Live from Hollywood: The David Brier Interview on Branding

“What is branding?” is one of the most common questions I get asked. I will answer this and many more questions about marketing, standing out, getting heard, rising above the noise and gaining new customers this Thursday which you can hear live and raw, with nothing pre-recorded.

Hollywood has “called” before with James Bond, Brad Pitt, Tina Fey and Anne Hathaway. I’ll explain.

Unplugged.
Unscripted.
Opinionated.

A couple of weeks ago, I’d received this email asking if I’d be willing to do a radio interview. The program host, Wendi Cooper, is a marketing pro herself and knows first-hand about marketing, branding and direct response. When we spoke, she defined her show, The C Spot with Wendi Cooper, which covers marketing as “Unplugged, unscripted, opinionated.” Just my style I thought.

Some facts:

• First airing of the show: January 26, 2012
• New shows air 4X per month
• 15K downloads, 7K iTunes podcast downloads with 3,100 page views

5 Things I May Discuss on Thursday

1. Do great things on behalf of your clients.

You’re not there to collect a fee or get a check. You’re there to make things better. Do that, and then exceed that expectation.

2. Help them become truly awesome.

Ordinary sucks. Better than ordinary is hardly noticeable these days. Excelling in excellence and in sufficient quantities of excellence are what it’s all about. Do that. Be happy about that. Realize that tomorrow, it will be old news. Do more greatness today that exceeds yesterday’s milestone.

3. When it comes to extraordinary, divide and conquer.

Extraordinary is made up of two words: extra and ordinary. Divide the word and do two things: realize what’s ordinary. Then realize what it takes to be “extra” — well beyond ordinary. Focus on that and build that into a stockpile of extra that’s so abundant, it becomes normal to always have more “extra” than you’ll ever need.

4. What would a genius do?

Too many times, the standard becomes, “That’s good enough. Get it out the door.” A genius would not only not do that, but would ensure their genius would solve that problem for the betterment of your client, their aspirations and those outcomes.

5. Disconnect. Rinse and repeat.

One of the biggest values is a fresh perspective. That’s what makes us so useful as branding professionals with what appears to be “superhuman abilities” — having little or no preconceived ideas of how things are, or could be, or should be. We simply look without bias at how much better, more useful, simpler or easier something could be. There’s magic in innocence.

That’s why it’s good to disconnect: take a walk, do something different, go to a gallery, immerse yourself in something different.

Coming to Computer (or Smartphone
or Tablet) Near You

This Thursday’s live interview with LA Talk Radio will occur at Noon LA time, 3pm EST. The show is called The C Spot with Wendi Cooper. (If you’re on a smartphone or tablet, download the “LATalkRadio” app for iPhone, iPad or Android and click on:  The “Listen Live, Channel 2”.) To help you, look for this icon on the home page (shown by the arrow):

To celebrate this LA premiere in the style of Hollywood, I posed for this shot. Please tweet this and share this on your social media so we have an awesome 50 minutes of branding insights.