in any way, shape, or form. They're so focused on how do I just eat? How do I pay the bills?

Speaker 2 How do I pay my employees versus how do I build something that can become a DreamWorks? How do I build something that could be this multi-million or billion dollar thing that you've been involved in?

Speaker 2 So one of the things you were also talking about is there's different people inside branding. There's different people that you hire.
There's different environments.

Speaker 2 And most people just, I don't think, understand that. I think they're like, oh, I'm just going to hire a guy for five minutes and my brand's done and I'm good to go.

Speaker 2 And I never have to reevaluate it again. It's completely wrong.
Walk me through that as we go into those things.

Speaker 3 Yeah. So what's happening too is like a lot of people, they use branding, don't do branding.
It's so funny because

Speaker 3 the popularity of branding really happened about 12 years ago. I've been doing it way back, like over 30 plus years.

Speaker 3 The point being is this, is that it became more popular through like Tang magazines, Four magazines, Money magazine. Everyone started to talk about branding, right?

Speaker 3 But then the next day, everyone says they're doing branding. And so there's a lot of confusion out there.

Speaker 3 So what happens is that a lot of people are not doing, in fact, quite honestly, out of all the hundreds of people I've met over the years that say they do branding, two people actually

Speaker 3 complex world. It's a really complex world.
So going back to your question, there's different differentiations between different experts of branding. Basically, there's three major camps.

Speaker 3 So there's a camp as far as strategists. The strategists are looking at the long-term play.
And I say that, or do I look at is I design from your future and bring it into the now present.

Speaker 3 So it's really thinking way down the road. It's like, here's my business model.
It's like someone comes to us and goes, here's our business model.

Speaker 3 Okay, how can we make it so you can maximize its value? And quite honestly, what is going to be the cycle of the life of that product, service, or information?

Speaker 3 There's a lot of deep thinking that goes into it. It's like, well, you have to answer, like, well, what's your overall philosophy?

Speaker 3 Starting off with not about even making money, but starting off with what is going to make you distinct and different from everybody else and what would yield adaptability.

Speaker 3 And by the way, what markets do you want to actually be able to be delivered in and what industry? so there's a there's a lot of like

Speaker 3 yeah it's like it's kind of like this you know you want to build a city you try to start off with the blueprint right you just don't start building piecemealing things together otherwise you'll have a pretty dysfunctional city i think you talked about before you know people it's some people do branding right off the hip versus planning out

Speaker 2 right and And it sounds like the difference between the people who have spent the time to scale and build, which are totally different things,

Speaker 2 when they're going to to do this, the difference between becoming a multi-million dollar business versus a billion dollar business all comes down to branding.

Speaker 2 And if they don't put the time in now, if they don't spend the X amount of days and ask specific questions, and I guess, you know, we talk about there's multiple versions of this.

Speaker 2 We've talked about the strategist, but remind me before we get too far away, I want to tell the audience like the top five questions or 10 questions they should be asking.

Speaker 2 So at the end of that, after we go through the different ones, let's definitely go into that and say, hey, these are the things that you should be asking because most people don't understand.

Speaker 2 And if you're not watching the video of this, Howard did a really good job where he talks about in all these people that he've met this entire time, he only met two people that were actually branders.

Speaker 2 And I don't think most people ever come across people who are actually branders in that case.

Speaker 2 Because if you've been doing this for 37 years and you don't come across two, the chances of people like me running across people like you are pretty darn rare.

Speaker 2 So if we've got the branding strategist, which we understand that, what is the next person? What is the next kind of step in this?

Speaker 3 So the next part, after the strategy to figure out who you are, what makes you unique, what makes you different from everybody else. Then the next part is execution, which I called implementation.

Speaker 3 So it's now, it's now what I call you have your DNA, it's now, or you could say even your ingredients to, let's say, a beautiful cake or meal, it's now making that meal.

Speaker 3 It's now making that cake with those ingredients. And that's where it takes, like, for example, to be a strategist,

Speaker 3 in my book, it takes about 10 years to master becoming a brand strategist. There's so many,

Speaker 3 there's so, it's like a whole different language in itself where you start to understand it. Like, what's the brand architecture of your business? Who's going to be the ambassador to your brand?

