Mia Fileman 0:05
This is Got Marketing? – a fud-free, fluff-free, no-nonsense podcast for marketers looking to work smarter.
I’m your host, Mia Fileman – a marketing strategist with over two decades of experience, and an entrepreneur.
I’m tired of marketers telling you what you want to hear. Instead, I tell you what you need to hear. During the show, I chat with creatives and strategists about all the aspects of marketing, but especially marketing campaigns. Unpacking and dissecting marketing campaigns is what I do for fun.
Got Marketing? is brought to you by Campaign Del Mar – the marketing education platform where marketers and entrepreneurs go to upskill.
Let’s dive in, shall we?
Hello, everyone! I have often said that playing it safe is the riskiest strategy of all. Sure, bold ideas come with risk, but rolling out same-same marketing is almost guaranteed to fail and be scrolled past.
To have this juicy conversation out, I’ve invited brand strategist and beloved Campaign Classroom graduate, Soojee Ford. Soojee is one of the directors of The Good Studio – a branding studio based in sunny Queensland.
Welcome!
Soojee Ford 1:30
Hi Mia! Thanks for having me!
Mia Fileman 1:33
Congratulations on the launch of the podcast – Boring is Bad for Business! What an awesome podcast title!
Soojee Ford 1:42
Yes, it’s been something that we started in Campaign Classroom – that idea of really latching on to boring is bad for business and owning it and it’s evolved now to its own podcast.
Joel is the other director of The Good Studio and we’re always talking about it inside the studio and then breaking down on a project how we can make things less boring. “We just need to share this out to other people.”
Mia Fileman 2:03
I’m so excited to have this conversation out with you.
First, I would love to hear your brand story and also your meet cute. How did you and Joel decide to become #workmarried?
Soojee Ford 2:17
I’ve never heard of a meet cute since our meeting story.
Brand story and our meet cute – our story of how Joel and I met together. The Good Studio existed before. That was Joel’s business. We both were actually at the time designers – art director and creative director – doing it for ourselves as small businesses on the Sunshine Coast.
My journey to get to that had been a little bit different. I had come through agencies as a designer when I was very young but also just moved more into the creative strategies where my role was sitting. Once I left the agency world, I thought, “You know what? I’ll just go back to design.” For some reason, I had this hunger for that.
I was running my business out of a coworking space which Joel was also doing the same thing. We worked together alongside each other for a long time. We were always bouncing off each other, and that’s a really great environment to be in. And then, we had this idea. “Why don’t we make this a bit bigger than just ourselves?”
At some point, we realised, “It’s great being a small business, but you can only spread yourselves so far.” Joel is really passionate about creative direction. I was getting more inspired. I was loving watching other people do great design. I was like, “I still have this hunger or thirst for the strategy.”
Even though I was doing these designs, I wanted to take people through why we are actually doing this. “What is the long-time vision of your business? Where do you want to be positioned? What type of customers do you want to talk to? Then, we’ll get to the design later.”
It just made sense. Two heads are better than one. We split those functions up and that’s how we thought we’d grow The Good Studio. Joel has been on the Sunshine Coast a lot longer than I have.
We were like, “Let’s go under The Good Studio and then make that the name for itself.” We saw it as a bit of an opportunity here on the coast. It’s still relatively untouched, and a lot of people through COVID have realised that this is a great place to live.
I think that the business and the economy here is growing so much. There’s a lot of business here. It’s a small business mecca that’s only going to get bigger. We really see it as such an opportunity to be involved in creating really big brands here on the Sunshine Coast that excite people and are not boring. They have that emotional connection.
At the end of the day, those brands get to do more things with less spending on the money because they’re connecting with people and they’re inspiring them and they’re exciting them and they’re moving them.
Mia Fileman 4:34
Oh, my gosh! I love that so much! There’s just opportunity plus, plus, plus. Congratulations! You and Joel make such a great team. You can see that there’s great chemistry and energy between you two. I’m so thrilled for you.
Let’s dive in. Why is boring bad for business?
Soojee Ford 4:53
Well, if you’re boring, first of all, you have to work so much harder! You said it before; playing it safe is the riskiest thing that you can do. You are guaranteed to be looked over.
We have dived into this in one of our podcasts and didn’t revisit the stats, but there’s some astronomical number of ads that we are being sent every day. We know it. We’re on devices nonstop.
With all of that, if you can cut through not being boring or saying something that’s out of the box or saying something that makes people stop for a second and has that emotional response, that’s not being boring, and that’s what cuts through the noise.
