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We Built This Brand explores the origins, evolution, and impact of brands through conversations with entrepreneurs, CEOs, and marketing experts. Hosted by Chris Hill, the podcast offers insights into brand development, storytelling, and strategies for growth. Each episode provides actionable takeaways, highlighting challenges, lessons learned, and diverse career paths. With a focus on authenticity and reputation, it’s a valuable resource for anyone passionate about branding and business.
Clint Runge: We really encourage our brands to think about, well, why does something become cool? Like where are your consumers headed? And let's go there and we'll meet them when they arrive.
Chris Hill: Welcome to We Build This Brand, the podcast where we talk to the creators and collaborators behind brands and provide you with practical insights that you can use in growing your business.
Today, we're talking with Clint Runge. The CEO and founder of Archrival, a youth agency that has worked with brands like Adidas, Spotify, and Hollister, and one of my personal favorites, Red Bull. He built this company from the ground up, and in this episode, we're going to dive into that story about how he built his brand, how he grew it, and what they've gone on to achieve since.
We're going to talk about some of the clients and some of the projects that they've worked on. It's just a very all encompassing interview, and I'm really thrilled to have this time to talk with Clint about building his brand. So without further ado, here's my interview with Clint Runge of Archrival.
All right. Well, welcome back, and with me today is Clint Runge of Archrival. Clint, thanks for joining me.
Clint Runge: Hey, super excited to be here.
Chris Hill: It's, it's always great to, as we were mentioning right before we talk, talk to people that, businesses that I'm familiar with. I've seen Archrival in the past because of my friend, Ben Harms, and it was really neat that we were able to, to get connected through secur-circuitous means.
Clint Runge: Hey! Let's go with that. Yeah, let's go with that.
Chris Hill: And, uh, yeah, it's great to be able to talk with you today. So.
Clint Runge: Yeah, pleasure's mine. Same.
Chris Hill: We're looking forward to diving in and talking to you today.
So with that said, typically how we like to start off, I always like to just get to know you a little bit better and talk through some of your background and what led you to start Archrival.
So yeah, I'll let you take it away. Tell me a little bit about where you got your start. What happened before Archrival?
Clint Runge: Well, it actually starts right there. I mean, it actually starts in, in college. I was an architecture major. I thought that building cool buildings was always, like, the something I wanted to do and building space and the structures around it.
I went to school for Architecture, at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and somewhere along the way, I was, as I was, you're, you're always creating these things and you're presenting it to architects, like actual professional architects. And I noticed along the way that there's a real hierarchy in the industry.
That is, if I wanted to be a great architect, you know, as any, at that time, I was fancied myself a designer, and I thought, if I want to be great at design, it's like, the industry is really top down. And I felt at that time being young and naive, of course, I wanted to build now and I was like, I don't want to wait 20 years to design something important.
You know, that time you would spend most of your time drafting other people's ideas, and I want to do my own ideas. So as I was getting a degree in Architecture, a friend of mine encouraged me to get a degree in Advertising, and I thought, yeah, maybe in advertising, younger ideas can happen faster. Maybe it's not so top down.
And so I got a degree in Advertising and Architecture and of course, fast forward, it's every industry is the same. They're all top down. That's just the way it is. People earn their keep and they get there, and they don't want to leave. But at that time, this made a lot of sense. And so when you graduate, you wonder, what is it you're going to do?
And as I looked around the world, I was really uncertain. I saw that the process for coming with great architecture was very similar to the process of coming with great advertising. It's essentially a design process. It's the creative process. It's the same that so many of your listeners do. And I thought, well, that's what I want to be great at.
I don't know that I want to be a great architect or a great advertiser. I want to be, I want to be a great creative, great at the process, and wherever that would lead me, it could lead me. I also felt like as I was searching for jobs that, and we can dig into this, but it's the creative world is really fragmented.
That is that if you wanted to be a business and you wanted to sell more widgets, it felt like depending on who you hired, you got a different solution to that problem. So if you hire the advertising agency, they told you, you need to advertise. You hire the branding agency, it's about your look and feel and your position in the market.