Speaker 3 There's like, there's so many components to that, right?

Speaker 3 Then there's the execution, which is now let's build it. Okay, so you got the blueprint.
Let's stick with the analogy of

Speaker 3 a city. You now have the blueprint.
It's like, well, let's start figuring out the roadways. After we figure out the roadways, let's figure out the residential area.

Speaker 3 Let's figure out the commercial areas. Let's figure out how everything is to work around the water, electricity, right? So now it's building it.
Okay.

Speaker 3 So the building part of it, there's in my book, there's like five major components to it. So branding memory is about not what you're saying, it's what everyone else is saying about you.

Speaker 3 The question becomes how are you going to influence them and getting back to that brand equity, what's in the mouth, help them become familiar with your brand, with the face of the brand.

Speaker 3 So I call that the brand icon. The brand icon is a name in the company.
It's the mark, like the Nike Swoosh. It's the font that you use, like Apple is very clear what font.

Speaker 3 It's the color that you use. For example, Pepsi owns red, and excuse me, Coca-Cola owns red, Pepsi owns blue.
So these are the things that really in the font I use. So the tagline as well.

Speaker 3 These five elements are what start to build the face to brand. Now, is that branding, the logo, for example? No.

Speaker 3 That is, that's 5% to a brand identity. That's 5% to a brand identity.
Okay.

Speaker 3 Now you're talking about, okay, that's the face to the company. Think of it like a brand, like a person.
Now it's the personality. Okay.

Speaker 3 It's when you when you look at big brands, think about this like commercials. You got the mayhem guy for all state, you got flow for progressive, you got the Geico Lizard for Geigo.

Speaker 3 Those are all personality to brands. Now, why do people, why do big brands do that? It's because they want to make it personalized and they want to be relatable to their target market.
Right.

Speaker 3 And that's part of the designing in the strategy to figure out what kind of personality should we create for a brand. And then what are the associations with that personality?

Speaker 3 So when you write the copy for a website or let's say a commercial, now you're starting to have some consistency between how you're actually projecting that brand, the storytelling, the tone voice.

Speaker 3 So what happens when people do it on their own and don't understand it, it's called a sibl effect. I call it the sibl effect where they have all these different personalities out there

Speaker 3 of their brand. Guess what? No one knows who you are.

Speaker 3 You're actually diluting your brand before you even started.

Speaker 2 I never sat down, even with everything that I've done, never sat and said, okay, what's the personality of our org?

Speaker 2 What is a personality at? And how are we coming across this? And just while you were talking, I was going through a couple of companies that I've worked with and I was like, oops.

Speaker 2 So, you know, the idea that I'm like, we never had this guy. And we did great.
We had, we exited, we had great multipliers. We've never sat down and looked at our sales copy.

Speaker 2 We never looked at our website. We've never looked at our posts.
We've never looked at any of this. And okay, what is our personality that we're trying to come across?

Speaker 2 It was more about, can we get looks and views and can we get virality? Can we get, you know, is it going to close? What is it going to do for the ROI? What is our upcoming sale versus,

Speaker 2 and it's interesting because when it comes to, because you gave the insurance ones, there are specific ones I will not buy from because of the personality they chose.

Speaker 2 I'm like, God, that does not resonate with me. I'm not going to do that.
And it was one of those things that's completely subconscious that I didn't understand. in any way, shape, or form.

Speaker 2 So when someone's trying to design this personality, I'm going to completely go here because this is fun. how do you find that balance?

Speaker 2 How do you find a situation where you might have gone too far down the road with one? Like for, you know, simple example, there's a very specific personality for political parties right now.

Speaker 2 And it just, it is what it is. It's a personality.
We get it. I'm not going to bash one side or the other.
I'm going to leave it alone. This is not a political show.

Speaker 2 But, you know, I talk about this all the time, that people don't buy products and stories. They buy, I'm sorry, products or services that may still write Dentis and Ways Out of Pain.

Speaker 2 I'm going to have to add to that, they buy personalities. Because if I told you and I asked you, hey, here's a guy who's got a four by four truck.
Who did you vote for?

