Josh Dougherty is a brand strategist, speaker, and the founder and CEO of A Brave New, a Seattle-based branding agency that crafts bold & memorable healthcare brands. They have specific expertise in healthcare technology, employee health & wellness programs, and hospitals & providers. Josh has 15 years experience building new brands from scratch, refreshing existing brands and building strategies to bring those brands to life in the market.
1. The basics about brand drivers
2. We’ll do a deep dive into three specific brand drivers
3. For each of these brand drivers Josh explores:
Josh Dougherty:
Welcome to A Brave New Podcast. This is a show about branding and marketing, but more than that, it's an exploration of what it takes to create brands that will be remembered, and how marketing can be a catalyst for those brands' success. I'm Josh Dougherty, your host. Let's dive in.
Well, today, we're going to talk about, I think, a long overdue part two to an episode we did last fall called “Branding Fundamentals Part 1.” And the inspiration for this podcast was that last fall we finished a blog series on branding fundamentals that takes an in-depth look at the key elements of what we at A Brave New call brand drivers. Brand drivers are kind of the core strategy at the center of your brand. Do you think about this as maybe your brand identity? Some people would call it that. Some people would call it brand strategy.
And so, in a previous episode, we unpacked the first half of the brand drivers. Those would include the essence and promise, the core attributes, and the brand positioning statement. And, today, I wanted to round out the conversation by taking a chance to talk through the second half of the brand drivers as we think about them. So, while essence and promise are about what that core connecting thread is at the center of your brand—the thing that makes you unique— and the promise you make to your customers, core attributes are about how you live out that essence. And a brand positioning statement kind of talks about ... It's a statement that puts all of those things together. There are some elements to brand, to our brand drivers, that are really important that we didn't cover in that first episode.
So, today, we're going to talk about brand personality, why personality is important to have established and defined and how you build it out. We're going to talk about benefit ladder. A brand benefit ladder really deals with the emotions we want to evoke with your brand. And then we're going to talk about what is the most powerful element of your brand drivers when it comes to implementation, which is the decision-making filter. So, from a high level, I'm hoping that you'll walk away from this podcast with kind of this renewed conviction that focusing on what makes your organization unique and the memory that you leave behind with your customers are just as important as a mission or a vision. I also want to give you some practical examples in our conversation and some guidance so that you can start developing your own brand drivers, and especially in that area that we talked about, personality, benefit ladder, and decision-making filter.
So, a couple more notes before I dive into talking about personality. The first is that we're about to release an ebook that covers these topics, so we'll link that in the show notes as well. This really compiles together all the rich information that we built out in that blog series into a single downloadable PDF I hope you'll find valuable. And, then, the second thing is that this is all loosely based on the integrated branding model, which is the framework that we use in our branding efforts and that we've kind of iterated on top of as we've grown as a branding organization over the last few years.
And so, with that, let's dive into the meat of things, and let's talk first about brand personality. Now, what is a brand personality? This is something that a lot of people ask me about, and at the end of the day, it's the same as it is in a human, right? Every great brand has a personality that connects with our essential humanness. It makes the brand relatable, it serves as a guide to how to build connections with people. And I think at the end of the day, we want our brands to feel human. We want our brands to feel like they are relatable.
And so, defining out your brand personality allows you to say, "How do we want to show up?" And personality, when we think about it, is complex, right? Think about your spouse, your partner, or close friend. They're full of wonderful contradictions, at least I think my spouse would say that about me, hopefully. Emphasis on the wonderful, of course. And it's hard to encapsulate everything, but if I was to give it a shot, we would do that by listing out a set of personality traits. And the same is true for a brand, right?
One client we worked with recently had a brand personality that was defined as this. They said that their brand was frank, it was laid back, it was bright, but it was also sensible. And what do you see when you think about these four attributes together? Well, you see that there's some great conflict built in, right? You have someone who's frank, but also laid back. That's some inherent contradiction that's really beautiful. It makes it feel real. You're bright, but you're sensible, you're laid back and sensible. Those maybe fit together better. But we want to have, when we're designing out a brand personality, have some of those inherent contradictions built in, because it makes them feel real. You want the brand to feel like a person when you're interacting with it.
