The Architecture Of Unforgettable Branding | Sophia Athas

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Indecision means slow and slow does not survive. Sophia Ays is the founder and creative director of Hatrick House, a boundary pushing creative studio specializing in brand strategy and communications. She's led work for global names like Sephora, Microsoft, Afterpay, Bumble, and Butter Boy. The biggest misconception about branding is that, hey, I've got a really sexy brand. Of course, it's going to be successful. That's not the case at all. Wise indecision. The demise for a founder?

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That's such a loaded question. A lot of founders start with their ideas because they think they are the majority when most of the time they're the minority. You can come up with a cool product and something that looks sexy and amazing, but if there's no one there to buy it, why are we here? Why do you do this? What do you get out of building brands? I love coming up with ideas and building things. even since I was small. Do you think that AI is going to collapse the agency industry?

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This episode is brought to you by Wix Studio. So, for listeners who think branding is just a cool logo, how do you as an agency owner define what branding is and what that means to you? I knew this was going to be the first question. It is more than a logo and we always say that. I think it's about storytelling. That sounds like very cliche, but I think coming up with layers for a brand, especially at the moment, it's I mean, most markets, they're so crowded. People are coming up with products. You can

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come up with a product really easily these days. And I think that's the thing. We get so many inquiries. We have a lot of founders come across our desk. We have even big legacy brands create like offshoots of their products and they all think it's the best idea, which I think you have to think that as a founder, but I feel like it's our job as an agency or a good agency partner to really bring them back down to earth and go, what are you actually selling? like what do you actually what are you trying

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to give to your customer outside of just that product that they're receiving or service or experience? Um it's deeper than that. It's a hard thing to explain and and for example we were in a workshop today and you know the client was saying hey our product is is exceptional like that's great everyone says the same thing all your comp you wouldn't be here if you didn't think that. Totally. And there's nothing wrong with having an exceptional product. And you know, we hear from the likes of

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Steve Jobs like product is everything. I agree. What is that additional layer? Like how do you define what it is beyond the product, beyond the solution you're solving with your service? How would you define what that branding layer is? I think it's different for everyone and I feel like that there's no blanket rule. Like yes, you can have templates. We always start at similar, you know, positions when we're we're thinking about a brand in strategy, whether that is from what does it sound like, what what do

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they look like, what is it packaged like? Um, but it has to be tailored and it has to be tailored for the audience as well. You can't sell to everyone. I think that's the other thing. So thinking about at the end of the day who's walking into your shop front or who's converting a sale online or sliding into the DMs on socials. It they're all coming from different walks of life for a different reason. So you have to tailor your messaging to them. I think also just having fun like

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branding is not that serious. I would agree. It shouldn't be serious. It's it's another layer where it's an experience. Yes. And it's like if you were to say, I'm hosting an event. Uh it's for my birthday party. People usually ask, well, what is the dress code? What's the vibe? What am I what are we going to be doing? Are there any activities that I need to dress for? The branding is more about like, well, this is what the event is, how you going to dress, how you going to feel, the

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vibe, the aura, the presence of what that is going to look like. Just saying we have a great product is like saying I got a birthday party. but also a great product. It's almost easy to make the product because there are resources out there to be able to do that these days, but it's competitive. So, how are you going to make the cookie or the lipstick that is formulated in exactly the same way stand out next to each other? Totally. And then even if you had the first great product, you went to market and then

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someone tries to copycat or steal it, how do you build a moat to protect your what it is that you're doing? Yeah, totally. I think that's the other thing. Brands can't remain stagnant. You just have to move really fast, which sometimes I hate that about marketing and branding. I think there's a balance between you have to have integrity and stay true to where you came from, where it started, what the core values are of it, but also you have to keep innovating. The brand has to grow. It has to move

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with the times. Even when we opened Hatrick House 7 years ago, that looked really different to what it looks like today. Tik Tok didn't even exist, I don't think. Yeah. Which is a huge platform for selling marketing. The the generation that grew up buying the beauty product back then was hardly even able to own a phone. So, I think yeah, it's getting complacent. Yeah. It's like the seven Ps of marketing are kind of hard to apply to Tik Tok cuz Tik Tok just seems like the Wild West. It's so rogue. It's so rogue.

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It's scary. It It's like any given week you're like that strategyy's ick now. It's new. It's a new thing. Yeah. Yeah. So, if we just zoom out for a moment just to give people a few handles on a few different things that we're probably going to unpack today. If we're taking the word brand, branding, brand strategy, brand identity, brand design. If we just separate them and even add in like let's say um content um advertising and marketing, how do you delineate the

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differences between these things? Because often times people contort them into being the interchangeable same thing with a different phrase, but they're actually quite different. They are. And I think at Hatrick House that's what we've tried to do in building our different departments. So we've got our content and design, which is your graphics, it's your logo, it's your packaging, your very tangible things that you can like hold, feel, touch in a brand and product. And then you've got

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communications, which is obviously how you're you're talking to your audience, how that product gets out there, how you're protecting it when people are talking about it online in the media, how you're pitching it. Um, and then also production. So, how you're creating content around it, campaigns, whether that's a huge campaign that's digitally produced in a big studio or on an iPhone, it's completely different for every client. Um, and our whole thing is that we do it all under one roof. So

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having the different elements of the branding and how you build a brand, we're able to do it without having to reach out to third parties unless they're specialists in the creatives or yeah, specifically to projects. We we work with a lot of contractors, but I really believe to have control over it, you need your people sitting in the same room. Totally. like your brand people. Totally. And I think sometimes business owners tend to go this branding guide is built, job done, and it's well, hang on

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a second. There's so much that goes into it. There's nothing worse than a brand identity document that goes for like 250 pages. And we always get them because we'll come in at either the production stage or, hey, we want to do a campaign. We've got our brand identity. and you look at this document and you think, well, it's a logo and you've just given me the logo in about 50 different shades of gray. It doesn't really mean anything. So, let's let's let's define this. So, like if we

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take um if we just separate, okay, brand branding, brand design, and brand strategy. Let's move content and advertising to the wayside momentarily. But if we just add some context here because people get confused about these things all the time. So if you could I guess from your agency's perspective define like we define brand as branding which is like the doing thing and then the strategy and the identity and the design. How do you separate it and how do you tend to let's say someone were to

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say I'm confused. I don't understand the difference in all these things. How do you guys define them? That's an interesting question because I think again it depends on the brief we get. We have founders or legacy heritage brands as I said coming and and wanting a logo for example that's starting from absolute scratch. We even help come up with names. So naming strategy, ideiation around taglines, copy things like that. It's almost like the baby is not even conceived yet. It's we're

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helping that happen. Then you could also come in after that stage where they hand us the 250 page brand identity book and we have to sift through it and really figure out what is important, what isn't because I think what I've found and maybe it's part of my personality where I like moving quickly and I'm I'm more macro than micro in the way that I think is Sometimes it doesn't matter as much as we think. Like, yes, a logo is important, but some of the most impressive brands I've worked with, the

