Aimee Tuck  00:00

You know the vision and the mission. We're a very engineering-driven industry, and that is kind of, for lack of a better term, woo-woo. And very, very firmly believe that should not be skipped, and it's probably the stuff that gets skipped the most.

Nico Johnson  00:15

If you spend any time around growing companies, well, you've probably seen this happen. Somebody says, "Hey, we need to work on the brand, and pretty quickly the conversation turns into things that you probably expect to recognize: a new logo, a new website, different colors, maybe a new tagline. My guest today believes that we're starting that conversation in the wrong place. Aimee Tuck has spent more than 25 years inside clean energy companies building brands, beginning all the way back at a company many of you probably haven't heard of, and many of my regular faithful listeners have. Company called Trace Engineered, back in 2000, and eventually founding Corbae Creative, where she's helped solar storage and grid companies figure out how to communicate who they are and why anybody should care. She's now taken that experience and turned it into a remarkably practical workbook called Powerful Branding. I think that the blood, sweat, and tears she's expressed into these pages, born from over two decades of pain watching solar companies do it wrong, right, and indifferently is instructive. As I worked through it, I kept thinking this might actually be a management workbook disguised as a branding workbook, because Aimee doesn't stop at messaging and visual identity, she gets into how values become decision rules, how brand gets embedded into company culture, how leaders should be held accountable for it, and how you determine what about the company must remain consistent while other things need to evolve within the market. So today we're going to unpack what branding actually means for those of us building businesses, why companies so often start in the wrong place, and what an executive should be asking their team before approving the next rebrand, campaign, or even website redesign. If all of that sounds fascinating to you, you're in the right place, and I welcome you to SunCast. Aimee, it is so good to see you. Thank you for taking time not only to write this book but to join us and talk more in depth about the ways that it can impact and has already companies in our industry.

Aimee Tuck  02:32

Thank you. I appreciate being here. I appreciate you having me on to talk about this,

Nico Johnson  02:37

Aimee. When someone comes to you and says we need a new brand, how often are they actually sort of referring to a visual identity problem, or how often is the real problem somewhere else underneath it?

Aimee Tuck  02:48

90% of the time, when somebody says we need a new brand, they mean visual identity, which is their logo, colors, style guide. It's very rare that they've thought about those underlying pieces that lead to a really good visual identity.

Nico Johnson  03:07

What do you think companies are trying to solve with a logo that a logo really can't?

Aimee Tuck  03:12

So, if you think about it, what a logo does is it gives us a visual reference for a company, and we put all of our interactions, all of the messages we've read, all of the pieces, all of our feelings. You know, like that truck that cut us off in traffic that had their logo on the side of the van. We put all of that into a logo. You know the way our brains work is it's you know it's that it's a short course. That logo means that brand, and so when people say or when companies say they want a new logo, it means that there's probably some sort of underlying tension that they need to be looking at other pieces of that brand,

Nico Johnson  04:06

yeah, it's fascinating. And I start there because I do think that one of the biggest misconceptions is that logo is like the the tip of the spear for brand, and I would say rather it's the tip of the iceberg.

Aimee Tuck  04:20

Well, and realistically, it's you know again I I think of it as the you know kind of the bucket that holds the brand, you know, and so it's again it's a short course, you know. If you step back, you know I personally define branding as every interaction, message, and visual piece that leads people to think a specific way about a company or a product, you know. And so, if you think about it like that, the logo is just a little tiny piece of that.

Nico Johnson  04:52

Let's go back a few years. You walked into a company that, for all purposes, doesn't really exist anymore. Whose fingerprint is on the industry? A company called Trace Engineering in 2000, without really knowing what an inverter even was. What made you decide that this was an industry worth staying in?

Aimee Tuck  05:10

That's a really good question. Yeah i I literally walked into the interview and I asked what an inverter was, but I've always had kind of a Sustainability, environmental bent to what I love doing, and I absolutely fell in love with the industry. I mean, I know you experience this. This industry is about people. I mean, yes, it's energy, it's clean energy, it's about sustainability. But really, what makes up this industry is the people, and it's a wonderful industry. And so, being able to work with people that I really enjoy working with, and moving the needle on the energy transition, it's it's near and dear to my heart. I I would be hard pressed to think of something else I'd like doing.