You hire the e-commerce company, they're going to tell you it's all about your platform. Social media is all social. And yeah, the architecture firm will build you a brand new retail center. You know, it's like, I thought this is so fragmented. I just want to solve the problem. And that's where Archrival was born.
It was really born out of that. Started knocking on doors, local burrito shop, and I would say, "Hey, how are you spending your money today to sell more burritos?" And they'd say, "Well, we have this $500 newspaper ad." And I'd say, "Well, I can do it better." And I didn't know if I actually could, but I tried. I would take the same $500, and I'd get paid in a burrito, and, and I would, I would come up with something so different than they were used to. It's, it's so interesting that when you start thinking about taking advertising outside of placing in media, and I know you probably have several listeners that have great media backgrounds, but in architecture, I was so, I'm just, I wanted to put it into space.
I want to put it in the community into the hands, and, and that's what I started to do. I start building communities of fans around these organizations and businesses, creating a momentum with them, and it worked. And so Archrival was born, right? Right then and there. And that's been my job ever since.
Chris Hill: That's so cool. So where did the name come from?
Clint Runge: So there's the Arch part of Archrival. Okay. That harkens back to the architecture. So I really liked that. But, you know, really Archrival is like a, it's like this feeling, and I'll use it in a sporting context. If you are. If you're in a sports team, and you have an arch rival, it's like, they do it differently than you do, but you have a level of respect for them.
It's like, "Oh, our arch rivals are so good at what they do, and we don't understand how they do it because they do it so differently." And it, and it's both interesting, exciting, and frustrating. That's how we felt right away, because all the things we were doing were just different because we didn't have any formal training in what we were doing.
We were just, you know, knuckleheads out of school, like doing what we thought was the right thing to do. And so Archrival just felt right. We were going against the grain, and we use that language today, going against the grain of traditional marketing. That was true then, still true today. And that's really where the name was born. Uh, was, was right there.
Chris Hill: That's really neat. I mean, you know, I don't hear too often stories where people go, I just went out of college and this is what, I mean- you hear it in the entrepreneurial world more in tech, but you don't hear it a lot in the advertising world where I just go, "I went out and just started my agency and it worked."
Clint Runge: I think that's because it's hard because
Chris Hill: It is.
Clint Runge: you do, to be good at marketing advertising, it's like you really do need experience, and we struggled out of the gate. I mean, my first five years, I classify as like my starving artist years where it's like, we knew nothing about business, nothing about client management,
and we were just doing stuff we thought felt right. And we made, we made no money. Okay. But when you're coming out of being a college student, you can kind of, you just keep living that way. You know, you're kind of always broke. Now, the work we were doing though was really interesting. We're getting published in every design magazine, we're winning a ton of awards, but as a business, we were, we were nowhere.
We were really lost, and that is definitely due to being young. All of the things that come along with inexperience. You're, you're really trying to find your way, and I think that it's better suited when you're older and you have that experience, you kind of know what you're doing. Of course, the advantage that we had was we were young and naive, and that, there's something to be said for that too.
Chris Hill: I can, I can definitely relate to that. Having, having done a similar small business right out of, not right out of college, but with some friends that were right out of college. Yeah, I can, I can identify with that whole like, yeah, we didn't know what we were doing and I would never do it that way again.
Clint Runge: What were you doing? What kind of business were you doing?
Chris Hill: It was a social media marketing company. Probably a few years behind you, I graduated school in 2008. I was one of the millennials that got, like, Facebook in college because I had a college email address.
Clint Runge: Hey, look at you. [laughs]
Chris Hill: Yeah, I feel like an old fogey saying that now.
But we were, we were still trying to figure out this whole new social media thing, and a couple years after college, I was in a space where I wanted to help some friends start a business. And they were starting to do social media marketing, and so we started a social media company called Simply Social.
And we started to do social media marketing for people, and it was the same thing. It was just this whole, like, we didn't know what we were doing. We divided the business up equally among four partners, and I was the only one doing the heavy lifting. [laugh]
Clint Runge: Yeah. Classic. Classic.
Chris Hill: Yeah. So I have learned my ways.
But man, I can definitely relate to that. So, but thankfully for you, you didn't have to go the route of like shutting down the business or anything. It grew for you. It sounds like you got awards, things started to grow.
