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How to Make Your Marketing Match Your Reality
44:45 with Dana DiTomasoToo often, the tone and promises of marketing don't match those of the business itself. Dana will help you bring your brand identity together, both in-store and online.
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[MUSIC]
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Once upon a time we worked with a client who was a manufacturer and
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I'm not gonna say what kind of manufacturer in case they guess
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it doesn't have a happy ending this story.
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They were a manufacturer and so they had their manufacturing division and
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their sales and marketing.
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And their installation in other parts of the company, their dealer network.
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And we worked with just their marketing department.
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We reported to their director of marketing.
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And when they started working with us their main
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pain was that they were spending too much on paper clip campaigns.
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Great, we'll fix that.
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We reduced their cost per click.
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We drove three times as many leads with the same kind of spend.
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And all of those magical things look great in a case study.
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But then, as we worked with them more and
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more we saw that thing weren't quite right.
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There were views or terrible like
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just really awful reviews and this was back when before Google made you
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use your real name to leave reviews so they were like, that's our competition.
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I go, okay.
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And one of them was obviously their competition, they left bad reviews for
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every company in town except for the company they worked at.
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Okay, legit.
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But then there was more and more bad reviews.
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And they were persistent bad reviews.
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Like that person was so mad, that they would write a bad review and
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then leave it on every possible review site, including ones we didn't even know
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of until we saw the brand name pop up in our search.
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Okay, they're really mad.
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And so we bring this to the marketing department and
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say, hey, maybe you could fix this.
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And they'd say, that's installation's problem.
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It's like, well, it's kind of your problem because we can actually see
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your conversion rate going down.
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We can see more searches for your brand name reviews,
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we can see more searches for your brand name sucks.
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That's not what we wanna have.
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And they say, no, that's installation's problem.
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Like can you please take $1,000 out of your marketing budget, and make this
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right for this other angry, angry, angry person who continues to leave reviews.
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No we can't do that either.
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So it got to the point where we felt gross marketing this company.
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They had all the right things, right?
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They had a good reputation, if you hadn't bought their stuff yet.
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They had Better Business Bureau logo.
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They didn't have any outstanding cases.
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They won Canada's 50 best employers to work at award, which is not really
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an award you win, it's an award you pay for but people don't know that.
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They had all the awards and they looked reputable.
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So as marketers we felt like we couldn't keep marketing this product, it was wrong.
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And for them, they couldn't get their different departments together
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to solve the fundamental issues.
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Their marketing did not match their reality, and this happens a lot.
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In organizations now, you have one person who does your digital marketing and
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you have someone else at the radio station who writes your ads and puts them out.
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And then you have your customer service department, your call center, and
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they have their own training manuals and training guides and what to say and
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what not to say.
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And then you have your social media team who's basically making it up as they go
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along, right?
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And I'm sure they're all nice people,
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but they don't necessarily work in the same department.
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They may not work at the same company.
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This could be all outsourced different agencies.
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And so they're not working together and we talk about silos and
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breaking down the silos but really at the end of the day it isn't just
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the silos within marketing, it's the silos within your entire organization.
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And what happens as a result of this is that your brand is broken.
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Your brand is not delivering the kind of experience that it should,
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and so we're gonna fix that.
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Your brand is your promise, your brand says,
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if you go with us, this is what's gonna happen.
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And different brands have different kinds of promises.
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If you do marketing for Comcast, you have a difficult job.
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I think Comcast is basically the only American company I consistently hear
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bad things about, like not even one good story ever.
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So if you're here from Comcast, I'm sorry.
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That's got to be a hard job, please write a memoire.
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I will read it.
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>> [LAUGH] >> But you're brand is your promise.
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Right, now Comcast promise is, well, you're stuck with us, right?
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And that's what they're trying for.
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But if you think about your own brand,
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and what you're promising people, does that promise actually match the reality?
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And it's more than marketing.
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It's more than your promoted tweets, it's more than your radio ad,
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it's more than your billboard, it's how you're greeted when you walk into a store.
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It's when you call somebody what does it sound like?
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Whenever clients we called them and I said put me on hold I wanna hear what it
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sounds like and it was fuzzy radio like okay, so let's fix that.
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It's stuff like that, and
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it's all these different things that come together to make a brand.
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And so, you're probably looking at this right now and
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saying, Dana I don't have control over these things, that's ridiculous.
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But when you're done with the brand strategy
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which we're gonna walk through today.
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You should, or you will.
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So for example, looking at this list, I'm sure you're adding up in your mind
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what you actually have control over at your job.
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Maybe it's one small part of this, maybe it's several pieces.
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You think vehicles, I don't have control over vehicles.
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Maybe I can put a wrap n it, so our logo's on it, and therefore it's branded.
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But it's not really branded, because if I get cut off by your truck on the road,
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I have now had a bad brand experience.
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I am mad at you, and I can't call, because we have hands-free cell phone laws.
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So I'm just gonna sit there and see that your stupid company and your stupid truck.
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And I'm gonna feel a little less happy, if I wanna buy your products and
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services later.
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I'm gonna feel a little bit less excited about buying your products.
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And that is the essence of creating that good
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brand experience, getting away from the bad things that take away from the brand,
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and instead building a solid foundation.
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For example, this is a airline in Canada, WestJet.
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They do fly to US destinations.
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If you like to visit Canada, they're very nice.
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They're very, very friendly, and if you've been in Western Canada you will know about
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the friendliness that you experience there.
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It's like aggressive friendly.
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Coming from Ontario originally, it took me a little bit to get adjusted to it.
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I was used to grumpy Toronto and people were so nice.
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[LAUGH] But for West Jet, they have,
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they're very family friendly, this is their magic plane.
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It doesn't just fly to Orlando, it flies around, and
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if you tweet, hey I spotted the magic plane and use the hashtag,
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apparently they toss you some credits for flight on WestJet which is pretty cool.
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But they do this thing every Christmas,
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and I don't know how many of you here have seen this.
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They call it the WestJet Christmas miracle.
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And it will make you cry, so don't watch it now.
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Maybe like on your break in the corner so you can weep.
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One that really stuck with me is there was a flight from Toronto to Calgary which is
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about a four or four and a half hour flight.
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And when you were at the gate there was a little video box and
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there's Santa saying hey, what do you want for Christmas?
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And you said to Santa what you wanted,
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some people said socks, some other people said a TV.
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They guy who said socks probably regretted it.
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>> [LAUGH] >> And then, the plane takes off,
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they're like oh, WestJet, they're so cute.
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They asked me what I wanted for Christmas.
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They get to Calgary, they get off the plane,
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and instead of luggage, out comes there presents.
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In the four hours the plane's in the air WestJet employees went and
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bought everything on that list, and there's crying, there's more crying,
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and instead of spending money on a tv campaign, they did this.
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And it was a beautiful execution of a digital first campaign.
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It's on YouTube, sponsor social, didn't worry about off-line,
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it happened, because it was that amazing.
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It went around the world, you may have seen it, it was all over Buzzfeed for
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a couple of days.
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But then, Michaela, our account manager at KickPoint took a flight with WestJet.
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And one of the things that they do, part of their brand,
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is that they tell funny jokes.
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And by funny I mean bad jokes, like puns and stuff.
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After you land and while you're taxiing,
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because that's really the most boring part of the flight and everybody gets antsy.
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So they tell bad jokes.
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And usually they're like cheesy like what's brown and sticky, a stick [LAUGH].
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But you're a little bit delirious because you've just been on a plane for
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four hours so it's hilarious.
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And this one time when Michaela took the flight,
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the flight attendant told a really.
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Inappropriate sexist joke, and half the plane laughed and half the plane went ugh,
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and those people felt a little bit less great about WestJet.
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Humans like consistency.
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We like things to be the same.
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We like to have expectations.
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Consistency is wide brand restaurants exist.
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I have stayed at the Hyatt, all of eight, three times for this conference.
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We stayed in three different rooms, I'm sure.
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They look the same, like it could be the same room for all I know.
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And it's cool because when I get there I know what I'm gonna picture.
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We like consistency.
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I had to return something from Lenovo, I bought the wrong kind of plug.
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And Anthony, my friend Anthony, I was waiting and waiting and
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waiting and then he popped on chat.
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He says, hey Dana, three exclamation marks, happy hump day,
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three exclamation marks.
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And then, thank you for contacting Lenovo's Post Sales Customer Service chat,
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located at our Global Headquarters in North Carolina.
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My name is Anthony,
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how may I provide you with extremely satisfying customer service today?
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I'm pretty sure the first two lines were actually Anthony and
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the third line was not.
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[LAUGH] Or so, am I talking to a human or am I talking to a robot or
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maybe it's like Skynet, right?
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All right, or is it the Lenovo cyborg who's now doing, it felt weird.
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And it was like this throughout the entire chat, I was sending screen shots and
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sending it around the office.
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Because it was just crazy that he felt that he could say happy hump day,
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which is funny, but come on.
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And then they got this like Lenovo script.
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Again, brand inconsistency.
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And good marketing feels right.
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Good marketing makes someone say,
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oh I don't believe in advertising, while they choose Coke versus Pepsi.
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Good marketing makes people make decisions that they are unconscious of and
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every time you interrupt, every time there's a bad brand experience,
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you're making people think.
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We do not want people to think, and this is why we need brand strategy.
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And this is why digital marketers are uniquely equipped to lead brand strategy.
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When I talk to people about brand strategy, in fact,
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I was talking to someone this morning while we were walking here and
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I was talking about what I'm gonna talk about today.
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And he said, yeah, I see that all the time in our locations.
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And how people are greeted and all this other stuff.
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I see the connections.
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And if you're used to working in one little silo, like say radio, or
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billboard or some offline traditional channels, you don't necessarily think of
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all the different connections that go into that final product, but
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digital marketers do.
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All of us in this room are able to understand brand in a totally new way,
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so I think that we are very well-equipped to go for the future of marketing.
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Rand just talked about this,
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lots of different speakers today are gonna talk about this.
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This is where marketing is going.
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The brand that manages to get their stuff together and provide a consistent
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brand experience is going to win over their competition, hands down.
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So let's get started.
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I would like you to picture a brand continuum.
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At one end, we have Dove.
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Now when I say Dove, I'm sure you think of something.
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Women wearing white, people looking in a mirror and crying,
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some sort of like sketch, maybe that parody that they did.
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And when you think of Protein World,
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I imagine you probably think of something a little bit different.
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Now Protein World, I don't know how many people know about these ads.
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They ran an ad campaign in the UK, a little bit in New York.
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And it was a picture of a woman wearing a tiny bikini and it said,
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are you beach body ready?
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Like I am not beach body ready according to Protein World and I'm okay with that.
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I also don't use Dove, I'm somewhere in the middle.
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So Dove and
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Protein World have two very different brand statements.
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This is Protein Worlds, when you read this,
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there's some words that really stick out, revolution is one of them.
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It's a very aggressive word, right?
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Healthier, leaner, fitter, stronger.
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Sounds like a Daft Punk song.
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But this is their brand statement.
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And then this is Dove's.
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And this is just a portion of Dove's, Dove's is exceptionally long and
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I decided not to give Erika hives and just take a portion of it.
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But, confidence, not anxiety, positive relationship,
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self-esteem, full potential, and if you put these together,
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you can see that at their heart, they're really saying the same thing.
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It's all about self-improvement.
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It's about making yourself better, one way or the other.
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Protein World's is you've got to look good in that bikini.
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And Dove is, you're awesome just the way you are.
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But they're still self-improvement at their heart.
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Their brand strategy is how they execute
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on that message of self improvement in very, very different ways.
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So when you go back and you start thinking about your brand strategy,
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I encourage you to start with your core values.
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Maybe you have mission statement, maybe you have none of these things.
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Maybe your mission statement says things like, world class or synergies.
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Or it doesn't really say anything at all.
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But it's a place to start.
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Kick Point's core value is we help you do better.
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That could be applied to almost anything, we apply it to marketing.
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So write down those core values.
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I'm sure they exist somewhere, maybe in a dusty document or somewhere.
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Let's start with that.
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And imagine your company as a person.
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Now, marketing agencies,
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I wanna say to you, you have to take the good and the bad.
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So your persona is not Don Draper
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because you can't have the whiskey without the sexism.
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It's very specific.
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And I see a lot of agencies are like, oh yeah, if our brand's a person,
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it's totally Don Draper.
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Peggy, I can get that, Don Draper, eh.
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But think about how you would express your brand as a human being, and
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humans are flawed, no human is perfect.
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There are things that make your brand good and there are things that make your brand
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bad, and you have to be really honest about both of these things.
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Don't just gloss over the bad attributes, this is like therapy for your brand.
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We're gonna talk about it, we're gonna cry, maybe some hugging, and
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then we're gonna move on.
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And really,
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I think one of the most perfect expressions of brand as a person is Roger.
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If I went around this audience today and I asked a hundred of you,
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tell me Moz's core values, you would know.
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There's a reason why you're here and you're excited for this, and
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it's their core values, the tag fee code.
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The givingness that they have for the community, right?
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So if I went to your company, and I asked 100 people what your company stood for,
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would I get 1 answer or would get 100 different answers?
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That's a good sign that you need to start to build your brand strategy.
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So we're gonna go through step by step how to make this happen.
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So step one is why did this fail before.
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If you're at a sufficiently large company, somebody has tried to do this, and
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they failed and you want to know why, so you can avoid the same fate.
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Think of it like Indiana Jones and when he's looking for the Holy Grail.
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And he goes into that room, I'm sure most of you have seen this movie.
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And he goes into the room with all the different cups and he has to pick
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the Holy Grail and the old knight is there and says choose wisely, right?
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And so he goes through the process and he picks, but
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instead of picking a Holy Grail, wouldn't that be easy?
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Here's our brand strategy!
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Instead you're gonna be forensic analyst and figure out why everyone else died
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and write it down, and be really honest as to why it died.
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Dust off those biz school books, and do a SWOT analysis, and
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figure out what is gonna cause havoc for this brand strategy.
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And at this point, I strongly recommend getting the C-level on board.
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So a couple different tactics for that depending up on how big your company is.
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If you're very small company then
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it may be very difficult because maybe the founder is maybe a little too involved?
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And you need to get them to step back and so
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I have a cautionary tale that you can feel free to share.
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Someone we know back home is a personal trainer.
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And he's building a company, but
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he has problems because he is the brand on social media.
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And they get a lot of their business from social media.
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And so everybody says, oh, I only want to work with that guy, the founder,
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I don't wanna work with anybody else.
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And so they hire other personal trainers, but it's almost impossible for
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people to come in via social and say, well I know you on social but
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I guess I'll work out with this guy.
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They're not excited about it, they don't stay.
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And so he has to let go of his social media and
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hand it off, but it's almost been too long now.
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It's almost been to the point where it's gonna be really difficult to step back
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as that brand.
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As a small business, until you have a brand strategy,
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until you have a brand voice, you,
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whoever is the most prominent person at the company, will be that brand.
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No matter what you do.
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So building that brand.
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Needs to be something that supersedes that person.
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I think Moz went through the same thing here actually when they, one of the goals,
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I remember Jen Lopez shared a slide and
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one of their goals in social media was to be brand on Twitter with followers, yeah.
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[LAUGH] And that was a really important goal for them,
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because brand has such a strong voice and Moz had to be its own brand, past that.
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So that's one way for the C-level if you're a small company.
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If you're a bigger company tell them about how much money you're gonna save
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by having less angry customers [LAUGH].
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That you can take the same budget, don't say less cuz then they'll cut your budget.
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You can take the same marketing budget and do more with it.
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Because you're gonna be building more brand advocates.
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You're gonna be building more happier customers.
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And you're also gonna be eliminating something that
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we like to call Marketing Debt.
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If you don't stand for anything at all.
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If you're like, if I say to you, who's your target market.
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You could say everybody.
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It means really your target market is babies.
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No, it's not.
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Then you say to them, we need to make sure that we stand for
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something, because what's happening is reigning in people who are tire kickers.
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We're getting people who are inappropriate customers.
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We're getting people who expect things that we are not comfortable delivering.
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And we wanna eliminate that marketing debt.
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That is time your sales team, or you, or whoever handles new leads is wasting
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as a result of inaccurately targeted marketing.
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And building a brand strategy is going to make that happen.
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It's a pretty powerful argument for the C-level.
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Do more with less.
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Save time across the board.
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They like that sort of thing.
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So hopefully, now you've got them on board.
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Now, you need to think about the brand is, and what the brand is not.
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21:54
And I'm gonna show you an example to illustrate this.
-
21:58
Erika from Moz has a great post
-
22:02
on the Salesforce blog about building brand voice and tone.
-
22:06
And I'm sure someone will tweet that out for you, so you have that.
-
22:11
But this is for a wedding invitation company.
-
22:15
So they have the brand is romantic and airy.
-
22:18
In the near future the brand may be elegant and elite.
-
22:21
The brand is not cheap or tacky.
-
22:24
So, to get to this brand,
-
22:26
and the brand is not statements, I recommend a card sorting exercise.
-
22:31
And if you haven't done this before, you get a whole bunch of cards with
-
22:35
things written on them and then you lock someone in a room until they can
-
22:38
sort down the cards down to what you need them sorted down to.
-
22:41
And maybe don't feed them until they do it either.
-
22:44
And don't let them get away with any of this oh,
-
22:45
I can't decide between these two things.
-
22:47
No, no, you need two is, two in the future, and two is not.
-
22:53
That's it, two.
-
22:55
Not six, not three, not oh, I can't decide.
-
22:57
Two.
-
22:59
And I also recommend a couple of things when you're setting up this exercise.
-
23:04
Write about 40 or so words down, but tailor them to your company.
-
23:09
If you make industrial I don't know, power driving machines, for
-
23:15
example, you are not gonna write romantic and airy as two of your brand attributes.
-
23:20
I think.
-
23:22
If you do you have a very specific segment, well done.
-
23:26
But make them specific to your organization.
-
23:29
But try not to influence the process, especially if you're an agency.
-
23:35
Because you do not work there.
-
23:37
They work there.
-
23:39
They know the brand better than you.
-
23:40
Your goal is to learn, draw it from them, and express it back to them.
-
23:45
That's what they're paying you for.
-
23:46
It's not necessarily for you to say,
-
23:47
well, I like this, so they make sure that their target market don't do that.
-
23:52
So write down these 40 or so words on cards,
-
23:55
start with the brand is not, it's a lot easier for people to say, oh,
-
24:00
I don't like that or I don't this, then I do like this.
-
24:03
Think about when the client see the designed pieces.
-
24:05
Right?
-
24:06
They don't start with oh, I really like this.
-
24:07
They're like, I don't like this color of blue.
-
24:10
That's the feedback.
-
24:11
It's not necessarily good feedback, it's frustrating feedback, but it's feedback.
-
24:16
So start with the brand is not.
-
24:18
Then work what the brand is, and then in the near future.
-
24:22
I also recommend don't do it focus group style.
-
24:25
Where you have a bunch of people in a room, because there's always gonna
-
24:27
be one loud person who's gonna end up overruling everybody else.
-
24:30
Try to do it one on one as much as possible.
-
24:34
So that you are getting the real unfiltered feedback.
-
24:39
And as a result of this, you're gonna get some really interesting answers.
-
24:43
And you're actually gonna be able to see where
-
24:46
the problem areas might be once you push out the brand strategy.
-
24:50
If 20 people say this and then five people in this other department say something
-
24:54
completely different, you're gonna have a bad time.
-
24:57
You know this now, so you can prepare for it, add it to you SWOT analysis.
-
25:02
And the next step is Defining Voice and Tone.
-
25:07
And lots of people have talked about this in depth.
-
25:10
Lots of companies have their brand voice and tone out there.
-
25:14
Nelchem has a good one that's publicly available.
-
25:17
Buffer, who makes everything public, has it available out there.
-
25:22
I recommend reading those over.
-
25:23
But I also encourage you strongly brand strategy is more than just voice and
-
25:29
a lot of companies get to voice and then they stop.
-
25:32
They say okay we're good, because voice is something tangible.
-
25:36
It's easy to grab onto and say well this is not what the brand would say or
-
25:39
this is what the brand would say.
-
25:41
What happens is that you have your marketing department speaking one way
-
25:44
because they're all really excited about this brand voice.
-
25:47
And then you have the people answering the phones still going back to the old way of
-
25:50
doing things.
-
25:51
And it's an incomplete implementation and
-
25:54
then they are like this brand strategy stuff doesn't work.
-
25:58
Nevermind, we're never doing that again.
-
26:00
And then you go and
-
26:01
join the dusty skeletons in the room with all the holy grails.
-
26:05
Make sure that your brand strategy transcends just your brand voice.
-
26:10
All that being said, this is an example that we did for a client of ours, they're
-
26:15
called Industry Mailout, they're based in Edmonton and they do e-mail marketing.
-
26:19
Which as you can imagine is a very crowded field, so
-
26:24
they have some things that make them standout.
-
26:27
And what we're working with them on, is to help express those values.
-
26:31
And so in our brand voice document we have right like this, not like this, and why.
-
26:38
This is real examples, a real screen shot from our document.
-
26:43
Please don't only include the bad examples in the document.
-
26:47
It can be really demoralizing, [LAUGH] everything you do is bad, and
-
26:50
I am here to fix it.
-
26:51
You are not the brand police.
-
26:53
You are a brand coach.
-
26:55
So encourage them to write different ways.
-
26:59
Show them why.
-
27:00
Explain it in depth.
-
27:02
Provide really good reasons for why you're asking them to change things.
-
27:05
Or, if they did something good, reinforce the good things.
-
27:09
I included one of the examples where what they wrote was not like this,
-
27:13
but in our document we do have examples where right like this and then we had to
-
27:16
come up with something bad as an example of how not to write to balance it out.
-
27:22
And at this point it's a really good idea to get human resources on board.
-
27:27
They're gonna be a really good ally in this.
-
27:29
If you're a large enough organization that has a human resources person or
-
27:32
department because they make the hiring decisions that bring in the people who
-
27:36
are gonna be implementing this brand strategy.
-
27:40
And one of the interesting things that a well-defined brand strategy does for
-
27:45
your organization is it defines culture fit.
-
27:48
If you interview someone and you say, hey,
-
27:51
can you write a blog post about why accounting is awesome?
-
27:55
300 words, don't worry about spelling or grammar,
-
27:58
just we wanna see a sample of your writing.
-
28:01
And you read this and you think, wow,
-
28:03
this really aligns well with our brand, that's a good hire.
-
28:07
You don't even necessarily need to provide them with the brand both, ahead of time.
-
28:10
In fact, sometimes you shouldn't,
-
28:11
just to see the kinds of information they come back to you with.
-
28:16
And also, as you go through this process, you're gonna have some people who
-
28:20
are gonna say, this is dumb and I refuse to do it.
-
28:22
And you're gonna need each other as an ally, at that point,
-
28:25
to help you solve these things.
-
28:27
Because if you're in a big enough company,
-
28:28
there's gonna be some people who are not gonna want to make this happen.
-
28:32
I also encourage you to keep it really simple.
-
28:37
Your brand strategy is not a 50 page document, it's a business card.
-
28:43
It's something that I could explain to you in less than a minute.
-
28:48
It's something that you could tell me about.
-
28:52
That elevator speech, that 15 second elevator
-
28:54
speech they tell you to do when you start your own business.
-
28:58
That's how your brand strategy should be expressed.
-
29:01
So, are there any German speakers here?
-
29:04
Okay, my German accent is apparently awful.
-
29:08
I went through Google and I tried to get it, I couldn't figure out how to say this.
-
29:12
So, but, you would know what this is saying.
-
29:17
So pretend that I just said this in German.
-
29:19
I'm not going to.
-
29:20
It's seriously half an hour at my house and then my wife said, no, stop.
-
29:24
It's. >> [LAUGH]
-
29:25
>> You're so bad.
-
29:27
This is I'm lovin' it from McDonald's.
-
29:31
And I'm lovin' it, if you're not familiar with the campaign, I mean you're familiar
-
29:34
with the campaign, but you may not be familiar with how it started.
-
29:37
It started as a German campaign made by the German advertising agency.
-
29:42
And it was so good and so successful that they put it around the world.
-
29:46
It's been translated into tons of different languages.
-
29:50
And it has the same core messages regardless of where you are.
-
29:53
And they use I'm Lovin' It,
-
29:55
which is arguably their most successful advertising campaign ever.
-
29:58
It's been their longest running.
-
30:00
Even better than the Big Mac song.
-
30:02
They've been using it for years, and they use it for hiring people,
-
30:07
you're gonna love your job, I'm loving it.
-
30:11
They use it for people who are excited about their food, and
-
30:14
if you see the commercials, and you hear the little ditty that they do and
-
30:18
you immediately think McDonald's, you're not their target market, and that's okay.
-
30:24
Although sometimes they do sell, like I drove past one yesterday and
-
30:27
they're like salads.
-
30:28
I'm like no, that's not why people go to McDonald's, salads.
-
30:31
One thing that's been really interesting about the I'm Loving It campaign is that
-
30:35
McDonald's in North America are actually doing quite poorly.
-
30:38
McDonald's overseas are doing very,
-
30:40
very well because of the different ways that they express the brand.
-
30:44
And so I would encourage you at this point,
-
30:47
if you have international locations, take that brand voice and
-
30:51
take that brand strategy, translate it, get someone who actually speaks
-
30:55
the language to do this not like Google Translate and get international on board.
-
31:01
Read it to them and if it doesn't make sense in their language,
-
31:04
if your using words that don't translate well, and this often
-
31:07
happens when you're thinking of things that translate from German to English,
-
31:10
usually you can figure English into some of their language.
-
31:13
But, if it doesn't make sense to them then you're gonna have a difficult time
-
31:18
selling this brand strategy around the world.
-
31:22
Your brand strategy should be so
-
31:23
simple where people see it and say, oh yeah I get that.
-
31:27
We help you do better.
-
31:28
Okay, I feel like that's a thing I can get behind, I'm loving it,
-
31:31
yes that's a thing I can get behind.
-
31:33
International locations will help you get there.
-
31:37
And so now that you've got all the stuff together.
-
31:40
You've got your brand voice, you're starting to build what this means for
-
31:43
your brand strategy.
-
31:45
How do you sell it to everybody else at the company?
-
31:48
I would encourage you to show the dream.
-
31:51
So this is the dream if you are a cellphone company.
-
31:55
We start with Jess, LochJessMonster on Twitter.
-
32:00
I don't know if that Twitter handle is available,
-
32:02
but feel free to grab it, if it isn't.
-
32:03
Asking her friend, Elle,
-
32:05
do you like Breeze Mobile?I'm thinking about switching to them.
-
32:08
And hopefully,
-
32:09
your social media department is monitoring non @ mentions of your brand.
-
32:15
There is a great study done that said that most brands completely missed those
-
32:18
mentions, please don't.
-
32:21
Hopefully your brand communicated back to them and your social media team knew
-
32:24
exactly what to say because brand voice, like this not like this.
-
32:29
They didn't spend time thinking about whether or not they should reply,
-
32:32
they didn't spend time thinking about what to say, they knew what to say,
-
32:36
and they were able to say it.
-
32:39
And then she did some Googling, she checked out the website.
-
32:42
Breeze.co is not a real website, please don't go there.
-
32:47
We couldn't get it, unfortunately.
-
32:49
Your meta descriptions,
-
32:52
your title tags, are another great place to put in that brand.
-
32:58
You're PPC ads, I can't even tell you how many PPC ads I see
-
33:03
that say the same boring dreck as everybody else and
-
33:06
this is a massive opportunity to stand out with your brand.
-
33:12
When I was at Search Lab in Boston, I talked about, very deeply about PPC
-
33:16
ads and one of the examples I gave was car insurance companies.
-
33:21
And I said, here's three ads, TV ads, from car insurance companies.
-
33:26
It's like, okay, everybody knows the Geico gecko.
-
33:29
Everybody knows Flo from Progressive.
-
33:31
At the East Coast they have an ap called map for you or something like that.
-
33:34
And everybody knew what their ads look like.
-
33:36
Great.
-
33:37
Here's three PPC ads.
-
33:38
Match them up with the brand.
-
33:40
Nope.
-
33:42
I think maybe one or two people got but it was kinda like they were guessing.
-
33:47
Because they all said the same thing.
-
33:48
Save money on car insurance.
-
33:50
My goodness.
-
33:50
What a unique concept.
-
33:51
I've never heard of that industry before.
-
33:53
I think everybody says you can save money on car insurance.
-
33:55
What are you gonna do to stand out?
-
33:57
So think about that in your marketing and how you express yourself.
-
34:01
Why does your brand get tossed aside when it comes to things like pay verticals?
-
34:06
It's okay if your click-through rate is a little bit lower.
-
34:09
This is a radical idea.
-
34:10
It's okay if your click-through rate's a little bit lower because the customers
-
34:13
that you get are gonna be the ones that you want.
-
34:16
I careless about the click through rate on an ad
-
34:19
than I do about the conversion rate on the landing page.
-
34:22
I careless about the conversion rate on the landing page
-
34:25
than I do on the conversion rate from the lead to the sale.
-
34:27
That's really the most important metric.
-
34:30
Don't waste your salespeople's time, get them just the leads that they want.
-
34:36
So Jess is now driving to the store.
-
34:39
Hopefully, the social media people said, hey, where's your nearest store?
-
34:42
Great.
-
34:43
Greg is gonna be there between 4:00 to 9:00 today,
-
34:45
make sure to say hi to him when you get there.
-
34:48
This billboard matches all the other advertising that you've seen.
-
34:51
There's no weird differences.
-
34:54
There's no special that you didn't see on the website.
-
34:57
Maybe it's got a nice, trackable phone number.
-
34:59
Maybe it's got a trackable URL.
-
35:02
The billboard matches, everything else is happening.
-
35:05
And now she's at the kiosk with her giant sack of money.
-
35:08
[LAUGH] And is ready to switch.
-
35:12
And at this point, how was she greeted?
-
35:15
Do the in store displays match everything else that has led her up to this point?
-
35:22
Is Greg behind the counter saying oh yeah, hey yeah I heard from our social media
-
35:27
team you're gonna be coming in and you've got an iPhone 6.
-
35:30
And here's what we can do to switch you over to our service and
-
35:33
here's how long it's gonna take for your phone number and all that stuff.
-
35:38
That's not an impossible dream.
-
35:39
We have the technology, we can build it.
-
35:43
It's not, it's just something that doesn't necessarily happen.
-
35:47
And if that happens people are gonna think that's amazing.
-
35:49
It's not impossible, it's just hard.
-
35:52
And I think that with a brand strategy you can achieve these connections.
-
35:57
And then after she's so happy she switched over her phone.
-
36:02
She actually ended up getting a six plus because she felt the six wasn't enough
-
36:05
like a tablet to hold up to your face.
-
36:08
I have a Moto X, so I make fun of iPhones all the time.
-
36:11
Then she got her email afterwords, and the email also matched
-
36:17
all of the brand touch points that have happened up to this point.
-
36:21
It wasn't one of those, dear customer,
-
36:24
we understand you've had a recent experience with us at Breeze Mobile.
-
36:27
Please fill out this survey for a chance to win a gift card.
-
36:29
Do people actually win those gift cards?
-
36:33
Is it like Publisher's Clearing House?
-
36:35
I always wondered and I filled them out.
-
36:37
I've been with my same cellphone provider for, I think, 18 years now and
-
36:41
I have always filled them out and I've never won a gift card.
-
36:43
I'm just, come on guys.
-
36:45
When I get to 20 years, maybe balloons will fall from the ceiling or something.
-
36:48
I'm hopeful.
-
36:50
But these emails also need to match that post purchase experience is,
-
36:56
I would argue, even more important than the pre-purchase experience.
-
37:00
Customer loyalty is not just lip service.
-
37:03
And it's also a two-way street.
-
37:05
A lot of companies expect customers to be loyal to them, but
-
37:08
they are not loyal to their customers.
-
37:10
Cellphone companies are particularly bad at this.
-
37:12
There's always deals for new consumers but not a deal if I've been with you for
-
37:16
18 years, and I'm renewing my cellphone.
-
37:19
Why should I stick with you?
-
37:20
You give me no reason to.
-
37:22
Customer loyalty has to go both ways.
-
37:25
So you bring all these pieces together, and you say this
-
37:29
is the kind of brand experience that's gonna make things less expensive for us.
-
37:33
It's going to increase customer retention.
-
37:35
It's going to increase positive word of mouth.
-
37:38
It's going to increase our net promoter score and
-
37:40
all those great metrics that people in the C-level like to see.
-
37:44
A properly executed brand strategy makes all those happen.
-
37:47
And at this point, you can say, okay, we're gonna get service on board.
-
37:51
Because you're able to show them how much better it is when people come in and
-
37:55
they're not pissed off all the time.
-
37:57
When people come in, they're like yeah you're social media person was so nice.
-
38:00
I'm really excited to give you a whole bunch of money and
-
38:03
help you meet your quota.
-
38:04
Right?
-
38:05
You have less angry phone calls.
-
38:08
You have people dealing with stuff in a more proactive way.
-
38:13
Going back to West Jet,
-
38:14
they've had a really difficult time lately in social media.
-
38:16
They're actually, I feel like they're providing a master class on
-
38:21
crisis management in social media because five of their planes,
-
38:25
two weeks ago, had bomb threats called in, and
-
38:28
every one of them had to be grounded, no idea who's doing it.
-
38:33
The Mounties are on the case.
-
38:34
That's a very Canadian thing to say, isn't it?
-
38:36
[LAUGH] I feel like a moose should come out now.
-
38:38
Right? >> [LAUGH]
-
38:40
>> But
-
38:41
they have been handling it on social media so well, and it's on their brand voice.
-
38:46
And they haven't just been, cuz their brand voice is helpful,
-
38:49
their brand voice hasn't just been like, hey look, guy who just lost your luggage,
-
38:53
we're busy over here dealing with a bomb threat, so we can't help you right now.
-
38:57
No, they've been helping everybody.
-
38:59
It's amazing, I do recommend you check out their Twitter, scroll back a little bit,
-
39:02
you'll see how proactive and on they are.
-
39:06
And when Mikayla told them about the sexist joke, they were really sorry.
-
39:11
And they do follow up, they do fix things and that's what makes the difference.
-
39:17
You screw up, you do have to apologize.
-
39:19
But getting service on board and saying like look you're gonna know when you're
-
39:22
doing things right and you're doing things wrong.
-
39:25
You will have that consistency, not just with consumers but
-
39:27
within your own organization.
-
39:30
And then, when you look back at this brand document again, now you can start to see
-
39:35
how all these things start to come together a little more clearly for you.
-
39:39
How you can figure out how your out of home affects your social network.
-
39:45
How your signage and your apps work together.
-
39:49
And what you can do to influence all of those things in your organization.
-
39:53
Go beyond a document.
-
39:55
Do not let your brand strategy languish as a 50 page PDF.
-
39:59
In your intranet.
-
40:01
It's a living, breathing document,
-
40:04
that is the true expression of your company out there in the world.
-
40:10
And always be coaching, don't think, okay, I've coached everybody,
-
40:15
why aren't you following the brand voice?
-
40:16
It's a constant, ongoing process.
-
40:20
And remember, brand coach, not brand police.
-
40:24
You don't wanna be the Soup Nazi when it comes to the brand.
-
40:27
No brand for you, right?
-
40:28
You wanna help people, cuz the only way you're gonna get
-
40:31
people excited about this, the only way you're gonna get cheerleaders,
-
40:34
is if you help them do better.
-
40:37
If you encourage them to be consistent with the brand voice.
-
40:41
If they start to feel it, this is cheesy, but
-
40:43
feel it in their heart, that's a good brand voice.
-
40:47
And if you do all these things and
-
40:51
you bring your brand voice completely together, you will feel
-
40:55
that every decision that you make, whether it's marketing, whether it's sales,
-
41:00
whether it's service, everything will drive forward together with purpose.
-
41:05
And at Kick Point our brand is called Lady KP, you can imagine why.
-
41:12
And we ask ourselves, would Lady KP say this, would Lady KP tweet this?
-
41:16
I am actually quite terrible at writing as Lady KP.
-
41:21
And my business partner, Jen,
-
41:22
we co-own Kick Point together, she is much better at it than I am.
-
41:27
So I'll send her things and
-
41:28
say, please, teach me how to do this cuz I can't get Lady KP's voice.
-
41:33
But I'm working on it.
-
41:34
And that coaching is really important.
-
41:37
And it's something that, it's okay if you don't get it the first time.
-
41:40
It's something that you're gonna work towards.
-
41:44
And if you do every brand interaction,
-
41:48
thinking about that brand voice, thinking about that brand strategy,
-
41:51
thinking about the ultimate purpose of this, every decision that you make
-
41:55
will drive your company forward with purpose, not confusion.
-
41:57
Thank you.
-
42:01
>> [APPLAUSE] >> Thank you, Dana.
-
42:07
So I was sitting there thinking about this, cuz we've all worked with companies,
-
42:12
and they seem kind of valueless, and you go in, and you try to, what is your value,
-
42:17
and you touch on this a little bit, and they say our value is to work hard and
-
42:21
make money and >> I hope that's most companies values.
-
42:25
>> Yeah. >> That's the surface of existing,
-
42:28
continuing to exist as a corporation, working hard hard and making money.
-
42:31
Otherwise, well, making money part maybe you're a charity.
-
42:34
They still have to make money.
-
42:34
>> Yeah.
-
42:35
>> So, I think you have to push past that.
-
42:38
And if they don't, and I mean as an agency it's really hard to say no to people, but
-
42:43
sometimes there are some lost causes and if you work at one, I'm sorry,
-
42:47
that just like, they're just not gonna get there.
-
42:51
Even Comcast, bless their terrible service little hearts,
-
42:54
they have service standards that they try to achieve.
-
42:59
As terrible as they are, they do have something that they stand for,
-
43:03
other than making money.
-
43:05
>> But making money, that's awesome though, that's fine.
-
43:08
>> [LAUGH] Yeah.
-
43:09
>> Okay, couple of questions and you can submit these on the hashtag MozCon
-
43:13
qa >> You talked about a process of putting
-
43:15
things on cards, where do you get the 40 words to put on those cards?
-
43:19
>> There's a lot of, I can tweet out a link later but there's a lot of good
-
43:24
prompts for writers actually when you're developing characters.
-
43:27
There's these great lists of words of different attributes that your character
-
43:31
can have in stories, in novels.
-
43:33
And so you can go through that list.
-
43:35
There's like 200 or so words.
-
43:37
That's a good start.
-
43:38
I'll tweet out some examples as well.
-
43:40
That's a good way to start.
-
43:41
And if you ask people around the company too before you start the card
-
43:44
sorting process that can kinda seed where you're gonna go with that.
-
43:48
>> Okay, final question.
-
43:49
Evan Davis asks, why was Arby's so low on your chart?
-
43:52
>> [LAUGHS].
-
43:53
>> And the meats.
-
43:54
What's the digs on Arby's?
-
43:57
>> Okay I personally love Arby's.
-
43:59
Often when we drive by an Arby's I have to stop and my wife hates it.
-
44:03
She thinks it's disgusting, so I just get my own little, roast beef burger and
-
44:07
have it peace.
-
44:08
And there's like two Arby’s left in Edmonton so I have to be very specific,
-
44:11
oh we're just gonna go down this way, it's a shortcut, and drive past the Arby’s.
-
44:17
Our art director made the brand continuum and I saw where she put Arby’s and
-
44:21
I laughed, cuz she knows that I love Arby’s and I just left it.
-
44:24
So that's why.
-
44:26
But Arby's roast beef, protein, Protein World.
-
44:29
And I wouldn't say too.
-
44:30
I imagine I wouldn't put the Protein World necessarily as the low end of
-
44:34
the continuum and Dove as the high end.
-
44:35
They're just different.
-
44:37
[LAUGH] >> All right, let's give a hand for
-
44:39
Dana DiTomaso everyone.
-
44:40
>> [APPLAUSE] >> Thank you.
-
44:41
>> [INAUDIBLE] >> Thank you.
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