And so, if that's what a brand personality is, I think the question is, Why do companies need one? And the reason why is humans are wired to make connections. In fact, it's also the way that they make purchase decisions. By building out kind of a believable and authentic personality for your brand, you're able to create something, create opportunities for your customers that interact with you on an emotional level. And at the end of the day, we all like to think we're rational decision makers that make decisions purely based on logic, but this just isn't the case. We make decisions on emotions, and so we need to build deep connections with our audiences to get them to make purchase decisions with us.
And so, what are a few examples of personalities? I have three that I'd share, of companies we've worked with. The first is a couple traits here, personality of being collaborative, creative, fun, smart, and honest. And this sounds like someone I want to work with. Right? They like to work with other people. They're coming up with new ideas all the time. They're maybe making some jokes, but they're also whip smart, and they're honest. They're going to tell you when things aren't going well. And this personality really allows the brand to develop content and visuals that are both smart, and analytical, without taking things too seriously. And it allows them to be straightforward and build trust with honesty, while inviting people to engage with them in a deeper way.
Let's look at another example. Another company we worked with recently. Self-assured, direct, thoughtful, focused, good-natured. What do those attributes make you think of? For me, it means that this brand feels friendly, because it's good-natured, but it places much more emphasis on being focused on what matters. It carries itself with maybe a quiet confidence, and it comes away feeling like it's taken time to develop some opinions and thinking through how to express them. It's maybe a little more thoughtful, and that will be the brand that feels self-assured, direct, thoughtful, focused, good-natured.
Then, finally, this was a healthcare company we worked with recently. This brand, we worked with them to choose their attributes as empathetic, nurturing, bold, direct, and savvy. I love the inherent contradiction between being empathetic and bold, being empathetic and direct, nurturing and direct. There's some push-pull in these brand attributes that makes them ... or personality attributes that really make this feel like a real person. I know a lot of people, especially coaches in my life, who are empathetic and who are nurturing something in me, but then they're going to hit me with some directness of what exactly I need to hear, or they're going to call me to be more bold. And I think by highlighting traits like empathy and nurturing, the brand can make deep connections with people, which allow it to express bold and direct ideas. And when a brand appears savvy, which was the other personality trait that I haven't mentioned yet, it makes it ... A savvy brand is one that you want to trust.
So, let's talk about how ... Those are some real-life examples of a brand personality, but let's talk about how to define personality. How do you come to these words? And so, one of the things I'd really encourage you to do is go back, and check out the blog post that we wrote about brand attributes, or core attributes, because that includes the instructions on how to run a core attribute card sort. I think that you can do a similar card sort for brand personality. And so, I'd encourage you to go back and look at the results of that card sort or look at those instructions and run your own card sort to draw out some personality traits that you really think are strong, and reflective of your company, and then begin to have a conversation around defining them.
At the end of the day, you want to choose personality traits that are both going to feel really comfortable for you and are going to push you, and you want to build on some conflict, so it feels real. And so, at the end of the process, the real goal is to have a brand personality that's going to feel like a human, because people want to trust humans. They want to trust brands that feel real, and personality helps with that.
So, the other thing that helps people build trust with your brand is if they can build a real emotional connection with you. And that's where the benefit ladder in our brand drivers comes in. A benefit ladder is a tool that helps you define how you want your brand experience to feel. This may be how you want your marketing stuff to feel, but also, how do you want engagements with your customers to feel? Whether you work with patients or you work with B2B buyers, et cetera, what do you want that to feel like?
And so, in a brand benefit ladder, we look at five things, products, and services. We define out, what do you do for your customers? Then we look at functional benefits. What are the practical outcomes that you provide through your products and services? Then we look at the first order emotional benefits. What are the emotions you want a customer to feel during an interaction with your brand? Then we define out the second order emotional benefits, the emotions that you want a customer to feel after they interact with your brand. And finally, we define what is the highest order emotional benefit, the most important thing. How do you want someone to look at themselves differently after they engage with your brand? And maybe not even after they engage with your brand but after they have said, "I want to be part of this brand's tribe." How am I going to look at myself differently?
And what's the value in all this? Why does it matter? Well, I have this conversation a lot with people, especially in the healthcare space that we work in, because people say that in healthcare, emotions are less relevant. We're data-driven, we're evidence-based, we're talking about facts, we're rational. But, I would argue that in a sector that tends to primarily make rational and data-driven decisions, understanding the emotions you want to evoke, really, it gives you a competitive edge. And at the end of the day, you're dealing with humans, too. Emotions have a really strong connection to the decision we make. And even if we're striving to be rational, and choose based solely on facts, so creating a brand that builds emotional connections with your customers, and in the best case, really transforms how they perceive themselves, will make a massive impact on how someone's purchase decision and, ultimately, loyalty to your brand looks.
