Laura Jones (00:18)
Hey everyone, welcome to Opinion Party. I'm Laura Jones.
Jason Gaikowski (00:21)
And I'm Jason Gaikowski.
Laura Jones (00:23)
And we've got producer Mark Richardson along for the ride. And you are officially invited to the first opinion party where we're going to get together and talk about the most pervasive myths in modern marketing today and dispel them with the cold hard facts of data. Jason, are you ready to party?
Jason Gaikowski (00:46)
I mean, I hate the name, but yeah, let's get into this, right? Mythbusters, Mythbusters for marketing.
Laura Jones (00:49)
Well, why don't we start there?
Yeah, yeah, let's start there. Why do you hate the name? Why do you hate the name?
Jason Gaikowski (00:57)
I mean, I'm an opinionated jerk.
You know, and I think that I think it captures something that is that is pervasive and a little bit troublesome in our in our industry You know so much of so much of the the decision-making around marketing and around brand building seems to be grounded more in tradition and superstition and myth than in objective evidence-based reasoning, so I think the I think the
The name of this podcast is both perfect and painful. It's, it's, it's just the right Nexus.
Laura Jones (01:34)
It's perfectly imperfect, right? Yeah, I mean, you know, opinion party is something we've been saying for a long time talking to clients. We bring data to the opinion party. Ain't no party like a data party because the data party don't stop. I am not going to stop with these party double entendres here. But we really found that when you do bring data to the opinion party, you can kind of cut through all of that crap, so to speak. And it's really hard to argue with
Jason Gaikowski (01:46)
You
I love it. Bring it all.
Laura Jones (02:03)
with data and with the years and years of data, 30 years in fact, that we have at our disposal, not only with the Brandeis Evaluator data set, but with all of the amazing academic research and research that the field is constantly keeping updated. So we're gonna go with opinion party as much as Jason hates it.
Jason Gaikowski (02:27)
That's alright,
it just might be that I'm not that social, I'm not that popular, and I'm not a guy that gets invited to parties, but that's okay.
Laura Jones (02:33)
Aww, well Jason, you are invited to this party. In fact, I guess you're kind of my co-host for this party, so...
Jason Gaikowski (02:39)
Well, you know, co-hosts,
co-cremujen, you know, one of those things. Believe me, you bring all of the charm. I'm gonna try and bring just a tiny bit of wit, but you know, even that, I don't have particularly great expectations.
Laura Jones (02:52)
Yeah, I love that. Go in with no expectations, right? Like New Year's Eve. Think about like all the parties you've been to on New Year's Eve, right? When you're just walking in, you're like, this is going to be the best time ever. And then usually it sucks. New Year's Eve is kind of the worst. So this podcast is not going to be like a New Year's Eve party.
Jason Gaikowski (03:08)
It's a
So it's a lot of buildup, a lot of letdown. I'm hoping that we'll bring the opposite, right? Let's get better and more interesting over time.
Laura Jones (03:17)
Yeah, for sure.
Well, speaking of bringing the opposite and over time, why don't you tell everyone a little bit about why the heck that we should listen to you?
Jason Gaikowski (03:28)
No, mean, that is a fair question. That is an honest question. Thanks for the gut punch right out of the gate. Just, you know, really just tapping into my own deep-seated fears and insecurities.
Laura Jones (03:34)
Hahaha.
Jason Gaikowski (03:40)
So I've been in this business for 25 plus years. I was very, very fortunate to train with some of the founders and originators of BrandAsset Valuator, the world's largest, most comprehensive longitudinal study of brands. I'm a bit of a research nerd, but my experience isn't purely academic. I've had the good fortune of...
doing brand-based business consulting with some of the biggest and most important brands on the planet, ranging from Ford Motor Company, Microsoft, Children's Mercy Hospital, Goldman Sachs. And what I've discovered along the way is I seem to have a knack for clarifying ambiguous topics. And...
Laura Jones (04:28)
You certainly do.
Jason Gaikowski (04:29)
Codifying it into plain-spoken sensible language that hopefully people will listen to so a lot of a lot of tenure in the business worked with a lot of brands and You know, I can knock out a I can knock out an entertaining quip or two
Laura Jones (04:45)
Well, amazing. And I mean, that's what I've just loved working with you, Jason, all these years is you're not afraid just to kind of come in and be like, what are you all talking about? Don't you see what's actually going on here? And I've always really appreciated that about you. You know, you're not afraid to come in and blow it all up. And I think that's going to make this really interesting.
