This week we welcome Lindsay Pedersen to the podcast. Lindsay spent her early career as a brand manager at Clorox before starting her own brand strategy consulting firm, Ironclad Brand Strategy. Her recent book, “Forging an Ironclad Brand: A Leader’s Guide” provides an accessible overview of what branding is (and isn’t) and offers a multitude of real world examples to demonstrate how strong brands help businesses make better decisions—from product design, to customer experience, to talent acquisition.

Topics include: the various meanings and incarnations of “brand,” the concept of brand as a relationship between a company and an audience (i.e., customers, candidates), the distinction between “functional” (rational) and higher order (emotional) benefits of a product or service, the connection between strong brands and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, how strong brands serve as “north stars” to guide business decisions, the recent emergence of “employer brand” as a concept and its connection to an organization’s consumer brand, the value of having a singular unified brand for both employees and customers, the challenge of rehabilitating a brand with a poor reputation, the four P’s of positioning, and the importance of building strong connections between talent acquisition and marketing.