Transcript
We still have potential clients coming to us saying you know oh we we know we need to do a strategy but we just don’t have time or we know that you know or we’re waiting for this to to land before we focus on strategy like you just need to get started.
Hello, I am Stuart P Turner. That wonderful voice was Brook Hill, and this is the Flow State podcast. We are back for the final part of our three-part conversation on Brand Storytelling. Why is it so hard to get started? We’re trying to answer that question today. We talk about why often the brand voice gets lost in execution and how you can make it a bit more real and tangible based on some examples from Brooke and her team. Enjoy.
That’s how you stand apart, you know. Like your unique way of expressing things, it is you and that’s what people look to you for. Yes, in Chat GPT-4 you can actually start to train it, but you know so that it understands how you like—you can say this is how I actually express myself and this is the kind that’s cool. But it’s still, but it’s still not going to get all the way there, right? So, you know, but and that that’s the thing—you do need to Brands will need to stand apart by having a really unique voice and having a really unique arsenal of stories that they and only they tell. And that’s where, yeah, that’s where the value comes in in terms of working with people who yeah know more than the machines.
Yeah, well, yeah, exactly. Yeah, and look I think, sorry this wasn’t on our on our note but you just made me think of it now, so like brand voice and/or brand personality is a personal bug bear of mine at the moment because obviously working in B2B quite a lot, it tends to be something that people seem to work a lot on but don’t ever seem to really nail particularly well. I don’t know whether it’s just because it’s designed by committee or because they’re also product driven. But how, like how are you currently approaching trying to make people think properly about their brand and differentiating beyond just like the functional stuff, Brook? Like have you got any sort of good examples of that or have you hit on any recent challenges in that in that space?
Well, yeah, I mean, I mean usually when clients come to us they know the value of brand voice, and so it’s less about convincing them why it’s important to develop and they’ve kind of already come to us with that. And we also teach in it as well. So we would, so like I’ve run courses in the past teaching people how to how to write in brand voice the way that we do it. I think the problem with brand voice is that one of two things happen, and this is why people tend to kind of come come to us when these solutions haven’t worked. One might be that they either have no brand voice or they’ve got really basic brand voice which is like we’ve got to be simple and honest and friendly and you know those things actually don’t mean anything. And that’s just how, I mean that’s how Chat GPT talks, like you know like there’s nothing unique or different about that so that’s kind of one camp.
And then or, oh sorry, and and then also sometimes they’ve had like an amazing writer who really nailed the brand voice but that person left and they don’t have any, yeah, right, so no guidelines or crap guidelines. And then they’ll have on the other camp they’ll have guidelines that have been created by creative agencies which are really incredible in terms of the vision that they have. And they’re, they’ll be really, they’ll be a couple of really amazing examples but they don’t then go into the level of detail that’s required for somebody to actually write in them. So they’re usually really good vision; they’ll have like “these are the three things that we stand for” and you know like “these are some descriptions of of what that means”. And then you then sometimes you might get like a paragraph on on how that’s expressed but that’s it.
So when we do guidelines we’ll do that and then we’ll do dos and don’ts for each of those pillars. We’ll do, we call them gold star examples, and so we’ll provide like a blog post, a social post, everything and we’ll mark up exactly why we made certain choices. That’s cool, yeah. So people have got a template to work from, a best practice to work from, and the reasons why those choices were made. And then we’ve got on top of that technical guidelines which goes into like grammar syntax, you know like sentence case, numerals, through to word banks, words we do and don’t use to describe something. So like for you, Stu, your technical guidelines would have very specific guidelines around how you construct your own grammatical sentences, probably slightly correct but that’s fine because it works. And then and and you’d have words that you use all the time and words that you’re like I would never say that word, that’s a stupid like not me. So it would all of that so it gives a brand and you know and a business so when you’re getting other people to write your content they know how this brand sounds.
So yeah, so I think that’s where the gap is. It’s just literally people don’t, like where you’re like where you’re seeing people not actually writing in a brand voice that’s useful, they just don’t have the people aren’t given the tools and the training and the level of detail that they need to actually be able to put it into practice.
Yeah, that’s a very interesting point actually because I do feel like a very common problem that I am often engaged to solve is that things falling into a huge gap in the middle of you know idea to execution, to put it in really simple terms I guess, which is exactly what you’re describing, right? We like we engage someone super expensive to do a load of work and now everyone’s like okay great we’ll just put that on the shelf with the other stuff and just carry on doing what we were doing before, which to your point is not necessarily because they don’t want to do it, it’s just because nobody’s been like here’s how you connect a very possibly conceptual sort of you know something to your day-to-day life at work.
Yeah, I think that I mean the conceptual stuff is so important and and like we’ll do that too, but I think it’s recognizing that you there needs to be that click over into practicality because some people work on that real like conceptual level and they just get it and they just get on with it but other people don’t. And that’s not anything to do with them, that’s just how different people function and different people work so you need to have these different layers. Some person like an experienced a really experienced writer will be able to look at what the creative agencies have created and just go ahead and do it. That’s like 5% of the population that can do that, and you want to sweep, you know you want to enable the rest of the population or the rest of the writers to be able to actually achieve that, otherwise yeah otherwise you’re just again resting your fate in one very experienced person hand which isn’t the best business strategy.
