Episode 75: How to destroy your brand

Sophie Peterson  00:03

Welcome to the CIM Marketing Podcast. The contents and views expressed by individuals in the CIM Marketing Podcast are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of the companies they work for. We hope you enjoy the episode.

 

Ben Walker  00:18

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the CIM Marketing Podcast. And today we're joined by a very popular guest, with us for the third time and to celebrate the publication of his third book, and that is Mr. Dan White. How are you sir?

 

Dan White  00:33

I'm very well Thanks, Ben. And, you know, thank you so much for having me back a third time, I'm privileged.

 

Ben Walker  00:40

It is your third book, isn't it? The Smart Branding Book doing very well very popular with marketers, The Smart Branding Book. But here's the thing. Dan isn't with us today to tell us how to do a bit of Smart Branding. He is here today to tell us how to destroy a brand, which presumably isn't the point of your book. Now.

 

Dan White  01:03

It's not it's not the point of the book. But it's a nice way, I think, I hope of illustrating some of the key points in the book, because that's where it's quite easy to destroy your brand if you don't know what you're doing.

 

Ben Walker  01:17

But one thing I sort of took from earlier discussions with you is that sometimes we can destroy a brand, when we think we do know what we're doing, it can sometimes be us thinking we're doing the right thing that can lead us down the wrong path. You know, they say that the road to hell can very often be paved with good intentions, the mantras that we as marketers, often hold dear, you say can sometimes actually serve to actually damage our brand? Not to make it as your book says smarter.

 

Dan White  01:44

Yeah, no, that makes sense. But there are a lot of things that people say and do in marketing, that on the surface make complete sense. You know, they're very intuitively sensible, but they're not necessarily all right. And I'm a big fan of starting with the data, starting with the academic robust evidence about the topic to make sure that we're not just doing it, because that's the way it's always done. But doing it because it's the right thing to do.

 

Ben Walker  02:11

Yeah, it's interesting. So I'm gonna throw, I'm gonna throw some at you, I'm going to put you on the spot today Dan, I'm gonna throw some of these mantras at you and you're going to tell me actually how they can end up backfiring, how they can actually end up destroying our brand in extreme cases, if we don't do them properly. So here we go. Keep your brand fresh and dynamic.

 

Dan White  02:34

Make sense? I suppose, doesn't it? You know, fresh, dynamic, sounds modern, relevant, etc. But tell me, Ben, when you say that, what kind of things might you want to get rid of in order to move on? You know, what, what do you mean by fresh and dynamic or new.

 

Ben Walker  02:55

New, bright, unexpected, innovative, surprising.

 

Dan White  03:00

And all of those things you just said, are excellent characteristics to grab people's attention. So yeah, when it comes to developing communications, for example, you need to do something new and different to some extent. But quite often, when people talk about refreshing the brand, you know, relaunching the band, which is a phrase that always gives me shudders, it can often mean changing the logo, or the slogan, or the brand character or some some other distinctive brand asset. And that is how you can easily destroy a brand.

 

Ben Walker  03:36

So actually, the examples aren't there of history I'm sure you can give us some, where they've gone down very expensive and prolonged brand refreshes. And what they've actually done is cause brand confusion or brand visibility.

 

Dan White  03:50

Yeah and often they have to rewrite, you know, reverse their decision. In fact, I mean, I won't. I mean, there are cliches there are ones that are cited all the time, but it's worth knowing these ones because you learn a lot from them. The Tropicana packaging fiasco in 2009 is possibly the most famous, you have a logo that is very familiar. You have a device with an orange with a straw sticking in it, which is wonderful because it conveys so much about the naturalness of the product etc. Suddenly goes overnight, and the brand suffers badly. And people who begin with normally bought Tropicana they go into the store, they can't find it, they're not going to seek it. people overestimate brand loyalty, don't they? So I can't find my normal brand, I haven't tried this other brand for a while I'll give it a go. Of course it tastes perfectly lovely. There's a lost customer.

 

Ben Walker  04:49

People do overestimate brand loyalty, particularly with people doing things which they don't particularly like doing often which is walking around a supermarket.

 

Dan White  04:55

When you go out of supermarket, you're usually in a hurry. because you have to afterwards, you need to go and pick up the kids and you've only got half an hour that you haven't got time to spend too long looking for, for a brand. In fact, people don't do very, very, very rarely do they actually actively seek out a brand, if it's not easily available.

