Dear brand, marketing, and growth-minded friends and colleagues, Bobby had the pleasure of sitting with Kirby Hasseman on his podcast, Delivering Marketing Joy. We go deep on why the brand is NOT just your logo and why your organization should “Give a Sh*t.”

Give it a listen, and let us know what you think.
Listen here

Transcript: 

Kirby Hasseman: Hey there, and welcome to a brand new episode of Delivering Marketing Joy. I am your host Kirby Hoffman and Joining me today is a brand new rockstar super excited to dig into the topics today. He’s the founder and principal of Propr Design. And he’s got a new book coming out soon called Build Your Brand Like You Give a Shit. I love that. It’s Bobby Gillespie, also known as Bobby G. Bobby; thank you so much for joining me.

Bobby G: Oh, thanks for having me here. Appreciate it.

Kirby Hasseman: Absolutely, absolutely. So one of the things I’ve heard you talk about is a brand growth success pyramid. I’m really interested in that. So can you explain that and why it’s important to build your brand on the right foundation?

Bobby G: So imagine the old food pyramid, right from back when it was just, you know, layers. And at the bottom of that pyramid is the foundation, right? The foundation is what everything is built on top of. And we start with building a brand Foundation, and that’s composed of a few elements at the tippy top of the pyramid is sales, right? The conversion. So if you want more sales, want better sales opportunities, if you want the conversations, you need to have to close deals, you don’t start with sales, right? You start at the foundation, right, and it all feeds up. So at the very bottom is your brand, which is your vision and strategy. And that’s made up of core elements are your core values and your brand message, which includes your purpose and mission. And your values are the non-negotiable aspects of your brand, right? The things that you truly give a shit about that you would fight on the street over. Your message is, who you are, and what you do for whom? How you do it, your purpose beyond transactions, your mission. And that’s sort of how you can your message is broadcast and everybody, you know, what you’re all about, and the right people will be attracted to that message. The wrong people like that stuff for me, right?

So when you’re trying to have those sales at the top of the pyramid, they’re the right people who found their way to you. And you know, that’s the idea. The last aspect of your brand foundation is your personality and tone of voice. And those are what influence what’s appropriate in terms of word and image design, writing, and video. So, what are the pieces of the pyramid that are between vision and strategy, aka your brand, and sales and conversion? So on top of the brand is design, which is influenced by all those things, right? The design influences what’s next in marketing, which is your voice. And then next is advertising, which is touch. And then following that is business Dev, which has inspired, and you’re inspiring, people to convert, right? So, you know, if you’re a growth leader, if you’re a revenue leader at your company, you don’t want to put all of your resources into that top piece of the pyramid; you want to make sure that all the pieces below that are going to feed into a more healthy, sustainable and scalable operation. Starting with the brand that’s the best way to do it. And we know that that’s the best way to do it because that’s the way we do it for our clients. And it works. It helps them sort of do all the right things, say all the right things to the right people in the right places at the right time to attract them and lead to those conversions.

Kirby Hasseman: Yeah, I like that. Because I think that if you don’t do that, sometimes you will accidentally hit on sales, but they aren’t the right people. And so then it’s very challenging. Whatever you’re selling, whether it’s a service or a product, it’s those; those kinds of customers always seem like they’re difficult because they don’t fit. You know, they don’t. They don’t value the same things you do as an organization. And so that does affect you. So I totally buy that. That makes a ton of sense. So I wanted to ask you, obviously, as a creative agency and Propr Design, most people kind of feel like I think a lot of small businesses for sure feel like their brand is their logo. And I was kind of curious to know, as a creative agency. Do you think that’s right? And if not, why not?

Bobby G: Well, I struggled with associating my company with branding because it kind of doesn’t really have any meaning. It means something different to everybody. And a lot of people say you my brand, your brand is your logo, the origin of branding was branding cattle and things like that. But the way we look at it, to make it approachable to everybody, is your brand is your reputation. So everything you do sends a message. Therefore, everything you do is marketing. But that message help set who it’s sent to? And how it makes them feel. That’s your brand. Right? Yeah. So not to get into like a slap, right? A couple of weeks ago. But think about the reputation of the person who did the slapping. Yeah, before the event. And after, right, a lot of damage was done to the reputation, right? So you think about the expression of your brand, is how you interact with people and how you treat them, right? The culture of your company, how you treat your customers, the impact your company has on the environment, you know, does the CEO Park in a handicapped spot because it’s close to the door? That’s their brand. That’s their reputation, right?

So you got to think about all these different things that make up this narrative. And if you wanted to have an authentic brand, you know that authenticity is not pushing a false narrative. It’s, pushing realness. And that realness is what people relate to. That realness is what people expect from your brand. That realness is what they want, right? That purpose, that mission, that authenticity. So yes, your logo is part of the story, your website, your core message, your marketing, you’re you know, your office, the way you dress, it’s all sending a message. And what that message is, you got to ask yourself, Is this message the one we want to be sending? Yeah, right? Is this the brand we want? At the end of the day, no matter what, you’re gonna get the brand new deserves; you better make sure you take the steps that stood the brand that you want.

Kirby Hasseman: I like that a lot; you’re gonna get the brand you deserve. I think there’s a ton of truth in that statement. I love it. So I read this sort of statement by you, Bobby, and I can’t wait to dig into this. So you have said that brand marketing is an infinite game played with finite resources. So I’m a big fan of Simon Sinek. And he has the book the infinite game. Are you talking about that? Can you explain what you mean by that?

