Episode 4: Branding and the Human Element

ilanit Appelfeld Welcome, Olivia Gonzalez hi how are you?

Olivia M. Gonzalez I’m doing wonderfully well. How are you?

ilanit Appelfeld Excellent. Thank you. We are here in Shenkar Center of innovation today, which is a part of Shenkar College is a well known for its design, art and fashion department. So we’re excited to be here. No better location to talk about branding and messaging. So, we’re going to hear about Brand story and messaging and story development, I’m really glad that you’re here.

Olivia M. Gonzalez I’m happy to be here.

ilanit Appelfeld Absolutely. You help organizations shape their brand stories to engage with their audiences. You have previously worked with TGI Fridays, which is great because I love that restaurant.

Olivia M. Gonzalez That’s a great place. They are a lot of fun.

 

ilanit Appelfeld I remember waiting for Friday so we could go out in London to TGI Fridays.

Olivia M. Gonzalez They’re the best. They really are.

ilanit Appelfeld They actually waited for Friday to go there, which is a little strange because I’m sure the messages that come every day.

Olivia M. Gonzalez It’s Friday. It’s always Friday and they’re at Fridays.

ilanit Appelfeld I don’t miss that.

ilanit Appelfeld OK. So let’s dive into our questions. Tell us a bit about yourself, Olivia, I mean, I’ll tell you our clients usually come in to protect their brands, and we always feel that we don’t want to be disconnected from the process itself. Because, when the protection resonates with the underlying story, it’s always much better. So people like you fascinate me. Well, they know what to do. What, I don’t know how to do. I only get the feeling when branding happens. That it needs some more work before it’s protected. So I think that’s the space I would like to talk to you today about.

Olivia M. Gonzalez OK, great.

ilanit Appelfeld So I guess it would be good to hear a bit about your experience. How do you work? How does the process start? What do you do?

Olivia M. Gonzalez Absolutely. Well, my first order of business is always to take a deep dive into the business of my clients through their story. So when a client books a strategy session with me, what they’ll do is, they’ll fill out an intake form. And that intake form really walks them through every single aspect of their brand story from the creative inception of their brand all the way to where they are now. The ideas and the reason why I want to do this is because I’m looking for a few specific things. I’m looking for the “Why” behind their business, why did they start their company to begin with? And who exactly is their target audience? Who were they trying to reach? And on top of that, what problem are they trying to solve for their target audience? That’s really, really important. And next thing is, especially when if I’m working with a technology company or a food industry or an innovation company, I want to know where is that human connection? Because that’s critical when we’re talking about developing a brand story. And then the final thing, as I do an analysis of everything that they’ve kind of uploaded or during our discussion is how can I build that bridge between their unique aspects or the elements of their particular brand story with that human element in order to create a reason for your audience to engage with you, because that’s really what we’re looking for. So no matter where you are on the spectrum of industry or business, those elements will always come into play. Why you build your brand, who you’re building it for. What problem are you trying to solve? Where’s that human connection and how can I make that bridge so that we create that automatic connection between your audience and your business? So that’s really kind of a high level overview of what you can expect if you book a strategy session with me or if I’m working with you one on one as a client with a corporate organization as well.

ilanit Appelfeld So let’s let’s suppose I am a client. I have my technology, I’m thinking of a name. OK. That’s our world. Is the brand or the name or the trademark The end of the process. Or is it the beginning uses a starting point? Or will you just keep an open mind?

