An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
A mission is particularly powerful for brands, especially in a time where they are being looked at to act and respond to topics far outside of what their business may focus on. Defining the mission can help guide teams who are managing the brand to know not only what to respond to, but how to respond.
As part of our series about how to create a trusted, believable, and beloved brand, I had the pleasure to interview Marissa Shapiro.
Marissa is the founder of Martha, the NY-based consultancy that builds brands from the inside, out. Her and her team partner closely with clients to create brand identities that claim space in their respective markets and engage their audiences across all touchpoints. Her career has led her to work with companies big and small, from Forbes, Vogue and Nike, to startups just getting their feet off the ground.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
Absolutely! I had a bit of a winding path. I had been working at a now defunct network within Viacom and a friend of mine was interviewing for an agency. At the time I didn’t even know what an agency was, but she described the roles they were looking for and it sounded a lot like what I had been doing — essentially production. They ended up hiring me and once I got there I was immediately exposed to the ins and outs of how brands, digital products, and campaigns were created. It was a very creative environment and I loved it. It took me going freelance to make the transition from production to strategy and creative. Once I did, I formalized that offering into Martha, which is about seven years ago now.
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?
Ok, when I was at that defunct network at Viacom (Spike TV), I was covering a live UFC fight in Las Vegas. We’d basically write up what was going on in the fight and post it via blogs and Twitter throughout the night. It was my first time doing it and I got a message from my boss a couple of fights in that was along the lines of, “way too much detail, you do not need to transcribe the fight, just give the highlights.” It was then that I learned the attention span of audiences is very low and you need to get your message across as efficiently as possible.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
Based on what I’ve seen from other companies over the years, what makes Martha different is that we go deep. We do a lot more than create a consumer-facing brand and hand it off with guidelines. We build a foundation for the inside of a brand, detailing out who it is and why it is that way based on inputs from the team, the market, and the audience.
Martha’s first client was a fitness company. The operations person was the one who ultimately hired us, and it was clear that the founder was uneasy about what they were spending on the project given what she determined the value of a brand to be. We went through our discovery process and our first review was brand positioning. She had a tough demeanor when the meeting started. By the time we were done she was smiling and excited. Once she saw the work, she recognized how deep we go to extract what’s special about a company and its team, to understand the audience and their needs, and to identify real opportunities in the market to serve as the foundation of the brand. They still leverage the brand we developed for them today, nearly eight years later.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
Yes! One project we’re about to wrap up is for a sustainability SaaS company. They’re building a real-time data platform that will help businesses measure their footprint, reduce and offset emissions, and communicate these efforts with ongoing transparency. There’s no question that more businesses need to become more sustainable and the positive impact that this transition will have on people and the world.
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?
Brand marketing is building awareness and recognition around the brand itself. This means ensuring that the emotional impact the brand is meant to have on its audience is coming through and achieving reach and growth as a result. There may be no call to action, or the call to action will be more about engaging with the brand itself (think: subscribing to a newsletter, following on social, consuming content).
Product marketing is communicating value of a particular product, service or offering. Essentially you’re trying to find an engaging way to explain what the value is and get them to take action (think: purchase, get in touch).
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?
A brand is the thing that people connect with. It has personality and depth. It makes people feel things. It’s what people remember. When engaging with a brand you instantly store it in an emotional place in your mind: “that’s fun”, “that’s cool”, “they know what they’re talking about.” The brand is the vehicle for a lasting impression. Whereas general marketing and advertising efforts are typically in support of specific business-driven goals for the year. Even then, the brand comes into play because it guides how you present the product or service being marketed.
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.
- Brand Positioning.
A brand’s positioning is key in understanding what you want people to feel when they think of, or encounter your brand. An ideal position is one that is aligned with the special qualities of a business, while also differentiated from the competition.
There’s a lot of competition in the food space, so when we worked with a ready-to-eat meal company it was a challenge to find something that was truly own-able. We started by outlining everything the competition was already capturing for consumers — from being aspirational to accommodating their specific dietary needs. Then we looked at the brand we were working with to identify qualities or value props that weren’t already on the competitive map. It took some work, but we found it 🙂
2. Brand Tactics.
This is how we make the positioning actionable. We ask: If we want to be here in the competitive landscape, how do we get there?
Let’s take a previous client of ours from the fitness industry as an example. Team was a central part of what made their offering unique. So, we identified their strategic positioning as “The Team Captain” because research shows this role is consistently responsible for winning teams. From there we developed tactics that reflect top qualities of the most successful Team Captains of all time:
Having No Ego
Leading By Example
Sticking to Impactful Interactions Over Performative Ones
Finally, each of these tactics are then broken down into practical actions the brand can take across all touchpoints, including examples for now and into the future.
3. Mission.
A mission is particularly powerful for brands, especially in a time where they are being looked at to act and respond to topics far outside of what their business may focus on. Defining the mission can help guide teams who are managing the brand to know not only what to respond to, but how to respond.
I recently received an email from Daily Harvest informing me that a new product of theirs that I purchased should be thrown away due to complaints from customers about gastrointestinal issues. In communicating this, they called back to their mission of “taking care of food, so food can take care of you.” They went on to explain that this means “quality, safety, and transparency are and always will be our top priorities.” By doing this, I was reminded that things happen and that even when things go wrong I can trust this brand to be honest with me and take immediate action in my best interest.
