How do people think about your company? What do you do to support how they feel? How do you influence their feelings?

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Dave Young:
Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, Dave Young and Stephen Semple here. And today’s topic is so secret that Stephen wouldn’t even tell it to me before we hit the record button.

Stephen Semple:
Well, yeah, and there’s a couple reasons for it. One, we have to keep our eye on the timer because with this topic you could go probably two, or three days. We’re going to keep it to 15 minutes.

Dave Young:
Oh, I’m sorry. Are we talking about me today?

Stephen Semple:
No, we’ll save that one for another day. This comes because of an experience that I had recently. So I was on LinkedIn and I was reading comments from a group. So this is a professional LinkedIn group of marketing people.

Dave Young:
What are you doing hanging out with a professional group of marketing people in the first place?

Stephen Semple:
I don’t know. I really don’t know. It’s a problem. My name’s Stephen Semple and I’m filling in the blank.

Dave Young:
Yeah, Okay. Okay, so you’re hanging out with marketing people.

Stephen Semple:
Yes. And they were having this debate about this question. The question was this, “Does how I answer the phone impact my brand?” Now, the fact that the answer was being debated made me crazy. It made me realize that what we need to talk about with people today is what is a brand, what is branding, and why you want to do it.

Dave Young:
Oh, man.

Stephen Semple:
So I want to start off with what is a brand. So let me define that to-

Dave Young:
Wait, you don’t want the answer to the question that’s asked?

Stephen Semple:
Sure. Give me the answer to the question that’s asked.

Dave Young:
Of course, it does.

Stephen Semple:
Of course, it freaking does.

Dave Young:
How you raise your kids affects your brand. Everything you do. You didn’t tell this group of marketing people that you have a podcast, did you?

Stephen Semple:
No, I did not. What I realized was-

Dave Young:
I don’t want him coming over here and arguing with us.

Stephen Semple:
What I realized was this was one of those moments where I just shut up and left. Which as you know for me is a very hard and painful experience, but what it made me realize is people don’t understand what a brand is, and it’s really simple. So let me simplify it for everyone.

A brand is how somebody feels about your business, period. That’s your brand. And what impacts how people feel about your business? Everything, everything you do, the people you hire, how you dress, the clothes you wear, how the phone is answered, everything impacts your brand. Your brand is the sum of all the things that impact how somebody feels about you.

Dave Young:
Exactly.

Stephen Semple:
So when this debate was going on, I was like, “Are you freaking kidding me?” Because the answer is really simple. Yes.

Dave Young:
Yes. All the things.

Stephen Semple:
Right. So how I answer the phone, does it impact my brand? Yes.

Dave Young:
I know this phenomenon. Gosh, I’ve seen it over the years, over the decades. You and I both used to be in a B&I group, right?

Stephen Semple:
Yep.

Dave Young:
And so, you’re at this networking meeting and everybody has 45 seconds to a minute to talk, and the person that is the graphic designer blathers on for 45 seconds about how they’re helping someone create a new brand for their business. It’s like, “No, you’re not.” You’re helping someone choose some new colors and maybe drawing a new logo, but a brand is bigger than that. Way bigger.

Stephen Semple:
Yes. But to help people understand things, I wanted to also go, okay, so your brand is a sum of all the things you’ve done in terms of what it makes people feel about your business, your product, your service. Branding is something different. When I was thinking about this, the best way in my mind to explain branding is the guy who invented the idea of branding was Pavlov and his dogs.

Dave Young:
Exactly.

Stephen Semple:
So if you think about it, the meat is the sum total of emotionally how a dog feels about meat.

Dave Young:
For the people that don’t know Pavlov, we’re talking about behavioral psychology. And in the 1920s, early 1900s.

Stephen Semple:
Or it’s definitely early 1900s, yes,

Dave Young:
He did an experiment where he took dogs and figured out how to measure their salivary output, and then trained them by getting them to associate being fed to the ringing of a bell, right? Where the bell has, in essence, nothing to do with food, but you could train them, you could teach dogs. Anyway, for people who didn’t understand that this was a psychology experiment way back.

Stephen Semple:
So if you think about it, basically dogs love meat. So there’s all the emotional attachment, the meat. When he gave the dog meat, he rang the bell. So you give the meat, rang a bell, give the meat, rang a bell. Then when he rang the bell without giving the meat, the dog had the same emotional response as if the meat was there. And he could measure it with the saliva.

So branding is the anchoring of all of the emotions that already exist towards your company. So there’s your brand, the sum total of all the things somebody thinks about your company. Then what you can do is you can take auditory cues and visual cues, and you can anchor those emotions so that when somebody sees those things, they recall all the feelings they have about your company. So branding is the anchoring of what it is you’ve already created.

Dave Young:
It includes all of the experiences that anybody has with your company, whether it’s driving by and seeing your storefront or picking up the phone and calling you, and how you answer the phone makes a difference.

