High Intent
High Intent explores unfiltered lessons from the frontlines of modern marketing.
Hosted by Justin Rubner, High Intent features interviews with innovators in brand building, demand generation, sales conversion and beyond.
- Why are CMOs disappearing?
- What behavioral science principles can marketers employ to ensure better conversions?
- How should a new marketing leader scale an early-stage company?
- How can we get sales reps to follow through on cold MQLs?
... These are just some of the topics we explore.
About your host: Justin has spent his marketing career building and scaling marketing programs — for tech startups and Fortune 500 companies ranging from NCR to CoStar Group. He also was a brand strategist for the Air National Guard.
A former business reporter, Justin brings positioning and storytelling front and center to his approach to ensure clarity, pipeline growth and long-term brand equity.
High Intent
How to Create Taglines that Move Markets
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Taglines. Does every company need one?
The short answer is yes, if you want to be understood quicker and be the first company a prospect thinks of.
But most of them are, frankly, lame — because most of them are about YOU, not THEM.
The next guest on High Intent is Kevin Perlmutter, author of "BRAND DESIRE: Spark Customer Interest Using Emotional Insights". He’s also Chief Strategist & Founder of Limbic Brand Evolution, a brand strategy and behavioral science consultancy. Kevin created Limbic Sparks® Brand Strategy to help brand leaders move beyond traditional approaches and tap into the emotional motivations that driver customer behavior.
We’re going to chat about science-backed principles behind creating taglines that move markets and get into the weeds a bit on how to actually create one. We'll also talk about how modern brand strategy is broken, thanks, in part, to a very popular TED talk.
High Intent is hosted by Justin Rubner and offers unfiltered views on issues facing modern CMOs.
Taglines. Does every company really need one? The short answer is yes, if you want to be understood quicker and be the first company a prospect thinks of. But most of them are, frankly, lame, because most of them are about you, not them. My next guest is Kevin Perlmutter, author of Brand Desire, Spark Customer Interest Using Emotional Insights. He's also chief strategist and founder of Limbic Brand Evolution, a brand strategy and behavioral science consultancy. Kevin created Limbic Sparks Brand Strategy to help brand leaders move beyond traditional approaches and tap into the emotional motivations that drive customer behavior. We're going to chat a bit about science-backed principles behind creating taglines that move markets and get into the weeds on how to actually create one. I'm your host, Justin Rubner. This is the High Intent Podcast. Let's do this. Well, Kevin, welcome to High Intent. I'm really happy to have you on today talking about modern brand strategy and how you can use this to do many things, including coming up with a valuable tag one.
SPEAKER_00I'm so thrilled to be here. I'm glad we met and thank you for inviting me to the show.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. Okay, let's delve into it. What is wrong with traditional brand strategy?
SPEAKER_00Traditional brand strategy is too rooted in old ways of thinking and internal perspectives. So think about it. We have an industry that's been around for decades. We have language that's part of the industry, like proof points and reasons to believe and unique selling propositions is what I was trying to come up with. Language that just steers you into like selling and proving. We have this phenomenon around what's your why? And what's your why in the absence of understanding who's your who is a half-baked brand strategy. Yet some companies are thinking that their why is their positioning statement. It's a great TED Talk. It's you know something? It's a very popular TED talk and it's incredibly popular and it's been around for over 10 years. And I think that it's caused a lot of economic harm to companies that have followed it to the letter. Because if you think about the golden circle, the one word missing is who. There's nothing in there about the customer. And it's all an internal perspective, and we can go on about the problems with that if you'd like. But the other challenge with traditional brand strategy is primarily that with all good intention, way too many brand leaders are focusing on what they already know and believe and internal perspectives, and not going out there and talking with customers to understand what customers are caring about and motivated by. And I'll say the last thing is, and what's sent me into this trajectory of my career and the book that I wrote and the consultancy that I have is an understanding that I gained along the way that most brand leaders and marketers and consultants don't have around behavioral science and how the brain works. I've learned that so much work is happening where you're trying to sell something, but you're not understanding how people instinctively make decisions with a behavioral science understanding. And I had a very fortunate experience uh working with some folks who I now consider to be my behavioral science mentors for a few years, and they taught me some things that helped me understand that traditional brand strategy is broken.