Clint Runge: Yeah, things were really good, but, but Chris, I'm being honest. We were, we were bought out of business three times.
I mean, it's just that it's the nature of it. So the work is great. We're doing wonderful stuff, but you know, like we struggled on the business side. And so after that first five years, we looked around at our friends and we're like, well, they're all having like careers and, and like they're, they're able to buy a house or a car.
They're raising families that you could kind of see, and we were like, we're still living a little bit like college students. And while there's, you know, that's fun, there was something like, we have to take the next step. And at really at that five year mark, we looked around and we said, well, what are all the things that we've done in our past that we were, um, that were, that worked for our clients.
Um, that we enjoyed doing and, you know, made us a little bit of money. And all those things had one thing in common. They were all projects that were trying to reach young adults, and this is kind of like obvious to me now. Um, but back then it wasn't so, you know, speaking to your peers is way easier than trying to talk to somebody you don't know.
And so people started hiring us to talk to people like us- young adults, young professionals, people that were attached to youth culture. And at that time we, we could have one foot in youth culture, and one foot. in this like professional world that you could trust us. Right? And so that, then I called the next five years of our business, like, this is our maturing time. It's like really where we, where we grew up, and almost immediately after we kind of declared, like, "This is. We're going to, we're going to be about this." And by the way, the business can get older, we can get older, but the business stays the same age. Like business don't have to age.
That's, that's kind of how you hire and the way that you run your processes and your belief systems. So like, we'll get older. The business can stay young, and almost immediately when we did that, uh, we got a call from Red Bull. And they were trying to bring their product, they had brought their energy product to the U.S., but they're still treating it like they were marketing in Europe. And they said, we need someone who can talk to young adults in the U.S, and we came along and we're a great counterpart to the many agencies they have. And that became a journey. Everything for five to seven years, for everything that was Red Bull was Archrival, and we kind of grew up together.
And Chris, we did some wild things. I mean, we, we, we were pitching concepts, like having parties on icebergs. It was like anything went and everything that we had ever believed about marketing was everything that Red Bull had been doing for 30 years. And so it was really, I call it like our first marriage.
And we fell in love and we did some amazing things together, and that's really where I learned a lot about, "How do you do this game? You know, how do you actually win the hearts and minds of young adults?" And, and, uh, I'd say that's, that's really where we cemented our, our foundational beliefs.
Chris Hill: That's cool.
So it sounds like you answered a question before I even asked it. One of my favorite questions to ask on the show is what was that moment of validation for the business? Was there something within that? Where you were like, all right, we're making this change. And when you make a big change like that and say, we're, we're setting our course in this direction, like there's always that bit of nerve of like, "Well, we're not going to have those clients anymore. We're going to have to get rid of these people," you know, and, "We're going to focus this direction." Like, was there a moment at which you were like, BAM! This is it. This is what we were called to do, and we know this is the business moving forward.
Clint Runge: There was a bank that wanted to hire us, but what they're asking us to do was bank-like marketing, and it was so much money, Chris.
And, you know, again, you're, you're young and it's, you know, you're still like learning, you're earning your way and, you know, I won't call you, "desperate," but you know, you make that change, you make this commitment, you say it out loud to everybody, and then this bank comes along and offers more money to do work for them than we had, than we had ever, ever been paid before.
And Chris, we turned it down. And, and I think back, I was like, "Am I gonna have regret on this?" But I looked back, and I'm like, that's the moment. The moment we truly were like, we are about youth culture, and that was it. That was validation because it worked, right? We started our notoriety about doing cool, you know, youthful things and connecting the young adults in ways that made sense to them, really became us. And I think sometimes what you say yes to and can be as, or what you say no to, can be equally as powerful as what you say yes to.
Chris Hill: That makes a lot of sense. And when you make that decision, I mean, I'm sure looking back it feels a lot better knowing that you've made it and that you've actually, you've stuck that direction.
'cause if you would've had that bank, you may have become. Just another catch-all agency within Nebraska. It may not have gone anywhere outside of that.
