Modern Strategies For Creating Your Brand Identity with Chris Sullivan

00:00 Andy Splichal Welcome to the Make Each Click Count podcast. This is your host, Andy Splichal. We are happy to welcome this week's guest to discuss today's topic, which is modern strategies for creating your brand identity. Today's guest has been labeled a tech nerd, but in reality, he is a practice storyteller with a knack for solving technical problems. Guided by two principles, technology is only a vehicle for a great story, and any big idea is worthless without flawless execution. A big welcome to the co-founder and executive technical director at Kworq, Chris Sullivan. Hi, Chris.

Chris Sullivan Hey, Andy, thanks for having me.

Andy Splichal Well, thanks for joining us. You know, let's start with talking about brand identity and strategy, right? Right from the get-go. What does brand identity encompass, and when should a company start working on establishing their brand identity?

00:53 Chris Sullivan Yeah, sure thing. So technically, brand identity is what everyone thinks, right? The elements that distinguish your brand, make it recognizable, memorable, and the litany of lists, you know, you got name, logo, tagline, colors, typography, all that usual, the usual suspects. But you gotta think about it more simplistically. Your brand identity is, it's your personal uniform. It's the first thing people notice about you. It's your outfit. It's what, you know, you wanna feel confident, you wanna make a statement, you wanna be remembered, right? So it's everything that encompasses the visual and outward messaging of your brand. When to establish it? That's a good question. Day one. And I think the more important question is to what extent you wanna establish it, right? So a lot of new smaller brands, they come to us and they think that they need to do this like massive brand identity exercise that can take a lot of time and a lot of money. And I think what they need to do is they haven't explored their market yet. And as soon as you put something out there into the wild, customers, they're gonna give you their feedback. You're gonna hear from your customers and you wanna feed off that and you're gonna adjust and you're gonna adapt. So I think it's important day one, but you need to step yourself into that brand identity. You don't need to come out the gate and be Verizon is gonna spend $10 million on a rebrand if that makes sense.

Andy Splichal So where do you think that most companies get it wrong when it comes to establishing their brand identity?

Chris Sullivan I think many companies, they imitate their competitors. They're like, they look at what, if they don't have a brand identity or they're thinking of shifting, they'll look at their competitors and they'll copy those things. They'll follow industry norms. And then you have an identity that has a lack, it lacks distinctiveness. It doesn't stand out. And then why should someone interact with your brand versus somebody else, right? So what you need to do is have a unique value proposition. You wanna find out, you will look inward and figure out what differentiates yourself over your competition and try new things. Try and do new bold things so that you stand out.

03:16 Andy Splichal So what, I guess, what's some examples of that? I'm trying to wrap my head. I mean, everybody, you know, business 101 talk about established machine, your USP, but how are you gonna use that in your brand identity?

03:38 Chris Sullivan I think when it comes to standing out and being different, you have all these opportunities. And brand identity can be a lot more broad than I think that people, when you think of like colors, brands, logos, right? That's very simplistic. But your brand identity is your voice. It is how you talk to your customers. And where we are currently with social media, everything that you put out there is your brand voice, your engagement with your customer base. And that's where you can explore and you can try different things. When you look at a platform like TikTok, that you don't need this curated feed of content, where you can try something new every single day. You can navigate through your competition. You can talk to your customers and get immediate feedback. And that can help you build a brand identity around those values and goals that you're learning from your customers.

04:40 Andy Splichal So you offer web design services, as well as a host of other creative production and strategy services. But let's jump into the web design, because I would assume that that's one of the most top ways you're gonna communicate your brand identity. What goes into creating a website that is going to engage the user?

05:02 Chris Sullivan So I think it's important to have clear and intuitive navigation. And you don't wanna confuse customers with complexity, right? There's a lot of like flashy website designs that you could do, which on its surface, you can wow a customer and it's gonna hold their attention for five seconds, right? But it's not gonna retain their attention. So you wanna be able to engage your audience with compelling and relevant content. So visual appearance is important, but it's not as important as content, right? Content is king. So we have customers that come to us that may be a WordPress website, a Shopify, a Wix, whatever it may be, get a template, start there, fill it with great content and product information, right? Get compelling content, product information, fill your site with that material, versus trying to build a website that has all these flashy bells and whistles.

06:04 Andy Splichal So when someone comes to you guys and they're saying, I need a new website, what are some of the reasons that they're going to want to revamp their website or replatform their website?

06:18 Chris Sullivan I think that we get this a lot, which clients come to us and they have a deliverable. They say, I want a new website. And we always ask why, why do you want that? And the question is usually aligned the lines of, well, we want more sales and this is our solution, right? So we as an agency, and I think we act differently than some other agencies that are very creative for branding agency, we act more like a consultancy where we challenge them. What problem are you trying to solve? And if it is sales, how do you know that that's your problem? And we may help them with revamping their website. We may steer them away from revamping their website and just repopulating it with content that we think is the issue. So I don't think it's black and white that you have to revamp your website, but it's great. What about the website needs revamping and why?

