Mr. Paul Kiesche with Aviate Creative talks about Stopping Commodity Selling Through Branding
In this week's Industrial Talk Podcast we're talking to Paul Kiesche, President of Aviate Creative about “Stop Commodity Selling and Improve Recruitment and Employee Retention through Branding”. Get the answers to your “Branding” questions along with Paul's unique insight on the “How” on this Industrial Talk interview!
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PAUL KIESCHE'S CONTACT INFORMATION:
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Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/paul-kiesche-design-llc-/
Company Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aviatecreative
Twitter: https://twitter.com/paul_kiesche
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PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:
Paul Kiesche Interview
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
branding, logo, paul, perception, people, industrial, company, website, important, industry, manufacturers, business, talk, dated, NEOM, positioning, creative, stay, exciting, psychology
Welcome to the industrial talk podcast with Scott MacKenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hard hat, grab your work boots, and let's go Alright, welcome to industrial talk where we celebrate industry heroes such as yourself, you are bold, you are brave, you dare greatly you solve problems, you're changing lives and you're changing the world. Do not, do not forget that that's what you are doing each and every day. And that's why we celebrate you on this particular podcast. All right, in the hot seat, we have a gentleman by the name of Paul Kashi. Now it's spelled k i e, s, CH e aviate. Creative, he is the president. And we're going to be talking about branding. And if you don't think branding is important. After this particular podcast, you will say, Wow, branding is important. Let's get cracking.
Alright, you know, I'm always talking about industry being the dream makers. So the miracle workers, the individuals that
really, really are impacting this new embrace the future, right? I say it all the time, because I am such a fan of what industry is doing around the world. Unfortunately, for me, and for Team industrial talk, we get a chance to constantly constantly highlight these individuals and and the hope that they bring to the future. And it's big dream makers, miracle workers, and hope. That's what you guys are doing. And I just want to make sure that you never ever, ever forget that. Now, speaking of which,
I know that you've heard me talk about this before, but I have to reiterate and speak when when, when I've had QA hours, countless hours of conversations that are wrapped around innovation wrapped around industry for Dotto cloud edge, all of the neat and unique innovation that is taking place out there. One of the questions that always comes to me is like where's it being implemented? Where's it being put into action? Now it is being put into action in a lot of places, but one of the areas that are just just absolutely, positively bought in on on creating the the future today, the
community of today. And that's Neil, right. So if you're out there on video, you'll see it out there. This of course, there's a podcast, but it's a video too. If you go out to industrial talk, the YouTube channel, you also see the video, but you'll see this website, and it's just an E o m, right. And
what why I'm so fascinated by Neo is the fact that they're taking all of this incredible tech, and putting their money where their mouth is, and they're doing it and they're executing on it. And I want to just encourage you to go out to NEOM.com. Right. And just look, just just look at the website, look at the brave and bold
passion that they have on developing this community of the future. It's fantastic. It is it's fantastic. And that's and I'm going to keep on pushing us. If you ever have a chance to reach out to Beverly Rider, and she has recently just joined team NEOM.
She is all about changing the world. And that's why industry is so exciting. That's why this is so exciting. Go out there, I highly encourage you to go to NEOM.com. The other area that I want to just sort of point out is when we start talking about creating content, right, and when I'm gonna be talking about branding in this particular podcast, but when we start talking about creating content, are you just sort of bent on just saying, okay, we're just created, whatever the content is, if it's poor content, so be it if it's low entertainment, so be it if it's low engagement, meaning low time, so big now, the low learning, so we've got sort of up our game. So I have this engagement quadrant and it's broken into and I've spoken about this before, but I want to offer it to you to just sort of keep this in mind when you're creating your content because you have to be successful. If you're an industrial professional, you have to be successful. If you're an industrial company, you have to be successful and part of that success comes with creating content that is both
great right? solving problems right? And it's it's got max entertainment, Max engagement time because if I'm not engaged, I don't care if you have the cure for cancer if I'm not engaged, so what right and then max learning because we have to be
out that education we have to be about that learning we have to be about everything that's associated with industry. Here is just an engagement crop of content that encourages to create great content, solving problems, Max entertainment, that means maximizing the human component as well as the fun component. And you'll see an improvement on how you're opening up opportunities and we've got to open up opportunities, especially this post pandemic world that we live in opportunity opening doors, a must. Alright, let's get on with the interview. I rambled on on that one. But I'm telling you, right, you need to go to Neil. Neil, calm. I get all I get all dolled typically when I see that website, because it's pretty cool. It's it's a bold vision for the future neon cop. All right, Paul kiss ish. Kisha excuse me, Paul, kitschy, aviate creative, we're going to be talking about branding and why branding is so important. One of the points that I think is really important with branding is that you got to stop that commodity sales, right? Do not become commoditized. And if you're branded properly, you avoid that commoditization of your business, which is really vital, right? You don't want to fall into that category. I've lived that
category lifted. And it's not fun, because you're constantly hammering on the margins that you can make as a business. Also, we're having challenges, gaining and getting quality talent into the doors of people, resources, branding, all a part of that. All right. Enjoy the conversation with Paul. Paul, welcome to the industrial talk podcast, the number one industrial related podcast in the universe. And I don't think I'm selling, overselling it by any stretch of the imagination. How are you doing? I'm doing great. Thanks, Scott, for having me. Thank you very much for spending time and sharing your wisdom and insights into branding, which, you know, it's interesting listeners, I didn't realize how important branding was until I was in business. And branding was everything. And so it, it sort of slaps you upside the head, and you realize how important it is. But before we get into that great conversation, give us a little background on who Paul is. Yeah, sounds good. So I own a BA, creative, a creative agency, with an edge in manufacturing. So we specialize primarily in the industrial businesses, manufacturing, engineering areas, and also technology.
