brand work is brand stewardship
bait & switch to business vicky
Hi friends — reporting from the bar. These days the setting is more likely espresso by day instead of Gamay by night — it's better for the eyes (brighter), thighs (gym rat need early sleep), liver (obvious), breasts (?). But mostly just because these days I feel less like alcohol.
Tristan pulled me an extra tall shot today. He slides it over and I realize yes indeed, an extra 0.67 ounce of concentrated coffee would be nice to savor as I write.
Reason #2437801 Why I Love New York City is that in places you most expect people to leave, they stay. Helps to have world class retail and hospitality.
So you have people like Moto at the Henrik Vibskov in Soho, who tells you to give him your phone so he can take fit pics — now the side — now the back — while you are wearing the drop crotch and you are not embarrassed.
Wow you're like a model!
I bet you tell that to all your customers! 😤
I pull the shirt with the cool needlework. Moto confirms this is a distinct style of embroidery that creates a pattern using only the base fabric itself. He hands me the matching hat to try, shows me how to tie the bow just so, and it fits very well, this one-size-only hat that Henrik modeled after his own head. I am comforted to know that I have a compatible head shape with a six foot something Danish man who may produce exclusive headgear but also puts sustainability into his textiles, tags, scripts, hiring. Everywhere here are words about materials. It's pride without boasting. Beautiful.
Back to Moto, the type of person who is why I stay in NYC. Walk into a store, recognize the one welcoming you, listen to them tell you why you should care about this one thing out of a million, listen to the image of yourself in front of the mirror. Learn to adore it. Let it heal you, be ready to leave it because you can't afford it, until you can.
Because when you stick around long enough, you start paying for things with devotion not money. Ok well not just money. You gain access to things through time instead of stature. Ok well at least stature built through time.
I keep thinking about Blackbird, started by Eater & Resy founder Ben Leventhal. "Blackbird is a payments and loyalty platform that creates deeper connections between independent restaurants and their guests."
"How do you spot an insider at a bar? Simple: watch the bartender bless them with a drink on the house. Though largely gone, the Buy Back—i.e. getting your drink comped, always at the discretion of the establishment—is one of those old school hospitality moves that ushers you into the inner circle of the spot. It’s a sleight of hand that says, “we like your vibe - you’re good here, kid.”
Now you can be the insider every time you go out with Bar Blackbird SF, a membership that gets you a drink on the house at 10+ amazing establishments across the city, from Bus Stop to Trick Dog, plus a bevy of other iykyk perks. Join today."
The visual direction and content of their marketing reads "cool kid starter package." But becoming a regular takes something more like "curious consistent loner kid." The secret is just keep showing up. Do it with the same people. Do it alone. Just Do It. ✔
The business actually sounds more compelling from the restaurant side, the part you can't see from the outside. Because more product usage means more first party data. And with consumer privacy going up and cookies going down, startup valuations look to be more tied to well collected and organized and distributed first party data.
Ultimately I want my independent restaurants to stay in business. I get it, technology can help a restaurant systematize customer knowledge otherwise stored in staff brains.
Recreating the magic of the bartender knowing I write at the bar and serving me an XL espresso I've considered but never asked for.
My most recent experience is B2B so I'm likely biased in thinking that we place too much emphasis on consumer sentiment, but I still think it's true. I wonder how Blackbird speaks to restaurants - both owners and staff, the ones in charge of buying and implementation.
Like Ramp tailoring content to both the CFO buyer and the accounting team who actually had to migrate their existing solution to Ramp.
B2B2C brand strategy is hard. B2B is the cash cow, and B2C is the feed for the cow (more visible brand building). Cool kid starter kit gets clicks.
That was one of the trickier things to reconcile when I worked in food & drink consumer product. Our marketing team then was running partnerships with Lucas Films and Food52, BAGGU and Stasher Bag. Rapid firing on photoshoots and glitter and social campaigns and influencers because we were supposed to but to what end? Sales would've been happier if we more directly supported our wholesale accounts. Improved the buying portal, designed emails with more than an afterthought.
B2C led marketing strategy is hard to keep up if B2B if where the money is. Burnout shouldn't be the signal to ask the pragmatic question - what if you let the money drive the marketing strategy?
Then for Blackbird I would go for restaurant-led rather than consumer-led product adoption. e.g. Training hospitality teams on a "Would you like to sign up for our rewards program?" invitation as opposed to pushing TikToks of "I live in NYC, of course I go to Via Carota."
In terms of internal team investments, this might look like an implementation consultant, like the team inside Adobe that helps corporate clients better utilize Creative Cloud. lord knows we will all never use more than 23% of our complicated tools.
Am I just describing a customer success team?
This is the point of brand strategy. It's not just marketing, or the team that makes things look cool, it's what is the next best thing you can do within your remit to grow the business? Sure, brand work might be rewriting positioning; brand work is also equipping the sales team with tone of voice guidelines.
Speaking now to brand people, I think the biggest challenge for us moving into 2025 is embodying this principle —
Brand work is brand stewardship.
Broadening the excitement. Undoing the brand police rep. Everyone should be a brand advocate and everyone can be.
It's why agencies struggle. If you're not embedded deeply enough into client's business, you can avoid accountability for your collective decisions. Whereas when you're in-house, you need to keep trying ways to douse the fires until it actually works. extinguisher didn't work? try the blanket??? Then stoke the right fires. Help your teammates see that brand is a feeling, a feeling you can't cut and paste from an artificial intelligence.
Anyhow. My Blackbird thoughts don't factor in their newest product update. It looks like they're going for not just loyalty program but also payments platform. If successful that would change things in a big way. These are just my efforts to honor my past work in service of the coming work. Or help my friends understand what I do so you can refer me to my next partner :)
Maybe just as someone who's worked B2C, who lives in a place where taste is copied just as often as created — I'm less excited when it comes to playing with consumer sentiment. We are so fickle. We know buying all the widgets won't make us happier, we know the apps do not contain our eternal sunshine, but! We can't help ourselves.
Conversely, it's easy to get excited about solving problems that aren't visible to the end user. am I late to the "Infrastructure is the new sexy" train? (But actually, mapping on Felt is pretty cool.)
With the state of the world, things like procurement reform and supply chain and GIS feel more in tune with reality. But I also love being proven wrong in the good ways. So here's to more of that in 2025.
Finger on the pulse!
"Because when you stick around long enough, you start paying for things with devotion not money."
VICKY.
(gorgeous.)