Marketing Lessons for Companies Big and Small

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Sarah Green Carmichael. Today I’m talking with Denise Lee Yohn, a regular contributor to HBR.org on issues of marketing and branding. She’s the author of What Great Brands Do, and her most recent book is Extraordinary Experiences, which focuses in particular on retail and restaurant brands. Denise, thank you so much for talking with us today.

DENISE LEE YOHN: I’m really excited to be speaking with you, Sarah.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So I’ve noticed, as I’ve been reading and editing some of your writing for HBR.org over the years, that you do often focus on retail and restaurant brands. And I noticed in the new book, really that’s heavily the focus. Why focus on these two industries, and what can they tell all brands, no matter the industry, about reaching customers?

DENISE LEE YOHN: Well, there are few reasons. The first is that I believe that the retail and restaurant categories are under a lot of fire, under a lot of pressure these days. Whether it’s on the retail industry with all of the– especially since I’m talking mostly about brick and mortar companies– with all of the online, mobile commerce that’s really growing, I think your brick and mortar stores have been under a lot of pressure to not only produce growth, but also almost justify their existence in a way.

And the same thing with restaurants. There’s a lot of services now that either provide delivery or provide meal services, and so I think they’re also under pressure to attract customers and continue to attract customers. So, I think for the very fact that these industries are so strained, actually makes them great cases for brand building and how having a strong brand can actually help combat some of that.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: It’s almost like it’s a crucible. They’re sort of both crucible industries. Like, if it works here, it’ll work anywhere.

DENISE LEE YOHN: Yes, exactly. Yeah. And also, the second thing, another reason is that I think sometimes brands and brand building can be a little confusing, or maybe seem conceptual to people. And I wanted to talk about branding in very tangible, and practical, and accessible terms. And I really thought that, hey, everyone goes to stores and everyone goes to restaurants, and so I think that people can kind of understand the transaction, or the kind of behavior that goes along with these industries. And now let’s talk about them from a brand standpoint and maybe that will make brand building seem– or help people understand brand building better.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So what’s interesting to me about that idea as well is that you often will hear people say– if you use an example like Nike or Starbucks– people at small organizations seem tempted to say, well that works for them, that could never work in my company because of XYZ reason. And you know, conversely, you’ll hear people at big companies saying, well for instance, a company like McDonald’s can’t learn from Shake Shack because McDonald’s is too big and established, and not nimble enough. People come up with these excuses, but in a way you’ve used all these different examples as a way to say, hey guys, you really can do this, these lessons do translate. That’s how it came across to me.

DENISE LEE YOHN: Absolutely. You know, it’s funny, because I think that one of the most frustrating things that people like me hear is, well our situation is different. And kind of like these reasons why these strategies, or principles, or business practices that work for others can’t work for us. And so I think that you hit the nail on head in terms of saying that, hey, these are things are going to relate to and hopefully everyone can learn from.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So let’s take one of those interesting examples, and actually this is an example that often does not get a lot of play in the business press, but Popeyes. It’s a pretty successful brand, in terms of I think a lot of people will be familiar with it. But at the same time, maybe not on the tip of the tongue in terms of business case examples. So what can Popeyes teach us? What are you hoping that lesson is?

DENISE LEE YOHN: Well, Popeyes came on to my radar because they have produced such a phenomenal turnaround in the last, I guess now it’s seven or eight years. Then as I started to dig into Popeyes, and the reason why it ended up featuring in my book, Extraordinary Experiences, is because they have a very strong internal culture. And as I’ve written, great brands start brand building with a strong internal culture.

I think that many people maybe are tempted to think that great brands are built by the images or external messages that they create, but really, great brands start inside. And Popeyes, with the way that the leadership team has cultivated this really strong culture, shows that you can build a great brand from the inside out.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: It’s also interesting in that example, as you walk through it in the book, you really hear– as is so often with turnarounds– the company really had a lot of things it had to worry about. The platforms on fire, what do we fix first? But they have to choose. You can’t do it all at the same time. So it seems like to me, there’s also an implication there that branding is also about prioritizing some things over other things.

