The Science of Brand Building with Ulli Appelbaum

Danyel McLellan [00:00:01]:

It doesn’t matter what kind of agency you run, traditional digital media, buying, web dev, PR or brand, whatever your focus, you still need to run a profitable business. The Build a Better Agency podcast presented by White Label iq will expose you to the best practices that drive growth, client and employee retention and profitability. Bringing his 25 plus years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant, please welcome your host, Drew McLellan.

Drew McLellan:

Hey there Drew Mclellan with another episode of Build a Better Agency. Super glad you’re back. Always grateful to get to spend this time with you and I think you’re going to love this episode. It’s going to get you thinking a little differently about how we talk about brand. And interestingly, our guest, a gentleman named Yuli Applebaum, agency guy from way back and now is doing some research and reinvesting in agencies. Sor agencies have given him a good career and a good life and his own curiosity around brand and also his desire to help other agencies has sort of led to a project, a research project and a book. And we’re going to talk more about that. And you know, that got me thinking about our friends at White Label who also are come from an agency background and are now reinvesting in the success of agencies. So as you know, White Label IQ is the presenting sponsor of our podcast. And one of the things that you may not know about them is that they don’t just say that they believe in agencies. They have actually have put their money and their time where their mouth is. So they helped found Agency Corps, which is basically a research arm, a nonprofit research arm built to better understand agencies and share back with what’s going on in our world and give us insights into how we can be more profitable, build our agencies, what clients are thinking and saying. All of that really sort of giving you some insight into agency life. And because their entire business is all about supporting agencies and they do that by doing White Label design, Dev and ppc. The insights that they’re chasing are the same ones that matter to them and, and that matter to all of you. So you should go check out agencycore.com if you haven’t already checked that out. But their whole attitude is that things are moving so fast and having great information is part of how they can help us by being a great partner. So go check out agencycore.com for sure, but also head over to whitelabeliq.com ami to learn more about how they partner with agencies just like yours.

So speaking of partnering with agencies just like yours, that’s why I wanted to have Yuli on the podcast, because he’s done some really interesting research about brand attribution and sort of the science behind what makes a brand work. And what can we as agency folks do to really improve not only the brand work that we do for clients, but what I want you to be thinking about is how can you use what he’s discovered and to improve the brand of your agency to your prospects across the globe. So without further ado, let’s welcome him to the podcast. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining us.

Ulli Appelbaum [00:03:30]:

Thank you so much for having me. Very excited to be on your show, Drew. Excited for the conversations.

Drew McLellan [00:03:36]:

So I just finished your new book, the Science of Brand Associations. When Mine Win Market. So tell everybody a little bit about your background, how you came to write the book, and then we’ll dig into what you learned as you were writing the book.

Ulli Appelbaum [00:03:49]:

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for asking. So first of all, as you can clearly hear, I’m German, but I live in Minnesota in the US. I’ve moved here 20 or so years ago. I did a master’s program in Europe and from there I started to work in the account planning department of some of the top tier agencies. One that doesn’t exist anymore, which was Lintas Leo Burnett. That was in Germany and in Hungary. And then I became a head of strategy at BBDO in Germany. And then early 2000, I decided to move to the United States because I got a job offer at the time from a company called Fallon. Fallon at the time was one of the top three creative agencies in the world. And when they called you, you didn’t ask, you know, let me think about it. You just asked, when can I start? That’s right.

Drew McLellan [00:04:33]:

That’s right.

Ulli Appelbaum [00:04:34]:

And then after that I went back to BBDO in Chicago, run the global Wrigley business there, from a strategic point of view, became head of strategy at Leo Burnett in Chicago as well, and then switched to a company called Sepion Nitro. Because of the Internet technology. I wanted to fine tune my understanding and experience with technology. But then in 2014, I decided to start my own consulting firm. First the Trousers, then the Shoes. And ever since, I’ve been consulting mainly corporate clients, anything from small startup to global multibillion dollar companies, literally across the board and across the categories. And I’ve always been fascinated with brands and what motivates people to buy and purchase something. And it frankly took. It was a journey of 20 or so years. And what I like about my job is I learn every day. I learn Every year. So I try to avoid the, you know, I launched, helped launch the fax machine in the 70s and that’s my credentials. So I try to keep up to date. And you know, I noticed very quickly that number one, there is not one single book on Amazon that has either a brand association in its title or that focuses exclusively on brand association. And yet when you follow all the thought leaders in the industry worldwide, whether it’s academics, whether it’s sort of like famous big research institutes, they all use the term or variation of the term. And so I was like, okay, so this sort of like a secret hidden in plain sight, everyone uses them, right? Everyone I admire. But no one has formalized or curated everything we know about, about brand associations. So that was one part. And then the fact that no one had ever written about it was like at first I thought maybe I’m wasting my time. But then I realized, no, it’s such an important matter that I’m going to try to put stuff together. And my second focus was really, you know, there are millions of books on branding and advertising and stuff like that, but from the millions, 99% are opinion based on or they share a theory and then they use a case study, typically Apple or Nike. You know, I’m always impressed how Apple and Nike are always used for every single out there.

Drew McLellan [00:06:47]:

And Zappos.