07:11 Andy Splichal What platform do you guys prefer? If you are going to do a site redesign, is there a particular platform that you recommend?

07:26 Chris Sullivan I think it really depends on the goal. So a lot of our clients are e-comm customer clients and we prefer Shopify. And we prefer for a bunch of different reasons. The management platform that Shopify gives is fantastic. And they continue to build on the tool sets of the front end, right? Front end and content was a struggle in early days of Shopify, where we would even do like ad hoc websites with Shopify backends and like WordPress front ends. And their tools are getting better and better every single day. So Shopify for the majority of our e-comm clients. We still, well building custom websites for brands that may not be selling, you know, a litany of products and maybe they're a service-based business where we will build WordPress websites because it gives us the most flexibility.

08:19 Andy Splichal Beyond your own website creating your identity, I assume social media is going to play a lot into establishing a brand identity. How much does it play? I mean, how active should a company be? I mean, beyond ads, forget ads if you're an e-comm company driving traffic to your website but as far as establishing your brand identity how active do you think someone should be on social media platforms?

08:48 Chris Sullivan I mean, I touched on this earlier. I think it's huge, right? Social media is your brand's voice. It's where you interact with the world and more and more the younger generation they wanna hear that voice, right? They wanna know what your brand's story is, the history the why, why do you exist, right? Identity, they want you to get out there and explain to them why they should pick your brand over someone else. So I think it's a great place to do that, communicate with those generations and it's a great place to experiment. Like I said before, the ephemeral content of like Instagram stories and even the lesser extent TikTok lets you try different things. You can try multiple different messages and multiple different tactics to find out what sticks and what message resonates with your customer base. And once you get that message, once you figure that out on social then you can disseminate that everywhere else and all your other touch points.

Andy Splichal How do you as an agency calculate ROI for your clients when it comes to branding?

Chris Sullivan Yeah, so calculating ROI in a direct relationship to branding is a challenge. I think the impact of a branding effort is often difficult to measure directly, like direct correlation. But it's also getting harder to measure direct correlation to any of the marketing platforms, right? Because privacy laws and changes in advertising platforms it's getting harder and harder. For all of our work that we do with our clients whether that's Facebook advertising or a branding initiative, we do rely on what's called MER, it's marketing expense ratio. And that is total marketing expenses divided by total revenue times a hundred. And it gives us an idea where ROI would be our return on investment for maybe an advertising platform or more appropriately ROAS, right? For advertising spend. MER is the initiatives that we put out from an advertising perspective, how much they cost and how much did it affect the total revenue being generated by that brand, right? So any dollars that we put in, how is that moving the needle? And how does that compare to the last week, the last month, the last quarter, the last year? And that's how we see what the initiatives are fruitful or not.

11:15 Andy Splichal Interesting. So you're combining all the different paid channels that you're spending money on as well as the money that's spent on branding

11:27 Chris Sullivan to get that MER calculation? Correct, right? And if the brand is doing other initiatives as well, holistically, we should factor those things in at the same time. You wanna see how anything that a brand is doing moves that overall value for the company. And it's not the only thing that is done. It's one of several metrics, right? As I said, you gotta have the ROAS per channel, you have to have ROI for marketing dollars, you have to have the expenses that involve creating that creative for those advertising dollars. And then branding initiatives, PR, anything like that needs to be calculated at that MER level.

12:05 Andy Splichal And when you are coming up with a strategy for a client, what is the percentage that you are allocating toward brand recognition versus acquisition versus, I mean, how does that break down?

12:18 Chris Sullivan It's very difficult to give you an answer on that. It is very dependent on a brand. We have clients that are much more brand oriented sales for like a long tail customer. What I mean by that is we deal with like new sports organizations, a whole team is gonna come, it's gonna cost them $20,000 to come to this resort. That's a lot harder to bite off than a product that cost me $20 and it's an econ purchase. That baseball organization that has that much larger product purchase, that is gonna rely a lot more on branding, communication and the whole package where the smaller brand and that econ product that's much cheaper, probably get more or less value out of an overall rebranding and more value out of partnerships with the white listing influencers or ad dollars.

13:29 Andy Splichal So what would be some actionable advice that you would give to listeners that wanted to increase their company's branding?

13:39 Chris Sullivan Well, I think we've touched on this several times, but build a strong presence on social media platforms. And I think a lot of that, especially with our clients, we push them and their internal teams to handle their organic social media platforms. You don't need necessarily an agency to be doing your day-to-day organic social media. And I think the smaller the company, the more valid that is. You wanna be much more authentic and coming from either the founders or the internals of that organization and company, but regularly engage with your audience, respond to comments, actively participate in conversations. Use social media to humanize your brand, share updates, showcase your brand's personality. I think starting there and you will get feedback that can be used everywhere else.

14:35 Andy Splichal So let's talk about your company. And before we do you personally, are there any business books out there that you could attribute to your journey as an entrepreneur?