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logo's been sketched on a notepad and then vectorized on Photoshop once without a single edit and it's still an awesome logo today. And no one's flinching. Polisher and City Bank. Exactly. Sketch it over coffee at Starbucks was like that too. Yeah. Crazy stories, Nike. Yeah. And so I think it's like again our job as an agency to care because it is really important to think about color, look, feel, curves, typography, things like that. But also, it's just not that deep. The deepness comes with the other

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layers around it. So yes, we love working on brand identity, but we would never do a brand identity without a brand strategy. And that could come prior to even thinking about the name or the logo or after if they've already engaged another agency to do it. Is there a better time to jump in and do brand strategy? Because we get asked all the time, is it better I do this when I'm thinking about the idea or like I should go to market with an MVP and then brand it. I think very some very successful founders have have come up

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with the product and their business idea way before their brand and that's awesome because they've tested it. They know that it's a good product as we were saying before. So they need something to like wrap it up in a nice bow and that's our job. But then the other side is they can be attracted to the shininess of creating a brand but the product is still in formulation. It's still needing heaps of work. It's still IP issues, patents are pending. I don't think there's a a one set journey. There's so

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many entry points, right? because sometimes depending on the founder as well like sometimes I find that if people have a lot of experience in branding they typically do it first. Um not always but they they they tend to come back and go okay we know how much of a headache it is to kind of build a brand and then change everything later on because you have to repackage and reconstitute everything. So I find that like second and third time founders are like let's just get the branding out of the way first. Uh, and they also value

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the benefit of the naming and the ideation and they wanna they kind of want to hit it with a bang rather than I think if it's like your second third rodeo I trust that the brand can come second. Yes. But I think brand strategy you you need that before packaging before a logo before colors. So let's define that for for you. What is brand strategy? And I understand what you're saying. before we choose colors and a font and a logo like that's communication language which is great but like what are we communicating which

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is typically strategy. Yeah. And I think strategy is always it's the elephant in the room when when you propose a strategy to a client it's almost like this invisible thing that you have to really push for. And I think out of all of our services, that's the one thing that is the hardest sell because it's not as tangible. You also strategy is your IP and your experience of coming up with ideas for someone when it's related to branding. Obviously, there there are different types of strategies, but in my world,

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that's that's what it is. And so when you can't show them a brand strategy that you've done or necessarily what what that is before you've done it, it's really hard to get it across the line. I've had clients have to sit on five different sort of sense check calls to even ask me, so what's in your strategy? Like but that's the point of strategy. You have to you have to trust me basically. Yeah, it's a paradox. It's like, well, what are you going to do for

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me? Well, we don't know yet, but we're going to do strategy. What is strategy? Well, it's like a lot of stuff. And I think like you also can't I believe you can't be a strategist or come up with strategy on your first day. I think throughout time and because I've had experience and my team now has had experience and has grown a portfolio, people are willing to trust us with their brand strategy, but I I think it's still a precious thing of it's a weird thing to explain. And I was having this

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conversation with um our creative director of strategy recently and we were having this discussion around okay we're going to look at hiring another strategist and we're like how do we find that person because it's a really hard role to fulfill because you're trying to find someone who can speak to a business owner command a room think neurode divergently on the spot. It's the two different sides of the brain. It's the two different sides. You have to have really high IQ, really high EQ and you

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have to you have to kind of dance between the two cuz when you're hosting someone who's made 10 25 mil and they potentially have an ego and a business partner and you know um a chief marketing in the room and you're trying to juggle them, you're trying to juggle the idea, you're trying to rip apart their old brand because it definitely doesn't work and you're trying to think of all these things at the same time. How do you hire that role? So it's a weird role where you're constantly

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almost like tissue testing like 30 things in your head at once. You're playing 3D chess. You are. And it's also I think with the brand, if you're doing a brand strategy, it's the perfect balance between creative thinking ideas versus thinking like a business woman or man of is this actually a commercially viable idea? Yeah. Do people want it? They're going to buy it. Yeah. Is it going to work? because you can come up with of course a sexy campaign that would cost half a million dollars to

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produce but that's not helpful for my founder client that has a budget of 50k. So I think smart strategy is being able to come up with creative within the parameters of resources. Right? So it's like someone saying I want you to make me the best car in the world and you're like hang on a second with $5. Yeah. I get five bucks and you're like, how do you drive? Yeah. And you have to almost engineer the brand strategy to the person cuz we've done this in the past. I think early days we made the mistake

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and I'm sure you've had the same experience where you've like overengineered a brand and you've given it to someone and it's like handing you know a machine gun to a toddler like they cannot handle this. that that's another I mean I think that's like part two that could be its own podcast in itself but from strategy to execution is a whole art form and I'm still trying to figure that out with my team. I think again ideas is that's our wheelhouse. And I feel like if I was confident in

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anything, I could walk into a room with the best idea. But that only is so helpful to someone who's paying you for that idea. I think you have to be able to also know how to recruit and sort of rally your resources to execute on it. Otherwise, the shiny stuff, it loses its shine really quickly. What would you classify as the shiny stuff? Big picture thinking, like big campaigns, um, wild activation ideas that it's so fun to come up with that. And you see clients faces, they light up, and they

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see a mockup of a billboard with their new product that hasn't launched to market yet. And everyone in the room is like, "Wow, this is it. This is why we spent all night, you know, for a year trying to come up with this." But then if you can't actually execute on that, it feels like an empty promise almost, right? So you have to have the creative strategy. Yeah. You have to make it functional and so you can get tactical and make it happen. Exactly. and then know how to do it and is it

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going to work? So you can have the best road map, the best creative, but then the product sucks. And I think that's what I've learned over the years is there's a cost to making things and producing things. And at the end of the day, it's not my money that the client is has to spend. It's their budget. It's their capital or whatever they've raised to get this product off the ground. They're trusting you in in taking direction of where they should spend that money, but ultimately it's up to

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them to either have it or not. And I think I used to not have the confidence to say, you know, you can you can do this, but it's going to cost you $200,000 to to get it looking like that that visual or the packaging that you want. It looks amazing because it's expensive and I think that's the reality of it. It's not cheap and it I mean we all know cost of living, cost of doing business, cost of creating things is going up. So it's that fine line as a creative agency to be proposing ideas as well that just

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will never see the light of day either. I think it's that balance of inspiring but also being a realist. Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes I I have to be a bit of a cuz I'm like Yeah. I'm like send me the brand guide. They send me the brand guide. They're like what do you think? And it's like handing me their baby and I'm like um have you considered another color palette? Yeah. It also it's subjective strategy. It's totally subjective and then they're like subjective. Yeah. So,

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so take me into this a little deeper. When it comes to the brand strategy and the visual identity, you're saying it doesn't matter which side they come to you with first, but it's more about like what problem they're trying to solve next. Yeah. I I like that we have brands and founders and marketing teams coming to us at all stages and from all angles. I think that that's why I started a house or an agency because I don't think I would have liked to work on just one brand for the rest of my life. Yeah. But

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at the same time it then makes it it's a whole stage for my team in the inquiry phase to figuring out where that founder is in the journey to really understand where we have to come in and make the most difference. for example, having the hard conversation. If that 250 page brand identity document looks so bad, objectively bad to us it's objective to them. They're like, "It's my baby. I love it." Yeah. True. Yeah. But that's the thing. It's like telling them that their baby is ugly. That's a

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really hard conversation to have. And so you have to be able to back yourself with your name doesn't stick. The logo I've seen before, things like that. And and then once you make these big comments, really owning what you're about to propose as the change as well. Backing yourself is a big thing. Business owners, if you're stuck using one platform for every project, you're probably stuck in a growth bottleneck. More clients means more hires, which just adds noise and cuts into profits.