Speaker 2 Here's a person who drives a fiat. Who they vote for? Here's a person with a Louis Vuitton bag, who's the person with a Whole Foods bag.
You know who they're voting for.

Speaker 2 So I've always used these examples, but I've never understood it as a personality. So that's huge for me.
When you're designing that personality,

Speaker 2 how do you design it in a way that you're not going to isolate

Speaker 2 a huge chunk of the audience?

Speaker 3 Right, right, right. So it's a lot of figuring out the persona of your ideal customer.
You can't be all things to all people because that becomes a waste of marketing as well.

Speaker 3 Seeing that over and over and over and over and over again.

Speaker 3 So really, it's really what's called, and this goes back to when I was doing a lot of work in ad in C's back in the 80s and 90s, which is still, it's now coming out.

Speaker 3 It's kind of like the trade secret of how good ads become very powerful ads. is called mood boards.

Speaker 3 So, you create the mood board to figure out your ideal customer, and you're figuring out, well, what would it wear? What would it shop? What, you know, who is this character? Is it female? Is it male?

Speaker 3 Is it actually neutral? Okay, what's its age? And so, you're really building in quote-unquote in this dialogue is how its emotions will be and what its lifestyle is. Okay.
Is it urban? Is it suburban?

Speaker 3 Is it a farmer? Right.

Speaker 2 No, absolutely.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 it works. It's like,

Speaker 3 so how you don't, how you make sure you're not alienating is you make sure then you're figuring out that you actually have a brand that actually could maybe float between, I'm just making stuff between 25 and 50.

Speaker 3 Okay. Or let's say wanted to get down to teenager, but also appeal to the elder.
Okay. So this is where you actually think very creatively what kind of different campaigns could be created.

Speaker 3 Like, what's the core? And then from that core, what could be offshoots? Like,

Speaker 3 like, like, what I always get with clients is I say, okay, what's going to be our core message? And we go, it takes about two hours to get down to the core message, right?

Speaker 3 The point being is when that core message, then you have different offshoots to appeal to those different marketplace based on what channel they're at. Like, are they on YouTube?

Speaker 3 Are they reading a newspaper? Okay.

Speaker 3 So, because we got four different, now we got the four biggest buying powers, the fourth one starting to pick up the Z generation.

Speaker 3 But the point being is that you got to really understand the psychology of your buyers to figure out what would be the right persona for the personality to be relatable. And a reason why,

Speaker 3 we buy from emotions.

Speaker 2 100%.

Speaker 2 It sounds like you're building, not only are you trying to identify your target market, but it's about who does the target market want to have lunch with?

Speaker 2 Who would the target market invite to their house? That's who you're building because it's basing it completely off emotions. And it's something that I've never heard of before.

Speaker 2 Again, you've only met two of these in the world. I've never heard anyone describe it.

Speaker 2 I've always heard, you know, build rapport, get emotions, you know, avoid, you know, identify their pain, you know, find their watering hole. All of those things I've heard a million times.

Speaker 2 I've never heard anyone say it's about personality. What is your personality of your brand? Absolutely game-changing.

Speaker 2 So going back, okay, so we've got strategist, we've got the implementator, we've got, you know, we got the blueprint of the city. We have, okay, now who's going to build the,

Speaker 2 what's our next step? What do we, how do we go from there after that?

Speaker 3 Okay, so when I was got like when we were rebuilding WSS, for example, in 2010, in the recession, a company that was not doing well at all,

Speaker 3 what we had to do is do a really launch. And so we came up with a strategy.
I worked with literally seven or VPs to actually come up with solutions to all of them.

Speaker 3 But the biggest thing was to come from the standpoint that we're all on the same page. Like everybody, because they had their in-house branding, marketing, advertising.

Speaker 3 I also worked with the CFO and COO, the CEO, da da da da da, but everybody was moving in their own different directions. And I call that the silo effect.

Speaker 3 So the first thing was getting everybody were on the same steeing sheet.

Speaker 3 And that's why that, what we call a master blueprint, is so imperative to make sure everyone's clear where we're heading and how we're all going to move there.