Ulli Appelbaum [00:06:48]:

Right, exactly. And then for the last 30 years I’ve been in the business, right. So I wanted to do something that is not my opinion but that is scientific based and evidence based. So marketing science based. So the book is basically a curation, I would say of the current best in class thinking knowledge and evidence about brand associations or memory structures or different other names you want to call this thing. And I did recently a sort of like chatgpt analysis of various famous books in marketing or popular books in marketing. And it turned out there are only three or four that are really just evidence based and science based and the rest is opinion based. They’re not bad, they’re just not based on replicable principles that a marketer can apply to build a brand successfully. So, and I launched it three weeks ago. So here we go. Here we are.

Drew McLellan [00:07:45]:

Yeah, you know, it’s interesting. I’ve always been a brand guy as well and back in the day when we talked about brand, we, we could talk about opinions and feelings and all of that because back then that was how we talked about all advertising. We didn’t have the data that we have today. And, and so today when I, when I read your book, I was just thinking about how timely it was because today clients want facts, clients want data, clients want proof. And in much of marketing we have that data. We have that proof. And I know a lot of that. I know not a lot of the listeners and a lot of the agencies that we serve that are brand agencies struggle to quantify the value of a brand or why they choose one color over another or whatever it may be. But in a, in a world that demands data, brand was sort of lacking in that data. And so that was what I found as a brand guy, that was what I found fascinating about your book was it’s like, oh, here’s the data, here’s the science, here’s now instead of, you know, just Talking about my 30 years of experience and leaning on that, I still can lean on my experience, but now I have, now I have facts to also support what I’m recommending for a client. So absolutely. Let’s talk a little bit about as you were writing the book and you were pulling together the data, what I know you, in the book, you identify some data backed reasons why brand associations actually do drive activity results. So talk a little bit about some of those reasons that feel to you like they’re most compelling. So imagine you’re sitting in a conference room or on a zoom call with a client and, and you’re, you know, a lot of times we’re educating clients about the power and importance of brand. Of those data points, which ones do you think are the most compelling?

Ulli Appelbaum [00:09:42]:

Well, I think those are the ones that resonate the most with our clients. Right. So let’s, if you don’t mind, let me step back. We’re jumping right into a brand association. I just want to make sure I define that for everyone that is listening. So when you think about it, what is a brand? A brand is really just a network of memories you have about a specific offering. Right. You think about Coca Cola, you think about all the memories and associations that come to mind. And these can be experiences. Oh, I was in Italy, I sat on this terrorist beautifully sunny day and I had this fresh, cold Coca Cola that really made me feel good. Or this can be emotions, this can be what the brand shares with you. So these networks of memories are what I call the brand associations. They’re principles and reasons on how you can build them. And the interesting thing is you made the point. We have the data. The truth is for some of these data points have been around for 30 years.

Drew McLellan [00:10:35]:

Yeah.

Ulli Appelbaum [00:10:35]:

We never really just decided to focus on them or to look at them and Some of them, where you said correctly as well is, you know, you rely on your 30 years of experience. I do the same. And a lot of it is correct, a lot of it is true. We just didn’t know why it’s true.

Drew McLellan [00:10:52]:

That’s right. We, we had no, we had nothing underneath it other than to say, well, I’ve been doing this for a long time and here’s what I know.

Ulli Appelbaum [00:10:57]:

Correct. Yeah, correct.

Drew McLellan [00:10:59]:

Yeah.

Ulli Appelbaum [00:10:59]:

So, so typical example is, you know, emotional. Advertising agencies have always been promoting the thought that, you know, advertising needs to be emotional to be registered by viewers. There’s a lot of science that shows that, you know, if a brand encounter leads to an emotional response from your customer, from your viewer, the branding or the imprint in your memory is significantly higher than just with. So there’s science to explain all that to explain, to come back to your question now is so the first one is really you want your brand at the moment of purchase to come to mind first because that is likelihood, if you think about your brand first, that you’re going to pick it, let’s say when you’re at point of sale is significantly higher. And it’s shown that if the brand comes to mind first, which basically means your brand has a very strong brand association network in the mind of consumers. And you can, there are principles to, to, to strengthen this network. The likelihood that you’re going to be purchased and the likelihood that you’re going to be successful and more successful than your competitors is significantly higher, which is what every client wants. And there’s data that shows that the faster the speed with which you think about a brand when you are in a moment of purchase, the speed correlates with the size of the brand in the market. So the biggest brand comes to mind fastest if they’ve done a proper job. But then there are a whole bunch of other criteria as to is long term growth. It’s shown and proven of your brand, it’s shown and proven that a strong brand association network leads to longer term higher level of growth. It allows you to justify price premiums when it’s relevant to your brand. A strong brand association network with the right associations allows you to ask for higher prices with your clients, with your, with your consumers. It shows that a brand recovers faster from a recession when it has a strong brand association. So I mean, it’s just mind blowing when you list all the data that support the strength of brand association as a success criteria for a company, blows your mind that you’re not doing that exclusively. You know, What I mean, I’ve been in the business for 30 years as well, and I look at this data and be like, what the heck have we done in the past? You know, I mean, we’re shooting in the dark often. We, we, because of the experience, we hit our target, but we often missed. And that allows you to avoid the misses, so to say, and focus really on works and what is effective.

Drew McLellan [00:13:28]:

Well, I think about this too, from the point of view of our, of the listeners, not only about the brands they build for clients, but the brand they’re building for themselves. Right. So what is the science behind some of this data? Is it sort of neurotransmitter data? Like what for? So, for example, one of the things we talk about all the time with agencies is that they need to be very consistent with their thought leadership so that when on whatever day the client decides that they need a new agency, that your agency pops into mind. So that, that gets back to your sort of your point of purchase. Right. So what’s the science behind that?