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there's like a slightly different approach every time but we do we are a small enough team and in and a I guess nimble enough team that we really create packages that are bespoke to the client. So one could come with a product and as I said not even have a name and it is a whole strategy around naming what inspired them what is going to show up on the shelf when the first shop opens the shop the lease hasn't even been signed by that stage. um working with the interior designers that are building

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the shop to then figure out color palettes, things like that. Or it could be a rebrand, which is kind of slicing up what's already there and relaunching something. So giving life to a product that has already existed completely different. Yeah. Yeah. So, you have like kind of pre pre-brand, which is like they're kind of still at the genesis or the molding, like formulation stage. Formulation stage. That's a great way of phrasing it. Uh the rebrand stage, which is typically, hey, something's not quite

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working here. We need a rebirth. We need a Wow, all this birth metaphor. I love it. It's on brand for you today. Okay. But if you were to go, okay, cool. Like pre preformulation. Um and then there's then there's like a rebrand. Some people get a little scared about the phrasing rebrand. Would you say there's like a hybrid maybe in between where they're kind of like we want a bit of a tuneup and then it kind of unfolds into a rebrand most of the time? Do you experience that? I feel

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like rebrands are dangerous, risky, almost hard, duh, then branding from scratch. I feel like we've seen massive success stories, I mean big success stories. We've had New Balance that I mean that died for a while then they came back and just owned the dad shoe and did it so well and that was all they went hard on and I feel like that stuck and it did really well. Great campaign for them and it was like for dads in Ohio and models in Paris and I was like that's such a great tagline. We always

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use that and I think that's a success of a rebrand repositioning. Um, and then you've got brands that just haven't been able to stick it even if they've tweaked their logo three times, launched with a different color. I don't know. But I think that goes back to the storytelling and it's not just about a logo in that instance. A rebrand is so much more than that because you've already got legacy and you've already got history that you can play off. It almost should be easier for you to talk

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and come up with stories as opposed to starting from scratch. If that makes sense. Why would why is it you would say that rebranding is dangerous or more dangerous than creating something from scratch? Because I believe you only have one chance at a rebrand. You can't I mean I guess it depends on different phases of where you're at in the journey. different if it's a year in and you have to change because of I don't know copyright issues or trademark issues. Um but huge brands I think Burberry has

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actually done this recently where they've launched with a new logo slightly different to the last but if you weren't a Burberry fan or in the industry you'd have no idea. They've brought back the, you know, cobalt blue beautiful colorway and then they've gone really hard on campaigns, but it hasn't affected sales. They're still struggling to innovate on product and now the narrative has become well, it didn't work. It's not about actually the rebrand or the creative. So, I think

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it's risky. Yeah. Yeah. Some of the the most famous stories I've seen one which is Gapgate I don't know if you remember that where it's like they rebranded everything they restitched their logo on everything reigned all their stores and I think they spent like near $und00 million to go back on the brand. I think the brand lasted that of all of eight days and it was so catastro catastrophic that they just went back to their old brands which I love their campaigns recently. I'm not sure if you've been

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following that journey, but they've recently got a new creative director and they've gone back to their legacy and just simplicity of what GAP was. And I always use it as a case study for our team and our strategy of sometimes you just don't need to reinvent the wheel a thousand times either. Well, it's always that new CMO that wants to prove themselves just jumped at the helm. Like if you see what happened with Jaguar, like we'll see how that turns out. But like for example, new CMO at the helm

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and they just reconstitute everything. What do you think of that? I think it's interesting because I think here's here's the thing is like Jagger was was going south. Yeah. Love it or hate it, right? It if you just purely look at the challenge that they had. They're in a declining market. People were not buying the cars. And one could argue that they're on every headline. So maybe mission accomplished. True. But it's like number two, they have to then back that up and like actually start selling

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vehicles. It would be interesting to see if they make a ton of sales. Like, but I think the challenge I personally had was like I look at luxury cars like Porsches and you know, Lamborghinis and Ferraris and things like that and I even considered buying a Jag, but then like looking at how they kind of hit the marketing, I was like, I don't know if I'm ready to be an aggressive early adopter of a heritage brand. So, it just felt like such a radical shift for me that I couldn't justify how intense it

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was. It sounds good on paper, but man, if they pull it off, it'll be the rebrand of the century, but I think my fear is that they didn't actually try to connect with a target audience. It felt to me more like a campaign around an agenda versus like, hey, what do the market actually want for a car? that seemed like it was completely missing from the strategy for me. But also at the end of the day, that that product is a very expensive conversion for a very particular customer. It's a very

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logo. No, it's not just about the logo. I'm talking about like the whole thing. Cuz like if you're selling a high-end Rolls-Royce looking vehicle at a high price point that's EV and then you constitute that with the messaging on top of that, which they did, that's a very niche market. Very niche, but I kind of like the the guts that they had to do it. Yeah. Tell me what you think. Like what's your opinion? What's your hot take? What what do you think about the Jaguar rebrands? Well,

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as you said, if if you're comparing it to their competitors of all the legacy luxury car brands, Ferrari or Porsche never going to do that. Never. Ever. Like the logo is almost too sacred to even look at. Yeah. So I think in that sense someone someone in that room has in in the strategy phase has obviously said this is our this is our opportunity to stand out make a difference yeah pivot but it's it's risky. I don't know if it will I don't know the answer. I just No, I I hear what you're saying.

