🎙️ Welcome back to another episode of Jonny Ross Fractional CMO! Today we're diving deep into the synergy between brand building and performance marketing with the amazing Carolyn Walker, CEO & Managing Partner of Response. 🌟

Episode Highlights

• 💡 Why performance marketing isn't enough and why you need brand building
• 📊 The importance of having a brand strategy and how it impacts your business metrics, from valuation to talent retention
• 🧭 Carolyn's blueprint for effective brand positioning
• 🌟 Real-world examples of companies who have aced their brand strategy
• 📖 Storytelling: The underrated secret weapon in marketing

In-Depth Discussion

A Balanced Approach to Marketing

• Carolyn discusses the importance of aligning performance marketing with long-term brand building strategies.

Impact of Branding on Business Metrics

• Unpacking how a strong brand can elevate your company’s valuation, pricing power, and even talent retention.

Brand Positioning

• Carolyn walks us through the brand positioning process, using her years of expertise to illustrate how it's done.

Standout Brands

• Carolyn shares why she considers Maersk and Chipotle UK as shining examples in the world of branding.

Importance of Storytelling

• A look at how storytelling and personality can become a major differentiator for your brand.

Key Takeaways

• 📌 Strong brands aren't built in a day, and they require a well-thought-out strategy that aligns with performance marketing.
• 📌 Consider your brand as an ongoing narrative, where storytelling and personality play pivotal roles.

Final Words

🎉 Thanks for tuning in! A huge shoutout to Carolyn for sharing her valuable insights and helping us navigate the intricacies of brand building and performance marketing. 🙏

Connect with Carolyn Walker

🔗 Guest Links

• LinkedIn Profile
• Response Marketing Agency

🔊 Listen & Subscribe

• Audio on your favorite podcast platform
• Video on YouTube

Feel free to use these show notes as a roadmap to navigate through this enlightening episode. Happy listening! 🎧

The advantages of using both brand building and performance marketing [00:02:28]

Carolyn explains the importance of finding a balance between brand building and performance marketing and the benefits of using both approaches.

Convincing board-level executives to invest in brand building [00:06:15]

Johnny asks Carolyn how to convince high-level executives to invest in brand building and what arguments can be made to support this investment.

The impact of brand on company valuation, pricing power, and talent attraction and retention [00:06:35]

Carolyn discusses how brand building can affect a company's valuation, pricing power, and its ability to attract and retain talented employees.

Understanding Brand Core [00:11:19]

Carolyn explains the importance of understanding a brand's core beliefs and how it impacts brand positioning.

Brand Positioning Process [00:13:02]

Carolyn discusses the three intersected components of brand positioning: brand truth, audience insight, and market opportunity.

Success Story: Maersk's Brand Transformation [00:19:24]

Carolyn shares the success story of Maersk, a global logistics company, and their brand transformation journey, resulting in significant growth and recognition.

The case study of Lyft [00:21:36]

Lyft's exceptional results, including a 194% increase in sales and over 1000% increase in ebitda since 2016.

The smart advertising strategies of Lyft [00:22:31]

Lyft's use of video shorts, advertising in transportation hubs, and smart TV advertising to reach their target audience.

Brand portfolio strategy and management [00:24:43]

The importance of managing the entire portfolio of brands, making strategic decisions about brand roles and relationships, and leveraging brands for the best results.

The power of brand advertising [00:32:07]

Discussion on how a brand's advertising supports their core belief and the impact it has on creating a difference in the world.

Combining performance marketing and brand building [00:33:12]

Exploration of how a brand can drive immediate sales through performance marketing while also focusing on building brand awareness and loyalty.

The importance of marketing during challenging times [00:34:16]

Insight into the significance of continuing marketing efforts, even during difficult periods, and how it can contribute to long-term growth and success.