So we can help with things like branding, certainly in web design, print design,
right writing collateral, that kind of stuff.
You know, why? Why? Just just for the listeners out here, they don't think that Brandon's important, which it is, by the way, FYI, why is branding important? You know, it's interesting, a lot of manufacturers and industrial companies kind of think of branding is just like a pretty picture and a pretty image, but
it, it's so impactful for the brands. And so many of these brands, hat used to think it was important, you know, so many of them looked great back in the 70s, or 80s or 100 years ago, and now they're way outdated. So some of the reasons why they might be thinking that it might be important is the one of the primary things that people think of is increasing sales. So certainly, branding makes an impact on new prospects. Well, the interesting thing is that a lot of manufacturers will tell me well, sales is not a problem, right? Now we have other problems. So some of the things that could also help with is it can help
recruitment and retention issues. So thanks for now, baby, big time. Again, hope. You know, when you're selling your company and exiting your company, it can help change your commodity, you know, your your commodity thinking. So instead of thinking that you're going to be selling this commodity product, you can become more of a premium product or just sell based on other factors. So there's a lot of different things that Brandon can kind of influence and change for your company that a lot of companies are not considering. Yeah, I think a couple of points that I that really stood out one, you don't want to be in a commoditized business. That's one thing and if branding can help you differentiate your value proposition and to become more of a premium product, that's a plus. The other thing that I find in manufacturing is the recruitment and retention challenges that exist today. And I would imagine it becomes very difficult if you have a dated logo dated culture dated whatever, that's circa 1970s Plus,
what do we do? How do we begin to journey down that road of saying okay, I here
Paul man, what do I do? Yeah, so so much of it is perception based, you know, when, say, say, if you're talking about the employee, or if you're talking about a prospect sale, they have a certain perception about manufacturing, they have a certain perception about your brand and your company. And if that perception, if they look at your brand, and your website and your, your company, and they see an outdated, you know, something that looks like it's from the 70s, something that looks dirty and greasy, and stuff like that, they're going to relate that to your brand. If they see your company, and it looks like it was run by college kids, because it's so poorly done. They're gonna think that your whole company and your products are run that way. So it perception is is huge. You can massively impact perception by changing the branding of it, I would imagine it's even more so today. I mean, it's it just seems that
given the culture that we live in, given what it is, I know, I'm easily swayed. I'm not gonna just be gravitating to a website that does look dated. I just not I just don't think that's good business. So I agree with you. 100%, there's a, there's a massive perception. What do we not mean? Let's talk about that perception? How do we start changing that? Once again? I want to change it. Yes, I'm dated, whatever, let's start talking about that perception? Yeah, absolutely. So part of that is defining who you are. So understanding your positioning. So you know, do you want to, and one thing a lot of people don't realize is that branding, can be a reflection of who you are now. But you can also when you design branding, you want to reflect who you want to be. So if you want to be a bigger company, if you want to be,
you know, national, instead of regional or international, if you want to be more professional or more fun, or more exciting for the perception of your brand and can change all of that. So and even for employees, like employees can be much more excited about the idea that they're working for a fun big company, then working for some small, boring company kind of thing. So that perception could be swayed significantly. And a lot of that's done with positioning. So you want to define your target audience, define your niche market, you want to really kind of understand your competition and how you differ from your competition and what's your advantages, right. So and then branding can help, you know, really pull together a lot of that with taglines, with imagery with the colors, everything, it can help
emphasize all your differentiations and emphasize why you're better and stronger than a Yeah, and you know, there are a lot of companies out there that are just absolute
nuts about their branding position. And it's a good discipline to get into. So if you don't think that branding is not important, or positioning your product, or finding that niche is not important, just look at some of the successful companies around there. And try to have a conversation that goes sort of away from that brand. It doesn't. It's it's always on brand, on purpose, on target on niche, if they're so disciplined about it, you need to be disciplined about that, too. One of my favorite things is like manufacturers will often say to me, they'll point to a company like apple, and they'll say, well, Apple has this logo that does this, and they have this site and I'm saying okay, well, Apple actually pays attention to their branding, Apple used to look differently, Apple used to have a rainbow in their logo, they used to have the word Apple next to it. And it evolved over time, and it changed and it got better and stronger and simplified and cleaner. And their website has not been the same it changes probably, you know, every year every two years or something. So to compare yourself to that, and then to not adapt with the times, it just doesn't make sense. Same thing goes for UPS, FedEx, you know, Pepsi, all these brands, they didn't start, you know, with one thing, and then just stop, they all continue to evolve.
