Marketing, PR, and comms expert Kim Rozdeba shares insights from his book, “Branding Queens”, including what exactly a brand IS, the 5 C’s of branding, the paradox of expectation, the Oprah test, and why having your own personal brand might be a trap, plus, reminisces about carrying the Olympic torch in the ’88 games.

Hi, hello. So you know, I'm in Nashville.

Where are you?

I'm in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Oh beautiful. My folks went to the Winter

Olympics. They are back in...

'88.

Yes. Did I read correctly that you carried the

torch that those games?

I was an escort runner. Yeah. So I was with it

for four days. So there would be parts. So we got to dark and

unsafe for having just regular people run with the torch. So we

would have running groups, or we would run with it to make up

some time. So if there was some time, or some areas that were

either difficult to run steep hills, whatever, we would do

that to keep the thing going. So yes, the part I really enjoyed

was, I've got probably a wry sense of humor. And every once

in a while the torch would go out because the fuel that was

fueling it in the in the actual torch would run out, and then

you'd have to refill it. And you'd see somebody and it would

like, it's no longer lit and then going, Oh, my God, what did

you do? And they're going, I did nothing. And I go, we're gonna

have to go back to Greece. Now, what are we gonna do? And I

said, to have a light to the match. But yes, there will be a

horror, but there is there is the eternal flame that is with

it. And it is capsulated. So it's protected. And that's where

you you light it from. So it comes from there all the time.

So you don't take a match and light it. I actually was living

in Toronto at the time. So I actually ran it in Ontario, in

minus 15 temperatures, but I didn't realize how incredible it

was an honor to actually be with the torch. Until my first

evening that I was running in with a torchbearer. The

torchbearer was beside me, and you run beside them just to make

sure, again, we would always sort of tell them don't, don't

rush it, you take, enjoy this moment. Because people would

just wanna, you know, and we were tired, because we've been

running all day, it was to our advantage. So they went slow.

But when we came in, this older lady came running up to me and

grabbed me and hugged me. And she said, God bless you. And

that was my introduction to that all week, four days of running

with it, the people the incredible emotions, the

feeling, you could feel the emotional in the air, when you

come into a venue where again, we'd stop, we'd have some

speeches, after you we went out with a group of of runners or

torchbearers, we would take them back, and then we would do a

debrief with them. And that debrief was quite emotional. And

the team that went out because we take a whole team out, and

then we, they'd be in a caravan and then we'd but you know, each

one would have their turn, and then they go back into the

caravan, we'd go back with them. And then a new group would come

out, they became instant friends. They shared, you know,

pictures and addresses. And yeah, it was very memorable. And

I say sad, very honored to have been able to have done that.

Yeah, that's a long time ago. Now that I'm thinking about 35

years, but every, every one of them, like I see other ones that

happen all over the world. I'm captivated. Because yeah, it's,

it is something that is truly amazing. And I had the

opportunity to work with some Olympians. And these are

incredible people incredible in the sense of they put their

whole life on hold or a sport, obscure sports, where there is

no audience, there is nobody, you know, cheering them on every

day. So they do need know to be able to have that endurance and

that perseverance.

Oh how cool. Ah, that's too cool. Thank you for

sharing that. Okay, so getting back to topic. The first thing I

want to ask is probably going to sound like a really juvenile

question, but I think it would be important, I think what is so

fascinating here is this idea of branding. Can you kind of walk

me through the differences or similarity between branding,

marketing reputation, what is a brand?

I'm gonna give you my definition of what a brand is

to start? There's lots of different definitions out there.

They talk about benefits, they talk about attributes talk about

tonality, but I've sort of taken a quote from Maya Angelou and

I've kind of rewritten it, and it's a brand isn't what it says

or does, but how it makes its customers feel. So the end

result of a brand is the feeling. So marketing, marketing

can help with the feeling but marketing is really talking

about product attributes. It's about action. In creating an

action, you want somebody to do something, maybe have a

promotion, maybe you have a sale, maybe it's, it's it's a

launch. But branding is about how people feel. Reputation is

part of that a lot of people say, you know, the most

important element is trust. And it's true, you'd look at your

personal relationships, you know, the foundation is trust.

So you have to build that trust, as well.

So this idea of a personal brand, talk to me

about the importance of that, especially from a leadership

perspective, you know, maybe, you know, maybe you're not the

CEO of a company, which you get what you're responsible for in

terms of that brand. But what if, you know, from a leadership

perspective, I'm running a team, I'm a business owner, I get the

brand part as it relates to the product, but what if in your

responsibility, it's not so much about the product?