You can do all of your ad statistics and where you want to place things but, still, you are competing for somebody’s attention. If you want attention, don’t be boring.
Mia Fileman 5:34
Absolutely! I wholeheartedly agree with that.
I think brands are afraid to fail, though. How do you go about validating your ideas and sense-checking them so that they don’t fail and so that you are lessening the risk of that creative idea ending up being tone-deaf?
Soojee Ford 5:55
Yes, and scared to fail is another topic he’d go deep on, but I think there are two things. You are always going to fail if you never take a risk, first of all. But then, in terms of how to sense-check things, it actually starts with a really boring thing – strategy.
You know your customers. Get to really know who are those customers that you’re wanting to talk to and understand what their characteristics are. What is their personality like? Who do they socialise with? What are their political beliefs? What are their social beliefs?
If you can tap into your customers and how they think and how they feel and then marry that up with your own beliefs as a brand – whether that’s a solo business or even a larger brand – and what you stand for, when you have those talking to each other and you marry them up, you are eliminating the need for risk because somebody being offended by something is generally because they don’t believe in what you believe in.
Of course, we don’t want to go – like you were saying – with something that’s completely politically incorrect and that most of Australia – or whoever your audience is – is going to say, “No, we don’t agree.” But I think, if you can get into the psyche of your customers, then that’s a really big step in the way of minimising risk.
Mia Fileman 7:01
Thank you, yes! It’s a really harebrain idea, but if you’re not sure, ask your customers! Have a chat to them. This is something that I’m sure you’re very familiar with – coming from corporate and big agency. Same with me.
We would actually focus group our campaign ideas and our marketing ideas. We would bring in customers that represented our target audience, share the concepts with them, and say, “Hey! This is a little bit of a deviation for our brand. This is a new direction. What do you think?”
Invite them to be part of the conversation before you launch something that is potentially too risky and actually pick up the phone and talk to your customers.
Soojee Ford 7:49
Absolutely.
Sometimes, people can survey not their customers but asking friends and family who aren’t actually the end user or whatever business it is. That is not going to get you the answers that you need. You need to understand your actual customers.
Mia Fileman 8:04
Absolutely – 100 percent!
You are a brand strategy, Soojee. Brand strategy is one of those marketing terms that is so misunderstood. There’s this misconception that brand strategy is complicated and expensive.
Do you think that you could demystify this for us?
Soojee Ford 8:25
The name, for some reason, sounds so ambiguous. I understand why people think that it is complicated. It’s like, “What do you actually do? Are you a designer? Are you a marketer? Who are you?”
I’d say all marketers really should be brand strategists, I believe, because why are we focusing on the tactical end result? The ads people understand an ad because they see an ad on TV. They’ve grown up around them. But underneath an ad, there’s all the mechanics of “why are we doing this ad in the first place? How does that ad get our business to be where we want it to be in the long term?” It starts asking those essential questions. That’s what brand strategy is.
I think that everybody who does good marketing should understand those key factors first. I guess, sometimes, in the agency world or the business world, these roles are hidden behind the scenes. We’ve got people in research creating these reports and pulling the data in. It’s the marketers I guess who are seen to pull off the ads. We’re behind those big ideas, but there is actually a team of strategists and business advisory that creates that information to start with.
Mia Fileman 9:37
Absolutely.
For me, brand strategy comes down to three key questions. (1) Who are we targeting? (2) What do we want to be known for? (3) How are we going to achieve that?
You can make that as complicated as you like but, actually, I think the most sophisticated strategies are the most simple that can really answer those questions very clearly and non-ambiguously.
Soojee Ford 10:12
Absolutely, yes. I love that breakdown of what brand strategy is.
If you’re in marketing, or even if you’re your own business owner, you have to be your own brand strategist because you can answer those questions for yourself.
Mia Fileman 10:25
Absolutely.
In amongst all the things that brands need to do to market their business, where does the brand strategy piece fit in the process?
Soojee Ford 10:37
The very, very, very beginning.
For me, it’s so connected to business strategy. The brand and the business are, actually – I believe – formed at the same time if you are creating in a start-up world.
If you’re product-based, for example, you might be going out and sourcing products and samples and things like that but, at the same time, you need to be looking into the future and answering these questions you said. “Where do I want to be 5, 10, 20 years?” and “This product is not for everybody. Who is actually that one person that is buying this product and what problems do they really have that we can solve?” Marry those two things. Like you said, it’s “how are we going to get there?” That is just as important as the often really fun parts of a business – like finding product or creating your services. It has to happen at the start.