Speaker 3 Because it's everybody's business when it comes to building the brand. Okay.

Speaker 2 So I know this is going to come as a surprise, but you're telling me that when you go to scale a business that people don't talk to each other and inside the organization, they're actually not each other's friends no

Speaker 2 so all right so yeah surprise i don't believe all the time the biggest problem in the organization is not the fact you're trying to get customers it's an internal your culture is broken and when you're doing this they're just completely the cfo hates the cio and the marketing person exactly hate each other it's the biggest problem you got to unify your culture when you run into this you've done this at pretty high level you know you've done this for billion dollar companies i'm completely taking us off course here but what are some of the ways that you unify what are some of the ways when you come in and you're like, hey, guys, I get it.

Speaker 2 Marketing thinks branding is garbage. Branding hates IT.
IT hates fulfillment. How have you found a way when you come in and you help out these huge organizations, which is what you do?

Speaker 2 How do you say, okay, guys, we all need to play nice to each other because we don't like to eat in two months. How do you do that? What are some of the tips and trades that you do?

Speaker 3 So that's a great question. So I always start with the philosophy and I always work with

Speaker 3 the spearhead, the founder, the CEO,

Speaker 3 or or it could be the president or a combination, right? But whoever is in charge, okay?

Speaker 3 I get to understand who they are. And what's funny is that employees, like with companies that have been around for decades,

Speaker 3 even like generations,

Speaker 3 you could say the management positions. finally get to understand who he or she is and how they think.

Speaker 3 So always start with the very top to get an understanding, what's in their head and questions that have never been asked before.

Speaker 3 So then we could actually start to figure out, well, what are we looking at, first of all, as a business and where we're heading.

Speaker 3 So I always start with the philosophy and I have these very deep questions that I ask this quote unquote, the leader, you could say. And once those questions are answered, I form the statement.

Speaker 3 And that for that statement should not be more than two sentences long, any longer than that becomes not memorable for anybody. Okay.
And it's not a lot of paragraphs. Right.

Speaker 2 So what are the questions that you ask the founder? What are the ones that you walk in? What are like the top two or three that you're like, hey, I need to figure out what you're the spearhead.

Speaker 2 How do we find alignment here? What do you normally do? Yeah, sure.

Speaker 3 So one of the questions could be like,

Speaker 3 if you're facing the, you're facing the more horrific challenges with your business,

Speaker 3 what values are so inherent your company would cease to exist? Gotcha.

Speaker 2 I can tell you most C levels, because this is my world, I interact with the C guys.

Speaker 2 I would say majority of them would have no clue how to answer that question immediately right off the hip.

Speaker 2 They would have to sit down and form that together because they just, they've never thought about it.

Speaker 2 You know, one of the things that I love talking to you about, Howard, is the fact that you're asking questions and you're bringing it from point of view because you've been doing this for 37 years that even as someone who I've done scale and I've done exits, never asked these questions.

Speaker 2 Never even thought of asking these questions. So it's absolutely right.
Okay, so that's one, you got another one for me? Because I'm just stealing information. This is great.

Speaker 3 Yeah. So now I want to be like,

Speaker 3 what, what legacy do you want to leave behind?

Speaker 2 Legacy is huge. Yeah.

Speaker 3 What legacy do you

Speaker 3 want to leave behind and why?

Speaker 2 You know, why is a big part on that one?

Speaker 3 Okay, who are. And so I, you know, you're right.
And a lot of times the CEO,

Speaker 3 they've been asked this question. So, of course, I help coach them through it.

Speaker 3 What happens is, though, is that they start to see a bigger picture than they ever thought was possible. The reason why I do this, by the way, is it's kind of like reverse working and

Speaker 3 talking to over 100,000 business owners because I speak all over the world.

Speaker 3 The point being is this, as I looked at the common denomination and looking at patterns, and I realized that most companies only reach 25% of their potential.

Speaker 3 So I want to create a model so they could reach their full potential, 90 plus.

