Brand management

And I think, like we just talked about at Link, the live shopping thing is great because it's a new way to engage with audiences.

I would actually advise that most brands and businesses now go back to the drawing board and take a look at things like brand strategy and marketing, just traditional marketing strategy.

What I'm noticing more and more about the output of a lot of these AI tools, so whether it's apps or platforms, is that everything is starting to look and sound generic.

Because if you're using ChatGPT, then it's doing things in one way.

increase of sales, but I'm accountable to create clarity and consistency.

And the more we have been working in this field, to deliver stronger against this clarity and consistency, the more you move really from the visual identity, the design side into the brand strategy.

And that's where we're really kind of anchored in.

And now the last step is that we are now moving into business strategy because we believe at the heart of good brand strategy is good business strategy.

But the heart of good business strategy is good brand strategy, right? So they're again, totally intertwined.

And for us to create the results that you know, the clarity and consistency, you need to not only go through brand strategy, we need to use the brand strategy to inform the business strategy.

because they're so tightly knit.

And that's how we measure success, because there's many agencies that would say, OK, we rebranded and all of a sudden the sales would go up, etc.

And it's always nice to catch up with you, Erica.

Well, before we jump in, I'd love it if you took a minute to kind of introduce yourself and share a little bit about, you know, what led you to brand strategy, which, you know, can feel in some situations can feel a little bit ambiguous.

Like what made this your life's work? Because at this point you spent more than 20 years, both, you know, in-house agency and on your own.

working on this.

Welcome to Never Have I Ever, the brand strategy edition.

What I mean by that is today I'm going to share some of the things I would never do as a brand strategist having done this now for more than 23 years, right? It's probably, maybe it's closer to 25.

I don't care to think about that.

Little bit of creative license.

It's not necessarily never have I ever, but these are things that I have certainly learned can be done better.

Brand Strategy Unwankified is the podcast making effective, real world brand strategy accessible to brand designers and creators so they can learn about the process and the profession minus the wank fest.

I'm Bec Hughes and my simple goal is to demystify, simplify and un-wankify brand strategy so you can make your value visible, your work count and your confidence soar.

If that sounds good to you, well, you better stick around.

And we are joined by Katie O'Donnell.

Who's the VP of Brand Development at Tromba.

And it's very easy for you, Katie, to be talking about the heat of the summer when you're tuning in from California.

Yeah.