There's so many examples out there that you go to just look out on fast foods and how fast food has changed as like the logo. And it's just once again, if you find yourself in a position that you have a stagnant brand, you might be just passionate about it, that logo, that color combination, whatever it might be, I guarantee you, you can improve upon it because you got great people like Paul and others that that understand the cycle. It's psychology to right, it's there's a psychology about it. I can you explain a little bit about that. I mean, I just I'm sort of Geeking on that one. Yeah, and you touched on something as well, which is, um,
you know, a lot of times there's brand equity involved. So people are like, oh, they're in love.
their brand and I like they want to hold on to it. But a lot of brands can hold on to brands but update and stave off like Apple is a great example of that where it's always had that Macintosh Apple with the bite taken out of it. But it's gotten a little more refined over the years. So you can stay true and pay tribute to an old logo, but refresh it. So that's certainly part of that, which was part of your first question. I'm sorry, what was the second? The Psychology, the psychology of it, it's like, even I know that if I look at something, and I'm not an expert, like you, I'm not an expert, like a lot of people, but I just intuitively know if I'm looking at something. And it just doesn't feel right. Right. It just doesn't feel right. It can. But it doesn't. That's the psychology and I'm always just like you're put off. And it's very interesting that people know when something's wrong, and it's bad, but they don't necessarily know when it's right. And what's really interesting is when people say, oh, marketing doesn't work on me, and I don't believe in advertising. It's like, well, you probably do a lot more than you realize. There's a reason you went to the McDonald's down, you know, the highway because you saw five billboards on your way. And you didn't realize it they kind of sunk in you know, one of my favorite billboards is like the most simple where it says, Your look, you know, something like, buy you're looking at this prove that it worked. Yes, yeah, yeah.
I got there, you gotta
stay.
It's so true. It's so spot on. But I psychologies all in it. I mean, like, you know, there's psychology of, of the colors, there's the psychology of how professional it looks and how modern and contemporary it looks. And there's like everything. So when we do a logo, we, we fill out a creative brief where we fill it, we ask a ton of questions about positioning and the company. And also they're like, why do you need to know what our brand personality is? And why do you need to know our comparison? It's like, because all of that goes into that simple little image. And it makes you stand out, differentiate, differentiate, too, it puts a vibe in there, right? So like, we'll ask what the company personality is. And a lot of people like, I don't even understand that question. I'm like, okay, so when you guys go out to a bar and have a drink afterwards, what's the personality? Is it funny? Is it fun? Is it celebratory, and what is it, and we try to get into what that differences and some are more funny, some are more clever, some are just really, really professional. But if we can pull some of that into the logo, it's just really subtle, you know, really little things, that kind of change that it can drive so much more of the brand personality and the logo. And his you know, it's interesting, he brought up an interesting point. And that is, you don't know how much business you're losing with a stagnant logo or stagnant brand or stagnant whatever, you have no idea. But
you know, that that intuitively, you are losing a potentially losing revenue? And that to me is a bottom line? I mean,
I don't know, man, I just think i think i never I never thought about brand being so important until it is. Right. And, and mean, thing is, is that like, say your say, I talked to so many manufacturers, and they say over, it's all about relationships, and it's all about these existing things, I say yes. But if that relationship sees that you're staying with the times and growing, they become more excited, and they want to invest more. If you're stagnant, and you look like you haven't changed, and your site is getting older and older, they start saying well, we better go look at another vendor, because these guys might not be around next year, you know, and they start worrying and eventually start exploring other things and building new relationships. You have to keep fresh, you have to stay current and look irrelevant. You know, you can't look like, like, what drives me crazy is these manufacturers are producing the future. They're making super high tech stuff that's super exciting. And then their brands look like they're from the 70s Yeah, and I'm like, it's not matching up. You gotta you got to, if you want to sell stuff to aerospace, you should look futuristic. Not like it's super old. You know, I'm saying that's a really interesting point that that that you're aligning, that is to your point positioning and your niche and defining that and aligning that. That perception that look in line with your market. I think that that is that's brilliant. And I think that that, you know, I didn't really think about that, but that is absolutely brilliant. Yeah, like without a doubt, you know, and like another totally different direction is like we worked with a
food manufacturer that produced
in this case, they produce matcha powder for like foods and beverages, and they came across really chemicals sterile because they're
laboratory. But I'm like, but that's not what the customer cares about. The customer cares about the licious. They care about culinary, exciting, interesting. And I'm like, you're this amazing product that makes food so exciting. And yet you're showing them a laboratory. I'm like, let's inspire them with gorgeous, beautiful shots of delicious foods and drinks. And that should get them excited. Not some laboratory, you know, I think so. It's, it's all about that perception and all about talking to your audience and understanding your niche market. You know, let me let me ask you this, when when?
When I think about going down this, it can be overwhelming, right? I can sit here and say, yeah, it's important. Yeah, I need to, but I don't even know where to start. Can we approach it from an incremental point of view? And then all my, my stationery has all my old logos. And, you know, you know, what that conversations like? Absolutely. What do we have smoothly, you can start incremental. Um, you know, I think there's this ideal of, if I create a logo, maybe I even rename it and create a new tagline. And what happens is, it starts getting overwhelming, because somebody is like, Oh, my God, I got to do all these things. Branding is not just a logo, right? branding is also like, sometimes all you have to do is add a tagline onto your logo, and it speaks to your audience more, or sometimes you have to just do your website over or your, your, your collateral, it's all part of branding. But if you're talking about the logo, one of the beautiful things right now is that most everything's digital, so digital doesn't have to all be printed.