So. Hello and welcome. Welcome back to another episode of the Jonny Ross Fractional CMO podcast. I'm your host, Jonny Ross, and today we have a real treat for you. We're joined by Carolyn Walker, the powerhouse CEO and managing partner of Response, an award winning marketing agency. We're driving deep into the art of brand building, everything from the interplay between performance marketing and brand strategy to to tips on creating a standout branded podcast. Trust me, you won't want to miss this one. So grab your notepads, hit that subscribe button and let's get started. How are you, Carolyn?

I'm doing great. How are you, Jonny?

I'm very good indeed. You're over in Connecticut. Just tell us a bit about response marketing.

Yeah, we are in Connecticut. We're in New Haven based agency. We're definitely on the smaller side, which we prefer. So there's about 15 of us and we've been around for about 20 years and we help ambitious brands punch above their weight with really kind of creative and strategic thinking about their brands and brand portfolio management.

And this idea of performance and brand building is definitely right up our alley.

And you say you're small, but actually when we were talking just in the green room just then around the type of businesses that you work with, some of them you class are small. But actually when I was asking you to define what you meant by small, you were sort of talking 50 million to a to a sort of 500 million turnover. So whilst you may be small and you may call some of your the clients that you're working with small actually I think we're talking about some, some reasonable sized businesses here. And in fact going up to the sort of multi-billion is a sweet spot, I think, for where you work a lot. So you typically across all sectors. We are going to talk a bit about restaurants because you've got quite a bit of an area on that, but you do cover all areas. But the bottom line here is you're passionate about brand building versus performance marketing and what you know, what the advantages are, what the pros and cons of focusing solely on one approaches.

And I just want you to explain why marketers should consider using both brand building and performance marketing.

Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head, Jonny. It isn't about one versus the other as much as it is finding the balance between the two. And when I'm talking about performance marketing, I'm talking about the marketing that you do to drive that engagement or, you know, sale or conversion, whatever you want to call it. Some activation with your with the customers that are in-market for your product or services now. So when you think about what that might look like, it's an ad that has maybe an offer, you know, like like a 20% off or maybe it's a new product introduction or it's a limited time thing, or maybe it's a free trial in the software space. So it's any kind of advertising that you can think about that is very functional and rational and trying to get a person who is in market for your product or service today to actually convert. That's the performance side. The brand side is the side that is, you know, a message.

It's really for the long term, it's a broader audience and it really is a message that's typically more emotional where we're really trying to connect with the audience, not only to drive awareness, but memorability, right? And so these are to the people who are likely not in market today for your product and service, but down the road they they might be or should be. And so we really want to build memorability so that they remember your brand when it is time to buy. And so the importance of that is, you know, you need to continually build a pool of people who are interested in your brand because if you only focus on the short term and those are in market now, you're going to run out of people, right? You're going to run out of long term growth. And so it really is super important. But what has happened with the advent of digital and all things digital coming about is that that performance side has gotten much easier to measure, right? Like we we know like people how many people clicked, how many people went to the landing page, how many people took advantage of the offer, how many people converted.

And so because you have that kind of immediacy and measurement, the marketing budgets have gone to that and forgotten about brand in many ways. In fact, I just read an article recently that said it was it was based on a study that Google and the Boston Consulting Group did and said that 20% of B2B marketers I'm sorry, B2B marketers spend about 20% of their budget on brand. That's a tiny fraction of their overall marketing budget. And less Binnie and Peter Field suggests that in the B2B space you'd be spending like 50%, 55% of your marketing budget in brand building efforts. So there really is this this disconnect. And I feel like brand has gotten crowded out by performance marketing and activation, and the balance has become it's become unbalanced and really shifted way towards performance to the detriment of brand.

And I think you have made it abundantly clear why I think as well. And that's and that's because it's so much easier to track on the. Performance marketing side. And so when you've got high level C, CMO, CFOs, you know, CEOs even, they're looking at the figures, they're looking at the conversion, they're looking at whether this campaign has delivered, whether you've got the conversion.

So how do you combat that and how do you get across to at board level that it's it's right to invest in brand? How, you know, what are some of the the things to say, the things to point out to to move that conversation.