Nico Johnson  06:01

The thing is, I've met so many people who would ask, like, "Why are you still in the solar industry? You should, could, whatever word they want to add, be doing so many other things. Like, there's a bigger world out there, and my answer is because every time I talk to someone about what we are doing and accomplishing, and about the people, the community that I'm doing it with, I see this spark of envy in their eyes because it makes most of my friends who's who are not in the industry. It makes them have this sense of like longing of like, oh, I wish that I had that that sort of industry camaraderie, that sort of community, that sort of legacy impact. I long for those kinds of conversations with my children about the work that I'm doing. It really is about impact, and I don't. And I think that that word gets bandied about, proselytized a lot because we are trying to do work that can make a huge projection on the future and the outcomes for our children.

Aimee Tuck  07:04

Well, and at the same time, with that, you know, I had a conversation recently with somebody that was newer to the industry, and they were really feeling discouraged because they weren't seeing momentum, and especially right now, where we're you know, there's a lot of uphill battles being, you know, fought, but you know, having been in the industry for 25 years, you know, when I first started, it was you know watts and kilowatts, like a 50 kilowatt installation was massive, and now that's nothing. I mean, you know, we're gigawatts, and yeah, I mean, so like you know, there's momentum there, and you know, it's it's awesome to see.

Nico Johnson  07:51

You mentioned watts and kilowatts. Trace is a company that helps to convert a direct current product, you know, or signal into a sine wave into help helps to basically translate the way electrons are generated into the way we use them in the home from DC to AC. Trace became Xantrex. Xantrex was eventually acquired by Schneider. You were exposed very early to technically sophisticated products that still had to be understood and chosen by human beings, what did that teach you about the gap between building something good and communicating to others why that matters?

Aimee Tuck  08:29

Originally, trace products. I mean, you know, there was very much you know it's a supply chain issue, and so not only were you having to communicate to people in the supply chain who were, you know, you know, fairly knowledgeable about what DC to AC even meant, and then there was very much a kind of, you know, okay, this is going to harken back to a few years ago, you know, like the Home Power crowd, the people that were reading Home Power magazine, who were doing all of this on their own, and so they were having to learn it. What it did teach me was, you know, you definitely have to have different messages for different audiences, you know. And I know that seems simple now, but at the time, it was really not something. You know, everybody just you know. Well, everybody will understand this, and if they don't, then they're not the right audience, and that's that's not quite the way it works. So, but yeah, I mean, again, thinking about it in the simplest terms you can, and again, it comes back to the benefit. You know, so what's the benefit? You know, does anybody really care that it goes DC to AC, or do they care that hey, this is really freaking cool? You can take power from the sun and run your life off of

Nico Johnson  09:51

it. Yeah,

Aimee Tuck  09:52

like that's the cool message.

Nico Johnson  09:54

Yeah, we need more cool messages like that. But also, I feel like one of the things that we what. The underlying threads that we want to pull in this conversation is how to communicate. You know, our our good friend Spencer Meeks, he does such a great job of talking about how how the technical jargons gets sort of lost in translation for folks that maybe aren't engineers, like how to talk to humans with engineering concepts. Where did you first? You remember any of the early sort of lost in translation moments or ways that it went badly early as you were trying to help companies think about how to not be so engineery in their communication?

Aimee Tuck  10:40

So something that has been going on for ages, and I'm just going to use advertising because, again, early on, that was the main way that people communicated their brand. So much advertising was product photo, you know, headline and maybe some solar panels behind it, and it would list features, and that was advertising like again and again and

Nico Johnson  11:12

again, right?

Aimee Tuck  11:13

And okay, number one, I'm sorry, most people do not care about your white metal box, they don't really care that this is what it looks like. You know, the installer might care what size it is, but most people don't really care what it looks like.

Nico Johnson  11:32

Yeah, certainly most homeowners. Yeah,

Aimee Tuck  11:33

yeah.

