Building a solid brand identity with Nick Mc Graw

 

Hello and welcome to the useful content podcast. And today we have a new teacher in our useful content classroom, Nick McGraw. Hi, Nick.

Hey Juma, pleasure to be here. It's nice to see you again. I'm glad we have another opportunity to do this again.

Yeah. The first time we did it was on your show and that was what else? 2021 or 22. That's

so long ago.

But now we get to do the Useful Content Show, which I'm really excited about.

Yeah, those are the early days, you know, as you know, and that was how we met. We met through LinkedIn and, um, and you're doing good stuff there and you still are doing good stuff. That's why you're on today to talk about brand design. So could you please tell the people what you do and how you help your clients create useful content?

Yeah. So, um, the content that we help our clients create, um, is always mission focused, and that mission is to make sure that their message, um, whether that's their services or the solutions or the answers that they get, uh, for their clients, that their message is spread, um, in as many places that are applicable as possible, um, as many platforms that will help them succeed. You know, um, if your business is. primed for LinkedIn, it may not be perfect for say TikTok. That's not always the case, but we want to make sure that our message is in the right places in front of our audience, where our audience is hanging out. Um, what I like to tell people, um, what I like to tell my clients is that social media is just a place to waste time, right?

People are doom scrolling. People are looking to take, to get a hit. They're going on Facebook. They're going on Instagram. They're going on TikTok. They're doom scrolling. They're just doom scrolling, doom scrolling. They're looking for a dopamine hit. It's a place to waste time. It's a place to hang out and kill time. Not everybody who's going to these places is looking to be hit with an ad or with some sort of message of your service. But if you already know your clients, your ideal customers, are on those places hanging out, then it really is to your advantage to be in those places. and I always, always explain to my, my clients, and I always try to encourage them and teach them if we're not doing video, we are totally missing out for two reasons. One, If you're not doing video and your competitors are doing video, you're being left behind, right? If you're not doing content of any kind, forget video, if you're not doing content of any kind, your competitors probably are.

So you're missing out on all the customers that are gobbling up. But number two, let's say your competitors aren't doing content. You should then do content because that means you're going to get ahead of them, right? Your message is going to be spread much, much more easily. It's going to be picked up by your customers first.

Right? Those who look like they're first in this space, those who look like they've been early adopters and they've taken to this content game quicker and earlier and more seriously, they're going to get all the clout and they're going to get all the attention. And attention is the biggest currency of today.

Attention is the only currency that matters, especially in the social media game. So the content that we produce for our clients, we help them produce it. It's their message, but we try to bring it to life. And we're always, always trying to explain the value of doing video, uh, Explain the value of what it is their clients need to see from them.

Maybe it's like behind the scenes stuff. Maybe it's polished final solutions of what they achieve for their clients. Maybe it's client testimonials. It can come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. It can be packaged up any way you like. Um, but the power of video, um, and really all types of content cannot, cannot be understated.

It really is helping to spread your message and build up your business.

All right. That's great. And so I know when you, when we first met and we first started to talk on social media, you were squarely inside of the camp of, um, probably identity design, that might be the correct way to say it. And I did, and of course I've seen you expand into social media content, into websites, and maybe even a bit of brand strategy, you know, doing those types of things.

Um, so what made you transition from just doing, you know, Brand identity design into these other components of content.

Yeah. So the other, the other, the other, um, offerings, the other services that we offer is like you said, uh, branding and identity, uh, and then web design and then content. So I would say those are the three main pillars that we offer the three core services, branding and identity, web design and, um, and content. Um, what made me venture into those is, uh, my clients needed them. It's very simple. Um, talking to my clients, you know, okay, maybe they need a beautiful brand, a deck, um, and some good assets, some brand assets. They're sick of what they have now. They've been in business for eight, nine, 10 years and what served them in the past was okay.

And now they want an upgrade and they deserve it. And they've earned it. And they know what they have. They have an awesome company. They have an awesome business with a book of customers. But they don't really feel, um, That what they're offering their clients looks the part, right?

You want to, you want to look the part too, and you want to feel like your messaging and your words and your marketing all feels good. And so, um, all of that's great, but a lot of people, maybe they don't just need, um, brand identity and a nice branding deck. It needs to function and do something after that.

So now we venture into the territory of web design. Okay, well, now that I have your brand built, why don't I build your website? Okay, well, what would that look like? Well, it depends on what you need. You know, we can build kind of a small, easygoing, you know, um, almost, um, uh, templated out, um, kind of DIY, do it yourself kind of web build like a Squarespace or a Wix, or we can build you something a lot more custom. It really depends on what your appetite is. Um, to stand out looks like, and it really depends on what your customers need today. Um, if your customers are more of a, um, a discerning, um, perhaps, um, um, more of a luxury clientele, they're looking for something very custom, they're looking for a nice flashy experience. Well, then we have to think about adding a little bit more customization and a little bit more personality, uh, to your website. If they just need something cheap and cheerful, well, there's options for that too. But I want to be able to. As I serve our clients, I want to be able to not turn anybody away. I don't want anyone to think, Oh, I got to go somewhere else for that. We want to be able to, to offer as much full service capability as possible. So, um, the reason we got into those other offerings like web design and content is because it was the next logical step. Um, as businesses grow and evolve, it was the next logical step. Our customers were demanding those things.

