In today’s episode, we revisit conversations with three guests from our current season: Simon Bailey, co-author of Myths of Branding; Miri Rodriguez, author of Brand Storytelling; and Rick Parkhill, founder of the annual Brand Storytelling event and co-creator of a new Brand Film certification course. IN CLEAR FOCUS listeners can claim a 20 percent discount on Myths of Branding and Brand Storytelling at KoganPage.com by using the promo code BIGEYE20 at checkout.
Episode Transcript
Adrian Tennant: Coming up in this episode of IN CLEAR FOCUS:
Simon Bailey: Ultimately, brands are there to perform two tasks really. The first is to help sustain demand. And the second is to generate loyalty.
Miri Rodriguez: Brand storytelling is about continuing to build its story that drives customer loyalty that people say, okay, I’m connected to the brand. I’m befriending the brand. I’m loyal to the brand that aligns to my same core values or not.
Rick Parkhill: People are learning about brand storytelling on the job. They come from journalism, from the entertainment business, and from marketing. This is a collision of industries.
Adrian Tennant: You’re listening to IN CLEAR FOCUS, fresh perspectives on the business of advertising. Produced weekly by Bigeye: a strategy-led, full-service creative agency, growing brands for clients globally. Hello, I’m your host, Adrian Tennant, Chief Strategy Officer. Thank you for joining us. For today’s podcast, we’re going to revisit episodes from this season that focus on branding and brand storytelling. Our guest for the third episode of this season was Simon Bailey, the co-author of Myths of Branding: A brand is just a logo and other popular misconceptions. Simon’s book was the Bigeye Book Club selection for January and during our interview, Simon provided insights and contexts for the stories behind branding myths.
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Adrian Tennant: So Simon, let’s start with the titular misconception, “A brand is just a logo.” Where did this idea originate and why is it a myth?
Simon Bailey: Well ultimately, because it’s such a persistent myth. I think that’s why it became the title for the book. It’s the one that we hear most frequently, throughout time in, in, in the sector, really. And of course, brands are so much more than just the logo, which is why it could also be maddening and a bit frustrating. But I think the reason for that is that it’s the logo that people do identify with. That’s the job of the logo: to act as an identifier for goods and services, and an experience, it’s the promise of an experience to some extent. And so I think what happens is those people that are more skeptical about brands or don’t like them, or just want to be a bit derogatory about them will say, “Well, brands are just about the logo” and they’ll tend to believe that’s what it’s all about. And of course it isn’t, it’s much more than that. And it struck us that was the most frequently encountered, most common, almost meta, myth that we were trying to address head-on and have a bit of fun with it and make it the title of the book.
Adrian Tennant: Well, chronologically, the first myth in the book is “brands are just a way of charging you more for the same product.” But you write that brands are rarely that.
Simon Bailey: When you buy the brand, you aren’t just buying the immediate product or service that’s in front of you. You’re actually buying all of the marketing investment that’s gone into building that brand in the first place. And actually, that really matters because we identify with brands. They are to some extent, an expression of kind of who we are and the values that we hold. But brands, of course, also act as a kind of guarantor of quality or of the promise of a specific type of experience. Let’s give you a practical example. Uh, if you were in a fortunate position to be able to afford a Louis Vuitton handbag, yes, of course you are buying into some of the intrinsics, you know, what you would hope to be good quality, great design. But you are also buying into an experience and a lifestyle. And that’s partly what you’re paying for really. And consumers understand that, you know, if you want to invert that idea for a minute, think about it the other way round. When people buy a fake Rolex, and I’m sure that, people may have done that in the past. You are really paying less for less. You know, it’s great fun, but close scrutiny usually reveals that it’s a fake. And even if people don’t spot it straight away, then you’ll rarely find it keeping good time in a couple of years. You know, consumers understand the trade-off and they understand that in the end brands are much more than just the product. They are a whole kind of collection of attributes that they’re really, that they’re buying into.
