Hey guys, on today's podcast, we're going to talk about branding. What exactly it means we're going to break down. What is a brand? What is it? encapsulate. And I have a creative assistant back this week, Derrick.
Everyone. Glad to be back.
So I'm Derek, you deal with a lot of brands at RG media? I want you to break down what, what exactly is the purpose of each one of the sectors that we offer for our brands? For example, you know, why do we Why do we take food photography? What's the point?
Yes. So I think, for me, my what I what I see branding, as is capturing what what happens at your business? And how do you want to present your business to your, to your customers. So a lot of our businesses that we work with are restaurants. So what we help them with is capturing photo and even better video content of them doing what they do best making their food, serving it to
their customers. And without that, then people that discover them online, they're not interested, they're the opposite of interested, if they if that presentation isn't there for them online, then it's just a total missed opportunity. So we have restaurant clients said, just make these like, delicious looking pizzas and entrees and and with us capturing that and then marketing it. It's it's a, it's blown them up.
Yeah. No, I agree. I mean, if you really think about it, what's going to? What's going to sell more? Is it going to be a text in a newspaper that says, We have delicious steaks? Or is it going to be a mouth watering picture in front of my face, as I'm scrolling on Instagram, that has just this delicious steak with the right lighting, and the right you know, it's just bang, it's, it's, it's reflecting right off the steak and I'm sitting here like, holy shit, I need one of these. That's what's
going to sell. So in theory, with food photography, you know, it helps to sell your brand, it helps define what your brand is about, you know, what makes you unique? What makes these restaurants unique from the competition, and that's going to be their food, you know, someone might like your food better here. And that delicious steak now has a background story. You know, someone might say, wait a second. Why is that steak cut like that. And it could be a
unique story. Like, you know, the first night of the restaurant, the owner cut the steak that way by accident. And ever since that we kept it like that. That's a story. That's something that's unique. That's something that, you know, that might make me go tell my friend, because it's just a stupid fact about the restaurant. Yeah, all that stuff helps you to build your brand. I mean, look at look at Hard Rock Cafe. I mean, everyone knows to go in there and look at all the props on the
wall. You know, that's a top trainer. So, yeah, anything unique?
Well, those anecdotes just help tremendously. Absolutely. It's the little
things, it really is the little things that gives you such a big return, it gives you a big return because you don't realize it but people care about the little Shin, they really do. So
I guess I can give you a good example of like, this isn't our client, but like, well, we strive to find these little features and then highlight them that a lot of the business owners don't. don't really think about and that can literally flip their business upside down and in the best of ways, so do you know the band Def Leppard? Yes. Okay, so what do you know about them? pawsome sugar? Yeah, so So you know the song. Yes. You know anything about the band members? Not
really, I wasn't a huge Def Leppard. Yeah, I mean, they're a little before my time. So, you know, I just, here's the fun. Yeah.
So, so it's basically to your knowledge, Def Leppard is a band that has a good song pour some sugar. Death leopards drummer was in a motorcycle accident and lost his left arm and relearn how to play the drums with one arm probably Shin has a whole mechanical apparatus of so that he could he really learned how to play the drums for the and using one arm and all these different foot pedals and stuff. He's
just Christ I can't even play the guitar with to hear. That's so amazing.
So now that you know this story of triumph, how he really learned, how much more likely are you to look this up on YouTube? Yeah. And then like, I have to, I have to imagine and then you're gonna discover more songs of theirs. And then And then hopefully, that would convert you into a fan. So this is like an extreme story example. But like, with that little anecdote is is what transitions you into, like actually engaging and interesting, and then maybe attending a Def Leppard concert?
Yeah. No, it's, it's true with all those interests. Yeah. So, so what we try to do is, take those story anecdotes, and highlight them, and leverage that into getting customers or ticket buyers or anything that our clients want, right.
Yeah, I mean, um, you know, something that something that would not only help your business, but it also gives your business a unique perspective that you might not even know you have, you know, it could be something where, in the middle of a shoot, you say to yourself, holy shit, why didn't I? Why didn't I think that this would be something that people would ask about? You know? Yeah, I could easily see something like that happening with something as simple as food
photography. I mean, yeah, who would think that that would help build your brand? So? So can you think of, can you think anything else that you think would would help? You know, if someone came up to you and says, Derrick, build my brand? Like, what does that mean? What would you what? What other, you know, segments, would you say, helps build the brand?