You don't have to do your stationery and letterhead right away, you don't have to do your business cards right away, you could start with your website and logo and kind of branch off of there. But it is good to have that full, comprehensive,
you know, consistent look all the way across with your brand. So certainly, that's the ideal, but it does overwhelm people. And one thing that I try to avoid is some customers start adding on to the bill. And it keeps saying, Oh, we need this, we need this, we need this, I slow down. Let's do it in phases, phase one, phase two, phase three, because if you do it, try and do it all at once, if everybody freezes, you know, the budgets get too tight, companies start panicking. So do a phase one approach, you know, you hit a couple things face to approach, and he rolled out. One thing I want to say though, is that
people get nervous about what their customers are going to think and what their employees are going to think when they rebrand. And my answer is always take them on the journey with you let the employees and the customers know about it and get excited about it. Like if the customer knows that you're growing, and it's the same, all they care about, is it the same people that we have the same relationships, and then they're excited about the growth and the change. But if you if you don't bring them with you on the journey, and you just announced all sudden, we're a new logo, then then it starts to send panic because they're like, Oh, my God, we you know, are you guys selling? Are you you know, is it the same people, they start worrying about it. But if you bring them with you, and you you tease them a little bit, and you give them a little bit of a campaign, it turns into a great marketing campaign. And they become very excited about the brand. And they feel like they're part of it. And I see I like that I like that a lot.
The one question I would have is
do you think in this world of this pandemic world that we're sort of coming out on the other side, I guess.
But let's say we're coming out on the other side, do you think that upon reflection, a lot of these companies were just somewhat lacks when it came to this and they just sort of got a little lazy? Do you find that today more than ever, it's important that you really nailed down that brand more than ever, like clarity. Well, this that's why I brought up the employment thing, because I think it's so interesting. So so many of the manufacturers I talked to are saying, we're too busy for this right now. We're too busy for branding. But we're we know we can't find anybody to hire. And I'm like, Okay, well, let's talk about hiring people. Because when that person goes to find a job, and they come onto your site, and it looks like a terribly old, dated company, and it looks gross and stuff like that, they're not going to want to work for you. So maybe don't do it for the sales right now. But do it for the employees because that's and for your current employees. So they know that they have a future there and for your prospect employees so that they get excited about working there, and that career page on air and make sure you're got the right messaging for them. I like that approach because I know that I know. Even I'm very visually attracted to things and especially now and I know the market is a you've got a tight market out there with I just think that this is just the you got to go down this road. I just agree. Yeah, and you know, to go back to your point though, I think
That,
you know, companies are going to find that they waited too long, and you don't actually really know it, no one's going to tell you, no one's gonna be like, Oh, your logo so terrible or whatever, you're just gonna start to see more and more of your business, go to competitors and not really understand why. And it's because you didn't really stay on top of your marketing, right? Like, it's even when you're the busiest you need to continually market so that way, six months down the line or a year down the line, you're still not busy.
So you know, I think that you need to stay on top of it. That that is that you're right. You can't just, you just can't stop. Right. And
so, give us some roadblocks. I mean, you're you're, you're talking my talk, give us some roadblocks. Why there's a problem.
why somebody might not do what you're saying. Yeah. Alright, so, uh, like I said, right now, a lot of people are saying they're too busy for it. They just can't.
They can't justify spending the time on it. Another thing is certainly budget, right. So they think it's just too expensive to rebrand.
Another Roadblock, I guess, would be, you know,
the brand equity thing that we talked about before is that, you know, our customers are used to this logo, they love this logo. They think that?
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, they're,
they're convinced that, you know, that is what got them where they are. And maybe that's the case. But it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to take them the next, you know, 40 yards, whatever, you know,
it
just because it, you know, got you that touchdown, you know, five years ago doesn't mean it's going to continually do that work for you, you have to stay up to date with it. And like I said, you can still pay tribute to your old brand. We have plenty of logos that we've done that,
that still pay tribute to that old brand, but have a whole new contemporary feel to them that just looks fresh and exciting. You know, I like the incremental approach. I love the fact that you don't have to take these big bang approach and big steps in any day. I think that that's important. listeners, I think that when we start talking about improving that perception, important positioning, defining that niche, all important. You've got to stand out, you've got to differentiate yourself. Do not be commoditized. How do we get a hold of you, Paul? Sure. Certainly, my website's a great place to start. So that's aviate creative calm.
My emails right on there. Let's see new. Hello, nav creative calm. And I'm on all the social media. So look me up for for Kashi or aviate. Creative. And I'm certainly
it's a good thing. You're on all those platforms. I was gonna say, if you're not, come on, man. Well, that is great. Thank you very much, Paul, for being on the industrial talk podcast. I love the topic of brandy. manufacturers. Get your branding act together. That's what's important here.
And it's gonna it's gonna be a fun journey. It's not gonna be
painful. It's fine. All right. Thank you, Paul. Thank you. This was great. All right, listeners. We're gonna wrap it up on the other side. So stay tuned.
You're listening to the industrial talk, Podcast Network.
All right. Once again, thank you very much, Paul. kissy, thank you for joining the industrial talk podcast. Of course, he's the president of aviate. Creative. We talked about branding. So important, so important for your company and your success. Absolutely. Think about your brand big time. Again. Neil and e o m.com. Where ad is a dead sexy doggone idea and vision for the future. It is a new community. It is leveraging the technology. It is absolutely great. As well as get your you know, I want you to create great content. I want you to great content that is entertaining or fun and humanized. Because we've got to open up doors and create opportunities for you. That's all out there. Everything. You're contacted Paul, everything's out there on industrial talk.com. All right, be bold, be brave, dare greatly hang out with people who are bold and brave and daring greatly. And you're gonna change the world. And that's what the industry does. Thank you very much for joining industrial talk. We're going to have another great interview right around the corner.