Clint Runge: Yeah, you say one thing, you know, but you really kind of do it all. And, and look, I like, I don't sweat people that, it's hard, like, doing the business is hard.
Our risk for us was a little lower because we didn't have families. It- we didn't have mortgages to pay, you know, housing, like it was a little different. So we could, in a way, taking the risk of saying, "We're about this," and sticking to our guns is maybe a little lower than it would be if I tried that today.
Like, I can admit that, you know, it's a little bit different. Yeah, but that's, it's kind of a moment of validation for us, uh, quite a bit.
Chris Hill: So where, where did things grow from there? By the way, I love Red Bull. I'm a big Red Bull racing fan and love the content they make. I've always loved the marketing stuff that they do.
It's just always out there and, you know, The stunts that they get people to pull just in the, you know, with their banner behind them. Like they just do some really cool things that are just incredible. So.
Clint Runge: Yeah, that era that we were doing work for them, one thing I always really appreciate and I take that to all our clients is now is that they, they, they just did not have that fear of failure.
It was, it truly was like, go, if you think it can work, go try it, go do it. Speed was important. You weren't going to get fired if it didn't work as long as you learned from it. But I think today's like marketing culture is it's, it's really hard to have that attitude, right? Everyone's worried about getting fired.
No one wants to make a stake. No one wants to get canceled. No one wants to step over a line. It's really hard today, but in that era, Red Bull owned it, and they were so good at it. And I'm very thankful that we got to be there when it was happening.
Chris Hill: So where did it go from there? So you get Red Bull, you people start to notice that you're really helping with this youth focused culture, and I'm sure the content you created for them reflected that. So you start getting more clients and start growing. Where did it go from there?
Clint Runge: Alright, so we were [laughs], you dated yourself with Facebook. I will as well. We were one of the original Facebook referred developers, like one of the first 10, right? And so everything that, because we were like, in fact, I still think I might be an administrator on the Facebook Red Bull page. It's like built into the old DNA, and you can't get me out of it. It's basically like we were like, you gotta be on this Facebook thing, social's gonna rise, and we were right there. So all the things that were first to market in social media, Red Bull was right there, and we were developing all of that. So you fast forward, and then we got a call from a guy named Jeff Dodges who had built a, collected a group of digital agencies back in the nineties, early two thousands about.
He believed that anything that could be digital would be digital, and his bet was absolutely right on. And he had this sort of new idea that anything that could be social would be social. Again, I think he was right on. He was ahead of his time, frankly. And he called and said, "Hey, whoever's doing this like cool stuff on social, like who's, who's all about that?"
And it was this little dinky group of youth culture. People up in Lincoln, Nebraska. Then he was, I'm sure his call was like, I can't believe I'm going to do this. I'm gonna call these guys. He called us, you know, he was acquiring agencies. We said no to the deal five times, because every time you hear about an acquisition, it just seems like it never goes well, but we said yes in the sixth deal, and he was true to every bit of his word.
And I will tell you what, it was one of the best decisions we ever made. Because for the first time, I had like a business mentor. Like Jeff was able to play the game at the highest of levels. And you know, we're down here playing this advertising game. And I realized I don't want to be here. Like, it's almost like too daunting.
But boy, we could, we could be a lot higher than we are today, and so I saw intimately into how other agencies ran their businesses. We took all the things that worked, we kept out the things that didn't, and two years later, we were a completely different organization. We really did grow up. Now, one of the things I learned from him was about software.
He was building incredible social software at that time and had to go on to sell that part of the business. And to make that all make sense, we needed to exit. And so he sold the company back to us, um, and, you know, bought it back. And honestly, it's like buying it back. I was like, so excited because. I knew what we could do.
You know, when you start your company at a college, you don't, you don't know the landscape. We knew we were good, and now we're like, "Oh, now I have a vision." Like I can see, we're as good as the people in New York or San Francisco, like, we can do all this stuff. And that became like a rally cry. We called it, "Midwest to The World," and we just started doing our thing, but now at a new whole new, level, and our travel grew from 24 people to about 84 people in the span of the next five years. And I call that our, that's our, that's our growth chapter. I was like, we're going to grow and we took off and yeah, that was, that was a heck of a ride as well.