Yes. So in the case, like, we were talking about our restaurant clients earlier, like a lot of these, a lot of these places, host events. And with each event, there's a story to be told, and, and content to be created. So like, like our client Kpop show holds Latin nights weekly, like Latin dance parties. Without capturing that with, with video content, it's just text, text on on a, on an Instagram post, or whatever that just says, Latin Night is
happening. Right? That's, that's the least amount of interesting. But if if we can capture video content of people dancing and having a good time, and someone who lives down the block from Kpop show sees that, you know, then there's, that's, that's engaging in interest?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you're just if you're just looking at this video, and you're saying yourself, wow, I want to see what that is, like, what is this, I want to, I want to be in that environment. This gives you the opportunity through video. Because an image, you know, I can I can take an image anywhere, I could take a still image off of, you know, Shutterstock, or something. You know, you could take stock video, also, you can do whatever
you want. But the difference with video is that you're now able to engage with the customers as well. So as you're shooting this video, you can walk up to one of the customers and say, Hey, what do you think of Latin night, and now they tell their story, and you might relate to that person's story. So now, you're the customer. I got this lady who has the exact same story I do. And she might say, Yeah, I came here for lessons because I wasn't a very
good salsa dancer. But Kay Potro has dance lessons, and I learned how to salsa. And now me and my husband's relationship is even better. Because we go out we do sauce every week, you don't know. And something like that could be a make or break for a customer to be like, Wow, holy shit. Did you know that? Like, you know, half the time you don't even know the restaurants that are down, like you said that are down the block from you. You don't know what they
have inside. You know, someone once told us, you know, if the Pope's in town, but it's not in the newspaper and no one's going to know. So what what is the point of having these events if you're not going to showcase them? You know, a lot of businesses you know, they might feel a little shy, they want to show them off? I don't know I'm the opposite. If I'm proud of something, I want to show it off. I want the world to see what I have to offer because it's different. What's
different. Why not just go to you know, any place why not just go to Chipotle for lunch or dinner because they don't offer that they will offer salsa dancing and Latin night. That's a day you know, that's something that makes your brand unique and stand out. So A
lot of times we find that like, there are these awesome things that are happening at these places could be events, stories that have been untold. And a lot of the owners, like don't even realize that that is something that can really shoot their business to the top 100%.
You know, this stuff, it's stuff literally in their own backyard, that they say to themselves. Wait a second, I didn't realize that this can do like this has this much potential.
Even something as simple as like a famous person ate at this restaurant? Yep. Is, you know, it might seem like, it's not that important to the owner or something. But like,
no, but it's cool. You know, like, like, rayos rayos is famous for that you can you can reserve a seat in there. Because yeah, you know, people book stuff months in advance, and then there's people who have seats already reserved for them for years. I mean, that's just something known. So if you do that, for your business, this is yet another talk trigger, that people are going to say, hey, guess what, you know, Jerry Springer was over 3d. Can you believe that? He was sitting
next to me. I mean, that's a true story. Like, literally, we were just over there. And I'm sending myself that's crazy. You know?
All about talking points. Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy.
So another aspect of brand building that I think a lot of people overlook, is the thing that really makes you a brand is everything that you showcase, from your website, to the plastic cups that you might serve to the tablecloth. I mean, everything has to jive, you need the font. You know, if I gave you a cup that had a mermaid on it, or whatever creature they put on the Starbucks cup. And I gave you another cup that has a well on
it. You're gonna sit there and say that Starbucks the well, you might say that's the Vineyard Place. There's a Vineyard Vines. But like, you see how you just knew that? Yeah, so that's a brand. I mean, that's truly a brand. So you have to make sure all of your images, you have to make sure your Facebook profile, and you have to make sure your YouTube page, everything has to match. Because the more people see the same standardization in fonts and colors, and all this
shit matters. People might think, Oh, it doesn't really matter. It does. Because I know, I know the font that you're going to use on a cup. I know Dunkin Donuts is font, everyone knows it. Everyone knows the colors. It's the purple and the orange. And
what we'll find is it.