DENISE LEE YOHN: Right. You know, so when I interviewed Cheryl Bachelder, the CEO of Popeyes, she talks about how, at the time when she took over the reins of the company, the list of people or stakeholder groups that were upset with her and her leadership team were so long. And they had to ask themselves, what problem are we going to fix first? Who are we going to pay the most attention to?

And after careful analysis, decided to focus on their franchise operators. These are the folks who have made a significant investment into the brand and into growing the business. And they’re also ones who impact the customer experience the most because they’re the ones that hire the managers and oftentimes they are working in the restaurant themselves, and affect the way that the customer experiences the brand. So they chose a franchise operators. And not to say that all these other groups weren’t important but I think having that priority, and saying, if we can meet the needs of our franchise operators first and fast, everything else should fall into place.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Right, which sounds like it’s actually– that would be a very risky strategy, I think, to sell to Wall Street, for instance.

DENISE LEE YOHN: Well, it’s a very uncommon one.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Well, I want to switch gears here slightly a little bit, and talk more about retail as well. Because of course, as we’re recording this, we are in the height of the holiday shopping retail season. Which in my previous life, many years ago as a bookstore clerk, you could see that the–

DENISE LEE YOHN: How funny!

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Yeah, yeah. You could see in our tracking system just how important the holiday season was to the health of the store because you do maybe a third of your sales for the whole year in Christmas shopping season.

DENISE LEE YOHN: Right.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So tell me a little bit about some of the things that really stores need to be thinking about today, when so much commerce is moving online.

DENISE LEE YOHN: Well, I think at the store experience is still critically important in almost every category and for almost every customer segment. And at the same time, I think that companies have done more in terms of developing their multi-channel services, so you might actually order something online and then pick it up in the store.

So you need to really be very specific about what do these customers want and need along their shopping journey? And then use their in-store experiences to meet that need, whether it is for that entertainment– and maybe there’s a lot of sampling that’s going on, a lot of demonstration, a lot of service that happened in your store– or for other segments, it may be very quick service field with order fulfillment transaction. Whether that means you’re delivering things to people’s cars in the parking lot, or whatever the case may be. But really using all the levers of the customer experience to appeal to those customers wants and needs.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: One of the things– seems a little bit random, but bear with me here– I wanted to ask you about is print catalogs, because I know you’ve written on HBR.org about how those have somewhat surprisingly made a comeback. I mean, we all thought– people like to say print is dead– but the print catalog, as my mailbox can attest, is still a thing. Very much so. But also it does seem like more and more other companies, outside the retail space, are getting into publishing, whether in print or content marketing online. Why do catalogs– why are they still around, what can a print product like that do for you, whether you are a retailer or another kind of company?

DENISE LEE YOHN: Well, I think that shopping is no longer just shopping. I think that people look to catalogs and other content like that for ideas, for inspiration, for information about the company behind the products that they’re buying. And so a catalog becomes a brand’s own personal magazine, where they can actually tell great stories, they can explain their products. Again, as I was saying about the customer experience, they can bring their brand values and attributes to life in the content they provide. And provide this part of the shopping experience that seems maybe disconnected from the actual transaction of going to a store, going online. But it actually really does feed into that part of the shopping experience.

I think that companies like Restoration Hardware or even Patagonia, they use their catalogs to really draw people into their brand. And those are the kinds of materials that people leave on their coffee tables, instead of the coffee table books that people might want to put out there. They put them out to coffee tables so they can pick up and browse themselves, and then when their friends come over, they see the brands that their friends are shopping from, and it becomes much more of a brand experience that this company is creating.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So, it’s interesting. In a way, I think it sounds like marketers never get to do fewer things. There’s always more things to do. New channels arise, but the old channels are not really fading away, despite what people may have heard. It’s just keeping up with all that sort of the biggest challenge, or is that just table stakes? And there are some other challenge out there that you would identify as like, this is the biggest challenge for marketers today.

DENISE LEE YOHN: Yeah. Well, I think that it’s two things. One thing that you talked about before, prioritization, and then to your point about keeping up. I think that what brands need to do is to figure out what are the most important channels, what are the most important tools for us to use, and then focus on those. And then, having the discipline or the courage or whatever you want to call it, to say, we’re not going to focus on these other areas.

So for a company like Home Depot, really adopted Vine and was producing a bunch of short videos through Vine, to demonstrate different products and different things that they sold. And that was a great channel for them. And I think that by selecting that, they probably had to deprioritze– they should have deprioritized– other social channels, or other types of content marketing they’re doing.