SPEAKER_01So I imagine this is part of what led you to write your book, Brand Desire. Absolutely. Which is right behind you to your right. Or you're yeah, you're right. There you go. That's for those watching our video.
SPEAKER_00I uh launched my brand consultancy in 2019 after a few decades of working for others in the advertising space, in the brand consulting space, and at a sonic branding music studio. I went independent for the first time ever. And I did so not to just be an independent freelancer hot desking at different brand consultancies. I did it to actually create an approach to brand strategy that is rooted in behavioral science, that puts emotional insight the center of how brands attract and retain customers and to create a new way forward for consultants and brand leaders. So, in doing that, I created Limbic Sparks brand strategy. I started working with clients in 2019. And a few years into that, I recognized that not only was it rooted in science, but it was working. And my clients were happy and seeing good positive results. And I didn't want to keep it to myself. To be honest with you, I'm more interested in teaching. I'm more interested in getting the word out. I wanted to have an impact on our industry, evolve the way people think, and not keep it to myself and only apply it to the few clients I'm working with. So I decided to write the book, Brand Desire, and launched in July of 2025. So it's been out a little over a year. So emotional motivation is science. Emotional motivation is science. Our emotional motivations are the driving forces of our decisions and behaviors. And if you're not addressing people's emotional motivations, then you're not addressing the driving forces of their decisions and behaviors.
SPEAKER_01Yep. All right, limbic spark. We got to talk about this. Yeah. Give us a high-level view of what it is and why it matters to modern marketers, go-to-market people, salespeople, et cetera.
SPEAKER_00So I'm very purposeful in the work that I do. And as I said, I launched my brand consultancy wanting to focus on a particular aspect of how brands attract and retain customers. And the behavioral science work that I do comes out of my understanding of the limbic part of our brain, the limbic system part of our brain that's been written about by Daniel Kahneman as system one versus system two and all of those things, the subconscious versus the conscious aspects of how we make decisions and how much the how the large majority of the instinctive responses and decisions we make are happening subconsciously, and very few of them are getting kicked to our rational brain and causing us to think hard about things. We're responding instinctively and emotionally all the time. So the term limbic felt like a good way to go for the name of my business, which is limbic brand evolution. And it's also a term that I coined called limbic sparks. And limbic sparks are what you feel when emotional motivation meets brand desire. So when you come in contact with a brand and you're instinctively interested, your interest is ignited, and you bring that brand into your life, and then you're continuing to feel like you want to bring that brand into your life after you've had experience with it, that's when limbic sparks are happening. And my goal and all the work that I'm doing and all that I'm teaching about how to put brands out into the world has to do with this idea of creating limbic sparks, creating those instinctive moments of attraction, those ongoing feelings of loyalty, and igniting people's interest as the first step, as the first step to getting them to take interest in your brand, because we're spending a lot of time deflecting marketing messages, ignoring things that are irrelevant. We are not eagerly waiting for the next brand to arrive on our doorstep in our inbox in our social media feed. We are actively clicking the skip ads button. We are actively scrolling through the feed fast when we see things that are irrelevant. But when something attracts our interest, we stop. We pay attention. It breaks the cycle of avoiding things.
SPEAKER_01Yep. Okay. So as a marketer myself, it frankly drives me nuts to see so many companies, particularly B2B, but uh a lot of companies making it all about themselves. And I know you talk about this a lot.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But how can you actually help transition a company that has feature itis embedded in its DNA to one that speaks to customers and prospects at every touch point? And we're talking headlines, social, advertising, images, video, how do you actually do this? Because I've seen it firsthand.