Speaker 3 And so with these deeper questions, it allowed us to tap into what's the opportunity of really creating something with a huger bigger roi but also deeper penetration in the marketplace and actually actually having it where we could do more good for all stakeholders so there's a reason why i start figuring out what is the questions that are not being asked that could actually create a company where it's a hell of a lot more sustainable a hell of a lot more scalable and actually a place that really people want to work with or work for So that's why I went with this quote unquote strategy of going with deeper questions is so the client would actually end up with something with a deeper potential of a bigger business.

Speaker 3 Okay. If they chose that for themselves or to exit faster for that matter, too.

Speaker 2 So it sounds like, you know, doing these things, you mentioned it earlier, that some of the stuff you did in the 80s and 90s, which no one was alive back then, no, it was so far ago.

Speaker 2 But some of the stuff you did back then is still reaping fruit now. Something 30, 40 years later, these companies are like, hey, we're still implementing it.

Speaker 2 And this is the value of branding, not marketing, about building this and sitting down and answering these deep questions.

Speaker 2 One of the things you you told me about that you do is you work with, you know, yes, you speak all over the world and you've spoken to all these people, but you work with individuals and you really do a brand analysis for them.

Speaker 2 What does that sound like? Because most people haven't ever done that. They'll just say, hey, I need a brand.
Okay, give me a logo, which you already mentioned is like 2% to 5% of who you are.

Speaker 2 Most people have never sat down with someone who is a brander.

Speaker 2 So if they're walking in and they're like, hey, I'm going to work with Howard on how to do this, because I want to say a brander, but I don't know any other brander. So Howard.
So what

Speaker 2 environment? What are they going to be doing? What is that experience like for them?

Speaker 3 So no matter, and you're right, I work all the way down to solopreneurs. Like literally, it's not for me the size of companies.

Speaker 3 It's more about the difference that they're making. And so my job for me is

Speaker 3 really is so. Honestly, so I look at this place at this globe that we all own, and I look at it from the standpoint, how can you actually make it better?

Speaker 3 And so it's made up of all these different personalities and different individuals. So what I look at is like when I work with someone, I always look at

Speaker 3 are they operating of integrity? Do they want to make a difference? Are they coachable? And do they want to have fun on the way?

Speaker 2 I wish people would answer the third one. Are they coachable? Good God.

Speaker 2 You know, I always talk about it. It's not about the, I don't care about the size of you.
It's a question that's going to scale you. I've said this for years and years and years.
The coachable.

Speaker 2 Holy Moses, I

Speaker 2 customers as well. It's like, okay, do they want your product? Can they afford your product? Will they buy your product? And then the last one being the most important, do you want to work with them?

Speaker 2 And people always forget the last one. So even when you're trying to coach people on scale, are they coachable? And that's a hard ballgame.
So when someone comes in, let's say they

Speaker 2 created a podcast name and it sucked and they have to change it on the flag. What are they going to be expecting to walk into? What are some of the questions? What does that environment look like?

Speaker 3 What should they prepare before they show up to have this conversation with you so what i always start off with no matter who they are what size what industry they're b2b b2c or b2g which is business or government i always start off with an assessment an assessment and i do it online that allows me to work here and work with anybody um and so what i do is i ask them to turn in like their their logo and there's a bit which we don't have a discussion we could talk about difference between a logo and a brand mark but let's say the logo they turn their website, they're turning brochure, they do have a product, their product, their packaging,

Speaker 3 even storefronts, because I did a lot of design storefronts, their billboards or radio spots, TV spots, their social media.

Speaker 3 And what I do is I will look and critique it in a way to take it from good to great. And

Speaker 3 it's usually an hour long, and I work really fast, and the whole thing's recorded. And I'm marking things up and going, okay, where's your value proposition? Okay.
Like their website.

Speaker 3 For example, the website,

Speaker 3 I have this process i take companies through is like the way i look at website is that the home page should really be like a trailer to a movie okay

Speaker 3 most websites i see is that they're throwing everything in and plus the kitchen sink so everything's shouting at you right and the reason for that is because a lot of times these

Speaker 3 people that are designing websites are not designers they're desktop publishers yes desktop publisher is someone that has no experience in design that picks up a computer and then calls himself a graphic designer without any four years eight years of schooling and so what happens is that there's a whole pattern to reading a website anything for that matter dominant subdominant subordinate dominant subdominant subordinate the headline should be the first thing that people engage in like a really strong headline that's engaging and then

Speaker 3 subordinate would be like the body copy to back that up, right?