So there's two questions there, I think one is

if you're an employee, and two, if there's about you, yourself,

so let me talk about an employee first, from a police

perspective, you could be an advocate of the brand. And the

great thing about having advocates, ie your employees,

people trust other people's opinion. So you know, if a

person is out there talking about your product, or your

brand, in a favorable way, that's a good thing. Ideally,

these are your employees, because they know your brand

better than anybody else. On a personal level of building your

own brand, I'm still not completely sure there's there's

a, there's a need to build a LinkedIn profile, there's a need

to have a good resume. I'm not sure unless you're a consultant,

or if you're a leader. And you are you are the face and voice

of a brand, that you need to have a personal brand. If you

follow the metrics of a brand, if you want to dissect a brand,

being a box of cereal is not a goal for me. That is a brand. A

brand is about consistency, and about controlling the messaging,

and all the attributes of that. And human beings are much bigger

and better. I mean, we're motional we have many things to

offer. And, and sometimes we're we change our minds, right? We

do different things. We're, we're multi dimensional, not

like a box. So there is parts of branding that we can utilize,

absolutely. But outside of being you know, a voice for the brand.

And you know, being out there doing content, writing content,

being out there doing podcasts, going, the extra step to build

your brand. I'm not sure everybody needs to do that.

Okay, but let's talk about if you ARE in

leadership.

So as a leader of an organization, or of your

consultant, or your lawyer, a doctor, should you have a

presence? Absolutely. Today, it becomes more important because

people want to understand your why it's about the why it's

about your purpose, it is about your promise, it's about you

know your values. And people want to know that if they're

going to be dealing with a company, they want to know the

values of those people that are working in that company, in

particular, the leader of it. So understanding that commitment,

your personal commitment, it's not like you're you're morphing

the brand's commitment. Because you've got your own personality

attached to it, you have your own things that you are keenly

interested in, you know, every time I see a new CEO, in an

organization, they bring different aspects to the brand,

they take things and they may actually highlight things that

are that are still within the brand, but it's their own

interests. So you have to have that passion attached to it.

And, and you can see some of the leaders, I love the people that

were passionate about certain topics, because they live it and

they breathe it and you you pick up, you pick up things that you

would never pick up before from that passion.

Ok, so talk to me about what you call the five

C's.

Alright, so the five C's, the first one is

commitment, and it is about your purpose, your promise that

you're going to deliver every day. The second one is construct

and construct is the logo. It's the it's the graphic designs,

the color palette, it's the tonality, it's the five senses,

you know, you know, what is it going to feel like? What's going

to touch? Does it have a scent, what's a scent going to be? So

it's all those things that you can construct and making a

brand. The third one is community and a lot of people

go, Oh, I thought I was going to be customer. And customer is

part of your community. But actually your community is much

bigger than just your customer. And we touched a little bit here

already on both employees and the importance of employees of

being advocates to your brand. So their key target audience in

your community. But the other one really it's a really

interesting one is influencers. There's media influencers,

there's podcast influencers, there's a whole number of people

out there that can amplify your brand and give credibility to

your brand. So that's your community. And then the next one

is your content and in content is your marketing, marketing

fits in there. It's your advertising, it is your public

relations, a lot of brands when they start out, they can't

afford advertising, PR, that's free advertising. So that

publicity, you know, you can't pay for I mean, it's it's really

good publicity. It's made some of the brands very famous very

quickly, you get Oprah Winfrey, to talk about your brand, and

you are set. But outside of that, it's is about leaders, it

is about your voice. It is about how do you present yourself in

the industry as a whole. So it's not just advertising, and it's

social media as well. And then the final one, the final one is

probably the one that's that doesn't have as much sizzle. And

that is consistency. And consistency is about how do you

replicate every transaction, every touchpoint that you have

with your consumer over and over and over and over the same way.

But it's not just the same way, because you're trying to ratchet

it up. Because once you've met expectation, the expectation

goes up again. So you have to continually build a system,

training, policies, governance, all of these things to make sure

that what's being delivered, is being delivered everywhere,

every place every time, the same way. And also improving that

delivery. Every time. Oprah Winfrey said, you know, she

denied being a brand for many years, until one day, she

discovered that one of the key elements of a brand is

consistency. And she goes well, yeah, I, I've always been

consistent. So therefore, I must be a brand.

Ok, one thing I have not ever heard before, is a

word that you use tied to commitment. And that is the word

promise. And I think it is super interesting that when you talk

about a commitment, you talk about a promise. You know, I

think a lot of folks commitment. While there's usually a ton of

sincerity around it, it almost feels I'll say a promise feels

personal. Yes. And to me the fact that you would make this

idea of a commitment be personal. As soon as you said

that word I go, yep, that's a difference. And I've heard that

you have this interesting definition of the word

accountability, are those linked at all? Can you talk me through

those two?