Adrian Tennant: Myth 13 in the book is “Branding is subjective. It’s all fluff and art with no rigor and science.” Now, marketing has academic literature, including journals and studies that underscore its status as an established discipline. Advertising too boasts several professional bodies that offer models of advertising effectiveness. But as you point out, the misconception about branding means that it hasn’t attained quite the same level of respect. Why do you think that is?
Simon Bailey: I think it’s because ultimately, a brand or the brand isn’t consistently owned by the same person or group of people across different types of organizations. So for example, if you think about a large FMCG business, you’ll often have people called brand managers, but actually, when you look more closely, those brand managers are really marketeers. They’re often responsible for the P and L and for the end-to-end performance of the brand.
Adrian Tennant: So a quick UK English to US English translation. In the UK, FMCG stands for fast-moving consumer goods, which in the US are generally known as CPG or consumer packaged goods. Different terms, but they mean the same.
Simon Bailey: Thanks, Adrian. In another organization of a different size or orientation, you might find the brand owned by the finance department or the legal department, because for that business brand has always sat with the legal, because they’re the ones that entertain any issues or infringements. You know, in another business, you might find someone charged with the brand or called a brand manager or brand director where their job is to make sure that the brand is applied consistently or managed appropriately across channels. You’ll have some people focused on trying to make sure that the brand idea is manifested across all those channels. And then you’ll have businesses possibly the more enlightened ones where the CEO themselves see themselves as the brand manager in a sense. And I think it’s to do with the fact that it doesn’t belong in a place necessarily that branding sometimes struggles to achieve the kind of professional parity that you would expect us to believe that it does ultimately deserve. So I think that’s probably at the heart of some of these issues.
Adrian Tennant: Myth number six is “brands don’t have financial value.” Can you tell us more?
Simon Bailey: Yeah, we would assert the brands most definitely do have a value and that value can be quantified. And I think it’s important before we just look at some examples to reflect on why they can and that’s because ultimately, brands are there to perform fundamentally two tasks really. The first is to help sustain demand. And the second is to generate loyalty. They are in a sense, a guarantee of future revenues. As far back as I think, 1988, and I’ll give you a few figures, but treat them as indicative because whenever you go back and have a look at these things, they change depending on who reported them. But Phillip Morris bought Kraft in 1988 for approximately $12.9 billion, which at the time was four times the tangible value of the business. Similarly, I think Grand Met, a little bit later acquired Pillsbury, for something like $5.5 billion, which was a 50% premium on book value. And as we come through the decades, in 2011 Kraft bought Cadbury, the chocolate and confectionary manufacturer, and it obviously went on to form Mondelez, and Kraft paid for that approximately $19.6 billion, which at the time was something like 13 times that EBITDA. So they’re earning before interest tax deductions and so on. And actually, for this asset, I saw a commentator describe that as a very good price. So all of that intangible value is being allocated. And then later on in 2017, Amazon purchased Whole Foods. And I think nearly 70% of the purchase price was allocated to goodwill. And of course, goodwill and brand value are not quite the same thing, but within that conduit of goodwill will set a substantial amount of brand value. And I thought it’s interesting just to reflect on two more things very quickly. I think it’s always been part of Warren Buffett’s investment strategy, if you go back, to invest in very well-known, very well-established brands, because in a sense they are less risky. They are there to generate future revenues as a higher level of confidence, that’s what they will be able to achieve. And then today, I looked just at one of the valuation league tables, one of the more established ones, and Apple’s brand value is, in their view, worth approximately $400 billion. Hopefully, some examples to get people thinking. Of course, he’s also recognized in various accounting standards as well as a genuine asset.
Adrian Tennant: So from a practical perspective, Simon, how should organizations arrive at a financial value for their brands?