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I champion the fact that they went for it. I question the strategy behind it and like where it landed. Only time will tell, which I'm excited for. But I also think that's another example of that sort of industry, like the car industry, luxury cars. We've seen it a lot with the F1 and that's a great case study as well with the Netflix documentary. They've now got the biggest Louis Vuitton sponsorship off the back of it and they're backed by that for all of the um Grand Pres

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that they're they're innovating. That's still innovation. That's still acting like exactly mean there. Well, F1 and Ferrari, Porsche, McLaren, all of those brands, they're they're old school. They were once for designed for an old rich man basically, but with some clever marketing partnerships, the way that their storytelling through Netflix documentaries bringing in the identity of the drivers, the drama, they've been able to then foster these partnerships with fashion labels and all

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of a sudden people like myself or younger care and we're buying into it. I I remember watching Drive to Survive season 1 and I was telling everyone about it and everyone's like, "What is that?" And I was like, "It's this F1 thing." And I got way into F1 cuz I I remember watching F1 as a kid growing up like, "Yeah, okay, cool. Cars going around track." But then I watched the documentary. I was like, "Whoa, these guys these guys hate each other. There's

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stories here. There's enemies here. There's friends. There's allies. There's like tire degradation and all these things you have to think about." And it's like being the greatest marketing play of all time is to like let's radically storytell the ugly stuff, all the glorious stuff and everything that happens. But that's what I mean by it's it's clever. It's clever brand innovation and strategy in a really traditional industry. I see. And I think you don't need to rebrand

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like a Jaguar. Not that it's I know that they're different. not necessarily just F1. You don't need to necessarily rebrand to innovate and keep progressing. Because to me, it felt like a mass abandonment of their their current target audience. Yeah. And it's almost like a risk. Which is a risk. It's almost like Red Bull going, "Hey, like we're no longer about extreme sports. We're about like calm meditation." Exactly. And like middle finger to all our target demographic.

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That's what it felt like. And you could argue, well, like, you know, older white men aren't cool or what have you. I I would disagree with that, but like I would say like there's that zeitgeist around it and then this ra rad radical pivot just felt it felt for me a little unfounded. I that's something that we always get asked and pushed on in our strategies is so we're here because we don't want to ostracize the audience that we're talking to and the customer we've grown

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with, but we need to acquire a new one. And that's always the hardest part about you don't want to create these campaigns that are too controversial or triggering or niche in the message, but also they're the ones that stick or make headlines and get pressed and make an impact in this very noisy world. So I think when you can successfully do that and have the OG customer still engaged while also talking to the daughter or the niece nephew younger generation that's successful branding. So instead of the

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abandonment it's the expansion. Yeah. Instead of contracting one market and re repositioning over here it's about like how do we continue to scale and grow. Exactly. Because I felt like McLaren did a really great job of like bringing in a younger audience because I remember once upon a time McLaren's were kind of for the older generation. Now it feels like because they've got these young drivers that are 18 and 19. The driver young maverick dudes and it's like I want a McLaren now. Like it's kind of cool. So

00:35:53 - 00:37:11

you're saying through storytelling in many ways, shapes and forms you can bring new life to your brand if it's a legacy brand. Yeah. Oh, well, I I also think that goes back to what we were saying before of smart design and creative is also being able to make more money for your client really. So if you can duplicate their audience and not ostracize or stop talking to a certain market but just increase it, expand it, there's no truer success than the dollars go up that there's more people

00:36:32 - 00:37:46

in the shop door. there's more customers willing to engage with what you're trying to sell as opposed to, oh, now New Balance is just for the supermodel. No, we're still selling to dads and we're still selling to the dads, but we're also cool again. So, I think yeah, but it's it's hard. It's a juxosition brand because in many ways it's seen one way in one part of the world and another way in America. Yeah. And you also don't want to feel like you're trying to be friends

00:37:09 - 00:38:09

with everyone and talk to everyone. I think that you have to segment your marketing and you know segment your messaging for those different people and different audiences. But your overall brand should appeal to the people that grew old, have grown old with you. You can't stop talking to them. Would you agree that then if a brand is established that it needs to I guess when it's figuring out a brand strategy, it's all about expansion or how do we continue to scale with a new brand? Do

00:37:39 - 00:38:57

you think that's more about trying to be a little bit more niche at the beginning? It's hard, right? Because I think these days just the the way that the world is, everyone seems to have their hobbies, right? You're either part of a run club or you love a certain coffee trend that you're you're chasing and that's sort of what you want to do. Fashion is really particular a big part of people's identities, how that they look, how they feel. beauty is quite niche as well.

00:38:17 - 00:39:28

You've got the the unbeauty beauty, the no makeup makeup, but then you've also got the high glam. You can't be something for everyone. Like I think you have to know your customer and know your product, but you have to be able to talk to different segments within that and not be too exclusive with it. Yeah, that makes sense. Totally makes sense. And I think I think would you agree that if a brand's new, let's just say they come to your agency and they're like, "This is the idea. It's a

00:38:53 - 00:39:50

beauty brand. It's edible makeup. It's not makeup makeup." So, you know, whatever that might be. And then they're like, "Hey, name it, logo it, package it, design it, website it for me, help us launch this thing." You would say that from your experience that they should have a bit more of a target at the beginning and then branch out as they go or can they start with a branched out selection of audience? Well, I think with with marketing products at the end of the day, you

00:39:22 - 00:40:41

wouldn't have a business if you didn't have a customer. So, people that don't know their customer well, I think have missed an entirely have almost missed the point. You can come up with a cool product and something that looks sexy and amazing and whatever, but if there's no one there to buy it, then why are we here? And I I find that interesting. A lot of founders start with their ideas because they think they are the majority when most of the time I would be confident that they're the

00:40:02 - 00:41:25

minority most of the time. What makes you confident that most founders are not their target audience? Because people are stuck in their little worlds. I I mean we all fall victim to that. I think we all we all think as soon as I became a mom, I'm like, "Oh, parents, moms, dads, such a big market." But then you really break down how many people need the very niche drink bottle for their toddler. You're like, "Oh, to to get the numbers up there, it's hard than you think." or

00:40:43 - 00:42:02

going back to niche communities, products go in trends and waves, we see heaps of desserts disrupting the space. We've seen shampoo and conditioner disrupt the shelves of Woolworths. There's always trends that happen, but then you really have to break down, okay, well, how many people are actually walking down that aisle looking for that certain product. It's not as many as people think, I don't think. Well, we hear this all the time where people get a product into David Jones or Worse or Kohl's and then

00:41:22 - 00:42:38

it just doesn't sell. Yeah. Which is scary. It's really scary. I think we always talk about doing our own products and people always ask me why do you back up other people's ideas? Why haven't you done your own? I think it's because I'm a pessimist in that way. I know that it's really hard. It's really hard to make a good product and a good brand and have those two things stick. People think that their idea is the best idea in the world, but it's everyone has the best idea in the world.

