Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: SA welcome back to another episode of Street Level Marketing. I'm your host, Mark Lamplugh, and we have a great show for you this hour. I have Evan Millman on the show, and we're going to talk, you know, about building brands, you know, that don't fall behind. I think we have a lot of good examples over the last 15 years of companies that stayed stagnant, didn't innovate.
And, you know, one that I can think of off mine is Blockbuster, and then the other one that I can think of off the top of my head is Netflix. Both in the same kind of category.
Blockbuster kind of faded out of the.
The times because they didn't innovate. But Netflix started off one way as a subscription service to rent movies, and then you could go to the machines. And then, you know, they transferred their whole business model to, you know, streaming once it started becoming popular. And it just. They grow and grow.
So I think they're perfect examples. And Evan's got a lot of experience, you know, building brands.
He's with Upland. He's a brand strategist and an innovation advisor.
So, Evan, welcome to the show.
[00:01:42] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks, Mark. Thanks for having me. Really excited to get going here.
[00:01:46] Speaker A: Yeah. So, Evan, what defines a truly disruptive idea in today's, like, oversaturated market?
[00:01:53] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I'd say a truly disruptive idea is one that changes what people expect from a category.
So it's not just adding a new product.
It rewrites the rules of how people think, choose, or behave.
And it feels maybe obvious in hindsight, but at the time, it's the idea that makes people stop and say, oh, I didn't know I could have that.
And that's when you've known you've hit on something real for people.
[00:02:26] Speaker A: Yeah. What's like, some of the earliest signal that something has the potential of being, like, disruptive?
[00:02:33] Speaker B: Yeah. So this is actually an interesting one. I'd say it's. It's when consumers don't just use a product as. As the way that we intend it, but they're actually adapting it so they're seeing more potential than the original maker did. This could be. You know, we've seen people repurposing mini humidifiers to diffuse oils or to humidify their pet spaces or for houseplants.
So those are the kind of huge signals we're looking at every single way that someone is interacting with a product and spending much longer with a person to identify those, what we call weak signals or an unmet need.
[00:03:16] Speaker A: I see you Share. Like a personal example of an idea catching early that turned out to be like, really big.
[00:03:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
Yeah. So I guess this is further back.
So I was working with a little company called Gatorade back in the day.
They were trying to get the G2 product right.
And what people were actually doing was still mixing regular Gatorade and cutting it with water, even though, you know, that effectively that's what G2 was. So that was allowed us to understand that it really needed to relaunch. This was a product that needed to better communicate what G2 was. It relaunched as Gatorade Zero Sugar and then followed the rest of the portfolio as Gatorade Zero.
So, you know, instant has really changed that, that category. I suppose maybe Powerade came first with, with that value proposition, but for Gatorade, at least it allowed them to stay really relevant in. In a new world of less sugar.
[00:04:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
Used to have the one flavor of Gatorade, the lemon, lime and. And then now they have the, the ones with the electrolytes and, you know, they're a perfect example of like a company that seems to, you know, move with the tide and come up with new trends.
[00:04:42] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. I mean they're, they're definitely, you know, under a lot of pressure right now from the likes of liquid IV coconut water, protein. It's always been chocolate milk. So, you know, sports hydration is in, in beverage in general is a bloodbath that they need to stay ahead of.
[00:05:02] Speaker A: Yeah. How do you separate noise from a genuine opportunity?
[00:05:08] Speaker B: There's a lot of noise, so that's a fair question.
So typically it's. You're seeing the same tension in, in a lot of different places and a lot of different categories that are next to each other.
So, you know, you'll see maybe in trail mix the same tension as within nuts and candy and cookies.
And maybe a brand all the way over on one side of the market is starting to innovate in the rest of those sister categories aren't.
That lets you give.
Typically that's a pretty good indication that the area is ripe for new product, the consumers are ready to receive it.
You do see a lot of brands innovating maybe to ahead of their time, where a product could actually be very viable five years from now.
But today consumers are not trained to really understand or accept the value proposition.
Um, so, you know, sometimes that's, that's noise.
But if you really want to be sure, you got to look at tangential categories. I'd say, yeah.
[00:06:18] Speaker A: This one, the next question I have for you really, you know, it comes back to me is, you know, you always, you come up with ideas and marketing campaigns that, you know, you, you like, you, you think ahead of time like, this is it, this is the one that's going to do it and it falls flat. And then you have the one that you had no idea, you know, you thought it was just going to be like a regular daily post and it goes viral.