Speaker 3 And subdominant would be a lot of times would be the sub headline, just like a great newspaper when reading the headline, it catches you and you read, it's this formula, and you're right.

Speaker 3 These principles will never go away. It's about how we digest information.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 2 And I think people don't understand that, that these ideas, you're talking about human behavior. Sure, there's different ways to get it.

Speaker 2 It could be a newspaper or it would have been smoke signals and now it's social media.

Speaker 2 The core of it hasn't changed. The delivery method has changed.
But the core of it of human being, humans are humans or humans are humans. We talk about this.

Speaker 2 I've talked to special force operators and we have this conversation all the time. They're like, just shoot to wound.
I'm like, why would you shoot to wound?

Speaker 2 Why wouldn't you, you know, eliminate your target? And they're like, because the target has friends and I'm going to turn one target into four. And I was like, that's universal across the board.

Speaker 2 It doesn't matter if it's a 50 cow at a thousand yards or if it's a bow and arrow at 20 feet.

Speaker 2 So it's these core parts of the human idea and the human existence that if you haven't gone to school and if you don't have these level of experiences, you're going to run into it.

Speaker 2 I kind of feel like you're like a UX designer in a way, in the sense of, let me let me explain.

Speaker 2 There's so many times where someone who does UX, which is U is your experience, where they've designed this whole great thing and you get this very well-trained UX designer, they're like, Yeah, you're changing everything.

Speaker 2 They're like, Why? I'm like, Well, people with colorblind can't see that. Your stuff's in the wrong place.
This can't be there. This is how people read.

Speaker 2 It sounds like branding is like the grandfather of even that as well. It's like, okay, UX is cute.
Let's talk about branding. You talked about the difference between a logo and

Speaker 2 what was the other thing? Brandmark. Thank you.

Speaker 3 a logo and a brand mark it's so foreign to me i didn't even know what a brand mark was till right now what the hell is the difference between a logo and a brand mark okay so yeah well because i created i started to create what's called an authentic brand so i create start creating a glossary of distinctions and that's a lot of times why people haven't heard of this because it's the only category i created over the years So the point being is that a logo, a lot of times people create a logo based on personality.

Speaker 3 Like, okay, I'm going to show my friends, you know, what, you know, my brother-in-law did and see if they like it or dislike it. Okay.
And, you know, ask them why and this and that.

Speaker 3 But it's all based on the personality. And a lot of times logos, for example, I call them a liability, where they're not simple.
They're not bold enough. They're not unique enough.

Speaker 3 They won't work in black and white. So they work on embroidery all the way down to the app.
They won't work from an app to a billboard. So they miss a lot of science to it.

Speaker 3 The second part that they miss is how it connects to the business

Speaker 3 so a lot of times i just look at something i go what does it have to do with your business what does it have to do what you just told me five minutes about your business or what it's about how to connect quote unquote your quote unquote identity to your consumer or customer and um oh go ahead so i have i have a really important question about this one because i always have how the hell did they get here when it comes to one specific brand and i'm curious if you've got a famous brand or going how the hell is that related?

Speaker 2 For me, the one that stands out is Starbucks Coffee.

Speaker 2 The logo of the mermaid holding up her legs that is cropped, it's a very famous, you know, it is what it is. How in the name of Zeus's butthole did they get from there to there?

Speaker 2 And I guess my question is: if you've got a logo that you've already been in bed with long enough, it's been part of your brand for 10, 15, 20 years,

Speaker 2 pivoting your logo or your brand mark is not easy.

Speaker 2 How does someone who didn't know know that you existed a couple of years ago go, oh crap, we have a, you know, a mermaid with her legs spread wide open as our logo. Good God, it might work.

Speaker 2 It might check those boxes. It might, hey, it looked, we can embroid it.
It looks short in black and white.

Speaker 2 It's clear, but it doesn't align with our brand. It doesn't align with the personality of our brand.
How does someone go through and say, okay. How do I fix this? How do I do this?