Simon Bailey: There are different methods of valuing brands. And, I think, listeners might begin to glaze over if we get into the intricacies of those. But I think it’s probably worth saying that there are purely financial approaches, which, if there’s any accountants listening to, they’ll understand the kind of process and method that you approach to do that. But then there are methods and approaches, which seek to delve a bit deeper and what they do, or certainly, the ones that have achieved suitable accreditation, what they try to do is establish the amount of earnings that are attributable to the brand, and they call those brand earnings, and they will then try and combine that with an assessment of how strong they think the brand is, or how well managed it is. And that’s used then to create a discount curve, which enables them to establish a, almost like a net present value over a certain time horizon nd that will provide a value for the brand and for the assets. And that brand’s strength factor then, depending on how you choose to do that, can be done with consumers so that you’re getting that fed directly into the process. It’s also worth just mentioning this as an adjunct, which is of course the role of the brand, in generating earnings differs by category. So if you take petrol retailing, brands are valuable, but the role of the brand in petrol or gas retailing is going to be much smaller than it will be in say the luxury apparel category, because when you’re looking for a gas station, You may have a preferred brand, but if that’s not available, you’ll definitely fill up with the one that’s closest to you. It’s convenient. Whereas in luxury branding, you’re really buying that brand and it’s that brand and nothing else that you’re seeking. So they’ll look to establish when they’re looking at those brand learnings, you know, the amount that’s attributable to the brand.
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Adrian Tennant: Our guest for the fifth episode of this season was Miri Rodriguez, the author of Brand Storytelling: Put customers at the heart of your brand story. Miri’s book was the Bigeye Book Club selection for February. During our interview, Miri discussed how brands can use stories to connect with consumers on a deeper level.
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Adrian Tennant: You write that research confirms that stories can be up to 22 times more memorable than other types of information. So can you tell us more about the neuroscience of narrative?
Miri Rodriguez: Absolutely. There is this brain awakening that happens when we say “once upon a time”, it is an innate response at the core, human level that when we are, you know, invoking a story, we tune in parts of our brain, oxytocin and, these other chemicals begin to really activate because we’re anticipating something that may appeal to us. When I say, “Hey, let me tell you this story,” you immediately go in and go, “okay, I wonder what this is about?” Versus, “Hey, let me share with you this data point”, or “let me show you this picture.” Uh, it really is about the anticipation. We all want to anticipate what’s next. We’re curious beings, and we want to know what’s happening. And we want to know if that appeals to us. If that’s something that has to do with me. Is that going to impact me in one way or another? And that’s why story works. Because it really levels off the content that we’re trying to drive with a human emotion and we get emotionally attached as a character to the story. I mean, think about the stories that you’ve liked, you know, that you’ve heard, The radio cast, or the poetry, or the songs, or the films. There’s something about those stories that you connect with as a character. And that enables you to really feel the emotions, and when you get emotionally attached to the story and see it to the end.
Adrian Tennant: Well, Miri, one of the trends we’ve seen in our research over the past couple of years is greater interest, particularly among younger consumers, in understanding what brands stand for: their stance on social and environmental issues, for example. How can brands harness storytelling to connect with consumers on a deeper level?
Miri Rodriguez: Oh, that is a great question. And I’ll tell you, I continue to do a lot of research on the stance of brands and their voice in the market, and how that is impacting sales and bottom line for them. I actually read an article the other day that said that, accessibility and social responsibility are what the brand is about today. It’s what consumers are seeing. If they don’t have these elements of how they’re talking about how they’re socially responsible, ethically responsible, how they’re being inclusive in their technologies. That is all going to drive the bottom line for them. And this newer generation Gen Z, and Gen Alpha, they are very much thinking about how they’re investing in their brand. When they purchase a product or service, to them it’s not just a transaction that just drives a product of service to the end line. They are thinking, “am I contributing to something bigger than myself when I invest this amount of money in the product?” and so to them, it’s not just about the quality of the product, it really is about the stance of that brand. So we’re going to see more and more of that increasingly in the next few years. Brands are going to have to incorporate their stamp, their core values, what they stand for as part of their story. And if they don’t have it, you know, they’re going to miss out on the opportunity, a huge opportunity to really establish themselves in the market. And so brand storytelling is about that. It’s about continuing to build its story that drives that customer loyalty that people say, “okay, I’m connected to the brand. I’m befriending the brand. I’m loyal to the brand that aligns to my same core values or not.” I mean, we’ve seen that actually impacted negatively when brands have decided to stay quiet with a social issue or say nothing against something that people expect them to say. So they are being seen as an entity, and a voice, and they should have one and they should talk about their stance.
