Bonus: Sasha Strauss (Innovation Protocol) - Brand Strategy, Not Making Brand Too Personal, and Importance of Positioning

Sasha Strauss is the founder and Managing Partner of Innovation Protocol, a full-service strategic brand consulting and design firm based in Los Angeles, with a presence in San Francisco and New York. Some of his clients include Google, Doordash, Nestle, Paypal, and Concur Endurance Group. Sasha also teaches Brand Strategy to MBAs at UCLA, USC and UC Irvine.

Highly recommend Sasha's TED Talk if you are looking for more resources about the power of brand and want to be inspired.

One book that inspired Sasha professionally is Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind by Al Ries. and one book that inspired Sasha personally is XXXX by Joseph Campbell.

You can also follow Sasha on Twitter @sashastrauss. You can also follow your host, Mike, on Twitter @mikegelb. You can also follow for episode announcements @consumervc.

On this episode we discuss -

1. What is brand? What led him to starting Innovation Protocol? When an entrepreneur is thinking about brand for their startup, what types of questions should they be asking themselves? If you were starting a B2C brand, what would be his starting point? Importance of positioning/competitive analysis
2. Is building a brand the most expensive asset one can build and the hardest? How does he think about brand today? Consumers have more choice and can have more of a connection with a brand than ever before because of the various ways they can interact with brands (social media, D2C ecommerce channel). Does he think that this is the golden age of brands and consumers will pay a much larger premium than ever before just because of the brand or does he see due to competition and the fewer barriers to entry to start a D2C business online, that it’s going to be harder than ever for a brand to charge a premium?
3. How does he think about brands that have a social missions or are eco friendly, because if brand is an emotion and if the consumer has a deeper connection to brands that have a social or environmental initiative, would consumers be willing to pay larger premiums for those brands? How does he measure the impact of brand on a consumer’s purchase decision?
4. What is one thing he would change when it came to the perception of brand? What is one piece of advice for founders when it comes to brand?

Here's the full transcript

Mike Gelb 0:00

Sasha, thank you so much for joining me today. Especially during these difficult times how are you and your family doing

Sasha Strauss 1:10 glad to connect and my family's doing okay, everyone's huddled down and hunkered down I guess is the right word but huddled together as a family and indeed be making it through staying busy keeping our minds active all the things you need to do to make it you know,

Mike Gelb 1:25 absolutely it's that's really good to hear your brand strategist,

Sasha Strauss 1:28 what is brand brand is a relationship. It's the simplest way to understand its purpose, but it's a relationship which means that for spur human to have a have a connection to something, there has to be some dialogue or experience or understanding your interface and just like people knowing people, you you know someone by name, a product or a service also needs that same kind of identity. So a brand is just a mechanism that you use to bridge a relationship between a product or Service and the audience

Mike Gelb 2:01 got it. brand is not only external, it's also internal. Right? Right.

Sasha Strauss 2:05 So that's what when I say that a brand is you know, relationship between a product and service and its audience, the audience may be internal, it may be the the builders, it may be the salespeople, and maybe the HR department, it doesn't matter. Again, you work, let's say you work for a big company that manufactures products. If you don't have a dynamic relationship with that product, if you don't feel emotionally connected to it, you're just a transactional talent, you're just kind of doing the job. Whereas if you feel again, connected, inspired, informed, you start to care deeply. And that helps you perform at a higher level. It helps you if you're an HR, it helps you recruit with fervor, you know, you're like, oh, come work for this organization. Because we do these things and we make this stuff and it affects these people. And so brand is that it's kind of crazy wrapper that takes all of the aspects of an organization and its outputs and and humanizes them In a way that can build connection, got it. Tell

Mike Gelb 3:02 me a little bit about your background. I mean, we're also gonna put the link into your TED Talk, as well in the show notes. That was, to me really inspiring. I actually teared up during when I first watched it really powerful. What interested you in having a career in brand, also a little bit about what a brand strategist is what led you to starting innovation protocol.

Sasha Strauss 3:21 I've never met anybody in my life who was a brand strategist. And in fact, when I was young, there wasn't such thing as one. So it was a it wasn't the kind of thing where it was passed down from an uncle or I read about it in a book while I was a student. It was honestly a physiological psychological response. It was a defense mechanism on my part, I'll make it really simple like this. anyone listening will remember when they were 10. And they saw a TV commercial or they heard a radio commercial or they saw a billboard. And there are those people who are like, oh, okay, fine stimulation. And then there were those people were like, Oh my gosh, I need that hamburger. Oh my gosh. Oh, I want to buy that car. My gosh, I want to play that sport. And I was one of the people who was wired to have the oh my gosh, I want that thing. I want to experience that thing. I want to believe that thing. And so my, my childhood experience was one of being pulled by all of these communications, it didn't matter if it was from a religion or a car company. I was pulled by it. And until I was sort of, I don't know, awoken when I was 1718 years old, and started to realize, like, wait a minute, I don't I don't actually need that thing. Or I don't really like that kind of car. Why am I called to desire it? And that was because someone communicated to me or to people like me in such a particular way and in such an engaging and relevant way that it was hard for me to look away. So the short answer to how did I become a brand strategist was I needed to protect myself from all of the communications that were encroaching on my consciousness, and the only way I got to be able to do that was to figure out how they were made. So after turning 18 from that day forward, I only Worked for advertising firms, marketing firms, public relations firms, you name it just constantly while I was in school, after school, etc. And then inevitably, you graduate and you work hard, and I worked very, very hard. I absolutely worked seven days a week for a decade. And what it enabled me to do is become, quote, an expert, you know, someone who's had enough exposure and enough time on the topic to, to be good enough to basically hang up my own shingle. And that's what I did in 2006. With innovation protocol, it was just simply me saying, alright, I've practiced this enough, I've been around it enough, I've worked it enough. Let's see if people will pay me directly then that's what started the business.