What role does intuition versus data play in spotting innovations early?
[00:06:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think maybe this is a little too easy of an answer, but I'd say intuition tells you maybe where to explore.
So, you know, we're all sitting in these industries.
You know, you're, you're in the car industry, I'm in, you know, a lot, but, you know, do a lot of food and beverage. You, you tend to pick up a lot of pet hypotheses or places that you really want to explore.
But right, the, the data, that's what allows you to drill in once you find the territory and actually understand what part of your intuition is correct or maybe change your mind completely.
So, you know, this could be a place, place where a brand will have a, you know, a gut hypothesis on where to explore, but, you know, where a company like mine will come in and validate it, you know, much more for innovation than just, you know, quant data on consumers or, or focus groups on consumers because they can't necessarily tell you where the answers are.
You need to go out and look for those weak signals. We can talk about those, you know, as we, as we dig in. There's a lot of different ways to do so, but intuition really helps you notice, you know, where to dig in the first place. I'd say.
[00:08:08] Speaker A: I, I mean, are there any industries more right now? I mean, I can think of one more.
[00:08:15] Speaker B: Right. For just, you know, behind your head. Is that why you said it?
[00:08:18] Speaker A: Well, we got that one. And I'm thinking about AI, you know.
[00:08:22] Speaker B: Sure, sure, yeah.
I mean, yeah, AI, yeah. That's a whole probably above my pay grade necessarily to talk about what's next in AI, but I'd say what I'm working on a lot right now is innovation through packaging.
There's so much potential to create awesome products based on how people natively use packaging. But packaging companies themselves are relying on the, know, a food or drink or consumer company to tell them how a consumer is using them. A packaging company could go in and start researching the consumer and bring those ideas right to their customer and win much more business by, by being, you know, Far more innovative and consultative. My mind goes to Graza Olive Oil. Maybe I'm pronouncing that incorrectly. While not. It's a, while it's not a packaging company innovating the, the brand. Graza essentially said people love a good, accurate, controlled pour of olive oil.
Why don't we put that in Sriracha bottles that allow you to do that perfectly? And now an entire category is upended because of a simple observation that I.
[00:09:37] Speaker A: Actually just shared a post, I think it was like last week about packaging and how much thought went into Apple and how they box their products. You know, the, the opening experience, you know, so it kind of made me think of that.
[00:09:54] Speaker B: Tons of money. Tons of money.
[00:09:55] Speaker A: Right.
[00:09:56] Speaker B: I mean, I think you're, you're paying.
[00:09:57] Speaker A: For.
[00:09:59] Speaker B: You'Re paying for, for a lot. I mean, certainly you're paying for the packaging. And, you know, you've seen Apple actually not truly innovate on, on packaging in ways that it's getting credit for anymore. I mean, there's, it still feels very similar to the unboxing of an iPhone in 2010. So because of that, it actually seems like kind of a vulnerable place for them compared to competitors.
[00:10:23] Speaker A: How do you get executive buy in when the idea really isn't obvious yet?
[00:10:30] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, just in general, I'd say the best way to do it is to make it real.
So this could be as advanced as a tiny pilot or a prototype if you have the funds. But if you don't. Right. It could be a mock up.
People don't necessarily get excited by ideas or words on a page. They want to see the idea and they want to see the consumer poll and tell the story around how you got to that idea in the mockup.
[00:11:07] Speaker A: What are some of the mistakes brands make when trying to be first to market?
[00:11:15] Speaker B: Well, I, I think that, you know, being first sometimes causes brands to not be meaningful.
So this is where the brand layer comes in first. Doesn't matter if no one understands the benefit. This is, you know, what I was talking about before with, you know, creating a product that's perhaps ahead of its time.
We've seen plenty of brands. I mean, Apple, not to bring up the most obvious example of all.
[00:11:40] Speaker A: Right.
[00:11:40] Speaker B: Comes in, swoops in second, third, fourth, but with a clearer promise, and they end up winning the entire category.
So first market matters if you're really connecting to the consumer and if you're launching that product in, in an interesting way.
[00:11:58] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, we're going to come up to a break.
[00:12:01] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:12:02] Speaker A: So are you loving what you're watching don't miss a moment of Street Level Marketing or any other of your favorite NOW Media TV shows. Live or on demand, anytime, anywhere. You can download the free Now Media TV app on Roku or iOS and enjoy instant access to all the full lineup of bilingual programming in both English and in Spanish.