Jason Gaikowski (05:12)
I may have actually said to a client years ago, this is true, that may be the dumbest thing I have ever seen or heard. And thank goodness it was well received. They were great client and they were open to a counter perspective that kind of knocked them out of doing for the sake of doing and really digging in and starting to think for the sake of thinking.
Laura Jones (05:22)
Hahaha!
Yeah, I mean that sounds like a pretty strong opinion to tell someone that's the dumbest thing. Is there anything else that you find is helpful when kind of bringing your opinion to the party that-
Jason Gaikowski (05:45)
Well, it wasn't so much of an opinion, it was backed by evidence and it was just wildly wildly difficult to rationalize what was going on when one considered the evidence with even a modicum of care and caution. You know, I think that has been throughout
a long tenure now. One of the things that I find unfortunately endemic to the industry is many of the people who make many of the most important decisions in and around brands are often the people who are least interested in what the research has taught us about how brands are built and how you create economic value and competitive advantage. And it's not it's not their fault. We have an industry that's built on apprenticeship.
and an awful lot of how we work is grounded in history and tradition. oral history and tradition, certainly not documented history and tradition, but the evidence is mounting and the evidence is increasingly conclusive that there are better ways of going about business. And so I think anything that people like yourself and I can do.
Laura Jones (06:46)
oral history and tradition nonetheless, right?
Jason Gaikowski (07:06)
to pave a better way is just gonna be better for our industry, better for our people, better for our clients.
Laura Jones (07:12)
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, that was a key turning point in my career too. I've been doing this for over 20 years as well. Talking to some of the world's biggest brands, helping them grow, helping to understand and diagnose.
why they're not growing, what's wrong, why they're sick, playing a little bit of a brand therapist, if you will. But I like that evidence-based approach as well. And I found that going into the room and having some foundational data that...
Jason Gaikowski (07:33)
Absolutely.
Laura Jones (07:44)
really separated that fact from the fiction, helped to sometimes validate people's core feelings and emotions because, I mean, let's be honest, right? Brand building has to be equal parts emotion and function. But if you can really bring that data in, that evidence, you can.
quickly cut through a lot of the swirl. And that's what we need more of. mean, to be honest, you do need a little bit of both, right, though? I mean, everyone's got way too much data. Data is just not enough. But you need data with
really strong evidence-based hypotheses building. And you still need creativity. I mean, that's one of the other things I just love about what we do in working with brands is being a little bit of a poetic quant, so to speak, right? And marrying those two things together and being able to see how both data can make things more creative and...
creativity can bring more excitement and meaning into data. So, yeah.
Jason Gaikowski (08:47)
Yeah, mean, you know,
the phrase gets bandied about art and science. Inconveniently, too often observe art or science, right? And it really is the intersection of the two. you know, the things that we know have a ton of value. The things that we wonder.
Laura Jones (08:53)
Yeah.
Yeah, good point.
Jason Gaikowski (09:09)
Creativity, imagination, innovation also have a ton of value, right? Data, I love data, but there are limitations to data. Data gives us a record of the past, and its ability to predict the future depends on the future behaving similarly to the past. And so to be limited by data is not a great move, but to...
ignore the data is also not a great move. And so I think our opportunity really is to help find the middle ground where decisions are evidence informed but also creatively inspired.
Laura Jones (09:47)
Yeah, absolutely. So why don't we kick this party off, give everyone a bit of what they're going to be getting into. What are some of those common misperceptions that we're going to tackle? What's one of your favorites? What's one of the ones that you're like, here we go again.
Jason Gaikowski (09:52)
Let's get into it.
Jesus.
Well, that's a loaded question. You know this. You know that I have an issue with the kind of slavish devotion to fame and awareness. And there's no doubt. Brand fame, it has value. Awareness, it has value. You cannot buy any product or service that you are unaware of.
Laura Jones (10:21)
Mmm.