Yep. So I'm gonna go back to my definition, which

is, it's a feeling you have to get to that promise, because it

is it's a personal commitment from a brand to to that person,

they don't look at it and go, you're serving a million people

you're serving Me, and My expectations are a certain

level. And you build that over time, because that consistency

becomes really important. Because that promise is

delivered. I mean, you think of think of your personal

situation, if somebody doesn't deliver on a promise, your trust

level changes. Now, there's situations you know that you,

you'll you'll give them the benefit of the doubt. And you'll

do the same with a brand if a brand falls down and they do all

the time. Yep, systems fall down, things don't work.

Employees have a bad day, you know, you have a bad experience.

The question is, how do they fix it, that becomes the important

element to all of it. That's where the accountability comes

into. Because everyone has to be accountable and delivering. And

if you don't, somebody has to fix it, and acknowledge that,

and people are willing to give the benefit of the doubt, if a

brand doesn't deliver. But if it doesn't deliver over time

consistently, then they have to reevaluate. I mean, banks banks

is a really interesting one. Because how many times do you

change a bank, I've got two banks, I deal with one, my

parents actually started and I had an account with it when I

was a kid. And the other one I started from university because

they were on the campus, I've gone to others come and gone.

didn't treat me as well as I thought, but has to be really

something really big to make that change.

Correct me if I didn't hear you, right, please,

this accountability is how you fix it. That just

acknowledgement understanding that when you meet somebody's

expectation, you got to continually go to the net, and

it's not an aggressive go to the next level. It's just now you

have a new foundation of what is expected. And you need to be

always at or above but if you do, because humans are running

these companies when you fall short, that's when

accountability steps in and how you respond to the falling

short, again, comes back to that trust factor. That feeling that

promise. You're bringing this to life.

At the Regis Hotel, high luxury hotel, beautiful

hotel, they empower their employees who are accountable

for that service delivery, every one of them if there's a problem

they have, I believe it's about $2,000 at their discretion to

solve a customer's issue They don't have to go anywhere, they

don't have to get approval, every employee in that company

can solve up to $2,000. a customer's problem. I think, if

I had 2000, I think I could solve what a few problems.

That is awesome. You know, when when I originally

heard the word brand, I thought about, you know, my mom was

raised in a time where brands, quite frankly, established

those, the haves and the have nots, if you brought knit, you

know, if you could buy brand name things at the grocery

store, or, you know, at the shopping center, wherever you

did, that was it. So she was not raised as a half. And so as she

grew older, that was very important to her to buy certain

brands, because it was the feeling. And I never understood

why she was so loyal, because quite frankly, there are better

products out there. But she is so immediate, she will buy a

certain name brand, she I just can't get her to change. And I

get that now, that's the feeling. And I think about the

generation where that I'm in, we have very little brand loyalty,

and it's a lot about price. However, as soon as that comes

out of my mouth, I think about what was one of the biggest

gifts this year for over the holidays, almost every single

female that I know, Stanley Cup, they're huge. And I was trying

to think like, what is the feeling that the Stanley Cup

that I have now? What does it represent? And it is a feeling

it's an it's almost a sense of being cluded? That is super

interesting. So let's take that. So you have this idea around

brand and the importance and what consists of it out? Did you

get to focus on females, because as a non female, and I'm not

making an assumption there, that surprises me a little bit. So

talk me through that.

So I got to start with the first there's 20

entrepreneurs a woman in this book called branding queens, and

they all why how we came up with the name was each one of them

was referred somewhere in the media of creative something. So

it was kind of an obvious it was like a ha moment for me. I had

several other titles before that. But it started repeating

itself. I'm going this is it. This is what the book should be

called. But the first woman that I actually had this started the

whole idea was the champagne, Veuve Clicquot.

Very familiar, huge fan.

So if you translate Vu, it's widow in English. I

didn't know that either. And I go, why? Why would you put widow

on a champagne bottle? I didn't know that it was actually a

woman behind the champagne house. So it got me intrigued to

go, okay. There's a woman behind this product. She started in

1810. Napoleon was raging and wars around a France, women were

basically second class citizens. How did this happen? So that was

my journey. That was the start. And then I go, and why did she

put when all you have to read the book to find out? So then I

started saying, Well, is there other women out there that I'm

not aware of? There's quite a few that I am. And they're

actually in the book. But are there others that I'm not aware,

and I started digging. And the hard part was as you go back in

time, I mean, brands are a relatively new concept. They

really came into their, their, their place back in the 1920s

30s, boomers, all the different brands that came up during the

boom 1940 There was a lot of brands that started prior to

that everything was just sort of a commodity, there was there was

no printing presses and stuff, there was no way to communicate,

you know, personal attachments to these things, or where it

came from. And that's kind of the the intent, right? is people

want to know where this is it safe is this? Is this a

reputable organization? Am I going to die if I eat this?