00:42:00 - 00:42:58

There's there's a quote I love from um a gentleman, his name is Mark Ritzen, and he says, "The first rule of marketing is you're an idiot." Brilliant. And if you can understand that like you, the founder, are not the target market. No, that's the best advice ever because then you can just get out of your own way and actually start observing like what people want. But you also start to learn with your customer as well. I think again launching brands to market you go through different phases and I guess

00:42:29 - 00:43:46

you've got your birth stage and then you have your growth stage and that's a really exciting phase because every sale is obviously more than what you made yesterday. Well, you'd hope. But then it starts to become this like adolescent a bit harder to grow and you have to work harder to talk to people. And I think that's where it goes back to yes you can have a good product, yes you can have a good brand, but you can't just do the same thing the whole time. You have to grow with the

00:43:08 - 00:44:15

customer with trying to reach new audiences, scale it. Yeah, it's it's a journey. Yo, my name is Dane Walker and I am disgustingly obsessed with branding. I had to figure out a way to do branding every single day. So, I branded myself. Then I started my agency Rivalionary and hired a team of branding mavericks hellbent on creating brands so good that they'll make your competition their pants. So here's the thing. You want your brand to go viral and Rival makes brands go viral. That's why we're

00:43:51 - 00:44:51

offering you a free 30inut branding session to get an expert's opinion. If you don't believe me, the proof is in the pudding. Here's what clients have to say about Rival. Rival is trusted by brands like Nutrition Warehouse, Light My Bricks, and Voomie. So, if you want to absolutely smash the competition and make your brand go viral, hit the link below and book in your free 30-inute branding session. Now, when you look at the success of a company launching its brands, when people ask you, "What's the

00:44:21 - 00:45:43

ROI of branding?" I know this is a question we all hate, but when you think about how you explain this to people, how do you define where the profit comes from when you're building a brand? That's a good question. Like I don't think there is ROI on branding. I mean the ROI is this is part of your start cost, your launch cost if we're talking brand identity. like this is part of your upfront. This is how much it costs to open the doors. Obviously, the ROI is do you make it back with within week one, week five,

00:45:02 - 00:46:28

week 575. That's not really up to me to answer that or help them answer that. I don't think different scenario if they came with a brief of hey we've got this epic formulation and we're about to launch this product we need to sell out of 10,000 SKs that's a little bit different. There's more tangible like numbers there that we can work with but that that's very rare. And I think if if a client is so set on ROI, it's our job to ask more questions to understand, well, what what do you

00:45:48 - 00:47:19

mean by that? I think a lot of the time they don't even know what ROI is. Well, we always ask this question as well, which is, you know, like what does success look like for you? I I also think to the point of ROI is if you're in it for the short term, then sure, whatever it costs to start, you want to see your money made back as quickly as possible. But I think for successful businesses or products to be on the market for years and to last, you have to reinvest back in. So it's just this constant cycle of

00:46:33 - 00:47:38

okay startup phase the marketing budget might be X which is always lean but then ongoing you can build on that because you know that it's like it's proving to work or not work which is also a scary thing and happens a lot. So yeah I think ROI is the devil. I I would say it's even near being a red flag for me when I'm talking to a client because when they start asking me the question like hey what's the ROI of doing this branding I'm like hang on a second this is the wrong question to be

00:47:06 - 00:48:08

asking right now like branding like you said is the barrier to entry like you need a good brand to crush it with content to look great to have people want to click things on your website it's kind of like it's having a nice store fit out it's like asking the question of like what's the ROI of a nice fit out in my store it's like well but the other side is I think and going back to You have to be creative but also commercial. So ROI is a very annoying benchmark and sort of phrase but there

00:47:36 - 00:49:00

are metrics and data that you can look at as a creative to understand if it's working. I I think it's important and I if I was the client, I would be reassured by my agency, my creative agency partner thinking about that and asking questions about that. But I don't think it's my responsibility to understand their product margin and P&L and ROI. I didn't sign up for that. Now, with people that are looking to approach uh an agency for support on their branding, what are some things that they should

00:48:18 - 00:49:50

have prepared beforehand? The the biggest problem that I see is when there are co-founders and they're not on the same page. They've come with the idea and they haven't actually spent the time unpacking how they want to unite behind the product and launch it. They're just on completely different pages on completely different planets sometimes. So that's really hard. I think you need to prepare being on the same page, which sounds really silly and really obvious, but the amount of partnerships and different

00:49:04 - 00:50:20

people in the room that, you know, some clients bring their moms on the call for an second opinion or their yeah, their boyfriends or whatever, which is great, but I don't think that's helpful to the creative process. I would agree. And it's actually quite frustrating because they're having these argu like these domestic arguments over. But you shouldn't do it like this. And you know, it's not really my job to sort that out. It's come with a clear vision and what you want. Be decisive.

00:49:42 - 00:50:47

If you've still got a lot of questions to answer, we can help you do that. But I think as a founder, you need a certain level of integrity and you have to be able to back yourself without sort of starting with so many questions. Totally. Cuz you're you're saying that like someone should come to you with a clear definitive at least vague direction like I don't know what house I'm going to live in, but it's this neighborhood. Yes. I don't know what street exactly. you will help me find

00:50:14 - 00:51:04

the street, but it's not south of, you know, you know, the bridge, it's north of the bridge, near the beach or what have you. They need to give you some vicinity of direction and understand that they have to honor the creative process. They can't just ad hoc bring their mom, boyfriend, someone in the background's chopping carrots and they're like, "What do you think of the logo?" Like, you need to bring them into the process. Also, do do your research, do your work. I think as a as a founder,

00:50:39 - 00:52:02

you have a responsibility to I mean yourself and anyone you're dragging into this big idea to know your stuff. Like don't waste people's time even if it is paid time. It's in their best interest to to have done their research if that makes sense. So, so like shifting kind of gears here, would you say that the rise of social media and the way people consume content and the way we tend to browse platforms like Tik Tok, Instagram, YouTube shorts? How has this shifted people's, I guess, directive when it comes to

00:51:21 - 00:52:41

brand strategy? I knew this question would come and I know you got the answers for this one, so I'm excited. I I think it like it's just a constant evolution for me as a founder. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I feel old now in terms of as we were saying before, Tik Tok didn't exist when I started my business. But now it's basically half of a marketing calendar if you're smart about it. I mean the states, the US has Tik Tok shop. We don't even have that in Australia. So

00:52:01 - 00:53:36

innovations happen a lot slower here as well. Does that buy us some time? Maybe. But it also means you have to be really prepared for when things do come and jump onto it really quickly. Also, the amount of reappropriating of content to fit the different platforms is crazy. I think back in, you know, ' 80s, '9s, before my time of actually doing this, you could come up with an amazing campaign and you would book the biggest billboard and if it slapped, it slapped. But now you have to have the viral Tik Tok lined

00:52:48 - 00:54:18

up, the billboard, the cool talent that aligns with the brand, the popup partnership that happens on the street corner, your creative mailer has to look sexy to stand out so influencers actually talk about your product. There are so many layers and that goes back to storytelling. Yeah. So I I think if in 2025 the brief was we need a tagline and we need to do a photo shoot and this is our product. I would almost be like well and then what what next? You can't I mean and also the audience we're