Jason Gaikowski (10:32)
Right people absolutely give greater consideration and greater preference To those brands with whom they have greater familiarity. That is absolutely positively true and all of the evidence backs it up and Fame is incredibly valuable right up until the moment that it's not And the problem that that I think too many people fail to face
Laura Jones (10:51)
Hmm.
Jason Gaikowski (10:59)
and wrestle with is you can be too well known. You can be overly famous. And to a greater degree, the pursuit of fame often takes precedence over the pursuit of other qualities and other variables that are important to brand builders and marketers. Right? Like I sometimes talk about Real Housewives versus Taylor Swift. Right? The Real Housewives are chasing fame for the sake of fame.
Laura Jones (11:24)
Hahaha.
Jason Gaikowski (11:30)
Taylor Swift is chasing excellence. And in the conversations that I'm sure that you've had these, too often the conversation is dominated by how do we become more famous? How do we create more awareness? And it can become really ironic and really frustrating to sit in a room full of marketers, have them explain to you how they are among the most famous brands on the planet.
They are in a fortunate position where there is not a person in the United States who is farther than one degree of separation from someone that owns and is an enthusiast and evangelizes that brand. Have them show you data that shows that 98%, 99 % of the American population is highly familiar with the brand. And in that same meeting, have them talk about
how they have an awareness problem and they need to drive higher levels of awareness, right? It's insane, it's absolutely insane. So that's absolutely one of my conundrums that I like to tease out. And how about you, same question, what drives you a little bit batty?
Laura Jones (12:32)
Hehehehe
Yeah.
Yeah, you know, I would say that same thing that either or mentality around we can either be well known or we can be known for something, right? And we actually have found in data that those two things
you know, how well you fit into people's lives and how relevant you are, and then also just how meaningfully differentiated you are. Those two things are actually negatively correlated. So they're really hard to do at the same time. And a lot of marketers inclination is to do one or the other. But if you really can unlock the levers by which to create brand meaning as you're creating familiarity and awareness for a brand,
That can be really powerful, but it's really hard to do. There's also the pervasiveness, wanting to be single-minded, and also the idea that simplicity is synonymous with single-mindedness.
I think those two things oftentimes can really do a brand a disservice because you end up getting, you know, really repetitive brands, right? And it's not good if you are known for one thing and then all of a sudden people don't like what that thing is or you're on the wrong side of culture, then overnight you can lose a lot of equity and momentum for your brand. yeah, and, you know, to that point, actually, to build on that,
I've been really
A lot of clients come to us and they want to understand and not only understand, but they want to capture their brand, right? Brand guidelines. They want to write it all down. They want to put it in a little bottle and stick it in and ship it off into the ocean, right? And spend six, eight months writing this document. And then here it is. And then they want everyone to implement those brand guidelines and all sorts of similarity.
I kind of have a little bit of a different point of view on that if brands are living organisms You know, I'm kind of of the nature that says burn your brand book, right? The minute you put something down in writing it changes
And so, yeah, I think that there's a lot of work to be done in our field, in the way that we talk about building brands, capturing brands, the essence of brands, and acknowledging that brands are agile things that are constantly evolving and in flux. And how do you keep consistency, but also how do you create room for the ever evolution of the nature of brands, just like people, right? If I were to pin you down today and say, you
Jason Gaikowski (15:42)
No, absolutely.
Laura Jones (15:46)
Jason Gajkowski hates superstition. I mean, I don't know. Do you have any superstitions about any of your teams or anything you follow? There's gotta be a little superstition in there that seeps in.
Jason Gaikowski (15:57)
I'm out. I'm out on superstition. I'm absolutely
out on superstition, but the point you make is so true. Look, consistency is good, because consistency allows people to know what to expect. When people know what to expect, then they know how to make a decision on whether to buy. Consistency is great. Consistency with no capacity to change, evolve, or surprise?
makes you overly predictable and boring. It's no different than the relationship that one might have with a long-term partner. It's good to be consistent, it's good to be reliable, but it's also good to be interesting, exciting, and a bit spontaneous. And so keep them guessing. And your earlier point where brand builders get caught in this trade-off,
Laura Jones (16:29)
Hmm.
Keep up guessing.
