An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Take all the findings to help define who you are, your purpose for being, what you hold dear, what makes you different to others and what your story is. This is where you need someone who is good with words.
As part of our series about how to create a trusted, believable, and beloved brand, I had the pleasure to interview David Lloyd.
David Lloyd is the Managing Director and co-founder of Naked Marketing, a creative agency based in Norfolk. With a whopping 20+ years’ experience in the creative industry Dave is a design powerhouse. On top of producing brief crushing work for clients of all shapes and sizes, Dave co-leads Naked’s Creative Team and manages the studio.
Naked specialises in building straight-forward and effective branding, design, digital and marketing strategies for small and medium sized businesses.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
The love of art and design. As a kid I loved drawing but also growing up in the 80s I had a fascination with movie posters, they left such a lasting impression on me. Then that interest turned to album artwork too. It was GCSE design communication where I suddenly became enlightened with the vast scope of graphics. I then studied Graphic Design at Lincoln when it used to be an art and design school before the university.
Can you share a story about the funniest marketing mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I’m not sure about a mistake but a strange/funny anecdote was that the first agency I worked for. I had to design a front cover for a video (don’t ask) that the Daily Star newspaper had commissioned. On seeing my first concept the editor of the newspapers was annoyed that I had made them look like a tack tabloid. Maybe what I was trying to do was project the brand image to the audience, which should be a given in marketing. Plus, be honest, don’t hide behind smoke and mirrors.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
Working with businesses of all shapes and sizes, it’s an organisation’s ambition or story that turns us on rather than just their budget. This concept helps us create long-term relationships that are mutually beneficial. We get to know our clients better. We want to create a marriage. The best story I can share is that we’re proud to say that over 50% of our current clients have continued to work with us for 5 years or more, and 20% for over a decade!
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
We’re working on lots of new brand/design/marketing projects currently from a global travel agency which will help all customers reduce and offset their carbon. This in turn supports important projects around the world to an amazing local, family run attraction stepping out of the shadow of lock down.
Ok let’s now jump to the core part of our interview. In a nutshell, how would you define the difference between brand marketing (branding) and product marketing (advertising)? Can you explain?
Branding and marketing is full of over-complicated ambiguous definitions and jargon that really can create confusion and turn people off. Brand marketing is how your organisation presents itself to its audience. It’s not just how it looks and sounds but how it also feels. There’s a holistic quote which says your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room. For me, brand marketing is how you influence what those people think. Product marketing is showcasing benefits of a certain ‘thing’. What is important though with both types of marketing is to make a connection, find the emotion.
Can you explain to our readers why it is important to invest resources and energy into building a brand, in addition to the general marketing and advertising efforts?
Not only is it important for a customer to know who you are and what you do but you need to know as well. Who you think you are might be different to your audience. You need to be saying the right things to the right people. You need everyone in your organisation to know what it is you were put on this planet to do, what values you hold dear and what it is you look and sound like. This might have changed and where you were is different to where you want to be, a brand strategy can help you get there.
Can you share 5 strategies that a company should be doing to build a trusted and believable brand? Please tell us a story or example for each.
You can do it in four. 1) Start off with a discovery session. Do this through a workshop with staff and interview clients, they might have a different take. Think about the questions you want to ask for the answers you want to find, where the gaps are in your marketplace compared to your competition.
2) Take all the findings to help define who you are, your purpose for being, what you hold dear, what makes you different to others and what your story is. This is where you need someone who is good with words.
3.) Design your image, this can start off with your logo/identity and images, colours and fonts. What image are you trying to represent?
4) Delivery of all of this with your marketing, this can be digital with website/social media/emails etc., offline with print or verbal/written through podcasts or thought leadership pieces.
In your opinion, what is an example of a company that has done a fantastic job building a believable and beloved brand. What specifically impresses you? What can one do to replicate that?
There are so many, but I think it has to be Innocent for the reason that it is the one brand that most people wanted to be like. It created a connection that resonated, it felt friendly, it cared, it was fun.
In advertising, one generally measures success by the number of sales. How does one measure the success of a brand building campaign? Is it similar, is it different?
I would say that there are parts that are similar; it depends on the KPIs of your business and the outcomes you want. Generally it’s to create more awareness and more engagement, being known for something and creating recognition — which then leads to specific outcomes that can be transactional if that’s what your strategy dictates.
What role does social media play in your branding efforts?
Huge, it’s how the outside world, especially those people that don’t work with us, see and experience our culture. We have won work off the back of social media and also had an old client call me up and tell me how much he hated what we were doing on social which I actually liked because it created a reaction. If it was boring they wouldn’t have said anything, and that’s even worse than hating it.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
I’m starting to think of myself as a pretty ‘apolitical’ person but completely resetting our entire political system, and probably most of those throughout the world would be an incredible thing. They seem very unfit for purpose. We need to help each other and the planet on which we co-inhabit, and currently politics seems to be the barrier rather than the bridge to making this happen.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
I wish I had the type of brain that retains all the great quotes I see, but I don’t, so there isn’t one specifically that I use. However, I do screen grab them from Instagram so here’s a good one I need to remember more — ‘if you have to force it, leave it’. It definitely refers to a time when I realised something fundamental in the business wasn’t working.
We are blessed that very prominent leaders in business and entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world with whom you would like to have a lunch or breakfast with? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them.
Michael Johnson from Johnson Banks
How can our readers follow you on social media?
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/designbynaked/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/nakedmarketing1
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nkdmarketing
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/naked-marketing/
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.
David Lloyd of Naked Marketing On Five Things You Need To Build A Trusted And Beloved Brand was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
