Moment 191: Inside Nike’s Branding Genius: Lessons for Building an Iconic Brand: Greg Hoffman

When you think of the most iconic logo in the world, which brand comes to mind? For me, it's probably Nike. Their former CMO Greg Hoffman knew exactly how critical strong brand recognition was.
And in this clip, he shares his tactics on levelling up your own marketing. I have about 40 companies in my portfolio.
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To create a strong emotional connection with someone else, I'm presuming you have to take a strong emotional stance yourself often. So I'm just thinking about the things that have evoked the strongest emotional connections with anything I do.
The things that have evoked the strongest emotional connections

with this podcast and its audience

are strong emotional stories.

But when you do that,

when you avoid indifference,

you are putting yourself in line

for potential criticism and attacks

and you're going to polarize people.

Some people are going to love and hate you.

How important has that been for Nike?

And how important is it for a person

starting a podcast or a business or leading a team or whatever else? For a brand like Nike, it was, you know, look at the athletes that represented the brand early on. I mean, they were all rebels, you know, within their own sports.
And so, you know, this idea of, and, you know, having a maxim within the company that was defy convention, right? So your values kind of say it's like, yeah, there are going to be things we do with conviction that may be polarizing. But it is the deep belief we have in those things.
And as long as we always relate them back to sport and this idea of serving the athlete, then we're willing to go there. And if we're not clearly tethered to, you know, what we say and what we do, then we would deserve the critique and the criticism.
So I think you can, for any small or large company that's kind of, you know, that's wrestling with this, that maybe wants to kind of go beyond just the transactions and truly move into that arena where you really are having real relationships with your audience, that their affinity for you comes from the fact that they're getting meaningful benefits, whether those are mental or physical, that are allowing them to progress in life. You know, when you reach that status, I believe indifference isn't an option right now.
I believe we need to look to brands that have that level of success. And again, it's not about scale because there's plenty of small brands, you know, mom and pop brands that are doing great things through their business to affect the lives of underserved communities.
But again, so much of what we're talking about is authenticity. Even doing this book, it's like, well, you know, how much social media should I do? And on this platform, does that seem like I'm inauthentic? And like, so so at the end of the day, because I'm driving people crazy with these questions, is that, because, you know, I'm not the most public person, right? But as long as I speak to from the center and the anchor of the power of creativity in business and its ability to change the world and make that connection clear.
And then if people are pissed off about that, then it is what it is. But more often than not, look at some of the most successful brands and it's made their own business successful.
It's accelerated their growth. And so that's where I get into this, yeah, our primary goal certainly for a public company is to drive growth, both from a brand and business standpoint.
But more and more, I believe that within that, you have to integrate this, being a great corporate citizen and using your platform to, you know, provide your innovation and your inspiration to those that quite frankly, don't have the access and opportunity to get it. How do I find which story to tell? Because if I'm, if I'm running this podcast and I'm thinking, okay, I need to do the logo, the branding, I need to position it in a way that's going to be, this is typically the way the brain thinks.
It's trying, it's the outcome is success. And it's trying to figure out which story to tell to get me to success.
So how do I make this podcast successful? How do you go about knowing where and how to find that story in your business, brand team, whatever it is, and which one is the right one to tell, to get the outcome I'm looking for, which is success. The success to me is that it's not overly packaged.
The success to me is that the transparency and authenticity of the conversations and that there's a rawness to it. And that is branding.
Sometimes it's the lack of design, if you will, is the very thing that makes something successful. 100%.
Versus there's go-to, it's always the same questions. And so that's the one thing I really appreciate about what you're doing is this, again, back to this being human as a being human and creating emotion.
And part of that is just do through people can, you themselves in you or us. And the, yeah, I mean, that's what I would say.
It's less about sometimes the traditional aspects of branding, which is I wanna make sure the frame of every podcast has the color gold and it must, you know. So, and again, I'm saying this as someone who's oftentimes been pretty rigid in terms of to grow some of these businesses to own a brand color, if you will.
And you pick your favorite brand. There's a level of repetition needed to build that kind of equity in a typeface, in a color, in a logo.
You need to build that brand frame, right? Oftentimes, startups almost skip that. It's like, no, go back.
It's like, really build your brand identifiers, your brand elements, right? Because that's your picture frame. And the stronger the picture frame, the more the picture in it is gonna shine.