Mike Gelb 5:38 That's awesome. That's awesome. So tell me tell me a little bit as well about what is a brand strategist like the actual role when a company like hires you on as a consultant.

Sasha Strauss 5:47 So if I was describing earlier that in my youth I was highly impacted by the communications of organizations. And then as I aged up, I found ways to understand those communications and and defend myself against them as a professional, what I've been able to figure out is how to actually create those connections. And I don't mean create those connections in a distorted way where I'm trying to get you to buy something you don't need. But what a brand strategist does is it figures out individual figures out who the audience is what they are experiencing, and then tries to meet them in the middle with with language and ideas and explanations that fit within their lifestyle. So here you are doing a podcast. Imagine that whoever's marketing to you a microphone or cables or audio editing or headphones, they come at it with a very technical spec driven motive, you know, like, okay, here, buy this microphone because it has the specs. But the fact is, is that you're not a microphone expert. You may be able to do some research and collect some details, but you're not a microphone expert. And so, what the microphone company has an obligation to do is not only tell you what it technically can do, but also connect to you based on how you might use it like produce the best part Cast Do you ever could or, or maybe you'll podcast more because this thing works so well or it makes it easy for you to podcast. And you see that those are explanations expressions beyond the functional capability of the device. And that's what a brand strategist does. Whether you're selling airplanes or bubblegum, the responsibility is the same, it's to sort of contextualize the capability of the product in a way that the audience can relate to and connect to.

Mike Gelb 7:26 I know you've worked with a ton of Fortune 500 companies, some of the biggest companies in the world. But I mean, this podcast is mostly focused on startups. And how do you think about or should an entrepreneur approach brand from the very, very beginning?

Sasha Strauss 7:42 I actually really appreciate the question because believe it or not, whether it's b2b or b2c, or startup or fortune 100. The actual approaches remain very, very similar. So my, I'm in a lot of entrepreneurs, societies, and I get that question. You know, someone comes up to me and they say, I don't have these fortune 100 budgets. Come on. You know, what can I do here? And my reaction is the same. My reaction is, Well, okay, are you going to be communicating? Do you know, people don't buy what they don't know exists? So you've got this direct to consumer offering. I don't know what exists, so you're going to have to talk to me. Okay. Well, are you talking to me the same way that an alternate product is talking to me? Or the product that I already use to do that activity? Are you speaking in the same words with the same tone, because if you are, I'm gonna have a really hard time telling the difference between the two of you. So the key factor for a startup is go about it as if you were building it with intention that you're not just trying to get quarterly revenue. You're trying to build annual revenue trying to build multi year connection with your audience. And that means that you have to do the things that big commercial brands do too. For example, commercial brands, always, excuse me, big larger brands always consider their competition. They're, they're following their tweets. They're walking by them at trade shows they're buying their products. And what that what that does for you is it really helps ensure that you don't sound the same. So that's one quick action that I would take as a start up. And the second quick action that I would take as a start up is, well, who is your audience? Who is your buyer? And how are they thinking, behaving, learning, getting informed, etc. Because again, no matter how powerful your capabilities, if one, you don't communicate them, then your audience is not going to receive them. But two, if you don't communicate them in a way that's contextually relevant to that audience, it doesn't matter how innovative your solution, it's not going to break through and change their life. And so my ask is, not only consider who your competition is, but consider who that consumer is, consider what situation they might be in, consider what language they use to describe that situation. And that will help even the smallest of startup get their brand, right.

Mike Gelb 9:48 I really appreciate that. I mean, it seems like a lot of what you said is really about looking at the actual competitive analysis and, you know, how are you communicating versus the versus the rest of the competition and how you can actually differentiate yourself on that front.

Sasha Strauss 10:02 Yeah, exactly like I see a lot of I see a lot of really inspired entrepreneurs, they come out with a blast, you know, they're tweeting and instagramming. They're building their web page. They're so excited about what they're releasing. And then what they realized is, for example, they might be using non industry terminology, you know, there entrepreneur who's moved between categories. And so they're using non specific language to describe their capabilities. And when you're a technical buyer, or you're a consumer who's trying to decide whether to give this to your child, like if it doesn't fit within your psyche, within the space of your consciousness as you're going about your purchase, then you're, then it feels a little weird, it feels like something strange. And so that's why this is such an imperative. And by the way, in the internet era, most of this is free. For example, when it comes to evaluating competition, you can surf the internet to the enth degree and you will find a lot about what your competition is doing. Same thing with your consumers. You can do social listening, you can join social media channels and pay deep attention to what consumers are saying within those channels. So these are not beyond the grasp of a startup with, you know, low income if you're a startup building

Mike Gelb 11:12 How do you think about first mover advantage when it comes to brand?

Sasha Strauss 11:18 It's a really interesting question. Because first mover advantage before the internet was gold, because if a consumer didn't necessarily know that a solution existed, and you were the first to introduce it to them, you got this kind of first in line, you know, priority. It's i