Because at the end of the day, we want them to be loyal. We want them to say, "You know what? I identify ... I want the healthcare brands that we work with to say, "You know what? We think about brand the way A Brave New does." And if I'm doing that, that would be amazing. So, to give you a little bit of background to that, there's a study that Google and CEB Marketing Leadership Council did, I don't know, a ways back, I think it was around 10 years ago, but the data is still really helpful. And they surveyed 3,000 purchasers across ... 36 B2B brands, across multiple industries, and they really wanted to uncover the reality beyond the basic assumptions that drive B2B marketing and communications. And so, what they found was, and I'm going to quote from the study here, read a little bit for you, is that, "Not only did B2B brands drive more emotional connections than B2C brands, but they weren't even close."
If we go back a little bit, they say, "Forging emotional connections with consumers has long been at the heart of business-to-consumer marketing. But for business-to-business marketers, it's not so simple. They ultimately need to reach business decision-makers, but those customers deal with the influences of purchasing committees, third-party buying consultants, and corporate procurement frameworks. This framework distances the marketer from customers and assumes that a rational frame that's devoid of emotion. However, we tend to forget that whenever there are people trying to work together to make a decision, there will be interpersonal and, inevitably, emotional forces at work. With this in mind, could B2B marketing rely on emotional connection even more than B2C?"
And so, what they found as they did their research, to further quote, here's a quote from the study, "Of the hundreds of brands of B2C brands that Motista has studied. Most have emotional connections with between 10 and 40% of consumers. Meanwhile, of the nine B2B brands we studied, seven surpassed the 50% mark. On average, B2B customers are significantly more emotionally connected to their vendors and service providers than consumers."
Boom, that's a really fascinating finding. Emotions matter. And to further quote them, I'll read one more paragraph to you. "While it may seem surprising at first, this high level of connection with B2B customers makes a lot of sense. When a personal consumer makes a bad purchase, the stakes are relatively low. Best case, it's returnable. If not, it might require an explanation from a spouse. Business purchases on the other hand, can involve huge amounts of risk, responsibility for multi-million dollar software acquisition that can go bad, can lead to a poor performance, business performance, and even the loss of a job the business customers won't buy unless there's a substantial emotional connection to help overcome this risk."
So, what did we learn from that study? That understanding how to build and solidify emotional connections with your customers is essential. And so, that's why we build brand benefit ladders for people. Let me share a couple examples with you. Here's one healthcare organization. Their first order emotional benefits that they wanted to build — this is how they want people to feel when they first encounter you — the organization is "relieved, engaged, comforted, heard, seen, hopeful, believed at peace." As you can see, right? You could start to construct engagements that help people feel that way.
And then how do we want people to feel after interacting with that organization? "We want them to feel seen, heard, understood, empowered, connected, inspired, confident, powerful, refreshed, invigorated, and respected." Again, we can construct experiences. We can construct our brand experience to help facilitate these emotions. And then the highest order emotional benefit for this organization, "Then we want people to feel free, feel inspired, feel in control, feel like they can do this." That's powerful.
So the next question is, how do you build a brand benefit ladder? The first thing that I would recommend doing is building a customer journey map. How do your customers interact with you? Identify all the steps in that process. Then talk as a team about what are the magic moments or moments of connection that cause customers to move further in their journey with you, and think through the aha moments customers have in that buying journey. Then talk with customers — who love you the most — about why they love you, what made them love you in the first place, and if or how they look at you differently, themselves differently, because of their work with you. And take all these inputs and then fill them into the brand benefit ladder. We'll link out to the brand benefit blog post, so you can see tangible examples of the brand benefit ladder and use it in your own work. And then, once you've built this benefit ladder, you can use it to help construct your experience or all types of experiences for your brand.
So as we close out on the brand benefit ladder, we've talked about personality, we've talked about brand benefit ladder. I want to now talk about the decision-making filter. And I love a decision-making filter, because this is really where it all becomes real, where you can really construct a set of questions that are going to help every employee within the company live out the brand.