Olivia M. Gonzalez I think you have to keep an open mind. And the reason is, is that, you know, we talk about what is a great way. Right. What’s the direction that you need to go through in order to select something to move forward? First of all, you need to know who you are. That’s first and foremost. You need to know who you serve. Again, it goes back to those original questions that I kind of look when I take the deep dive. But when you talk about what problem you’re trying to solve, all of those things play into a brand name. They play into what you want to communicate to your audience. What’s critically important is, as you are thinking about your brand name, you’re thinking about your brand. You have to understand that there is a lot of psychology behind the building of brands. There’s psychology behind the colors. There’s psychology behind the naming your brand position. There are a lot of archetypes when you build your brand. And I know it can sound overwhelming to kind of put it that way, but just break it down a little bit and have a better understanding going into the process as to what you’re looking for. And again, know who you are and that you have to understand and identify that you do solve a specific problem. And sometimes we have a lot of multi passionate, you know, areas, especially like technology can solve so many issues, so many problems across the board. But what are you good at? What problem can you solve? First and foremost, what can you hone in on and then identify that and then understand your audience, this problem that you’re solving. You have to learn to speak their language a little bit. You have to understand what are they searching for when they go to Google, when they go to look in their social media and they’re trying to find an answer. What questions are they asking? You know, just like Google prompts, right, whenever you type in the question that you’re about to ask. That’s how you have to be thinking. What are the questions that people are prompting in order for you to develop a brand name? Especially if you think about SEO and you think about how your brand name is going to come up based on what people are searching for. So you really have while it’s fun, the colors and the names and everything is a very creative part of the process and very enjoyable. There’s a method to the madness in psychology. When you think about the brand colors, for instance, maybe you will find very frequently in technology or even in banking institutions, because that is representative of trust. That’s representative of someone who you can trust – honesty. Red is very bold. You think of big international brands like Coca-Cola, who’s really out there in bold and you know, and big. When you think about yellow, you think about positivity, happy, fun energy. So if you have a splash of yellow in your branding colors, that may mean that you’re taking a positive spin on something or perhaps you don’t take everything so quite so seriously. But there’s something a little more positive. But do you see all the different colors and there’s, you know, endless right information that you can find on the Internet about that type of branding. Just map out those keywords that you hear your audience speaking that you would identify when you’re looking to problem solve and then do a little research with regard to the psychology of the colors that you’re using, as well as don’t get so creative that in your name or in your branding that your audience can’t tell who you are or what you do. And if you want to have something unique, you know, if you want to have something unique that pulls together, have a sub header if you have something for me, mine is pretty direct OMG brand story. So OMG are my initials and I was very fortunate in that we can think my husband for the G at the end of my name for OMG. He completed it and brand’s story is what I do under the umbrella of brand story. I have a lot of strategic ways that I work with organizations on building their culture and engagement, messaging their internal messaging and communications, strategic, you know, communications with regard to leadership and brand positioning. But they all fall under that umbrella. So think of it that way. What’s your biggest promise? What is the thing that you are really, really an expert at when you lock, lock in there, identify what those things are, and then work your way there? People, once they get to know your brand and get to identify with your brand, then they’ll ask questions and then you’ll be able to kind of lead them into the other section of your business. But first and foremost, when you’re thinking about choosing that brand name, that definitely is kind of you want to make sure and develop your business. Of course, that’s the focus. You don’t want focus the whole thing on the brand name. You want to be purposeful and intentional in the names that you choose.

ilanit Appelfeld OK. So do I need to have my avatar in place? I mean, I know all my other theories and my branding. And you have this I sense a catch 22 situation. If I’m just starting out with questions that I don’t know how to answer, I don’t necessarily know who I am to begin with because it’ll take some trials now. So what is the ideal time to, you know, to consult with a specialist to start, filing for trademarks? Because at the end of the day, you need to test your market. You need to see what you’re good at. You need to focus on. So, What from your experience, is the best time?

Olivia M. Gonzalez That’s a great, great observation. You have to have an audience first before you can trademark a brand name. People get caught up. I need a business card. I need a Website. I need this and that. You know what? My name’s Olivia M. Gonzalez. This is how I can help you. These are the problems I can solve for you. Let’s work together. I’m going to build my strategy based on how I’m helping you as an independent individual. I can set up a business bank account way before I do anything else and get all of those things in order. On the business financial aspect, so that I’m, you know, set up financially and legally without doing the huge trademark things and the branding and things of that nature. Until to your point, I know my market. I understand what they need from me. And at that point I can then build. You are intentionally building solid stepping stones toward a successful business, because without a solid foundation, I can send I can hand out business cards all day long. But if I cannot deliver on my promise. I have nothing. I have nothing. And it doesn’t matter, you know.

ilanit Appelfeld So what would you say is the most common mistake that you see companies doing branding, I mean, is it usually around timing or is it going all over the place with a message?

Olivia M. Gonzalez Sometimes. Sometimes it is around timing because they’ll do things like promote, promote, promote and then launch something that collapses because they didn’t spend enough time on the back end of their technology. On the user facing testing on the focus groups in that particular area and they do a lot of marketing is just, you know, they can explode on the marketing scene. And then once they’re there, the question is, can they perform? Can they deliver? And so a great mentor of mine, who I love and adore. Nicole Walters always says functional, not fancy, because ultimately you can build the fancy around the functional if your product works. If you have worked out all of the back end issues that you need to tweak or make adjustments with, whether it’s in programing, whether it’s in user facing so that it’s user friendly where there’s, you know, three clicks or less things of that nature ironed those things out first and then you can promote and get into that space because think about all of the individuals who maybe were rushed into or launched into the stratosphere and did not have structure. They were not structurally sound. So building that map, identifying, you know, and knowing exactly what it is that you need to include in your in in the elements of your brand story. So when you talk about those common mistakes, lots of times companies will focus on the bells and whistles again, the marketing piece of it all the bells and whistles of it all and disregard the human element, the human connection. They’ll disregard the fact that they have to actually work. When somebody goes to your programmer, uploads your app or, you know, whatever the case may be, it has to work. Those things have to work. And so the common mistakes are A, they move too fast into the marketing arena before they actually have established a strong foundation. And B, they forget about the human element because ultimately that’s what it’s all about. I talk really in a lot of detail, my online courses, the brand magic map online course where I go through all of the different elements that need to be built within a brand story. And what’s funny is a lot of the stuff that you’re going that when you go into you’re thinking, I need to talk about, you know, who we are and, you know, how many, you know, shades of color we have and how many buttons we can push and how many what a win is when really and truly all of the greatest companies in the world have one thing in common. They’re all different with regard to their unique stories, their backgrounds. But every single successful company in the world has one thing in common, and that is the human element that’s interwoven throughout their brand story. And that’s the connecting factor. So as much as we are into whether it’s technology or food tech or maybe it’s app building or maybe it’s, you know, financial, you know, security or maybe, you know, it’s as any sort of those things. Those are amazing elements that solve problems for human beings. So tell me why it’s going to make me feel safe. Tell me why it’s going to make me feel better about trusting you with my information about trusting you with my restaurant business, without trusting you with my app.

ilanit Appelfeld Thinking about my clients. Most of them are startup companies. And let’s talk about technology, because I see what you’re saying about the human connection. But when you have a SAAS product But where do you so is when you have excess product, when you run your sitting, when you’re a start-up that you want to get to investors.

ilanit Appelfeld Right. You need to you need to get over your survival mode. You’re not in the market. I understand what you’re saying completely. But I’m asking, you know what? If we say, you know, we think this is ready, you is the richest third. It hasn’t. Right. What are it’s looking for investors. It has a business plan. It has developed. And then we don’t know what the end product is going to be like. And we need a good brand because without it, good run. I mean, of course, we’re not going to spend any money on one on branding or infringing on trademarks. But a lot of the companies have their branding in place very early on. I don’t have any I mean, I’ll tell you what, you said something the prison resonates with me. You said. You know, you can’t have the name being totally unconnected from what you’re doing because it can be very fanciful. We can invest a lot of money on marketing, but the people that people don’t know. Yeah. Oh, I always tell them I’m trying to not think of suggestive names.

Olivia M. Gonzalez Yeah. You wanted to play with words? Absolutely. Play with words. And that’s another thing to know when talking about those list of keywords, the things that suggest what you do and connects to what you’d list. You listed a lot of wonderful things when you’re talking about startups and what they have and they’ve got their business plan and they have their, you know, their brands set up and all of those things. My question is, it does not matter what is. You asked me earlier about the common mistake and what you’re mapping out right now is a perfect example of the one thing that is left out of all of those things is what problem are you solving for me? What problem are you solving for me? And why aren’t we focused on that? Because that’s actually where the attraction is. That’s where the engagement is going to be. People don’t people want to know the. Have you ever heard of it’s called WIIFM? It’s W I I F M what’s in it for me. All right. What. What’s in it for me. And they call it’s a very common kind of business strategy kind of term with a you get all of this stuff exactly what you just said. You’ve mapped it out. You have the brand strategy. You’ve got a brand name. You’re talking about your avatar. And I guess. And I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been in a corporate conference boardroom and they go through the whole presentation and someone will say WIIFM, what’s in it for me?

ilanit Appelfeld Right.

