Welcome to Season 3: New focus and new co-host

Gabriel Cohen: Welcome to the third series of Brand Enabled. We’ve been thinking a lot about how last season went and making some big changes to this year.

One of the things that we’re doing this year is we’re going to be more focused on the topic of brand enablement. So for those kind of corporate brand leaders as well. And so we’re going to focus on guests who’ve all been in that corporate brand role.

The other big thing is, when I think about a lot of the podcasts that I listen to, that I really enjoy, they’re ones where they have two hosts – because then you get the diversity of thinking, in terms of the questions being asked as well. And I thought, why not bring someone in who has amazing agency experience but, more importantly, has been client side. They’ve sat in the shoes… they’ve walked a mile in the shoes of the people that we’re speaking to.

This first episode, which is a bit of an introduction to the series, is also an introduction to my new co-host. I’m delighted to welcome Holly Osborne as a co-host to Brand Enabled Season 3.

Hello, Holly.

Holly Osborne: Hey Gabe, it’s so good to be here.

Gabriel: Thank you so much for agreeing to be the co-host and be along on the journey with us. I’m so excited to have you for the season and for everyone who listens to this to get to know you as well.

Why don’t we just start by you introducing yourself – a bit of your background and why on earth did you agree to do this with me?

Holly: You know well that our conversations, Gabe – and I’ll fill our listeners in on how we met – but our conversations always felt like a podcast, frankly. Because we allow ourselves and our thinking to be pretty expansive when we connect, and we don’t always stick to a specific agenda. So we can meander, and we have moments of brilliance and moments of hilarity, and I’m sure moments of stupidity that we can mutually appreciate. It sounded like a good time to me. I’m just glad to be here and doing this with you.

The way we met actually, Gabe, is a good segue into what I’ve been up to in my career for the past – well, let’s not age ourselves here, but a couple of decades under the belt at this point. Your agency, Monigle, was pitching my company, Ciena, on a whole host of brand enablement elements.

That was the last chunk of my career where I was deep in the corporate infrastructure. I was at Ciena for six years, and I like to say it’s the most important tech company no one’s ever heard of. I went to Ciena to help put their brand story together – really to bring a brand practice to that company.

I was there for six years leading global brand and prior to that I had been building my brand chops over the years at places like Landor and at Google, in the Google brand lab, and so forth.

I’m really just delighted to have a chance to kind of look back, retrospectively, together. Not only at what I’ve experienced, but apply those learnings to all the other stories that we’re going to be hearing about this season. We’ve got a really cool roster of people to talk to. So pretty pumped about that.

Gabriel: I think we had such a natural connection in a lot of these conversations – that’s why the idea came up – But what excited you to even co-host a podcast? Was that on your personal development plan?

Holly: Was it on my personal… the PIP that my husband created? You know, actually…

Gabriel: No, no, PIP is something different. That’s an improvement plan.

Holly: How about a POP? Personal Optimization… [Holly knocks her mic over] and there goes the mic… a Personal Optimization Plan.

Gabriel: Here we go.

Holly: You know what, it’s no secret, I’m a chatterbox. I’m happy to talk to anyone at any time. But really, as we get further along in our careers – we hopefully gain some wisdom and we gain some friendships and a lot of resilience – I just, I look for people like you, Gabe, who are so bright, creative, funny and open-minded. And I think every conversation you and I have ever had has meandered way off an agenda. Which I think are the best conversations because then you know you’re talking because you want to be talking, not because you have to be talking to each other.

When we let our brains sort of operate expansively and we spar a little bit and we challenge each other, we always land in these conversations in such a cool place. And I thought, why not do that together in service of our brand peers and really dig into kind of the difficult and sometimes ugly business of brand building together and just hold an honest, safe, and hopefully sometimes funny place?

Gabriel: Yeah. I think the moment I realized that I really wanted you to be my co-host here was the day I was working on a corporate narrative project for a client. We’ve all done positioning before, but just the notion of narrative is one where it’s more tied to the business training. I just called you up as a bit of a shortcut –  just to say,”Holly, have you done any corporate narrative work when you were at Ciena?”

And you just gave me a 45-minute masterclass in the corporate narrative. To the point where I ended up presenting the Ciena narrative work as if it was case study work that I had done. There was such richness in the information – it wasn’t just the work itself, but it was all the stuff that happens behind the scenes around the selling process, the process itself, the dos, the don’ts, especially in a huge, engineering-based networking B2B company.