SPEAKER_00It starts with understanding customers. So if you don't have a very clear view of what motivates your customers, what they actually care about in their life with or without your brand, then you are either selling what you have to sell in the absence of that insight. You are trying to prove to them that they need and want what you have without understanding if it's true or not. And your brand strategy and your messaging is equivalent to guesswork. You're guessing at the things that you should say. These are informed guesses. I'm not saying that marketers are not smart. I'm not saying that they don't understand their product. I'm not saying that they don't understand their customers, but I'm saying that if you don't truly understand what deeply motivates people that you're trying to reach, you're further from accurate than you than you than you are if you had this insight. Your guesswork is less accurate than if you had insight. So for instance, that causes you to either talk about who you are and what you do, or to put invitations out into the market that people don't really want to have. So for example, I mean, some examples of taglines that are out there. Let's move your business forward together. It's a weak line. It's not specific about anything. It doesn't sound proprietary. Intelligence at work feels very familiar. It feels like a lot of people have said it. I've seen that line in a few different forms come up many times in competitive reviews. You then you've got something that feels like an invitation, but it's so jargony and so nonspecific, like human potential optimized.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Human potential optimized. That's gonna catch them. That's gonna, that's gonna really reel them in. Give me a good tagline. So some good taglines. I'll give you a couple of options, uh, some that are more iconic and well known, and I'll I'll share a few that that I've been part of creating. So one of them is the ultimate driving machine. BMW. That's an invitation to a feeling that you want to have. I'll give you another one that comes from the same country and the same category, something that was part of a movie called Risky Business in the mid-80s that caught my attention and had and created limbic sparks for me when I was just a youth and drove that feeling for decades. Portia, there is no substitute. Let me give you another one. Think about recruiting young people to be part of the military service who are looking for either financial support so they can go to college, looking for direction in life, who want to serve their country. Be all you can be. Absolutely. Be all you can be. That ignites a feeling, it gives people uh agency, it helps people feel like they can accomplish something that they're deeply motivated to achieve. And I'll give you one last one. Save money, live better. Save money, live better. Walmart. That is a something that people want. It's a benefit and invitation to something that people want. Those are out in the world, those are iconic. I bet most people recognized them as I was saying them before we mentioned the brand. In my work with clients, we've used insight to come up with benefits and invitation that give these brands the opportunity to create an invitation. So let me give you one. I worked with the ATT Performing Arts Center, which is a nonprofit in Dallas, Texas. They hired me because they were looking to expand their audience. They were doing a really good job attracting wealthy individuals to their campus of performing arts facilities. They were wanting to invite less wealthy, younger families to things that they had going on, concert series in the summer, yoga on the lawn, giving young artists access to stages and education that would help them perform and go from emerging artists to well-paid artists at some point in their life, helping students in underserved parts of Dallas actually have arts education as part of their curriculum because their schools couldn't afford it. So subsidizing that, bringing kids onto their campus. They weren't known for any of this. They were known for their high-end offering. They were known for their black tie events. And their tagline was staging the amazing. It's about it's not a bad tagline, but it's about them. It's more their why than it is an invitation. The other thing it did is a great tagline is a benefit and invitation that actually guides the organization for how it communicates. Because you have to deliver on that benefit. So if you say staging the amazing, you're going to talk about how amazing things are. You're going to talk about the amazing black tie events, the amazing buildings, the wonderful chandelier, the Lexus parking garage. These are the things you're going to focus on. And they were struggling with the brand feeling not for me for a large portion of their desired audience. We understood, I understood through talking with their customers, their patrons, their families, people from different walks of life. We heard things like, I come to this place and it's the best thing Dallas has to offer. I didn't know that I could walk through these doors, that I even had the right shoes to enter this building. I discovered things here about myself that I didn't know existed. I had an amazing time with friends and family, and I didn't even realize that we can go to these types of events. This place has so much to offer that I haven't even like realized yet, and I want to keep coming back. So we transformed their brand from staging the amazing to yours to discover. Six years once it was launched, this brand has anchored into yours to discover as a way to open their doors, to welcome people in from all walks of life in their community, to discover all they have to offer. It became a guiding force for how they communicate as a brand and invite people in. If I have time, I want to give you one more example. So I worked with a Chinese company, a manufacturer of a highly durable and bulletproof material. It's like Kevlar. Kevlar is in their competitive set. Kevlar is a popular brand that many people heard of and associate with being bulletproof. Their material is in an ingredient brand to manufactured products. So they are a B2B marketer, mostly selling at trade shows and through one-to-one