Our customers were not demanding. Our customers were asking for those things. Um, and it made sense. It's within our wheelhouse to provide those things. Um, I, I can't get everything done. I don't know how to do everything in the world, but the things that I know that we can facilitate and the things that I know we can deliver, we'll do a very good job for them. Um, and then that just made the most amount of sense. There was a demand we could supply. So that's how that worked out.

Good. Good. Cause I noticed the transition and I was saying, oh, this is good. This is like an expansion and it makes sense if your customers are asking for it, or, you know, I think some of them might actually be demanding it, you know, despite your correction earlier. Um, then yeah, you, you do it for them once you're capable of doing it and you have the capacity.

And sometimes, and I know that your team, you have a small internal team, but you have an expanded network of people who you work with.

Uh, who provide these services. So that's really excellent. And you know, interestingly, we've been hearing over the past years and years, more from many different quarters and people have been saying it over and over again, and it's true.

I know this, you know, this, and I guess by now many people know this, that your logo is not your brand. Right. And, um, that is something that is not disputed anymore. People are not arguing over that anymore. It's a known fact. Right. But from your perspective as a brand designer, can you define for yourself what a brand is?

It's funny. Someone just asked me that question. I had to articulate it for them. I think a brand is, um, there's all sorts of things that we can do. to develop our brand logo, colors, fonts, messaging, positioning, marketing, um, you know, um, uh, merchandise services, product offerings, uh, customer experience, our followup, our followup game, all of that adds to an experience and all of those things are important. Um, but at the end of the day, Um, your brand is what they tell you your brand is right. You can try to pump out all the marketing and all the messaging and all the lovely images that you and I both do. We're pumping out graphics, we're pumping out videos and this is what my brand is. Don't you love it? And that's all great. But when that hits the eyes of my audience and it hits the ears of my audience, they're going to give me the feedback on, wow, we love it. This is great. This is exactly what we think you are. Or, Hmm, what is this? What, what, what is this today? What, what is this post? So, um, I think your brand, um, all the things that you do to develop your brand, all the marketing you put out, all the websites and landing pages you develop, all the emails you send, all of that's a great brand experience. But eventually the feedback will come back to you and your audience and your customers will tell you this is what we think of you This is what we expect of you in the future do more of those things do less of those things Right. Do more of this, do less of that. These are the things that we're expecting from you in the end.

So your brand is, you know, you can tell people you want what your brand is. They'll tell you what it is. So I think your brand is a combination of, um, your efforts and then your reputation coming back to you. Um, and it's very hard to, you know, we can take a look at all the, the big, big companies of the world. Some of them have kept their brand squeaky clean, perfect, reliable. Everybody knows what they're going to get every time they buy a product or service from them. And then there are other brands who derail their reputation every single, every single time that they get a chance. So your brand, um, essentially is your reputation out there in the market for people to provide feedback on.

Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. So your brand is your reputation and that is the online brand is your reputation that you've built from sharing all this content and how you interface with people on all those different things online as well. Um, I mean, you could have. The, you, you could decide how you want to, to share your brand with people.

And it could be that you want to be controversial and, you know, they're different categories. You could be a rebel. You could, you know, you know, all those different things. And, and so sometimes if your brand takes a sharp 90 degree. Turn without kind of easing the people in or kind of building up. And it's not an alignment with who you generally say or show yourself to be more than what you say is more of what you show then, yeah, that can cause fallout that can definitely cause

a fallout with those types of things.

And I tend, me, a person, I tend to say your brand is the thing that people don't forget about you. That's my general definition of a brand. Um, But when it comes to doing, and I know you believe in, you know, building, uh, long term business relationships, right. I know you believe in that, you know, how can your brand.

Identity help you as a business owner, build long term relationships with your customers. How do you think that may work?

Oh, I think, um, on the surface, um, um, I think that there's a great deal of trust that can be built on the surface. Um, I have a client right now, she's an accountant, um, and she, her accountant business, her accountant business that she was once an employee at and then, um, branch director and now franchise owner.

She owns multiple franchises. She's really leveled up in the last decade. That business has just gone through a rebrand of itself of its own. Rebrand might be a bit too, too much of a word. It's more of a refresh. They use kind of the same colors. They've kind of given it a logo refresh and identity refresh, but it's all very recognizable. I take that as an example of, of that. It looked okay before, but now it looks a lot better. It looks a lot more trustworthy, even if you've never worked with this accounting practice before, if you've never given them your business, if they've never looked at your books, it looks trustworthy on the surface already.