Transcript
Welcome to the industrial talk podcast with Scott MacKenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hard hat, grab your work boots, and let's go Alright, welcome to industrial talk where we celebrate industry heroes such as yourself, you are bold, you are brave, you dare greatly you solve problems, you're changing lives and you're changing the world. Do not, do not forget that that's what you are doing each and every day. And that's why we celebrate you on this particular podcast. All right, in the hot seat, we have a gentleman by the name of Paul Kashi. Now it's spelled k i e, s, CH e aviate. Creative, he is the president. And we're going to be talking about branding. And if you don't think branding is important. After this particular podcast, you will say, Wow, branding is important. Let's get cracking.
Alright, you know, I'm always talking about industry being the dream makers. So the miracle workers, the individuals that
really, really are impacting this new embrace the future, right? I say it all the time, because I am such a fan of what industry is doing around the world. Unfortunately, for me, and for Team industrial talk, we get a chance to constantly constantly highlight these individuals and and the hope that they bring to the future. And it's big dream makers, miracle workers, and hope. That's what you guys are doing. And I just want to make sure that you never ever, ever forget that. Now, speaking of which,
I know that you've heard me talk about this before, but I have to reiterate and speak when when, when I've had QA hours, countless hours of conversations that are wrapped around innovation wrapped around industry for Dotto cloud edge, all of the neat and unique innovation that is taking place out there. One of the questions that always comes to me is like where's it being implemented? Where's it being put into action? Now it is being put into action in a lot of places, but one of the areas that are just just absolutely, positively bought in on on creating the the future today, the
community of today. And that's Neil, right. So if you're out there on video, you'll see it out there. This of course, there's a podcast, but it's a video too. If you go out to industrial talk, the YouTube channel, you also see the video, but you'll see this website, and it's just an E o m, right. And
what why I'm so fascinated by Neo is the fact that they're taking all of this incredible tech, and putting their money where their mouth is, and they're doing it and they're executing on it. And I want to just encourage you to go out to NEOM.com. Right. And just look, just just look at the website, look at the brave and bold
passion that they have on developing this community of the future. It's fantastic. It is it's fantastic. And that's and I'm going to keep on pushing us. If you ever have a chance to reach out to Beverly Rider, and she has recently just joined team NEOM.
She is all about changing the world. And that's why industry is so exciting. That's why this is so exciting. Go out there, I highly encourage you to go to NEOM.com. The other area that I want to just sort of point out is when we start talking about creating content, right, and when I'm gonna be talking about branding in this particular podcast, but when we start talking about creating content, are you just sort of bent on just saying, okay, we're just created, whatever the content is, if it's poor content, so be it if it's low entertainment, so be it if it's low engagement, meaning low time, so big now, the low learning, so we've got sort of up our game. So I have this engagement quadrant and it's broken into and I've spoken about this before, but I want to offer it to you to just sort of keep this in mind when you're creating your content because you have to be successful. If you're an industrial professional, you have to be successful. If you're an industrial company, you have to be successful and part of that success comes with creating content that is both
great right? solving problems right? And it's it's got max entertainment, Max engagement time because if I'm not engaged, I don't care if you have the cure for cancer if I'm not engaged, so what right and then max learning because we have to be
out that education we have to be about that learning we have to be about everything that's associated with industry. Here is just an engagement crop of content that encourages to create great content, solving problems, Max entertainment, that means maximizing the human component as well as the fun component. And you'll see an improvement on how you're opening up opportunities and we've got to open up opportunities, especially this post pandemic world that we live in opportunity opening doors, a must. Alright, let's get on with the interview. I rambled on on that one. But I'm telling you, right, you need to go to Neil. Neil, calm. I get all I get all dolled typically when I see that website, because it's pretty cool. It's it's a bold vision for the future neon cop. All right, Paul kiss ish. Kisha excuse me, Paul, kitschy, aviate creative, we're going to be talking about branding and why branding is so important. One of the points that I think is really important with branding is that you got to stop that commodity sales, right? Do not become commoditized. And if you're branded properly, you avoid that commoditization of your business, which is really vital, right? You don't want to fall into that category. I've lived that
category lifted. And it's not fun, because you're constantly hammering on the margins that you can make as a business. Also, we're having challenges, gaining and getting quality talent into the doors of people, resources, branding, all a part of that. All right. Enjoy the conversation with Paul. Paul, welcome to the industrial talk podcast, the number one industrial related podcast in the universe. And I don't think I'm selling, overselling it by any stretch of the imagination. How are you doing? I'm doing great. Thanks, Scott, for having me. Thank you very much for spending time and sharing your wisdom and insights into branding, which, you know, it's interesting listeners, I didn't realize how important branding was until I was in business. And branding was everything. And so it, it sort of slaps you upside the head, and you realize how important it is. But before we get into that great conversation, give us a little background on who Paul is. Yeah, sounds good. So I own a BA, creative, a creative agency, with an edge in manufacturing. So we specialize primarily in the industrial businesses, manufacturing, engineering areas, and also technology.
So we can help with things like branding, certainly in web design, print design,
right writing collateral, that kind of stuff.