Ulli Appelbaum [00:14:08]:

So there are different strings of science that focus on. It’s basically what happens in your brain and in your mind. Right. And there are different sciences that focus on that. And I describe two in my book. One is from cognitive psychology, which is basically the processes on how we lear and memorize and make decisions. And there’s this theory called the association network theory. And what this theory says. It basically says to build strong memory structures, you need three things. Basically you need nods. They call them nods, which are basically the pieces of information. The logo, the benefit you communicate, what people associate with having encountered you and experience with you, the emotion people associate with you. So these nods need to be connected to each other to form a strong brand. So when I think about Drew, I think about the great content of this podcast, makes me feel smarter. And all these kind of things, these are important because these are the core association that you need to define and reinforce consistently over time. So these nods are also connected to each other. So when I think Drew, I think small agency running small businesses more or small agencies more effectively. This connection is the link between those two nodes. The stronger these links, the faster they will come back to mind when I think about you in this case. So there’s the node, there’s the strength between the node, and then there’s the speed of recall. And one thing that most brands forget as well, also advertising agencies, is this information can only be recalled if you hook it to a brand asset. You know, often we thought about for a long time, we Thought about logos, you know, as a core brand asset to recognize the brand. But recent research shows that the logo is actually the least effective hooks to associate to your network. So a much stronger hooks can be audio hooks. Like an audio sound?

Drew McLellan [00:16:06]:

Yeah. Interesting.

Ulli Appelbaum [00:16:07]:

Can be a brand character, it can be a color scheme like, you know, think about blue and yellow. Ikea comes to mind automatically. Think about red, Coke comes to mind. So those are hooks that you need to constantly associate with your brand. So to your second to the point you started to make define your nods, what is it you want to be associated with? Connect them to brand assets, so visual or audio brand assets and then repeat them over consistently at every touch point and over time. And this will basically strengthen the associations people have with you or your brand. And that’s it. It’s simplicity 101. But being doing this consistently and committing to doing it this way is extremely difficult because new marketing director shows up or you get bored by your own ad or visual identity and then go and change it. All these kind of things. Consumers think about you a quarter of a second every month if you’re lucky. So there is no. And there’s science actually that shows that consistency even of creative advertising, of creative work becomes more and more effective over time if you continue to air it and you know, promote your brand with that advertising over a longer period of time. So it’s not the, oh, we aired this for three months, everyone is bored. Let’s do a new strategy and new TVs. But consumers don’t think like that. Consumers love consistency in advertising. And I said there’s data now that shows that these ads or these campaigns are way more effective than changing every six months to the point we made earlier. The data is out there. You just got to look for it and ask the right questions and find the data to help you answer that question. It’s mind blowing.

Drew McLellan [00:17:50]:

So I think you made the comment that a strong brand helps and again, we know this intrinsically. A strong brand helps us rebound faster from recession or. Right. So right now things are a little wonky, you know, economically and a lot of brands are cutting back on their spend right now. And this feels to me like there’s data points to say to them, this is exactly the time not to cut back. Here’s why it’s important for you to stay super present in the marketplace because you will bounce back faster if people are tied your brand. So besides the consistency, which you’ve already talked about, what were some of the other data points that agencies can be thinking about? When they talk to their clients who are saying, well, you know, what tariffs, this, that, the other thing. So we’re going to cut back. And the agency knows, again, we know instinctually, no, now is the time you could capture market share if you’re out there, because it’s kind of quiet out there. So now is the time to make more noise. But what’s the data behind that?

Ulli Appelbaum [00:18:53]:

Well, there are several studies. I mean, we’ve had the good. The good or the bad thing is we had several crises over the last 20 or 30 years, whether it’s economic, whether it’s the real estate boom, whether all these things. That’s Covid. So there were quite some analysis done during these different phases to try to understand which brands stood out and which brands succeeded out of this crisis. And I think, yes, obviously consistency is essential. You can also spend less than you did before. The name of the game is to still spend more than your competitors, because the name of the game is you want, again, you want to be the brand that comes to mind first and first and foremost before all your competitors. And as simple as it sounds, you just need to be a little bit louder than everyone else out there. There’s a lot of research also that speaks about this concept of excessive share of voice, and that is also a proven principle of brand growth. And excessive share of voice simply means that your media spend should be proportionally a little bit higher than your market share. So if, let’s say your market share is 10%, your share of voice should be at least 10% better, even if it’s like 15 or 20%. And that is proven again, with gazillion points of data that this will automatically get your brand to grow and grow faster than competitor. And again, it’s simply I shout a little bit louder than everyone else over time, so I’m the one people will start to remember, so to say. And again, there’s evidence to support that, which is just mind blowing.

Drew McLellan [00:20:26]:

So, A, I need to be out there consistently. B, I need to be out there a little louder than whoever I think my competitor is. And interestingly, I think what you’re saying is that we think it’s logo, logo, logo, but really it’s about. It is. It is about those nodes and figuring out sort of these are the three or four points I want somebody to always associate with me these experiences. Or. And then again that that single defining sentence of, oh, my brand does this. My brand is all about this.