sales. And they want their material, which goes in highly durable ropes and netting. It also goes in bulletproof materials like cars and glass and vests and other things that are bulletproof. And they want their customers, their manufacturers to use their material as opposed to other materials. Now, without getting into all the details that took me a good month and a half to understand, their material is a lot newer than Kavlar and some of the more familiar brands in the market. It's a newly patented material that has significant advantages over others in the market. It also has some things that it's not as good at. But when you put it against other well-used and known brands in the market among these manufacturers for certain use cases, it is the superior product. However, conveying that is an important thing. And, you know, traditionally, how do you convey that? You have claims like 30% stronger. And you know, like you use all these claims that talk about the differences in terms of strength and durability and things like that. But when we interviewed their customers, their manufacturer customers, we heard things like, well, I put any material in my brand and it represents my brand's quality. I'm worried about my own brand's reputation. It's challenging to change out our manufacturing process to introduce a new material. We have to change a lot of things. We have to test it that we have to change it. So all these things are going on. And there was also a lot of confusion in the category around because everybody had the same claims. So anyway, we went with the brand idea, the tagline, a material difference. A material difference, it's a benefit and invitation where when they're at a trade show and their booth says a material difference, manufacturers go, oh, well, what's different about it? Well, the word material has double meaning. Yeah, it's a material, meaning significant, but also the material itself is different and it's a conversation starter. So they've used that line now for a few years, and it's something that actually is helping them break through in a crowded category of very well-established brands. Both of these cases, by the way, and five others are each individual chapters in my book with all the details of the work we did together and how we got there.
SPEAKER_01Oh, very cool. Let's get into taglines or brand ideas. And I can tell you from experience that they are one of the hardest things to do, as it, you know, requires so much thought, research, and creativity to boil down everything into a few words. And you know this. I know this very well. I'm a huge fan of taglines, if done right, because they not only encapsulate the emotional driver, but also imply what you do. And here's a stat: 71% of consumers who recall a tagline are more likely to choose that brand over competitors. Wow. Uh, and I've seen that stat a lot. And that's pretty major. Having said that, does every company need a tagline?
SPEAKER_00It's so funny you should ask. I'm working with a client right now, and that question came up. Do we really need a tagline? They haven't had one traditionally. They've had lines, they've had headlines on their website, but I don't think they've ever really committed to a tagline. And we're going through the process right now. We did all the insights discovery work, talking with customers. I spoke with 20 plus of their customers. We actually did quantitative behavioral science research to understand motivations and drivers across their customer set. They're a very large brand in the world and well known in their sphere. And the question came up: do we really need a tagline? And I said yes. Not because it's my job to create them or because it's part of my scope, because a tagline is an anchor for customers. As you just said, there's statistics out there that say that if you remember a tagline, you're more likely. But even without the tagline, people may be likely to engage in a brand. What a tagline is, it's a beacon. It's a beacon internally and it's a beacon externally. If done right, and when I say right, I mean as a benefit and an invitation, which is my definition of a tagline, not an about us statement, but as a benefit and an invitation that's rooted in customer insight. One, you understand the customer insight that got you to that line. As you said, like I have reams and months of customer insight that for this particular client, I have to boil down to three or five words. And it has to be a benefit and an invitation based on my criteria. You want some of those words to have double meaning, like material difference, so that it really covers a lot of ground. And, you know, you really have to be artful about it. It can't be something that feels familiar and cliche and jargony. It has to be something that grabs your attention and feels like when you see it, it feels like, oh, I've got to learn more about that. They get me. It feels like, wow, it feels like this brand might be designed with me in mind. I need to check this out. It needs to ignite interest. If you have the right tagline, not only does it create a beacon for customers to ignite their interest in what you have to offer, but it also creates a beacon internally for continuing to deliver on that promise. When you say yours to discover, it guides everyone internally to keep putting things out there in a way that helps people discover all they have to offer. For that particular brand, with four or five buildings and activities happening in all of them each and every day and on weekends, like there's a lot for people to discover. And you want to keep letting them know and finding ways to help them discover more. So the answer to your question is yes. I believe a tagline is a very valuable piece of brand content that, if done well, attracts people based on something you know they create.
SPEAKER_01Most are pretty darky, though.
SPEAKER_00There are some rough ones out there. There are some rough ones out there. I mean, for every brand I work with, I probably see 20. In their category. And you know, there are a few good ones in the category. There are a few that actually meet my criteria as a benefit and invitation, but a lot of them, you know, fall into that camp of human potential optimized, you know, or yes, it's just it happens.