Nico Johnson  11:34

I don't want to leave people down the wrong path. A lot of homeowners do care what it looks like physically. Yeah, so I don't want to mistake that,

Aimee Tuck  11:41

but that's not the first choice. You know, they're looking for the what's in it for me. I mean, yeah, that's what everybody is reading for. That's what everybody is looking for. Like, what's in it for me? How is this going to make my life better? How is this going to make my job easier? Again, what's in it for me? And if you start from that point, then you're going to communicate a lot better, you know. Very, you know, thinking customer focused versus product focused.

Nico Johnson  12:09

Aimee, I'm eager to dig in here and better understand some of the frameworks that what that I think you have really expertly outlined in your book. But before we do, I want to kind of ask at a very high level. Over two and a half decades now, you've been helping entrepreneurs and executives think about branding, specifically around clean energy. What do you still see them consistently misunderstanding about branding that you hope to correct this book?

Aimee Tuck  12:38

One is that people think branding is very external, and it starts internally. I years and years and years ago, I was sitting in a room, and the company was rebranding, and the branding agency talked to the CMO and the CEO, and those were the only two people they communicated with the entire time, and this was a larger company,

Nico Johnson  13:04

right?

Aimee Tuck  13:04

And then the CMO tasked one of their marketing managers to present this new brand, and so they did the unveiling, and literally every single person in this room thought it was awful, and you know, and this is a room of marketing communication professionals. I mean, this is not like you know, you know, random Joe off the street. And the agency and the CEO and the CMO did not give this marketing manager the tools to defend the choices. Like there was no communication about why this brand was unveiled this way, and needless to say, internally it was not accepted.

Nico Johnson  13:53

Yeah,

Aimee Tuck  13:53

and it was pulling teeth to get it implemented, and it was about a year later they actually brought somebody in, did another rebrand,

Nico Johnson  14:05

of course,

Aimee Tuck  14:06

and they actually had is

Nico Johnson  14:09

another rebrand,

Aimee Tuck  14:10

exactly, of course, but they involved more people, and they talked to people, and people were invested, and hey, guess what worked really well this that next time. So you know it's it's not an external; it's an internal. So you know that's probably the number one thing that I think companies get wrong. They forget the internal piece, and you know the second piece I would say is that a lot of people think companies at the start out at the outset. We're going to figure out our brand,

Nico Johnson  14:42

right?

Aimee Tuck  14:43

And I don't think I can think of. I probably could not count companies on one hand that could come up with their entire brand identity at the outset. Startups tend to not do this. Yeah,

Nico Johnson  14:59

of course. And are, yeah, and especially in the startup range, yeah,

Aimee Tuck  15:03

yeah. I mean, they will a logo, you know, they'll have a logo, yes, but that's about it. Yeah, it's usually some sort of inflection point further on down the road that causes an actual branding exercise.

Nico Johnson  15:16

And the words that come to mind for me, you said brand identity, are things like beneath the surface, and one of the things that I think that you did really well in the book, kudos, because I think that it's hard to find visual aids for marketing construct that don't feel like infographics, right? And one of those is like pretty early on. It's actually page 16, I think. There's a chapter called the branding tree, and when I saw this, I I instinctively go, "Oh yeah, that that's that's right. That helps me think about what's going on, sort of in the branches and sort of underneath the surface, I want you to help unpack the visual image here, and maybe we can throw up a visual reference for those who are watching. In the branding tree chapter, you introduce this concept. So, for someone who's not holding the book, take us underground first. What are the roots, or maybe you want to give a perspective of what the tree represents, but then I want us to quickly go sort of beneath the surface.

Aimee Tuck  16:25

You know, if you think about a tree, you know it needs you know for a tree to be healthy, it needs roots, it needs a trunk, it needs the branches and leaves, it needs all of those pieces to be healthy for a full healthy tree. And branding is the same way. You know, if we start at the roots. These are pieces that are typically unseen by stakeholders. You know, you're talking about you know the research that somebody does, vision, your mission, your brand values, you know, your positioning, your customer profiles, all of these pieces that go into creating a brand identity that will then impact what your visual identity is, and will you know which you can think of as your the trunk of the tree,

Nico Johnson  17:11

right?

Aimee Tuck  17:11

And then all of those will impact you know the branches and the leaves, which are the forward facing pieces that you know when we think of a tree like that's what we first think of, or the branches and the leaves. Those are the forward facing, you know, like your website and your, you know, like a sales deck. I mean, all of those pieces.