 

Ben Walker  05:17

So it's interesting, isn't it? Okay, I'm gonna throw another one at you Dan I'm not going to let you rest on your laurels. Focus on loyalty among your existing customer base.

 

Dan White  05:28

That makes a lot of sense, doesn't that mean, they already love you, they love you, they're using you, they're a customer, make sure they don't go, you'll be fine. But that is a really bad way of thinking. And actually, we know from the work from Ehrenberg Bass Institute, in every category they've looked at, there is a huge amount of churn of customers. And when you think about it, there are lots of reasons that are outside of your control. Why someone who bought you last time might not buy you next time. I mean, life stage is a big one, you know, as we evolve in our life, certain products and categories become relevant, more relevant, less relevant over time, income is a big one, you know, we can buy the deluxe brands, but if we lose our job, things change. You know, there are always factors that drive that and especially in the competitive market, it's quite easy for a competitor to grab someone's attention. And, and for them to switch their allegiances. In fact, that there wasn't much allegiance to start with it was just to buy the other one because it sounds good. So you will always lose a certain proportion of your recent bias over time, and if you don't keep topping up that leaky bucket, your brand will decline. And the evidence is so clear.

 

Ben Walker  05:28

Can demographics often work against you? If you're if you're trying to rigidly hold on to your existing customer base people grow old, they could become richer and become poorer. Some of them some of them leave us entirely without putting too fine a point on it. And actually, you've you've got this analogy of a leaky budget, there's a desperation to hold on to what we have, you're saying can sometimes preclude our efforts to actually get hold of new stuff?

 

Dan White  07:20

Well, yeah, because sometimes you can't hold on, like you said, there are factors beyond your control. That means you can't always cling on to people who bought you recently. So you're gonna have to continually make sure that you have more people attracted and aware of your brand that come into your brand.

 

Ben Walker  07:35

So holding on to your loyal customer base is a dangerous assumption.

 

Dan White  07:39

Yeah, it's a really dangerous way of thinking in almost in almost every case, actually.

 

Ben Walker  07:46

This one, surely you don't have a contrary answer for it sounds absolutely obvious, but I'm going to give it you anyway. To maximise the return on investment from your advertising.

 

Dan White  08:00

Sounds good. Of course, who doesn't want to get the maximum return from wherever they invest In their advertising? But Ben, do you know what the best amount to spend is, in order to maximise the ROI from your advertising?

 

Ben Walker  08:19

Ummmmm, because I know you better than I should. I'm gonna have a crack at it. Is it zero pounds and zero pence?

 

Dan White  08:26

You're close. Now, come on. It's a return. It can't be zero. That's mathematically impossible. Yeah, yeah. But you're right. A penny. Yeah, exactly. The best return you can possibly get is to spend as little as possible because, you know, there are some nuances. But essentially, the more you spend, as you spend more you get a diminishing return. You know, there's a bit of nuance early on in the curve, you know, when some econometricians believe one thing and some companies, others but, but generally, if you spend more, the latest spend has less of an incremental effect than the earliest spend on on all key dimensions. This fundamentally means if you want to maximise your ROI, you spend very, very little, but your brand is likely to suffer as a result. That leads us to the concept of you know how to set an appropriate marketing budget.

 

Ben Walker  09:29

Yeah, I mean, this is interesting, this curve isn't your what you're saying you get an explosion at the beginning of your initial expenditure, go from zero to something, and that leap is significant and noticeable. Then of course, as an economist will always say the law of diminishing returns kicks in so the more you spend the additional gain, you get slowly diminishes per pound spent, but I was gonna before you go to explain to me about setting the right budget. What I was thinking is well, yes, but God is in the margins, isn't it when you're talking about taking an edge in business, you've got to get somewhere high up that curve, presumably, so you can beat your competitors with that small edge because everybody else is doing the same thing.

 

Dan White  10:11

Yeah, that is the key point. It's about the competition. You know, I think that the the learning from Burnett and Field is crucial here. And I know we've touched on this before, which is, you know, as a really rough rule of thumb, if you want to maintain where you are in an existing market an, existing brand an existing market, your share of spend has to be roughly in line with your share of market. If you spend less than this your ratio is lower, you are likely to decline and if it's higher, you are more likely to grow. So already, you know that your maximum ROI, which would be a lower spend almost in every case, would probably kill your brand because your competitors will outspend you.

 

Ben Walker  10:55

Yeah. So as you while you're counting your high levels of return on investment, you're slowly but surely losing market share until eventually, you might go bust.

 

Dan White  11:06

Exactly.