So that brand identity looks super friendly, super accessible, super welcoming. It looks trustworthy and like they're going to handle my business perfectly right away, friendly, engaging, welcoming. I know I'm going to be taken care of here. And I haven't even spoken to a single human being behind those doors yet. So I know that, um, certain brand identities, uh, depending on the values that they have, they can evoke feelings of trust and belonging, and you'll know that you'll be taken care of there. And then departing from, you know, getting away from, uh, business branding, personal brands can do this as well. My same client. Who who works at this franchise who is a franchise owner of this business? She has a personal brand that she's building up and guess what? She has a lot of the same similar core values She wants to be a trusted name a trusted resource for information She wants people who have never even hired her yet who have never seen any of her talks or presentations or any of her content She wants to be trusted immediately and she's doing a very good job.

Her message is perfect She gives Um, excellent advice all the time. Always, always just giving her insights, her knowledge, never gatekeeping. She's always just giving that away and the look and feel of her content. We've just given her content a refresh. We have all nice new, fresh colors, fresh fonts, new subtitles on her videos. If I thought, and I was making her content before, if I thought her content was trustworthy before, it's way more trustworthy now. It looks refreshing. It looks bright. It looks friendly. Anyone can start listening and watching her videos. Very, very effective engaging stuff. So I think that your brand identity can, um, to answer your question, it can definitely help cultivate, um, more of your audience.

It can help, um, bridge a gap that perhaps, you know, was too far to cross for people. I think your brand identity can definitely bring people closer to you, especially the people that you consider would be customers, potential customers. Yeah. You can definitely show them the light and say, Look at what I have to offer.

Even if you've never heard my message before, even if you've never heard me speak, you've never seen a single video from me, look at how it looks and you make the decision of, is that something you want to be a part of? Do you want to continue following me? Do you want to continue watching and listening to my message?

Um, because you might learn something from it and it might be very valuable to you.

with that in mind, let's talk about your brand a little bit, your brand identity. So I know that, um, well, I'm always fascinated about, about the choices people make with brand identity, why they choose particular, uh, colors in there. Design and their brand identity and all those different things.

And, um, so your colors, people who are listening to this can see it. You have, um, and it's shifted a little bit now. It's less neon green. It's more, more pink. Uh, I don't know what you call those colors exactly. So you can, you can first tell me what those colors are. And then you can tell me, why did you choose these electric colors for your own brand identity?

Well, we talk about core values, right? And the, the need to live by those values, every brand, whether it's a business or a personal brand, like an individual has a set of core values that they will not deviate from that they will not, they will not step away from. It's their guiding light. Their pillars of who they are, their pillars of the business or their pillars of their personality.

And one of my core values is energy. Every conversation that I have, like you and I are having right now, every interaction I have with clients, every relationship that I build always has energy and I make sure that I'm involved, engaged. I'm excited. Not just, I'm not just faking it. I actually am this. I always bring energy to every interaction, every relationship, everything that I'm doing, every project that I'm working on, uh, will always have my energy in it.

And so it's important that I reflect that into the world. It's important that I beam. That core value into the world. I have other values as well, like transparency, and I'm very relationship oriented relationship building, but energy is a big one. And so, especially being a designer as well, I need to stand out.

I need to walk the walk of all the things that I tell my customers about. I'm preaching to them all the time. You got to stand out. You got to make noise. You gotta be noticed. Well, if I'm. shades of gray and I just blend into the background. What kind of designer am I? What kind of, what kind of message am I spreading?

Just, just kind of falling back into the background. I need to stand out myself. I need to make some noise. I need to cause commotion. Um, and I need to stand out with my own brand. So I picked these colors and these images. And the visuals that I have so I can stand out so I can reflect that core value of energy back to people so they know when they start working with me or have a conversation with me, they kind of know what they're going to get, even if they've never talked to me before, or they've never seen one of my videos, they kind of know what they're going to get.

And so pink is a, um, this warm, bright pink that I have as a main color. Um, is, um, reflective of the energy that I have. It's not a common color at all. You don't see a lot of brands draping themselves in this pink or the electric green that I have. Um, they're loud, they're fun. Um, they have a lot of energy.

And I think that when people, uh, especially my potential customers, when they see this, they know exactly the type of person that they're going to get. The colors and branding that I have for myself don't necessarily map to all of my, my, my customers, right? They're not looking for these bright pinks and greens and purples on their own branding, but they know that if they work with me, they're probably going to get someone who's, you know, got a lot of energy, um, has, has a lot of impact on the work that they're going to be doing is probably going to be very, a hundred percent committed to the relationship. Um, likes to be social, um, is definitely an extrovert. So all of these things are helping to Spread my message around. Now again, my audience will tell me what they think of me. You know, we don't really think you're high energy. We really don't think you're that transparent at all. And I've never had that from anybody.

No one's ever accused me of being low energy. Um, so I think it's working. And so these aren't common colors. Um, for certainly for a male, I don't see a lot of guys using pink. In fact, there's only three of us. On the planet that I've actually seen use pink. Um, and both of them are, are in Australia. So, um, as a designer and as a guy, not many of us are using bright pink.