Ulli Appelbaum [00:21:02]:

And the. That’s exactly right. If I may just build on that, Drew is the other points I would add. So I don’t want this to come across as is just spending more money and being more consistent than everyone else. Because the other key factors are you need to be meaningful to people, right? You mean you need to offer them something that your clients or your consumers want, right? You solve a problem, you provide a solution that no one else can provide. So you need to be meaningful and relevant. Offer something people want, and you need to be different from everyone else. And that can be through the emotion, through the personality. But when people look at your brand and a competitor brand, they need to look at your brand and think, you know what, that’s different. They offer something different at the same price or maybe slightly higher. But I value that difference. It’s meaningful to me. I’m going to purchase that brand. And the third element that is consistent as well is two more. One is elicit an emotional reaction from your customer or from your consumers. So we’ve known that if you elicit emotional reaction, and this can be through a piece of advertising that makes you laugh, the imprint in your brain is going to be significantly stronger than without this emotional reaction. So basically, what makes, you know, what’s this saying? See, the saying, it’s still valid is, you know, people don’t remember what you say or people remember how you make them feel.

Drew McLellan [00:22:25]:

Right?

Ulli Appelbaum [00:22:26]:

That is sort of like the popular quote that has the scientific foundation behind that. And the third one is, especially for brands, it’s maybe a bit more difficult for agencies as a business is emotional storytelling. If you wrap these associations that are relevant, that are differentiating in a story that is emotional and that touches you at a personal level, this is one of the most powerful technique or tricks or vehicle you can use to imprint your brand in the brain. So those are a couple of things and then a few more, which is refresh your focus on the same message or the same association, but make sure you refresh them every so often. So those are sort of like five or six principles that, that science shows that, that if you do those, the memory is going to be stronger and the recall of that memory is going to be stronger and faster than if you don’t do those things.

Drew McLellan [00:23:22]:

So what, what is the science behind the idea that even if you’re a B2B brand, you have to trigger some sort of an emotional response? What, what is the science behind the power of emotion versus intellect or the cognitive, the rational brain versus the emotional side? What, what is the science behind that?

Ulli Appelbaum [00:23:44]:

So what do you mean, what is the science? What Are the studies that prove that?

Drew McLellan [00:23:47]:

Yeah. Why, why, why is emotion, why so critical? Right. What, what, what happens to the prospect or the audience?

Ulli Appelbaum [00:23:57]:

Great question.

Drew McLellan [00:23:58]:

Anchors a brand because of emotion.

Ulli Appelbaum [00:24:01]:

So from an emotional, in terms of emotion, what, what an emotion does to you is first, you pay attention, more attention. If you’re engaged in something emotionally, you are into it, you don’t get distracted by I gotta go to the bathroom during the advertising break or shoot, I just dropped some peanuts on my floor or something like that. You are engaged, so your attention is higher. The second thing is neuroscience does this. The neuroscience measures the changes in your brain through different devices, measuring device, and they show that if you elicit an emotional response, the imprint in your brain, the changes in your brain are bigger and more significant than without emotion. So literally, you take a stamp and put it on your brain, it’s going to be bigger and deeper than with an emotion. And the third is the recall is just faster because the imprint is stronger because you paid more attention and hopefully because it was something that touched you personally or that is relevant to you, the recall is going to be so much faster to that. So there are like three or four reasons, scientific reasons, for why emotions work so hard at building these strong brand associations. The only caveat I would put is, as I said, this emotion needs to be relevant. You know what I mean? So that needs to be meaningful and relevant to your brand. Just make you. I sell, if I sell ice cream and make you cry for the sake of making you cry, that’s a waste of energy. That’s not going to happen. Right. If I turn that into an emotional story of a little kid connecting with his grandpa after not having seen him for nine months, I’m making stuff up. It’s the ice cream is the vehicle for this reconnection, then it is impactful. So that’s the only caveat. I’ve seen too many creatives telling me about emotional advertising, which is often an excuse for do whatever you want to do and don’t talk about the product. Which is exactly the wrong way to look at emotions.

Drew McLellan [00:25:57]:

Right, right, right. So in the, in the book, you outline some frameworks. So I want to, I want to take a quick break and then I want to get super practical for the back half of our conversation around this. Some frameworks that agencies can think about deploying as they’re building brands either for themselves or for their clients. So let’s take a quick break and then we’ll come back and we’ll talk about that a little bit. Are you Tired of juggling multiple tools to manage your agency? Meet Dell Tech Workbook the All in one solution for marketing and communications agencies. Streamline your projects, resources and finances all in one place. With real time dashboards and reporting, you’ll have full project visibility. You can plan team capacity weeks ahead to avoid bottlenecks and keep your budgets on track to maximize profitability. It’s perfect for both agencies and in house marketing teams looking to work more efficiently. PCI is a certified delltech partner offering expert implementation and support to ensure your success. If you’re ready to transform your operations, visit PCI US Podcast for a free consultation today. Hey everybody, thanks for listening today. Before I get back to the interview, I just want to remind you that we are always offering some really amazing workshops and you can see the whole [email protected] on the navigation head to how we help. Scroll down and you’ll see workshops and you can see the whole list there with descriptions of each workshop. They are all in Denver and we’ve got them throughout the year for agency owners, account Execs, agency leaders, CFOs. We have a little something for everybody. No matter what it is that you’re struggling with, people, new business, money, all of those things we’ve got covered. So check them out and come join us. All right, let’s get back to the show. All right, we are back and we’re talking about the science of brands and brand associations and the powerful data that is behind the work that many of us have been doing for much of our career. And we’ve done it based on our instincts, our experience, previous successes. But thanks to this new book, we can talk with clients a little bit more from a data point of view. But we still have to build the brand. And so how have you taken all of this data and all of this knowledge that you’ve identified and let’s talk a little bit about the frameworks that are in the book or a framework in the book that will help agencies build a brand for a client, sell the right brand to a client, because sometimes you know you’re right and a client just can’t get there. And so, so let’s talk a little bit about that.