SPEAKER_01Yep. All right, let's get into tactics. How does their company start this process of creating a memorable tagline?
SPEAKER_00Well, when I do my work with clients, and what I outline in my book are the three phases of brand development, which include focus, connect, and evolve. Focus, connect, and evolve. Focus, connect, and evolve. And in my book, there are five parts. The middle three are focus, connect, and evolve. The first one is feel, because it gets into behavioral science. And the last one is lead, which is all about applying what you've learned so that you can lead your company in this direction. But the three middle sections are focus, connect, and evolve. Focus is all about insights discovery. It's all about understanding the emotional motivations that people have. It's all about getting out of your office and actually talking with customers, doing interviews, whether it's you or your consultant or your agency or whatever or your research partner. It's understanding what drives people to your brand as a way of understanding what other people would be interested in. One of the biggest things I find is that brand leaders don't know what drive people to their brand as well as their customers know what drives people to their brand. If you ask customers, you're going to find out things that you want to know and you can elevate those benefits that people articulate to the top of your benefits and will weave them into the umbrella tagline that covers all the grounds. So focus is that first phase. And the end deliverable of focus is what I call the shared emotional motivation. This is not part of traditional brand strategy. This is part of Limbic Sparks brand strategy and what I'm hoping people use going forward with or without my process. The shared emotional motivation is what both the brand and the customer are trying to achieve in the world individually and perhaps together.
SPEAKER_01This added a whole nother element there to make it even harder. To make it even harder to do what? To create a tagline.
SPEAKER_00Well, it's another element in the process to get to an effective tagline, but it's a lot harder to spend a year and a half using a tagline that's not effective because it's guesswork and not rooted in customer insight. So I suggest you spend an extra couple of weeks up front to articulate the shared emotional motivation that you've discovered through your work, through your insights work that you didn't skip over and you use that as an input. And then it actually makes it easier for you. The shared emotional motivation makes it easier for you to create a tagline that is rooted in insight and specifically designed to attract people to your brand based on what they're motivated by. Now, if you want to go really easy, you just use AI, but that's not going to get you there. That's not going to get you anything that's unique, that's compelling.
SPEAKER_01We'll get AI in a second.
SPEAKER_00We could talk about that for a whole, but we'll get there. So the second phase of the work is Connect. Connect is where you develop the brand strategy. If you think of insights discovery as a big funnel with all of these insights, you distill it in Connect at the bottom of the funnel. And in Connect, you are using the shared emotional motivation as the first bookend, the first core element of your brand strategy. And you're using the brand idea or tagline as the other bookend. And in between, of course, you have things like your personality and voice traits, your brand positioning statement, your core brand benefits, which I suggest are emotional benefits articulated by your customers. But the brand strategy, the tagline comes out of understanding that shared emotional motivation, understanding the most compelling brand benefits, and then developing a line that is a brand benefit and invitation, not an about us statement.
SPEAKER_01Ked, really quick. So the shared emotional motivation, which is both the brand and the customer, cross back, right? Is this one idea or can it be multiple? Or do you have to boil it down to one? I imagine that you have to boil this down to one idea, right? Not 20. Correct?
SPEAKER_00Yep. Oh, yeah. The shared emotional motivation is a line, a statement, usually a few words, almost like a tagline, but it's not meant to be a tagline. So uh it's the framework behind the tagline or a part of it. It's the core insight that drives you to a tagline. So if if you want to invite somebody to something, the best way to do it is to know what they care about. The shared emotional motivation is a summation of what they care about at the highest level.
SPEAKER_01Give us an example of uh a succinct one.
SPEAKER_00I have to remember them. ATT Performing Arts Center is desire for entertaining experiences. So this is not a unique state. This is not like a I get it. If we know that our audience is wanting a desire for entertaining experiences, this brand is yours to discover. For the Sundless, which is the manufacturer of the bulletproof material, their shared motional innovation was an uncompromising advantage. Yep. Manufacturers want an uncompromising, they want all the advantages that they have with their current material ingredient, but they want an advantage without compromising anything. That got into a material difference.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I get that. So both the uh bulletproof material company, the manufacturer, as well as the end customer, that applies to all three of them, really.