00:53:33 - 00:54:51

talking to younger generation we were talking about this before. They're so fickle. Their attention span is like I think it's six seconds on Tik Tok and they scroll next. That's six seconds to make a impact on the product launch what they're talking to. Also getting across information in a really clear way is hard in six seconds. It's a lot cuz cuz I remember sitting down with our team like a week ago and I was looking at like the social media statistics and it's like average view

00:54:12 - 00:55:25

time 4 seconds. I was like what? And if we get six we're like punching the ceiling. We're like hell yeah we got 6 seconds. I was like god this is crazy. Like how do you get someone's attention in 6 seconds? But I also think it's that ickyness about this time that we're in that it's all about the shock factor as well. We're all just creating things to disrupt and shock and go viral and be disruptive. Whereas sometimes the most beautiful campaigns and the ones that do resonate are the ones that actually do

00:54:49 - 00:56:05

make you think a little bit deeper and just stop and not have to have that chaos attached to it. Which again I sound old. It's that Tik Tok mentality of quick, fast, messy. It just anything goes. You just have to put it up. Yeah. Whereas you also need the considered piece as well. And I imagine someone like you and you're a lot like myself where you're trying to control the narrative, control the situation, guarantee some kind of outcome and help drive your client towards success when you're throwing mud

00:55:27 - 00:56:48

at the wall and you're like, let's just see what happens. Yeah. Feels a little crazy to me. But that's kind of where the market's at. But that goes back to you need a gun internal marketing team to be able to facilitate that because this the speed at which these platforms are moving and and changing. You can't rely on an agency partner to restrategize every time you launch a product or every time you want to reappropriate your content to fit a different channel. You need the person on it every day to see

00:56:06 - 00:57:35

the trend, see the viral moments, see who the latest face should be and partnership because XY Z happened and they make a great fit for the latest lipstick campaign. As an agency partner, you actually don't get that insight necessarily. I think as an agency partner, it's our job. Marketing teams can come to you with their idea and then you figure out how we're actually going to put it on the billboard, on Instagram, on Tik Tok, admlast.com. Like there are so many different channels.

00:56:51 - 00:57:52

Yeah, it's it's a collaboration. How do brands avoid then with with the climate that we're talking about, let's just say Tik Tok, six-second economy, um, everyone's flicking through their phones looking for the next disruptive thing. How do brands maintain integrity rather than looking schizophrenic and constantly jumping from trend to trend? I think finding your niche and just sticking with it. like we always use a few case studies in our sort of strategies to educate um the

00:57:22 - 00:58:49

brands that we work with of these are real success stories on that platform. For example, the customs offices in the US, I'm not sure if you've seen this, but their entire following, which is millions of people for a customs platform. Like, why do they even have an Tik Tok is kind of beyond. So, US Customs has their own social customs. Yeah. TGA, that's what they call it. Okay. Yep. All they post is dad jokes. like dorky dad jokes, dads on vacay, dads with annoying kids in custom lines,

00:58:06 - 00:59:36

and that's the way that they've built this following. It's got really nothing to do with national security of the United States. Yeah. Another example is um Nutter Butter, also from the US. Theirs is like late night cookies and sort of, you know, order your cookie at 2 a.m. when you're gaming when you're drunk and you you want that fix. And so their entire following, which I think is like over 5 million, is all about that Gen Z brain rot and just buzzing out and it's a cookie. like it doesn't have

00:58:50 - 01:00:09

anything to do. You hardly ever see the product in their content, but they've been able to engage their audience so much that f Yeah. 5.4 million people follow that account and it's all about just dirty, grungy teenager bedrooms basically. So that's Tik Tok. that that to me sums up that platform of you don't you don't post your big campaign there. You don't have to talk about everything there. Be specific. Um as opposed to you've got your more traditional platforms like your website,

00:59:29 - 01:00:36

Instagram, paid digital where of course you have to be acquiring top of funnel like talking to customers, educating them on promo, sales, things like that. Tik Tok is different when you're thinking about places like Tik Tok and you're trying to work with your clients for their thematics. And just to list some of the clients you've worked with here, um, you know, Butter Boy, Sephora, Afterpay, Bonds, Microsoft, Bumble, Tic Tac, and heaps more. You've got an enormous portfolio. What are some of the

01:00:04 - 01:01:32

things you look at with these short format platforms like Tik Tok to help them leverage a fan base instead of just talking about the products? How do you try to formulate a thing? Is it all about entertainment? Is it all about disruption or is it something else? Yeah, entertainment and disruption, but also community. I think the nature of that platform is that it's it's built around UGC userenerated content. For example, with the Butter Boy store, one opened and all of a sudden a video of a soft serve ice cream went viral

01:00:47 - 01:02:04

because a customer asked to put that on top of their cookie and then they got it and squeezed it and it went everywhere. That wasn't a planned thing necessarily by the brand, but seeing the views go up by the millions, you then start to think, hang on, this could be a cult product. So then cleverly flipping the narrative of come and get the soft serve and the cookie. It's it was almost created by the customer because they're telling you what they want to what they want on the shelf because they're they're creating content

01:01:26 - 01:02:50

right there and there. They buy the cookie and then they take the video. It's almost the best insight into market research that you could ever have. Same as a beauty product, going from in store, swatching it at home, mixing it with some random cleanser that wasn't necessarily part of the brand's repertoire, it goes viral. And then if the brand's clever enough, they'll formulate the next cleanser 2.0 to be exactly what the customer created the content about. So I think it's it's it's like a two-way

01:02:07 - 01:03:10

street as well. So if in the case something is sensationalized and goes viral, trying to find a way to leverage that, it's innovation. Innovate off that opportunity. Yeah. And in the case where people don't yet have a strategy or haven't yet even attempted to tackle social media, what are some of the things that you tend to look for to help formulate at least a beginning point to jump off with where to start? I think community that comes back to who's your customer that you're

01:02:39 - 01:04:05

if you've got your product, who's that pro who who is the product designed for? And then going deeper than just asking, well, where are they? What do they do? What what's their hobby? Where do they live? Who do they hang out with? What are they ordering as a coffee order in the morning? what's their weird niche that they're into? Run clubs have been a huge case study for that. Um, seeing brands sort of rally behind fitness niches, sport has been massive off the back of obviously the Olympics last

01:03:21 - 01:04:44

year, but I think that's community building. And if brands can somehow find a relevance in that, then it suddenly becomes more than just a product that they're buying. It's, oh, I made a friend through that. I know the people in the comments in the Instagram post. I when there's a consumer event, I know that Sally and Sarah will show up and all of a sudden the brand has fostered that friendship. Yeah. Content off the back of that is authentic. I think I think it's really interesting because when you when you're

01:04:04 - 01:05:00

thinking about Tik Tok and these platforms, it just seems that every five minutes things are changing and the flywheels onto the next thing and then when you catch up, it's already moved ahead. So, by hiring this younger person, you're kind of giving yourself someone who's on the bleeding edge to internally criticize like something's icky or cringe, like we need to flip it, change it, adapt it, and just constantly try to push ourselves to be up to speed with where the market is, rather than