Jason Gaikowski (16:52)
false premise by the way, between building meaning and building fame. I would go beyond building meaning to really understanding and targeting, not just meaning, but what kind of a meaningful role are they going to play in the lives of their customers, right? It's cool to stand for something, but it's even better to participate and contribute to the lives of your customers
in a way that adds meaning to their life. And so it's really an evolution that I think that we're five, maybe 10 years into in recognizing that the role that you play in people's lives is at least as powerful as your communications and storytelling. And maybe a little bit more.
Laura Jones (17:45)
Yeah, and you've done a lot of work with that, right, Jason, between the intersection of brand experience and customer experience. You want to talk a little bit about that and how those two worlds are coming together?
Jason Gaikowski (17:58)
Well, I mean, we're trying to get the worlds to come together. You know, there's some, I think, really pioneering research that we were able to do in partnership with your group, BAV group, your group of consultants and data scientists, as well as a number of really important experts from around the world to really dig into this question of does customer experience have an impact?
Laura Jones (18:01)
Mmm.
Jason Gaikowski (18:26)
to the asset value of a brand. And if so, to what degree, how much? And what we were able to identify is that customer experience represents a little bit more than half of total brand equity. Our research consistently comes up with a number right around 60%. And so, what that indicates is how you treat people, how you show up in their lives, how you add value to their lives.
Laura Jones (18:45)
Wow.
Jason Gaikowski (18:55)
is even more important than the promise that you make and the stories that you tell. moreover, research that Tantar did a couple of years ago, they find the numbers even a little bit higher. They find the customer experience represents 75 % of total brand equity. when you dig into the data and you dig into the analysis, the difference between their research and our research is that
They are classifying experiential marketing as part of customer experience, and we are classifying experiential marketing as part of brand experiences. But no matter how you slice it, a brand's actions in the world have a larger impact and generate more value than the stories that they tell and the advertising that they run.
Laura Jones (19:34)
Mmm.
Yeah, it's kind of like, don't tell me, show me, right? Yeah.
Jason Gaikowski (19:51)
show me and tell me.
Right? And I don't know how far we're gonna wanna go down this rabbit hole.
Laura Jones (20:00)
We're gonna go down all the rabbit holes in this party. yeah.
Jason Gaikowski (20:02)
I love the rabbit holes.
You know, I've really come to the strong perspective that brands would be far better off really identifying what are the qualities of the experience the customers most appreciate, most perceive as special, different, and better than the alternatives and use that as the foundation for rich, creative storytelling. Right?
Laura Jones (20:30)
Mmm.
Jason Gaikowski (20:32)
rather in opposition to what often happens where it's about creatives trying to identify something in these zeitgeists and tell that story and then maybe try and figure out after the fact, can the organization deliver against that story that's just been told, right?
Laura Jones (20:52)
That's
a really great point that you bring up and it reminds me of another pervasive kind of marketing, let's call it a trend, right? Because there's myths, there's also trends. Purpose. Purpose marketing, you could not throw a rock in the mid-20 teens without trying to develop, diagnose,
Clarify a brand's purpose and it got some brands into a little bit of trouble. I think right kind of overreaching overstepping
Jason Gaikowski (21:27)
Yeah, I mean, you know, there's been, there's been over the past 20 plus years that championing and standing for a higher cause is a path to business value. You know, what we've seen coming out of Michael Porter, big business thinker at the Harvard School of Business, he's become a very, very strong proponent of the notion that business is a
more powerful mechanism for addressing social problems than philanthropy. And that there is an awful lot of business value to be mined at the intersection of what's good for the world, what's good for people, and what's good for the business. Because if you can create a profit by tackling a social issue, that profit allows you to scale in a way that philanthropic endeavors just simply don't. So there is a lot of evidence that
Laura Jones (22:01)
Mmm.
Jason Gaikowski (22:25)
You know purpose can be an engine of value creation. But. But. When purpose is a platitude. When purpose becomes a set of nice sounding words written into an organization's vision and mission when it's written into the the roof of a brand house.
Laura Jones (22:29)
Absolutely.
There's always a but with Jason.
Jason Gaikowski (22:56)
or at the top of a brand pyramid, or at the center of a brand onion. And then marketers go about the business of telling stories that align with the purpose. When the operations of the business are misaligned with the purpose, people figure that out. When the actions of the business are misaligned or in...
in frankly just contradicting the purported purpose, it becomes a real problem, becomes very very quickly becomes brand baggage.