SPEAKER_00It does. The uncompromising advantage is what the manufacturer wants, it's what the end product should deliver to end customers. You know, you want the all the advantages with no sacrifice. If you're using something that's meant to be highly durable, if you're using something that's meant to be to stop a bullet, you want all the advantages with no sacrifice. What we're offering is a material difference, something you should check out because it offers you this uncompromising advantage.
SPEAKER_01A little side story. When I I was in the Air Force and was stationed in Saudi Arabia, and whenever I went off base, they gave us these what I thought were bulletproof vests, but there were only bullet resistant that were for to protect you against explosions. Oh my gosh. I had no idea until afterwards that I didn't even have a bulletproof vest.
SPEAKER_00Good thing you weren't taking chances stopping bullets, you know.
SPEAKER_01I I could help. All right, so uh back to the tagline. Yep. Visualize this. We're in a room and we have the brand strategist, the CMO, and uh a couple marketers and all the VPs of sales, product, etc., in a room, and we're gonna start this process. How does this start? Or do you even have all these people to start?
SPEAKER_00I'm often in a room with lots of people with those titles. I'm not necessarily brainstorming taglines with them. I am sharing the results of insights discovery as the first step. So I when I do my insights discovery work, I'm doing a few things. One is I'm gathering insights. Two, I'm talking with their customers, probably more than they have in recent history. And lastly, I am beginning the essential process of stakeholder management. I'm doing one-on-one interviews with lots of people on the client side as well as the customer side, so that everybody has a voice in the process. And then when they see the culmination of what I learned, one of the things I like to do from those one-on-one interviews, both with the internal people and my clients' customers, what I like to do is share the question. And I'll say, here's a consolidation of verbatim and the core insight from this question across everyone I spoke with. Sometimes the question is just for the insiders, sometimes the question is just for the customers. And sometimes I'm showing the answers that I got from the insiders and I got from the customers. So, what is the best thing that this brand has to offer? I have a list from insiders and I have a list from customers, and I show a compare and contrast, and I get to show the differences and point those things out. So when I'm in the room next, I'm sharing the results of Insights Discovery. And when I'm in the room the next time, I'm sharing recommended brand strategy. One thing that I like to do at the end of the Insights Discovery presentation is with the group align on what I call the brand evolution success criteria. What are we trying to do? We're going to shift from being a company that's about this to a company that's about this based on insight. We're going to, based on the insights we gathered. We're going to throw some criteria in there just to help them get out of their own way. We're going to avoid industry jargon and be specific about benefits that people care about.
SPEAKER_01Thank you.
SPEAKER_00I get everybody aligned on these criteria. And then when we come back and review the strategy, we start with the criteria and a summary of the insights and say, now let's go over some potential ideas. Now, during this whole time, I'm going through my process of developing tagline ideas. Sometimes I'm doing it independently. Sometimes I'm doing it with a collaboration partner in the background. And I have lists and lists and lists and lists. And ultimately I get it down to about six to present. And we talk about the pros and cons of each of those ideas. I get a feel for what the clients are interested in, what sparks their interest as it what feels naturally right to them. Sometimes we have to do a little work to get people comfortable with a bigger idea than they're used to. I had one client situation where the clients were like, wow, that's a really bold statement. Like, oh my goodness, that's taking a pole position in the category. They actually said to me, that's like saying the ultimate driving machine in our category. And I said, So what's the challenge? They said, Well, what if we can't live up to it? I said, Well, here's the beauty of the process we just went through. You are living up to it. I've spoken with your customers, I've read your customer reviews. I don't create stretch goals for taglines. I don't create aspirational positioning statements. I create things that are rooted in what your customers are already saying you do well and recognizing that that's why they keep coming back for more. And as a result, if we put that idea out there, others might be attracted to that same benefit.