Nico Johnson  17:33

Doing podcasts. Doing

Aimee Tuck  17:34

podcasts exactly.

Nico Johnson  17:37

I, you know, one thing that. So as I've thought about this metaphor of the branding tree. I'm reminded what you've described as the brand identity is the foundation, and you're right. Most startups, they there's this instinct, instinctual attachment to what those foundational things are, like the mission, vision, the value propositions, the competitive strengths, things that we recognize outwardly as a brand, which often are simply the visual reference, the messaging, the voice, like you mentioned, how we show up at trade shows, the various sales collateral, what's the customer experience, what do people say about us, what decks are we using? When you watch a tree grow, each of those pop up sort of over time, but the fat, but the roots are very much like already there. The seed grows the roots first, and then something pops above the surface that shows the outside world what it looks like. And what I think is really crafty about how you've crafted this this chapter, and I would argue even the whole book, it is to say, let's flip the thing on its head here and not focus on the website and the content and the sales decks. Let's talk more about the roots. So, I want of all these roots, I want to know which one do you think companies most often discover they have never actually defined well. The

Aimee Tuck  18:51

biggest thing that companies probably don't define well, and they also confuse, is their vision and their mission? If you think of a vision, it's a statement of where, like how you imagine the world could be better because of the existence of your company. You know what? What do you imagine the world could look like? And then a mission is how your company is working towards that goal right now. And oftentimes, what happens is you know startups, you know, a founder will have that in their head, like they they they see it,

Nico Johnson  19:36

yeah.

Aimee Tuck  19:37

But it they don't communicate that, or they communicate that to their, you know, when they're small, they can, you know, bring like-minded people together. And this is one of those points that I, you know, I was talking about inflection points earlier on when they start thinking about branding, communicating that vision when you start getting layers of, you know, like nobody's not everybody's reporting to the CEO anymore. Okay, so how is that vision getting communicated through layers, and if it's not actually spelled out somewhere, it's getting lost in translation. One

Nico Johnson  20:12

of the things that you and I talked about prior when I was trying to get my head head around kind of what what is the nature of the book that you've written is there's a common answer, perhaps in these executive conversations, a will sell to anyone who will buy, and that's certainly true for any startup who's ever tried to sell anything. There's this, there's this like, there's always this tension between those creating the product for a specific avatar and those selling the product who know they're driven by revenue. Can you talk about why that's a dangerous answer, and sort of how figuring out the roots of the brand tree are critical piece of that?

Aimee Tuck  20:49

So you know, thinking about customers and thinking about customer profiles, you know, I I hear this pushback a lot. Well, but that really limits us, or we really. And again, in kind of in the startup world, we're going to sell to anybody. And you know, I I hate using this adage, but you know, if you try and sell to everybody, you sell to nobody. And you know, I'm a pragmatist. You know, yes, you need customer profiles. You need to be speaking to very specific audiences in your marketing and say your website and your sales deck. That doesn't mean you don't sell to other people. Yeah. If like that person, you know, like if you have an opportunity come along, that doesn't mean that you're not selling to that person because they don't fit the profiles. It means the profiles are who you're talking to and who you're trying to track primarily. You're

Nico Johnson  21:49

targeting, yeah,

Aimee Tuck  21:50

yes, exactly. And understanding how those customer profiles fit to work towards your vision is it's important?

Nico Johnson  22:02

When I was reading through the research section of the book, honestly, I started wondering whether one of the purposes of this process that you map is actually to expose disagreement. You know what leadership believes versus what employees understand, what customers experience, and what the company says publicly. Do you think that's a fair reading?

Aimee Tuck  22:22

Disagreement, yes, and or you can think of it as different perspectives. That, yes, dissonance. That's a better word than disagreement, I would say. Yeah.

Nico Johnson  22:35

Okay. Where do you find the dissonance tends to exist most often, or what does it reveal?

