Blog Archives

Jeremy Parker bought the url swag.com to disrupt the boring and outdated promotional products industry. Swag should stand for something new, and be bought differently, and it should be stuff people actually want to keep.

That vision turned into reality as swag.com had 2000% growth over the last three years, made it onto Number 218 on Inc’s Top 500 Fastest Growing Companies list, and counts TikTok, Netflix, Facebook, Amazon, Mercedes, Starbucks, Google, and Spotify as its customers. Even during this tough past year, where events were canceled and offices shut down, the brand kept growing while most promotional product companies laid low or faltered.

In the end, Jeremy’s brand succeeded because he kept a razor-sharp focus on the ever-evolving customer experience. There are many brand and marketing lessons in this episode, from smart brand positioning within a commodity vertical to leading with empathy, this is an episode not to be missed.

You must have been on a social media diet to not have stumbled upon TRUFF’s masterfully designed array of truffle-infused sauces. But TRUFF is not solely a social media sensation, you can find the brand anywhere from Whole Foods to Neiman Marcus, and from the U.S. to Australia.

The two Co-Founders, Nick Ajluni and Nick Guillen, have a knack for brand building and now that I have tried their products, which of course in true TRUFF fashion they immediately shipped my way after recording the interview, I can attest that this is not just hot marketing; it is one unbelievably addictive, tasty, and unique product.

I am thrilled to have had them on the show to share their branding and marketing secrets with you. We had tons of fun during this interview and it is an episode I would want no one to miss out on.

In the last episode we were in Iceland, today we are in Australia, and finally, we have a B2B brand on the show again: A tech brand that is in the business of converting, retaining, and growing your customers with delightful personal video messages sent at just the right moment.

But Bonjoro is not your typical tech company – it has brand and culture at its heart. It is about creating customer love, and it is a weird brand, a fun brand, a brand that is not afraid to stand out, most probably more afraid to blend in.

Matt and I talk about the importance of branding for B2B companies, about brand copy, about creating funnels for a brand that has multiple audiences with multiple pain points, and of course, we talk about the importance of bears to Bonjoro hence Matt’s unusual title.

Emmanuelle Magnan is the Founder of the Parisian flower studio Pampa.

Those of you listening to the show frequently know that I love to talk with founders of internationally known brands like Rotten Tomatoes and Evernote just as much as with smaller brands that are unknown to many of you, but that I feel are doing something unique in their space or with their brand.

Pampa is doing both as they disrupt the traditional flower business with a splash of color. Once you see their brand and their bouquets, you can not unsee them. That’s what happened to me as I scrolled through my Instagram feed and I stumbled upon the brand and sure enough, here we are today chatting with Emanuelle about how to stand out in a crowded space, how to navigate sustainability, and why branding is all about creating self-identification.

Patrick Lee was Co-Founder and founding CEO of Rotten Tomatoes, the movie rating system we all came to know so well and that I always saw as a kind of anti-brand.

To kick off 2021, we are talking about how Patrick transitioned from running a design firm, like so many of my listeners, to running Rotten Tomatoes 23 years ago. Needless to say, the brand is still going strong and we discuss how the name and the famous Tomatometer with its counter-intuitive colors came about, how focus is key to brand success, but we also go back to his design agency days where Patrick shares an inspiring story on how the small agency won Disney as a client without having any related work in their portfolio.

A well-rounded conversation to ease into 2021, which I hope will get a Certified Fresh status too. Oh, I know, only you Rotten Tomatoes fans will get that one.

Cole Orobetz founded Alpha Foods five years ago and is currently the CEO and CFO of the healthy frozen meal brand that can be found in over 9,000 stores across North America and Asia, where their plant-based Alpha Chicken Nuggets are available at KFC (which is quite an endorsement!).

Cole and I talk about how a blizzard and a vegan bagel dog got him into the business, why he had to re-name his brand for the Chinese market, how ‘familiarity’ is key to convincing meat-eaters to try plant-based varieties of their favorite foods, and how it took them hundreds of logos and four agencies to arrive at their very first logo – all because the brand strategy phase was missing upfront.