Also, once you answer those questions, it gives you a lens to be like, “Actually, that product is right,” “It needs a tweak,” “That service is right,” et cetera.
Mia Fileman 11:39
I wholeheartedly agree.
Last year, my business partner left our business, and I was transitioning to becoming a solo business owner. That required a change in brand name and a change in our whole company name, really.
Before I picked up the phone to a single designer to think about new logos and new names, I spent a couple of weeks over the Christmas break writing my brand strategy because how were they supposed to create an entire visual identity and a name for a brand when I haven’t gotten clear on those elements? “Who is this brand for? What problem do I solve for customers? Why do I exist? What do I want to be known for?”
It absolutely tickles me pink when people refer to me as the campaign lady or the campaign guru or any of those words – even though I don’t love the word “guru.” I just love that I’m so closely associated with campaigns because that’s exactly the positioning that I want for my business.
Soojee Ford 12:48
Absolutely.
I love that example because, again, marketing words have this tendency to be really confusing and ambiguous. Positioning. When somebody says in business “campaign,” you want to be near Campaign Classroom or Campaign Del Mar. That’s the association you want to get. That’s positioning.
Mia Fileman 13:09
Exactly. So true.
Brand strategy comes first. We do not pass go. We do not collect $200. It’s first. Then, we can go into brand identity, brand voice, brand messaging, and any of those sorts of tactical elements. But, as you know, Soojee, I’m low-key obsessed. I don’t know why I said lowkey. I’m high-key obsessed with marketing campaigns.
How does your brand strategy fit with your marketing campaigns? How do those two things come together?
Soojee Ford 13:45
I did a bit of homework on your question because I thought that was a good one. Then, I came up with this idea of Aldi. I was looking around. I was like, “Get into the mood for good chats.”
I was like, “You know what? I love an Aldi ad.” I don’t watch a lot of TV, but when you see an Aldi ad, it just nails it, so I just wanted to break it down and be on where brand (14:02 unclear) and talk a little bit with their campaigns and how I see the two fit together with an example.
Business-wise, with Aldi, you go back a long time. They were a new player on the market, but they were perceived as this discount cheap “you come to us because it’s cheaper to shop here” and people just have this perception that they were cheap.
They knew that business strategy-wise, they actually wanted to transition away from that and be able to compete – especially in Australia, and they do this in different markets as well – with the top players – Woolworths and Coles. I don’t know if we’re mentioning names here, but they knew that that’s what they wanted to compete with. That became their business strategy which also is part of their brand strategy.
The way they racked that up – as with this great line – it’s like, “Good different.” Fantastic. I think, in terms of brand strategy, you see this with Aldi, everything they do is a little bit different – whether it’s the brands in store that they get, but they’re still good. They’re the same products.
Sometimes, they’re just a little bit different to how we usually buy them. The way that they stock their shelves. The way that you have to pack your own bags. The way they have their staff sitting down. That’s all brand activity that link very closely to “we’re going to do things differently.”
And then, I see that Aldi run their campaigns, and that’s a campaign that’s always on – “good different” is always on. But I see then that they’ve got these creative campaigns that still have the spirit of being different, and they have this outlandish funny personality, and I tend to see that they sort of spike on and off.
That’s also the buzz that that campaign gets for Aldi – whether it’s their Christmas campaign or they did something for COVID. That just adds more equity into the idea of being good different. It gets more buzz. But I see that they’re on and off. Those campaigns aren’t always on, and that’s how I broke it down with the brand strategy – any campaign strategy.
Mia Fileman 15:48
Oh, my god. I love that so much.
Every year, I look forward to Aldi’s Christmas campaign because it is always good, and it is always so perfectly on brand. That’s what you’re saying. These campaigns are very funny, irreverent, sometimes a bit cheeky, but they always align with the underlying brand strategy for Aldi – that it is good different. That is an absolutely amazing example. Thank you for sharing.
Soojee Ford 16:20
Thanks for prepping me with that question. I would have been a bit thrown if it was on the spot.
Mia Fileman 16:25
No worries. Those podcast discussion guides are always a win.
For me, I always say that your campaigns should look different to your always-on marketing. They should capture attention, and you’re only going to achieve that if it’s not your regular programming, but they shouldn’t be like strangers.
My friend Rachel (16:54 unclear) says that they should be cousins. Your campaigns and your brand strategy or your marketing strategy to your campaigns, they should be cousins. They’re related, but they’re not the same, so I really like that analogy. It’s so good.
Tell us about your campaigns for The Good Studio. What are you working on? What does it look like for you in real life?