I don't know the name of it. But if I saw it, I can tell you it's Dunkin Donuts. That's like, you know, that's like, what? Anything Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings. I mean, all these guys, you see these fonts, and you just, you know exactly what that is just by looking at it.
I think people don't realize how important it is because it's it's like it's an intangible, like subconscious impact. People People don't realize the impact because it's all subconscious. It's not the it's not metrics. You can you can review, like, there's no yeah,
it's just something like you said, it's like subconscious. If you're, if you're glancing really quick, you might be like, oh shit, I know what that is. And then you look away, you just know it. You know, that's like, I mean, that's like anything, you. That's why it's very, very important. That the stuff you may think doesn't matter
matters. Like if you take a step back, and you have to say to yourself, What looks better, what would make me want to purchase this, or what would make me pick this cup instead of this cup. And that's how you build your brand. And then you just dissect it from there. As long as everything matches. As far as color scheme. I mean, there's half of the posts that I see on Facebook. I mean, men on
Facebook, on Instagram. When you scroll, I could tell you right off the bat, who posted it based off of the font and the color, and maybe even a logo. Some people don't even need a logo because the font and the color already tells me who it is. Yeah. And audio branding is going to play a huge part in this because audio I mean think of PC Richards right PC, everyone knows that. So when you hear the PC Richards you know, the jingle you know for a fact on a radio commercial. That's PC
Richards. So that's going to play a huge part. Come 2020 2021 audio branding is going to be humongous. And everyone's getting into the whole vibe of audio. So if people can distinguish your brand, even while they're doing something else, that's really really powerful. Because they know right off the bat, I didn't have to see anything. I didn't have to View anything I could hear and say, oh shit, that's RJ media's skill or, you know, that's a Starbucks skill. Who
knows? And who knows what, who knows what they're going to come out with. Starbucks could have, you know, the sound of an ocean or whatever, if it's even a mermaid, I still don't know what it what she is, but whoever it is, is distinguishable.
I've an interesting prediction, I think is audio becomes a norm of the amount of content consumed becomes like more people are consuming audio content routinely. And a few years I think what's gonna happen is that large, large audio content creators like businesses like Starbucks, if there's a Starbucks like podcast or or Alexa skill or something, I think they're gonna start having like, famous actors or actresses, or influencers be their their voice brands, of
course. Look, look at the Lexa I downloaded to Samuel L. Jackson. Voiceover And I asked him the weather. And he gives me what I expect a smartass response and I love it. He goes, Oh, I'll check the weather for you outside. And it's I that's what I want. Yeah, you know, people look for that.
I mean, it's, it's awesome. And the more people when I had AOL, back in the day, we used to download the audio, instead of it saying you got mail, it would be somebody getting on that saying, like Austin Powers, I download hours, and he'd be like, You got mail baby. And it was funny, it made you it was different. That's what that's what was unique to Austin
Powers. So if you can offer this, if you could be your own personality, people are going to hear your voice and they're going to say, Wait a second, are you the lady from the Alexus skill, and they are going to know they're going to know who you are. And this is really powerful shit. This is like, it's almost like you're like you said, it's almost like you're a celebrity now. And that's what's going to happen. There's going to be influencers. There's tons of people with a radio type
voice. You know, I don't personally had a radio voice. But if the guy who you know who voices Optimus Prime came on, I mean, I would fucking I would download that in a heartbeat. You know, because that was like I was my childhood was transformers. So yeah, stuff like that. And that now you're coming into nostalgia, you know, and nostalgia is already playing a huge role. I mean, look, a
PokemonGo PokemonGo was huge. So if you really want to hit the millennials and the Gen Z, you literally can have Pikachu as your Alexa skill voice. You know, and it's gonna and it's gonna tell you the weather. You know, it's stuff like that. And I download it because again, yeah, my childhood nostalgia
marketing is the biggest thing, like, you know, because then we're talking about this earlier, outside the podcast, but um, the remastering the first Tony Hawk Pro Skater game, which was one of the biggest video games of all time, and like one of the biggest things to happen to skateboarding period, right. And like putting that out, and also releasing the PlayStation five game console is just like, now there's a reason for 25 to 35 year olds to buy a game system.