Laura Jones (23:35)
Yeah, brand baggage. There's a lot of brand baggage. And I think there's a lot of a misunderstanding about just how...
Jason Gaikowski (23:37)
Right?
Laura Jones (23:45)
cross-functional true brand transformation really is. I mean, you mentioned when you touched on all of the different ways that a brand could, behind the scenes, be not living up to what it's promising to its customers or its prospects. A lot of that has to do with how the organization is structured, how teams are run, what are the myths and cultures within their own organizations, and do you have any words of wisdom for marketers that kind of in those situations where they're being tasked with moving
or even changing or revitalizing a brand and having to kind of push that rock up the hill of making real business organizational change.
Jason Gaikowski (24:25)
I gotta love this question.
Laura Jones (24:28)
Ha ha ha ha.
Jason Gaikowski (24:31)
You know, it is my strong perspective that the business of brand building is as much or more about operations as it is about communications. Right? Like, if you really want to build a brand and marketing powerhouse, you've got to get your message into the operating system of the business itself.
There are so many times that marketers and their agencies come up with these amazing creative ideas and they start writing checks that the supply chain can't deliver. again, there's absolutely room and there's absolutely a need and there's absolutely so much value from change, creativity, imagination, challenging the status quo.
Laura Jones (25:04)
Mmm.
Jason Gaikowski (25:20)
but the most powerful ideas that marketers bring to bear build on company organization, company operation, company supply chain. And one of the things that comes out of research from the Forrester organization is that when a company has consistently amazing customer experiences, number one,
Every person in the organization knows the brand promise. It has been well articulated, it is clear, it is crisp, is concise, and it is complete. What I like to call seven words or less. Number two, every person in the organization can articulate the brand promise.
Laura Jones (25:55)
Hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Jason Gaikowski (26:11)
Right now that's really important. Like I kind of know it versus I can say it versus I can say it in my own words, right? I understand what the brand promises and I can articulate it in my own words. And then number three, every single person in the organization from frontline staff, from accounting to payroll, to the person at the front desk, they can articulate how their role contributes to the fulfillment of the brand promise.
It's a lot like this amazing story that goes around from the late 60s when someone wandered into a government organization. They came upon a janitor and asked the question, what do you do around here? To which the janitor replied, I'm helping to put a man on the moon. That is the kind of aspiration that a modern marketing leader really needs to aspire to if they want to make a dent.
Laura Jones (26:56)
Yup.
And that internal inside out focus is oftentimes.
something that's overlooked, right? A lot of times we focus so much of our efforts as marketers, as change makers externally, right? For the sake of delivering shareholder returns or delivering short-term business performance metrics that we remember that that change starts, we oftentimes forget to remember that that change really starts from the inside. And when you think about...
you start to think about your employee base as a communications audience and as the biggest proponents of putting your message, your meaning out into the world, that really starts to shift. actually might even change the way you do things like brand equity research. You might start to run parallel monitoring of what are the gaps of...
not only within your organization and outside of your organization, but what are the gaps in between how your current customers see you as well as how people that might not yet be customers see you? And when you start to look at the juxtapositions, right, different opposing groups, that's when you really start to understand the work that is to be done, right? What is the movement that you need to make in order to grow? And so that's some of the favorite ways to slice and dice data that I've
I've found is just really figure out what are we trying to do here, right? Are we trying to make this people see the brand like these people? Are we trying to make everyone that works in this organization as in love with the brand as everyone who's spending hundreds of dollars a month on a service or products? And yeah, that's it's there's so many different things to to keep up in the air. So, I mean, it's no wonder why these marketing myths are so pervasive. Who's got
the
time and the energy and the curiosity to keep up with all of this, right? So, and the discipline.
Jason Gaikowski (29:07)
and the discipline. You know, just
I'm so curious. In the course of your career,
how much energy has been put into understanding the attitudes, the perspectives, the needs, the wants, the desires of employees around a brand as compared to trying to get to the insight in the minds of the quote unquote target consumer.
Laura Jones (29:36)
Yeah, I mean, I gotta say it's like a 95-5 split, 98-2 split, external-internal. There are some brands out there though that we work with, the YMCA of the USA. They're an amazing nonprofit organization. We've actually just worked with them to look at not only their potential members and membership base, but also their organization from the inside. So.