 

Ben Walker  11:07

So maximising your return on investment is a good way of destroying your brand. You heard it here first.

 

Dan White  11:16

Ben, this is feeling more and more like Room 101, the more we go on.

 

Ben Walker  11:20

But it is sort of a Room 101 for marketers isn't it is we're being asked by financial directors, and so on and so forth to do all of these things. We're trying to make a case back as marketers, as marketing departments, or even as marketing agencies as to why we shouldn't approach things in this one, you're actually it's Room 101 can be useful, because it tells us what not to do. I'm going to stick with advertising for a little bit and come to another mantra that we often hear, um, spend on advertising that shows clear sales responses, you know, that shows clear conversions from the advertising. That to me sounds like the height of logic and common sense.

 

Dan White  12:04

Yeah, in other words, spend on what you can prove has worked, you know, you've got some very clear evidence, you spent the money, you got this out return, focus on whatever that was. There is a big problem, though, with that way of thinking. And that is because it's about short term versus long term. You know, if you go by that mantra, you would always continue to invest most of your money in what I guess most people call activation advertising. Advertising, that's often near the point of sale, that triggers existing brand memories, and get you to actually buy it there and then that increases your sales. And if you get that sales response, you say, well, I'm gonna put all my money into doing that kind of advertising, which is often you know, quite quick, quite short exposures, things that just leverage or what's the word capitalise on existing mental structures that you've built over the years for your brand.

 

Ben Walker  13:07

I'm getting mental images of your sayings, I'm thinking of the Domino's campaign where they advertise just before the start of a football match to say order now, to get up half time. That's the ultimate example is that they want an immediate return.

 

Dan White  13:20

Yeah. And if they do a quick yodel at the end, even better, just to remind you, oh, yeah, I like them they're good. Exactly.

 

Ben Walker  13:27

And the pizza brands are, of course available, I should say. But anyway,

 

Dan White  13:31

Um, but the trouble is that kind of, you know, short exposure advertising, it doesn't add to the the mental connection to your brand, it doesn't, you know, strengthen them or add a new layer and make your brand more memorable for years to come. So what it's really doing is leveraging and exploiting the brand associations that are already in people's heads. But it's not adding to those. It's not increasing them. It's not building, building them, which is fine in the short term, but in the long term, it means the brand is going to be less memorable and less able to, to generate those sales in the first place.

 

Ben Walker  14:09

Yeah, so you've got to do the groundwork in order for the instant stuff to work essentially.

 

Dan White  14:14

Exactly and in fact, it can take years or, and a lot of money to build those kinds of what we call them distinctive brand assets. And it's those distinctive brand assets and memories about the brand that you can then leverage in your activation. So you have to do the two under the rule of thumb, and it is only an average, if you like, but it's still useful, I think, is that from Bidett and Field again, suggesting that the optimum ratio for the longer term is to have about 60% on brand building, and only 40% on the activation side.

 

Ben Walker  14:49

Right. So that's interesting. So when you're next told as marketers to make sure you're only spending on advertising that shows clear and instant conversion rates. Remember Dan's words there that actually you'd actually be probably only about 40% of what you're doing. And then the rest is brand building.

 

Dan White  15:05

Ben, just it's worth saying that, of course, for the brand building sign of it, you are taking a little bit of a leap of faith because you can't measure its effect, quickly, you have to wait a year, or two or more or less sometimes to be able to establish the long term effect that you did have. So there is an element of taking it on faith.

 

Ben Walker  15:27

Interesting, interesting, which of course, is sometimes what we as marketers have to struggle with in our organisations is that sometimes we're not able to prove certainly not instantly that what we're doing is gonna have effect. But that doesn't mean it's not worth doing.

 

Dan White  15:40

No. And there are still things you can do that to illustrate the kinds of things we're doing are the characteristics are connected with the kind of activity that does work in the long term. So you won't be able to prove it through econometrics yet, but you know that this is where market research can be very powerful. It's a yeah, but it's ticking all the boxes that are highly correlated with long term success. So research becomes very powerful as part of the business case.

 

Ben Walker  16:07

there's some really good insights there about mantras about advertising and how they can destroy your brand if you're not careful. Let's move on to a different topic. Avoid innovations that cannibalise your most profitable products.

