Appreciated Branding | Reid Holmes

David McBee: Hello and welcome to Simpli.fi TV, the web series and podcasts for agencies, marketers, media buyers, and business owners. I'm David McBee. Our guest today is Reid Holmes of House of Holmes. Reid is a former ad agency executive creative director and copywriter for big national accounts like H&R Block, Burger King, and the Mayo Clinic. His 25 years experience in Ad Tech recently led him to write a book, which we'll, of course, talk about on today's episode. Reid, welcome to Simpli.fi TV. Reid Holmes: Hi, David. I'm psyched to be here. Do we still use that word psyched or pumped? David McBee: I like the word psyched. You are welcome to use psyched and any other retro words that make you happy. Reid Holmes: A deep cut. David McBee: Deep cuts. All right. Well, listen, I understand that the impetus of your new book came out. It came after an interesting epiphany that you had. So why don't you just start by telling us about that? Reid Holmes: Absolutely. Well, they say we borrow this world from our kids, and my kids were graduating from high school, and as you'd mentioned, I spent 25 years as an ad agency copywriter and executive creative director. And maybe I'm hard-headed, I don't know. But I finally realized everything I'm making, all this advertising that we get to make, it's just ephemeral. I mean, it's fun to make, and the companies we help make a lot of money, but they get to keep all that. And the work I work on just kind of runs and goes away. And I finally realized that here I'm going into kind of what I would call act three of my life. And I wanted to do something lasting and something that hopefully leaves a bigger legacy and helps other do good in the world too. And so when I finally had the light go off on what that was, I spent a few years studying it and decided to write this book because I realized this might be the fresh take on marketing that our industry needs on how branding can be a huge driver of sales and make all this performance marketing that is now kind of the norm, work even harder and work as hard as it needs to and make budgets go farther and everybody wants more money, but there's a finite amount of attention in the world. So you got to find ways to get that attention in a smarter way. David McBee: All right, I really like the direction this is going. I get a lot of people that want to be on the show to talk about branding, so I love that you have a fresh take on it. And I also love the performance marketing metric, which a lot of our listeners participate in. So what's unique about your branding message? Reid Holmes: Well, the interruption model was invented basically in the 50s, soap operas, the grand bargain of ads for content. And back then, we had, maybe I'm going to throw a dart and say 300 messages a day to deal with from advertisers. It was the dawn of consumerism. It's like, oh, a clothes dryer. You mean I can just put my wet clothes in there and then go have a martini. I don't have to go hang it out on a line or go wash them and beat my clothes on a rock. It's like that was the dawn of mass consumerism. But today it's an onslaught. I mean, we are hit with 10,000 messages a day. Why should anyone care about your message over anyone, especially when they're trying to do all the other crap they have to do all during the day? I mean, what's his name? He wrote the book called Deep Work. He said that focus is the number-one skill of the 21st century. And I think he's right. It's like everybody wants your attention. This 15 inches in front of your face became kind of like a 100-year oil tranche of marketing gold where you could put your messages. And yet it's just swipe, ignore everywhere return and categories are saturated with solutions. So my point being that brands that don't define themselves with a bigger promise and with something I call in my book a unique emotional solution, which is kind of a counterpoint to Rosser Reeves' old unique selling proposition. They'll be defined by the marketplace as interrupters and chasers of sales, kind of like I would call them almost the corner watch salesmen. Brands have surrendered their value to this transaction-chasing bottle of the funnel stuff, and it's unsustainable. That's only 10, 15% of the addressable market. What are you doing to invite people into your world? David McBee: Tell me more about that phrase. Unique emotional, what'd you say? Reid Holmes: Unique emotional solution. David McBee: Yeah, tell me more about that. Reid Holmes: Well, I've built this thing I call the brand appreciation pyramid, and there are basically three things you can do to attract or to market yourself. You can say things, and that's at the bottom. You can do things, and that's in the middle, and the top is what you solve. And that's a new thing that came out of my research and my thinking through on this book. Up until now, the idea was if you do things worth talking about, then you're doing better than just saying what you do. That sounds wonky. But so if you think about it, most companies or most marketers think their product is the coolest thing ever, and people are going to inherently care about its rational benefits. But those are things that are generally expected by consumers. And I would call that the left side of the, say, section of the pyramid. That's the unique selling proposition, right? That was invented in the 20s or 30s, when there wasn't a lot of competition. Categories weren't saturated with