Soojee Ford 17:21
At the moment, it’s all about boring is bad for business. We’ve brought that out to life with our podcast, and we have got an idea that we brainstormed together in Campaign Classroom. Again, it’s the idea that boring is bad for business.
I don’t want to give away too much, but we’re actually going to do something that’s completely un-boring and basically helping people how to create a non-boring brand, but we’re doing it in a non-boring way. We’re hoping that that’ll be out mid-year, but it’s going offline as well.
We’re going back to our basics. We’re both designers. We grew up in the age of print. I’ve given you some ideas there but, I guess, with our marketing, what we’re trying to do is really demonstrate ways that you can do business without being boring. For us, that was getting offline and getting into the print space.
Mia Fileman 18:07
Oh, my gosh! That’s a juicy tip. I can’t wait for this. I am intrigued, for sure!
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Boring is bad for business. How do we go about being non-boring or unboring? I have some favourite brainstorm techniques, but I would love to hear yours as a brand strategist. What’s the starting point for unboring marketing?
Soojee Ford 19:24
My starting point is a little bit boring, unfortunately. My starting point does sound boring, but it gets the juicy details that we need. When we work with clients, the first thing that we do is we actually take them through a workshop.
Our end product is a brand identity system and also a website. A lot of the time, when you’re getting those services, somebody would ask you to fill out a brief. We don’t do that. We actually get the client to come into the room. If they are local, they will come into our studio, and they’re here for about four to five hours.
It does work on Zoom as well. We’ve adapted. It’s actually been great to have COVID. We were open to it, but clients sometimes felt a little not-so-opening up on the screen, and we sit down, and we ask them questions. They don’t prepare anything. What we’re doing in that workshop is we’re really asking all of those questions that we discussed before.
“What do you want to be known for? Who are your customers? Explain to me in your own words, what is the culture of your company like? What are some things that people say about you? What’s the special X-factor that you have?”
In that time, Joel and I are sitting in there with the client in these conversations. They’re exhausted by the time they leave. They literally are like, “Wow! That felt like therapy for me. I just have so much going on in my brain right now. That was huge! I’m quite exhausted. You really made me stop and think and analyse.” That gathering of information is key for us to create a non-boring idea.
My role from that point is then to put that into notes, but often the good ideas don’t come from the notes that I create, unfortunately. They come from the things that you can’t verbalise – things that we heard or the way that we saw someone react to a comment.
Our process is we don’t really have a big structure. We sit down and we go, “Great. We’ve mapped out the position. We’ve mapped out (21:16 unclear) and now this is on the competitors.” We really understand what these business leaders or the founders want to be known for. We’ve done a deep dive on their customers. Let’s start spit-balling and bouncing ideas off each other.
We often start with words and lines. That’s how my brain works. I don’t if yours is similar, but it’s often the lines and the short words and snappy sentences – almost like a tagline that we think would suit for this. And then, we start going, “How could that look in visual form? What else could you do with that?”
Mia Fileman 21:44
Wow! That’s awesome. Gosh. That workshop sounds amazing! Like therapy for your brand. Going and having spa treatments for your brand. That sounds so good. What a rejuvenating experience!
I really, really think that that is such a great way to approach it because then, when you’ve done the work – like you said – any ideas that come out of that are going to align with the brand. Again, you’ve minimised the risk of any of these ideas being too OTT or just not in alignment with the brand. That’s a very strategic way to approach creative development.
It’s really interesting that you start with words. I actually don’t. One of my favourite brainstorming techniques which we’re going to do in the brainstorm party is rapid-fire brainstorming where we come up with what I like to call big ideas. It’s more the concept. It’s hard to explain.
I really struggle to put the big idea into words because it’s not words and it’s not just visuals. It’s almost like the theme of the campaign. “What is the theme that runs through the messaging, that runs through the channels, that links all the moving parts of the campaign together?”
The great thing about rapid-fire brainstorming that I find is that you don’t stop to get in your head and psyche yourself out about the ideas. “Oh, that sucks! That’s never going to work. That’s shit. That’s boring.” because it’s about quantity at this point – not about quality. It just allows you to lift those shackles of self-doubt and just come out with all the ideas – crazy or not.
You get past the boring. You’re like, “That’s been done. That’s obvious. Let’s move past those ideas and start to get to the good stuff.” I really like it.
Of course, we need to go back and validate and qualify those ideas to make sure that they’re actually going to work, but we do that only once we have a big bank of really creative different ideas to pull from.