Adrian Tennant: Let’s take a short break. We’ll be right back after these messages.
Adrian Tennant: Each month, in partnership with our friends at Kogan Page, the Bigeye Book Club features interviews with authors who are experts in marketing, consumer research, and customer experience. Our featured book for August is Social Media Marketing for Business: Scaling an integrated social media strategy across your organization by Andrew Jenkins. IN CLEAR FOCUS listeners can save 20% on a print or electronic version of the book with the exclusive promo code, BIGEYE 20. This code is valid for all products and pre-orders and applies to Kogan Page’s free e-book offer. To order your copy of Social Media Marketing for Business, go to KoganPage.com.
Sandra Marshall: I’m Sandra Marshall, VP of Client Services at Bigeye. Every week IN CLEAR FOCUS addresses topics that impact our work as advertising professionals. At Bigeye, we always put audiences first. For every engagement, we’re committed not just to understanding our clients’ business challenges but also learning about their prospects’ and customers’ attitudes, behaviors, and motivations. These insights inform our strategy and collectively inspire the account, creative, media, and analytics teams working on our clients’ projects. If you’d like to put Bigeye’s audience-focused consumer insights to work for your brand, please contact us. Email info@bigeyeagency.com. Bigeye. Reaching the Right People, in the Right Place, at the Right Time.
Adrian Tennant: Welcome back. You’re listening to highlights from this season of IN CLEAR FOCUS, exploring the role that branding plays in marketing communications and examining some of the ways brands are embracing storytelling. Let’s rejoin my conversation with Miri Rodriguez, the author of Brand Storytelling: Put customers at the heart of your brand story, which was February’s Bigeye Book Club selection.
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Adrian Tennant: In Brand Storytelling, you also describe your approach to prototyping stories based on human-centered design principles. So Miri, what led you to apply design thinking to storytelling?
Miri Rodriguez: Well, basically I failed. I failed to do the job. Um, you know, again, thinking there’s a lot of ego involved when you can write a story and you’re like, “Hey, I can do this.” Again it was this very niche audience that I was hoping to reach and I was not reaching them. And for me, I had to break out of what I was doing before. And I think storytelling teaches us, if we really think about storytelling and story designing, we got to move away from the conventional idea of just telling a story or just writing something that may work or not. It is an empathetic approach to your audience. It is a designed user experience. You have to think of the story as a, a persona. Actually, the persona is the relationship that the story has with the reader, the consumer. All of us have a unique story, a relationship with whatever we consume. If you read a book and I read the same book, we’re going to have different reactions and learn different things from that book, even though it’s the same content. So for me, I had to really think, “well, no longer do I approach this as I have my stories fully baked and it’s going to be successful.” It’s the other approach of “I’m a lifelong learner and I’m failing massively. So I’m going to just prototype things. I’m going to use the design thinking approach, which is five steps, as I mentioned before. And the prototyping piece is where you just ideate some stories that you think might resonate with your audience, and then you test them and see how they’re going to react. And if you’re writing a story that is emotionally connected, you’re going to get that reaction. And you’re going to start seeing that response. And I started seeing that and I was like, “oh wait, this is working!” And so more and more, I started to apply. It’s almost like the audience’s guiding you to tell you, “okay, this is what we like. This is where we want you to go with the story.” And the story has a life of its own and you let it flourish and you let it, you let its wings, you know, take over and fly.