Aimee Tuck  22:44

You know, so there's a couple of answers to that. One, you know, there there's this belief that branding is a it's kind of it lives in marketing, and so say the CFO doesn't get it. Like, why? Why? Why should I care about this? So there can be a dissonance there. It's like you know, it's all about the numbers. I care about the numbers, or you know, the product. If the product is good, it'll sell itself. You know, and that's that's you know, kind of the in the engineering world. And so you can you have kind of a dissonance in how people you know Think about their roles, which is one of the reasons why, you know, throughout the book I talk about how to involve people in thinking about their roles within specific exercises, like how do you imagine your role forwards the vision,

Nico Johnson  23:42

right?

Aimee Tuck  23:44

So there's that piece. The other one is, you know, when companies have been around for a while, it just evolves over time, and so somebody maybe using a, you know, materials or something that has been around for 10 years, and 10 years later, the company is not the same company, and so it's just you know thinking about you know like one of the exercises we go through is an asset review,

Nico Johnson  24:10

right?

Aimee Tuck  24:11

And it's always fascinating to just watch people's faces when they start seeing like oh we thought that we were pretty on brand, and then you know, kind of seeing it all at once. Oh, maybe not so much.

Nico Johnson  24:27

Also revealing is when you ask, "What presentation are you giving in the sales meeting? And marketing leaders get to see that the sales team hasn't adopted anything they've done because the old way was better or different, or that's what they're used to. I'm curious, though. Like, I mean, it all. It all also. I've been in startups where essentially every decision by a customer required the CEO to be present because they not only validated that this was the right place to be, but had this sort of tribal archive of. Compelling stories, arguments, narratives, and it makes me wonder. You've experienced this a lot in the companies you've helped sort of reposition or or think through their brand strategy. I'm curious how you help a founder where the brand has been living inside their head for a long time. It's no longer enough that it's there inside their head. They've got a team to transmit it to. Maybe it has been transmitted various ways to various people, depending on whether they're engineering or marketing or finance. Where do you start with that process of kind of getting it in, getting it onto paper, like getting that process out of their head?

Aimee Tuck  25:38

You know, the first thing that I do is I interview them, and I sit down and I talk to them, and you know I've and and I I'll interview them. I will interview other senior leadership. I'll interview other staff, and you know what that does is it just it gives you a good picture of you know how that's getting translated or not translated as we talked about, yeah, and then rolling into going through creating a vision process, and again, it's taking this something this you know, I call it. You may know it, but do you really know it? Like, can you communicate it? And so, getting them to take this sort of internal-I feel it in my limbic system-knowledge and being able to communicate it in one sentence is a process, and you know, go through a series of exercises that involve the company, that involve personal stories, and then combine that down to some very specific words, and then roll that into a vision. And that, and having that written out is oftentimes the first piece to getting it out of the CEO's head. So

Nico Johnson  27:06

now, lest you think that this entire interview is for the CEO to convince them that branding is a different type of appropriate approach and strategy, no, no, no. All of you who like like myself and and Minnie and Aimee and others are creatives and marketing leads who are saying, "Okay, great, but thank you. What am I going to ask? I've tried everything. Well, you're in luck because you have a sage in Aimee. And on page 32, she starts with "Why interview staff and leadership? and this whole section literally is a manual. There's a whole chapter on staff and leadership interviews, everything from why to do it to what questions to ask to each department-literally questions best reserved for marketing-is the subtitle of social media. I can imagine why that is. We can't go through every single page of the book. I just think it's fascinating, all the way through to what to include in your final final analysis, like literally, if you've never done a brand redesign for a company or a branding exercise, you should be picking up this book before you call Aimee and going through it, so you can ask her all the right questions about how if you've if you've got it right. But I mean, you've you've really just given, in my opinion, a soup to nuts manual to all of your competition for how to do the thing that you do. I think it's very generous of you. The beautiful thing is, like, it's kind of like, well, this is my process. You know, I think I I want to be helpful. You can do this internally, but but trust me, it's hard.

Aimee Tuck  28:39

Oh, and and realistically, I mean, that's one of the things that I do throughout the book. Is every exercise I talk about, you know, what you need, what skill set you need on staff, and I call out points, and even when

Nico Johnson  28:52

you need it.