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Welcome back to Street Level Marketing with your host Mark Lample. And if you're just tuning in, I'm here with Evan Millman and we're now shifting from early disruption to something just as critical is, you know, why every company, even in traditional industries, need a solid brand strategy.
Evan, why do so many B2B and manufacturing companies underestimate brand strategy?
[00:13:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean this is the, the bane of my existence personally and something I'm constantly fighting against. It's because brand to a lot of folks in these categories feels like fluff.
They think it's a logo or a color palette. It's a one and done thing. It's not something that affects revenue.
The focus is on specs, performance, price, sometimes partnership.
And they forget at the end of the day that people are the ones making the decisions and people are constantly living in their own world where they're seeing consumer brands.
So when everything looks the same on paper, your brand is what tips the scale.
It's, it's what makes your buyers feel confident to say yes to you.
[00:14:21] Speaker A: Yeah, that makes it, yeah. And you know, there's a lot of, a lot of the brand type of marketing is more penetration and you know, free, you know, and frequency and, and you know, so you don't necessarily always see the ROI on that.
You know, you can a little like what ROI should a, a healthcare or industrial brand expect from a brand strategy?
[00:14:49] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean I, I, the easy answer is let's take it to a sales organization within one of those companies. So the ROI is not abstract, it's, it's definitely measurable.
A stronger brand gets you into the room more often.
It can shorten your sales cycles.
It can allow you to charge a premium certainly because your product is seen as, as better or they're more confident in it actually working and it can actually protect you in, in tougher markets. The brands that will go, the companies that will go away in, in a tough market are those typically with inferior brands.
So you know, we, we see this a lot, that it means bigger deals, deeper partnerships.
The, the, the numbers follow when the story is right for, for companies.
[00:15:38] Speaker A: Yeah, it brings me back to exit. You know, I worked with a very large behavioral health company back in the mid, around 2012-2015. They were one of the first to go public.
And he was doing a lot of TV ads, you know, at night, get help for your mental health and all this.
And the, I, I think, you know, he was spending millions and millions of dollars to promote these ads, you know, on almost every channel. Everybody knew that the company and it got, you know, I think it generated like 1% back.
But the owner did it not for the sense of generating revenue from the advertising, but he built up a 200 team business development team that went into hospitals and you know, therapist office to get referrals. Yeah, and that's why he did it. Because anybody, anytime they walked into the hospital, they knew the company they were with just from the advertising and cmotb.
[00:16:42] Speaker B: Yeah, it's, it's, it's instant credibility. You know how to place them, you know what they do. It saves you the first 10 minutes of any sales call because you don't need to explain who you are. They'll say, I know who you are. I've seen your commercials. I've seen, you know, obviously there's plenty of different channels to advertise, but. Yeah, absolutely.
[00:17:02] Speaker A: Can you give an example when a strategy shifted the trajectory of like a, you know, a boring brand?
[00:17:08] Speaker B: I'm not going to call anybody out as boring.
Let's go back to packaging. Just, you know, maybe some people would consider that not the core product. So, okay, so, you know, I was working with a client.
They're stuck in the commodity mindset of we sell plastic, we meet specs, you know, we're trying to undercut based on price or you know, some, sometimes, you know, metrics around sustainability.
But we reframe them as an innovation partner.
So someone who could help CPG brands solve their packaging challenges, not just ship material.
And that really changed how brands or other buyers approached them. It made their conversations bigger, more strategic. Now instead of just selling into procurement, they're selling into a marketing organization within a big CPG company.
So, you know, you're unlocking brand new budgets.
[00:18:10] Speaker A: Right.
What, what's the number one misconception you face when you're trying to, you know, sign on some of these clients?
[00:18:24] Speaker B: Yeah, I'd say that that brand strategy is marketing's problem or conflating the two together, that, that it's not, it's not a business's problem.
The truth is the brand is the foundation that supports everything else. And if you don't define it, somebody else is going to for you. And I'd say the sister point to that is it's, it's not window dressing.
It's not fluff. It's what, it's what lets you stand for something beyond price or specs.
[00:18:58] Speaker A: Why is internal brand alignment critical, especially in complex organizations?
[00:19:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I'd say if people can't explain who you are and why you matter, how will your consumer, how will your customers or consumers believe it?