Adrian Tennant: From a practical standpoint, how do you do that prototyping? I mean, if it were a UX project, you would probably do some kind of usability testing. How does it work with a story?
Miri Rodriguez: Yeah, same. So you have to think of the story as a product because it is, and so from a usability perspective, when you prototype it, you prototype it with two benchmark approach. So first one is, it’s readership, it’s consumption. Um, it’s the first touchpoint of, they consume the content, are they going to share it? And are they going to react? So engagement is a big benchmarking when you test it. It’s going to happen organically. You don’t have to put media behind it if you really believe that the story will actually do its job. And you have to create a mission for it as you do with any product. Who is my audience, who am I targeting here? What do I want them to know and feel when they come in touch with the story and what is the takeaway that I want them to have? And so you create a mission for the story. Every story should have its own mission. And for brand storytelling, there’s this long narrative that the brand has, that is consistent, but there’s also smaller stories that are helping the narrative come to fruition and remind the consumers why we exist and what’s happening and how we are evolving. So there’s a consistent practice – it never ends.
Adrian Tennant: You write that only brands that spend a considerable amount of time researching to truly understand which universal truth appeals best to their audience will remain competitive. Okay. Miri, could you unpack that for us? What are universal truths in this context?
Miri Rodriguez: Yes. Uh, I call universal truths that emotion that you will feel when you come in contact with the story. And that is what the brand intended to do. A universal truth is if I tell you a story of something that happened to me, and you’ve never experienced anything like it, but let’s say it’s a story about embarrassment. I usually use that as an example and—because I’ve been embarrassed a lot in my time! I have a lot of those! But if I tell that story, I usually tell a story about a wardrobe malfunction that happened to me on my first day of my job. I was 16 and people are like, cringe! You know, they’re like, “oh no, I can’t believe that happened to you.” and I say, you know what? This probably never happened to you, but you can, at that moment, I brought you to my space and my place, you were able to relate to me at the very core human level, even if that’s never happened to you. That’s what story does. And so, the universal truth is a feeling that all of us at the human level feel. It’s emotions that we all have, and we can appeal to when telling the story. These are stories of fear. These are stories of inspiration. These are stories of love. These are stories of embarrassment. And we all have felt some of that. And so all of that. And so when we are able to successfully connect with another human who’s consuming this story at that moment in that emotion, that’s a universal truth. At Microsoft, for example, our brand mission is to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more. Our universal truth is empowerment because that’s the feeling. I mean, you know what it feels like to be empowered – or not! Uh, but I don’t have to explain it. It’s universal. And so that’s the thing, that’s the magic of a good story versus an inconsequential story. Stories are stories and some of them are good. Some of them are not. And what I think makes a story good is that universal truth. So brands that are going to really think about designing a story that connects that universal truth at the human level connection, at the emotional level, with their consumers, with their audiences, will win in the market. I’ll give you an example. We’re now telling stories about engagement at the employee level. That’s a thing right now with hybrid work, the future of work we’re calling in, that’s my remit today. And, we have to switch the conversation from employee productivity to employee engagement. That word changes everything. Because in productivity, when I read productivity, I’m like, “oh, they just want me to be more productive. They want me to be a machine.” But if I hear my employees saying, “Hey, I want you to engage.” Now, there’s a loyalty, there’s an exchange of emotion that I want. The brand is talking to me. So it changes everything, that changes the story. So it’s really that empathy that you have with your audience to say, “what do we want them to feel when they read this?
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Adrian Tennant: In the seventh episode of this season, we were joined by two guests who have established a new filmmaking certification to meet the growing demand for branded media. One of the course’s authors is Rick Parkhill, a media industry veteran and creator of an annual event called Brand Storytelling.
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Adrian Tennant: Could you tell us about your professional background and what prompted you to create Brand Storytelling?