Olivia M. Gonzalez Because that’s what we want to know. That is the. But that’s why I talk about the human element so much. You’re absolutely right. They need investors. Sure they do. Guess what? investors are human beings. They need to know the bottom line. They also have needs. And yes, they need to have products that are going to have ROI, half that return on investment for them. Absolutely. That is no doubt at all whatsoever. The business plan. You need to be structurally sound. Absolutely. The brand name, when you’re starting to do brand messaging and and branding, you need to have something that’s relatable, that’s identifiable, that is unique and outside of the sea of sameness. Because a lot of people you’ll see, you know, you have to do your research, have some alignment with the psychology of your colors, the psychology of your fonts, for Pete’s sake. There’s all sorts of things that happen there as well. That with regard to like why you use the fonts that you use, some of them are more formal. Some of the more casual. Some of them are more technology driven. You have to be able to identify those things, but you also have to be accessible to your avatar, accessible to the individuals who need to use your product. So you’re correct. All these brands, startups, your clients specifically, they may have those things. And I will say this brands change right with the times. We have to understand that you’re going to have to be flexible as well. That’s very important, I think, to communicate with your branding and your brand name. And I’ll give you a perfect example. When I first started out individually, I started out as an independent contractor under my own name, just Olivia M. Gonzalez, because that a that’s the easiest thing to do. That’s how you get into networking. That’s how you get into the space and get people to know who you are and associate your name. And then I developed OMG brand story because that was the focus after I had done my work with my focus groups, my marketing groups. I did analysis with the direction of what exactly do I want to offer as the umbrella product and then work up everything else underneath that. And OMG brand story fit the bill. It fit if it who I am, what I do and what my expertise is. And so after I did that, you know, then we start building at that point. But every single part of the process was, how am I helping you? How am I helping you? What is the problem that I’m solving for you? I’m helping you identify the unique qualities in your brand stories in order to drive connection, in order to reinforce your company culture and in order to have profitability increased because of the connection between you and your audience.

ilanit Appelfeld It all comes back to the human factor then.

Olivia M. Gonzalez Yes. Yes, without a doubt. And that’s so difficult, especially in the technology arena, in the technology space. It’s very, very difficult, I think, because we’re so excited about the technology and about the wonderful things and the aspects in all areas that we soon we get really, really captivated with. You know, I’m going to go back to the bells and whistles. Right. Piece of things. But ultimately, I want to know, what do I get out of this? What’s in it for me?

Olivia M. Gonzalez So when you go back to that human element, you know, while every brand story, you know, is really unique. We talked about a little bit earlier that one human element I want to make an example. I want to give you give me example.

Olivia M. Gonzalez Even the brand stories of global icons, if you think about Toyota, they all have human elements. You know, Toyota was created basically by a son who wanted to make looming easier for his mom. That’s how Toyota started. So the focus is not the sleek car that’s going to be auto pilot in the future and have these new sleek using them in Japan where it’s like a single seater that kind of auto pilots and you can drive and navigate through the, you know, all of these new things that are coming out. That’s not where their story started. It’s built on a very solid foundation of a story about a son who just wanted to make work easier for his mom. And it and years, you know, hundred plus years or 60 plus. Well, in USA, 60 plus. But hundreds of us in Japan. Those things matter. Those things matter. If you think about Coca-Cola and the huge global international icon that it is, you know, had started, a pharmacist was curious about creating a differently flavored soda for the soda fountains where he was where he was working. So that’s what you have to remember. I love that we are so far advanced. But I want to also say that another huge person that I would actually share with your audience. Her name is Jen Kamm, who is also a brand strategist as well. She’s talking a lot recently about this analog revolution is kind of what she calls it. And it’s true. This is something that and I’ve said this in a couple of other interviews that I’ve had as well, is that I’ve always said she’s on point when she calls it the analog revolution. And I think that’s something that’s relatable to your technology clients and something that they could, you know, focus on, is that there must be a more basic with your mind being more basic with message and gulp.