Stephen Semple:
How you answer the phone makes a difference. So it’s why you want to do branding and it’s powerful. Branding is powerful. And I’m not trying to dismiss the power of branding. Branding is powerful and we’re going to talk at the end here about how to make your brand and branding more powerful. But the reason why you want to do branding is aided recall. And Dave, you’ve got a great way of explaining aided recall because that’s what branding does for you is aided recall. So Dave, I love how you explain aided recall.

Dave Young:
Well, our founding partner, Roy Williams, has always said the goal of a branding campaign is to be the company that people think of first and feel best about when the need for your product or service arises in the mind of a consumer, right? And I think there are some other advertising people who are renegades and mavericks that take that you want to boil it down even further. It’s fame. Become the brand that’s famous in your category in your town.

And when you’re talking about guys like Bob Hoffman, and I think Les Binet and Peter Field agree with that, they’re European brand guys. So back to aided recall. So a couple of definitions of terms. Unaided recall is if we’re having a survey and we ask you, “Hey, could you name a pharmacy in your town?” All right. And if you can, then that’s unaided recall. Yeah, I can tell you it’s Semple Pharmacy down on the corner of Maine and 12th. Okay, simple. That was easy, right? You named one. Can you name another one?

Any businesses in your category that people can name that fall under unaided recall. They know you so well that the name of your company just rolls off their lips when you ask, “Can you name one of these companies?” So that’s unaided recall. Aided recall would be, “Hey, here’s a list of companies. Have you heard of any of them?” Right? And in that case, they might list a dozen different pharmacies. And if Semple Pharmacy is on the list and people have heard of it before, they’ll check the box and say, “Yeah, I’ve heard of that one. Of course, I’ve heard of CVS, and I’ve heard of Walgreens and all these other big names. But yeah, I’ve heard of simple because I see it on the list and yes, I have heard of it.

So where that comes into play. These researchers have estimated that a, let’s say a 5% unaided recall. We survey 100 people and five of them can name you unaided, just the word Semple Pharmacy just comes right out of them. That converts to about a 55% score in aided recall.

Stephen Semple:
Right. So aided recall is 10 times.

Dave Young:
10 times. So if 5% of the people can name you without any prompt, 55% of the people should be able to pick you out of a list. That’s how famous you are in your market.

Stephen Semple:
Right. So tie this back to branding for me, Dave.

Dave Young:
Okay. So the reason people have trouble with unaided recall is that I’m not thinking about you all the time, right? I’ve got a life to live. I’m not thinking about your pharmacy. I’m not thinking about your plumbing shop. I’m not thinking about your tire shop. I’m thinking about me and what I’m up to today. All right?

Now, my experience with your brand is have I seen your ads? Have you had enough ads that I can remember them? Have I used you before? Do I have friends that have used you? And so, there’ll be a context in which people are talking about your brand. And when I finally need what it is that you do, if it’s a pharmacy, if it’s tires, if it’s plumbing, you’re better off at least being in the list, right? Having established some place in my mind where I know who you are and don’t have some negative connotation about you just, “Yeah, okay. I’d give those guys a try because I don’t have anybody else in mind because that’s not what I’m thinking about today.” Although it is now because my tire’s flat or I need to get a prescription filled.

Stephen Semple:
I’m going to cut you off here because I know you can go on for a long time on this.

Dave Young:
You said days.

Stephen Semple:
Yeah. Well, you could because it’s a big topic and I want to simplify it down for people. The act of branding, which is adding those visual or auditory cues, what they do is they aid all of that recall because it’s suddenly this thing that’s recognizable. Oh, there’s the logo. I recognize that company. I recall all these things that I know about this company. I hear this tagline or brandable chunk, or whatever it is.

Dave Young:
Maybe it’s a jingle. Yeah.

Stephen Semple:
A jingle. I’m then able to recall all those things. So what happens is branding aids recall. That’s what it does. Now, here’s the reason why you do want to hire a branding expert is because if that brand that is created, those visual or auditory cues that are recreated are not consistent to the existing brand, then recall is harder.

Consistency and authenticity is what works. So when all the dots align, you actually end up with a very strong brand. And the other thing is good branding is about helping you recall one or two things. Because we cannot remember a thousand things about a company. We can recall a couple. So what happens is your brand, your brand does all the things that people think about your business. It exists, right?

Now, you can impact your brand by making conscious decisions of I stand for these things. Let’s make sure my script in terms of how I answer the phone meets all of that. That then strengthens my brand. Branding is all the things that help a consumer recall that. Which as you said, Dave, is 10 times the number of consumers. So if two people can recall it, we can now make it 20. If five people can recall it, we can now make it 50 with good branding.

Dave Young:
And so it’s not just recalling it, but recognizing it when they see it or hear it.

Stephen Semple:
Recognizing when they see it or hear it, including all the opinions that they’ve made about that business, right? Helps recall all those things. So the reason why a business wants to concern itself with its brand and branding is because it does help sales. No question. It makes your business significantly more powerful. In fact, we have an example if people go back and listen to the episode on Rolls Royce and Bentley, where Rolls Royce was just bought for the name, no plant, no equipment, no nothing, just the name.