01:04:32 - 01:06:01

letting the market get too far ahead of us and start to stagnate and then lose market share. to that point of I I would assume back in the day like we were saying the 80s 90s it was really led from the top creative was very sacred it was all this is the CDs tagline and they all had to agree that it was good it's kind of flipped and tumbled and ideas can come from the junior or the social media exec or the most random rogue person in the room, the the baker at Butter Boy. And that could be the most genius

01:05:16 - 01:06:20

campaign idea, but it's still the responsibility for the creative director or the senior creative agency partner to know how to execute it and know when to go and when to stop. If that makes sense. Totally makes sense. Now, would you say that a founder's job is to if they don't have this team member, you got to do it yourself? And if you don't want to do it yourself, you got to hire someone. But you can't live in purgatory of like, well, I can't hire someone right now and

01:05:49 - 01:07:04

I don't have the time to do it. Someone has to do it. I know that. And that's always the hard part. And as you know, it comes back to budgets. When you're growing a business and a brand and a product, it's not necessarily the priority to hire this social media gone. It's you you have to put money back into formulation to actual product getting on shelves or on the freight to land on shore to be able to sell it. I understand you wouldn't have a business if you couldn't spend the money on that.

01:06:25 - 01:07:44

But I'm I think when we're assembling the creative army or the marketing and brand army, those people that are in the trenches on the accounts, behind the comments, in the DMs are your closest that you're getting to your customer outside of being behind a cash register or a point of sale. So they really matter and their voices need to be heard. They're not just junior social media people. So there needs to be a healthy balance between kind of the old school way of thinking and like the new

01:07:05 - 01:08:18

school tactics, a blend of the two. If if you were to say the market right now and where it sits and how it's moving into more of an AIdriven economy, Yes. would you say who's most at risk here? Is it the brand entering the market kind of entering you know red water or like a ocean of sharks eating each other or is it the big incumbent brands that have stood the test of time who are at most risk of AI? Who's at most risk of getting torn up by the market? The person entering the market or the

01:07:42 - 01:09:23

incumbent brand who's been around for a decade or two? I I think it could be either. It's how are they using these tools and platforms and and embracing the innovations of AI and what that looks like for their industry and market versus knowing how to still humanize it as well. AI is a funny thing for creatives because I have half of my design team who hate it thinking they've replaced us. The robots are, you know, coming for my job versus the ones that can have trained that robot so well that they can

01:08:32 - 01:09:50

spit out images at a faster pace. We can create branding presentations way quicker, way easier, at a cost, more cost effective budget as well because we're relying on technology. It's a balance though. I don't think they're replacing the human thinking and creativity. I think it's interesting. But what's what's been your take, your personal opinion on AI in the creative space? I think it's that of it's really interesting to see people either completely deny it and be haters versus

01:09:12 - 01:10:50

the ones that are embracing the innovation and becoming really savvy. But I think it's a balance. I I think as a creative inherently I'm attracted to things that are, you know, visual. It's random. It's rogue. It's all subjective. It it comes from just, you know, a picture of an aesthetic, which is really hard for AI to conjure up. So, I don't necessarily feel threatened by it, but I think we need to use it a lot if we're going to keep up. And also, it as I said, it really helps with

01:10:00 - 01:10:58

resources. It can be another team member if you if you know how to train it properly. Do you think that the the component of that is not because the let's just say the the rationale behind the strategy may be g from AI then the founder has to then drive that and they have to understand it and they have to inherently know it. They can't just look at text on a page and go cool got it I'll roll it out like they have to deeply and innately embody that to succeed in the market anyway. Well, it

01:10:29 - 01:12:13

kind of goes back to, you know, in the.com era when it all launched when user gen like user computers, the Apple, the Macintosh came about. It's not like they replaced the human thinking. Humans were still behind it and designing and Photoshop still needs taste and a subjective I want to put this there and organization of ideas and visuals but it's allowing us to be quicker and more efficient with our resources. Yeah. What are the biggest misconceptions business owners have about branding and what it can actually

01:11:22 - 01:12:46

do for their business? I think the the biggest misconception about branding is that, hey, I've got a really sexy brand. Of course, it's going to be successful. That's not the case at all. We we all know of brands that have failed that looked pretty good on the shelf. They looked good in the packet. They had a shiny appeal to it. They weren't doing anything necessarily wrong. But it goes back to it's deeper than that. And it has to be married up with your packaging looks amazing. Your brand, your logos, you've

01:12:04 - 01:13:30

got an epic marketing calendar lined up. But if you don't have any product innovation in the pipelines, if you don't have any exciting sort of community events that you're organizing around that, it gets flat really quickly. And it's more than just a logo. Going back to our original our original sort of chat around I don't think a brand is a logo. It's it is more than that. Now moving to disruption. When people say this and we hear this all the time like we want to build a

01:12:47 - 01:14:03

brand that gives people confidence and we want to do it with authenticity and integrity and disrupt and innovate. These are like popularized buzzwords that people tend to throw out. Yeah. What do you believe it truly means to actually innovate and to actually disrupt in the world of branding? That's a it's a good question because I think what what do you measure measure success off? To me, I don't come from a traditional like design background. I didn't study that at university. I'd never worked in

01:13:25 - 01:15:00

corporate. I never worked for someone else. So to me, things like awards and design accolades don't really mean much. Yeah. I don't I couldn't actually tell you the the ones that you know you need to have on your portfolio to be known for that. But I think a legacy can be built based off successful brands that you've been behind and that just comes with portfolio and growing that in different sort of categories. Why is indecision often the demise for a founder? That's such a loaded question.

01:14:12 - 01:15:34

Again, this whole podcast, but I have it out of guess. If you're just taking a stab in the dark, you're like, usually it's X because indecision is means slow and slow does not survive in 2025. You you have to move quickly. You can't wait around for a thousand rounds of edits, feedback because you shot the campaign last week and it has to go live next week or your entire idea is redundant if it doesn't you there's no room to sit around and ask questions and question it again and

01:14:53 - 01:16:01

again. I think it also goes back to the best founders back their ideas and the ones that are indecisive, it's a sign of second-guessing and being unsure about what they're doing. And I always think that's a red flag and it's a red flag for their team because it's like, well, exactly. This person can't make a simple decision as to like who they're targeting their product to. Yeah. That they spent $100,000 formulating. You have to go with your gut as a founder. If you don't have that gut feeling,

01:15:28 - 01:16:59

then you'll start to listen to the wrong people as well. And I think there's a you have to be protective of your Yeah. your board, your creative board as well. Curate your circle and make sure the people that are in that bubble truly understand what you're trying to do. Yeah. And I think also there's a difference between being an arrogant know-it-all versus just being sure about what you want and confidence. Basically, when this is all said and done and your business is at scale, how would you like to be