Smart brands out there are doing it, but I would say an inordinate amount of time is spent externally focused and externally looking. you know, again, some of that has to go back to the way that teams are structured within, right? Oftentimes that internal look is Chief People Officer, Chief HR Officer, right? And...
that kind of research, that kind of insight finding can look really, really different. That's one of the things I love about, you know, chief marketing officers and why I think it's so important and critical that more chief marketing officers become, you know, full-fledged members of corporate boards and get really, really involved in the business critical decision-making and operations is because they truly are intersectional thinkers. You really have to be an intersectional thinker to put together the fast-moving trends.
media, creativity, data, put all those pieces together and understanding human complexity, understanding decision making, human behavior, all of that is the same externally as it is internally. There were some really great examples, I think probably about a decade ago when Antonio Lucio at HP was brought in and also later at Facebook, he was one of the chief marketing officers that really was probably the first
to start to combine both the internal and the external viewpoint. But, you know, it can be really tricky, right? Because those lines, those swim lanes, as sometimes we like to call them, are etched in really deep into corporate cultures. And a lot of times it's kind of like you stay in your lane and I'll stay in my lane. Or really just those jobs are too big to do it all with one person. But in really cross-functional leadership teams where, you know, people
and people teams are as much looking outside as, you know, how are these policies that we're going to put into place? How are these benefits going to reflect out our values of what we stand for and what is impact is that going to have onto people that might be interested in buying our products and services? And then the same way, you know, that marketers can say, what messages are we putting out there in the marketplace? And are we really living up to those values internally? So, I mean, I've got to say it's all pretty simple.
It comes down to communications, right? What we're all here to do is be excellent communicators and do that and live up to that. And not only think that just communications needs to be this formal, highly campaigned and planned out thing.
Jason Gaikowski (32:31)
Hahaha.
Laura Jones (32:46)
It's actually talking to people. It's actually sitting down, connecting, understanding where people are coming from, having empathy, right? And none of that should start or end with the consumer. It really needs to be both internal and external.
Jason Gaikowski (33:01)
No, for sure. And I think it's one of the great missed opportunities of the past and one of the great available opportunities for the future. Because too often, the barriers to true collaboration between, a chief people officer responsible for building the internal culture of an organization and a chief marketing officer responsible for building a culture for the organization externally.
They are separated by different histories. They are separated by different traditions. They are separated by different belief systems, mental models, experiences, different motivations, right? And it's not just communication. It's about building bridges between different motivations and even different assumptions about the world.
Laura Jones (33:31)
Hmm.
Motivations.
Hmm.
Jason Gaikowski (33:53)
Right? Like, I see this everywhere right now with marketing organizations and customer experience organizations. Everyone will agree you should brand the experience and experience the brand. Everyone will agree that a brand is a promise and the fulfillment of an experience for customers. Everyone will agree to that.
Laura Jones (34:07)
Hmph.
Jason Gaikowski (34:17)
Yet when you look at how organizations organize and structure their talent, marketing teams and CX teams are separate organizations. They're siloed. Oftentimes they compete or even fight like cats and dogs. And yet they both have a stake in the healthy growth, development, and profitable performance of this shared asset called brand.
Laura Jones (34:33)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Gaikowski (34:43)
And it's really, really hard to create the tools and create the means that allow them to collaborate effectively. When on one hand, marketers highest ambition, a Superbowl spot. You've got one shot to get it right. You have to get it right the first time, right? That is an operating premise that is shared by marketing creatives everywhere. I want to do a Superbowl spot and man, I got one shot. It's gotta be.
right. Customer experience professionals are different, right? You may be familiar with the quote from Reid Hoffman that if you're not a little bit embarrassed when you first ship your product out the door, you're not moving fast enough, right? Customer experience are ingrained in this idea that not only should you not aspire to quote unquote get it right the first time,
that is implausible, if not impossible, even as a goal. So a customer experience assumption about the right way to work is get a prototype out there, get it going, test, learn, iterate, evolve, and it gets better and better and better over time. And that's just a single example of a whole host of beliefs that are entrenched in different disciplines that evolved independently that we're now asking to collaborate.