14:45 Chris Sullivan I don't know if I can say that it has, I stopped short of saying that it has affected the journey of our company. I'd like to think it has. One book that I recommend to all entrepreneurs is a book called Measure What Matters. It's a book that focuses on the concept of OKRs, which is objectives and key results. And OKRs are a goal setting framework that helps individuals and teams go towards a common objective. And there's examples in the book about Google, Intel and other Silicon Valley companies that use OKRs in their day to day business.

15:34 Andy Splichal It's a pretty interesting book. Now, agency wise with Kworq, what services are you offering clients to increase sales?

15:43 Chris Sullivan So at Kworq, we operate more as a consultancy agency than a traditional creative agency. So we like to act as an extension of our clients internal team. So we find and fix internal marketing strategy and analytical inefficiencies. So it's a little bit more unique from that brand, from that angle where we don't list a litany of services that are ad hoc that people come and just bite off. We really get in bed and have multi-year relationships with our clients.

16:20 Andy Splichal Is there, with that in mind, I mean, is there long term contracts? Is it an annual commitment that you're making with hiring you or how does that look?

16:34 Chris Sullivan The majority of our clients are retainer based. And I use retainer loosely because it's not a use it or lose it model. It's paid for by hour. It's estimated for a 12 month period. But we don't have 12 month commitments. We don't lock anyone into that, into a long term relationship.

16:54 Andy Splichal Got it. And I see that one of the services you offer, it was interactive and personalized experiences. And that caught my eye. Can you explain what that is?

17:04 Chris Sullivan Yeah, those are personal brand experiences, like at a sporting event or a pop-up shop. They're like things that your customers can interact with. So we've created these digital experiences for events. And they are not cookie cutter. They're ad hoc and made per a brand and initiative. And so we've created these digital experiences that are made per a brand and initiative or an event. One of my favorites that we did several years ago was a project for Verizon and the NFL where we made these 80-inch touch screens that were in stadiums. And they were individually personalized for a fan. They put in their email address and their name. And there was some interactive content that you could do and participate in that would put your personal details into that content.

17:51 Andy Splichal Oh, that's pretty neat. Now, I also saw on your website that you recently held a talent show. Now, that's different. How did that come about? Why and how did it turn out?

18:04 Chris Sullivan Yeah, so that it's called Let's Get Weird. That's what we called it. And it definitely was different. That was the goal. We wanted to have an agency event. And we pulled all the employees. Nobody wanted to do like a standard speaker or panel. And we really wanted to create an experience that people would want to come to. And we invited people in the… We're in Gwanas in Brooklyn. And we wanted to get the community involved. We definitely achieved that. It was a very interesting night. And I think we'd do it again in the future. It was fun.

18:44 Andy Splichal I was going to say the sign of success. Is this going to be an annual event then?

18:47 Chris Sullivan I don't know about annual, but we're definitely going to do it again. It was successful enough to be very interesting and fun. And got a lot of people together.

18:58 Andy Splichal So agency-wise, what problems do you feel that you're solving for the clients? And how are you standing out from the competition?

19:07 Chris Sullivan I think that those questions can be answered with… We don't do what the clients want. We do what they need. And what I mean by that is most of our clients come to us with a deliverable request. And we ask why. What is your goal? What is the problem you're trying to solve? Most of the time, the answer is I want sales. They want more money. But the problem needs to be diagnosed first. So this approach has led to years-long relationships with our clients. The main service that we offer is diagnosing why this problem exists so that we can help solve it. Sometimes that's partnering with other agencies. We figure out this is what the problem is and we help that client to a relationship that works best for them. Sometimes that's us getting in bed with them and helping build out whatever that need is.

20:08 Andy Splichal And who is the perfect client for your agency?

Chris Sullivan I would say someone that has a brand that has critical thinking and willing to take risks.

Andy Splichal Critical thinking and willing to take risks.

Chris Sullivan Exactly.

Andy Splichal So if that is a listener out there, how can they learn more about working with you? I think the easiest is to email us.

20:33 Chris Sullivan We prefer email at newbiz@kworq.com. And kworq is spelled K-W-O-R-Q . com. And then we usually get on an engagement phone call and talk it out. Andy Splichal Well, this has been great. Is there anything else you would like to add before we wrap it up today?

Chris Sullivan I think we talked a lot about brand identity and the brand's outward appearance and messaging. But I do want to emphasize the importance of understanding your audience. So talk to them, engage with them, and make sure you're collecting first-party data, especially with everything that's going on privacy-wise, getting that first-party data and talking to them about it.

21:17 Andy Splichal Great. Those are fantastic closing words. All right. For listeners, remember, if you like this episode, please go to Apple Podcasts and leave us an honest review. And if you're looking for more information on Kworq or connecting with Chris, you'll find the links in the show notes below. In addition, if you're looking for more information on growing your business, check out our podcast resource center available at podcast.makeachclickcount.com. We have compiled all our different past guests by sharing our content, and we've also created a podcast that's going to be a little bit more interesting We have compiled all our different past guests by show topic and included each of their contact information. In case you would like more information on any of the services that I have discussed during previous episodes. Well, that's it for today. Remember to stay safe, keep healthy, and happy marketing. And I'll talk to you in the next episode.