Holly: Yeah, it was a really interesting opportunity to bring a lot of consumer brand motions into a hardcore B2B environment. And honestly, the joy for me was in seeing the principles start to apply – more around a notion of business to human is really where we landed at Ciena.

We’ve talked about this, this is not a new conversation. B2B2C, however we want to think of it, but you had a company that was so deep in a niche for a very long time. It operated for a couple of decades, delivering a really specific part of networking strategy. And then expanded and wanted to move into a much larger addressable market and found themselves suddenly competing, for the first time, against other brands.

That niche success was no longer working for them. In fact, it kind of held them back.

Gabriel: Against big global brands. Like all of a sudden you’re going up against the Cisco’s of the world.

Holly: Cisco, exactly. With budgets that just dwarfed ours. I think that a lot of brand leaders might say at that moment, hey, let’s conserve here then. Let’s pull back. Let’s be careful. We don’t necessarily need to hit this as hard – meaning brand. We don’t need to hit the brand with as much robustness as say a Cisco. We’ve got smaller budgets. Let’s be modest.

Ciena, however, understood that in order to grow and to really push into these audacious goals they’d set for themselves and for Wall Street, that the brand had to work a lot harder for the company. They weren’t going to be able to get there using the playbook that they’d had.

So it was an exciting opportunity to bring so many of the principles that I had learned over the years on some B2B, but frankly, some B2C clients. The work I had done for the likes of Xbox or Disney parks and resorts informed where we were going with Ciena. They were a first-time storyteller. The brand had never put a story together. And, you know, I think that that was the most exciting opportunity that I’ve had as a brand leader –  to walk into something that didn’t exist and create something and build something that could stand the test of time.

Gabriel: How were you able to convince a company of engineers that storytelling and emotion was important?

Holly: What happened at Ciena was that I had to apply radical patience. If I went in with the same kind of playbook I had at Landor or the Brand Lab, I’d be hitting an ant with a sledgehammer. They weren’t ready yet to radically transform brand.

I think that’s one of the things that we need to learn and be able to adapt to – not every company is ready to go straight to purpose or straight to this intangible, perhaps more esoteric area of brand.

Gabriel: So stepping stones.

Holly: It was. The first order of business, Gabe, was to wrap a brand around their portfolio, not around the company. And that was a really different motion.

It was tied to a sales outcome. It was tied to hard facts about product. It was tied to an aggressive differentiation approach. And it was very different than telling this company, “Hey, you’ve never done brand before, but I’ve got an idea for you. Let’s out of nowhere announce to the market that we have a purpose and a new brand story. And let’s just show up in the market with that. Why don’t we?”

There was no reason for Ciena to show up with a market story at that point. They’d been doing one thing and doing one thing well for a very long time.

Gabriel: I’ve always felt that in larger complex B2B organizations, that architecture and portfolio are the most tangible business-oriented way to start to build credibility and connectivity to the business. Where you get out of the esoteric aspects…

Holly: But that’s exactly what it took.

Gabriel: … and perceived fluffy things, because then that brand very quickly brings in its cousin, all the naming stuff – which starts to get out of hand very quickly. And once you address all of those elements, then you can start to bring in the… it’s a stepping stone to the narrative and storytelling.

Holly: It exactly is. Stepping stone is the right word. I think a lot of companies and brands are tempted to wrap a story around the entire company before they’ve justified what they service or what they produce. And that’s, I think, the first step in engaging audiences on a different level.

If you’ve had no storytelling engagement, you’ve not been out there with anything other than speeds and feeds for the bulk of your existence, it can feel inauthentic and quite random, frankly, for companies to show up with a marketplace story.

What needed to happen first was to make sense of the products they were selling. As Ciena continued to acquire other companies and broaden the portfolio into areas they had never operated in before, it started to appear disorganized. Prospective clients were asking, “Why do you have these new offerings? How does this all hang together and what business are you in anymore?”

It became clear at that point that we needed to rationalize and explain the portfolio. And to do so, by the way, would also signal to the market where we were headed as a brand. What our future looked like. What our DNA was now made of.

So we applied many of the same principles that we would have used for an overarching company rebrand. We applied those same principles to the portfolio itself. We named the portfolio, we reorganized the portfolio, and gave it a story that put some credibility and some cohesion around what had started to look a little disparate.

Gabriel: Holly, what was most different for you going from the agency consulting side to client side?

Holly: Oh my gosh. You know, I thought agencies were political and… this isn’t about any one company. I speak for dozens and dozens of my peers also who’ve sat in my chair… the political landscape when you get onto the client’s side is vastly different than what you’re exposed to on the agency side.