So we see this all the time. Different divisions are telling different versions of the same story.
It creates confusion. That confusion over time erodes trust.
When someone's on the same page internally, that, that clarity flows out to customers.
That's when the brand really clicks. That's when you start to see benefits.
[00:19:37] Speaker A: Yeah. It brings me back to.
I worked with a lot of call centers and the admissions folks that would answer these calls.
You would create chaos on admission to these different centers when they weren't online, on the services and the offerings of the organization, you know, to potential callers. Yeah. So we would, you know, meet pretty frequently on making sure and listening to calls to make sure that everybody was saying, you know, everything was, you know, offered the same and there was no variations of that because it would, it would create conflict in the, in the centers.
[00:20:16] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, how is anybody supposed to trust you if they're hearing five different things about your company?
[00:20:21] Speaker A: Right.
What's the first step you take when beginning a rebrand or a, like a positioning refresh?
[00:20:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it's, it's always the same thing. It's. It's listening. So we're going to. We're going internal first. So it's, it's employees you're starting to understand lost deals. You're going to their partners to talk about what are they really good at, what are they not so good at.
You're going to their customers. What do they actually say about you? What do they feel about you?
That's where the truth lies.
So you really can't build a great brand strategy just from any one of those elements. If, for example, you, you create, you get a great insight from a consumer to build an entire brand around, you don't know if that brand is going to have the people behind it to support it or actually care about it.
You have to go out to all these different places and hear their truth and what's real.
[00:21:16] Speaker A: How can niche industries still create emotional connections with customers?
[00:21:22] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean if we're still talking about B2B I'd say if we're talking industrial goods or healthcare, we can still connect to real human emotions and outcomes.
You're helping people feel smarter, safer, more in control.
This, the trick, I'd say is to stop thinking that emotion means warm and fuzzy. It means understanding what makes your customers feel confident in choosing you.
[00:21:51] Speaker A: Right.
How do you balance like the legacy with future ghosts? And what I mean by that is, you know, there's always that.
Well, we've always done it this way.
[00:22:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:04] Speaker A: And trying to, you know, know, get the buy in from the team that may have been there for years on the new strategy.
[00:22:12] Speaker B: Well, look, I mean if, if you have legacy, it's a, it's a great leg up. It gives you credibility immediately.
[00:22:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:18] Speaker B: It shows people you stood the test of time. It's great to see a brand that's been around for 100 years, but it can also put you in a pitfall where people think you're not for the next generation or for them.
Growth means not standing still.
You will get disintermediated or disrupted. Somebody will figure out that this industry has not been disrupted in a long period of time and they will create something around you. So, you know, this gets into the disruptive nature of a lot of my work. It's, it's pre identifying the disruption that's going to come so that brands could can innovate ahead of it so they can be the ones that are disrupting the industry rather than getting disrupted.
[00:23:01] Speaker A: Well, we're out of time for this segment but when we come back, you know, I want to talk about making innovation practical, you know, systems for continuous breakthroughs. So we'll be back with a word from our sponsors.
Loving what you're watching.
Don't miss a moment of Street Level marketing or any of your favorite NOW Media TV shows. Live or on demand, anytime, anywhere. Download the free Now Media TV app on Roku or iOS and enjoy instant access to all full lineup of bilingual programming in both English and Spanish.
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From business and breaking news to lifestyle, culture and everything in between, now media TV is streaming 247 ready whenever you are. And we're back with Street Level Marketing with Evan Millman. And you know, we're talking about building brands and, and Innovating.
And I wanted to, you know, kind of get into, you know, what makes making innovation practical, you know, kind of systems we can use for continuous breakthroughs.
Evan, what does a real innovation process look like in a company?
[00:24:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I think a lot of people think about innovation as just having an idea out of the blue and then you go and create it. But it, innovation is not just a singular event. It's, it's a muscle.
You're building this, you're doing it over and over and over again. The most innovative companies run an innovation process every single year or twice a year. So it's, it's creating a rhythm.
You are exploring where the world is changing every year. You're framing what opportunities you're seeing, and then you're ideating fast, you're testing small, and then you scale from there and you do it again and you see what worked.
[00:25:15] Speaker A: How can companies institutionalize creativity?
[00:25:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's, it's, it's hard to put it on a scorecard for people.
So you got to make space for it and find ways to reward it. You have to create meetings in places and rituals where creativity is expected.