Not many of us are bold enough and brave enough to use that, but I've also strategically picked it because they reflect my energy, um, and they help me stand out and they do all the things that I'm trying to tell my customers to do.

Stand up, make noise, cause a commotion.

And it definitely does some of that. And so let's talk about that. Cause that kind of leans into a big part of what we're going to talk about today. Even though we're way into the discussion now, we're going to talk a bit about brand personality. Uh, and I know you believe that the lines blur between the founder and the business.

And for many small businesses, that the person in charge, they, uh, the brand. And let's talk about how someone can lean into that, uh, attract customers. With their brand, if you were talking to somebody about leveraging who they are as a leader, as a business owner, to begin to attract people with their brand personality, how would you tell someone to start with that?

Where should they begin doing that type of thing?

One of the buzzwords that is thrown around a lot in our, you and I live in the same space in the digital world. Um, one of the buzzwords that's thrown around a lot in the digital world is culture. Right? Not just in the digital world, but in the real world as well. Um, culture is, is, Culture is becoming more and more important every single day. Um, how, how employees choose a place to work. Yes, the work is okay, but they really are working with the culture. They're, they're buying into, um, a culture of a, of a team that they're buying into, um, or an employer or an employee.

And the reason I bring, the reason I'm bringing up culture is because culture is set from the top and it's, and it kind of sprinkles its way down, right? The boss, the leader. Sets

the tone of culture and that is kind of just, it trickles downhill. It's kind of like a waterfall effect and that bleeds into every single employee, every single SOP, every single rule set, document, email, email signature, like how the employees treat the customers and how the business treats its clientele is totally from the top down. And so culture is set from the top and as the business leader, if you don't have the right, let's say, values, um, positioning for your business, leadership qualities, if you can't recognize those things in yourself, or if you're lacking in any one department, the rest of the business is going to lack there too.

If you establish a culture of fear, for example, or a culture of, um, You know, intolerance in your business while the rest of your employees are going to take note, the rest of your team is going to follow suit because you're the boss and you dictate this. Everyone's personality is sort of going to be affected by you.

So you're at the top. And so culture is huge because it affects so many decisions that are both tangible and intangible. So many decisions are affected by the workplace's culture and your brands and businesses culture. So yes, I do think the lines blur between business owner. And the actual business, like so many business owners start from the ground up.

They start with nothing. They invest their own money into it. A lot of people don't have investment and investors and VCs and all that stuff. So they're bootstrapping it and they build it from the ground up. And it's all them at first. And then they hire someone to help them. And then they hire a few more. And soon you have this core team that all started from you. And so they're all taking their cues from you. You're the boss. You're the leader. You dictate how you want the business to be run, how you want your employees to treat your customers, how you want your staff to treat your clientele, the people that pay you, and all that's going to be affected by

the personal culture that you bring to the business is all going to trickle down throughout the rest of the business and the brand.

like you're saying that the leader of the company needs to, um, like demonstrate. Or what are the important things about the business and the ways of the business? Um, so that's important, but how do you then take something that could probably be, because, you know, if you demonstrate something to somebody, take that and they could probably interpret it one or two ways.

They could take it and say, well, okay, I'm going to emphasize this part of it, but I'm going to de emphasize this other part of it. So then when you're talking about your business brand personality, maybe somebody might have a skewed view of what that might be. What does a business owner, Or a leader or CEO, whoever that person may be need to do in terms of communicating that brand personality.

How, how, what can they do to do that? Is it documentation? How has that done in terms of communicating that brand personality?

a lot of businesses don't value, what true brand strategy is and true brand strategy is going to take a very serious and transparent look at things like your vision, your mission, your reason to exist, why does the company exist? Why are we serving the people that we serve?

Why do we offer the services that we offer? And then how do we do that? And the how is the core values. It needs to come back to your values, right? These are immovable, real tangible pillars of your personality, of your brand that affect how you conduct business, that affect how, um, you. Treat your. Yourself, your staff, um, and then ultimately how the customers and clientele are treated. Whether it's a solopreneur or a big corporate business, um, has to get clear on why, why it is that they exist, who it is they're going to serve. and how they're going to serve them. And those are our core values. So it really comes back to brand strategy. Once you figure out all of your strategy, all the other fun stuff that you would associate with a brand, Colors, fonts, websites, all that visual stuff.

That's all easy. That, that becomes very easy to figure out when you understand your own strategy.

All right, great. Let's touch a bit on the easy part, because I know some people may want to hear what a practical easy part, which is like the colors, your fonts, your things you can see, things you can hear, and even sometimes things you can touch, all of those different, um, aspects of, um, Branding or brand identity.

Uh, so let's, let's create a scenario. Someone comes to you. Uh, they are, have a company that's up and running. It's fairly stable. Um, they have a, uh, something that they created for themselves at the very beginning, let's just say it was three years ago. And maybe they did it in clip art or Microsoft word, and it hasn't been a big deal, but now the market is becoming a lot more crowded and, um, they have a problem.