My biggest growth opportunity really was to learn how to manage competing agendas as well as to put the company or my division above my own agenda. And that was not something that I got used to at the agency side because we were always fighting for the client, right? It was, you know, all hands on deck for our client. We’re joined on one clear mission. There is no competing agenda unless the client throws a wrench in the plans, right?

On the client side, you may be fighting to create something like a virtual sales center and realize that your project is not going to have enough juice to make it to the end and that what you should do is sacrifice your budget to someone in the communications department for what they need to do. So I think really stripping back my personal, professional agenda and widening the aperture to understand that everything I did was in service to this company and to its shareholders. And that I would spend the bulk of my day whipping votes and acting as an ambassador and a diplomat within my own company.

Gabriel: Yeah, that’s super. That means building alliances.

Holly: It means building alliances and it meant actually taking a bunch of bites of humble pie. Really, I mean, like entire plates full of humble pie. Suddenly you’re in a meeting with the product team, they’re talking about wave division multiplexing and you’ve got nothing to contribute. Or you’re in a sales meeting and they’re talking about how they can’t ship product because there’s a golden screw missing and we’re going to miss our number. And marketing can’t solve that.

So I think a lot of the gusto that I had from the agency side, where I was absolutely convinced we could solve anything for you, I had a different lens on that once I was on the client side. I started to realize that, you know, marketing is oftentimes put in a position to solve a business problem and that that required an all hands on deck, all divisions, kind of a one Ciena mentality.

Gabriel: I want to go back to one of the really interesting places that you worked at, and I didn’t even really know this existed, was Google Band Lab. What is the Google Brand Lab?

Holly: Good question.

Gabriel: How did that come up? How did you end up getting in there? What did you do when you were at Google Brand Lab?

Holly: I’ll say first of all, disclaimer – I can’t speak for what the Google Brand Lab has become. So I’ve been away from Google now for…God, I can’t do the math anymore, Gabe, but it’s been a number of years. The Brand Lab may be something entirely different today.

When I was there, it actually went through its own evolution, and that was why I ended up in the Brand Lab. The Brand Lab, essentially, think of it as a gift with purchase. You know, when you buy skincare and you end up getting a chapstick or, you know, get the lip treatment for free. Advertisers who spent over a certain dollar threshold at Google were then also awarded a day in the Google Brand Lab.

They provide a brief five weeks before their Brand Lab date. They provide a brief that explains something they’re struggling with from a brand perspective. A story they don’t know how to tell, a product that has been struggling within the portfolio, a line extension they can’t figure out where to stick.

They come to you and they commit to bring their senior most players. So they can’t get into the Brand Lab if the CMO is not there. It’s C-suite. They’ve got to have the decision-makers in the room.

The Brand Lab team has five weeks to sit with that brief and start working through a strategic response – an answer that not only will support their brand, but will do that and will take their brand to the next level using Google tools. So Google tools might include YouTube, Android, Chrome, perhaps Google Maps comes into play, maybe YouTube Music becomes part of it. And so it’s in service ultimately to bringing better storytelling to the Google platforms that advertisers use and encouraging them to understand…

Like Gabe, the biggest issue – why most of them needed to be there  – was that they were sticking their TV ads on YouTube. Right? So you have Tide… P&G, they’re sticking their TVC onto YouTube and that is absolutely right church, wrong pew. We needed to help advertisers understand primarily how to use sight, sound, and motion in a YouTube setting to be able to break through.

So the wild thing was though, I mentioned we had five weeks to prepare for a brand to come in and we would take them through an eight-hour boot camp, but we did one every week. So we had five weeks to prepare, but every single week, every Thursday, it was a revolving door. So I had Adidas one week, then State Farm Insurance the next week. Then I had Unilever the following week. Then I had… I’m trying to think… Mrs. Meyer’s Detergents and Cleaners. It ran the gamut.

Anything you could possibly think of was fair game. We had the movie studios in. We were working on The Secret Life of Pets 2 and some other films. So really what it started to do was force you to become the most dexterous, or I should say gymnastic brand strategist on the earth. You’re dealing with just a flood of briefs, every category and industry imaginable.

The clients showed up expecting the world because it was Google. They oftentimes flew out – we had clients fly out from Indonesia. So they’re showing up expecting a world-class experience. And it was my job to put together the strategy, the approach, and lead the clients through the day. And it was exhausting and exhilarating and super rewarding.

Gabriel: I think we could do a whole separate podcast just on that, but this is meant to be a quick introduction to you and to the season. We call this podcast Brand Enabled, what does that idea mean to you?