Olivia M. Gonzalez And basically storytelling is having at a like a renaissance period. It’s coming back. It’s, you know, storytelling was, you know, forgotten about for a really long time. And businesses are realizing now, oh, we went so far away. We use marketing and so, so far away from the human element and that human connection that we are now no longer storytelling. We’re just pitching and pitching. And, you know, pitching doesn’t do. Yeah. So it’s. Matter of going back a little bit and understanding that we’ve got to talk about those stories, we’ve got to talk about those human elements and the basics of your stories, how you crafted your story. Again, why behind your business? Why did you start? Why did you. Something happened. Something happened. You have a personal story too Ilanit. I know you do. And I have one, too. Why did we start our businesses? What was the behind the scenes something that catapulted us into the areas that we are experts in now? People want to know.

ilanit Appelfeld Connect your “why” to the Story, connect your why to the message?

Olivia M. Gonzalez Yes.

ilanit Appelfeld Connect your why to the brand. but you are saying: look at the level of awareness of your customer/client.

Olivia M. Gonzalez Their language, your language.

ilanit Appelfeld They’re in a different place. You don’t get to the place. You’re never going to be able to communicate with them.

Olivia M. Gonzalez I go back to the whole idea about. Think about your person and what are they looking for on the Internet? What are they typing in? Think about that.

Olivia M. Gonzalez What are they typing in on that Google bar that they’re looking for? They need to find you. And if you think about it that way, they’re certainly not typing in 10, five fastest. You know what they’re looking for? Problem solving for my business. I need my computer to move at a rapid pace for the intake of orders that it’s receiving at this time. And I don’t know how to anticipate or I need to anticipate, you know, my marketplace. How do I do that? I need to protect my trademark that my ideation, my trade. But how do I do that? I need things like that where you have to think about your audience and what are they typing into that search bar? That’s how you’re going to get to the space of the mess. The type of messaging that’s going to resonate with your audience.

ilanit Appelfeld OK. Excellent. So I’m wrapping it up. I think that for me and what I’m taking from this interview, which is an eye opener, is that it all comes down to seeing who your market is understanding what their level of awareness is. Next thing into your story. Being authentic about your “why”. Packing it up and protecting it when you’re ready.

Olivia M. Gonzalez That’s right. Because that’s huge as well. Protecting who you are. You know, we talk about protect the asset. Protecting your value. It’s your ideas. It’s who you are. Once you have that aligned and in place and you know that you’re about to launch into the new level of your business, you have to protect yourself. Those are things that are absolutely necessary because you have to understand, you know, yeah it’s critical.

ilanit Appelfeld Greg, where I’m concerned is we know the trademark of the both and plus forever. Yeah, love it. You know, that’s why Apple is. Everything. You know, she you brought it right. Everything to the trademark world and even the trademark wonder on your store, on the design of their store. Yes. Well, once you get into the trademark for the human.

ilanit Appelfeld It is such a beautiful protection technology. And, you know, one of my mission, my points thinking, you know, think that one of, you know, the trademark side because trademark is going to last forever.

Olivia M. Gonzalez That’s exactly right. And I want to say, you said they trademark the Apple store. You’d think trademark that the Apple store and the way that it’s laid out because of the why they do it, because they’re, you know, that the value, their value, their worth is in how they feed people to the front, how it’s set up visually, the experience you’re protecting, the experience of your audience as well. Once you have those things mapped out, so do your research exactly like you said with the human element, understand exactly what it is that you have to offer and then protect it. That’s really important.

ilanit Appelfeld By the way, what’s Apple said in that judgment? Germany was that they see their store as a part of their packaging.

Olivia M. Gonzalez Yes. It really is. It’s something to think about. And I can’t tell you. Take deep dives into these huge global icons and get a better understanding of why they do what they do because they’re geniuses. You know, they didn’t forget about the human element. They tell their story very well. They grow. They’re very innovative. You have to grow with your you know, your clients. There’s a huge there’s a lot of, you know, brand takeaways that you can you can grab from doing a little research from them. And I do talk about that, by the way, a little bit on my online courses as well about those brand takeaways. So I loved this has been a wonderful conversation with you. I’ve enjoyed it very, very much.