Soojee Ford 23:59
I love that. I’m always keen. I’m going to be at the brainstorming party as well. I’m always keen for new techniques for brainstorming because that’s the thing. Creativity doesn’t have a structure. It’s not linear. I’m going to definitely try that rapid-fire. I’m keen to know about how you break down what that theme is in the brainstorm party.
Mia Fileman 24:20
Yes, the way that we ask people to come to the brainstorm party like prepared with a question. This is a very common technique in design thinking. It’s the “how might we?” statements.
You reframe the business opportunity or problem but from a customer perspective. It’s like, “How might we reposition The Good Studio as a brand that is known for unboring marketing ideas?”
Then it gives everyone in the room a really great catalyst from which to ideate ideas based on that very specific “how might we?” statement that’s created for that particular brand so that we’re making sure that we’re coming up with ideas that are relevant, that meet the objectives, that meet the target audience. We’ll spend a bit of time doing that “how might we?” statement and then we jump into the rapid-fire brainstorming.
Often, one brainstorm session might not get the job done, so do another one. Do it with some different people; do it with your business partner or with your team. I really feel that even though I say marketing is not a tap that you can turn on and off, when the tap is on, it can really start to flow.
Over the 21 years in my career, I have managed to turn that tap on a little bit more. Now, it’s so much easier for me to get into that creative state because I’ve figured out what helps me get there, what inspires me, what I need to do to get ready for those creative juices to start flowing and to get to the good stuff earlier.
But the first couple of years, there was a lot of resistance. “I’m a suit. I don’t do this kind of work. I’m the account director. I’m the brand manager. I look at the data. I look at the numbers. I don’t get to do the fun creative stuff.” It’s like, “Why not?”
Soojee Ford 26:22
Exactly.
You’ve got those insights. Sometimes, that gut feel on an idea or a thread to follow comes from good insight. Well, not sometimes. It always comes from good insight.
Mia Fileman 26:33
100 percent. All the best marketing campaigns in the world, the ones that you remember – “Think Small” Volkswagen, “Got Milk?” “Diamond is Forever” – all of them are insight-driven. Every single one comes from a relatable human truth.
Soojee Ford 26:53
Absolutely.
With your brainstorming technique, I was thinking, it’s solutions-focused, especially when you ask that “how might we?” I think that probably opens up your mind to possibility. It’s not just in our (27:08 unclear). Sometimes, yes, we can get in that holding pattern where it’s like, “No, I’m not feeling any of these. Where do we go next?” whereas with asking “how might we?” anything is possible, and it can be outlandish, and that’s actually fantastic.
Mia Fileman 27:21
Yes, I think often people come to the table with a business problem. “How might we increase our market share of red lipstick in Victoria?” Every idea that I’m going to have for that is going to be business, profit, revenue focused. It is not going to be a marketing solution. It’s going to be like, “I know! Let’s do a consumer promotion.” There is nothing more boring than a price discount. Let’s be clear on that.
Soojee Ford 27:49
Agreed.
Mia Fileman 27:50
By reframing the problem from a customer perspective and from that solution perspective – like you mentioned, Soojee – then it opens us up to many more possibilities and gives us so much more voda from which to jump off from because we’re thinking outside our business problem and we’re thinking big picture.
Soojee Ford 28:15
Absolutely.
You’re thinking what the customer wants. Again, coming back to those core values of brand strategy or the core factors of brand strategy. It’s what your customer needs – not what the business needs. The business needs the customers to buy the products, so get into the customer’s headspace.
Mia Fileman 28:29
Absolutely. Amazing.
I think that that is a great place to wrap up this chat. I would love for people to be able to come and connect with you. Can you let us know the best way to do that?
Soojee Ford 28:40
Absolutely.
The best way to do that is probably two methods – The Good Studio’s Instagram, we are thegood.studio on Instagram; also, you can reach us via email if you are more traditional and want to know that it definitely lands in our hands. That email address is [email protected].
Mia Fileman 29:00
Amazing. I’m going to put all of that in the show notes. Also, I urge everyone to go and have a listen to Boring is Bad for Business the podcast which launched very recently because it is bound to be very juicy with extra pulp.
Thank you so much for joining me, Soojee. It was such an absolute pleasure. I am so excited to see what comes next on your journey with The Good Studio.
Soojee Ford 29:24
Thank you, Mia! It was a blast to come on here and talk all things brand strategy and big ideas and brainstorming.
Mia Fileman 29:31
Thank you!
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Podcast reviews are like warm hugs. They’re also the best way to support a small business. You can also connect with me, Mia Fileman, on Instagram or LinkedIn. Feel free to send me a message! I’m super friendly.