Rick Parkhill: Well, first of all, I’ve been infatuated with the media environment for decades now. I launched a magazine back in the late eighties called Infotext that was the first publication for interactive media and marketing before the internet existed. It was audio text technology and video texts and things like CompuServe. So I’ve been really infatuated with interactive media and the evolution of media over the years. So, about seven years ago a number of friends of mine came to me that had been attending the Sundance film festival and taking brand clients with them. And they wanted to be together with these independent filmmakers and the creative community, but didn’t have a place to belong to, you know, where discussions could happen around branded content. And I didn’t really understand it at first. But as I got further into the business of content, it really excited me because I could see the shift in the media world that was being fed by advancements in technology. You know, YouTube was really coming on at that time. And brands were self-publishing content, and it just opened up a whole new world, for brands to be storytellers. Sort of the perfect storm that was brewing was sort of migration away from analog TV and money that’s been poured into television being re-evaluated. So that got me really excited. We started our first event in 2016 and haven’t looked back.
Adrian Tennant: Can you tell us more about the kind of content you screen at the Brand Storytelling event?
Rick Parkhill: Sure. So this year we opened up, submissions for brand films. We received nearly 200 submissions from brands like the North Face, P&G, Red Bull, Apple, Whirlpool, United States Postal Service, HP, Hawaiian Airlines, Pepsi, some brands you’ve heard of. We put together a selection committee that consisted of about 16 people, brands, agencies, directors. They poured through the films and selected 15 films that we would screen over a four day period at Sundance. The film would screen for our audience afterwards, we’d have panels and Q and A with the brands and directors and producers, and even sometimes talent involved in the films. The films range from a three-minute film, to a 90-minute feature. Some great films, ones that you’ll see on streaming platforms, like a woman’s place by Whirlpool, Dear Santa by United States Postal Service, Generation Impact by HP. The Beauty of Blackness is a new film by Sephora. Black Boys is an impactful film by Proctor & Gamble. So, we’re very proud of the content that was selected and we’re anxious to screen it in front of a live audience in park city in January but unfortunately, that was unable to happen.
Adrian Tennant: How has the content evolved over the years that you’ve been running the event?
Rick Parkhill: Well, I’ll tell you, five years ago, we wouldn’t have been able to run the brand storytelling theater as we did this year. Uh, had we opened two submissions just five years ago, the quality and quantity of content would have been far less. This is a fairly new phenomenon going on, where brands are redirecting investment away from interruptive advertising to engaging content. You know, brands are finding their ways onto the streaming platform. When television audiences are migrating to Hulu and Netflix and Amazon plus and Disney plus and paramount plus, you know, go on and on, brands need to follow the audience. So how are they going to do that on a streaming platform that doesn’t provide 30-second spot commercials? Plus it’s a generation of people that are used to just watching what they want to watch when they want to watch it. So, interrupting, immediate choice is really annoying to most people these days, especially the younger audience that’s so important to brands. Look, they have to compete for eyeballs and interest in engagement, they have to compete with Hollywood. They have to compete with the best creators on the planet, and they’re doing that. And they’re investing money in, top-notch creators in great productions.
Adrian Tennant: Well, Rick, I want to talk about the certification. You’ve attracted some really impressive industry partners already. Could you tell us a bit more about them and how they’re involved in the program?
Rick Parkhill: Sure. So our industry partners include companies like Intel, Southwest Airlines, Discovery, Univision, Body Armor, the energy drink that was just bought by Coca-Cola. So we have these amazing brands that are behind each one of the cohorts that will produce in ‘22. There’ll be six of them. In each cohort, we have a single brand who issues an RFP to the students. So they have one-to-one connection with these students and opportunity to present their RFP. And then all of the responses become the ownership of the brand. So they could stumble on a great idea, we have students that range from Emmy award-winning filmmakers to grad students. So anybody can come up with a great idea. We see that all over the place with, uh, crowdsourcing these days. there’s a couple of motivational factors that are attracting our brand sponsors. One is that opportunity to interact directly with the students, the other, is that a big part of our mission is DEI element here. Our industry of brand filmmaking is really imbalanced when it comes to diversity and inclusion, It’s reflective of the ad industry. And we want to do our part to help fix that. So we’re working with various organizations to help recruit scholarship applicants, that are DEI students that are underrepresented folks, and bring them into an immersive program that allows them to work in teams with other students and have the opportunity to present their response to the RFP in person to the brand live. So we’re introducing these folks directly to Intel in discovery and Univision and Southwest airlines and mentoring them along the way, giving them opportunity and building their networks. So that’s a big motivational factor from these great brands that are working with us that want to help us in that mission and embrace that. So a couple things, you know is, opportunity to interact and meet students. Recruitment. All of these companies are looking to build their internal teams of brand storytellers, content development. And look, brand story telling has some history with these folks too. So it wasn’t coming to them cold. They know us, they trust us, and they got behind our mission 100%.
