The Brand Shepherd Podcast

Let’s connect some dots about the role of world-changing, altruistic purpose in product branding and positioning.

First, let’s hear from the new CEO of Unilever, who recently announced that they will stop ‘for fitting purpose’ into their brands:

“But we will not force fit this [purpose] across the entire portfolio, for some brands it simply won’t be relevant and that’s okay,” he added.

Now let’s connect Unilever’s decision to the likely reason why they don’t see ROI in force-fitting purpose to products: GenX women.

In a piece from 2021 titled, “Why GenX Women Will Not Be Aging Quietly,” which I have shared a few times for the wealth of info within, we learn about the powerhouse demographic that GenX women compose.

More specifically, “40 million 50+ American women represent over $15 trillion dollars in purchasing power and are the healthiest, wealthiest, and most active generation in history.”

The last connection I want to make is how these two are connected: GenX is not out to change the world.

Among the generations alive today, Boomers, Millennials, and GenZ share one - and maybe only one - belief: to change the world into a better place than they found it. They embrace big concepts that they see as world-changing actions and ideas.

See, if we go back to when GenX were youngsters, it was the Greatest and Silent Generations that were the elder adults and while GenX’s Boomer parents were out of the home chasing careers and wealth, it was the Greatest and Silent Generations who co-parented GenX kids.

And the one attribute Greatest and Silent Generations shared was that they did not set out to change the world.

The Greatest Generation is called so because they answered the call to enter a war they didn’t want to be part of. When WWII ended, the headlines read of how the war was over, not of how they won. They were happy to just get back to the quiet life they wanted in the first place.

And the Silents were the logical outcome or next step from the Greatest, in that they just wanted to live a quiet/silent life that was enjoyable for their little sphere of the world.

I’m a visual guy so I see visual patterns when I learn stuff like this.

If Greatest/Silent/X = 🟠

and Boomers/Millennials/Zoomers = 🔵,

then the pattern would look like this: 🟠 🟠 🔵 🟠 🔵 🔵

Greatest / Silent / Boomers / X / Millennials / Z

Half do not want to change the world, half do.

(GenAlpha is TBD. They’re too young.)

So if the “the healthiest, wealthiest, and most active generation in history,” GenX Women, are not out to change the world, then it makes sense that force-fitting purpose to brands won’t work.

In short, the demographic with the most power and wealth doesn’t care about the world-changing, altruistic purpose of brands.

Enjoy this short break because while GenX is currently powerful, it’s also very small and with Millennials already in their early 40s, they will be bringing a strong interest in purpose to brands back in force in just a few years.

You can use this time to strengthen your brand and the value it offers its customers so that when adding purpose to brands is back in favor, adding it to your brand won’t diminish its core value.

We can also see this as a strong reason why paying attention to broader generational preferences is vital to reading the room and gaining a basic understanding of what your customers want, especially if you struggle to gain clarity about customer wants in this current confusing era of economic chaos.

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Sources:

https://www.marketingweek.com/unilever-ceo-stop-force-fitting-purpose-brands/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/amyschoenberger/2021/10/07/why-gen-x-women-will-not-be-aging-quietly/?sh=3c29a7d02b6b

Not GenX. Definitely not GenX Women.What can we learn and use from this?

Brand Shepherd is happy to announce a new spin-off business called shepx.

shepx makes better websites for your customers than they’ve experienced before, and gives you a better experience creating it. 

Listen to the episode to learn what caused shepx to start, how it is tied to Brand Shepherd, and what shepx believes to be true about the massive change in the role of websites in the web3 era.

Visit shepx.us to learn more.

Video became most businesses' default media during the COVID-19 pandemic years of 2020-2021, and in 2022 video continued to dominate how both B2B and B2C consumers get valuable information when they are seeking an experience.

With that context in mind, Les Fultz joins the Brand Shepherd Podcast to talk about what he anticipates for video in 2023.

Les is the founder of Valere Studios, a corporate video production agency in Cincinnati.

Whenever Brand Shepherd needs to know the pulse of video as a medium, or where video as content is headed, Les is the guy we call on. A trusted peer and partner for many years, Les is a well-established expert trusted by B2B and B2C brands nationwide, and even news sources like ABC News and Fox News.

We normally do not produce dated content like this. The shelf life of this content's relevancy is likely just 9 months, max. Yet as we head into what should be the first full calendar year with no lockdowns within the American economy, we believe sharing this timely guidance serves our clients and listeners very well.

In this episode, the core Brand Shepherd team of Daniel, John, and David sit down to have a casual conversation around this question:

What are the best practices of creativity?

Hear what we came up with and how our answers evolved in this no-filter conversation about what to do and what not to do in order to get the best results from creativity.

What comes to mind when you hear about PR?

You know, Public Relations. What is your vibe check on the role of PR in today's landscape of brand marketing options?

Whatever you thought, this episode of the Brand Shepherd Podcast will be super informative because we get to hear from Julie Simon, Senior VP with Orca PR.

What makes this even better is Orca PR is all about product people!

As "America's PR Firm for Inventors and Entrepreneurs," Orca is constantly at work for that "Shark Tank" demographic, the product inventors and entrepreneurs we love to hear about – and Brand Shepherd loves to work with.

