Nov 18, 2019
Alan Brew has been in branding since 1985. In this, episode he
takes us back to that year to explain how he got into the industry
and what he's seen change since then. Along the way, he's worked
with clients like Chevron, Elsevier, Tech Data, Royal Bank of
Canada, Delta Airlines, and Huawei, as well as a number of startups
and small-to-medium businesses. Now a founding partner
at BrandingBusiness in Southern
California, Alan's career has also included roles at Landor, Addison, and Siegel+Gale.
Alan and I met at that last one: Siegel+Gale. I was lowest man on
the totem pole (I think that may have actually been my title) when
Alan came in as Managing Director of the LA office. I remember an
early meeting with Alan. We were in a full conference room with
lots of smart strategists and designers sitting around the table. I
was used to being a fly on the wall for meetings like this-maybe
just taking notes or waiting for some marching orders. I can't
remember what the meeting was about or what we were trying to
decide, but I remember, vividly, Alan turning to me and asking my
opinion on the matter at hand. Now, maybe Alan just didn't know how
unimportant I was, but I took it as something else: To me, it was a
recognition that my point of view had value, hierarchy be damned.
That moment stuck with me, and shortly after Alan left, I followed
him to his next agency and joined his strategy team.
I wanted to get Alan talking about his early days in the industry,
including the origin of "global brands," the first time he saw the
book Positioning, the age of the corporate
narrative, and a fateful dinner meeting with Walter Landor, back in 1985.
Next, we talked about a proprietary tool at BrandingBusiness, the
Brand Performance Platform. "The Brand Performance Platform is a
databased research program that produces analytics, metrics, for
evaluating brands on ... awareness, consideration, preference, and
purchase intent-the classic sales funnel," says Alan. "But we can
put metrics against those elements and look at where a company is
succeeding or where a brand is succeeding. ... We can, on those
four metrics, create an index, which we call the Brand Performance
Platform, and say, 'This is your index and this is how you increase
it,' and we can correlate that increase to revenue
performance."
Afterward, we got into an interesting conversation about "corporate
narrative," which Alan think of as an evolution of positioning. We
talked about storytelling and content creation, with Alan
explaining that brand strategy has "become more of a fungible
externalized set of strategic components rather than just this
inert strategic document that lives on somebody's shelf."
Lastly, Alan shared some favorite brands (Amazon and Subaru) and
recommended some non-business books and authors he recommends every
brand strategist and businessperson reads: Dickens, Michael
Lewis (including The Undoing
Project), Man's Search for
Meaning, and The Economist.
To learn more about Alan, visit BrandingBusiness, where you can learn
about his agency, read his bio, and see many of his blog posts.
Speaking of blogs, you should also check out Alan's blog about
brand naming: Namedroppings. You
can also follow Alan on Twitter.