Yeah. I think there's a few things. I think one is definitely looking at you know, competitors in your space to see what they're doing or are they doing it or are they doing it successfully. If you don't have competitors in your space, then maybe you're looking at other case studies of brands that employ a more balanced approach between brand and performance and sharing those results. The other thing I think that is really important and powerful is, you know, doing a small test on your own. You know, we've seen studies that show when brand marketing and advertising is added on top of performance advertising, you can see A6X lift in performance. So that's an easy thing to do, right? Run your performance marketing and then go in and add a brand on top brand marketing on top of that brand, advertising on top of that and see what happens.

And if you see a lift, you have a case study, right? You're going to see a better, a better ROI on the performance marketing when you add brand in. And so, you know, there's things like that that are super powerful. I think there's other things that are parts of conversation too, which, you know, I think CFOs, by the way, are super interested in. It's the financial side, right? And, you know, how how how does our brand building brand affect the equity in the in the company, right in the name? And what's the asset on the on the balance sheet? Right. This intangible asset of brand on my balance sheet. And when companies are value weighted, it's very much about future cash flows. And what we're talking about with brand building is in fact, you know, solidifying or protecting those future cash flows by having brand out there, getting these future customers and market for us. So think that's a conversation you can have. I think the other couple of things that have been proven with brand marketing is that, you know, when you have a very strong brand and people have a high perception of your brand, you have way more pricing power, right? And so, you know, you don't you don't have to enter price wars, you know, with your competitors.

If people really love your brand, right, if they love your brand, they're going to be willing to pay more for it. And in fact, little tiny increases in price have a huge impact on profitability. So if you take a 1% increase in price, you might seem more like a 10% increase in profitability. And so think that's another conversation that would kind of spark with with the CFOs, you know, kind of lens on that. And then lastly, I would say is and I've proven this self with some clients that I work with is there is a benefit in terms of hiring and talent, right? Talent loves to work for brands that they love and and strong brands. And and not only, you know, will you be able to recruit new people potentially with a strong brand, but also make the ones that are within your organization, you know, super happy. In fact, we ran a billboard out in a brand billboard for a client out in California. And the the CMO came back to us and said, you know, I consider this a campaign a success no matter what, because we had people who saw the billboard, who saw our ad like for an appointment and initially weren't going to consider them as an employer.

But when they saw the billboard, they were like, Oh my gosh, am definitely going to consider them now. And they actually came in and talked to them about it. So there is this, you know, attraction in terms of talent as well, attraction and retention in terms of talent as well.

Well, you've put a very, very strong case for brand there. And not only is it around increases, increasing the the organization's valuation, the value of the organization, but also in terms of attracting and retaining staff and the price point. Because actually being just focused on performance marketing makes you vulnerable to the price. And and building the brand can really alleviate that, I should say. By the way, thank you for watching. Thank you for listening. You might be listening to the podcast right now, but we are also live on LinkedIn. We live on YouTube. We live on Facebook. Thank you so much for joining us. Make sure you hit that subscribe button and don't miss future episodes.

Caroline We're talking about brand building versus. Performance marketing. And there's clearly a passion for brand building here. I get it. And you've spoken about the importance of the sort of core belief in brand building. I want you to delve into what it means and how it impacts brand positioning and perhaps some sort of actionable steps for achieving a solid brand position.

Yeah, I think, you know, really solid brand positioning starts with really a solid brand and really understanding the brand. And when you when you're creating a brand or repositioning a brand or even maybe you've had a brand for a while, but you're kind of uncertain about elements of it. The really the most important thing is getting to the brand core. It's a lot like, you know yourself as a person, you know, like understanding who you are as a person drives, how you, you know what you do, what you think, what you believe in. And it's the same for for a brand. And so it all starts. It goes way back to me.