Right. And it's no different than the kind of collaboration we need to unleash between chief people officers and chief marketing officers.
Laura Jones (36:11)
Yeah.
Absolutely. It sounds like what you're saying is chief marketing officers and marketers just have to be a little bit uncomfortable with being perfectly imperfect. Just like we're going to be a little bit uncomfortable about being perfectly imperfect with our first episode of this podcast. You know, but you know, you really bring up a great point, which is just the pressure that marketers can face.
Jason Gaikowski (36:32)
Hahaha
Laura Jones (36:47)
to really deliver in a short-term focused world and putting a lot of emphasis on high fidelity, finalized, polished production, almost relics, right? Creating artifacts.
Jason Gaikowski (37:05)
Yep.
Laura Jones (37:06)
Versus customer experience professionals, they're actually creating products, right? They're creating iterative services, things that are growing, changing. People expect there to be updates, new releases.
Jason Gaikowski (37:12)
product services.
Laura Jones (37:21)
Bugs are gonna happen, fixes. And what an interesting concept if we actually lifted and shifted that mentality into communications, right? What if you saw version one, two, three, and we all know we've been through probably rounds and rounds of creative testing. What if instead of spending six months getting it perfect, we put it out there kind of not all the way there?
Jason Gaikowski (37:31)
My f- my-
Laura Jones (37:51)
and saw what happened and got feedback and continued to evolve it. I mean, it's a really interesting idea from a messaging perspective in taking some of those principles.
Jason Gaikowski (38:00)
Yeah,
I mean, now you're tapping into another one of my pet peeves. Organizations, they seem to insist, and again, I think this is habit, I think it's tradition, I think it's just acceptance of the way we do things is the way we've always done things. Which is, I'm gonna design my brand campaign to the nth degree. I'm gonna test the bejesus out of it.
Laura Jones (38:06)
Hahaha
Yep.
Hehehehehe
Jason Gaikowski (38:27)
And
then I'm going to launch it into highly expensive, slow moving media.
Then, after it's launched into very expensive, slow-moving media, then I'm going to extend it into inexpensive, fast-moving media.
we're gonna start on television and then eventually make our way to Instagram. Or we're gonna launch simultaneously on television and on Instagram after we've done all of the creative testing on the television spot. I'm like, this has been driving me crazy for at least a decade. Like, why not run experiments on cheap, fast-moving media like social? Figure out what works in the real world rather than in the testing lab?
and then take the creative ideas that perform best in the real world and scale them to more permanent, slower moving, more expensive media forms.
Laura Jones (39:24)
Yeah, and that's exactly what the direct to consumer business is. The startups, know, all of the the new age, we'll call them brand that aren't so new age anymore. That's really what's upended our industry. Right. And upended a lot of the legacy marketers, the legacy products. You know, if you're a brand that was created in a laboratory, how do you really get that authenticity, that level of an authenticity of a brand that was started as a passion project by a few friends and business
Jason Gaikowski (39:29)
Right?
Laura Jones (39:54)
school
and thinking of Warby Parker I just saw the one of the co-founders last week speak and one of his first jobs was out with an optometrist in developing nations fitting women with the ability to give glasses to people in their villages and you know he combined that with one guy that had a pretty crappy pair of glasses that was always broken and another guy that was great at putting together business models and
Jason Gaikowski (40:20)
Yeah.
Laura Jones (40:24)
of a sudden you've got a really authentic brand that's actually meeting an unmet need in the marketplace. It's actually structured as a B Corp, right? So it's doing good in the world. You know, it's really hard for the legacy companies to compete with something like that that was engineered and architected from the ground up. But it's not impossible. And that's, think, a lot of times where really understanding your brand through the lens of data
can come in handy because if you know where you are and what's actually going to drive meaningful movement, then you can develop a strategy to get there.
Jason Gaikowski (41:03)
Absolutely understand your assets and then deploy your assets understand your weaknesses and shore them up or accept them right like There's an automotive company that I'm aware of right now They are chasing a segment leader But in the pursuit of chasing a segment leader they are absolutely abandoning and evolving away from a really really profound and powerful Heritage that is authentic to them
Laura Jones (41:12)
Absolutely.