They didn't even think twice about buying 100% Because it's like tapping into the nostalgic.
Absolutely. I mean, I'm going to go out and buy one because I used to play Playstation. That was my first you know, that was my first real modern console. I mean, obviously, I had Nintendo but my, my brothers, and my sister had Nintendo and it got handed down to me. But like, my real first game console modern was PlayStation One, I was not an Xbox guy back in the day. So for me, that really hits home because I'm like, Holy shit, this is Tony Hawk. This is you
know, PlayStation five. You know, this is something that I am used to this is was my childhood again. So that's something that hits home. And if brands can just think about stuff like that for a minute, take a step back. And you say to yourself, who's the market that I'm trying to target? And how can I get from point A to point B and have them give a shit
about it. And that's when that unleashes your creativity, the bridge that gets you from A to B, and the B mark in the market that you're trying to get to, if you could tap into that brand through nostalgia, or anything that has to do with your brand. And it doesn't have to be crazy. It could be something like the letter, one of the letters, right look at Chick fil A, they just put out a marketing campaign for letter A. They said what is the letter A mean? I
mean, how simple is that? And they thought of a campaign, and that's their brand and you said you You're so holy shit, there's a capital A in their brand. So you have to play on that you guys have to, you have to play with what you have. What are the cards you're dealt? And you play on it? And guess what? If you don't have cards that are dealt for you to actually be able to play on that, then you create a brand, you create one. Yeah,
it's important to just like analyze who your customers are that your demographic and like, what, what is their lifestyle? I was reading a book recently, just kind of like about music industry marketing, and they're studying that Adele's fan base is like 75% like soccer moms. Wow. And like, that was very important when figuring out how to market her next release. Yeah, absolutely. Yep. Because you don't want to use elements that are appealing to teenagers in terms of your content
creation. If, if you realize that you're the people who actually listen to your music are our soccer moms. And maybe you want to do something related to Grey's Anatomy.
You know, what, you just hit the nail on the head. I mean, that's really what it is, like,
get someone from Grey's Anatomy in the in the music video instead of instead of that, Charlie, girl from tick tock.
No, but you know what, you nailed it. You know, what was his name, Dr. Sweetheart, or whatever the hell they call them, the guy that was on Grey's Anatomy. You know, you that's what you got to do. You have to, you got to say to yourself, Okay, you know, my mom or my sister used to watch Grey's Anatomy, and they always mentioned this guy, maybe we should get him in the commercial or, or in the music video, like you said, you got to tap into this, because this is what brand
building is all about. Because now the people watching it are going to say, Wow, they really thought of that. I mean, that's really, that's really unique. That's really something and it'll and you don't have to have a fortune 500 company to do this. You could do this with whatever you want. I mean, no one's saying you have to go out and hire, you know, an actor or an actress to do a social media
commercial. I mean, as a small or medium sized business, that's going to be very difficult, and very, you know, cost cost a lot. So, but you have to sort of relate it to that a little bit. Um, you know, you just have to, you have to really be creative, but now is really the time to be creative. Because nostalgia is not really a trend. It doesn't go away because you could you could play on nostalgia anywhere. I mean, really realistically, 30 years from now. I can play on nostalgia of
fortnight. I never personally, I think I played it once. And that was it. I played it for a few minutes because my niece asked me to pick up the controller and she said Uncle Joey Can you play and after that I stopped playing because some kid kept building stuff and I was trying to shoot him and I was frustrated. But we can be meaningful duty kid
we can guarantee though that like fortnight, merchandisers, fortnight branding, things will come back in 20 to 30 years literally because of how, how much it shifted the culture. Yeah, it's so like, they
make a bit when they say they hit a billion dollars in revenue off of downloadable content. Because the game went to iPhone and kids started downloading packs and shit like that. I mean, it's just unbelievable. I mean, really, off of a mobile game that you could just keep downloading shit.