SPEAKER_01Is there any room for aspirational ideas in a tagline? Because I get this a lot as a marketer, you know, especially from product teams, is we're not there yet. Yeah. We will be. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00How much room is there for future aspiration? I think that question can be answered in two ways. When it comes to the line itself, it's got to be something you are delivering to customers right now. So I don't think there's room for aspiration. I don't suggest taglines overstep what you'll feel and the benefits that you'll get as a customer, because then what you're doing is you're making promises with advertising that your brand experience can't keep. And that is not a good idea. That's not good for business. On the internal side, there's often a revelation and recognition that you're delivering at a higher caliber than you thought you were. And sometimes internal operations and organization of products and services, portfolio architecture, sometimes there's some customer service things that you want to improve upon to better focus your effort on delivering that brand promise, but you're already doing it. You just recognize that if that's the beacon, you can be doing it better. So I have had situations where brands have transformed internally. I've helped brands transform from product and service-oriented organization of their portfolio on their website and actually having different groups of people servicing the same customer with different products and services to transforming entire organizations around being customer-centric with the same people serving the same customers and the benefits for the same customer all being together as opposed to being separated by product and service. That's an internal transformation. But the brand idea that we came up with, they're already delivering on the promise. They can just do it more efficiently and better.
SPEAKER_01Okay. What tools are you using? And is AI a part of that stack?
SPEAKER_00AI has become a part of my work as a thinking partner. So over the last year or so, I've been experimenting with what it's good at and what it's not good at when it comes to the kind of work that I do. And what I found is it's great at generating lots of ideas. It's great at generating lots of ideas that are 85% something I would never use. But those ideas spark my thinking. They expand my thinking. They send me into new territories. So one thing that it's done for me is it gets me to a list of ideas quicker. It doesn't mean it's a good list of ideas. It just means it gives me more to think about and more ideas to either accept or reject. There's hardly anything I've ever gotten from AI that was usable as is. Sure. It's led me down a path. The other thing that I find it's really good at is providing context. Like if my client is a manufacturer of this type of product with these types of customers, and I'm looking at these three taglines, tell me the pros and cons of each line and what it means, what the meaning and implications are to the audience that it's for. It'll help me understand. It'll be very specific about well, this line is really good because it does this, but its downside is this. You don't want to use that word because it triggers uh the meaning of something that you didn't intend for it to mean. It gives that kind of information. But the watch out on that is I feel really smart when I share my work with AI because it tells me how brilliant everything is.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. We're all brilliant. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I'll share lines and it'll say, those are brilliant ideas. And then like you'll share the next batch and I'll say, Oh, you've done it, you've taken it to the next level. These are brilliant ideas. And every once in a while I say, stop telling me how awesome I am. Oh, well, this line is not good for this, and this line is not good for. I mean, you have to prompt it to like temper its enthusiasm for your genius. I gotta be honest with you, it's reliable if you use it with an eye toward, I don't believe what you're saying, but I'll take that as okay advice. It's not good if you believe everything it sends you is good. Yeah, it gives you a false sense of confidence in your work if you allow it to.
SPEAKER_01What's your AI or choice for this?
SPEAKER_00I use Joni.
SPEAKER_01Non-tech, are you using a whiteboard?
SPEAKER_00Yes, I use a whiteboard. I like to say that my work is Sharpie on white. I have 3M post-it pads around my office. I use Sharpie. I like to sketch things out. I'm very visually oriented. So I like to sketch out ideas. I like to list ideas with a marker. I like to storyboard out a presentation with little squares and notes on what's going to go on each page. I like to visualize things and then put them together. It's a great feeling when you come up with one that you think works, isn't it? I gotta be honest with you, it is an awesome feeling. And I've done it enough times. I've worked with uh 25, 30 brands, I forget how many, at this point, and I've created taglines for most of them. And when you're going through that ideation piece, and by the way, my ideation work on taglines isn't just standing in my office here at a whiteboard, it is when I'm driving my car. It is spontaneous focus groups with my family. It is calling up friends in the industry and having little bounce idea sessions. If you looked at my text messages to myself, it's always me in the car saying, I'm not going to say her name because she'll light up my phone, but hey, so and so, send a text to Kevin Perlmutter and I'll say, yours to discover, and I'll leave it there. And then I'll look at the end of a long drive, I'll have maybe five or six ideas that I've sent a message to myself and I put them on the list, and half of them are no good, but at least they they were an idea that I didn't want to forget. So my goal during that process is to have six I'm proud to present. When I know that I've just nailed one that's going to be on that list that I won't reject because I've come up with something better, it's a great feeling. Now, the worst feeling is when you go to the US Patent Trademark Office website, you PTO.gov, and you do a trademark search and you're like, oh, I'm not the first one to think of that. So your great idea is suddenly off the list. But it's a great feeling when you come up with something that you know just crushed the brief. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And this is something we all should do. Go to USPTO.gov.