Hmm.
Jason Gaikowski (41:33)
and I don't know how the story will end, but I think there's some real evidence that suggests that it may not be a case of all's well that ends well.
Laura Jones (41:46)
Well, we'll see about that and you you bring up some story ending. think this chapter is getting close to the end. So I want to kind of start to close this up with a final question, which is let's put some intentions out into the into the universe. If you could have any guest on to Opinion Party podcast, you can invite anyone to this party over the course of our episodes. Who would it be? Who do we want to manifest?
Jason Gaikowski (41:56)
No, final question.
Look,
I'm not shy, you know I want Galloway. You know I want Prof G. I'm interested to both chat but perhaps even spar a little bit with the maestro, the big dog. Nah, that'd be great fun. But you know, who else I wanna talk to? And I don't know if it's even possible, but I would love to talk to Adam Morgan or one of his disciples.
Laura Jones (42:15)
Yeah.
Ooh, I'd pay money to see that.
Hmm.
Jason Gaikowski (42:41)
You know, I think that eating the big fish to this day still has a lot of important lessons. But I also think that it's an ideology that might be ready for eating the big fish 2.0. And I'd be really, really curious to explore what remains relevant, what remains powerful, and what maybe is ready for an update. How about you, Laura? Who's on your wish list?
Laura Jones (42:47)
Yeah.
I love that.
Well, you brought up the Real Housewives earlier in this episode and bravo. You know, my head is going to Ryan Serhan, actually. He has really stealthily become, you know, quite the marketing expert.
Seemingly, right? He's of course got, if you think about Ryan Serhan, I don't know anyone that's seen Owning Manhattan. That was the first time I came across the wonderful world of that ecosystem. But he's got a platform.
You know, and I think that cannot be understated in really what is the best way to build a brand is to build it horizontally and to build it meaningfully so it can operate across many different dimensions. So there's probably a lot of people that know Ryan Serhant as a real estate agent, right? There's a lot. He also has an entire Academy for selling and for real estate agents and just in general an ethos about how to sell, how to do business.
Jason Gaikowski (44:03)
Mm-hmm.
Laura Jones (44:15)
also has a gigantic kind of influencer type presence on social channels, etc. And he's actually fundamentally shifted the way that a pretty traditional industry like real estate approaches its own generally accepted
principles of marketing, right? He has built a studio within his new company and they actually, all of the way that they market their properties, all of the way that they appeal to new clients, they really woke up and understood, whoa, this market has shifted. The people that have money in this country and the types of people that those people are has shifted. And we want to be on the cutting edge and in the new wave of that. they just really, and he
Jason Gaikowski (44:43)
Yep.
Laura Jones (45:06)
particular has built it from the ground up. So I'd love to talk to Ryan and just see, you know, where that goes and what marketers in other industries can learn from him. So, so we'll see. We'll see.
Jason Gaikowski (45:19)
No, that's fantastic. I
tell you, I'm gonna throw one last one out there and you bring it to mind talking about Ryan. Ryan Reynolds, get your butt in here. Ryan, Ryan Reynolds, come on down, we want you here.
Laura Jones (45:26)
Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah. Yes.
Another multi-platform, you know, really storyteller, right? I mean, after all, isn't that what marketing is? Storytelling with a point of view backed by a little bit of data.
Jason Gaikowski (45:44)
and the guys built a disruptive agency and I think he might be one of the most interesting brand builders going today. So, Ryan Reynolds, if didn't like the event you hear this, come on down.
Laura Jones (45:56)
All right, OK.
Well, Jason, I'm getting a little bit of a nod from Mark that we're about to run out of time here, so I'm going to leave it here. I hope everyone listening had as much fun at this party as we did. And if you've enjoyed yourself, remember to hit the subscribe button and leave some comments. You can find all of our VIP content in the show notes as well as on our podcast website, www.theopinionparty.com. And if you want to dig
into some of the data that you are going to hear on upcoming episodes, head over to bavgroup.com and vml.com, our show's sponsors website. So thanks everyone so much for joining Opinion Party and we'll talk to you next time.
Jason Gaikowski (46:43)
Bye everybody, thanks Laura, it's been a great party. Ciao.
Laura Jones (46:46)
See ya, this has been fun. Take