Ulli Appelbaum [00:28:46]:

So there are several frameworks in the book. The first one is, and it’s a logical sort of like flow of questions you go through. First is what brand associations do I want to associate my brand with? Which basically that’s the positioning of a brand. So what are the three or four or maximum five associations I want to Create. The first framework gives you a scorecard or a series of questions that you can answer to see whether the association network you have defined is really going to do what it needs to do, which means imprint itself into the mind of consumers. And again, those are the criteria we just talked about. Consistency, personal relevancy, creating an emotional reaction, and those kind of things. So the first framework allows you to assess, are my four or five associations doing the job they’re supposed to do based on what we know? The second framework then looks at, okay, so now I’ve defined those associations, I need to build them, right? With my marketing plan, with my communication, with everything my brand does, my new product activities. So the second framework, or a scorecard, and the scorecard can be downloaded for free from my website, basically leads you through a series of questions that allows you to identify, am I doing everything I need to do to build a strong association network in the mind of our consumers? So first one is, is my mix the right one? The second one is, is my brand doing whatever it can to build the strongest possible networks in the mind of consumers? And again, those are all principles on, based on science, on evidence. And then the third framework is sort of, I call it like the master framework. It basically just brings everything together. And I’ve developed a little AI based online survey on my website where you can answer 20 questions and you get immediately an assessment that tells you, where am I strong, where am I weak in my efforts to build the brand, basically? And you can use them as questions. I don’t have any science to support that or data to support that. But when you look at the results of this type of analysis, you are 80% further ahead than without these tools because you focus really on what matters. You know, you’re able to tell your client, okay, you really have a super relevant benefit. But we don’t have anything to trigger an emotional response, for example, we need this in our communication. Or you could go and say as a design agency, for example, you’re spending all this money on advertising, but you’re not leveraging your brand assets, for example. And again, research shows that you’re wasting advertising dollars if you don’t have a character, an audio device, or a color scheme, any asset that identifies this message with your specific brand.

Drew McLellan [00:31:35]:

Yeah, it’s one of the reasons why jingles were so powerful and popular, right? Yeah.

Ulli Appelbaum [00:31:41]:

And it’s interesting because it’s coming back, right? Characters were so popular. So one of the companies I admired and I worked for was Leo Burnett. And Leo Burnett was the master of building brand character, you know, Tony the Tiger and all these, they worked extremely powerfully. But when you look at the evolution over time, the use of characters has significantly decreased over the last 30 years. So brands use characters less and less and yet you have so much data that tells you that out of the many brand devices you can use, a brand character is the single most powerful and effective one to build your brand. It’s just crazy.

Drew McLellan [00:32:23]:

Do you think we’ll see a resurgence of brand characters either through AI created avatars or personality driven brands? Do you anticipate with your years of experience that we’ll see sort of an uptick in characters but maybe a different way of approaching characters?

Ulli Appelbaum [00:32:42]:

I hope so, and I think so, and I hope so. And the reason is simply there’s more and more data that shows the power of these devices. Yeah, I think AI. So AI is not a tricky one, but it’s an interesting one. But I don’t think that any AI platform can create an idea for a character for you, but it can bring it to life. Because a character, it’s not just funny, goofy stuff that you promote in your advertising. Typically they serve a strategic purpose. And the strategic software companies, IT companies, banks, all these sort of insurance companies, all these companies that are seen as cold, dry distance can benefit from a character that makes the brand look more human, brings it closer to the gecko from Geico, you know what I mean? It humanizes an anonymous insurance company, makes it sympathetic, makes you smile, emotional reaction. So I think we’re going to see a true comeback to that. But I think the requirement, strategic requirement of what the brand character needs to do, I think that’s a human task. But then bringing those requirements to life, that can be an AI based task, if that makes sense.

Drew McLellan [00:33:58]:

It does. So what’s the science behind the power of characters? Because I think you’re right, I think we have seen a decline of that and I think we often don’t think about sort of the, the business owner could be the character, the business owner could be that personality. So what is the science behind the power of that?

Ulli Appelbaum [00:34:17]:

Well, there’s a lot of data, FE data and stuff like that that shows that campaigns, let’s say with a character, perform better at acquiring new customers as triggering an emotional reaction, as growing the business. So this data that supports the impact on the business to that. And then from a psychological point of view, I think a core element is, you know, when, when you have a picture with, let’s say different elements in it, a face, a human face is Something you got to spot first.

Drew McLellan [00:34:47]:

Right.

Ulli Appelbaum [00:34:48]:

So we had naturally gravitate towards humans or everything that is anthropoform and humanized, to use a simpler word, which means a character. You see that Disney does that greatly. Pixel park does that greatly. You have these characters that may look like monsters or anything else, but with their behaviors, their reactions are very human and therefore very relatable. So again, it’s a non rational way to connect with something and you just think it’s cute, it’s funny and stuff. But you’re not thinking like, oh, they’re using a visual device to attract me to the brand. You don’t think about that, you think, oh look, they’re so cute, they’re likable. Makes me like the brand without any rational reason behind it in a, in a sense, you know what I mean?