Chris Hill: Yeah. Growth is always a challenge in a business and you know, you've got a good name behind you.
You've got some awareness for your brand that always helps with the salespeople getting indoors and opening up opportunities, but what did you find during that period that worked well for you all to grow?
Clint Runge: Well, we were willing to let the processes break. I mean, that's a pretty rapid growth, and so the way that you used to do things, you can't continue to do them that way.
And in a lot of organizations have like this tension between, like, an old guard. It's like, "This is the way we did this way. We got successful," and there's really good reasons behind it. It's like, "This is what made us who we are," and then you have like the new, new people. Right. And they're sort of like, "Let's do this a different way." And I think that tension can be really, it can probably be unhealthy. For us, it was very healthy, and we were just had this willingness to be like, let's upset our apple cart. Like, let's be willing to let the processes break and figure out new ones, and that allowed us to bring in a lot of other people into it so that it felt like we kind of all owned this,
and by the time we got to 80 people, it didn't, you know, all those fears about top down, it just really felt bottom up. It kind of felt like we're all making this together. We have different roles and responsibilities and leadership, of course, but it felt, and it still feels this way where it's like, we're kind of all doing this thing together.
We're kind of all going against the grain, and it feels more like a together thing. I think that's one of the things I learned during that period and something I never want to lose.
Chris Hill: The collective path forward, I think, finding people that can be a part of that is really cool. So.
Clint Runge: So good.
Chris Hill: Yeah, always, always awesome when, um, I don't know if you've ever had the opportunity to row in a rowboat or anything, but when, when you're rowing together and everybody's in stride, everybody's in motion together, you just, you feel that momentum forward and it really-
Clint Runge: It's so much better, right?
Chris Hill: Yeah. So much better. So that's, that's really cool.
So you grew, you got to where you are today, and it, I was just perusing the website looking at some of the case studies and things you had, and you all have worked with Adidas, and I noticed Spotify, which of course is, being a podcast production is near and dear to my heart, but what, what are some things right now that you would say like these, this is probably our, this, this case or this, this deal, this project represents like us best at the current state.
Clint Runge: Yeah. That's so good. I always like to say, we have these two different types of clients. We have these super cool clients who are on the edge of culture. The brands that you mentioned, they're, they're, they're like making culture. You know, along the way, along with their products and services and brands, they're, they're really making and pushing culture forward.
And that's like, that's an interesting challenge. We have a second type of client who's not there, okay, but they're, but they're building a brand or product that they think should be part of that, that youthful conversation, should be part of the fabric of culture, and they just, no one knows who they are yet. They need help going from where they are today, be more relevant tomorrow, and to me, that's really the, what we do is we bring relevance to all this. But how we do it is very different. So for those brands that you mentioned, like, like Spotify, for example, it's about the- for them, it's about understanding what's the future of audio.
And so we can go alongside them, help create these strategic sort of thinking around it, great insights, and how to see that into culture so that they have relationships with guys like you. Where it's like, you, you both need to win. Right? And so how do you do that? That's, that's culture making, and it's something we love, but probably the one that represents us the most today is our relationship with Adidas, who we started back in 2014. It was a crazy time in the sports marketing world. I mean, that time Under Armour had reached like number two, and they were looking around saying, "We gotta, we gotta, we gotta rebuild who we are from the bottom up," and that spoke so much to our, to our DNA. You gotta be bottom up today to be successful. We believe that, and so they said, "Who's doing all this Red Bull stuff?" They finally got in contact with us, and we've, we've been building out communities in and around that brand that puts them in the spaces and like these niches that you can't go as a giant mega corporation. You just can't. The only way into them is with people and transparently they get you over the walls.
And we talk about trust a lot here. People trust people like themselves. Uh, they don't trust organizations and brands, and so we were sort of ahead of that by building these programmatics. Today, you might even think of it as influencers, but it's highly social, but it's not really influencers either. It's credible, authentic people who can represent the brand in a way that says, "These guys are legit. The product's legit. It's cool. It's worth it. It's, it's, I believe in it." That goes so much further, it probably always has in the history of marketing, we just have, we just build programs around that. We've done it for Spotify. We've done it for, for Adidas, Hollister. There's so many brands that we do that for.