The weaker that frame, then the picture within it is kind of, it's just, it's not on solid ground, if that makes sense. And so that's why in the book, I talk about the picture and the frame and ensuring that the frame never outshines the picture.
That's what I'm getting at. It's like when you're thinking about brand elements and how best to express those through the different platforms, it's the right question, but making sure that they don't take away from the actual storytelling within it, which is the picture.
Which happens a lot. For me, so some things that we do intentionally to try and communicate the, I guess the heart of what we're doing on this podcast, for example, in the branding.
So one of the things is we always make sure it feels like home. So it's in, whether in LA or in London, it's actually shot in my actual kitchen.
On a very similar looking table, people are actually surprised it looks exactly the same. But we always shoot it at home because I think the conversations we're having are homely ones.
They're the ones people have at home. They're not ones that, you know, we could go do this in a massive studio, but it wouldn't be in line with our values.
The other thing is it's dark in here. So that speaks to the subject matter.
Sometimes it speaks to secrets. The other thing is obviously the title of the podcast is The Diary of a CEO.
And you ask yourself what one might keep in a diary. It tends to be things that are a little bit deeper.
And there's all these small things. We even, I mean, we spend many days this week, me and Jack debating removing the microphones because it kills what the humanness of authentic communication.
So we're thinking about ways where we can have the microphones hanging, where we can remove the barrier. And all these small things, I guess, is that the frame? Or when you think about brand elements, you're talking more about like colors and things like that? No, I think that's the frame as well.
You know, when I walk into a space, I'm a bit obsessive compulsive about like design and details, you know, and I walk in, I look at the carpet and what type of chairs and like the display case and what are the objects, you know, and whether I go into a restaurant or the hotel I stayed in last night, you know, and I'm soaking all that up, but that isn't the actual experience. That isn't the actual story.
You're revealing the story of this podcast through all these elements, but that's still the story frame's still the, the story frame and, and is where I'm going. And then, um, the delivery of, you know, through your voice and these conversations is what sits within it.
But my, but yes, those identifiers, those brand elements, um, play a huge role because every one of them, I guess what I'm saying, what I like about when I walked in is it's like everything was considered. There was nothing arbitrary because what a miss for some brands, large and small, when they don't have a culture that cares deeply about those details.
And I think the best ones do. And certainly when you think of some of the most successful fashion brands, like, you know, there's just an ethic inside that any detail, large or small, will be intentional.
So, you know, that's design, you know, emotion by design, the word design is really about intention, be intentional, and look to reveal something about yourself through this round table, you know, with the marble top, it's like it all communicates. Trust me, I drive my wife and my kids absolutely mad, right? Because they've had to live with this guy who's just constantly moving stuff around and, you know, is the clock, is the bookcase like, you know, curated perfectly? Are the books in the right.
So if I have a problem, it's in some ways that it's, I'm searching for perfection too often. And what can happen is you start to strip the soul and personality out of something.
And it's been great that I've had people throughout my career to balance that. That's back to this idea of creative tension.
Like if there's two startup founders, I love it when someone represents the art and someone represents the science. Someone's more analytical in their decision-making process and others maybe a little bit more nonlinear, maybe a little bit more right brain thinking.
And I love that tension because when you don't have that, it's like one side starts to kind of creep up. And that's why I got into, you know, I'm also the branding instructor at the University of Oregon's Graduate School of Business.
And these are, you know, I'm in front of mainly folks that want to become future GMs, entrepreneurs, product developers, you name it, right? And, but I'm there to say it's like, you know, yes, we're going to go through how you create a brand plan and a brand strategy, and we're going to do this, but you're also going to work on brand identity. And don't worry about if you don't think you're creative, because that kills me when I hear that.
The application of creativity, yes, it's oftentimes reserved for people that have created a fluency through experience and education, whether it's an architect, a coder, et cetera. But the creation, the inception of an idea, we can all participate in that.
Like the brainstorming of an idea, we can all participate. Because what happens oftentimes is people say, well, I can't draw, I'm not creative.
And it's like, well, that's only part of the equation. You know, I've done, I don't know, a couple hundred, I've led a couple hundred brainstorm sessions over the years, big and small.
And I've never said at the beginning of the brainstorm session, I want all the non-creative people

to leave the room right now

because we're gonna start to concept and be creative.

No, it's again, it's right and left brain thinkers

working together to conceive great things.