Aimee Tuck  28:52

Yeah, and when you need it, how long it'll take, and I call out points where it's like, you know, you probably are better off outsourcing this. It's

Nico Johnson  29:01

like an asterisk. Bring in professional. I love it. I think, and it's genuine. It's genuinely honest about the process that so many who are trying to sell marketing services face all the time. It's always a like, can you do this internally, or do we have to hire an external person who can help walk us through it? One of the things that stands out for me is you recommend talking not only to happy customers, which occurs to everyone, but to former customers, even former repeat customers, which gets into a little bit of like sand in the gears, a little bit of alcohol and a cut. Why might the customer who left tell me something more valuable than the customer?

Aimee Tuck  29:38

Well, a customer that loves you, yay! Either reinforcing. the positive. That's great.

Nico Johnson  29:44

Yep. A

Aimee Tuck  29:45

customer who's left is going to show you where you can do better.

Nico Johnson  29:49

Yeah. Yeah.

Aimee Tuck  29:50

And they may have left because they weren't getting responses that they needed. They may have left because simply the product just did not. Meet the needs that they had anymore, and you know it may not be anything that you did. It just they needed different something different, and it's always good to hear. And you know there's a million different reasons, and you know sometimes it can be kind of hard to find customers that are willing to actually talk to you after they've left. But if you can, it's worthwhile. And you know, even though the industry is growing, it's still a smaller industry, and it can be good to actually hear what they're saying to other people too.

Nico Johnson  30:33

There's, of course, a whole section, page 43, interview voice of customer. Everything from I love this for the interview itself. Use meeting software such as Zoom. Why is it important to use like Zoom instead of just an outreach, like a form? Why do you think is it? Is there? Have you found that it's better to have that sort of personal engagement?

Aimee Tuck  30:51

I find that customer interviews the best information

Nico Johnson  30:58

is

Aimee Tuck  30:58

that stuff that comes between the questions. Like if you, if they're filling out a form, they're going to be quickly responding to whatever the form says. And if you're having a conversation, you can ask more, like tell me more. What happened there? Or oh, you know, oh, you mentioned Larry from accounting. You know, he doesn't work here anymore. Oh, well, then I'm coming back. You know, I mean, you know, you don't know until you actually get into that conversation. Oh

Nico Johnson  31:26

my god, I can. They're like literally. I had two people pop in mind from previous and previous roles where if those people had left, customers would come back. That's so funny. You have a warning as well. There's a subtle though it may be in the customer profile section that I think a lot of executives could miss. Sometimes your customer data doesn't describe the market; it describes who your team has chosen to approach. How do I know which one I'm looking at?

Aimee Tuck  31:48

Some of that is you can say, "Look at the makeup of your sales team, and look at the customer approaches, or you know who you know who your main customers are, and if they're fairly homogenous, you know, sales team and customers. Then you're probably missing out, and you're probably missing opportunities. You know, I know you and I have talked about this in the past. You know, women in the industry. You know, there's a lot of us, and you know, we're not always represented in customer profiles. So you know, like how are you communicating, and how are you know who are you missing? You can you know see those gaps, and it's an opportunity.

Nico Johnson  32:33

So it seems to me like part of the hypothesis or the yeah put forth with the book is the first step's not inventing necessarily who we want to be; it's understanding what's actually true about who we are, how we show up. So leadership has to make choices based on that evidence, which brings me to a question of when does branding actually become important? Like it seems to me like there's a there's a runway that you have to get through to of like doing the thing before you can actually determine what the brand identity can be.

Aimee Tuck  33:01

There are several points that people often reach. Our companies often reach out and ask about branding. You know, we've talked a little bit about you know the growth. You know, when they go beyond the CEO, you know, you know, they start having you know the CEO can no longer communicate their vision to everybody every day. If they're looking at going into a new market, or the market is changing, and you know, clean energy never experiences change in markets ever. And then you also see, you know, say when they're going through a fundraising stage, you know, I, I would say for startups, most often they're approaching, uh, you know, me for branding around the Series A. You know, they've gone through their friends and family and early on, and then they get to the Series A, and it's like, okay, now we've got to put on our, you know, you know, big company pants, and you know, figure out who we are, and then there's the whole you know mergers and acquisitions, and you know, if companies are combining or being acquired, like how does that branding evolve, or you know, what are the key points to carry over to the new company, you know. So,

Nico Johnson  34:23

should a company, in your opinion, claim a value that it aspires to but has not yet consistently lived out?