Holly: You know, what it means to me in context of this particular… There’s Brand Enablement, you know, sort of capital B, capital E. And then there’s brand enablement through the context of what you’ve invited me to do with you here, Gabe. And that’s the lens I’m looking through right now. Which is in my 27, 26… I don’t know. Let’s not worry about it… the number of years…

Gabriel: You started when you were 10.

Holly: Exactly, just a child prodigy.

In my infancy as a brand manager… you know, I think I grew up through the brand business surrounded by so many bright people, especially when I got to Landor. It was like just… the brain power was exponential and my tendency was to want to package up every story I told to everyone in my agency or to everyone around me as if it had been a wild success.

Anyone who’s really done the business of brand building understands there’s… you know the magic is there, magic moments happen… but it’s blood, sweat, and tears. And that we make a lot of mistakes along the way. I’ve made a lot of mistakes along the way.

And so my interest and my inspiration around this particular podcast is actually enablement for each other. It is to pull the veil off of the really good-sounding stories. Like we say in our intro, pull back the curtain and get really honest about what we’ve experienced. And have conversations where we make it safe for other brand leaders to be honest about where they’ve stumbled.

Because honestly, where we stumble is where we grow and we learn something and got stronger and better. And that’s on the level that we should be talking.

Gabriel: And because most people inside organizations – they’re small, but mighty teams,  and they don’t have anyone to share with… is that notion of community, right? I think that’s what really inspired us to do this podcast.

I think why we wanted to narrow in even more in this season on this topic, as opposed to going broad, is to deal with the specific challenges that people in a corporate brand role face and to talk about how different it is from one place to the next. We can be talking about the same eight subjects, but they’re going to be drastically different. And there are a lot of nuanced stories in each one of those topics. It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about brand architecture or how do you sell brand internally…

Holly: Right.

Gabriel: Or how do you think about brand protection and brand consistency, to how you build influence inside so that you drive brand through experience and culture.

Holly: Yeah, I think that there’s never been a better time really to have honest conversations with each other and talk about enabling brand because the landscape is changing so fast under our feet. With AI and with the changing landscape of the agencies. You know, the classic US agency model is undergoing an evolution.

I think we’re sort of at an existential moment around brand. Is brand for brand sake going to survive? Are we going to have storytelling for the art and for the engagement and the esteem of a brand? Or are we looking more and more at performance marketing? Are we looking more and more at growth marketing?

Those of us who really want the stories, and the art, and the essence, and the magic to continue are trying to make sense now of how this is all changing for us and how we continue to bring magic moments and accidents of branding and sort of brilliant tension into the process. A process that is now largely aided by AI.

So I think it’s just a great moment to kind of like bare our souls. Let’s get honest with each other – the good, the bad, and the ugly. So it’s just a treat to have these conversations with you.

Gabriel: Well, that’s a great setup to this season. I think we can announce, at the end of this first episode, that the first guest that Holly and I are going to have on is going to be Monica Skipper, who has been the VP of brand at FedEx for 20 years. Someone who Holly has known for many years.

I cannot wait for this conversation because if there’s one brand that we can learn so much from and someone who has 20 years worth of experience, who’s gone through… whether it’s the FedEx/Kinko’s merger… just so many great stories and learnings. And that’s just from the initial prep call that we did with Monica. It’s going be a great way to start off the season.

We’re going to have some incredible brands. More importantly, incredible brand leaders who are going to share with us stories, advice, failures, successes, and learnings that you just can’t find in a textbook.

So excited to have you here for the journey, Holly, and all the insights and perspective that you’ll bring.

Holly: Thanks, Gabe. I feel the same. People are not going to want to miss these conversations. So let’s get going. Let’s grab Monica next.

Gabriel: Sign, join us, subscribe… I don’t know what I mean by saying sign. I don’t know what you’d be signing.

Holly: Sign your lives away to us. You won’t regret it.

Gabriel: Figure it out, follow us, send us your questions. Send us your ideal guests because people don’t want to talk to me, but people want to talk to Holly.

Holly: Not true. That’s false.

Gabriel: That’s really the secret of why we’ve got Holly involved. [Acts like he is sharing a secret] Holly, you’re the bait.

Holly: No, this is false advertising. And if you yourself, listener, think you’d like to be a guest, come join us. There’s no such thing as a hot seat on our podcast. Like this is just fun, friendly territory. You know, we just happen to be brand nerds. What’s wrong with that?

Gabriel: All right, Brand Enabled Season 3. We’re off to the races.