Drew McLellan [00:35:37]:

So if you were tasked with creating a digital character, so again, whether it’s an avatar or whatever it may be, what would, based on the, based on the data and the science, what would you make sure you baked into, like how would you decide? Is it have a male voice or a female voice? How would you like, how would you make, like how would you use the science to make some of those decisions?

Ulli Appelbaum [00:36:03]:

So first I would really look at what problem are we trying to solve? You know, it could be that the brand is not memorable enough. That would lead me to, okay, this thing needs to stand out and be memorable at the first contact. Or it could be the brand is, as I mentioned earlier, is perceived as cold and distant like utility companies. Who likes utility companies? No one.

Drew McLellan [00:36:23]:

Right?

Ulli Appelbaum [00:36:24]:

Companies that have a monopoly status type thing. Okay, so how do I humanize this brand? How do I make it more? How do I create an emotional response with that brand? So the problem you define will help you determine what the solution should look like. And the principles are the same is quite the same. I think what I would say is we know that distinctiveness is extremely important, right? The distinctiveness is simply you need to stand out. Now the problem is there is a study done by a company called Ipsos Global research company for a design agency that shows that out of all the brands assets and they tested like thousands and thousands of different brand assets around the world, only 15% of them are actually working as brand assets. That means they are remembered and they are associated to the correct brand. So think about that. And brand assets mean packaging, visual elements on the packaging, color scheme and all these kind of things. Only 15% of thousands and thousands of brands assets tested work as brand assets. That Means to me that 85% just disappear.

Drew McLellan [00:37:33]:

Right.

Ulli Appelbaum [00:37:34]:

So that’s why distinctiveness is so important. If you think, you know, you typically use chocolate as a category, as an example, all the chocolate brands look. If you look at them face to face, you think, oh, no, this is very different. This one has a silver stripe here, and this one has a coca cow nut there. It’s very, very different. If you’re a consumer 10ft away from the shelf, you see browns and darks and white, and they all look the same. That is not distinctive. Take a brand like Tony Scioccoloni, you see blues, you see yellows, you see reds that frankly have nothing to do with chocolate as a core essence, but it helped the brand stand out. So I would make sure that this character doesn’t look like you, or if it looks like you, it looks like a caricature of you. Like a very distinctive way that highlights your features and benefits. So I think distinctiveness would be a huge factor for me to succeed with that character. That’s right. And I think they’re the danger with AI, which AI for me, is just an aggregation of our collective knowledge. So it’s an aggregation of everything that is out there. So the potential and likelihood that it comes out with something that is really different. Yeah, I would challenge that. I think you need to prompt your machine a lot to get to something different.

Drew McLellan [00:38:52]:

Well, and I think that’s the key, right. Is that it’s you designing, rather than just taking an avatar off the shelf to be your chatbot or whatever you’re doing, is how do you create it in a way that it is distinct to you. And, you know, so I go back to when in your book you’re talking about, it’s not necessarily just how it looks, but it’s how it sounds and its tone and all of those things. It’s just an interesting thought process. If characters are. It’s sort of like direct mail is sort of the hot new thing. Right. Because nobody gets mail in their mailbox anymore. We all just get inundated with email. And so if what was old and worked is new again. So if direct mail is working and we have that same conversation around creating a character around a brand, we still have to be really thoughtful about the science of what are we trying to. To your point, what are we trying to trigger?

Ulli Appelbaum [00:39:48]:

Yes.

Drew McLellan [00:39:49]:

And what do we want to be so distinct that, again, everybody knows that the gecko is for Geico, and it’s not just the wordplay. That character is very distinct and unique.

Ulli Appelbaum [00:40:02]:

Absolutely.

Drew McLellan [00:40:02]:

Yeah.

Ulli Appelbaum [00:40:03]:

And that is so true. When you’re hinting at something else that is important. The character is not just the shape and the form and the way he or it looks. Right. It’s the personality for sure. Especially in technology. So in the book, I mentioned a research company that measures what they call excitement points. And excitement points are simply they ask consumers, hey, what recent encounter did you have with a brand across categories that really excited you? And they let people, you know, mention spontaneously what comes to mind. And one thing they have learned is, especially in the field of technology and the Internet, like chatbots. Chatbots that have a human feel, a human touch, and a human personality, whether it’s a quirky humor, whether it’s the tone it’s interacting with, you can act as a really powerful excitement point compared to all the other standardized, generic responses you get from a machine, so to say. So just adding a bit of personality in a chatbot can make a huge difference in the experience the consumer has. So again, maybe you actually pointing. The bigger truth is the personality of the character is probably equally, if not more important than the person, than the character itself.

Drew McLellan [00:41:18]:

Right? Right. Of the frameworks that you have now, what framework surprised you the most? So you’re gathering all this data, you’re looking at all this evidence, you’re looking at the science. And then what you’re doing in the book is you’re taking all of that intellectual insight and turning it into a tool. What tool that you created. If people only look at the book for one tool, what’s the tool that you think will surprise them the most and be the most useful to them?