It goes like before brand positioning happens, you really have to understand, you know, the company who who mission, vision values, of course, but who you are at the core. And I love Simon Sinek work around this. Right? And and he talks about, you know, so many companies can say, you know what they do. Lots of companies can say how they do it, but there's very few companies that can say why they do it. And that's really what it's about. What's your purpose? What's your why? And a company without a Y makes it very hard to position because that why really allows for you to have very, very, very be very much distinctive and have a lot of differentiation. So I would say start there. You know, really figure out your purpose, your why, you know what, you believe in your core beliefs and then, you know, your brand positioning is really taking shape at the intersection of of three things. What believe three things. One is that brand truth.

What's your why? What's your purpose? You know, what makes you tick. The second is what kind of insight do you have about your audience? You know, what are their needs, what their expectations were, their beliefs? What are their fears? What can we tap into right from a from their mindset perspective? And then lastly, the third piece and the third intersected piece is this you know, where's the opportunity in the space, right? So from a market or a competitive standpoint, where's the opportunity for us to differentiate and grow? And positioning is at the intersection of all these three things. And so, you know, there's a there's a very kind of simple formatted way to approach brand positioning. And when you have those three things, it becomes very easy to right up your positioning, right. And be able to to communicate that positioning. And it really is about, you know, who your audience is. And so I talked about that like that. What's that audience insight. It's not just demographics and psychographics or graphics, but you know who they are, who what do they believe in, What are they passionate about? What are they afraid of? Those kinds of things.

So really kind of, you know, understanding audience and putting that down, you know, what are we one of what's the market that we're competing in? And you know, what's our unique selling proposition or what's our kind of unique positioning in that market? You know, what can we say? What can we promise to our audience? So that's the the third component. And then lastly, you know, it's the reasons to believe why would anyone believe that? What are we doing to, you know, to to deliver on the promise of our of our our positioning. So, you know, it's a it's a kind of a simple process, but it really starts all the way back at, you know, who the company is. What do you believe in.

What what's your why what's.

Your why exactly.

Yeah, I love how you simplified it down to just that sort of three steps in the brand positioning, which is, you know, why why are you doing what you do and what are the insights? What do you know about the people you're not? I love how you said it.

It's not just about demographic and not just about target audience, but actually what do they believe? What do they think? What's in their mindset? And and then what's the opportunity? And you know, how can we engage with them. That's yeah, I like that a lot. So you've done there's let's just talk about some of the clients that you've worked with. I think there was a couple that you were happy to mention in terms of some of the work you've done. Maybe just take us through, you know, one one of a choice and then a couple of examples, what you've done and how that's assisted them.

Yeah, sure. So one of them is a smaller client. It's a course credit union. And they came to us a few years ago, probably 4 or 5 years ago. And, you know, they had there have been very successful in in growing their their business. But they were really they kind of started to kind of plateau and weren't really sure where to to kind of take things next.

And they're bombarded with competitors. Right. Not just credit unions, but also regular, you know, banks. And so they were really like, you know, how do we differentiate? How do we kind of solidify ourselves? How do we let people know that we're different than traditional banks and that we're, you know, we can we can do as good as or better things than traditional banks. And so we we started kind of working with them just on, on brand and, and exactly what we were just talking about. What are, what are their mission vision values, their core beliefs. And and we got to a really strong positioning with them for the brand really around that you know with them you're banking with a different perspective and you're banking with a brand that really cares about every single dollar. You know, when you think about the bigger banks that they're competing with. They really are more about, you know, answering to Wall Street, you know, and and that kind of thing. And it's not and that's not the case with Sikorsky, with Sikorsky Credit Union.

And so we help them reposition. And the years since we have been out there with both brand and performance, by the way. So we have brand, you know, brand building advertising, but also other brand building pieces out there. And we have, you know, they they have to be competitive from like, say, an auto loan perspective or a mortgage perspective. And their rates are very good. Their savings rates are great. Their their lending rates are great. And so we have both out there running. And over the years, we've actually helped their membership grow. Their assets under management have risen. They are, you know, been rated the number one credit union in the state by one of a very prestigious magazine many years in a row. And so it's just one example of how you really do find you know, you figure out what the with the brand and the company, how to find the balance and what are the right messages to say, you know, all aligning to brand and being strategic.