Speaker 2 How do I pivot this?

Speaker 3 So that's a great question.

Speaker 3 So it's really interesting because when I present and i'm you know teaching and presenting i'll show case studies of where uh where a company had a logo two brand mark and one of them is starbucks by the way so starbucks if you look at it it's very like hand done it looks very junior level looks like you know someone's done it you know in their basement and then you could see the transformation over years okay and i knew they're going to have problems when i first saw starbucks and it took like three more reiterations probably cost some millions of dollars to redo all the storefronts and everything associated with all the marketing, all the advertising, all the product itself, right?

Speaker 3 Right. To redo it all.
So what they had was really, so God, this is a gloated question. So let me just finish this discussion.
So, so, so you, so they had the evolution from a logo to a brand mark.

Speaker 3 And the, the one that was prior to the one that they have now, it's called an emblem mark.

Speaker 3 where they chiseled it down graphically so it looked beautiful, looked simple to digest, but they had the words integrated into the actual mark itself of what's called a Victoria mark of the mermaid.

Speaker 3 The problem with that is that as you start to migrate, you start to grow your company into different countries, guess what?

Speaker 3 That needs to be, that can be translated from English to Arabic or Chinese or whatever, right? It will look like a whole different brand. It looks like you just got knocked off, right?

Speaker 3 So what they did, which is I'm a firm believer in that, and I actually started to figure that out building brand marks

Speaker 3 years ago. The point being is this, you want to separate the two.
So the mermaid is now separate from the words. So now

Speaker 3 the mark itself, the pictorial mark, the picture is filling it up in a sense you don't have to have words anymore. Right.

Speaker 2 It could stand on itself.

Speaker 3 You have something now that's universal and all languages. It has nothing to do with the words.
It has to do with an image. Right.
So that's how that one was able to do it.

Speaker 3 To keep that story, but, you know, how he came up with the book, because, you know, Moby Dick,

Speaker 3 we keep that part of the history behind it. But the point being is that now it actually is a brand mark.
So now we don't have any limitations where we have a lid on it.

Speaker 3 And we keep being, now we're able to grow that into any part of the world for that matter, because now you have a strong brand mark.

Speaker 2 So one of the questions that people are going to ask about branding, especially now that we live in a world where you can't get domains anymore, where you can't get the name that you want.

Speaker 2 And that influences a lot of the name of the company, where it's like, oh, I want to name my company the best

Speaker 2 podcast show ever. And I'm sure someone owns that.

Speaker 2 How do you survive when you're building your brand, where you fall in love with an idea and you've got your brand mark and all of this, but the domain's not available?

Speaker 2 Do domain names matter anymore?

Speaker 3 Absolutely.

Speaker 3 Before you even think about the name though, you really want to think about the position, the strategy session to figure out what is your position, who's your target market, what media you plan to be reaching those target markets.

Speaker 3 And when it comes to naming, there's five basic categories of creating a name.

Speaker 3 And first of all, you want to create a name that really don't, you don't want to have more than three syllables. And then ideally, you don't want to have it more,

Speaker 3 just more than two words. Why? Because it goes back to how we think.

Speaker 3 If you want someone to remember who you are, you've got to make it simple.

Speaker 2 It's true.

Speaker 3 The dot-bomb era, they make up all these fanciful words. Well, you're never going to be able to find a website because these.

Speaker 2 You can't spell the name thing.

Speaker 3 Remember that whole, that whole era was like total chaos. Like, what a freaking nightmare.
But anyways,

Speaker 3 yeah, you do want to have it where, so just, so let's go back to like, there's five ways to create a name.

Speaker 3 There's generic, which is not trademarkable, which hotel in Las Vegas tried to create a hotel called Name Hotel. They battle.

Speaker 3 God knows how much money they spent trying to figure out if they could trademark that name. They could not because it's a common word.
Then you get into, you know,

Speaker 3 descriptive describing, like Motel 6, when it used to be $6, right?

Speaker 2 Not anymore.

Speaker 3 Okay. And then you get in suggestive and then you get into arbitrary, like apple to fruit and apple the computer, right? Then you get into fanciful, totally made up, like Exxon.