 

Dan White  16:23

Make sense, doesn't it? I mean, if you're making money out of certain other products, why on earth would you introduce something completely new, that would cannibalise all of that. But of course, there was always about your competitor might, in fact, in a competitive market, your competitors will at some point, probably almost certainly discover what it is that you've hidden under the carpet. In fact, there is a very famous case example of this. The most famous of all, is Kodak, Kodak, Kodak a brand well, the brand did die, it has rarely been resurrected in the new guise, but it did go bust a while ago.

 

Ben Walker  17:03

I should say for people who don't know me, because you may not have seen me you heard me is that I'm a I'm a vintage of a generation to which Kodak was a massive brand. And some of our younger listeners, Dan, I daresay may not have heard of it. But in back in the days in the 80s and 90s It was the biggest photographic brand they were the they were the top top top dogs when you went and got your films for your cameras and there and of course lies the tail films for your cameras and went through a period where there now is it fair to say down much less known or

 

Dan White  17:36

Well, almost extinct, but came back in a slighly different guise. Yeah, actually, there's a bit of a tail here but my my mother, no longer with us sadly, but my mother worked in the Kodak shop, there were actual shops all around the country, Kodak shops and keen photographers like my dad would go to the shops, and they spend a lot of money on buying films, different types of, you know, old fashioned films and slide films to put in their cameras. And they'd also go back to by paper so that they could print produce prints either at home or Kodak would do that for you. And all the chemicals that requires and that's why Kodak made all their money from the the film's the paper and the chemicals. Essentially a bit likr ICI, you know they made again, a brand that no one's heard of so sorry.

 

Ben Walker  18:32

No, no, no, no, no, this this is great, because it kind of is I think it's going to prove the point that you're about to make is that these mega brands and Kodak I think it's fair to say was a mega brand.

 

Dan White  18:42

Huge brand, all around the world. Yeah.

 

Ben Walker  18:45

And you're gonna tell us what happened.

 

Dan White  18:48

Exactly. So what happened was in 1975, one of codecs engineers called Steve Sasson, he invented what is essentially the digital camera. So they have r&d department, like all the company should have to think about the next big thing in their area. And he came up with the camera and he, he took this prototype, this concept to the management of Kodak at the time in in 1975. And of course, they thought this was amazing and ingenious. But they told Steve, not to tell anyone about it, right? Essentially, because they said, Well, if this takes off, we will make no money from our film, our paper and our chemicals. So it was buried. But of course, we know you know, the rest is history, as they say, companies like Canon and Nikon. You know, soon after that also discovered this, this idea of digital photography. And of course now those brands actually dominate the photography market.

 

Ben Walker  19:54

So there's a really interesting paradox here because my original question to you was to avoid innovations that would cannibalise your most profitable product. And of course, what happens is this Steve chap, he did the opposite of that, because he innovated something which he knew would cannibalise his product and then took it took it to his bosses and they said to him, No, you will cannibalise that product, which at that point, perhaps seemed like a logical tactic if not a strategy. But what you're saying is that the trouble is that somebody else is going to invent it down the line, in which case it was competitors.

 

Dan White  20:27

They will they will Blockbusters, what's another example, made a lot of money out of their, their rental market, you know, VHS and DVD rentals from stores. But Netflix came in with a streaming service that did something similar in a very different very different way, a disruptive model. And that's the kind of disruption that can change the fate of a brand, of course, Blockbusters, I don't I don't think it has come back in any guise has it anyway, I'm pretty sure it's no more. There are lots of examples. But I think weirdly enough, Netflix had already pivoted its business before that. It used to DVD postal rentals as I...

 

Ben Walker  21:11

I remember.

 

Dan White  21:12

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. So they did that but they realised there was an opportunity to use the technology to disrupt the whole market. And they succeeded, of course.

 

Ben Walker  21:22

So what this is a story about disruption is if you discover something that will disrupt your own business, don't try to hide it away, embrace it, and run with it. Patent it, because somebody else is going to discover it very soon after and do it to you.

 

Dan White  21:37

I'm actually very proud of something I was involved in when I worked at Cantar. Oh, yeah. Which is Cantar, one of their biggest sellers, most successful products, is the pre testing system called Link advertising pre testing system called Link. And we realised that you could do a fully automated version of this using new technologies, which would bring down the cost and the price dramatically wouldn't be as good in terms of the depth that you can provide through a lot of human artistry. But it was a disruptive technology. And I'm proud that I was one of the champions to push that technology so that we did it rather than being taken over by competitors that did it back in the day. So that's a good example, I used to I used to joke and say, you know, cannibalism, like people who say, Oh, we can't do anything, if it cannibalises. And I say, don't you use the C word? It's not that funny. I know. But it made an impact. You know, it's, it's  cannibalising yourself is probably what you have to do. If there's a new technology that someone else could could use against you.

