Erika (Haendel) Weiss’ Post

Chubbies has one of the strongest men's brands out there. However, for the better part of a decade, I had no idea what Brand meant. Once we found out what it meant, and how to quantify it, our business fundamentally changed for the better in the form of material profit generation. Here's what we learned and what you can do to get your company thinking about Brand from the business performance perspective. *what I learned* Brand ≠ logo, font, color scheme Brand = the revenue you have when you turn off ads, new product launches, and promotions. it generally manifests in owned and organic new customer acquisition. when that's growing, the Brand is strengthening. things like logo, font, color schemes, taglines, jingles, etc, are great tactics to help drive changes in the ways people think about your Brand. this is brandING however, the output of branding is your Brand. the problem with focusing only on brandING is that you can't measure it. and because of that, you can't invest in it. and, most importantly, you can't connect it to profits. not saying branding is not important. it is. however, it is not the most important thing. the most important thing for a consumer brand is to strengthen their Brand so that, over time, the % of new customer revenue coming through owned and organic channels (across all sales channels where you get that data) increases over time. very simply, it boils down to building and strengthening your free money machine. this is more important than your return on ad spend, your customer acquisition cost, or your marketing efficiency ratio. as an example: Coke can turn off ads, new product launches and promotions and they'll still have a massive business. on the other end of the spectrum, the dropshipper who just started selling whatever is trending on Tiktok turns off ads and they have zero dollars coming in the door. one business can be handed to future generations and will generate predictable profits for long periods of time. the other will likely go out of business (nothing against dropshippers. just a different game.) -- *what can you do about it as you prep for H2 2024* Make sure everyone in the company knows the answers to the following 3 questions: 1) What is the % of new customer revenue coming through owned and organic channels? 2) is it higher than same time last year? 3) what are we doing to increase that percentage? when the answer to 2 is yes, keep going. if no, it is so important to get everyone together to get an understanding of why and what we're going to do about it. unlike vanity metrics like revenue or return on ad spend, the metrics around your owned and organic new customer acquisition engine are core fundamentals of business performance that should be maniacally tracked, thought about, talked about, brainstormed about improving, etc. we're here to build and strengthen the free money machine; not to get good at buying transactions. let's gooooo

The 19 reasons why you should not invest in Brand Building. 1. You really really really detest high margins. 2. You love being at the mercy of Meta's algorithm. 3. Speaking of which, you get a special kind of joy inside when you turn off your Meta ads and your revenue drops like a rock. 4. You never want to be able to raise prices. 5. You have too much organic and direct traffic. When you see all that unpaid branded search volume you think, "If people could stop Googling by brand name so much, that'd be great." 6. You want price to be the only factor your customer uses when determining whether or not to purchase from you. 7. The thought of building a competitive moat makes you sick to your stomach. Brands building long term sustainable competitive advantages are lazy. You'd much prefer to fight for your very existence all day every day. 8. Going to Chat GPT and prompting with "write me a product launch email" is too darn fun. After all, who has time to write emails to customers these days? 9. Your primary company goal for 2024 is to be able to attribute 100% of your revenue to Meta on a 1 day click basis. There's a simplicity to it that gets you jazzed. 10. You want all your word of mouth to be about your customer justifying their purchase because it was 30% off. You hope and pray they never tell others about how awesome your brand is or why they love it. Better yet, you don't want anyone talking about your brand because they're embarrassed to be associated with it. That's the coolest. 11. You really don't want the buyers at your dream retail accounts reaching out to you, begging for the opportunity to carry your product. 12. You want everyone to opt out, or unsubscribe from your email and sms lists IMMEDIATELY. 13. You want your contribution margin to go down 5% every year like clockwork. You LOVE LOVE LOVE having that predictability. Makes forecasting easy! 14. You believe the single best use of creativity is coming up with the next promo. 15. Your team LOVES spending 100% of their time churning out 50 variants of the same static product-shot-on-a-white-background 16. You take pride in having a higher CPM than your competitors. After all, bigger numbers are always better. 17. Using profits to fund causes you and your team care deeply about is a bad use of capital. We've already discussed that a much better use of capital is funding your ever-increasing CPMs 18. You'd rather light your hair on fire than be able to attract the best talent to your company. 19. The reason you founded this company in the first place was to run out of cash and go out of business. So please, I'm begging you, for the love of all that is good and holy in this world, do not invest in Brand Building.

3 minutes and 3 seconds. That's all it takes to learn from the best investor on why Brand is the most important driver of business value. If you're debating if, why or how investing in Brand building is right for your company, look no further than this compilation of Warren Buffett quotes from interviews over the last 50 years on why investing in Brand is the single most important thing you can do. While in the day-to-day of operating a company, it can seem foolish to invest in this mythical, hard-to-define thing called "Brand". However, if we listen to the most successful judge of fundamental business asset value over the last century, it's clear that a strong Brand is the most important thing. Here are the 5 topics, the 5 takeaways and the best quotes from the video 5 Topics: 1. Why Brand is the most important moat  2. Why Brand is the most important driver of business value,  3. The tangible benefits of a strong Brand in terms of pricing power,  4. Maintaining margin and shelf space in retailers, and  5. How a strong Brand is the only thing that can fend of inevitable competition. 5 Takeaways: 1. Brands are Moats 2. Single Most important thing he looks for are defensible Moats 3. The main Moat is Owning a Position in the consumer's Mind 4. A durable moat, driven by a strong Brand enables   a) sustainable Pricing Power (AKA the ability to not need to discount)  b) the best defense against competition   c) leverage in the Brand <> retailer relationship  5. Ultimately, Brand is the best driver of durable Profits The Best Quotes: On Brand: 1. "Brands are moats"  2. "A strong Brand is really potent stuff." 3. "[The Moat] can be because...of its position in the consumer's mind...that it has this moat around it." 4. "So you've got to protect a Brand, you've got to enhance it in every way. You've got to get a promise in people's minds that gets delivered that way." On the Importance of Moats:  1. "What we're trying to do is we're trying to find a business with a wide and long lasting moat around it, protecting a terrific economic castle."  2. "In essence, that's what business is all about." On Brand and Pricing Power: 1. "The single-most important decision in evaluating a business is pricing power. If you've got the power to raise prices without losing business to a competitor, you've got a very good business."  2. “You can measure the strength of a business over time by the agony they go through in determining whether a price increase can be sustained.” 3. "It's not a great business when you have to have a prayer session before you raise your prices a penny." On Brand as defense against competition from other Brands and retailers: 1. "The Brand has to stand for something in the consumer's mind because, in the end, the retailer may want to shift to a house Brand." 2. "I remember when Sam Walton sent me the first six-pack of Sam's Cola 20 years ago. And believe me, Walmart has plenty of power, but so does Coca Cola and the Brand."