It's not just welcome. So, you know, you saw this in the 2000 and tens, you know, around idea jams or setting aside small pilot budgets.
And then I think most of all, it's, it's rewarding the trying, not just the winning.
If people only think about the big, big wins, you lose out on the continuous gains in the small gains you can get.
[00:26:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
Even with the, the rise of AI coming in, you know, I think we're at a critical point in the creative aspect of marketing, and I'm guilty of it too. Like, there's all these posts of the, you know, the Bigfoots, and I, I use one in an ad I created last week for, you know, our Ford store.
And now with Meta coming out with the new AI for Facebook pages and businesses that they're not even going to need to create ads, going to do it with AI for businesses. And what I see with that is you're going to see a lot of businesses looking the same.
[00:26:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:49] Speaker A: You know, what are some of the tools or frameworks you use to surface new ideas?
[00:26:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, Mark, look, I think it's, it's a really good point. So you can get good on AI, sometimes even great, but you can't necessarily get new. So you're not going to get an incredible new idea for a product, product line, feature, or benefit through AI.
It's really not there. Yet in terms of innovation, which a lot of my work is in.
And one of our favorite tools at Upland is something we built called Disruptor id.
So it's our way of spotting the ideas that could flip an entire category before anyone else sees them or even fuels them. So we're not looking at just what is trending on social media or what's selling.
We're mapping unmet needs, hidden tensions, the little workarounds that consumers are already hacking together.
You aggregate these, you, you start to see them grow, you start to see a movement building and then you can innovate based on those. Those become your opportunity areas.
Those are the disruptors that we believe are coming in and we have a, you know, pretty great track record in building new products off of these that, that are successful.
[00:28:12] Speaker A: Is this a like a web based app or platform? Is it like available to the public or is it just an internal system you, you use at Upland?
[00:28:24] Speaker B: No, so it's a, it's a methodology. So we are at our core a consulting company. So it's a, it's a project that you would, that, that brands, some of your favorite brands would, would purchase from us.
So you know, candy companies would come to us and say, you know, how are we going to compete with smart suites or you know, all these other areas, you know, what's the next big nerds rope or nerds clusters?
We've also done this for healthcare companies, right, that want to understand what, what are the patients of the future going to be expecting from us? What are hospitals going to be expected to do or how can we have world class patient care?
And you know, it's really interesting. One of the tools that we use most often is actually looking at what private equity is investing in.
There'll be multiple hundred thousand dollars investments that all have kind of the same golden thread throughout them. And if you're looking at just one investment, it looks very small. But if you look at all of them, it's tens of millions of dollars in a space that hasn't hit the shelf yet.
So you can predict kind of the future of the shelf by looking at these small weak signals that are building over time. And that's really what Disruptor idea is all about.
[00:29:46] Speaker A: Where should innovation live? In a company with the product team, with marketing, with leadership?
[00:29:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean it's, it's, it's all over the place, I'd say in different organizations. The oftentimes it's its own organization tied to product, but within marketing.
So it's, it is done best when it is connected to an insights team, I'd say in an intelligence team so that there's kind of a free flow of ideas. The marketing team brings in a lot of the consumer ideas and consumer studies. So I'd say typically it's most often in a marketing organization.
[00:30:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I, whenever I start anew leadership position in marketing, I'll always spend the first two weeks meeting with the, the team.
[00:30:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:45] Speaker A: One on one, you know, maybe the department heads, you know, sales team and sit with them and just talk to them, find out what they think, you know, what do they think's been working well, what ideas do they have? You know, you get some of your best ideas from people that sometimes they're the janitors, you know.
[00:31:04] Speaker B: Oh yeah, yeah. Goodwill hunting, right?
[00:31:07] Speaker A: Yep.
Yeah.
What's your take on cross functional innovation teams?
[00:31:16] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean I think it's the same answer. So if you're not using, if you're not understanding what's accelerating at shelf along with what's changing behaviorally from people, it's really hard to kind of marry actual behavior in purchase patterns with what people are starting to really worry about. So you know, you need someone that sits in the middle of all of these things. That's why innovation teams are important in large organizations.
Without that, you're getting one dimensional ideas and yeah, you might as well use ChatGPT as you said to say, hey, what are the big topics in my industry that I should be innovating on? Because you know, your ideas might not be as rich as even those.