 

Ben Walker  22:51

You have to do it, because then you're going to be the one that adopts it, and you're to get first mover advantage.

 

Dan White  22:56

Exactly why give the first mover advantage to someone else. And if that means you have to reshape your business, then you have to reshape your business, it's going to happen anyway, you might end up having to be a smaller company, at a higher margin, using this new way a new business model, but so be it. That's business.

 

Ben Walker  23:14

Sometimes it's just interesting point. This isn't because sometimes, presumably, as a user of a legacy technology, or as a successful user of legacy technology, you are presumably very well placed to disrupt because you know, what the new disruptive technology needs to be able to do to compete.

 

Dan White  23:32

You know, better than anywhere else, you know, the market. And also, you probably have more existing customers who would be quite happy to, to be exposed to this better way of doing the thing and very glad that you came to them with it. So that was my pitch, I used to go to clients and say, I can you know, help you do something almost as good as you used to do for a third of the price does that sound good? And then when I like you, and I'll stick with you, because that's exactly what we want our partners to do to bring better ways of doing business to us. Otherwise we'll move somewhere else.

 

Ben Walker  24:07

So there you go. There's a contrary insight from Dan White, cannibalise your own product category of course, all when it's make make a rod for your own back, shoot yourself in the foot. Choose your own idiom, all of these sound bad but are good.

 

Dan White  24:21

Ben you're going too far but yeah I like your sentiment.

 

Ben Walker  24:24

I like going too far. This one, I'm sure you're not going to have a smart answer for them. It sounds you know is pretty obviously correct as far as I can see, but I'm gonna give it a go anyway. Build brand sales early on and focus on profitability once your brand is established.

 

Dan White  24:49

Well, it kind of makes it but there is one big factor that means that that could work. There's one which I guess you call economies of scale, right? As in, as you build your business and get more and more users and more and more, you'll produce more and more of your product, if it is a product or, or deliver your service wider, you could quite often enjoy economies of scale. And yes, that that I guess it makes sense. But the thing is, if you what is the data, you've got to look at the data, there was an amazing paper that came out about a year ago called questioning the growth dogma, a replication study. I won't try and pronounce the the two authors, but it came out in February 2022 okay. And it basically, it was a huge study and it backs up other academic studies that says that, actually brands that start off with low profit and just grow, grow, grow, grow, very, very rarely end up being star performers. In other words, they rarely become high profit, high growth brands. However, brands that start off high profit in a in a small contained way, have a much better chance of then expanding. And I think it makes sense to me in that if you've got something wonderful that a group of people, a small group of people to start with think is incredible and are prepared to pay for, you know, you're making a high profit, because you can charge a high amount, you're making a big margin, then if you can then scale that often geographically, that's the best common way of scaling, you're onto a winner. You start in a small part of one town, Ben and Jerry's did this by the way, they started off in, in in a town and then they went to the next town. And then they had two more towns, and then they went across the US, and then they went to Europe, and then they went global. That's a brilliant way of doing it. Because you know, you've got something people that special that people will pay a premium for. The other way round is really risky, because it could be your rapid growth is only because you're too cheap. You you're giving it away.

 

Ben Walker  27:02

For free is the case with many techs, of course, yes.

 

Dan White  27:05

At the moment, weirdly enough, I'm obviously enjoying a Chat GPT, which is currently free. And I'm trying to make hay while it is still free. But at some point, you know, okay, there are exceptions. Maybe maybe that will be the exception. We will wait and see. But yeah, generally you need a model that has worked at a small scale. And then expand it. I mean. I know it's I know, it's an overused example, but Dove is incredible. The Dove brand, between 1957 and 1995, that's 38 years, they start basically with one product, the bar, the cleansing bar, yep. They took it from the US to Europe and global, same route. And it wasn't till 1995 that they expanded into other areas.

 

Ben Walker  27:52

Other, cosmetics of the cosmetic.

 

Dan White  27:54

Yeah, shower gels was first shampoo then. And again, it's still amongst the same target audience, mainly mainly women. But they did it geographically, because they made a good profit from the cleanser that funded the expansion and it funded the r&d into child gels and shampoos. And it wasn't until I think it was 2010 when they actually started to attract a new target audience, which is Dove Men and Care was the brand. Yeah. And then 2017 It was Dove baby. Yeah. So 38 years making one thing, selling one thing very profitably, because it's brilliant. Because it doesn't dry your skin like soap can or whatever the original phrase was, and all the others since then. It works. It works.

