Lori Cohen, fractional CMO at Chief Outsiders and former VP of Marketing for Percona, joins us this week to talk about the importance of your brand— not just your branding. From popping balloons with Veridium to saying “Mongo Wrongo” with Percona to falling in love with Made In pans, Lori explains how brands earn the right to live in our heads through keeping it personal and not being afraid to have a little fun with longer term strategies.

Timecoded Summary:

[03:27] Navigating brand identity and metrics in a high pressure environment

[07:48] Effective guerrilla marketing through thought interruption

[15:39] Showing up beyond the gimmick to create an impactful convention experience

[25:01] Getting in the heads of your audience and earning brand recognition

[33:36] Personalized communication and its impact on audience connection

Be sure to check out the photos and videos of the Mongo campaign, referenced by Lori, here!

How do you navigate that brand when you're in one of these venture-backed, high pressure, high performance environments?

When talking about branding goals, Lori is quick to explain her distaste for short-term goal measurement and how much focus certain brands spend on MQLs. Although short-term metrics can seem extremely successful, longer term projects with larger goals often lead to higher chances of profitability. Although it might take some convincing, Lori advises her fellow marketers to ask for the resources for longer term projects over the MQL-focused short-term.

“No one likes to talk about it. Nobody likes to put money towards it, and everybody confuses brand with branding. So, those are even some places that we can start.”

Can you explain how you go about sourcing these creative things instead of just sorting by cheapest?

As Lori explains her adventures in brand marketing, one question we kept asking ourselves was: How can we do that? It’s easy to fall for cheap marketing materials, like coffee cups and

pens, but those items rarely connect to our brand’s message. In Lori’s experience, the best way to source these creative ideas is long-term planning, similar to other marketing strategies she endorses. When we make our swag a part of our brand message, we avoid the gimmicks.

“It wasn't just a gimmick for gimmick sake. We got to translate that message into the pain that we know everybody feels and then demonstrate our technology.”

Tell us why you prefer that consumer brand over others. What is it that they do that's really good in brand building?

For an example of a brand that speaks to her heart, Lori tells us about her love of Made In. Made In makes pots, pans, and assorted cookware for people just like Lori, who are passionate about high quality tools to make high quality meals. Made In speaks to Lori and inspires her loyalty not only through living up to their high quality purpose, but for their consistent messaging and their focus on the right audience.

“They want to speak to me. They don't want to speak to my friend Robin, who we may look alike in terms of our demographics, but she has never cooked in our life. They would be wasting a fortune to go after her. They're really going after people like me.”

How would you feel if our brand disappeared?

Brands make their way into our heads and have the permission to stay there through connecting with us on a personal level. Lori is quick to remind us that, no matter how our customers and potential clients are connecting to us, there needs to be a personal approach to what we do and how we speak to them. From making sure our emails aren’t just automated by no-reply accounts to reaching out with fun messages and memes, we only can succeed with inspiring brand loyalty when we make ourselves worthy of that loyalty.

“I'm not saying it's easy, but the ones that do that well, I think they actually get invited into your home and begin feeling about your brand in a different way. And then your emails seem less spammy, and maybe more welcome in their inbox.”

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Spend some time with our guest Lori Cohen on LinkedIn, Twitter, the  Chief Outsiders website 

Additional resources mentioned in this podcast:

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