Adrian Tennant: Rick, in what kinds of ways do you hope the certification will help both current and future brand marketers?
Rick Parkhill: I have a daughter who is 22 years old that just graduated from the University of Missouri’s Journalism School and Strategic Community. She’s learned more about brand storytelling in our house than she did at college. You know, they’re not learning it in school. People are learning about brand storytelling on the job. Nobody comes into this business of brand storytelling knowing everything. They come from different walks of life. They come from journalism, from the entertainment business, and from marketing. This is a collision of industries. So, a brand storyteller needs to understand how Hollywood operates. If brands are going to be creating content that’s good enough to be purchased, to be distributed on the streaming platforms, they need to know entertainment law. They need to know how to avoid the pitfalls, how not to get sued. You know, brands are risk averse, and there’s a lot of risks in developing and distributing content. So, there’s just a lot of things they need to know. And this course is going to help them figure it out.
Adrian Tennant: Rick, I know it’s very early days, but how do you see the certification evolving? Are you thinking about designing complementary courses or maybe creating in-person industry workshops or events?
Rick Parkhill: Oh, yeah. Well, look, I’m an event producer, so, you know, I haven’t been able to do an in-person event for two years now. The major thing in my career is producing, you know, bringing people together, is what I’ve done. You know, nurturing communities and that’s what we’re doing with this group. Once they graduate from this cohort, they’ll be in a private LinkedIn group, we’re going to have a strong alumni factor here. You know, this is such a collaborative industry of writers, directors, filmmakers, brands, producers, media companies, they all need to work together. So all lends itself to workshops on, you know, ongoing ways to collaborate. And so there’s that, and then there are additional courses. Of course. I mean, we started with brand film, but brand storytelling takes on a lot of different forms. You know, we’re on a podcast right now. Brands are big into podcasting. Audio storytelling, that’s a whole nother course. Is that, you know, social video, very short form, video storytelling for social distribution. There’s this crazy thing around the corner called the metaverse, you know, we hear more and more about it every day. It’s the shiny new thing that’s out there in the marketing media world, and there’s going to be rich storytelling to do in the metaverse. That’s going to require a lot of education. So we see all sorts of opportunities to expand on our course offerings because we’ve got to follow what the industry needs and marketers and students need is these forms of education and these courses where there’s a need we’ll look to fill it.
Adrian Tennant: You’ve been listening to perspectives on branding and brand storytelling from the current season of IN CLEAR FOCUS. Thanks to our guests, Simon Bailey, Miri Rodriguez, and Rick Parkhill for participating in the podcasts – and to Kogan Page for supporting the Bigeye Book Club. Now, if you’d like to purchase a copy of Simon’s book, Myths of Branding or Miri’s book, Brand Storytelling, you can save 20% when you purchase online directly at KoganPage.com, just use the promo code BIGEYE20 at the checkout. You’ll find a transcript with links to the resources we discussed today on the IN CLEAR FOCUS page at bigeyeagency.com, just select Podcast. And if you enjoyed this episode, please consider following us wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening to IN CLEAR FOCUS produced by Bigeye. I’ve been your host, Adrian Tennant. Until next week, goodbye.