 

Ben Walker  28:42

Yeah, yeah, and other great soap or cleaning bar are available there as well, too. But it's a great example. It is a great, great example. We talked about tech within the techs or a sort of a big, big player example of this, where it's all about market share, market share, market share and not profit. And then of course, what happens with lots of techs is that before they ever make a profit, something else comes along to replace them. The only money they've ever generated is investor revenue, rather than sales revenue.

 

Dan White  29:12

Exactly. And there's a big shift now and I'm I don't know enough about the business side to be really honest, there are experts out there who do, which is its to do with the cost of borrowing money that has gone up dramatically recently. So maybe that model would work for startups in previous years. It just won't work anymore.

 

Ben Walker  29:33

Yeah, yeah, it's a really interesting one. So yeah, don't don't don't don't believe the hype about going for market share and building your brand when it's not profitable. Profit is a good thing I once edited an accountancy magazine: turnover is vanity and profit is sanity.

 

Dan White  29:50

Oh, oh, can I write that down? That is I'm gonna use that. I love that.

 

Ben Walker  29:55

It is one of the mantras of the accountancy profession and it actually is a good one to live our lives by in other sectors too. Dan, we're coming close to the end of our time. And I want to remind our readers about The Smart Branding Book, which is great, you'll find lots of great examples of this sort of stuff we've been talking about today in the book, but telling you how to do good things for your brand, not destroy them. Before we go, I'm gonna throw one more into it, which is one that's always it always plays, on my mind working for a global company. And it's one that anyone who works in a global space probably grapples with: Have consistent global brand advertising is one thing that we're told, is it right?

 

Dan White  30:43

It can be, I think the word global is a problem there. I think you can have consistent multi country advertising, if the countries you're talking about have enough commonality in terms of culture, advertise the kind of advertising that they respond that people in the country respond to, and that the category has enough similarity and in how it's used, and that the local competitors. Yes. So that just makes sense. But global is really hard. I did, I worked with Ogilvy. It was a long time ago now, it could could be 20 years now, on a huge analysis of global advertising. So we basically looked at the same if the same ad had been used in multiple countries, we looked at the correlation between app performance of the app across countries. And we found that it sticks in my mind, I remember France and Spain have the highest correlation. So if an ad works well in in Spain, it's likely to work well in France and vice versa. And the connections between UK, Netherlands, US and Canada were broadly similar. The Dutch had a crazy sense of humour, which the Brits kind of half got and the US didn't but apart from that, you know, puns and humour changes it, those things work. But there were some countries that were just on their own. Yeah. The one that had, I remember how it had a zero correlation with any other country, was Japan. They're famously insular, literally, and metaphorically, it, you know, an ad worked well, in Japan, you'd have no idea if that would work anywhere else, and vice versa. So I always used to recommend to my clients, you know, if you're going to do a global campaign, one of the countries you're going to need to test is Japan. But France and Spain, they pick pick, pick one of them, the bigger market, etc, etc. I think I learnt a lot about what does transfer across countries and cultures and what doesn't. So it's one of these 5050s, you know, you can do multi country campaigns. But it's very, very difficult to have an ad that works well after everywhere.

 

Ben Walker  33:04

It's interesting, isn't it, know where there are cultural commonalities, and accept that global is very difficult., that's a great line to finish on. I mean, there's been some really interesting busting of mantras and perhaps, received wisdom in the marketing sector and actually, if you want to learn more about how to build your brand, really well, I'll say it again, The Smart Branding Book by Dan White, I do commend it to you, I absolutely love it. It's got great lessons and great diagrams and drawings in there, which will stay with you.

 

Dan White  33:36

I'm very proud of the book. But if you don't want to spend, you know £9.99, you can go to my website. I'm very, very proud of my website. It's smartmarketing.me. And most of my illustrations and frameworks are available there for free people can use them so long as they credit me, you don't even have to ask my permission. So you know, that's proved very popular. So if you want to use that, please feel free. Thanks, Ben.

 

Ben Walker  34:03

That's a great takeaway, a great resource to learn more about some of the things we discussed today. How to destroy your brand, and how not to destroy your brand and build a smart brand. Mr. Dan White is here today with us. It's been fantastic. Dan, please come along again. It's been great having you sir.

 

Sophie Peterson  34:11

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