And then by the same token, then you have a brand like IKEA that continues to see their catalog as a great way to promote their brand and promote their products. So I think that IKEA probably leans into that and leans away from other things. You’re right, you can’t do everything. So it’s really identifying what are the best channels, what are the best tools that express our brand and that reach our target customers, and really focus on only those.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Yeah. So that’s an interesting point because I think for many years, HBR was not on Pinterest because we thought, well that’s great if you’re a food magazine or gardening magazine, but maybe not right for a business magazine. Just because our content at the time, we thought it wasn’t terribly visual. But then we kind of had this flash of insight where we realized that a lot of Pinterest is actually about self-improvement, and a lot of our content is about self-improvement. And when we looked at it that way, suddenly it all made sense. And now we’re on Pinterest.

So I guess what I’m wondering is, when you’re making those kinds of decisions as a marketer, how do you get more quickly to that flash of insight? How do you think sideways about some of those things that might lead you to an interesting new audience, if you only could sort of think of it?

DENISE LEE YOHN: Well, I think it starts with being very clear about what your brand stands for. And to your point about realizing, hey, a lot of our content is about self-improvement, I think that that probably links back to, what’s does HBR stand for? What is the value that we’re creating in the world out there? And if it really is about helping leaders and executives improve themselves, well then that leads you to these different channels.

But I think it starts with having that clarity and having that focus. If you don’t have that, if you’re kind of like, oh we produce great business content– which I’m not saying that’s what HBR would say about themselves– but I think if you’re very generic or open about that, then it becomes very difficult to select the right media for you. I think the clearer, the more focused you can be, then I think that the connections happen.

Now, at the same time you need to have your radars up, so that when the next Pinterest becomes available– whatever social network, or whatever methodology or tool comes available– you need to have your radar open so that kind of thing comes on your radar and you can say, hey oh, here’s something that we can use.

I think you also need to be aware of what your competitors are doing. And while sometimes, from a category standpoint, you need to be in certain channels just to be a player in the category. You also want to be looking for, where can we differentiate ourselves by being in a place that people wouldn’t expect, or by being in a place that none of our competitors are. So I think it’s a very strategic exercise, even though it seems very tactical because you’re talking about different marketing approaches.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: That’s a really good point. And I think maybe as we’re just running out of time here– which I can’t believe since I feel like we just began– but you know, when you are working with companies, thinking about companies, and helping them to do that work that’s very strategic of identifying what they stand for, what are some of the questions you ask, or tools that you might offer them to think through and define that proposition, maybe a little bit more usefully or differently than they thought about it before?

DENISE LEE YOHN: Yeah. Well, in the past I’ve really taken my clients through exercises of unpeeling the onion, or maybe even the 5 Why technique that I think is very common in a lot of business cases, where it’s like, why do you exist? Why is that important? And why is that important? And why is that important? So you kind of unpeel the layers of an onion, until you get down to really, what is your reason for being? What is the belief or the cause that embodies what you stand for? What is the value that you create?

And so that’s definitely something that I’ve worked a lot with my clients. I’m starting to now explore if I could use a different metaphor than unpeeling the onion, as like climbing up the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. And thinking, not only about what are those basic needs or desires that you as a company might fulfill for your customers? But how do you, at the end the day, at the very top of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, help people self-actualize? Help people become better people, help people become their best selves. And I think that when you start thinking about the value that you create at that level, I think that’s a very rich, emotional, more sustainable place for you to mine what your brand stands for.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: That’s interesting. That reminds me of something I’ve often heard you say which is, “great brands never have to give back.”

DENISE LEE YOHN: Absolutely. It’s not about making up for all the toil that you’re exercising on the world, but rather you’re creating a positive social impact of what you do. How can you make this world better? How make people be better? How can you help people do better things to make this world better? I think that the best brands have figured that out.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Well Denise, thank you. This has been a fascinating conversation. I wish we had more time. But thank you for giving us some of your time today.

DENISE LEE YOHN: Thanks a lot, Sarah.

That was Denise Lee Yohn, author of What Great Brands Do and Extraordinary Experiences. For more, go to HBR.org.