The problem is that what they had before in terms of visual communication, maybe is getting overshadowed by all of these other new competitors that are popping up and they want to change their visual identity, like a complete overhaul from logo all the way back to their social media content and everything in between.

Where does that process start with someone when they come to you? How do you first address them wanting to start adjusting their, their visual identity? And could you walk me through some of the steps of doing some of the critical things inside of, of that process?

questions that will get me closer to understanding their business model, what it is they serve, what it is they sell, their products, their offerings, and then who their ideal customer is. I then ask them questions about, you know, if I were to build you, you know, the perfect. The perfect solution. What would that look like? What would it feel like? You don't have to tell me specifically, well, we need a website and we need this and we need that. What would it feel like? How would your business be operating more functionally? Because Juma, I think it's important to address that. We're not, at least I don't think this, we're not just graphic designers. We're supposed to be problem solvers. We're supposed to be really thinking through these problems, these challenges. If you just need a quick logo today, you can go on five or you can go on Upwork. And you can bang one of those out for 200. That's, that's easy. But if you want someone to help you strategically grow your business in a creative way, maybe not in a dollars and cents numbers way, but in a way that attracts more business to you in a way that attracts more customers to you is in the right places online, in the digital world, you have a much stronger, cleaner digital footprint. Then these are the things that we need to think through. And then what is most likely going to happen, especially as in your example, like you say, They need a logo. They need a new brand. They need a website. They need everything. They want everything redressed. What is most likely going to happen is we're going to have to do a brand strategy workshop. And that brand strategy workshop happens over multiple meetings. Um, we go and build your ideal customer avatar. So we profile your ideal customer. So I make a whole profile of your ideal customer. Then I profile you as a business. And we do those things we talked about establishing your vision, your mission statement, your superpowers, your unique selling position, your USPs, right? Your tone of voice, your brand personality, your core values. These are all the things that make you, you all the things that make your customer, your customer and all the things that make you, you. Okay. So that's, those are two big part of it. We then take a look at your SEO. Analyzing your website, the strength of your online business, but also analyzing your customers, right?

We do a deep competitor analysis and we take a look at all the people in your space. In your geographical area. We also take a look at like all your competitors in your immediate area, who's competing with you in your town or your city or your province or state or whatever. And then we go outside of that.

We take a look at competitors who are not in your geographical area, but might be doing something so good. And so rad, like if you're a landscaper and you live in town a and town L is all the way on the other coast. Okay. So your, your, your landscaping company and his landscaping company are not competing.

They're 500 miles apart. They're not serving the same area, but he's doing something so good over there. You're like, how is he, how is he generating so much business? He's got. roughly the same amount of customers available to him. How is he doing that? So we take a look at their strategy and we start to cherry pick some of the things that they're doing really, really well because they're not competing with us over here.

So we can take the best bits of their strategy and inject it into ours. So our ideal customer avatar, your own brand persona. So profiling your customer, profiling your company, doing an SEO analysis, a deep analysis of your. Current online brand, the state, the state of play that your brand is right now online, taking a look at your competitors and then building you a new plan, a new basically blueprint battle plan of what we're going to do next. If you're saying that, um, in your example, somebody needs a website, they need content while in this SEO audit that we do in this SEO strategy, we also carve out plans to build a new website for them. They might have an existing website that doesn't serve them. It's funny. I was just on a call with someone today. It's basically a landing page they have for their team. They're a realtor and it's just photos of their team. And that's the whole website. It's just, this is Amanda. This is Chelsea. It's just photos of their team. I'm like, I'm sorry. This is a, this is a real estate company that sells 5 million homes. This is just an about page. And it's doing nothing for their business. And she said the same thing. She goes, it does nothing. I get no customers from it. So I'm like, okay, we need to change that. So we build them out a suggestion, a battle plan of the new website that we could build complete with meta descriptions, SEO keywords, um, coming out with all the, the next stage is also copywriting.

We need to copyright all their website. We need to, to build all the pages and write it all out. We then conduct a brand, an actual visual branding strategy where we come up with A refreshed logo, um, mood boards, um, visuals for what their brand is going to look like over the next steps, mockups, fonts, colors, logo, everything you would expect in a brand deck in a brand guidelines deck. Um, but it all starts with understanding who the customer is, who you are, who you want to be, and how we're going to bridge those two things together. Because any business Juma can tell me, Oh, I really like blue. So I want my business to be all blue, but if your customers love red and yellow. I guess I can't make you blue, can I?

If they're attracted to other things that you're not attracted, we gotta do things that attract your customers, right? If they're the bees, we need to be the pollen and the nectar, right? That's what we need to be. We're not necessarily the honey. The bees make the honey. We don't need to be the honey if that's what they're making.

We need to be the thing that attracts the bees in the first place. We need to be the nectar, right? So you need to attract the bees. The people that you want to be, that you want to pay you the most. Right? So I'm always trying to make my customers think that way. I'm always trying to put that in their heads.