You know, why? Why? Just just for the listeners out here, they don't think that Brandon's important, which it is, by the way, FYI, why is branding important? You know, it's interesting, a lot of manufacturers and industrial companies kind of think of branding is just like a pretty picture and a pretty image, but
it, it's so impactful for the brands. And so many of these brands, hat used to think it was important, you know, so many of them looked great back in the 70s, or 80s or 100 years ago, and now they're way outdated. So some of the reasons why they might be thinking that it might be important is the one of the primary things that people think of is increasing sales. So certainly, branding makes an impact on new prospects. Well, the interesting thing is that a lot of manufacturers will tell me well, sales is not a problem, right? Now we have other problems. So some of the things that could also help with is it can help
recruitment and retention issues. So thanks for now, baby, big time. Again, hope. You know, when you're selling your company and exiting your company, it can help change your commodity, you know, your your commodity thinking. So instead of thinking that you're going to be selling this commodity product, you can become more of a premium product or just sell based on other factors. So there's a lot of different things that Brandon can kind of influence and change for your company that a lot of companies are not considering. Yeah, I think a couple of points that I that really stood out one, you don't want to be in a commoditized business. That's one thing and if branding can help you differentiate your value proposition and to become more of a premium product, that's a plus. The other thing that I find in manufacturing is the recruitment and retention challenges that exist today. And I would imagine it becomes very difficult if you have a dated logo dated culture dated whatever, that's circa 1970s Plus,
what do we do? How do we begin to journey down that road of saying okay, I here
Paul man, what do I do? Yeah, so so much of it is perception based, you know, when, say, say, if you're talking about the employee, or if you're talking about a prospect sale, they have a certain perception about manufacturing, they have a certain perception about your brand and your company. And if that perception, if they look at your brand, and your website and your, your company, and they see an outdated, you know, something that looks like it's from the 70s, something that looks dirty and greasy, and stuff like that, they're going to relate that to your brand. If they see your company, and it looks like it was run by college kids, because it's so poorly done. They're gonna think that your whole company and your products are run that way. So it perception is is huge. You can massively impact perception by changing the branding of it, I would imagine it's even more so today. I mean, it's it just seems that
given the culture that we live in, given what it is, I know, I'm easily swayed. I'm not gonna just be gravitating to a website that does look dated. I just not I just don't think that's good business. So I agree with you. 100%, there's a, there's a massive perception. What do we not mean? Let's talk about that perception? How do we start changing that? Once again? I want to change it. Yes, I'm dated, whatever, let's start talking about that perception? Yeah, absolutely. So part of that is defining who you are. So understanding your positioning. So you know, do you want to, and one thing a lot of people don't realize is that branding, can be a reflection of who you are now. But you can also when you design branding, you want to reflect who you want to be. So if you want to be a bigger company, if you want to be,
you know, national, instead of regional or international, if you want to be more professional or more fun, or more exciting for the perception of your brand and can change all of that. So and even for employees, like employees can be much more excited about the idea that they're working for a fun big company, then working for some small, boring company kind of thing. So that perception could be swayed significantly. And a lot of that's done with positioning. So you want to define your target audience, define your niche market, you want to really kind of understand your competition and how you differ from your competition and what's your advantages, right. So and then branding can help, you know, really pull together a lot of that with taglines, with imagery with the colors, everything, it can help
emphasize all your differentiations and emphasize why you're better and stronger than a Yeah, and you know, there are a lot of companies out there that are just absolute
nuts about their branding position. And it's a good discipline to get into. So if you don't think that branding is not important, or positioning your product, or finding that niche is not important, just look at some of the successful companies around there. And try to have a conversation that goes sort of away from that brand. It doesn't. It's it's always on brand, on purpose, on target on niche, if they're so disciplined about it, you need to be disciplined about that, too. One of my favorite things is like manufacturers will often say to me, they'll point to a company like apple, and they'll say, well, Apple has this logo that does this, and they have this site and I'm saying okay, well, Apple actually pays attention to their branding, Apple used to look differently, Apple used to have a rainbow in their logo, they used to have the word Apple next to it. And it evolved over time, and it changed and it got better and stronger and simplified and cleaner. And their website has not been the same it changes probably, you know, every year every two years or something. So to compare yourself to that, and then to not adapt with the times, it just doesn't make sense. Same thing goes for UPS, FedEx, you know, Pepsi, all these brands, they didn't start, you know, with one thing, and then just stop, they all continue to evolve.
There's so many examples out there that you go to just look out on fast foods and how fast food has changed as like the logo. And it's just once again, if you find yourself in a position that you have a stagnant brand, you might be just passionate about it, that logo, that color combination, whatever it might be, I guarantee you, you can improve upon it because you got great people like Paul and others that that understand the cycle. It's psychology to right, it's there's a psychology about it. I can you explain a little bit about that. I mean, I just I'm sort of Geeking on that one. Yeah, and you touched on something as well, which is, um,
you know, a lot of times there's brand equity involved. So people are like, oh, they're in love.
their brand and I like they want to hold on to it. But a lot of brands can hold on to brands but update and stave off like Apple is a great example of that where it's always had that Macintosh Apple with the bite taken out of it. But it's gotten a little more refined over the years. So you can stay true and pay tribute to an old logo, but refresh it. So that's certainly part of that, which was part of your first question. I'm sorry, what was the second? The Psychology, the psychology of it, it's like, even I know that if I look at something, and I'm not an expert, like you, I'm not an expert, like a lot of people, but I just intuitively know if I'm looking at something. And it just doesn't feel right. Right. It just doesn't feel right. It can. But it doesn't. That's the psychology and I'm always just like you're put off. And it's very interesting that people know when something's wrong, and it's bad, but they don't necessarily know when it's right. And what's really interesting is when people say, oh, marketing doesn't work on me, and I don't believe in advertising. It's like, well, you probably do a lot more than you realize. There's a reason you went to the McDonald's down, you know, the highway because you saw five billboards on your way. And you didn't realize it they kind of sunk in you know, one of my favorite billboards is like the most simple where it says, Your look, you know, something like, buy you're looking at this prove that it worked. Yes, yeah, yeah.