Ulli Appelbaum [00:41:50]:

So I think the tool is the one I mentioned, which is this online survey on my website, because it’s the simplest thing in the world. You just answer a few questions about your brand and you get a strategic analysis of what your strengths and weaknesses are beyond tools. To be honest, Drew, what. What surprised me when the more you dive into the science, the more data you get to support your point, the more you realize that it’s about basics, simple principles. It’s not rocket science, it’s communication. And you know what I’ve started to do with my clients? If you want to pay me $600,000 to develop you a 260 page strategic framework, I’m going to take it. I’m not going to say no, thank you. But what I’ve learned is if you sit down with your client and ask them, what are the four or five associations you really want to create for your brand, the ones that you think will drive your business and draw little bubbles on a whiteboard. At first, everyone looks at you. It’s like, okay, do you think we’re in kindergarten here? We’re doing paid by numbers or something like that? But once they understand the concept, you start to realize how basic and simplified your thinking becomes, which means you can only build three or four associations. So don’t waste your time with 26 RTBs or these associations need to fulfill these few criteria. Would one association in the mix allow prompt consumers to say, you know what, I like that I want that I’m going to buy you because of that? Is there an association that helps you feel different from competition? And that can be a personality. I’m asking you like four or five simple questions. You know, you don’t need a mathematic formula for any of these questions, but answering those basic questions will make you succeed is more likely to make you succeed than talk to me about the ethos of your brand or the archetype of your brand and what’s the point of view we want to have about the world and all these kind of things, which you can spend hours discussing those in workshops and in meetings. But unless you answer this question about the few associations and do they meet the right criteria? And then the third step, do we do everything we can to build those associations? You can boil that down and that’s what I did with this online questionnaire. You can boil it down to 22 questions, simple questions that an informed group can answer honestly on their own to get a quick understanding of. Do I have a strong brand potential? Is it weak? Where are my weaknesses? What do I need to strengthen? What do I need to change type things? It’s more. The more I dove into science, the more I dove into all this data, the more I realized how simple and basic successful brands. Sorry, how simple the principles are on which successful brands are being built. It’s crazy. So now when I see young strategies that want to move forward the discipline of strategy and stuff like that come up with, oh, I redesigned the brand architecture framework into a new model. Now it looks like a butterfly eating an onion. Because I think it’s more appropriate for how to capture a brand strategy in today’s world, I just yawn. Because again, my question becomes so in this big framework, what are the three associations you really want to focus on and you want to build? Any other conversation is not wasting time, but not leading you to a relevant solution. If that makes sense.

Drew McLellan [00:45:23]:

Yeah, it just feels it when as I’m listening to you, it feels like just excess for the point of excess. Yes, as opposed to, you know, you just, you need to just keep repeating, maybe in new interesting ways, but you need to just keep repeating and just deeper embedding into the brain of the prospect. To your point, the three or four things you want them to really associate.

Ulli Appelbaum [00:45:52]:

With that brand, that is 200% correct.

Drew McLellan [00:45:55]:

The brain science suggests that that’s the most effective way to build a memorable, long lasting, differentiated brand.

Ulli Appelbaum [00:46:04]:

200%. And that just has a few requirements. So that’s the difference between simple and simplistic. Right. So, yes, you need to commit to three or four, let’s say core brand associations, but you need clarity about that. You need to know they’re going to help build my business. You need internal alignment within your organization or alignment between the client and the agency. Yes, those are the ones we want to build. And then you stick to it. So it requires discipline and rigor and sacrifice. Right. The laziest client is a client that tells you, oh, these are the 26 things I want to achieve with my brand, with my $250,000. No, give me the one or two core associations you want to create. And I think that also unleashes creativity because then if you use that as a benchmark to assess the work, for example, that gets presented, then you can determine, does it help me establish myself as the expert in, I don’t know, knife performance, making stuff up? If it doesn’t, if the creative doesn’t lead me there, I don’t need to pursue it, I don’t need to focus it. But that requires, indeed sacrifice at the beginning of your process and clarity at the beginning of your process.

Drew McLellan [00:47:18]:

Well, I think it, I think it’s a little like, you know, having a block of marble and you strip away things to get to the masterpiece. Right. And then, and it’s really, it is about sort of the very defining lines and shapes that celebrate and communicate the brand.

Ulli Appelbaum [00:47:37]:

Yeah, that’s exactly right.

Drew McLellan [00:47:39]:

And what I, what I really valued about the book was that it has data points that we can use to help clients make better decisions and feel better about the decisions they make. And I think also clients have to have to sell that up the food chain inside their organization. So we’re also arming them with data points that they can use to sort of when the clients, like, every time I look, the commercial sounds the same or feels the same or whatever. And they would be like, well, actually that’s on purpose, because the brain science says this. You know, before we didn’t have that we didn’t have that sentence to sort of justify our decisions. This is. This has been fascinating. If people want to. If people want to go to the website and get to those tools or access all of that, what’s the best way for them to get more information on all of this?

Ulli Appelbaum [00:48:29]:

So either you find me on LinkedIn uliappelbaum, or you go to firstthetrowsers.com but it’s first-the-trousers.com and on my homepage you’ll have the. The book. The homepage is now occupied by the book. And there you’ll find a bunch of infographics, scorecards, the online survey I mentioned that you can download for free and use for yourself. And not only do the scorecard you download will they ask the right questions and help you assess the situation of your specific brand? They also give you a lot of potential solution on how to address the different problems that you identify using the scorecard. So I tried to provide as much information as I could for free out there, but as I said, it’s not rocket science. It’s understanding the fundamentals and sticking to them consistently and continuously. That’s just what it is. The point I wanted to make, Drew, is also because it’s all about small agency management and efficient management. What I’ve learned is a lot of agencies want to pretend to be highly strategic and try to analyze the category, the market, the brand, and all that stuff. What I’ve learned, the most efficient thing you can do is sit down with your client for half a day or for a day in a sort of like, strategy workshop with the objective to clearly identify what are the few associations we want to build or what are the problem we’re trying to solve. What are the associations you’re trying to build? You involve the client in the conversation. They know much more about their business and their brand than you. But you can guide them with the right question. Do we think that your little lever to open the can is something that will motivate consumers to buy you or not? You can go, you know, do you think that your brand triggers a sort of emotional reaction with consumers? If not, which one do we want to create in a day? You can capture the whole strategy that allows you then to, you know, send the creative team on their way, as opposed to spending three weeks analyzing data and trying to show to your client that you know the category as well as they do, which you’ll never be able to do, per se, you know what I mean? So you can be way more efficient in the way you get to a strategy than in the traditional way of doing things.

Drew McLellan [00:50:56]:

Well, I think one of the things you’ve done is and we barely scratched the surface of all the data points in the book, but a lot of the scorecards and some of the other tools that you’ve built are really practical tools for agencies to be able to use with clients to guide them and again to point yes. To pair that insider knowledge that the client has and that outside perspective that we bring. You know, one of the things I think is the greatest compliment that a client can give us is when you ask them questions. They go, oh, no one’s ever asked me that before or I’ve never thought about it that way before. And I think a lot of your scorecards and some of the tools that you’ve provided give us those questions to be able to kind of get under the surface. Surface. What is it Mark Twain said? I, I’m sorry that I didn’t have time to write a shorter letter. Right. Like it’s harder to get to the essence of something. It’s, it takes more effort and time. And so I think the data that data points that you’ve provided and the tools that you’ve created from those data points are a way to help us get to the essence of that brand for a client in a really effective way. And so it’s, I think it’s gonna.

Ulli Appelbaum [00:52:02]:

Be super helpful and in a non confrontational way or in a collaborative way too. Right. So they’re making an excellent point. Maybe I should actually sell them shell sell those scorecard with that objective in mind. But you’re right, you can use them as a strategic conversation guide with your clients. And yeah, as long as they give honest and candid ANSWERS, you’re at 85% of where you need to be based on the inside knowledge your client has already and honest and candid, you know, view of the answers they provide.

Drew McLellan [00:52:34]:

So yeah, absolutely, yeah, this has been a great conversation. Thank you so much for being on the show. No, thanks for having me taking the time to write the book. It was really, there was a lot of ah, like now I see why that works and I understand the brain by a little bit under. So it was for me as a, as a brand guy, it was really fun to, to do a deeper dive into the science and the data points that have driven the work and, and validate the work that we, many of us have done for many years. So thank you.

Ulli Appelbaum [00:53:07]:

And now we finally know why it works. And I got to say it was exciting for Me to write the book. It was a discovery, it was a journey. It was like, oh, really? We do have science about that. That doesn’t make any sense. Why? I haven’t been recommending that to my clients for the last 15 years. You know, so you go through a journey. I went through this journey, which was exciting and fun. So. And now it’s available for everyone. Everyone who’s interested.

Drew McLellan [00:53:30]:

Yeah. So I will say, I also think, folks, homework. So, number one, go to the website, download some of the tools. I think you’re going to find them really insightful. But as you’re reading the book or as you’re using the tools, I want you to use sort of both sides of your brain. You’re going to very quickly see how you can use it for clients. But as important for me, for you, is that you use it to think about, oh, as I think about building the brand of the agency, as I think about trying to differentiate myself from all the other agencies out there that do what I do for the kinds of clients that we do it for, how do I create those brain associations? How do I use this data and these science to create an emotional trigger and response? And what are the touch points? If somebody says, oh, XYZ brand, here are the three things that I associate with them. What are your three things? I think sometimes we don’t sort of turn the telescope on ourselves and ask ourselves these questions. And I think you’re going to find the scorecards are a great way for you to guide yourself through some of that thinking, even for your own brand as well as for your clients. So make sure you go do that.

Ulli Appelbaum [00:54:39]:

I love it. And I think what you’ll also have, and then I’ll be quite a promise, is you’ll be surprised by your own answers. Right. I’ve seen so many agencies that say, oh, our methodology is unique. And then you look at 50 of those methodologies and like, literally, they’re literally saying everything the same thing with slightly different language. So maybe your methodology is not the way you differentiate yourself. You need something else. What could it be? So, absolutely.

Drew McLellan [00:55:04]:

Yeah, no doubt there’ll be surprises.

Ulli Appelbaum [00:55:06]:

And I hope they let you know what they came up with, because I’d love to see what. What agencies that applied this methodology actually come up with.

Drew McLellan [00:55:15]:

Yeah, me too. Me too. All right, guys, you’ve got your homework. Two quick things before I let you go. Huge shout out and thank you to our friends at White Label iq. As you know, they’re the presenting sponsor of the podcast. Go check them out. @whitelabeliq.com AMI to find a special deal that they have just for you. And last but never, never least, I am so grateful that you keep coming back. We’ve been doing this together for a long time and I love getting to meet people that have new ideas that get us thinking differently about our business. And I don’t get to do that if you don’t come listen. So thank you for listening. I’ll be back next week and I hope you will too. So have a great week and I’ll talk to you next week. Come back next week for another episode designed to help you build a stronger, more stable and sustainable agency. Check out our workshops, coaching and consulting packages and other professionals development opportunities at agencymanagementinstitute.com.