And there’s been lots of other examples where businesses have been way more valuable for the name. So for example, if Apple was to shut down today and say, Hey, does anybody want to buy the Apple name and logo? Be like, “Oh, hell yeah.” They would get tons of money for it. But there’s all this confusion, there’s all this confusion out there around brand and branding, and I think that’s the problem. The brand is how everyone feels about your business. And the branding anchors to help recall and be remembered.

Dave Young:
So let me give you a real-world example because people are like, “Oh, nobody’s ever going to ask me to pick you out of a list.” Oh, yes, they are.

Stephen Semple:
Oh, yes.

Dave Young:
Think about doing Adwords or a Google search in your market for a pharmacy, for a tire place, whatever it is, right? Now, if you do a generic search, you might get a Google adword at the top of the page for Semple Pharmacy, right? But because you did a generic search, Semple Pharmacy’s going to have to pay a lot for that one because all the other pharmacies are competing for that click as well. If you don’t know what Adwords are, it’s a bidding basis, right? So the more popular the search term, the higher the cost for getting a click on that term.

So if you search for a generic phrase, it’s going to be expensive because every pharmacy in town wants that click because this is the indication that here’s a consumer that hasn’t made up their mind. But let’s say you’ve heard of a pharmacy, but you don’t even think about it, right? You just go do that generic search and all of a sudden the Google search results become the aided survey list. So not only do you get all the usual businesses, but the one that’s been doing radio ads or has been doing other branding efforts has a place in your mind that you just didn’t think of. Now they’re on the list, right?

You’re looking at this big list in Google of different pharmacies or whatever categories you’re looking for, and the one that’s on the list, you go, “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s the guy that does. Yeah, he does those cool ads. I like him.” Right? So all of a sudden, instead of having no opinion, you now have one that’s helped out by all of the other associations that you’ve created by intention in the past.

Stephen Semple:
And Dave, I can prove it. We’ve seen this over and over again. This is one of the things that when we take on a client we’ll do, we will ask… Oh, if we’re not doing the Adwords and they’ve got somebody doing the Adwords, we will ask them to grab a couple of the generic ones, not change the bits, not change the ad, and leave it unchanged. We then will run a mass media campaign, and guess what magically happens? The click-through rate on those ads improves. Now, why’d they improve? We didn’t change the bid and didn’t change the ad. What happened?

What happened is better branding helped aided recall, which is a Google Ad search, and lifted that result. We see that over and over again. So to recap, because we promise that we keep this short for folks, is when you’re thinking about your brand, it’s everything you do. It’s how your people greet people at the store. It’s how they dress. The signage. It’s absolutely everything, which then distills into emotionally, how does a customer feel about you?

Branding anchors all of that so that you get better-aided recall, which is a big deal. And that aided recall, to your point, Dave is not just the name, it’s the feeling, I like these guys. I’m comfortable with these guys. I trust these guys. Oh, these guys are so much fun. Whatever it is. And a strong brand is consistent.

So for example, one of the ones that I love is businesses will go, we’re family-owned and operated. And then they have this voicemail system that’s like this tree that is longer than fricking General Motors. Well, you know what? That’s not consistent because you’re saying, “Hey, we’re small, we’re friendly.” Then bloody well be small and friendly.

Dave Young:
And answer your phone with a human.

Stephen Semple:
Be consistent. So consistency is really important because the more consistent you are, the stronger those emotions are, the better the anchoring is. And that visual, auditory, whatever those cues are, have got to also repeat that. If they’re inconsistent, it doesn’t work, right? So there’s your brand, there’s the act of branding, and then there’s the whole consistency. And all of that will result in better-aided recall. But where the big bucks are, it results in better-unaided recall because that number is always 10 times.

Dave Young:
Yeah. There’s nothing better than having people search for you by name because they do remember you.

Stephen Semple:
That’s the best.

Dave Young:
And long-term branding campaigns can accomplish that.

Stephen Semple:
And again, to prove it with companies that we’ve done long-term branding campaigns, when you look at the Google Ad space is branded keywords will actually start pulling more clicks than unbranded keywords. And again, that we could do a whole episode. If people want to learn about the difference between branded and unbranded keywords, give us a call, set up a starter session and we’ll go through what that is because we could spend another 25 minutes explaining that. We’re already past our 20-minute minute mark here, Dave.

Dave Young:
But anytime somebody tells you that your brand is just the colors and the font and your logo run from them. Run from them.

Stephen Semple:
Run. Or if somebody wants to debate with you about whether or not how you answer the phone impacts your brand. Yeah, just quietly walk away. Hopefully, I didn’t hurt your head too much there with this one, Dave.

Dave Young:
So part two of this episode airs when? Because I still got more to say, Stephen.

Stephen Semple:
Oh, I know. I know. You could go a very long time. I know I was taxing you to keep it short.

Dave Young:
Okay. Thanks for bringing it up though.

Stephen Semple:
All right. Thanks, Dave.

Dave Young:
Thanks for listening to the podcast. Please share us. Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and leave us a big fat juicy five-star rating and review. And if you have any questions about this or any other podcast episode, email to questions@theempirebuilderspodcast.co

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