Speaker 3 Now, here's the beautiful thing. As you start to go up the chart of to the, you know, where it's arbitrary or fanciful,

Speaker 3 you're you're going to have something that separates you from the pack.

Speaker 3 It will take more to get people to know who your brand is, but the beautiful thing is you will leave the pack and get more known and be more unique to be more memorable, like Lululemon, for example, right?

Speaker 3 Or as much as we don't like, I didn't like the word at the beginning, Google, right? But the point,

Speaker 3 but the point being is that as you move up the chart, so you know, there are plenty of words that are when we when we come up with names, we come up like literally when we work with clients, we come up with hundreds of names.

Speaker 3 And my job is to look at if we get a high percentage of dot coms

Speaker 3 because there's ways to articulate what kind of names should you be creating based on a strategy.

Speaker 3 And from that DNA starts to build out, well, what are all the possible names that we create based on that strategy? to actually best represent that brand position. Right.

Speaker 2 There's so much that you've shared here. There's so many things that even with, I'm in the middle of a renaming and a rebranding now where I'm like, that's got to all change.

Speaker 2 There's so much that people just don't know. How do people find you?

Speaker 2 How do people, you know, sit down and get some of this knowledge and maybe save themselves millions of dollars in, you know, not trying to brand something that they can't brand and make it so that their company can scale up into that next level.

Speaker 2 How do people find you? How do they sit down with you? How can someone pick your brand and get access to you?

Speaker 3 i make it really simple i give away my my mobile number and my my uh personal email so my email is howard at howcreative.com okay howard at howcreative.com h-a-w creative.com and then my phone number is 310-804-4251 and then we'll set up like a 10-minute discussion and if you want to you know go through quote unquote it's up to you if you want to go through a full assessment then what i do on my website i sell it for twenty five hundred dollars for an hour but through a code using h ow and you hit the coupon say apply it brings it all the way down to five hundred dollars

Speaker 3 and i'll do a whole evaluation a whole assessment on what you've been creating and show you the gaps who you here's what you here's where you what you just told me where you want to be and who you are but this is how you how you're representing yourself right now and what is that gap so if someone doesn't have the ability to to call you up or jump on the website are there other resources you have that people can get access to?

Speaker 2 Are there tools that you like to use?

Speaker 3 Yeah, so I took this time to write a book. It took me five years.
I think it's been about 15 years, and it's called Authentic Branding. It's sold, you know, not so much in bookstores, but globally.

Speaker 3 But the fastest way people could find it is on Amazon under Authentic Branding by Howard A. Lim.

Speaker 3 And they could find my book.

Speaker 3 Now, the reason why I created this book, by the way, because at the time there was maybe five branding books when I wrote this book, and um, there's one book I really admire called Strong Bands, by the way.

Speaker 3 Um, it really inspired me.

Speaker 3 But the point being is that none of these books really had any exercises, yes, and no one wanted to divulge any of their trade secrets, which you know, that's fine, I get to respect that, you know.

Speaker 3 And I said, Well, I'm here to help out as many companies as possible. I'm gonna actually say, Okay, what do you do to create your values? And how do you test your values?

Speaker 3 And then give examples and da da da da.

Speaker 3 So, so that book is not just a book to read it's based on uh actually how do you actually think about your own brand and it's available on amazon it's on amazon yeah need to go to amazon after this okay perfect

Speaker 2 i really appreciate i just wanted to make sure we had that

Speaker 2 I really appreciate you coming on and changing so many different things. Just the idea, you know, for me, the biggest takeaway was that it's a personality, that you're building that.

Speaker 2 I was like, oh, crap. I looked at every company I built in scale.
I just went, oh my God, I left so much money on the table. Holy Moses.
So yeah, there's, oh, damn it. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 2 Thank you so very much for coming on. I really appreciate you blowing my mind.

Speaker 3 Yeah, no, this has been really fun. This has been really, really fun.
Thank you.

Speaker 1 Success isn't about having the perfect strategy on paper. It's about executing imperfectly and iterating based on real feedback.

Speaker 1 While others spend months perfecting their business plans, winners are out there testing their assumptions with actual customers.