multiple Me Too solutions. And people are now making decisions based on convenience or price and not a brand and its value and meaning to them. The unique emotional solution says, well, wait a minute, this is what we stand for in the world. But we all know that most purchases are made based on an emotional decision. So an example might be a guy selling tennis lessons says, I have tennis lessons. I can teach the best tennis, teach you to be a great tennis player. The unique emotional solution says, Wait a minute, let me think about this. What if there's a market where parents have kids that are just bouncing off the walls and they need something to do? Well, why don't I market to them and say, I'm a kid tennis player or kid tennis coach, and I will get your kids tired out so that you can have a minute's rest and they can come home and perhaps learn a whole new sport that will last their life? That's the basics of it. Another great example of a unique emotional solution would be Snickers. It's an off-sided example, but Snickers used to say it's chocolatey, nougat, and peanuts. Well, the category is chocolatey, nougat, and peanuts. They finally figured out that their unique emotional solution is you're not yourself when you're hungry. Oh, wow. You're right. God, I didn't think about it that way. When I have a Snickers, I actually can pound away that hunger and start performing at the way I want myself to perform. I mean, that's the basics of it. David McBee: I love it. And a lot of this, I assume, comes from your new book. Tell us about what's the title and what else is in there? Reid Holmes: Well, the book is called Appreciated Branding: How to Transform Your Brand From Ignored to Irreplaceable. And honestly, it was a labor of love. I wrote it because I wanted to see where it took me. This idea of, well, what if branding could actually help? And it sounds pollyannaish, but what if branding is the solution to making the world a better place or making the world in which our customers live a better place? I didn't write it because I thought I'd get rich selling books or I wanted to write a book necessarily. I needed a process to think through this proposition that I had, and I wanted to torture test this idea. And it basically revolves around the idea that brands can proactively do things in the world as a way to get attention and to get people to care. And in a sense, it's not really getting people to care. It's doing things we know they already care about. So you're not breaking through, you are tuning into, an analogy may be, you're tuning into a station they're already listening to. You're appealing to them based on their values, not on your product's differentiation, or your sale, or your whatever. And in that sense, it adds meaning to the brand. And a brand then is able to put a stake in the ground and say, this is what we care about, and we know you do too. And together, we're on this mission to make this a better thing. I call it now, as I've talked through with people, it's a black hole of opportunity. Very few brands are recognizing that they can do this. They just think it's the old saying when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. I need more money. I need more money to break through. I need more money. I need more share of voice. Well, you don't. You just need to spend your money smarter and appeal to people in a way that attracts them to the values they already have. It's not necessarily about demographics anymore. David McBee: Well, I've interviewed quite a few authors, and I got to tell you, I hope everyone listening, all these agencies, media folks, business owners, I hope they pick up your book because it sounds like the kind of book that can make a real difference for them. So thank you for sharing that. Reid Holmes: I appreciate being on. It's my honor. David McBee: Yeah. Now before you go, I do like to ask all of my guests if they have a favorite podcast or a book that was really instrumental in their success. Do you have one of those? Reid Holmes: I love, and you might get this answer a lot, but I love how I built this with Guy Raz, the podcast about people who, entrepreneurs, who started brands and companies. As someone who is moving over to the world of entrepreneurialism and trying to build a consultancy, it's just like jet fuel to me. I love it. David McBee: Okay, I'll add that to my list. And what is the best way for people to get a hold of you or to find your book? Reid Holmes: Well, the book is yet to go on sale. It'll be on Amazon, hopefully in June. But I have a site that's going up as we speak, called appreciatedbranding.com, and there's some information about what the book is about and this thing I call the brand appreciation pyramid. You can download a free worksheet that helps you look at where your brand can start to earn appreciation and how to start that process. David McBee: Awesome. Well, I got to tell you, Reid, I really enjoyed talking to you. Thank you so much for being on Simpli.fi TV today. Reid Holmes: Well, it's been an honor. Thanks for having me, David. I really appreciate it. David McBee: And thank you, guys, for watching. Simpli.fi TV is sponsored by Simpli.fi, helping you to maximize relevance and multiply results with our industry-leading media buying and workflow solutions. For more information, visit Simply.fi and follow us on LinkedIn to be informed about future episodes. Thanks for joining us today. I'm David McBee. Be awesome, and we'll see you next time.