[00:32:01] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. And you're going to get whatever's found on the Internet, Right.
[00:32:05] Speaker B: You're just gonna go. You just might as well Google it.
[00:32:08] Speaker A: What KPIs or metrics should you apply to innovation?
[00:32:13] Speaker B: Yeah, I would say success of new products.
So percentage of revenue from new products, time from idea to pilot. So are you an efficient innovation team?
How many of these pilots are turning into launches? Are they generating revenue?
So yeah, I think that there's a lot that could allow you, you know, to, to really measure whether or not what you're doing is worthwhile. And also, you know, how many new products are there are coming out from competitors that you had inklings about and you didn't rush towards. You got to go and dismantle and understand why you didn't launch there.
[00:33:04] Speaker A: Yeah. What's a red flag that a company has stalled in its innovation cycle?
[00:33:12] Speaker B: Yeah, I'd say when everything new, all these new ideas are dying in the prioritization phase.
So prioritization and feasibility coming in Too early into ideation is the death of new ideas.
Our first rule of innovation brainstorming is only allowing one side of the brain to operate at a time.
Creativity and analytics. Right. You gotta allow that creativity in this big ideas to, to run their course and to, you know, to, to populate and then you can go in and prioritize.
[00:33:58] Speaker A: Yeah, I know for myself and I was just talking about this to one of our general managers yesterday, the day before because I didn't originally come from the car business.
I, I mostly did healthcare marketing the last 15 years and I did auto sales back in the early 2000s for Saturn but I never did marketing in the auto industry. And they said one of the, the big things with me joining the team was that I, that was one of the reasons is I, because I didn't, you know, maybe there'll be some fresh ideas that can come in.
Yeah. You know, to, because you know once you've been stagnant in an industry for so long, you're kind of, you know, pigeonholed in the, you know, what you've done in the past and you kind of don't look outside the box.
[00:34:47] Speaker B: Yeah. Are you, are you the reason why Saturn is no more?
[00:34:52] Speaker A: I was there when that happened.
[00:34:53] Speaker B: Really? What happened? Did you go to another car brand or.
[00:34:57] Speaker A: No, so I was, yeah, I worked in sales and Saturn 2008 and no, they just came in and you know, shut the door and it really is kind of a sad thing about Saturn because they, they were a good car.
[00:35:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:11] Speaker A: But when they got taken over by GM they just kind of lost the vision.
[00:35:15] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, maybe they'll, maybe they'll come back like you know, the Bronco or you know, there's all sorts of makes and models that revitalize still waiting on, you know, the, the Bonneville. That's what we grew up as kids.
[00:35:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
How do you pitch a new idea and like a risk adverse culture.
[00:35:35] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean most of them are risk averse to be honest.
You know, I, I, I love, you know, as an innovation guy taking risks and trying things in market quickly. But the best thing to do is to shrink the risk and you do that by tying it to a real customer problem.
So you know, in anything more than that. Right. We'll, we'll distill this, we'll shrink this risk even more. So you know, small reversible tests allowing people to try the thing, talk about the thing, feel the thing, etc, taste the thing. Right. If it's, if it's food or candy.
[00:36:13] Speaker A: Right. Well if we're out of time for this segment, but when we come back, I want to get in the, you know, the foresight thinking, kind of looking ahead, you know, what's next for branding and marketing. So we'll be back with a word from our sponsors.
Welcome back to Street Level Marketing with your host, Mark Lamplugh. And you loving what you're watching. You know, don't miss Street Level Marketing or any of your favorite NOW Media TV shows. Yeah. Live on demand, anytime, anywhere.
Download the free Now Media TV app on Roku or iOS and enjoy instant access to our full lineup of bilingual programming in both English and Spanish. Prefer to listen on the go catch the podcast version of the show right on the Now Media TV website, www.now media.tv from businesses to breaking news to lifestyle culture and everything in between, now media TV is streaming 247 ready whenever you are. And I'm back here with Street Level Marketing and I'm with talking to Evan Millman from Upland.
And you know, we're talking about brands and how to build them and stay innovative. And now kind of want to talk about, you know, the future and thinking ahead.
Evan, what is foresight thinking and how does it apply to brain development?
[00:37:44] Speaker B: Yeah, so foresight is comparable to insight. So insight is the study of what's happened in the past, how people felt or are feeling.
Foresight is trying to make the best guess of what's to come.
And the power is that you can build brands and products that are relevant for the future.