But you know, ultimately, you know, communicating the right things to get people to really kind of love and trust the brand. So that's one.

Yeah, I was just going to say so. So if, uh, I'll put the links in the show notes for anyone wanting to visit any of these websites. If you can't hear exactly how things are pronounced to the course, Key Credit Union is the one you just talked about and think you're about to talk about another one before rudely interrupted you.

Yeah, well, actually, want to give an example of of a company that's not a client of ours but that I admire very much. And they're very big, very global on the B2B side. And the company is Maersk RSC and they're a global logistics company. They used to really just be in the freight business, but they moved into global logistics and movement of containers and ships all across the globe. And in 2016, they they decided they were going to, you know, put their company on this path of transformation and really invest in brand.

And that was way back in 2016. It was a ten year plan, like they had this goal and vision of, you know, hey, you know, we we understand how our brand is perceived today. We have, you know, initiatives to, you know, increase that over the years. And and and so they had this ten year initiative and they put together incredible creative. So that is another thing, by the way, about all of this work is, you know, you really have to hold a pretty high bar from a creative perspective and and not just be a little daring and be, you know, kind of take some risks and be a little bold when it comes to creative in order for you to to kind of break through. And so they put this whole campaign together. And like I said, this ten year plan and four years into it in 2020, they measure and I'm sure they did this over time. But this these are the public information I was able to get. Their brand perception went up by positive brand perception up by 13%.

Their top of mind awareness went up by 20%. Their brand favorability went up by 8%, brand consideration went up by 13%, Willingness to recommend went up by 30%. Their NPS grew is just incredible. And, you know, their brand value estimation also grew over that time and their sales grew over that time by 44%. Their EBITDA increased by 219% over that time. And so, you know, they really started to see the effects of, hey, you know, we really need to be out here, not just, you know, trying to convert people to using our services, but building brands so that, you know, the awareness and the love for the brand. It starts to grow. And it's been pretty dramatic. And more recently, there was a case study out they did another brand refresh, um, a couple of years ago and they've won all kinds of awards for this work creatively, which is amazing. But they were named by Time magazine as one of the most influential companies in 2021 and 2022.

They won, like I said, Grand Prix Awards at the Cannes Film Festival. They went from a Challenger brand to a leading brand in Gartner's Magic Quadrant. I mean, it's just it's just exceptional results. And and when I went back and looked at, okay, well, what's happening with sales now, you know, they started in 2016. We're now in 2023. What's happening? We saw that Lyft I told you about, you know, from four years ago. Well, today versus 2016, their sales are up 194% and their EBITDA is up over 1,000%. It's just incredible. So think the case study is there to kind of show.

You've obviously been watching them for a while. What what are the standout things that you've actually seen? If you if you just give me some a couple of examples of the things, you know, is it a Facebook ad? Is it a YouTube video? What in particular, what what's to some of the things.

They're really they they've been really, really smart.

They they created video shorts so like short films about their brand. And so this the most recent one it's so incredible. You know they talk they do this great short film. It's very Raiders of the Lost Ark ish. And it's wonderful. Like it's really captivating and it helps you really like think of Maersk in a very different way than you ever did before, you know, like a hero of logistics. Um, and so I think that was really smart. They do short films. They are advertising in big transportation hubs, you know, in airports and places where their audience might be traveling to and from their in logistics, which makes sense. So they're in place in, in places of transportation. And they, you know, have done very smart TV advertising from what I can tell. So it's really that kind of broad based, right? Like get as much exposure out there as possible against people who are potentially in their audience. It's just very, very smart advertising.

But but actually, you know, some of this could sound expensive.

At the same time, though, it's it's what's happening. It's it's it's not all about the budget. It's also about the story, how you tell it, that sort of filmmaking that you described, the personality, those are just as important. And you can do them on a smaller budget. You don't have to have budgets for, you know, billboards in a large airport, etcetera. I think that's absolutely.

You could scale everything down, right? Think about things a lot smaller. But it's all it's all very reasonable and doable. And I think, you know, the the age of digital is here. It's leveled the playing field in a lot of ways from an advertising perspective. Yeah.