4. Who we are and who we aren’t.
We always develop brand attributes in our process, which are essentially the personality traits of the brand. What I’ve found to be critical in developing these is to also identify what you are not. I’ve seen this done as two general lists, but I like to think of the attribute on a spectrum so we can narrow in much more closely on that personality. This ultimately results in a brand that is more clearly identifiable and consistent.
So, let’s say we want a brand to be Collaborative. We’ll look at that attribute and think, if we over-invested in this what might it become? And in this case we determined it was Friendly. Now, this isn’t a bad trait to have at all, but it’s not appropriate for this brand, which is dealing with crime and other serious matters. With this targeted approach, we gain a much more practical guide to executing on these attributes.
5. Brand awareness and sentiment tracking.
This is the practice of surveying and listening to your audience, both existing and prospective, to identify where your brand stands in their minds. Do they even know about it? If they do, do they have positive feelings about it? Do they associate any of your value props with the brand?
It’s always eye opening to hear what a client views as their brand’s core values and differentiators versus what the audience does. It teaches you how noisy the world is and how delicate brand messaging can be. We had a client that provided security of data and information exchange as their primary value, yet the audience all referred to the top value of the brand as being easy to use. That’s not a bad value to identify as, but it’s pretty baseline for a SaaS company these days. That’s not what is going to set them apart in the greater, noisier market. With that insight, we were able to help them refine their identity accordingly.
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?
I’m always impressed by brands that last — the ones who know who they are and stand the test of time. Home Depot is a good example of this. What impresses me most is their ability to appeal to a range of target audiences — from young and old, to the professional contractor and the DIY homeowner. I never really want to go to Home Depot, but if I need materials for a home project, that’s the brand that comes to mind first.
I think what we can learn, or try to replicate is the simplicity and consistency. The brand doesn’t scramble to adapt or fit in as the tides change. It sticks to what it knows and presents it simply and consistently. Its campaigns don’t try to grasp at far-reaching concepts and tie it to home improvement. It speaks directly to who its customer is when they walk through their doors and what they’re going to get. This was evident once again in their new tagline unveiled in 2019 — “How doers get more done.”
Building any brand, especially a believable and beloved one, also takes time. When you combine simplicity, consistency and time in market, your odds of sinking in with consumers in a way that means something to them are pretty good.
I’d be remiss not to acknowledge the slack they’ve received for their political affiliations in recent years, which I touch on more below. It actually makes this an even more interesting example of how much a beloved and believable brand can do for a company. In this case, Home Depot will very likely be fine because the brand equity is strong enough to either overpower or outlast the consumer’s attention span around negative PR.
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?
It’s similar in the sense that you should absolutely be measuring both. When it comes to measuring brand building campaigns, you’re typically looking at awareness, reach, perception and sentiment. These are things you can measure with brand awareness studies. Ideally brands are doing these every quarter, setting a baseline and observing shifts as new campaigns and products roll out. This includes social listening and surveys to the target audience to understand if the brand messaging, attributes, and value props are being absorbed.
What role does social media play in your branding efforts?
Social media is a key input and output for branding efforts. During our discovery phase, we do social listening to identify trends in how the audience is engaging or thinking about the brand at that current time.
Then social media channels become a part of what we explore and test against as we’re developing the visual and verbal identity. Will the logo mark scale down to the Instagram profile icon size? How do we speak to consumers in a social ad versus an organic social post? Do we use emojis? There’s lots to consider when it comes to social media.
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. 🙂
To stop brands from being able to donate to politicians and lawmakers. Bringing it full circle, Home Depot has recently been boycotted for donating to lawmakers that rejected the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Brands — even beloved and believable ones — can often be used as a facade to get people to buy things from companies that aren’t really living up to the values that they put out into the world. We’re always going to be consuming, that’s not going anywhere. But, it would be incredible if we could feel confident in the brands that we’re consuming and not have to worry about strings attached. Separating corporate and political power would be a good start.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
There isn’t one single quote or mantra that I live by. I’m Type A so that can get dangerous (haha). I do work with a coach and she often likes to take key insights and turn them into mantras so we don’t lose sight of them. A recent one was “Hear the Hesitation.” It’s really just a more applicable way of saying “Go With Your Gut” for me. As a business owner, there are a lot of pressures and competing priorities, which can make finding your gut challenging sometimes. But one thing that always stands out to me is when I’m hesitating. When I listen to that, I find it’s my gut trying to tell me something and I remind myself to stop and listen.
This has been particularly relevant for me in deciding what companies and people that I want to work with. Martha is a boutique consultancy and we like to focus in on the clients and projects that we work with. As of 2022, we only accept four projects at a time. Needless to say, who we choose to engage with is of the utmost importance to our business.
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. 🙂
Definitely Jess Lee from Sequoia
How can our readers follow you on social media?
You can find me at https://www.instagram.com/marisshapiro/ and you can find Martha at https://www.instagram.com/hello.this.is.martha/
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.
Thank you!
Marissa Shapiro Of Martha: 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.