So foresight is about playing offense. That's how I typically call it. It's mapping where your customer, your category, culture, etc. Are headed. And it's making sure your brand and products are ready for it.
[00:38:25] Speaker A: How do you help brands plan for a change while still staying grounded?
[00:38:32] Speaker B: We we always design two parallel tracks. One track focuses on on what's working now, what's driving revenue today, where your brand strengths are most clear. The other track looks at the edge. So experiments the next bets the things that might feel small today that will be game changers tomorrow through a snowball effect.
And you know, it's really important to help balance those two so you're not losing sight of what's working while also having an eye to the future.
[00:39:06] Speaker A: Can you give an example of a brand that positioned well for the for future relevance?
[00:39:13] Speaker B: Yeah, we worked with a snack brand that saw early on how consumer curiosity was becoming a growth driver.
And now most of their best products are all about mashups. So mixing unexpected ingredients, seeking out, you know, really cool Partnerships and helping them stay in culture. This is Snack Club, a brand that is, I think, number four in nut mixes and trail mixes though. You know, a lot of consumers don't, don't know them, but they know their products, they know their innovation.
So, you know, you're seeing things like Hidden Valley Ranch Nuts or Hot Ones flavored Trail Mix.
It wasn't about just one product. It was, it's now infused in their DNA. That's, that's what they do, is create the unexpected.
[00:40:06] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm always admired, you know, food and beverage brands because when you go into a supermarket and you're shopping, I mean, it is very easy to get lost and then even to penetrate and get into the stores. I mean, I gotta imagine there's a lot of unsuccess, there's more unsuccessful, you know, opportunities that, you know, companies are trying to get in than that actually work.
[00:40:34] Speaker B: Yeah, it's 500 ideas for a successful idea.
[00:40:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:37] Speaker B: Not more. And you know, food and beverage, what's fun about. It's probably half of my work is in food and beverage.
What's fun working in those categories is the innovation cycles are very fast.
They're constant. There's always new stuff coming out.
So a lot of work for us.
[00:40:57] Speaker A: Yeah, I would say that's the biggest change from my, you know, being in marketing and healthcare. Then to me, coming over in the automotive space is healthcare. Marketing was pretty, you know, behavioral, mental health, addiction issues, a pretty constant thing. Like the ad campaigns that we did were pretty steady. You know, you had your digital campaigns, you changed a little bit. Maybe you had Mental Health Month. But when the auto industry, there's, you know, new offers twice a month from all the, the brands and you got to change all your messaging. Then you have all different kinds of sales and you're competing with other, you know.
[00:41:38] Speaker B: Yeah. And people's relationship with their vehicles are changing.
[00:41:41] Speaker A: Right.
[00:41:41] Speaker B: I mean, there's all sorts of ways to pull at heartstrings.
One of my big clients is Toyota.
So it's, it's, it's definitely quite interesting. I mean, even, even in health care. Right. I mean, each new generation in mental health and addiction creates a whole new relationship with those challenges.
I mean, Gen Z is, is going to be very different than Gen Alpha once we understand what Gen Alpha's issues are.
And within each of those, Right, there's all sorts of sub pockets. So, you know, it's really about understanding your consumer and how to grow with them intimately.
[00:42:18] Speaker A: Yeah, that's where the, the stigma for each generation kind of softens up, you know, got like my, my parents and grandparents generation, like a treatment center, you know.
Yeah. 1 have it, you know, you tough it up and you know a little bit more. They have app based counseling services now and you can do them online.
[00:42:40] Speaker B: So it's, I mean just look at how comedy's changed. I mean stand up comedy is talking all women is like talking about mental health 50 of the time.
Back in the day it was, it was not about it at all.
[00:42:50] Speaker A: Yeah, that's so true.
How does future casting affect naming, messaging and design?
[00:42:58] Speaker B: Yeah. For those who don't know future casting, it's a core part of an output of foresight. So you're trying to understand what's about to happen. What are the various future scenarios for naming messaging, design, product development? You have to build in flexibility.
You want to pick names for example, that won't box you into a corner.
Messaging that can stretch across different types of consumers, consumer needs, their use cases.
We see this trap happening a lot with brands that they're building for right now rather than leaving room for themselves to grow.
The future is messy.
[00:43:39] Speaker A: What shifts in consumer psychology are changing how brands need to behave.
[00:43:45] Speaker B: Yeah, I'd say the old playbook that we heard a lot was more choices means more satisfaction in a lot of industries.
Maybe not as much cars, which is interesting. The new playbook is give me fewer smarter choices that make me feel confident that I chose correctly. So this huge desire for simplicity you're seeing, I mean it's just such a complex world. People gravitate towards the simple.
[00:44:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
What role does AI and tech playing shaping tomorrow's brand landscape?
[00:44:21] Speaker B: I was waiting for you to ask me a question about AI.
Yeah, I mean it, it depends on the industry. Right. I think you see so much proliferation of AI. You have AI on every website in chatbot now.
So it's a lot about customer service. People are okay talking to an AI chatbot because they know that it's going to get them to an answer quickly versus you know, let's say an automated telephone line.
So the, the best brands are blending product and experience together through AI.
[00:45:03] Speaker A: Yeah, I, our, our owner here for this dealership group is completely against any type of customer connection with AI chat or phone. He wants it personal. He wants the customer to feel like they're talking to a live person.
Now he's okay with using it on other processes, you know, things like that, but he's not there yet with human interaction and that, that goes into a big part, especially with the behavioral mental health space. Too, you know, what, what's, somebody's in crisis, them talking to an AI or do you want them talking to a human when, you know they're calling in? So that's a dilemma there that I think's going to be crossed.
[00:45:52] Speaker B: I think that's our next, our next show, Mark.
I mean, it's, it's super interesting. I mean, you, you see entire categories upended because AI can serve us faster in mental health. I mean, you hear instances of a lot of people using AI as a therapist very effectively.
[00:46:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:46:13] Speaker B: Because there are no therapists available until, you know, three to six months from now. I mean, the mental health crisis that is going on. My wife's a therapist. Right. So I can tell you, you know, there's a lot of tools in between sessions that you can use or you can help, you know, build language for your next session with your therapist to make those sessions more effective. And that applies to more industries than just mental health.
[00:46:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
Do you have a favorite technique or, you know, for stress testing a brain against the future?
[00:46:46] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I'd say playing out a bunch of what if scenarios.
So we, we think about scenario planning. So, you know, there could be five different scenarios that a category could be headed in. Typically the reality is a mixture of multiple of those, but you allow a client or a brand to sit in each of those and think about what are we exposed to there, how can we win in each scenario? What would our products, services, marketing need to look like in each of those scenarios? And what that does is allow a ton of blind spots to, to game plan around so that when they actually do happen, you can act way faster or you can innovate ahead of them.
[00:47:34] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, we're coming up to time, you know, the hour, and I want to give, you know, the watchers, viewers and the listeners an opportunity to reach out, you know, find you.
[00:47:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:47:46] Speaker A: A little bit about what you're, you're up to.
So you want to share a little bit about your company, how anybody can get a hold of you, you know, some of the projects that you're working on.
[00:47:57] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I'd say, you know, first of all, I'm open to any conversation. Right. So if you're a leader at an organization and any of this stuff that we've talked about is resonating with you, let's, let's chat. No pressure to, you know, use our services, but I love to hear kind of what, what you're looking into for product innovation, brand strategy.
Feel free to search me on LinkedIn.
There's only a couple. Evan Millman's on there, so you'll find me.
Shoot me a line at Evan Millman. Go-Upland.com Our website is go-Upland.com as you could guess from my email address. I'd love to hear from you.
As for what I'm working on a lot of confidential stuff, working with.
[00:48:45] Speaker A: A.
[00:48:45] Speaker B: Lot of companies right now in automotive, automotive products, like, like oils manufacturers, candy brands, snack brands, toy brands, healthcare companies.
So, you know, a lot of this stuff applies across many industries.
So, yeah, reach out.
[00:49:05] Speaker A: Right. I just want to get you real quick. If you could give one piece of advice to any business about building a brand that lasts, what would that be?
[00:49:16] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I'd say you got to look at, you got to look at foresight, right. So the idea is to build a brand that's still going to work five years down the line, not a brand that's going to work for, you know, today or even last year. So you got to invest in foresight rather than simply building a brand on insight.
[00:49:35] Speaker A: All right, well, that wraps up another thought provoking episode of street level marketing.
Evan reminded us that staying relevant takes intention, not just reaction. If you want to build a brand for what's next, start thinking differently today.
I'm Mark Lamplow and we'll see you next time right here on NOW Media tv.