Yeah. Yeah, as stupid as this sentence is gonna sound to a lot of people, but it's true. Like the game fortnight is one of the most important people and is one of the most important things in millions of people's lives. Absolutely.
And that's, and that's not stupid. You know? Why? Because there's little things that a million million times that people will think this is so dumb, but guess what, like you said, Guess what? To the 50 year old or a 40 year old person that says that sounds dumb. Not to a kid. Your kid loves it. They and you probably know they do because you see their room, they might have merchandise. You probably just came back from Toys R Us and bought a gun from fortnight. I mean, this stuff, it's you know,
this was Toys R Us Now that's nostalgia. Because that's KB KB.
They used to answer the phone. Hi, this is KB Smackdown two is now in stock. How can I help you? And I swear to God, I was so excited that day as a kid, I was like, Oh my God, what did you just say? Because that was it. We couldn't check the internet. Yeah, that should. We didn't have inventory online that we had to call up and the lady would tell us if it's in stock or not, and I had to rush there at the time. My mom getting Come on, we gotta go
rush there. So, like you said, all this stuff, all this crap, and collectibles and toys and shit. It's stuff like that, that you look at your brand and say, Wow, I want I want to do that I want to be someone's nostalgia. And it's all about what your brand can deliver. What can your brand do different that somebody can say you created that nostalgia? You know, fortnight wasn't. fortnight wasn't a brand. Someone made it a brand. Like I would sit here and say fortnight What the hell is that?
And somebody you know, a lot of people were like, Oh, I don't think this was the right name for my brand. Who gives a shit? Whatever you do for it. That's what makes your brand kids wouldn't have cared if it was called, you know, pen cap. Seriously? I mean, think about Pogs What the hell is a pug and I used to collect the shit out of those. I had the Pogs I had the huge disc and I would play it for
my time.
Oh my Derek Jesus. Those little little discs. You don't remember pugs? Oh my god,
they pop.
Jazz? Jax? I don't think I ever put is that the thing with the spikes? Right? I never really. Now I wasn't a big Jax guy.
I played I played Congress. No, no.
See, that's how I see. I don't know that. But you know, I never played that. No, but like, you know what, everyone's always worried about the name like, oh, I don't know if we should do this. I don't know, if I just shut up and start putting out stuff. And that's going to be the name. That's
the name is not as nearly important as
it's so not. It's crazy. You know, I'm so I mean, to sort of wrap things up on branding. We went way over our time at branding. I mean, really, I said I wanted to make this a nice 15 minute short segment. But we got into nostalgia, you know. But that goes to show you it roped us back in. It always does. So to conclude with branding. Derek, if you have anything else to add, now would be the time or forever hold your peace?
I don't think I do. Okay.
Yeah, I mean, that's really that's Branding. Branding is just, what do you want to show off to your customers? What do you want to show off to potential clients? How are you going to show that off? Okay. And what's going to make you unique? It's very simple. I mean, it's not a huge process, you know, it's, you know, you have to the medium right now, there's three mediums, audio, video images, it's very simple. And all we have to do is put those pieces together with your unique story.
And that's a brand people will start to follow content. You know, Jersey Shore is a brand, because these actors, these, you know, they were kids at the time, they were kids, and they they told their each individual story you learned about who, you know, you knew who this guy, Pauly D was, or Snooki. I mean, these guys are now brands, you know, and they did that because they chose video as a medium. And they told their story on it. And MTV. I mean, what better? That was the best demographic.
So this is how you storytel There's no reason why your business can't do that. If you have characters that are similar, then, you know, show them off through video and people will see that and say, oh shit, I know who you are. You're the kid from that video. And, you know, you know, you're funny and you say stuff like that. I mean, this is brand building, build characters build emotion in people. And that's what's going to that's what you're going to be remembered for.
You're going to be remembered for what you show people through these mediums. So that about wraps it up. And until next time, guys, if you can, I will have links, you know, for you to to visit us fit or visit our website. Follow us on social media. Yeah, that's about it. So until next time. If you feel like this has brought you some value, please join our community by texting podcast to 516-447-5332