Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba – Episode 466 of The Action Catalyst Podcast

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.

About Kim:

Kim Derrick Rozdeba is passionate about building strong brands and is an avid blog writer on the topic. One day it occurred to him how little was written about branding from a gender perspective, especially about entrepreneurial women brand leaders. Exploring the idea, he realized this was an untold story of a long list of women he found so inspiring that he decided then and there to make these inspirational women the subject of his first book. When he isn’t investigating what makes some brands iconic, and others wither away in time, he works in the corporate world, supporting a global brand as head of communications and public affairs. He resides in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, with his wife, Brenda, and has three adult children.

Learn more at Rozdeba.com.

The Action Catalyst is presented by the Southwestern Family of Companies. With each episode, the podcast features some of the nation’s top thought leaders and experts, sharing meaningful tips and advice. Learn more at TheActionCatalyst.com, subscribe below or wherever you listen to podcasts, and be sure to leave a rating and review!

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(Transcribed using A.I. / May include errors):

Stephanie Maas
Hi, hello. So you know, I’m in Nashville. Where are you?

Kim Rozdeba
I’m in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Stephanie Maas
Oh beautiful. My folks went to the Winter Olympics. They are back in…

Kim Rozdeba
’88.

Stephanie Maas
Yes. Did I read correctly that you carried the torch that those games?

Kim Rozdeba
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.

Stephanie Maas
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?

Kim Rozdeba
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.

Stephanie Maas
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?

Kim Rozdeba
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.

Stephanie Maas
Okay, but let’s talk about if you ARE in leadership.

Kim Rozdeba
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.

Stephanie Maas
Ok, so talk to me about what you call the five C’s.

Kim Rozdeba
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.

Stephanie Maas
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?

Kim Rozdeba
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.

Stephanie Maas
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.

Kim Rozdeba
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.

Stephanie Maas
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.

Kim Rozdeba
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.

Stephanie Maas
Very familiar, huge fan.

Kim Rozdeba
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.

Stephanie Maas
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?

Kim Rozdeba
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.

Stephanie Maas
No, no. This has been super insightful. Thank you so much for being here and for your time.

Kim Rozdeba
Stephanie. I really enjoyed it. Thank you.

Stephanie Maas
Oh, thank you very much.