Where the challenge is for a lot of those businesses, if I am hearing you correctly, is like you sort of, you know, you can’t have like your entire brand like resting with you know the market person, which I guess is the the way it would have been, you know in time time’s long gone now. But also if you’re going to kind of democratize I guess the brand across more people, you know how do you do that without it becoming diluted or just getting ignored? I think is the the big challenge. Hey, and like it sounds like it sounds like you guys are starting to try and address that with the people that you’re working with in a pretty interesting way which I haven’t I haven’t seen being done across the other companies that have been sort of chatting to you recently, which is quite interesting.
Yeah, it’s yeah I think the brand is such a powerful vehicle for, you know, we kind of think of it as an outward thing but actually it’s an internal thing and if you can get your people living it and communicating in it first and empowering them and enabling them with all the tools to do that then, you know, it’s just going to amplify. So yeah, it’s I think it’s about it’s being able to set the vision but what are all the tools and the training that’s required to, you know, and engagement? Like how do you get people having fun with it, you know? How do you get people, yeah, like back to that fun thing, like if you have fun something you’re gonna it’s going to be so much more memorable? You know when we did our Rebrand we I took my whole team away on a retreat, and you know we had like the best time and all of that stuff. It just cements everything that you’re working for so powerfully if you can just show your people a good time. And so that’s what the Wonderthink creative spark sessions are about. That’s why we do our Retreat. It’s like you learn through fun, you know, you learn through just having a good time.
I’m a big a big advocate of that as well. I think, you know, back to the point you made earlier about sort of taking things from your childhood as well, like when you, you know, you see how little kids learn how to do stuff. I think adults tend to think they’re a lot more mature mentally than they actually become as well. So like you kind of forget that that whole social play interaction part of how we all behave is how we learn most of the stuff that we actually learn. Like, you know, we’re not that far off, you know, chimps just wandering around grooming each other and you know fighting in in the woods, right? So like I think that’s what, without drifting too far off topic, I think that’s one of our current challenges of our generation slash time that we’re alive in particular is like you’ve seen a lot of like stats about increasing like loneliness and social isolation and stuff and the repercussions of that, and then obviously all the, you know, the co-dramas a few years ago.
Like it’s it’s a pretty, I think, concerning trend that people seem to potentially be forgetting just how to like socialize and then, you know, obviously the more isolated you become the harder it becomes to kind of step back out. So, you know, I I totally agree with you. I think it’s just important to remember that, you know, you don’t just have to go to an office and ignore everyone and just silently work all day. You can go and, you know, actually socialize as well, it’s totally fine, even though I suppose the corporate agenda might not, you know, might not say that, but whatever, who cares about them.
Let me, I know we’re kind of we’re almost hitting time, Brook, but let me throw a bit of a random news media curveball question at you before we finish up. So I was reading in a somewhat grandiose sounding article about the B2B world, the B2B marketers and sales apparently are now flipping back to Brand, realizing apparently that it is the more important place to be investing because of changes in buying committees. Now I’m interested to hear your thoughts on this because you and I are from the generation in question but the two reasons they cited for This was changes in the buying groups in B2B businesses because they are now being filled with Millennials such as yourself and myself now who have different values allegedly to Gen X in the previous generations, and also the fact that you know the performance stuff that was being driven before is now a bit of a diminishing pool. So I’ll I’ll add a link to the story in the studies here, it’s come out of a Media Group, so read into that what you will. The actual study is not too bad, it’s by Denu. But question one, Brooke, what what do you think of that broadly? And question number two, as a millennial or at least a millennial minded woman, what do you think the significant differences in values are, you know, versus Gen X previous generation?
Uh, so I I’m I am right on the cusp just FYI. I am what they would call an elder or a geriatric Millennial. I think I think I am as well. I think just crept in there. It’s fine, we can be geriatric Millennials together.
Yeah, look, I I’m very controversial but I find those sorts of articles super irritating because this idea, I’m glad you said that, brand versus, you know, brand versus marketing or you know whatever it is. Like I I don’t think that there needs to be a a competition. I’m delighted to hear that B2Bs are focusing more on brand because I think as the world evolves we will need to stand apart more. And so how do you do, how do you stand apart? That’s what the purpose—the purpose of a brand is to help you be different to and better than your competition. Right, it’s to help people choose you. That’s what at the end of the day you develop a brand for. So if we can, so if B2B marketers are recognizing that that is an important thing to do, well then that’s awesome. And you know and and that’s only going to be more the case if you think about we haven’t really spoken to it but like search, you know search AI, generative search is is this idea of, you know, you’ll soon be able to go to the Internet and get any question answered. And again that that that will mean that brands need to stand apart even more, you know because they won’t necessarily the the search won’t be generated in the same way that it has in the past. So, you know, and that’s just one impact, right, that’s just one. So yeah, so brand will become more important.
