Welcome ladies and gentlemen to Uncensored Renegades. This is a new show that I'm launching with Kory Marchisotto and we're going to be focusing in on leadership and we're going to be doing that in a new format which is the two of us tackling one topic for 20 minutes. So shorter than normal show but super focused and with the absolute rockstar that is Kory. I know you're going to love this. Now, if you want to make sure you get this every single week, please do go and subscribe to Uncensored Renegades in your feed and then you'll never ever miss an episode again. But without further ado, let's get into it. Here it is. It's okay, boss.
We are. Well, we're back in France. I think we're going to have to make this series like tour of France, aren't we? Like, basically, we were canned last time. We're in Paris this time, which is a pretty cool occasion. I can't...
Yeah. Right. One thing that struck me actually when we last chatted is you had done a session in Cannes with a group of marketers and a really basic question you asked them which really struck me as a question we never ask is what is marketing? And I remember you telling me like there were no two similar answers.
No, I asked in that moment I asked 25 people in the See It Be It program and I got 25 answers. So that was a signal for me to say if these 25 people who are actually in the discipline can't agree on a word, what happens if I take this to a broader audience? So I got back to the office and I gave everybody the same prompt and this time I opened it up to about 150 people and it's unbelievable what came back. So I thought it was fascinating if you think about other functions in an organization. If you said to somebody, what is finance? What is supply chain? What is legal? I would venture to guess it's not going to be elastic in its definition. Most people are going to be somewhat within the same type of framework. When you think about marketing, and I looked at the responses, and I would love to get your head on it, and we can react and respond to some of them. It's purely elastic. The extremes are so far away from each other with everything in between. I think that what that signals is marketing is not one thing. Marketing is everything.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. It's quite funny, isn't it, when people ask you what you do and you say just to see what they think that the job is or what do you get phoned up asking for advice? I mean, people phone up and go, I've got a new website. Can you give me some advice? I'm just like, I got no idea. I'm probably the last person to give advice on a website. You know, I have people do that for me. You know what I mean? What does your daughter say? She said you color and sticker.
So you do the cutting, the sticking, and the coloring in.
But cutting, the sticking, and the coloring in. This is amazing.
Well, my mom to beat that one. My mom still goes to the beauty parlor, as 80-year-old women do to get her hair done. And every time she goes to the beauty parlor, what does she talk about? She talks about her kids and what they do. And she'll call me every once in a while before she has to go to the beauty parlor to say, 'Hey, you still sell lipstick for a living, right?'
So to my mom, I sell lipstick for a living. And I'm like, you know what? Sure. Let's go with that. Okay.
But I love your answer you gave just earlier about it's everything because I really believe and I think part of the reason marketers career-wise get unstuck is they stay in the tactics. It's like I'm in charge of the social media handle or I do the print campaign or you know what I mean? And it's like actually as marketers once we realize that what we do impacts everything in business and also when everyone in our business impacts on marketing you see the world differently and suddenly you go hang on a minute I'm responsible for how this brand turns up in the world what people think about it what they experience what they say about it is down to me. It changes everything in terms of how you view your role, doesn't it?
Yeah. And I think it goes the other way too as marketers, brand people, communications, this is all more or less within the same vein. You recognize that at some point. What I would like everybody else to recognize in all the other functions is actually every function is responsible for brand. Brand is your thing. Your brand equity is your value out in the marketplace to whoever your stakeholder may be including your community, your consumers, your investors, whatever the case may be. So if you are in finance, you are responsible for brand the same way as somebody who's in supply chain, the same way somebody is in legal. And all of the codes and cues and language you use and every single signal you give to the world says something about who your brand is. And I think very often times in organizations everybody thinks brand's job belongs to the brand people. And my perspective is brand's job is everybody's job.
Yeah, that's really good. It's I did a oddly I did a finance degree, right? So, one of the things I learned in my finance degree is I think about 60 to 70% of the average business's value is intangible assets and intangible assets are pretty much brand goodwill and it's like that. So, you know, brand is the majority of the value of your company. So, building that is obviously going to be hugely important to shareholders to to employees to everyone.
Yeah. And it's amazing when you think about the number of people you encounter and what that means to how someone's going to talk about your brand. So, for example, I have a corporate credit card, so it says ELF on it. So, when I'm checking into a hotel or anytime I take my card out, somebody Oh, you work for ELF. Now, think about that interaction and what that's going to leave behind for them. If this is a positive interaction, if they like me, if we have a good moment together, if I leave a positive impression, that's the impression they have about the ELF brand. On the contrary, if they encounter somebody who works for ELF and they don't have a positive association in that moment, they're actually going to have a negative perception of the brand. And that's where this idea of brand, what is it really? Which is it a feeling? Is it a promise? Is it an emotion? Is it an impact? Is it influence? And all of those words are actually true. Every single person who encounters anything that carries the name of your brand, the people who work for it, the community members who buy it, the product itself is in fact your brand equity.
Yeah. I think there must be an inverse correlation between like the size of the company and the understanding of the brand in that context because whenever you talk to like a startup founder they're like everything like the employee handbook the you know the uniform it's like you can see that because they've got no advertising budget everything has to be media right you just treat everything as a media opportunity like oh the first time we put product down the production line becomes you know a viral hit you know sort of thing you think about about it. But I think part of the problem is as you know we we progress into bigger companies, we dissect marketing into its kind of constituent parts, don't we? And therefore we marketing gets reduced to the to the one P of promotion. And I think we got to get marketers to realize it's all the four Ps, not just the one P.
There's way more than four Ps.
Well, there's more than four Ps. I know we we talk about this a lot.
Yeah. And I 100% agree with you. And again, I think it depends on where does brand sit in the organization. what is its wingspan and even the person themselves because if you have great influence and you can prove out that there is real value in the contributions that are being made in this regard then you can actually influence everybody to ensure that the brand does in fact radiate from every chair the brand has to radiate from every chair which is why I actually think about brand as an ethos it's really about the spirit of the thing that you're up to and that is how it comes across and who you hire should be within that ethos and if you are a brand that is a bold disruptor like ELF for example you need to hire bold disruptors you're not going to get disruptive work if you hire conservative people so the key is it's also a hiring practice it's it's what the walls in your office say it's how your people carry it from every single chair that they sit in and that's 24/7. Again, you're out at dinner entertaining. You and I can go out to dinner together tonight. I'm going to take out my ELF card. It's somebody's going to see that name and that interaction they have at that moment, even though there is not a single piece of product on the table, is going to mean something to them.