Aimee Tuck  34:30

Yes, and you know, I'm I'm always for aspirational, and it needs to be realistic. You know, a you know, can you work towards living this value every day? You know, I mean, if you are somebody who is completely humorless, you're not going to have a brand value of humor because you've decided that humor should be something like people appreciate. Humor, therefore, yeah, that's what you should do. And if you have zero sense of humor, that's not going to be a value you should try and aspire to. Yeah. So I, you know, it has to be realistic again. Pragmatism.

Nico Johnson  35:13

You know, the book started getting interesting and sort of different for me once you establish like the vision, values, and the foundational work, I love that you don't leave them as abstract ideas. There's very meaningful. Like you unpack exactly how you help someone get there. I want to make sure that people listening can really appreciate that. Where I said at the outset that I think it's a management book, sort of masquerading as a branding book, is that you actually take it a step further and suggest that things like values and vision and brand value can become management rules. Help me understand that. I probably say this half a dozen

Aimee Tuck  36:00

times in the book, going through this exercise, and then oh hey, we have a vision, and it sits on the website or sits in a drawer. I mean that doesn't do any good.

Nico Johnson  36:12

So give me concrete examples, like what what might it look like in hiring, for example, that your brand values become KPIs.

Aimee Tuck  36:18

You know, a couple of things that you can look at. This number one is when you are really living those brand values, you're going to attract people that also feel those values. It's you know, and so you know, and again, we don't want homogenous, but you can be honest and not be homogeneous. Say like that's your brand value. When you are, you know, working with new employees, you know, or when you are first introducing this, one of the tools that I really recommend that companies use is have specific questions, you know. So, like, you know, I'm going to skip to vision. You know, there there may be a question that they ask about everything, and that you know, if even in

Nico Johnson  37:18

the interview process,

Aimee Tuck  37:19

even in the interview process, I mean, there's going to be some question that you know, and and it's like okay, like down to their you know, like the paper choice that they make in the company, and you know their software or how they build their product. I mean, you know, and what it does is it helps them keep on track towards their vision, and it's you know, and it's a very specific, concrete question, and it's hard at first because that's not a brain path that we're used to doing, but then eventually it kind of starts getting into you know a you know a routine, and it and it's easier to implement.

Nico Johnson  38:04

If you take it a step further, you suggest that the brand implementation could become a part of even performance reviews, and that it should actually weigh more heavily than higher the the higher someone sits up in an organization. By way of example of how where this sort of landed for me, I used I used that sort of rubric when I was doing executive coaching for many years. I had a very specific example. If he's listening, he'll know. I'm talking about that example of a of a CEO who had a I'm going to say like a problematic issue or a problem employee, and because this person had been with him since the beginning. He he often had a hard time, like sitting down and giving this person frank, honest feedback about how they were doing when they were messing up, so to speak, or out of alignment. And I said, "But you know, you have these core values, and one of these core values is X. And this example that you shared with me is very clearly out of alignment with X, and it was like a bolt of lightning for him. He was like, "Oh, I can just have a conversation with him that the kinds of the the kind of company we're running has these these things that we've all outlined and that I talk about in every Monday morning meeting are our brand values, and you're not showing the team what it looks like to live to those values. And when you do this thing, the rest of the team can rightly believe that that value is not important to us because I let you slide doing it. That for me is a palpable example of how values can be management tools, specifically for performance reviews, I wonder if there are other examples of of implementation that you've seen done well.

Aimee Tuck  39:49

People are going to take their cues from senior leadership, and like how much how much this weighs on decisions that they make, and so the more. That they see leader leadership doing this thing, or you know, really living those values, you know, whatever the you know exercises that you know you're working through in branding, the more they're going to say yes, this is important.

Nico Johnson  40:15

Right.

Aimee Tuck  40:16

I can think of an example similar to what you were talking about. It maybe because you were talking, you gave that example of an employee who really couldn't-they just could not wrap their brains around where this branding was going, and they were so unhappy. And their manager actually helped them find a job in another company, and yeah, I mean they like it, you know. And so the manager said, you know, look, I know that this is not a good fit, and so they they helped them find another job, and the other person actually ended up being a lot happier in the other place, and that department ended up running a lot better. And so, kind of you know how you know again putting emphasis on how stringent you're going to be with those values, I mean, you know, the you know, the more stringent and stronger you are, the more the rest of the company is going to take cues from you that these are important.