In terms of how values are driven, I see this happening more and more like with my team in terms of the way they connect with with with brands and the way that they the way that they make choices. So again I do think that brand and purpose are things that people yeah increasingly want to connect to and and seek it out. You see it in the stats but I also see how it plays out in my team and why they make choices about the brands they engage with and why they you know want to connect with the the brand they feel connected to the clients that we have. Like if they’re if they’re identifying with their the shared values of our clients then that they’re so much more invested in in working for them. So yeah, I do, so so yeah, it’s all important I think is is what I’m saying. Another day we can talk about transformational promise and how I think that that will be the most important thing. Interesting. I’ll just leave that little, you know, Easter egg for you.
No, I like that, Brook. Because I think look I would I would happily carry on talking to you about about search AI and like the current, you know, Google legal snafu, but I think that’s probably a whole other conversation about the more the more functional side of what we’ve talked about. But what would you be sort of saying to any marketers who are struggling with, you know, the issues we’ve touched on or like sort of trying to stand out or thinking about how they’re going to deliver their brand in the new digital media landscape? Like what, you know, what are your kind of current takeaways or what would you be sort of advising people to to think about if you’re if you’re having issues in, you know, in any of those areas? Or is that too broad a question?
No, no, I mean what comes to mind is that is just invest time and resource in the strategy side of things. You know I still think that there is a strategy gap in businesses. You know we still have clients coming to us saying, you know, or potential clients coming to us saying, you know, oh we we know we need to do a strategy but we just don’t have time or we know that, you know, or we’re waiting for this to to land before we focus on strategy. Like any strategy like you just need to get started, you know, and you just to take carve out the time. It really doesn’t, it doesn’t have to be the full bells and whistles, it could be a day. You know, like you I think again people think strategy, “oh my gosh, we’re going to have one of the big four come in and spend a year and millions of dollars to to create”. Actually, what there’s there’s the good, better, and best. Like best of course, you know, we could come in and help with strategy and and, you know, it would be a very detailed and robust process. But equally, you know, it could be a day’s workshop and we come out of there with some really clear direction and some really clear priorities about what to focus on first. And then you work through it. You know it doesn’t have to be over over egged.
So yeah, so I think just, yeah, in terms of in terms of what to focus on just do the thinking, you know, and and as part of that, you know, the get get the creativity flowing. Like you’ve just got to, yeah, you’ve got to do that work otherwise it’s all just spraying bullets at a wall and hoping for the best, you know.
Yeah, yeah, I think I think that’s really good advice. And like, I know going back to where my previous roles, like I’m a big fan of like, you know, just as you said, like if you’re making the space for it just thinking about the habits that help you to think. Like I know the common ones, like, you know, your ideas in the shower sort of stuff, but you can actually I’ve I’ve found having tried to change some of my less savory habits for better ones recently that like, you know, just get out for a walk, like go to gym, go and get into a different mindset where you’re not just staring at a screen and kind of feeling like you have to work than really works for me. Just to let your brain kind of tick over a bit and not really be necessarily actively thinking about stuff is I think a bit of an overlooked sort of easy too thing. You know also it’s a good excuse to not do work for a bit so, you know, a double win from my perspective.
But yeah, look, I think that’s really sound advice, Brook. I think if anyone wants to, you know, chat to you about any of this stuff, how would they how would they go about reaching you now? What’s the best way to get in touch with you?
If if people want to talk more, well, I usually just hang out on LinkedIn. So you can look me up on at where all where all the cool guys are now, right? Yeah, that’s where we are. Or the or, you know, Wonderthink on LinkedIn or our we our beautiful new website which the team did a phenomenal job. I can take almost zero credit for it. It looks so lovely and they did an amazing job.
Look, I really like your new brand actually. As you know, I’m a big fan of sort of, you know, high impact colors sort of that kind of design. So I think it’s very cool. I think you’ve done an awesome job with it.
Thank you. Well, yeah, the like I said the T, it’s a team job and Belinda Hubble who is my creative collaborator she yeah is the vision behind this and she did an amazing job. I love it.
Well, well done everyone in that case. Everyone involved, definitely a winner. Go check it out if you haven’t seen it already. Awesome. Well, look, I think once again, Brook, have covered a significant amount of ground there. I think let’s let’s definitely not leave it another year before we talk again, but I really appreciate you coming on. That was super interesting. And I guess, well, I will put a mark in the diary just to see if our new predictions have come true again. But thank you very much for your time. It was super interesting.
Thank you so much, Stu. Thanks for having me.
That friends is a wrap on the conversation with Brooke. Don’t worry, she will be back in 2025. I hope you found that interesting. There was some fascinating takeaways there on how AI can enhance our lives but certainly isn’t replacing us yet. Hope you enjoyed it anyway. Tune back in for the next episode in a couple of weeks.