I mean, the way you've described it, I've not seen it and probably because I'm in the UK, but the way you've described it makes me want to go and watch some of the films that they've made to bring their brand to life, and I think that's good. This is so I assume, is this part of the brand portfolio strategy? What's so some some people listening or watching right now might not have heard of a brand portfolio.

Um yeah. What's what's within a brand portfolio strategy.

Yeah so they're related brand portfolio strategy and management really is about. About managing the entire portfolio of brands. And I've worked with companies that have gotten them into gotten themselves into situations where mostly through acquisitions, they keep acquiring, acquiring, acquiring brands, right? Different brands, and they're rolling them into their company. And without much thinking about what's the role of the brand, where does it fit in the portfolio, what's its purpose in the portfolio? Is it making things clearer or is it making things more confusing? You know, that kind of thing. And so I've worked with brands to help them understand, like from the corporate brand to maybe there's divisions, right? And maybe there's brand. There's branded or non-branded. There's go to market brands, there's product brands, there's ingredient brands. There's there's this, you know, slew of brands. And they they get very confused, you know, after a while through these through these times of acquisition. And so we really believe a very strongly and a lot of the work that David actor Arcare has done in this space and what he says is from a business perspective, you should be thinking about fewer, stronger global brands, right? So in that fewer meaning none, but fewer meaning what's the minimum minimum number of brands I need in order to deliver on the business, you know, strategy and objectives and where we want to go as a business.

And so, you know, when you think start thinking about that way, you know, it starts to bring clarity to say, you know, do we have issues because of bloat? You know, and and some of the the things that you find or some things you can ask yourself to see if there are problems are you know, are things confusing internally and externally? Do people understand? Do these brands compete? Are they different from each other? Um, are we putting resources and time behind brands that have very little potential? You know what brands should have more of the resources, you know, because they have more potential, they're stronger, they can be power brands. So, you know, you really there's a lot to think about and a lot to kind of flesh out. And so the portions of brand portfolio strategy and management are, you know, how how the House is architected. And what I mean by that too, and you probably heard this before, is are we taking on or do we want to be a branded house, meaning everything is pretty much branded the same like the corporate brand, like think of an IBM or an Apple or or, you know, a brand like that, right? Where everything's kind of branded Apple or IBM or Siemens, even things like that.

Or do we are we taking a more house of brands approach where we have lots of brands under the corporate brand like a P&G or something like that? And so, you know, there's very there's decisions to be made about those strategies and the importance of those strategies. Um, and then, you know, so it's about that number one. And then two is how is it architected? Like I was saying, like what's the relationship between the brands? You know, what role does the corporate brand play in my go to market brand or in my ingredient brand? So how are they architected and, and and what and not only architected, but like kind of what's their purpose in the portfolio and how do we present the brands to our audiences. Right. And so that's kind of like that, that structure of like, you know, brands can be constructed from like a price point level, right? Like we have opening price point brands, we have mid-price point brands, we have high price point brands, and these are how they then they fall within like say in the automotive market.

This is an easy one to understand, right? So like we might have low mid, high price point across cars, SUVs, trucks, right, that kind of thing. And so it's really kind of understanding that structure as well and how are we going to market and again, how are we leveraging those brands to get the best result that we possibly can. And like I said, not not one brand, but maybe it's the fewest brands that makes sense. And if there's there's a lot of times we work with businesses that say, oh, well, we have channel conflict, right? We can't have one brand in every channel. We have to have different brands. And so, you know, you make these strategic decisions about the brands, but it also, like said, lends clarity to, you know, where you're investing your resources and where what are the brands with the most potential for you.

You've I've heard. Are you talking about having a North Star when you when you're talking about brand portfolio strategy? Have you already alluded to that when you were just describing brand portfolio strategy?

Yeah, Just.

Wondering what that North Star is. Out of curiosity.