It's the thing that we see wins over and over again. And Chris, why the brands love it is that you can, you can literally see the return on investment. Like, you can see it directly, and today's marketing game, you gotta prove it, you know. It's, you can't just put it out there and hope, you gotta prove it and these programs do that.
Chris Hill: Yeah, I learned that early on in, in my career that like if you couldn't tie something to ROI and it was just soft and fluffy, especially when we're dealing with social media in the early days, everybody wanted it to be about a feeling and I was like, no, it's not about a feeling like a
Clint Runge: feeling. For a while it can be, but it quickly goes away, right?
And so it's like, okay. How's this work? How's it actually work? So those are really good.
Chris Hill: That's really cool. And, and it's always, I'm sure it's way more complicated than we have time here to, to discuss, but when you, when you say you're, you're building communities for these organizations, are these like Facebook groups or these like influencers?
Like what do you mean by building communities in that respect?
Clint Runge: So it's all of this. It's, it's, it's real people, right? Okay. Who are physically in for Adidas. They're in a women's running group in Knoxville, okay. And there's a point that everyone looks to and says, "I love running." And so they'll say, "Hey, look, these boots that I'm wearing. These are amazing, these are awesome, and I love them." And people say, "Well, I will love them too." And, and so you build that, and you do that in soccer, and skate, and in gaming, and all these, all these territories where Adidas comes in with an advertising message. It can be cool, but it's largely ignorable, right? Versus someone, you know, that's saying, Oh, this new product, it's legit, and they believe in the brand. And so they are highly social as well. Of course, today, you know, they're physically in the high schools we want to be in and, but they're also in on social and they're influencers in their own way. And I don't look necessary for mega influencers. Yeah. That's a different type of program. can work as well, but what we're really about is that bottom up stuff. The people who are really moving the needle in ways that you just can't reach them. You just can't reach them with a media, a large media message. And by the way, the two together is like when it really works.
You have this top down stuff, it's like, you know, sets the tone. The bottom of stuff that gives it credibility. Like that's, that's the win-win, and Adidas does it really well.
Chris Hill: Big fan of Adidas as well. Just, I like their apparel. So... [laughs]
Clint Runge: Same, same. [unintelligible] [laughs]
Chris Hill: Yeah, that's, that's really neat. So, as, as we look to the future, I mean, you know, right now we have this quandary with TikTok, right?
Like it may or may not exist in the, next year or so, whenever that comes due. But like, what, what do you see as like being the, the future of this space as you look towards where, and I'm going to sound old saying this, the youth are going these days.
Clint Runge: I'm just as old. Yeah, I get it. Yeah. Yeah. When you start thinking future, you know, you start leaning, you start thinking of all the technologies that are becoming just like social with a new technology that became tangible for, for most people.
You never know where to place your bet. Right. If you had, That big into, you know, a Metaverse or something like, you know, you started doing those kinds of things, and you kind of miss. And we have that same revolution happening with AI right now and people building all that out, and they're all going to have some staying power over time, but where I really think about it is like, if I was trying to build a brand, I wouldn't be trying to chase trends. That is like, what's cool today. I- we really encourage our brands to think about, "Well, why does something become cool?" Like, where are your consumers headed? And let's go there, and we'll meet them when they arrive.
Like, that's where we want to go. And so, like, I'm not worried about what's, you know, clubhouse is new. And we got to build our clubhouse strategy because these brands are too big. In six months, it takes to build a strategy, and everyone's nervous about the first content, and then by the time you do it, it's like, nobody's here.
So I try not to chase the thing. I'd rather think about why- what does this generation want and need? And what's, what, what speaks to them and then meet them- and then that's adaptable to any platform, any new tech that comes around, and then you don't feel like you're chasing, you're feeling it behind. You feel like you're meeting them there.
So a lot of that's going to be being available. When I do this, I do a talk on youth culture, and one of the, when I'm talking about Gen Alpha in particular, which, you know, are the next generation behind Z's, uh, I have this slide where I'm like, I'm going to show you. Your future marketing plan. This is it.