So this is a natural fit and we took our sweet time covering a lot of ground about the power of PR for products.

Dolly Parton is America's most beloved artist, and each year, millions of people flock to East Tennessee's Smoky Mountains to make new memories at her Dollywood theme park and resorts.

In this episode of the podcast, we get to hear from The Dollywood Company's Director of Financial Planning & Analysis, Melissa Walker.

We cover a lot of ground in this episode:

Melissa was very generous with her time and gave us a practical look into how strategic planning guides, grows, and protects the Dollywood brand.

You do not want to miss this episode.

Agriculture, as an industry, is experiencing the most radical transformation, disruption, and innovation of any industry out there right now – and has been doing so for several years.

Agriculture is our food supply, but it is much more than that. It impacts our planet's soil, water, and air. A massive number of jobs are directly and indirectly involved with Agriculture (Ag). Our health is impacted by Ag, due to what products are used to grow food, and so Ag has a big role in public health and healthcare itself.

The scope is sweeping and the stakes could not be higher. 

Everyone involved wants what's best for Ag, including the people behind an org like AgLaunch.

AgLaunch is "bringing startup culture to agriculture" by drawing smart, innovative people with Ag business ideas to help them get to work.

In this episode of the Brand Shepherd Podcast, Lilly Tench is our guest. She is the Entrepreneurial Programs Lead and does a masterful job of making AgLaunch's work digestible and informative, no matter if you're a seasoned Ag pro or just learning of what's happening right now.

Brand Shepherd's managing partner, Daniel Crask, is also part of AgLaunch's Mentor Network, and so we are on the frontlines alongside these very exciting Ag startups, helping them develop their brands and products. This compliments our years of Ag brand work.

If you have an Ag startup idea and want to learn about AgLaunch's accelerator programming, please contact them today.

There’s a brand of products I am particularly impressed with because of how obsessed they are with their customer experience.

Their official Facebook Group is the unlikely means by which they serve their customers, and they do it so masterfully, I have to tell you about it because I believe this brand is showing every other product brand out there that an energized, active, loyal Tribe of customers is still possible today.

This brand uses their Facebook group to…

So, what’s the product that people are so engaged in?

Flashlights.

You read that right.

112,000+ people – 90% of which are men – are engaged in a Facebook group for a flashlight brand.

As in 250+ posts per day…10,000 posts per month…313 new group members last week…engaged.

The brand is Olight.

Olight is a global brand estimated to be $80mil/year that designs, manufactures, and expertly sells flashlights to extremely devoted customers around the world.

Listen to this episode for an assessment of how Olight uses Facebook Groups to grow their thriving Tribe. 

You can also read the complimentary blog post here: https://brandshepherd.com/the-unlikely-brand-that-is-growing-a-thriving-tribe/

by Daniel Crask, Managing Partner & Co-Owner, Brand Shepherd

In March 2019, after a long journey and a fantastic book, we announced that we were going to embrace who we authentically are: A product-focused branding agency.

For the rest of 2019 and all of 2020, that pivot reverbed into the most profitable, enjoyable stretch of work we have ever had.

But then COVID happened.

And then the government-mandated lockdowns happened.

Out of fear, a decision was made by me – Daniel Crask, managing partner and co-owner of Brand Shepherd – to retreat from the product pivot, and go back to being focused on no brand type in particular. A return to "all are welcome."

What I was witnessing at the time was…

This has proved to be the most disastrous decision in our business' history, and I'm here to talk candidly about it in this episode of the podcast.

2021 has been a year of frustration. In a very general sense, "frustration" is the overarching theme of everything in business.

Yet what I have been frustrated with most is how to talk about Brand Shepherd.

Over and over, with the Brand Shepherd team, I tried to figure it out. Lots of experimentation with our Pandemic Pivot, yet nothing resonated within or with prospective clients.

I even thought we had to embrace the hyper-local economy.

We tried going all-in with being a neighborhood agency. Once again, a flop.

Something was missing, not aligned with our Why, our true brand.

But while my family and I were at a Church service recently, it hit me like a wave washing over me: The problem is that I abandoned what we love…Product Brands.

This explains everything.

When we dropped our focus on products, people no longer had something to grab onto in terms of what we do for their brand.

Worse, we were attracting a tribe of brands that were a mismatch.

Yet during this stretch of time, we still attracted product brands and those relationships remain intact and are thriving.

In fact, despite a messy Pandemic Pivot, we still helped bring 41 products to market and 17 more are in development as I write this.

So I am being open about all of this, and embracing the lessons learned as we return to our roots: Brand Shepherd is a product-obsessed creative agency.

Listen to this episode and hear all about it.

Then, if you are part of a brand that makes a product, now would be a great time to work with us because we're in a very generous state of mind as we turn away service-only brands, and embrace the work with products we love so much.

"Good" brands can be polarizing, but the market winners know the immense value created take making a stand for their ethics. Consumers are demanding action and smart companies know they prosper better than their brand is aligned to a purpose and purpose is aligned to their actions at every level.

Yet, one might ask, "How would my brand even begin to start this change?" 

That is precisely what we delve into in this jam-packed conversation. 

Here are some of the points we cover in today's episode: