Brandon Carter

Brandon Carter (00:00):

And that can be one of the more challenging parts of that process, but it's also. I think, the most rewarding.

Colton Holmes (00:07):

That just seems to be where a lot of eggs are going into baskets.

Brandon Carter (00:11):

And usually somewhere in there's a new insight.

Colton Holmes (00:16):

Almost like all of this work that people almost just kind of forget.

Brandon Carter (00:20):

And ensuring that everyone sort of embraced the same vision, but at the same time was empowered to make their own decisions.

Colton Holmes (00:34):

I'm Colton Holmes, and today I'm your host on The Rough Draft. In this episode, I sit down with brand strategist and copywriter Brandon Carter. Brandon's been in the industry for over 12 years helping develop strategic narratives for VC backed startups and publicly traded tech companies. He's an expert in helping businesses develop their brand meaning and connect with audiences across owned and earned media experiences. We spend some time defining brand and discuss the increasing importance of brand strategy for companies. We talk about how businesses are telling a story through every decision that they make and how Brandon's work helps bring order to the chaos of that decision making throughout an entire organization. All right, here's my conversation with Brandon Carter.

(01:23):

All right, Brandon. Something you and I talked about in our pre-interview a couple of weeks ago was this idea of companies are inherently telling a story, whether they're intentionally telling the story or not with their brand and how they approach customers and how they interact with customers. And a customer or an audience is always going to be receiving a story whether the way that it's intended to be received or whether they're interpreting it in their own way for better or worse, and so I want to talk about and ask you just to define what the term "brand" actually is when it's in relation to a company and what they're producing.

Brandon Carter (02:00):

Sure. Yeah, sure. You can get different definitions from different people, I'm sure, but the way I think about "brand" is it's kind of the sum total, the sum impression that people have of a company. And they're going to form that impression in lots of different ways and through different touch points. Any encounter they have with the brand in the world, whether it could be an ad, it could be customer service, whatever it is, the sum total of all those experiences inform what this company is about in a person's mind. And so that's why I think in the brand world, notions of consistency come up a lot. I think every company wants to be delivering sort of a consistent experience, giving a consistent impression, making it very clear to people what to expect from this brand and deliver on it time and again. But in practice, obviously it can be a very difficult thing.

Colton Holmes (03:19):

Yeah, I think it's easy, for me at least, and I would assume others are the same, to think of brand just as the visuals that a company produces, whether that's graphic design or video or website design, but it goes beyond that. I mean, the ethos of their story infiltrates, what's my experience and if they have a storefront, what's my experience when I walk in to when I walkout? How far does that reach and what are some things that maybe I'm not aware of that you think of, as a brand strategist, that I'm just never even thinking about, this is also a part of brand that I'm experiencing.

Brandon Carter (04:01):

Sure. Yeah. I think any touch point or interaction or communication, even if it comes through a third party is part of the brand story. So earned media is a great example. Someone is writing about a brand in a magazine or something like that. The brand only has so much control in that environment. Now it's sort of in someone else's hands to tell the story, but whatever a reader or viewer picks up from that story about the brand that now is going to inform how that person thinks about that brand.

(04:44):

So Boeing is a great example and sort of what they're going through right now. I think very often there can be a bit of a disconnect between what a brand says and then how the brand behaves. And I can guarantee you that somewhere in Boeing HQ, the word safety is written on a wall somewhere as a brand value. And I'm sure it's been practiced for a long time, but the way things are playing out in the media right now, people maybe feel a certain type of way about that now. So that's just an example of something that's even when the story is picked up and placed in the hands of other people to tell the story, that, too, becomes part of this overall brand impression that someone is getting.

Colton Holmes (05:43):

Yeah, I mean, I think whenever you put it that way, brand just takes on this whole new weight rather than just the quick surface level idea of what a brand is. Because every decision a company makes between who they affiliate with, who they hire, even. Even some small decisions might have an impact on how consumers are engaging with this brand or their thoughts around this brand. And so it just adds a lot more weight than what I traditionally think of as whenever I hear the term brand. Well,

Brandon Carter (06:12):

And what's, I mean, you're not wrong to place some weight and value on things like logos and things like that because I mean, those things, they're very useful as sort of brand shortcuts. Gap blue, that's like their blue, it's useful, it helps people just very easily identify and form kind of a connection to that brand, but it's not the only thing that defines the brand.

Colton Holmes (06:45):

Yeah, the gamut is really large of what lives under this umbrella of the term brand and what a company is building in their engagement with customers. And so let's talk about what your role is as a brand strategist. Tell me about what that is and what you do.

Brandon Carter (07:09):

The way I like to describe it is I help companies decide how to show up in the world, and there are a lot of decisions they need to make about that. And I think my job is to help make those decisions easier and help ensure that they truly are rooted in addressing the problem. Because every company has grand ambitions about how they want to be perceived, the growth of their business, all of those things. But they have very real, there are very real challenges that sometimes get in the way of that. And that's how I view strategy. Strategy is about trying to apply whatever advantages you have on your side to a problem.

(08:00):

I think very often the trick there is helping brands, helping brands gain clarity and sort of simplify things. Again, it gets very complicated in the day to day. The competitive environment is intense. It gets more intense by the day. Consumer opinions and behaviors change they're dealing with a lot. And I view my job as coming in and in some respects, maybe helping a company get back to some basics. Maybe there are things in the brand's DNA that we've lost sight of a little bit, but they're there. And how can we then apply that to how the brand shows up, maybe, in a refreshing way or in a way that maybe surprises consumers a little bit or just kind of cuts through the noise and stands out from the competition.

Colton Holmes (08:56):

So just going back to that idea of companies telling a story and then audiences and consumers receiving that story and potentially sometimes there being a disconnect. Would it be fair to say that sometimes your role is to come in and bridge that gap and to work from both ends from the company's perspective and really stepping into what consumers are thinking or wanting or feeling and being the bridge that connects those two?

Brandon Carter (09:26):

Yeah, I think that can be one of the more challenging parts of that process, but it's also, I think the most rewarding. I think a couple of things. I think most companies and brands, they have a pretty good understanding of who their consumer is. They put a lot of effort and investment in understanding that. So I always walk in with that assumption that, to some degree, this company knows the audience better than I do. But sometimes it's very easy, it's remarkably easy to lose sight of that a little bit when you are just so consumed with the story you want to tell and the things you want to say. Because you're like, it's just important. We need people to believe this about our brand, probably for commercial reasons or the competitive environment or whatever it is. And so I like to look at that process as maybe a realignment with the audience and what the audience finds important and prioritizes and how they behave, and also what the audience expects from that particular company or that, maybe, category that the company is in.

(10:52):

And so even in a situation where the company has a very good handle on the audience and stays close to the audience, I find there's always opportunity to still get more data, more insight on the consumer. There's no substitute for talking to people just straight up, literally asking people these questions about their experience and their habits and things like that. And usually somewhere in there, there's a new insight maybe that the company maybe just lost track of a little bit that can really spark something. And like you said, maybe help alert the brand to the fact that there is a little bit of a disconnect here. I know your audience very well, but on this particular thing where we're missing a little bit, and maybe you didn't realize that this was a problem, or maybe you didn't realize this was a strength, that sometimes it's a good surprise, actually people really like this thing about your product, not this other characteristic that you're really trying to push. So yeah, it's a super important step in the process, for sure.

Colton Holmes (12:02):

Yeah, and I think it's not changing the story, it's more of just telling it in a different way, maybe, sometimes, because I think it's important, like you said, companies, they're wanting to tell this story. This company was built out of this passion for this thing most of the time, and you don't want to maybe sometimes steer away from that aspect of where this brand was originated, but more of, Hey, let's try and tell it in this different way so that what you're wanting to share is received the way that you're wanting it to be received.

Brandon Carter (12:33):

Yeah, I think this is part of the whole notion of being audience centric, which in some ways is a fairly recent revelation for a lot of industries and companies. It's simply about just staying attuned to making sure you're thinking of and solving people's problems as opposed to being so myopically focused on just what you want to say. And again, it's very easy to lose sight of that in the day-to-day.

Colton Holmes (13:05):

Talking about just how consumers engage with brands today. A lot of that is content driven and creator content driven. That just seems to be where a lot of eggs are going into baskets as the content creator. And so on that note, you came to Austin to Southby to talk about can brands act like creators rather than just always tapping into the creators? Can they develop their own platform? Can you tell me a little bit about that question and why it's so relevant today for brands and companies to consider?

Brandon Carter (13:42):

Yeah. Yeah. So I was moderating that panel. I was with Alicia Morales from Skillshare, Ryan Mack from Made In Network, which is a studio that does a lot of great work with creators and Carla Lalli music, who's a food media creator, I guess, is how she would put it. But yeah, I guess the question behind that question was can audiences build, or rather, can brands amass audiences online and sustain that? Because I think that to me is a question that's probably never going to go away. And the models for how you do that, I think we've definitely seen some shifts in the last 10, 12 years. For example, 12 years ago, the answer to that question was sort of brands should act like publishers. That's what brands were told. Brands were told, "If you want to engage people online, in particular, and stay engaged with them, stay close to them, you need to build these kind of editorial properties. You need to build these destination websites and try like hell to get audiences there." Literally deploy these audience development strategies of pulling in new audiences and then keeping them engaged.

(15:06):

And I think now in 2024, it's very rare. A lot's changed. It's pretty rare to find that model. redbull.com used to be held up as the perfect example of this, where it was sort of this extreme sports media property. Now it's stuff, it's like Formula One who won the Formula One race. Makeup.com, that was a novel thing that L'Oreal started, and it was like, what a great idea to have a site that's almost like Pure Wow with all these great skincare tips and things like that. Now when you look at that property, a lot of that content is just curated from creators. So clearly there was a shift. I think obviously publishers have gone through a lot in that time, have I think suffered a bit at the hands of tech and the big social platforms and all of those things.

(16:01):

So yeah, the question was sort of like, Well, what's next for brands? If that model has sort of gone away, what degree of control can brands have over developing audiences who show up for them? Because I think what you're seeing now, you alluded to this already in this kind of creator centric model, brands are just trying to partner and collaborate with creators, which is smart. I mean, I think that, sure, creators have amassed so much influence and audience now they're rivaling the biggest media companies in the world for audiences online who love these creators and come back to them for more and more content. So brands are always going to follow the audience, smart to partner with creators. But I also think brands usually want a little more control than that.

(16:59):

So that's where the question comes from. Is there an opportunity for brands to actually act like creators and maybe adopt some things that creators do very well to develop their own relationship to audiences and develop this sort of gravitational pull online so that they know audiences are showing up for them, the brand and not necessarily showing up for the creator. And then the brand is sort of hanging out at the periphery, like, "Hey, hey! Over here, look at me!"You know what I mean? So that was sort of where that question came from.

Colton Holmes (17:42):

Yeah. Do you think there is a brand that's doing that particularly well?

Brandon Carter (17:48):

Yeah, this came up on the panel as a well-known example. I think Duolingo does that very well on TikTok. They got 10 million followers on TikTok. And the content is pretty simple stuff. It's like someone twerking in an owl costume, and there are funny captions and people just like it, but I think there's this perception that they're sort of the exception. It's like how often... Brands should not expect to, first of all, maybe make that level of investment in one platform like TikTok, which we can see maybe the folly of putting your eggs in one basket now that TikTok is under legislative threats. These platforms can always change whether it's the algorithm changing or something regulatory happening that can really screw things up. But I think, yeah, there was this notion that came up on the panel that I think is very useful for brands to think about, which is, if you're not in the TikTok model, how can you serialize your expertise?

(19:08):

I think most brands can use that in some way, and that doesn't necessarily mean that you have to do video at scale, which is what TikTok does. But it's easy, again, it's a kind of cheap video, but it works really well for that platform, and they've sort of started a phenomenon there. But yeah, brands typically, I think, don't maybe do video scale typically. It is never really like a proficiency, so it's something that they have to learn, but there are other ways to act like a creator. It doesn't just have to be a video thing.

(19:49):

Newsletters are a good example. Newsletters are as popular as they've ever been, and there's no reason a brand can't develop a great newsletter that people talk about, share with friends, ask people like, "Oh, do you read that? It's actually really good." And that's something I advise clients on all the time, "Have you thought about starting a newsletter?"

(20:13):

So yeah, there's lots of answers to that question. There are different ways of thinking about it, but I'm interested to see where it goes. I think we're just at the beginning of that realization maybe that brands can actually learn some things and apply some things to their own marketing practice when it comes to communication and speed of production and efficiency of production and authenticity obviously is a big one.

Colton Holmes (20:47):

Yeah. I want to take a second and step into just some of the processes and tools that you employ when you are hired into positioning a brand. And there's a story that you mentioned a couple of weeks ago when we were talking with Francis Ford Coppola about the way that he approached his crew on set with the Godfather and employed a tactic with his crew in order to alleviate some things from his perspective. Can you tell me that story?

Brandon Carter (21:18):

Yeah, I'll start with the story and then I'll kind of back into how it sometimes applies to this kind of brand work. But yeah, the story, I think it's probably kind of a famous story in some circles. A buddy of mine, I think, told me about it.

(21:33):

But evidently on The Godfather, well, first, Francis Ford Coppola, I think, developed a reputation in the seventies for making these really difficult movies. The movies were just at his peak. They were very difficult to make. He really suffered physically and mentally, I think in the process of making these movies. And The Godfather was not an exception. He was dealing with a lot of decision fatigue and just sort of realizing how much of being a director was truly just answering 200 questions a day, coming from different department heads, what color should this be? What tie should Michael be wearing in this scene?

(22:15):

And so he realized that this was not sustainable. He can't sort of focus on what he needs to focus on and also be making all of these micro decisions and sort of micromanaging the process. So he developed what is essentially a strategic framework for collaborating on this movie and ensuring that everyone sort of embraced the same vision, but at the same time was empowered to make their own decisions and make the decisions in their own way. So he basically just developed a one word theme that distilled the meaning of the movie, because that's always the question is what are we making really? What is this movie about? So I'm the Godfather that one word theme was succession. This movie is about succession, and anyone who's seen the movie can understand that. So anyone who read the script and was working on that movie can understand that.

(23:23):

So he found that in developing this one word theme to describe the entire enterprise, which was succession. Now when someone from the costume department came to him and asked him, "Oh, which tie should we put on Michael Corleone in this scene?" He could say, "Which tie says succession to you?" And the costume designer can now go and make an informed choice. Now, they might make a different choice than Coppola. For all I know there are scenes of the movie where the tie Michael Corleone is wearing, Coppola is still like, "I don't know if I would've chosen that, but let's go with it." But the point is just in creating that alignment with one word across the entire enterprise, his life got a lot easier and people were empowered to go and do their thing because they're experts, they want to make sure that the director is happy, but also it's kind of a shame to squelch their creativity in service of this dictatorial ego.

(24:40):

So I love that story because truly about empowering people, it's about ensuring that everyone is rowing in the same direction. And at the end of the day, it is about efficiency too. It just makes everything more efficient. So in the brand world, I'm always looking for that one word, or maybe it's three words, but what is that theme or meaning that we can unlock that helps us just make all of these decisions from what the new logo should look like to the content we should develop digitally to where we show up in the real world?

Colton Holmes (25:24):

I want to go from there and talk about just what is your process? And I know that you mentioned you take that approach of taking one word and using that as you approach projects. And can you just walk me through a little bit what all that looks like?

Brandon Carter (25:41):

Yeah, sure. Well, I think very often the hard part is finding that one word or three words. So I think I go into any project knowing that that's what I'm looking for, and they need to be these kind of evocative words that really just nail the brand or what we're trying to do. But that's a process, getting to those words, it involves talking to lots of people. It involves talking to lots of people at the company. Usually it involves talking to people outside of the company, partners, customers, whoever they are, doing that sort of research. And then you're trying to synthesize all of these inputs and you're literally just trying to spot patterns. What keeps coming up in all the conversations that I'm having, what are those consistent themes? What's kind of consistent feedback? Maybe there's a word that keeps coming up, and that's when I get excited.

(26:43):

It's like, now I feel like we're honing in on a truth that doesn't feel so subjective. It feels a little bit more objective. And I think that's important in trying to get that buy-in from whoever it is you're working with, that this isn't just about pretty words and sharing our thoughts. We are trying to, we're embarking on a process to find the truth, and we have to gather all of these inputs, but then at some point, we have to make some decisions about what's important within all of those signals. And I think recurrence is a really good way to figure out what is truly important here. And then once you have those recurring themes, then it becomes a little bit easier to now make decisions on messaging or visual identity. How can we use these words, which are now maybe functioning as creative filters to make decisions on color, typeface, language, all of those things. That's the fun part, I think.

Colton Holmes (27:56):

So with all of that, are there some principles that you have that you kind of adhere to, that you instill into every project that you approach, that you always go back to, "This is a principle that I want to just continue to inform the way that we're approaching this project"?

Brandon Carter (28:11):

Yeah, yeah. We've talked about a couple of them already. I think one is definitely this idea of recurrence. What am I consistently encountering in terms of feedback or just information about the brand and where we're trying to go.

(28:35):

Simplicity also is another one. That's why I love the Coppola story. I mean, if you truly can distill what might seem like a complex problem or ecosystem down into one word that everyone can understand what it means, there's nothing better than that. And I always aspire to reach that level of simplicity by the end of my work in the process. Doesn't mean I always get as close as I want, or like I said, sometimes that can be a really difficult part of the process, but I think I judge my own work on simplicity and clarity. Like, "Did I bring that to this collaboration?" Because it's easy to sort of complicate things and feel like, well, if it's complicated that it's sophisticated. And I think this work, I think the opposite sort of true. The simple is sophisticated because we all know how much work it can take to arrive at this point where we're confident in something as simple as one word or three words kind of being our framework for how we're going to make decisions.

Colton Holmes (30:00):

What are some tools that you maybe some tangible tools or software or even physical tools that you lean on while you do your work?

Brandon Carter (30:12):

There's a few. I do a lot of interviews, kind of like what we're doing now, in my work. So something as simple as a transcription tool, honestly is super useful. So I can actually have a conversation with a stakeholder where I'm actually listening. I'm not laboring to take notes on every single word that person says. I know there's going to be a record of this, and if I need to go back and again, look for those recurring themes and patterns, I can actually do that with a transcript. So that's a big part of it. And that actually helps me approach an interview again, with, I usually have a few objectives in mind. There are things I'm looking for when I have those conversations, and so there's not this pressure to take notes on every single thing. I'm sort of waiting to hear, even if I'm not a hundred percent sure what it is, I know I'm sort of looking for a few things, and once I start to hear them, that's my moment to pounce.

(31:20):

So that's a big one. I mean, there's a lot of AI enabled tools out there. I like using something like perplexity.ai, which is an AI enabled search engine, and sometimes I think that's a great place to start. If I'm just trying to get a picture of this company, what does AI think this company does based on all of the inputs it has at its disposal? And usually I can get some, I'm not going to obviously take whatever answer is spit out as gospel truth, but sometimes I'll get some strange or evocative words in that answer that kind of spark something, and I'll write that down. That's an interesting word to associate with a software company or whatever it is. And then also, it's great, it'll show you the sources that it's getting this information from so I can decide if I need to do some more digging, I can clearly see that, okay, this is where it's getting information from. Let me do a little deeper dive on this particular source.

(32:28):

So yeah, those are a couple off of the top of my head when it comes to... Especially those initial stages of just trying to wrap your head around, all right, what does this company do? What's the competitive market like? Audience insights, perplexity.ai, I think is a great place to start wrapping your head around some of those questions. And then a transcription tool that just allows you to actually be present in conversations you're having with customers, with stakeholders at the company without worrying about losing any really important information.

Colton Holmes (33:05):

Yeah. Yeah. That's good, man. It's really encouraging just to hear your entire process, and it's really fun for me to get a peek into what you do. But I like the idea of that you're bringing order to chaos and that you're alleviating decision fatigue within a company, and that you're creating this really streamlined approach into how a company tells their story. And it just really empowers everyone from CEO level to entry level in a company to continue to tell the same story and synergy and continue to go back to this game plan, to back to this brand strategy that has been intentionally and thoughtfully and really carefully established in a brand.

(33:53):

I think it seems like takes so much work and dedication and thought, and then just becomes, hopefully, I think, maybe you have a different opinion, but hopefully it just becomes this second nature part of the company because it's been rehearsed so many times in so many different ways that it just becomes something that almost doesn't even get thought about as much because it becomes part of the organic structure of where the company goes is what I would assume would be the hope, is that almost like all of this work that people almost just kind of forget because this is just like, oh, this is just what we do.

Brandon Carter (34:37):

Totally. Yeah. If it becomes really effortful, then it probably is not going to succeed. And I think that's part of it. How easy is it for an entire collaborative, creative, corporate enterprise to actually adopt and deploy whatever we are saying the solution is? And if it's really hard, yeah, it's probably not going to succeed, and that probably means there's more work that needs to be done.

(35:10):

So there is usually this sort of test phase right after maybe we've kind of come to the end of the process and said like, "Okay, this is the solution. This is how we're going to deploy all these changes to all these different brand environments." There does need to be, I think, before maybe putting all the eggs in that basket, let's test it out. Let's see, is it seamless and easy for people to adopt. I'll give an example. I did an internal communications strategy project not too long ago, and that was one of the core objectives up front was just sort of like, we know that internal communications very often falls to managers and they're super busy, and whatever solution we come up with, it has to literally take them almost no time to adopt it. Because we can't be creating extra work for them.

(36:14):

That's a limitation, that might sound like, "Well, that's very limiting if you're saying any solution we come up with has to take almost no additional time for managers to adopt." And it's like, that is limiting. But that's kind of the beauty of strategy. It is now forcing us, that's where the creativity comes in. We now have to get creative about how we're going to empower managers to be better communicators within the organization in a way that takes them almost no additional time out of the course of their week. So yeah, that is a big part of it, there does need to be an ease. I've used the word simplicity a lot in this conversation, but ease, which is maybe a slightly different word, there's a slightly different connotation there, but they're related. Ease has to be a big part, I think, of this kind of work too. There's ease of information and just sort of helping people absorb what the solution is. And then there's ease of deployment and adoption and things like that. Those are usually things I optimize for.

Colton Holmes (37:25):

Yeah. Well, Brandon, thanks again for joining us today. For those who are listening, how can they connect with you online?

Brandon Carter (37:34):

Yeah, you could definitely find me on all the main social media platforms. If you're on X or Instagram, it's @brandedcarter. See what I did there?

Colton Holmes (37:48):

Yeah.

Brandon Carter (37:49):

Branded Carter. And yeah, you can hit me up on LinkedIn, whatever it is. And yeah, I love connecting with people, so yeah, don't be shy.

Colton Holmes (37:59):

Yeah, that's funny. I was actually going to say we should title this episode Brandon on Brand.

Brandon Carter (38:05):

Yeah, there you go.

Colton Holmes (38:06):

But I'm sure you've heard that joke a million times now.

Brandon Carter (38:08):

Actually. I haven't, but I like it.

Colton Holmes (38:11):

All right. Well, thanks again, Brandon. I really enjoyed it, and I hope to have you back on soon.

Brandon Carter (38:17):

Yeah, my pleasure. Always great talking to you and appreciate it.

Colton Holmes (38:24):

Well, that's it for today's episode of The Rough Draft. To learn more about our guests and to find links and resources related to the conversation, check out rev.com/podcast. That's rev.com/podcast. If you enjoy today's conversation, be sure to rate and subscribe in order to stay up to date with the latest episodes and help other creatives find us. Thank you for listening, and we look forward to seeing you again on the next episode of The Rough Draft.

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