So, the definition we use is that a brand filter is a set of five or six questions that anyone on your team can ask themselves as they make decisions, big or small, to ensure they're aligned with your brand. So, there's a bit of a formula for this question one as it relates to the brand essence. This question should help your team explore whether or not the decision, initiative, or effort they're pursuing aligns with the brand essence. Questions two through five, then, are usually built from the core attributes of the brand, and each question is constructed to ensure that your team is thinking through how to infuse each core attribute into their work or into the decision. And then question six relates to the personality. How do we make sure your team is thinking about the vibes so that the work feels on brand?
And so, a brief example of this is with Claris Health. This is an organization that, full disclosure, I don't work with, but I think it's interesting. Their essence, I think, if I were to guess, was around simplifying complexity or bringing clarity. So, I might construct the first question in their brand filter to be, How are we making things simple and clear? How are we specifically reducing complexity? See how that totally removes the, high-mindedness or unapproachability of a brand and makes it real world? It helps someone understand, "Oh, I want to be reducing complexity in the work. That's what our brand is all about. Okay, I can make this simpler."
So, why does the brand filter matter? Because of that. It demystifies brand, it makes it a simple branding, a simple and easy tool to make decisions. It helps you do the three things that all great brands have in common. It helps you make branding more than a marketing campaign. It helps make the brand accessible to every employee in your company and shows them how to live out the brand. And it helps you implement the brand consistently because, then, implementing the brand becomes just about asking six questions and adjusting your frame. Powerful stuff.
So, one client that we worked with in the past on their branding was Huntsman Cancer Institute. They're in Salt Lake City. They do amazing work on cancer research, cancer treatment. I have great respect for their communications teams — both at the institute proper and at the foundation that does fundraising around the work that they do — and they gave us permission to share their specific brand filter. And so I want to share their six questions, and you can see how this becomes a powerful tool.
So, Huntsman says their first question, which is related to their essence, is, Is our deep personal commitment reflected in this decision? Then they have four questions that are related to their ... or five questions that are related to their attributes. "How are we considering all the small details and not just the big ideas with this decision? Are we considering the different needs of each community with this decision? Are we thinking beyond Salt Lake City, to the rural mountain west, and to those who are underserved? How?
Now on to question four, How are we pioneering the future with this decision? How are we looking beyond what we already know? Question five, Are we being diligent? In what ways can we follow through on what we're doing? Question six, Is this decision bold, and is it right? Would we make a different decision if we stopped thinking simply about pitfalls or potential ways this decision could fail? And now, a couple of questions related to their personality. How does this decision embody a compassionate approach to treating and researching cancer? How does this decision convey our commitment to training and education?
You can see all these questions taken together, which is a few more than the six questions that I mentioned, but still, a relatable chunk of questions. It really brings the brand to life as you're making decisions, and it allows them to make sure they're making decisions that are driven by the core essence and uniqueness at the center of their brand, not just by a business decision.
So, how do you create a brand filter like this? The first thing you need to do is define out your brand drivers, and then I would just say there are three things to keep in mind with your questions. Open-ended questions are best, so don't make the questions ones that are a yes or no answer. Craft questions that someone will have to think through. The second thing is to be brief when possible. So, short questions without caveats are more effective than long questions. Make your team think hard about those questions, not the answers.
And then item three is, questions are only questions, so you need to do brand training and accountability work to make sure the questions are adopted. And if you do these things, if you put them into practice: develop a dynamic brand personality, think about the brand benefit ladder, and then put a brand filter in place — in addition to doing the background work that we talked about last time of defining your essence, defining your promise, building out core attributes, thinking about your brand positioning statement — you are going to end up with a rich brand that you can represent not only in your marketing, but throughout your organization to help ensure that in the future, you're making bold decisions and your brand is showing up in a way that's memorable to people.
And that's ultimately my hope for you, and hopefully you found this to be a valuable topic. If you're interested in digging more into this topic, I encourage you to download our latest ebook, which will be in the show notes, and I'm looking forward to seeing you on another episode of A Brave New Podcast. Have a great week.
Thanks for listening to this episode of A Brave New Podcast. Go to abravenew.com for more resources and advice on all things brand and marketing. If you enjoyed this episode, show us some love by subscribing, rating, and reviewing A Brave New Podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts. A Brave New Podcast is created by A Brave New, a brand and marketing agency in Seattle, Washington. Our producer is Rob Gregerson of Legato Productions.