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Hey - I'm Drysen, a content strategist at Made by Things with a deep background in animation and motion graphics. But, video marketing is only a small part of the marketing industry. From email campaigns to digital ads and OOH, there's a ton to learn, and I want to learn it from my marketing peers.
So, I'm determined to have a daily 10-minute conversation to learn everything I can and become a better marketing person, and I'm inviting you to be a fly on the wall to learn alongside me.
Each episode is sponsored by the Made by Things Discovery Workshop—a collaborative workshop where Made by Things designs a custom 'à la carte' style menu of fresh ideas of content and solutions to help you deliver a more robust customer journey and experience.
Learn more at Madebythings.com/discovery.
Welcome to Drysen Learns Things. Today I'm talking to Ashton Hoff from The Good Kids out of Bismarck, North Dakota. Hello!
Ashton (00:15.099)
Hi, thanks for having me.
Drysen Carsten (00:16.445)
Yeah, absolutely. We've known each other for a couple of years now, but this is one of the first times we've actually gotten to have a true conversation about branding, and I'm excited. You recently, you're the good kids, I think this is last year, year and a half, somewhere in there, worked on a project for Pride Dairy. Talk to me about it.
Ashton (00:23.842)
Yeah, me too.
Ashton (00:33.58)
Yeah, so if you're in North Dakota, you might be familiar with their ice cream because it is one of the best. It flies off the shelf at all of the local grocery stores. And so they're like a hundred year old company that started as a co -op and bought in North Dakota. But when they came to us, they wanted to release a new national product as a pint because previously they were just doing like the bigger tubs of ice cream. And so that kind of kickstarted a whole, whole journey with Pride Dairy that we absolutely loved because it did include free samples.
You
Drysen Carsten (01:03.175)
Ooh, that is the best kind of project to work on. So talk to me about so if I understand correctly, a lot of it was focused around the branding of Pride dairy and that specific product launch. Talk to me about that in general.
Ashton (01:05.698)
Yeah.
Ashton (01:17.75)
Yeah, so we wanted to make sure when we looked at the brand as a whole, that the parent brand, the Pride Dairy brand was ready to go before we started putting it on all these products across the country. And with that, we wanted to really honor its history and its legacy, because like I said, it's very beloved in this part of the country. And so we really kind of just kind of, I don't know, tweaked the technicalities of it to make it sweeter, make it more delicious, make it smoother.
Drysen Carsten (01:45.191)
Yeah.
Ashton (01:46.222)
So that we didn't really mess with the equity that was built into the brand, but we did spend a lot of time thinking about the name of the pint product line. Cause that was the new one that was getting released across the country. And so we started from scratch with the name and did research, market research, audience surveys. And then we branded that as well. So then when it came time for packaging, we had a lot of those assets already built from the branding project.
Drysen Carsten (02:12.893)
Yeah. So one thing that I'm a big fan of is the fact that, when you talk about branding, it is like the promise of what it's like working with you to interact with your company. So talk to me a little bit about how you are intentional with branding.
Ashton (02:22.37)
Mm
Ashton (02:28.524)
Yeah, all of our projects start with a strategic phase that results in a brand blueprint is what we call it. So it's really the framework around the game plan. Like who are we as a company? Who is our target audience? Who are we trying to appeal to? How are we different in the market? What is our differentiator? What makes us unique? And then what is the culture surrounding either our industry, our product, our part of the world?
Drysen Carsten (02:54.878)
Yeah.
Ashton (02:55.054)
So we look at all four of those things and really create a game plan so when it comes to the visuals we know that it hits the mark on all four levels.
Drysen Carsten (03:04.125)
And when it came to working with Pride Dairy, what was some of the big overarching themes and ideas that kind of came together?
Ashton (03:10.88)
Yeah, one of the kind of key brand ideas that we used for them was that idea of an old ice cream, a vintage ice cream parlor, because we didn't want to lose that small town root experience that people were so used to. So was how do we package that in a way that you can still feel it when you grab a pint out of a cooler in Florida or in Texas, you know? So that was one of the key kind of brand ideas around all the work that we did with them.
Drysen Carsten (03:30.405)
Yeah!
Drysen Carsten (03:38.545)
Awesome, awesome. So tell me a little bit about like just the emotional journey of landing that project because that's not a little thing. That's kind of a big deal. So from the moment you guys landed that, were you like, this is gonna be amazing, we're super confident, we're gonna crush it? Was there some nervous in there? Like talk to me about the emotional experience.
Ashton (03:47.106)
Mm
Ashton (03:51.497)
Yeah.
Ashton (03:56.608)
Yeah, well, I, like I said, a lot of people have a story with Pride Dairy Ice Cream and for us, at, Caleb's Family Lake Cabin, it's always available at the, like, the boat dock station. you can get it scooped. And so I, you know, had loved Pride Dairy going into it and a lot of our teammates did too. So we were just excited to partner with a brand that brought such joy and delight to all of us growing up. so very excited on that level.
and then honestly, I think like we were up for the challenge. love, CPG companies, we love products and especially food. mean, who doesn't? so we were, we were just jacked to get the opportunity to do a national product launch like we did.