I don't care what you like. I care about what your customers like, and that's what I'm going to try to build for you. I'm going to try to build an attractive, beautiful experience for them so that they can come and give you money.

Let me, poke at that a little bit, um, and bring up something that I think you, that you said that I think is interesting just at the end there, which is that. There is to some degree, there is a, um, what's your customers. Now, when it, when it comes to colors, colors are very, very personal a lot of times.

Right. Uh, and especially if you have a small company and you're starting out generally, um, you tend to just pick what you like and it doesn't really have much meaning at the time.

And then later on, you probably shoehorn in a meaning, or maybe it might change, who knows, but how can you, how can you, you explain to someone that they have to change a color, unless for example, a color that they like, because there's another thing to that, which I'm not going to mention now.

So let's just deal with this one too, because I'm having another thought here while I'm saying this, but how can you tell someone use these colors that your customers seem to like? As opposed to the colors that you prefer or that you want. And how can you justify that to someone other than the fact that they should just do it for the customers?

You're right. You're, I think you're right to poke holes in that. I think, um, two things can be true at the same time. Um, I think that our ideal customers are looking for a particular feeling or a particular experience from us, you know? So, um, let's take the, uh, let's take the, um, let's take the customer segment of new mothers. New mothers have their babies, right? Um, their world has changed and everything about their decision making now is all about that baby. They want the softest clothes, the most protection, the best beds, the best cribs, the best mattresses. They want, uh, fully. Powered out stroller. You know what I mean? They want the biggest wheels, the best grips.

They want everything really expensive. Everything has to be plush for the baby, the best foods, all of that stuff. What would the brand that speaks to new mothers. Look like would it be full of neon greens and pinks like mine Juma or would it be full of neutrals and soft pastels? Maybe a nice maybe a nice Teal or a pink for you know, the boys and the girls whatever I see this with diaper brands No pampers and huggies here in in in my part of the world Those are the two biggest brands for sure but a lot of the brand Um, that is serving new mothers for babies for infants will be soft and welcoming and feel plushy and nice and probably wouldn't be too loud, but probably be nice and soft and calming and comforting. They're not going to be like electric blue and laser yellow and, and jet deep, deep blacks. Like that's not, that's not going to be for mom and baby. Right. So I can justify design decisions based solely on what the ideal customers might be looking for. And all I have to do is find references of other like, you know, other brands and businesses and logo identities and things like that.

All I have to do is build a mood board and show my client, you see what everyone else is doing. That's because it works. Now. I also said we have to stand out. I also said we have to be different. So just because 10 other companies do the same thing doesn't mean we're going to be the 11th to do the same thing just because it works. There is some degree here of we need, we need to push back a little bit. We need to stand out and we need to do something different. I'm not saying we disrupt, but we need to do something a little bit differently than them. Okay. So two things can be true at the same time. We need to Do what our ideal customers are expecting of us to attract them. But we also need to do something different enough that they would be attracted to us to begin with, because if they just see us as another, you know, the fourth or fifth iteration of companies they've seen before, they're going to go, Oh, great. Another one of these. Why do I need another one of those? What would be, I already have one, two, three, four.

Why do I need this fifth one? So you're just the same as the other four, just slightly different. That's not enough. That's not enough of a distinction. That's not enough of a differentiation. So two things can be true at the same time. We need to take cues of what's happening in our space now and take a look at our competitors and, and, and understand what makes them successful. And then we have to be ourselves. Right. So two things can be true at the same time. We need to do the things that we know will work because it pleases our customer. But then we also have to be different enough that we're attractive to our customers. And we look like the new kid on the block who can offer something different, who can offer something that the others haven't been able to offer up until now.

Yeah. So, okay. So I agree. I think those two things can be true. Where you have the thing that is proven and that works that people associate because I mean, over the years, and even if we don't, we're not told explicitly that this is true, we know that certain things are associated with certain colors, right?

And we, we have a certain field behind it. You know, before you said the, the, the black as a color for babies, I was thinking, what would that be? If you had like baby clothes and all black and

It would be a really luxury brand.

it'll be a luxury brand.

It would be like, it would be like, you, you see these luxury brands like Chanel or Cologne or, um, you know, Audi, you know, these high end luxury brands,

imagine you decked out your, your kid in like, you know, um, Louis Vuitton or like diesel or something like that. Then it becomes a high, high end luxury brand.

I've seen this before where, um, there's a designer out there who took. Common everyday brands and just made them black. So he took McDonald's like the, the fry box, which is a traditional red and yellow, and he jet blacked it with a white McDonald's logo. And it looks really high luxury. He did that with ice cream. He did that with really cheap products, like traditionally cheap, affordable value products, and he made them into luxury brands and they, it really worked. You're like, Oh, I guess that now costs a million dollars just because it's in black and white. So, yeah. So. Yeah, there are certain things you can do.