That North Star is your strongest global brand. So how many brands does it take to get you to your business objectives and strategies? And that is the North Star. You kind of have to keep thinking about that and and and think brand portfolio strategy and management. A lot of people, like you said, a lot of people think companies like they think about it, they address it, and then maybe it goes to the wayside for a little bit when it really is something that needs to be actively managed. Like you just can't forget about it because you're you're going to constantly be thinking about the roles of the brands in the company. You know, how what's happening to the brands because they don't stay stagnant either. You know, you might find that there's a brand that is a sleeper brand that's turning into a power brand, and so the dynamic changes within the whole portfolio. So it's something that needs to be actively managed and constantly looked at, at least on an annual basis.

We are running out of time. There's so much more to talk about. But you've westar appetite in terms of really thinking about how important brand is compared to performance marketing, but also whilst performance marketing is still important, it's a separate thing. It shouldn't be one or the other. They should both work together. Another brand that you were going to mention that sort of stands out and does this really well. It was a restaurant brand, I think. And yeah. Who was the other brand that you were going to mention?

It's called Chipotle. I don't know. I know you guys have a few of them in the UK. There are huge brand in the United States. It is a fast casual Mexican concept and they have stayed true to their core belief in purpose since day one. And their belief is that food has the power to change the world. And so this company has just done a phenomenal job of investing in brand and and not only just investing in brand, but doing really smart performance marketing that aligns with brand.

And so what I mean by that is if you look at their advertising like their advertising talks about. How, you know, they believe in, you know, basically supporting farmers and and they talk about how much food they're buying from local farmers, you know, tons and tons and tons of produce and things like that. So they're really all about like, you know, maybe one person in one sale of one burrito isn't going to change the world. But when they look at the whole food chain and what they're doing, they're making a difference. And they're they're really making sure that the that everything is tied back to that core belief that they're changing the food does have the power to change the world. And so you'll see brand advertising, like I said, around that. But then also on the performance side, what they're doing is not leaning into play to the price. What I mean is like our burritos for 99, they're saying, Oh, our our performance marketing is, hey, you know, you can get $1 delivery or hey, we have this new limited time item with no price mentioned.

And so they're driving frequency, right? And interest in the brand and that short term like urgency to drive those immediate sales while they're also building brand And again they're another example of their results are just incredible. Their sales are up almost 700% since 2007. Their unit growth is up 350%. So sales growth is outpacing unit growth. So it's not just the units that are driving those sales, it's actually organic growth as well. And their marketing budget, by the way, over that same time has grown over 1,200%. Wow. So it's it's it just shows you like they've got it right. And that marketing budget growth, by the way, stayed like they continue to grow in 2016. You guys might not be familiar with it, but they had a big issue with Breakout and they didn't pull back. They said, listen, we're we're we're admitting like what happened. We're going to be transparent. Tell the world what happened and we're going to keep trudging on. And it's just they've been on this rocketship of growth.

It's incredible. So it just shows you.

The best time to market or to continue marketing is when things are bad. That's the best time to market. Yeah, we saw that through. We saw that through Covid. Um, sure.

Did.

Perhaps you've piqued the interest of a brand VP or a chief brand officer. Where do you hang out online if you're if, if they'd like to reach out and speak to you, what's the the platform you hang on out on? And also the address of your website.

So.

Me Yeah, me personally, I'm in LinkedIn probably the most. So go search my name, Carolyn Walker on LinkedIn. And, and so you can find me on LinkedIn quite a bit. And then our agency website is responsive.

Fantastic out there to.

All of everything that we've discussed. All the links will be in the show notes. So please do head over to the show notes for any of any of the things that we've talked about today. Carolyn This has been brilliant in terms of really getting us thinking about the importance of brand, and you've given us those real, really good reasons as to why brand is so important.

And actually, if you just focus on performance marketing, you could end up in a price war. That's where you could end up. It's it's been it's been really helpful. Listen, thank you for watching. Thank you for listening. We've been live. We've also been recorded on the podcast. So thank you for being an audio companion as well. We'll catch you on the next episode. We look forward to speaking to you soon. Take care.