And I put up and it's just a bunch of ones and zeros. And I'm like, there it is. Because it's all about the devices. It's about being available. It's about being present in those devices, and so when my seven year old asks Alexa for something, are we available there? Same thing with, is AI going to recommend us?
And to do that, you need an army of people behind you, believing in you, and promoting you because all of that technology will always draw from the culture. It will always say what is relevant to people and then make that more relevant to more people. And that's what, and so that's what we try to think about now is building those cultural threads so that the fabric later gets put together.
Chris Hill: I think that makes a lot of sense because, you know, even as I was asking the question, I'm like, yeah, we don't, we don't really know. But if you understand the basics of something, or if you understand the core behind what makes communication work, what makes advertising work, what makes these things work and what drives people, you're going to be able to morph to whatever platform they're on.
That's more about the technical of learning it. I always compare it to like acoustic guitar versus learning electric. Learn on the acoustic. You'll get better chops and be able to play better on the electric. Once you-
Clint Runge: Do it, you always do the electric or whatever comes along. You can always do that. If you can do the acoustic, you can do it all.
Chris Hill: Yeah. You could play ukulele if you want to, once you learn that. What, what, whatever it is, like just learning, learning those basics, I think. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That's really, that's, that's interesting to, to think about.
Yeah, so what, what is top of mind for you right now? Like, with everything going on, TikTok, not just, not, I'm not trying to harken it back to TikTok per se, but like, that and other things within, in culture right now, like, what is just, what is top of mind in the industry for you right now?
Clint Runge: I mean, there's so many things. Right now, I mean, the things that come are really big, right? These are really big topics. I'll just list them off here, but I think about identity right now. Where are young adults getting their identities from? I mean, when you and I grew up, it was, our identity was basically like filling out a yes or no survey, right?
It was like, I'm black or white, I'm gay or straight, I'm a citizen, or I'm not. And it's just like ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, and you add it up, and that's who you are at the day. But we know that like, culture's way more great than that. There are so many choices in between all this, and I think it's almost paralyzing today for, for young adults.
Who are you really? And where do you, who do you, so identity is a big one, and I think brands play a big role in that, right? They probably always have now more than ever, because what brands you represent, you believe, you wear, you listen to, that forms your identity today. Brands are the expression of identity.
So I'm thinking a lot about that. I'm thinking, I mentioned trust earlier, where do we get our trust from? Okay, we don't trust businesses. I think it's something like 80 percent of young adults just inherently don't trust the business. Okay. That's a terrible place to like talk from. Our parents, they trusted businesses through and through.
If you ever look at some of those old ads, like, and you're like, these are the corniest things I've ever seen, but they worked. Cause people trusted the businesses. Now, when you see an ad, there's an inherent distrust there. So I'm thinking a lot about that. And so trust today, of course, is through people.
And then another way I think about it that I'm thinking a lot about for our brands is, is the gatekeeper-less attitude. For so long, brands have been like the gatekeepers of culture. They decided what was going to be fashionably cool, what movies are going to be released, what music, what you're going to listen to, but now young adults really operate in a gatekeeper-less world. They don't need the brands the way they used to. And so, you know, you, if you are an organization or a brand that wants young adults, you got to be open to this, right? You got to be open that they, uh, they think that your, your consumers think of themselves as investors into your brand, and therefore they should have say into what you do and how you act, and that's a tough relationship. I'm telling you for a, for a Boomer CEO, okay, like that's a tough conversation for them to have, but it's the one that's important if they want to continue to keep there. So these are like the topics that I'm thinking about all the time, and you get, if you get those right, you know, these are the really big strokes, all those other little things you were talking about, the trends and like, you know, showing up the right places, like those things fall into place if you get the big ones right.
Chris Hill: That makes a lot of sense. People want to see themselves represented in the content that's created. So I can see how that, that identity piece is really important and how all that plays into building trust and, And everything.
And you gotta get that one right, too, because if you do it wrong, it comes across so bad.
Clint Runge: Ah, so bad. And don't you know it when you see it? Like, you're kind of like, "Oh, that's dead on arrival." Like, okay, how'd that get through? And probably has nothing to do with the creatives behind it, has everything to do with the leadership that's behind it.