SPEAKER_00And and you always want a pre-screen. You don't want your clients to fall in love with something that's not viable. So do you have to work at all with legal departments? I don't directly. I mean, in my scopes of work, my clients are responsible for trademark clearance and registration, not because I don't want to do it, but because it's their legal responsibility and their lawyers want to handle it anyway. When I go to them, I've done a pre-screen. I've looked at uspto.gov. I've searched the internet to see if anybody's using it. If I make a judgment call that it's probably okay, that is not a legal judgment call. That is my judgment call based on my very terse. I feel good enough to present it and say, I think if your lawyers look at this, you'll probably be fine, but I'm no lawyer and that's not my responsibility.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Any other tactical advice for when you're standing at the whiteboard coming up with these once you have the insights that we've talked about?
SPEAKER_00Don't ever present something that you don't want to see in the market. If you don't really think it's a good idea, if you're not really proud of it, if you don't think it nails the brief, don't present it because that's the one that they're going to come back and say, hey, we really like that one. And then all of a sudden you're either like stuck with, you know, something that you'd never want to say you were a part of, you don't think it's the most effective work for your client, or you have to backpedal and say, you know what, we really didn't think you were going to pick that one, but there's some better ones here. You want to talk about the I've learned over time, and this is with taglines, this is with any work, visual identity. Never present anything that you don't think is right or that you're not proud of. You know, occasionally show them what they've asked for and show them what you recommend. Absolutely. But be very clear in that meeting why you are not in favor of what they've asked for and be very good about showing them what you recommend and justify why it is the case. Our jobs is not to appease our clients, our jobs are to provide them with good counsel and good recommendations based on our expertise. Now, on the other hand, it's also not our jobs to force anything down their throats. One of my favorite lines with clients is this is mine to recommend and yours to love. And if you don't love it, then I'm not gonna suggest you go for it because it won't stand the test of time in your organization. But I do encourage you to think beyond what you thought before you met me because that's why you hired me.
SPEAKER_01Staying on the tactical route, once you have your wonderful tagline. How important is it for the frontline people, i.e., sales, marketing, success, etc., to encapsulate that tagline and all of their mass communications? One more thing. When I say encapsulate, I mean getting the idea of the tagline in every headline and image that you show.
SPEAKER_00Is that well, let me uh come at it a slightly different way is that I think that when you launch new brand messaging that's rooted in customer understanding, that's a very valuable tool for your sales force and your marketers. And they need to embrace it, they need to understand it, they need to understand why it was selected based on the research that we've done. It's going to be different than what they're used to. And they need to deliver on that messaging. You need to provide activation guidance. And by the way, we talked about focus and connect. The third stage is evolve. Evolve is where you bring that messaging to life in a what I call a brand messaging hierarchy, where you apply visual identity evolution based on where the brand is going, if necessary, where maybe you have some other components and where you make sure brand experiences reflect at the highest level the promise you're making and the invitation you're giving to your customers. I think you have to go forward with that guidance. Salespeople will resort to sales tactics if they don't have compelling things to say. If you've done all the hard work to give them compelling things to say, you have to help make sure that they are ready to talk about those and can talk about them fluently, and they will be thrilled to have something new and compelling to say that you've proven is why people choose the brand. Because in the absence of that, they're going to be saying, well, with us, human potential is optimized and like nobody's gonna know what they're talking about. Well, great. What's your parting wisdom? My parting wisdom is that the largest driver of loyalty for a brand is how the experience with that brand makes you feel. So understanding how people want to feel is the most important insight that you can have to get you to branding, marketing, a tagline, and experiences that will deliver on the way people want to feel. And if they feel that way, they will keep coming back for more. If they don't, your brand is gonna someday be a fleeting thought in their mind. Very cool.
SPEAKER_01Kevin, thanks for being on.
SPEAKER_00Thank you for having me.