Like I even have this pack of gum here. This is five gum, right? And that's all jet black packaging. It's got texture on the box. This isn't like some fancy bubble gum. It's jet black packaging. Even the way the, even the way the box opens up to get this stuff inside. It feels like it's like a, it almost feels like it's a pack of cigarettes. Like you're actually, this isn't just gum. This is like an experience. And so they knew that about their customers. They wanted to do something different. And like, I don't know who woke up in the morning and said, we need to disrupt the chewing gum market and really like kick some ass there. I don't know who decided that gum should be 10 a pack, but this is some really, this is some really high end stuff.

It has bold, juicy flavors. The flavors last a long time. The packaging is cool. It's recognizable on the shelf. It stands out because it's not a bright, bold color. Every other gum brand stands out or at least competes with each other because they're bright yellow or the bright pink or the bright green or the bright orange. This one is a breath of fresh air because, no pun intended, this one's a breath of fresh air because it's jet black, it's more of a luxury thing. This thing looks different on the shelf next to all the loud things. So sometimes you can, you can take a, you can, again, you can be the loud thing in a sea of calm, or you can be the calm thing in a sea of loud. And that's how you're different, right? So it's still gum at the end of the day. It hasn't done anything groundbreaking, but, um, you know, I have a couple of flavors here. You have the mint one and you have the watermelon one and those things look really attractive. They look really, really cool, uh, to me in the packaging and on the shelves.

So there's another example. You can turn gum into a luxury product.

mm Yeah. I have two friends who only buy five gum. So when you pull that out, I, I, you know, one buys the cinnamon, there's a cinnamon version,

Imagine, imagine having a friend whose identity is wrapped up. Well, Juma, I can't hang out with you. Why not? Well, because you, you eat Bubblicious and stuff, and

are you publish, are you double into something?

Doublemint. What are you What are

you, what are you, a peasant?

you know,

get on my level and buy the 16 pack of gum. What

are you what?

are you, a communist? Come on, man, buy the expensive gum.

Well, you know what happens, right? When they, when they pull the pack out, I'm like, can I have one? So then now they're in danger. They have to share,

Now they have

to share. Do you know,

how much this stick of gum is, Juma? This is 1. You're killing me, Juma.

yeah, yeah, yeah. I understand. I get where you're coming from. I get where you're coming from in terms of how you could shift the perception of a particular brand by just the use of the correct colors and how that is a way. So I like what the statement of, you can be calm in a sea of noise, or you can be Noise or the commotion in the sea of common, either way it works, but you just have to make a choice that, that, that's what you want to do.

You want to stand out in this particular

way. So Nick, we're coming in for the end of our conversation here. Are there any last tips about branding or any very, very specific things that you want to share with the people about how they can make their brand identity or their brand personality stand out?

I think it just comes back to knowing, um, You know, I can give you all this advice, Juma, but at the end of the day, you know how you want to conduct your life and you know how you want to conduct your business. Um, I don't know if even the choices that I've made from a Grossam are the right ones. Could I have picked different colors?

Could I have associated myself with different types of content? Um, can I Dial back my personality, not show my personality as much? Um, you know, you have to do what's right for you at the end of the day. Um, the brands, the brands that are built every single day, I, I, I'm following, um, Some really awesome brands coming out of Canada.

Now, um, we talked about the gum. I'm following this one brand that makes protein chocolate bars. Um, their rise through their brand story and their, their brand strategy has just been remarkable to see, um, and their packaging is awesome. Their products are awesome. Um, but at the end of the day, they are who they are and they're not going to apologize.

They, they, they've had so many. So many people who are smarter than them and better than them tell them what to do. And they said, no, we're just going to be ourselves. And it has worked. It has worked because one of their core values is authenticity and they're going to continue to be themselves and their audience loves it.

Their customers love it. Their customers love that. They push back on the, they're like David pushing back on Goliath. And their customers see that and they love it. They're like, don't ever bow down to anybody. We, we like that you're, you cause conflict and you cause drama and it's just a protein bar and they love it.

They love it and they keep, they keep buying into that experience that when I buy this product, I'm a rebel. I'm part of a disruptive type of, uh, ecosystem. So I love buying this cause I'm taking market share away from the big bad guys. So their customers love them. They know that. And so at the end of the day, you just have to be yourself, do more of what your customers love.

Of course, they have a model now that works for them. And of course they're listening to their customers. Their customers are informing their decisions, but do more of, you know, what comes right to you. What comes naturally to you, your gut and your instincts will tell you a lot more than just, you know, I can build a strategy all day for you, you know, if you want, but at the end of the day, you'll know what feels right.

If something feels like fake or inauthentic. You'll resist it, right? And so, um, the best advice I can give you is yes, we can inform our decisions with as much data and as much strategy as we want. And the numbers can all look good and the decision making and the reasoning can all look good. But at the end of the day, these brands experiences, especially if they're personal brands that you're developing a personal brand, very intimate.

Like you said, even color choice is very, very personal, very intimate. There's, there's data behind color choice. There's color theory and all this other stuff. But at the end of the day, you have to make choices that you feel are right for you. Because I can guarantee if you feel it's right for you, other people who like you and like what you do, who have the same values as you will also like it. So the decisions that you make, as long as you're not crippling the company and losing money every day, the decisions that you make are probably sound and probably valid. And you're probably already pleasing your customers.