Probably turns down the really great ideas because they didn't really understand it inherently. And I, by the way, I'm a Gen-Xer, so like, part of being a Gen-Xer is to think you're always right, so we're in position to leadership as well, and so what happens is you think, "Ah, that, that doesn't, that's not funny to me," or "That's not cool to me," and we make, we make decisions based on that viewpoint, you miss, you know, you just miss in the same way that your parents missed understanding you.
Chris Hill: That's always, always a big challenge.
Clint, thank you so much. Um, I always like to ask at the end of these interviews, you know, what brand do you most admire right now?
Clint Runge: I mean, there's so many great brands, but the one that comes right to mind, and I think I've liked them for a while, is Lego. Like, Lego just kills it. Talk about, I mean, It's a simple toy, and then somehow has become, like, embraced by every generation. They continually reinvent themselves. When something becomes popular in culture, you can, you can be a part of it through Legos and amusement parks and the movies.
I just feel like they've done such a great job at building something- I call it a brand universe. Okay? They don't just build a brand product, they're building a brand universe, and you can enter into this universe so many different ways, even as a creator. I mean, they, if you can, you can, you can create something, post it online,
and if it gets enough upvotes in their platform, they will, they will actually make it and credit you. I think they've done such a great job. Um, Lego is one that I just think a lot about. And by the way, my kids love Lego as well, and so maybe that's my architectural background as well, peeking in there, but it's one that I'm constantly looking at and admiring.
Chris Hill: Yeah, I, I mean, I was just playing Legos with my son last night before bed, and like we, we had lost the directions, and I had added them all to that app that they have now. It's amazing. Like you can even flip around like the little like designs and stuff and see the different sides in 3D, and like, they've just done an incredible job like over the years.
So I, yeah, wholeheartedly agree that like it was a great brand.
Clint Runge: There's few brands that you and your son could both be a part of and actually equally be enjoying. Like what a great bonding. It's just anyway, I, so good. And, um, you know, credit to them.
Chris Hill: Yeah, credit, credit to them for sure. Cause I mean, it's not just my son, like my daughter, who's only like two, two and a half right now, she has the Duplos now we've handed those down and now he's got the little Legos in his room.
And so like it was going from room to room playing Lego. So it's just like. Yeah, you're right. Like that, that engagement with children. And even, even as an adult going, "Man, I need to buy one of these sets," that's like the, you know, like one of the formula one cars or whatever they're doing, what they're doing with McLaren right now is fantastic, by the way.
But anyways,
Clint Runge: Not to promote them, but they have a new, uh, I think it's a, it's a, it's the Notre Dame Cathedral, and you can actually build it in the same stages historically as it was built, and it's being rebuilt now open for the public. Like I'm like, these guys are so smart. Like, what a great, like, device.
Yeah, yeah. If only we could build all our brands as well as them.
Chris Hill: [laughs] I know, right? It's brilliant. I just hope I never get to be, well, hope I get to be over 100, but then I'd be sad because I wouldn't get to play LEGO anymore. Not suitable for over 99. Um, but anyways, that's awesome.
Well, Clint, thank you again for coming on the show. Where can people connect with you? Where can people connect with Archrival?
Clint Runge: archrival.com is the easiest place to see what we do and how we do it. Me personally, LinkedIn is always great. So it's just Clint Runge on LinkedIn. That's probably the best way to get ahold of me. And there's a clintrunge.com if you need, if you want to hear more about the talks and the things that we do, you can find me there as well.
So, um, and then by the way, we also have like a, we do a weekly newsletter. You can get that archrival.com and all kinds of topics we were, we were brushing up on, we talk about those weekly and it's, uh, it's an easy, easy read.
Chris Hill: Fantastic. Well, Clint, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Clint Runge: Yeah, thanks for having me. This is great.
Chris Hill: Thanks for checking out this episode of We Built This Brand. Don't forget to like, follow, or subscribe on your player of choice. You can also keep up with the podcast at webuiltthisbrand.com. If you liked this episode, please be sure to give it a five star review and make sure to tell your friends about it so we can continue to build this brand.