These are important things to know. But there were there were

women out there Bissell the vacuum cleaner, a lot of cases

they started with their husband, they were joint in the business

because they intimately knew the business. Their husbands passed

away fairly young, particularly in today's world. Did they have

to continue with the company, a lot of cases they didn't. Other

cases, they had like four or five kids, but they wanted to.

And they saw the vision of what this brand was and they actually

built the brand. So I took situations here where they

actually took whatever they they had when they started and then

did they actually grow it? And did they actually make an iconic

brand? And did they have enough evidence attached to it that

they actually did get involved in building the brand

themselves. So they just weren't an icon associated with the

brand. And I found 20 women. The youngest is Sara Blakely Spanx.

This recently stepped down as the CEO of her organization. I

think she's got three kids three or four kids but These are

fascinating stories. They're fascinating stories, because in

many of these cases, they had no experience of building a brand.

They had no experience of building a product. And when you

think of building a product, I'll go to Elizabeth Arden,

she's a Canadian, she was born in Canada, and she moved to New

York City. And she started working cosmetician doing a lot

of facials and stuff. And she came up with a product, a cream,

she call it a jar of hope. So she already understood the why

but she was doing and the why usually doesn't come right when

you start with Apple didn't understand what they were doing.

At the beginning, it took them a while to figure out their why.

And most products, and most brands, this is the case, you

don't really start with something big, colossal, you're

going to change the world, you're just trying to make a

product that's better than any other product. And it's Joe,

it's affordable. And you can, you can actually put it a

distribution center. And you can put a retail plan, you could get

employees, all of these things. So the interesting aspect to all

this is is all these women had to learn. And they were

ferocious, and their ability to learn different things because

they came with just their passion. If anything most of

them came with is they knew that there was a problem. And they

were the customer in a lot of cases.

I think, and I know I'm being a little bit

assumptive here, but I think especially for women, and I'm

taking this from what you said about Sara Blakely stepping

down, I think for women to really get into that idea of

balancing work with family, and so forth and so on. There has to

be a lot of passion, because there's a lot of sacrifice,

quite frankly, you know, even in today's society as modern as we

may be. But the other thing I heard, which I think is really

good counsel for anybody who feels like they have a passion,

and it really eliminates ego, and pride, and all these other

things, is the ability to learn the desire to learn. And I think

those two things together, just looking at the list some a list

of the women, gosh, you would have thought, I don't know that

you would necessarily go out and say they don't have pride or

ego. I don't think you would say they were prideful or

egotistical. But I don't know that without your direction

here, we would naturally say that their ability and desire to

learn was a standout or would be the advice. I think, you know,

most people would say, hey, advice, passion, get organized,

rely on other people don't try and do it all. But the way he

broke that into just ability and desire to learn. It's so cool.

Is there anything that you wanted to make sure we talked

about or addressed in our time together?

I mean, don't be hard on yourself that you have

to be a brand. As a person, you know, I took the challenge and

said, I'm going to build a brand, it's a lot of work to

build a personal brand. And I don't know if all of us need to

be a personal brand. I sometimes I think this is a social media

platform, wanting all of us to build content, right? It's it's,

it's to keep all the social platforms full. And I again, as

I said, Be yourself, do you need to present a particularly on

LinkedIn, a professional viewpoint of yourself? Yes. But

that shouldn't stop you from, you know, having your cooking,

Instagram, your tick tock, I know, I know, quite a few people

have ticked dogs, for hobbies, and to have all these different

things and not feel that you are deviating from your purpose or

your goal because that puts you in a box, you know that

consistency puts you in a box because that's what a brand is,

it's going to be consistent all the time. It's going to always

act this way. And human beings can change, right? Sometimes if

you see famous people who are brands, and they change, not for

the good, you know, that has a detriment to the brand. So we

know that but I don't want to be the king of England or the Queen

of England in the sense of you know, being confined have a

personal way of being presented. That's not real life, I don't

think.

No, no. This has been super insightful. Thank

you so much for being here and for your time.

Stephanie. I really enjoyed it. Thank you.

Oh, thank you very much.