Okay, great. That's a great way to end the conversation about pleasing your customers and being authentic, making those decisions out of what you think is right for you, your company, and for the people who matter to your business, your customers, like people may want to find you online and have a conversation with you, could you tell the people how they can find you online?

Yep. Um, so my website is probably the best place to find me. Um, mcgrossom. com. I don't know if I can leave a link, um,

Yeah, sure. We'll put it in show notes. Yeah.

So mcgrossom. com you'll find out what we're all about, the services we offer. I'm easy to get ahold of through the contact form. If you want to come follow me on Instagram and LinkedIn, those are the two big places that I hang out with. Uh, I hang out on, um, and, uh, it's just mcgrossomdesign on Instagram and just my name, Nick McGraw on LinkedIn. Or you can go into Jumas. friends and all of the people that he knows. And you can find me through Juma's list.

Yeah. Yeah. And also you have a, is it a marketing quiz? Is it some kind of quiz

That's right. Yeah. So that's a good plug too. So anyone who wants to test their might, anyone who wants to see how good their online position is, their online strength, I have a quick little quiz for you. It's totally free. You don't have to do anything. It's like 15 questions and you can answer it within a minute and you'll see Just exactly how good or how badly your brand is performing.

Yeah. We leave a link to that too in the show notes. Thank you so much, Nick, for joining us today in the Useful Content Classroom. Thank you students for tuning in. Useful Content Classroom dismissed.

And we're clear.

Cool.

We are clear.

How was that? Was that horrible or useful?

It was horrible. You know, interestingly, here's the thing. Here's the thing, right? When I, when I was first, like I was a photographer first and I used to do a lot of weddings. And one time in my early days of doing weddings, we did this wedding and it was a foreign couple. And, um, and. The bride asked me, um, how would the pictures now?

The pictures were great, right? But I was being kind of snarky and I said to her, Oh, they're horrible, horrible. And my goodness, she nearly had a heart attack. She, she went, what were they

say that to the bride.

She nearly died. She nearly died. And I learned very early in the business that, you know, ever, ever, ever,

Don't joke, Don't joke.

unless, unless the, unless the bride has joked with you first. Don't joke.

Yeah, that, that was not a good joke to me. So what I've learned is that, um, is that, uh, what, first of all, tell the truth. Right. But secondly, even if you think something is going off the rails, there's a way to say it, but saying that to say that this is good, this is good, Nick. Um, so no, no need to worry. And this is our post.

Post, um, uh, Conversation

Yeah, yeah,

that I, I, I

Well, I just wanted to, I wanted to be useful for you. I, I was recording, I have a little, um, phone holder here and

Oh, right,

kind of on, like on my screen, like right here, recording myself answering. And

halfway through the fucking thing said, you ran out of storage. I'm like, my iPhone, which is a bottomless pit, ran out of storage.

Oh, for real.

Well, I'm gonna have to go back and delete some stuff, so.

oh, shucks. That's not good.

Uh,

quite annoying, actually. Quite, quite, it enraged me as I'm halfway through. Cause, cause you started asking even better questions, and I'm like answering these more competently. Like, all of my clients, man, I have an HVAC client, you know what HVAC is, right?

yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh

So, I have an HVAC client, and when I started developing the strategy, he asked me, is all this necessary? It's just a fucking

Squarespace website. And I was like, I just need you to trust me. And when we finally got through it all, he was so blown away with the final product. He goes, okay, I can see why all of this was necessary.

And now Juma for the first time, his website existed for like nine years on the internet in nine years. How many leads do you think came from the website

in nine years?

dunno. A hundred, a hundred leads zero.

Oh my goodness.

never once got a single contact form filled out, like the contact form you can fill out on your website. Never once got a lead. Never once got an inquiry. No one ever went to the website and then called him. No traffic. No analytics. No visibility. No nothing. A

month. A month after I launched his new website. First lead. First lead in nine fucking years.

A month after settling on the internet and a legit lead. Cause I can see all the backend.

I can see all the comments. Hi, my name's Marco. I work for such and such. We're actually putting in a bunch of plumbing into this huge, huge house. Uh, we're, we're looking for quotes on HIV. I need your help.

So what was a legitimate, not a, not a bar, a legitimately two weeks later, another one comes in. The website's been on, on the internet for about two months now.

He's had five or six new leads.

Wow.

It's not groundbreaking. It's not remarkable, but it's five or six more than he's had in the last Nine years.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So a web, a website, a web. I know you know this. A website's always, its weakest when its first launches.

Imagine how many leads the thing will collect after a year, 12 months of being on the internet.

Imagine how many leads we'll have. Maybe a hundred, I don't know.

But the fact is that it's working now.

yeah, yeah, that's, that's the thing. Um, people can't see the value until they see the value. So it's, it's interesting that,

That's a good,

a good comment.

yeah, yeah, it's true.