Out-Of-The-Box Thinking and Branding Strategies | Patrick Smith

Ann Kraus: Hello and welcome to Simplify TV. I'm Ann Kraus. Our guest today is Patrick Smith, the founder and creative director for C2 Creative Studio, an independent brand, strategy, and design team in Chicago. Patrick works with clients on everything from digital content to customer experiences. As principal, Patrick manages C2's creative team of creative writers, developers, and designers. C2 Creative guides their clients with big picture thinking, bringing things together that may have never been done before. Thank you so much for joining me, Patrick. Patrick Smith: Thanks for having me, Anne. Ann Kraus: So it sounds like out-of-the-box thinking is not really going to cut it for what you actually do with your strategy. You even say on your website, "Let's break the rules." So how important is this approach in working with clients? Patrick Smith: Yeah, that's a great question. The Let's Break the Rules and the out-of-the-box thinking, it's more of an attitude, and every client's going to have their own definition for what's breaking the rules. So I think a brand everybody can kind of point to right now and look at that did break the rules is Liquid Death, in the water category. They took a category that was pretty standard. You had your Aquafinas and all those kinds of things in there, very more had a lifestyle feel, and they took that lifestyle idea and blew it up and turned it on its head with a great name and a great packaging design. It feels like an overnight success, but over time, has really become a lifestyle brand, and you can see it everywhere from podcasts, now, to concert venues, and even on retail shelves. So that's a brand that's a great example of that it broke the rules. Not every client's going to reinvent the category, but sometimes it's just as simple as doing the things that you should be doing already that you just haven't, and for a lot of clients, that's kind of the low-hanging fruit for them to get out and start doing something innovative, at least in their category or in their competitive set. Ann Kraus: So when it comes to branding, many organizations seem to focus more on the product, like Liquid Death, for instance, they probably focus more on the product than the services that they offer and rather than on the actually organization's brand itself. Patrick Smith: Sure. Ann Kraus: So why do you think it is that these organizations are not focusing on the bigger picture and rather really hone in one particular product? Patrick Smith: I think, well, there's a couple different types of clients like this. If it's a family-run business, and a family-run business could be a $50 billion a year enterprise, it's their baby and they know all the stories behind all the little decisions that were made, and it's hard for them to not talk about the 42 different formulas of paint that had to be mixed to get it right on the plastic in that smear kind of thing. So all those things a client or the end customer might not appreciate, but the owner does. So that's one reason. It's hard for them to separate themselves from that. But you also see this a lot in healthcare where companies like Johnson & Johnson invest a lot into their individual products, but you'll see this every once in a while, unfortunately, when there's a recall or something happens, if they had invested in the parent brand, and because you trust that parent brand like Johnson & Johnson or an Abbott Labs or something like that, somebody who makes baby formula, say, if there is an unfortunate recall, that product doesn't go away because the parent brand is so strong. So the brands that invest on the corporate side, there is an upside to that, for sure. Ann Kraus: I can see what you mean with the family-owned business, how it would be a real tug at the heart for them to let go of some of that control and just say, "Okay, yeah, we'll focus on the brand." Patrick Smith: Sure, absolutely. And they will say, and there is truth to this, the widget, whatever they're selling, that's where the revenue comes from. It's not from having a strong brand, necessary. So sometimes they're a little bit more of a sales organization than a marketing organization. When that happens, it's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just hard to pull them over to the marketing side and have them see the value of the branding on all levels. Ann Kraus: What would be the benefit for a smaller B2B business, for example, to invest in its brand? Patrick Smith: Sure. A small B2B business doesn't need to go out and spend a lot of money on big corporate campaigns and things along those lines. It could be a lot of little things that happen. It's just paying attention and making sure that your brand is current to your customer. What is your competitor doing? Are they entering new products or service that you need to rethink how your product or service mix is stacking up? An example of this, right now, we're working with a printer, and the world's changed since COVID, and printers before were kind of struggling to begin with, and after COVID with supply chain issues and things along those lines, there is even more challenges. So the question becomes when your customer just thinks of you as only a printer, how valuable are you? So we're helping them reposition themselves and being more than a printer and being more of a business solutions kind of partner for a lot of their customers. And that's a benefit of just paying attention to your brand. And just some really practical kind of things, if you're a small business owner and say your business does 15 or $20 million a year, you might want to sell it in five years or you might want to partner with someone. So to have the ability to have that image updated, have it positioned the right way in a marketplace can add value to it. We helped a technology company pre-COVID with this, as well. We didn't know they were positioning themselves to sell the business, but we went in there and kind of rebranded them, and everything went... A new website to go with it. And not too long after that, they ended up selling. So that was an exercise for them to help polish up, if you will, the brand image that they had. Ann Kraus: I would imagine that many feel like this whole idea of branding is cost-prohibitive. How do you respond to that? Patrick Smith: Branding is an investment. A lot of people talk about ROI, and you can measure... An investment in the brand is just it costs money to do that, so a lot of people shy away from those kinds of things. But kind of a common rule of thumb for a B2B brand is to be spending somewhere around 5% on your brand on any given year. B2C, it gets closer to 10. As B2B brands become a little bit more B2C-like experiences, that number should go up a little bit, but anywhere between 5, 7, 8% is probably a good rule of thumb for your business. Every business is different and every category is different. But if you don't, you could just drive up a street in almost any city and you can kind of see who investing and who's not, and over time, it becomes pretty clear what brands are relevant and which ones aren't. Ann Kraus: Yeah, so true. So true. The 5 and the 10% rules are good things to remember. If I could take you down a little bit of a marketing memory lane here, is there somebody in your past that you were like, "I really want to do this job because of this particular person?" Or a book you read or somebody who really inspired you? Patrick Smith: Sure. This is going back, I'm dating myself, but Good to Great was, at least, at the time, for me, this was probably around, I don't know, 2000, when I was an art director. I wasn't a business-minded person, necessarily. I mean, I had some of that DNA, but not really. That wasn't my focus. But just to start to understand what makes something good versus great, as far as business goes, and all the little factors that came along with it, was really interesting to me. And then looking back on that, I look at a book like that and say, "Oh, yeah, that does kind of apply to what I do now and how the operations work and the customer experience and customer service, and how all the dots need to connect." And in that book, they kind of showed how, if you do it right, you can go from the average to an outstanding business. Ann Kraus: Great. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that one. It may sound like it's an oldie, but I'm sure most of the stuff that's in that book is still very applicable today. Patrick Smith: Sure. Ann Kraus: Patrick, thank you so much for joining us on Simplify TV. I'm so glad that you were able to take the time. Simplify TV is sponsored by Simplify, helping you to maximize relevance and multiply results with our industry-leading media buying and workflow solutions. For more information, visit simply.fi. Thanks for joining us today. I'm Ann Kraus, and we'll see you next time.