Bobby G: So, yeah, Simon is great. You know, I think his brand is the why guy. I appreciate and respect that. But it isn’t an infinite game, right? Like, you know, we don’t want to get into winning or losing, right? Those are short-term accomplishments; we, you know, as Simon says, it’s not winning or losing. It’s how long and how, and at what level you’re playing the game. But when you think about marketing, right, especially when you’re thinking about it in terms of breaking down silos between the creative and the conversion, we want to say like, okay, we only have a certain amount of resources that we can allocate to marketing, right, we don’t have the energy of the sun, to be able to to put, you know, the broadcast everywhere, we have a limited amount of energy. So you want to focus it like a laser.

And that comes back to positioning. So if you position yourself well, right, you’re saying the right thing to the right people, you have a product or service that brings value, you’re authentically having those conversations, then you’re gonna get a lot more out of those limited resources, right? Because you want to keep playing, you don’t ever stop marketing, right? People do, and they regret it for all kinds of reasons. But having that focus on okay, this is who our customer is; this is where they are. This is what they care about. This is who we are. Right? We’re clear on that because we have a proper brand foundation. This is what we care about. This is where we go and meet them. Right. And that eliminates any excesses that eliminate any waste that maximizes the impact on, you know, on any initiatives that you’re taking in terms of marketing?

Kirby Hasseman: Yeah, no, I think that makes a ton of sense. So it kind of leads nicely into my final question for you, Bobby is, you know, one of the things that I see that’s so challenging is that there’s just so many metrics out there to try and measure, oh, well, you know, the reach was this and the engagements where this and that, you know, whatever, there’s just there’s so many. And some of them I like to call sort of ego metrics, which are, you know, that’s fine, but they just are what they are. So can you talk a little bit about the difference between insights versus content?

Bobby G: Ah, yes. So content is you create content to influence the machines, your content is going to improve SEO, it’s going to drive traffic to your website, and is going to get people to come. You know, maybe no, of you maybe heard of you, right? But your insights, you know, you can outsource your content creation, you can do keyword research, and get blogs written by other people. You can get videos created; you can do, you know, all that stuff. That’s important. And all those, you know, metrics you’ve mentioned fall into that. And those are those that are important for the bigger picture. But what’s going to lead to a conversion to sales, right? That business stuff and inspiring are your insights, okay, that comes from, you know, thought leadership that comes from an open source mindset in terms of your ideas. Now, sharing your ideas with others, not giving away all your intellectual property, but sharing your IP and saying, like, hey, this is some value, I think that you can benefit from; here are some things that we’re seeing that may help you.

Here are some things that we’ve done that you probably feel the same challenge, and we’ve helped our clients do that. So sharing those insights, having an open source approach to say, hey, you know, what, this is contributing to the conversation, this isn’t going to make us all better, this is going to make our prospects and our audiences better. So what that does is influences them to say like, Hey, you know, what, Bobby’s an authority on this. He’s really good, right? So when the time comes, that they’re, they have a need for something that we do, we’ve already brought a lot of value to them. That’s absolutely nontransactional, right? Because we know it’s going to help them. So that’s like taking a whole different approach and saying, like, Oh, we’re gonna get all of our content because it’s so valuable. I like to say like, Hey, you know, what, let’s just add to the conversation and make all marketers better. Right? And we’ll pick up some clients along the way, but we’re contributing to the conversation, which I think is more important than just the success of my company.

Kirby Hasseman: I love that that’s; I’m so excited that we’re sort of finishing on this. This is what I like to call giving first, right? You’re providing value upfront. And I think that generally speaking, you know, it’s not new, but we’ve got new tools to do it. People who give first tend to win. And so I think you and I are kindred spirits on that.

Bobby G: The rule of reciprocity, right? If someone gives you something, you feel compelled to give back, unless you’re a sociopath. That’s also like, a lot of us, you know, b2b space, especially we’re trying to build relationships with people, even like b2c, you’re trying to build relationships with people, right? That you want a positive relationship with your brand. And the only way you’re gonna develop a healthy relationship is by delivering some sort of benefit and value.

Kirby Hasseman: Totally.

Bobby G: And if you’re just giving value to people all the time, eventually, that rule reciprocity will dictate that, hey, you know what, they’re really good people. You know, I like their style. You know, they’re smart, or obviously, know what they’re talking about. I’m gonna pick up the phone and give them a shout. And then it’s not selling yours has conversations and say, hey, you know, what, what’s the problem you’re having? Is this a good fit for us? Is this a good fit for you? And then you just agree on the terms to work together? Yeah, that’s what I want. I mean, I’m a designer, you know, art director, Creative Director. But I’m also the revenue executive at the company. And I’m much-convincing anybody to hire us, right? Yeah, I want them to perceive our value and align it with things that they’re struggling with. And for them to know that we’ve, we’ve been through it, and we can help them through it.

Kirby Hasseman: I love that well, Bobby Gillespie or aka Bobby G. Thanks so much for taking the time. As you listen to this, please go check out his book. Hopefully, it’ll be out when this drops. Build Your Brand Like You Give a Shit absolutely love that title. I can’t wait to check it out. And we’ll have to do this again. Sometime. It’s been fun. Okay.

Bobby G: I appreciate the opportunity. Kirby, Thank you. All right, cool.

Kirby Hasseman: Well, that’s gonna wrap up this edition of delivering marketing joy. We’ll see you next time.