I got there, you gotta
stay.
It's so true. It's so spot on. But I psychologies all in it. I mean, like, you know, there's psychology of, of the colors, there's the psychology of how professional it looks and how modern and contemporary it looks. And there's like everything. So when we do a logo, we, we fill out a creative brief where we fill it, we ask a ton of questions about positioning and the company. And also they're like, why do you need to know what our brand personality is? And why do you need to know our comparison? It's like, because all of that goes into that simple little image. And it makes you stand out, differentiate, differentiate, too, it puts a vibe in there, right? So like, we'll ask what the company personality is. And a lot of people like, I don't even understand that question. I'm like, okay, so when you guys go out to a bar and have a drink afterwards, what's the personality? Is it funny? Is it fun? Is it celebratory, and what is it, and we try to get into what that differences and some are more funny, some are more clever, some are just really, really professional. But if we can pull some of that into the logo, it's just really subtle, you know, really little things, that kind of change that it can drive so much more of the brand personality and the logo. And his you know, it's interesting, he brought up an interesting point. And that is, you don't know how much business you're losing with a stagnant logo or stagnant brand or stagnant whatever, you have no idea. But
you know, that that intuitively, you are losing a potentially losing revenue? And that to me is a bottom line? I mean,
I don't know, man, I just think i think i never I never thought about brand being so important until it is. Right. And, and mean, thing is, is that like, say your say, I talked to so many manufacturers, and they say over, it's all about relationships, and it's all about these existing things, I say yes. But if that relationship sees that you're staying with the times and growing, they become more excited, and they want to invest more. If you're stagnant, and you look like you haven't changed, and your site is getting older and older, they start saying well, we better go look at another vendor, because these guys might not be around next year, you know, and they start worrying and eventually start exploring other things and building new relationships. You have to keep fresh, you have to stay current and look irrelevant. You know, you can't look like, like, what drives me crazy is these manufacturers are producing the future. They're making super high tech stuff that's super exciting. And then their brands look like they're from the 70s Yeah, and I'm like, it's not matching up. You gotta you got to, if you want to sell stuff to aerospace, you should look futuristic. Not like it's super old. You know, I'm saying that's a really interesting point that that that you're aligning, that is to your point positioning and your niche and defining that and aligning that. That perception that look in line with your market. I think that that is that's brilliant. And I think that that, you know, I didn't really think about that, but that is absolutely brilliant. Yeah, like without a doubt, you know, and like another totally different direction is like we worked with a
food manufacturer that produced
in this case, they produce matcha powder for like foods and beverages, and they came across really chemicals sterile because they're
laboratory. But I'm like, but that's not what the customer cares about. The customer cares about the licious. They care about culinary, exciting, interesting. And I'm like, you're this amazing product that makes food so exciting. And yet you're showing them a laboratory. I'm like, let's inspire them with gorgeous, beautiful shots of delicious foods and drinks. And that should get them excited. Not some laboratory, you know, I think so. It's, it's all about that perception and all about talking to your audience and understanding your niche market. You know, let me let me ask you this, when when?
When I think about going down this, it can be overwhelming, right? I can sit here and say, yeah, it's important. Yeah, I need to, but I don't even know where to start. Can we approach it from an incremental point of view? And then all my, my stationery has all my old logos. And, you know, you know, what that conversations like? Absolutely. What do we have smoothly, you can start incremental. Um, you know, I think there's this ideal of, if I create a logo, maybe I even rename it and create a new tagline. And what happens is, it starts getting overwhelming, because somebody is like, Oh, my God, I got to do all these things. Branding is not just a logo, right? branding is also like, sometimes all you have to do is add a tagline onto your logo, and it speaks to your audience more, or sometimes you have to just do your website over or your, your, your collateral, it's all part of branding. But if you're talking about the logo, one of the beautiful things right now is that most everything's digital, so digital doesn't have to all be printed.
You don't have to do your stationery and letterhead right away, you don't have to do your business cards right away, you could start with your website and logo and kind of branch off of there. But it is good to have that full, comprehensive,
you know, consistent look all the way across with your brand. So certainly, that's the ideal, but it does overwhelm people. And one thing that I try to avoid is some customers start adding on to the bill. And it keeps saying, Oh, we need this, we need this, we need this, I slow down. Let's do it in phases, phase one, phase two, phase three, because if you do it, try and do it all at once, if everybody freezes, you know, the budgets get too tight, companies start panicking. So do a phase one approach, you know, you hit a couple things face to approach, and he rolled out. One thing I want to say though, is that
people get nervous about what their customers are going to think and what their employees are going to think when they rebrand. And my answer is always take them on the journey with you let the employees and the customers know about it and get excited about it. Like if the customer knows that you're growing, and it's the same, all they care about, is it the same people that we have the same relationships, and then they're excited about the growth and the change. But if you if you don't bring them with you on the journey, and you just announced all sudden, we're a new logo, then then it starts to send panic because they're like, Oh, my God, we you know, are you guys selling? Are you you know, is it the same people, they start worrying about it. But if you bring them with you, and you you tease them a little bit, and you give them a little bit of a campaign, it turns into a great marketing campaign. And they become very excited about the brand. And they feel like they're part of it. And I see I like that I like that a lot.