Drysen Carsten (04:38.845)
Yeah, and then kind of going through the process, looking back at what you've accomplished now, how does it feel?
Ashton (04:44.954)
it feels incredible. And every time we go to the grocery store or, you know, we get to see it in like, my hands, you know, that I just went, you know, to our family Lake cabin and got to pull it out of the cooler for the first time. so it just, all of those emotions kind of come full circle when you get to actually hold the product in your hands.
Drysen Carsten (04:53.442)
Yeah!
Drysen Carsten (05:06.835)
I think that would be the coolest part for me just being out in the wild going, we did that. That would feel cool.
Ashton (05:11.31)
Yeah, yeah. yeah. And especially like right away they placed it, you know, next to all of the other tubs of ice cream or the pints of ice cream. And it's so distinctly be like, it's so uniquely Pride dairy and ice cream because of the color and the illustrations we use. And so there's like no question. It's so easy to find on the shelf. And that's like my favorite part is looking at how different it is and how cool it looks.
Drysen Carsten (05:33.619)
Yeah.
Drysen Carsten (05:39.613)
I love that. I love that. Well, let's talk about branding as an entire part of the marketing pipeline and process. Because I mentioned it earlier that I am a firm believer that when you have good branding, people can almost infer what it's going to be like working with you. So talk to me about your thoughts behind, know, why is the Good Kids a branding studio and why do you do what it is that you do?
Ashton (06:03.126)
Yeah, I mean, Ben and I both have a design background and maybe that sounds specific to some, but design is so huge. You know, you could end up at an in -house, a creative studio, you could do marketing, you do advertising, you do all these things. And so after, gosh, decades of just doing our own freelance projects, we realized that there was a passion of ours to do branding because we love
Finding someone's different differentiator is what we call it. But like really what makes them unique whether that's a person a product a company We just both personally love that discovery process And then we noticed that there was a market gap. We are the only branding studio in North Dakota Believe it or not. There are other groups that offer branding There are freelancers, of course, but we are the only like brands dedicated team in the entire state
Drysen Carsten (06:51.849)
Really?
Ashton (06:53.838)
And so when we saw our, went through our strategic process ourselves. And so when we saw that we just knew that we were destined to land amongst great greatness, even if we needed five, 10, 20 years. And so that's kind of what initially got us into the branding space.
Drysen Carsten (07:12.265)
I feel like I can poke fun because we're both from the Dakotas, you I'm from South, you're from North, but there's only like 15 people in both of our states combined, so. No, I did not know you guys are the only ones. What I love is there is something I've heard like a lot where, you know, people think that a brand is just your fonts and your colors, but it's so much more than that. It's deeper than that. What are your thoughts?
Ashton (07:15.532)
Yeah.
Ashton (07:20.184)
That makes it easier.
Ashton (07:26.254)
Mm
Ashton (07:38.004)
Mm -hmm. Yeah, the quickest way that I describe a brand to folks is that it's what makes you different and how you're communicating that to your ideal audience. And do they get it? Is it emotionally compelling, right? Because everybody loves a story. We know that stories convert like massively over stats or facts or whatever else you can do it. So the more quickly that you can convey
Drysen Carsten (07:59.944)
Right.
Ashton (08:03.042)
what makes you different and you do it in a really like engaging way to the person that matters. Not everyone, but to the person that matters. that's kind of the secret sauce behind a good brand. that involves so much more than just the logos, the colors and prompts. That's your tone of voice, your tagline, your key talking points, right? There's the whole verbal side of it too. so there's just a lot that kind of comes together. And of course the cherry on top is the logo that you see. So a lot of people,
Drysen Carsten (08:23.614)
Yeah.
Ashton (08:31.66)
you know, connect a brand to a logo. But there's so much underneath that you don't see that really makes a brand strong.
Drysen Carsten (08:38.153)
Yeah. Truly good design matters. Bottom line. So if anyone is curious to learn more about the good kids, where can they find you at?
Ashton (08:43.212)
Yes.
Ashton (08:50.028)
Yeah, they can find us on our website at the goodkids .co. We're also very active on LinkedIn and Instagram. So we're just at the good kids. I'm personally on LinkedIn. So just Ashton Hoff over there. But I think.
Drysen Carsten (09:02.993)
And I love following your LinkedIn content. It's like every day that little brand like look what this brand did. Look at that brand did. It's really fun to watch you like dissect and like put up these things. It's the highlight of my newsfeed.
Ashton (09:10.402)
thanks. Yeah, yeah, we are ongoing students, so I got to make sure that I'm keeping up with what others are doing and learning from it.
Drysen Carsten (09:19.965)
I love it, I love it. Well, Ashton, thank you so much for hanging out on Dreyse and Learns Things today. I appreciate it. If anyone is watching or listening, please know that today's podcast, I'm prepping for my webinar next week, or two weeks from now, so I've got webinar in my head, but today's podcast is brought to you by the Discovery Workshop from Made By Things. Check that out at madebythings .com slash discovery, and we will see everyone next week.
Ashton (09:43.575)
Awesome, see you then.