01:16:12 - 01:18:00

remembered in this industry? That's a hard question. I think to be known for ideas and creative support and guidance around successful brands. And I think the the key word there is successful because you can work on a thousand brands a year, but if you're not leaving a creative legacy on the table, whether that is through showing how you've you've supported scale in a business from founding it launch to market to selling the founders eventually selling it one day. or being able to show that you survive

01:17:07 - 01:18:39

different I think stages in growth as well what we were talking about before of the launch phase is the hard the the easy and the exciting phase but if you can prove that you've been with that brand from launch through toddler adolescence adult and then through different ownership phases is that to me is success. If you could put a billboard all across the world, what would it say and why? I always say to my team and my friends and my siblings, and I think I learned this off my dad, of there's no such

01:17:52 - 01:19:18

thing as a free lunch. Yeah. Okay. There's there's a few meanings to that, I think. Contra is the devil. I think time you need to be paid for your time and you need to know how to pay properly for the right people for that service or whatever you need to get done. And I think you would know this, but in our industry, there's a lot of favors that happen and get asked. And that's where the line gets blurred between What's the scope? What's the responsibility? But no, this is my

01:18:35 - 01:20:01

scope. This is my role. And I will promise you that I can execute on this, but this is the price. It's not coming for free. And I don't want product in exchange. I just want money because that's not paying the team's salaries or the overheads and what it costs to open an agency door. Like it's not a hobby. It's a business. And I think a lot of founders especially like founder operators always pull in their friends and family to go, "Oh, but we can get it from them. We can call up

01:19:17 - 01:20:30

a favor. It never works. You need your startup costs, your capital, all all of your ducks in a row to really know what it's costing you to launch this thing. It's not just a hobby for everyone. Yeah. It's like you're launching a business here. It's a business. And when you talk to people about their bee hag or their big hairy ass goal, they're like, "We want a $100 million exit." And you're like, "Cool. It's gonna cost you 60, 70, 80 grand to brand this thing."

01:19:55 - 01:21:18

And you have to be cool with that. No one's ever made a million not spending a couple hundred grand. No one's ever made 100 million, not spending millions on marketing. And I think that's it's definitely especially as a female founder I found throughout the years you get haggled and drilled on price and people will always question your rate cards thinking I can get them down how can we just shave off the edges how can we tweak the quote but whenever I've done that and you try

01:20:34 - 01:21:57

to discount or do favors or or try to I think be creative with the the budget, it always comes back to bite you. Why? I think it's that mentality of at the end of the day, it's a business that an agency runs and you've got x amount of overheads to resource the people and the tools that you need to do your job. It doesn't just happen for free. Hence, there's no such thing as a free lunch ever. I love that. I'm stealing that for sure. Now, for you personally, what's a door that you need to kick in right now

01:21:17 - 01:23:00

to take your business to the next level? Have a baby. I think that's going to happen. Get get through that. Um, we I think there's there's always what are our shiny big long-term goals and we'll we always have them. I think that's the fun part about being a business owner and a founder is you're in the control center. You can come up with ideas and you can pivot and steer and turn and act and achieve things. It's all basically reliant on if you have that vision, you can decide to

01:22:10 - 01:23:31

do it. And then there's the short-term things. So keeping team inspired, building the right team around you to be able to facilitate that growth. It doesn't just one day you wake up and you've doubled the turnover and you've suddenly got a bigger office and you have all of these bells and whistles that come with it. It's slow. I think people underestimate the the nature of how slowly the burn is to get the bigger things that people see from the outside. Does that totally agree? sort of makes

01:22:50 - 01:23:51

sense. Totally makes sense because it's like like I've I've found it like when people are messaging me now because we're now we're now starting to get quite a lot of traction and a claim and it's like dude I've been doing this for six years and like hundreds of calls where clients like prove yourself to me and only now it's like they're like love your portfolio excited for you to jump in on this project but like the slow burn and the sheer ignorance and like stubbornness you need

01:23:20 - 01:24:32

to kind of push through this market as a brand in historically what's been done from other agencies for decades. Yeah. You know, I I can only imagine we're sharing similar battles where it's like we're coming up against these bigger agencies and we're trying to like carve our own path and they're not making it easy. No. But but I also think at the end of the day, the the biggest agency in Australia and the most boutique have the same amount of hours in a day. So the playing field is sort of even.

01:23:58 - 01:25:30

That's a great argument. I think if you can show up with better ideas and more efficient ways to execute on budget, resources, time, they're going to pick the smaller agency. Yeah, I found that as well because, you know, people love the up and cominging agency versus the massive one that's been doing it for decades. Yeah. I always think that there's a sense of legacy that will always be surrounding those. And I don't I don't think I would ever want Hatrick House to become an agency where you have to have

01:24:44 - 01:26:07

whole teams assembled for huge retainers that you lose sleep over at night. That's not really why I do this. And that's really old school. But I think there's something really exciting about disrupting that that way. And just because it's been done forever, it doesn't mean that it has to be the way that brands execute. In fact, everything we've just spoken about, those large agencies often can't facilitate a Tik Tok account or a small campaign in the way that we could.

01:25:27 - 01:27:05

So yeah, love it. Last question. Why do you do this? What do you get out of building brands? I I love coming up with ideas and building things. I've I always have even since I was small. I think my mom always told me that always reminds me that even when I was younger, I was building Lego houses and weird contraptions for my siblings to come in, whether it was a fake hotel or a fake grocery store that I would have everything set up and sell to imaginary customers, and I would do projects for her and just present them

01:26:15 - 01:27:42

because I liked doing And I think studying through university and and I think that side of the brain is so important and I I think you have to be smart about it and commercial about it. But coming up with the creative is what gets me up in the morning. Like imagery, visuals, aesthetics, and then tying it all together. Brilliant. I love that. And I love your passion for the space. I love that you hate do brands. I love that you want to do original work and that you think um if a client can't back themselves that

01:26:59 - 01:28:00

they're a red flag. Yeah. Be warned. I I really appreciate you being here. Um I know that you have a tremendous amount on your plate. Um and I'm just grateful. I I love everyone in our industry and it's really great to hear from someone who's sharing similar experiences and I'm a huge fan of your work. You're clearly excellent at what you do and I'm inspired by you and I think that you've got an exceptional team, a wonderful business and I'm only excited to see

01:27:29 - 01:28:43

what you guys do next. Um, thank you for having me. feel very yeah I think it's important to talk about this stuff collaboratively and know that as an agency as a fellow agency fellow brand building lover that yes you could see each other and all of us as competitors but it's not really like that I don't see it that way at all I agree I always have an affinity towards like hey we're in the same industry cool like we obviously have a similar passion I'm a I'm a huge fan of of networking with

01:28:06 - 01:28:13

those in the same space. [Music]