The one question I would have is
do you think in this world of this pandemic world that we're sort of coming out on the other side, I guess.
But let's say we're coming out on the other side, do you think that upon reflection, a lot of these companies were just somewhat lacks when it came to this and they just sort of got a little lazy? Do you find that today more than ever, it's important that you really nailed down that brand more than ever, like clarity. Well, this that's why I brought up the employment thing, because I think it's so interesting. So so many of the manufacturers I talked to are saying, we're too busy for this right now. We're too busy for branding. But we're we know we can't find anybody to hire. And I'm like, Okay, well, let's talk about hiring people. Because when that person goes to find a job, and they come onto your site, and it looks like a terribly old, dated company, and it looks gross and stuff like that, they're not going to want to work for you. So maybe don't do it for the sales right now. But do it for the employees because that's and for your current employees. So they know that they have a future there and for your prospect employees so that they get excited about working there, and that career page on air and make sure you're got the right messaging for them. I like that approach because I know that I know. Even I'm very visually attracted to things and especially now and I know the market is a you've got a tight market out there with I just think that this is just the you got to go down this road. I just agree. Yeah, and you know, to go back to your point though, I think
That,
you know, companies are going to find that they waited too long, and you don't actually really know it, no one's going to tell you, no one's gonna be like, Oh, your logo so terrible or whatever, you're just gonna start to see more and more of your business, go to competitors and not really understand why. And it's because you didn't really stay on top of your marketing, right? Like, it's even when you're the busiest you need to continually market so that way, six months down the line or a year down the line, you're still not busy.
So you know, I think that you need to stay on top of it. That that is that you're right. You can't just, you just can't stop. Right. And
so, give us some roadblocks. I mean, you're you're, you're talking my talk, give us some roadblocks. Why there's a problem.
why somebody might not do what you're saying. Yeah. Alright, so, uh, like I said, right now, a lot of people are saying they're too busy for it. They just can't.
They can't justify spending the time on it. Another thing is certainly budget, right. So they think it's just too expensive to rebrand.
Another Roadblock, I guess, would be, you know,
the brand equity thing that we talked about before is that, you know, our customers are used to this logo, they love this logo. They think that?
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, they're,
they're convinced that, you know, that is what got them where they are. And maybe that's the case. But it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to take them the next, you know, 40 yards, whatever, you know,
it
just because it, you know, got you that touchdown, you know, five years ago doesn't mean it's going to continually do that work for you, you have to stay up to date with it. And like I said, you can still pay tribute to your old brand. We have plenty of logos that we've done that,
that still pay tribute to that old brand, but have a whole new contemporary feel to them that just looks fresh and exciting. You know, I like the incremental approach. I love the fact that you don't have to take these big bang approach and big steps in any day. I think that that's important. listeners, I think that when we start talking about improving that perception, important positioning, defining that niche, all important. You've got to stand out, you've got to differentiate yourself. Do not be commoditized. How do we get a hold of you, Paul? Sure. Certainly, my website's a great place to start. So that's aviate creative calm.
My emails right on there. Let's see new. Hello, nav creative calm. And I'm on all the social media. So look me up for for Kashi or aviate. Creative. And I'm certainly
it's a good thing. You're on all those platforms. I was gonna say, if you're not, come on, man. Well, that is great. Thank you very much, Paul, for being on the industrial talk podcast. I love the topic of brandy. manufacturers. Get your branding act together. That's what's important here.
And it's gonna it's gonna be a fun journey. It's not gonna be
painful. It's fine. All right. Thank you, Paul. Thank you. This was great. All right, listeners. We're gonna wrap it up on the other side. So stay tuned.
You're listening to the industrial talk, Podcast Network.
All right. Once again, thank you very much, Paul. kissy, thank you for joining the industrial talk podcast. Of course, he's the president of aviate. Creative. We talked about branding. So important, so important for your company and your success. Absolutely. Think about your brand big time. Again. Neil and e o m.com. Where ad is a dead sexy doggone idea and vision for the future. It is a new community. It is leveraging the technology. It is absolutely great. As well as get your you know, I want you to create great content. I want you to great content that is entertaining or fun and humanized. Because we've got to open up doors and create opportunities for you. That's all out there. Everything. You're contacted Paul, everything's out there on industrial talk.com. All right, be bold, be brave, dare greatly hang out with people who are bold and brave and daring greatly. And you're gonna change the world. And that's what the industry does. Thank you very much for joining industrial talk. We're going to have another great interview right around the corner.
About the author, Scott
I am Scott MacKenzie, husband, father, and passionate industry educator. From humble beginnings as a lathing contractor and certified journeyman/lineman to an Undergraduate and Master’s Degree in Business Administration, I have applied every aspect of my education and training to lead and influence. I believe in serving and adding value wherever I am called.