Nico Johnson  41:32

Near the end of the book, you introduce a useful tension. On the facing page, you cite research saying that 33% of businesses report that brand consistency helps them boost revenue by 20% or more. But you've also told me that branding is never done. So I'm curious if consistency matters and the brand has to keep evolving. What exactly are you allowed to change?

Aimee Tuck  41:57

You can put this into three buckets. You know, you can think of your non-negotiables, and you know that's going to be you know your vision and your brand values. You know what are those things that are not going to change?

Nico Johnson  42:08

Yeah,

Aimee Tuck  42:09

and then you're going to have stuff that's going to evolve. You know your customer profiles. I mean they're going to evolve. You know. Yeah. You know your competitive strengths. Those are going to evolve, and then you have stuff that is responsive, and that you know gets more into the marketing side. But you know what's going on in the industry, and sometimes you have to make choices. And like, crap, we need to bring money in right now, and we know this doesn't quite fit with our brand, but we're gonna do it. But you're making that a conscious choice, so

Nico Johnson  42:46

yeah,

Aimee Tuck  42:47

you've got those three steps, and you know understanding you know what you're evaluating as you go forward. And again, one of the last steps I talk about in the book is doing regular evaluations of your branding, right?

Nico Johnson  43:02

So I'm curious, what belongs at the CEO level with those monthly, quarterly, and annual brand check-ins that you're referring to? Where does the CEO need to opine versus what marketing should simply manage without bothering the CEO?

Aimee Tuck  43:16

I would probably say that the actual assessment is probably done in marketing, and that then the CEO is actually reviewing those assessments, so that they understand and that they can actually respond and think about shifts that are happening, and you know, like, oh, okay, well, we need to adjust this, or you know, hey, here's this opportunity. How is this going to fit into future branding?

Nico Johnson  43:47

So imagine I'm a CEO, and I've realized by listening to this conversation that we probably haven't done this work very rigorously ourselves. What are the first three questions that I should ask my marketing leader when I get back to the office.

Aimee Tuck  44:01

This is the practical one. Do you have a style guide? And that's a visual thing. It's it gives you a document that everybody can refer to. Number two, do you actually have customer profiles and the research to back those up? Those are two big pieces, and then number three. When was the last time you actually did a you know an overall asset review, and what has that shown you?

Nico Johnson  44:33

And I I would add to that maybe when's the last time we talked to our former customers?

Aimee Tuck  44:38

Oh, that's a great one. Okay, number four. Yeah,

Nico Johnson  44:42

what do you think of everything that you've put into powerful branding? Is the part that you think a CEO is most likely to skip, but probably shouldn't?

Aimee Tuck  44:52

I would say, and this is from past experience, that section two, the core, you know, the vision and the.

Nico Johnson  45:00

Yeah,

Aimee Tuck  45:00

and brand values. We're a very engineering-driven industry, and that is kind of, for lack of a better term, woo-woo. And very, very firmly believe that should not be skipped. And it's probably the stuff that gets skipped the most.

Nico Johnson  45:16

I love this book for a lot of reasons. One of the main ones is even you have made several of the worksheets freely downloadable, which again I think speaks to not only the generosity but the the the the depth of experience that you bring to the table. So I'm in the C suite and I want to take a nibble. Which one should I start with, and what conversation should I have with my team after I complete it? The

Aimee Tuck  45:44

reason why I put asset review very first is because it's very tangible, and it's something that is easy for people to wrap their brains around. I mean, some of this work is really like you have to do some deep thinking.

Nico Johnson  46:00

It's heady, yeah, yeah,

Aimee Tuck  46:01

and and and it can, yeah, it can be tough, yeah. And but an asset review, it's you know, again tangible, and so like I would start with that and just

Nico Johnson  46:12

yeah,

Aimee Tuck  46:12

like see where you are, like what are we doing? How does the world see us? You know, how does our stakeholder? You know, if we're talking about our stakeholders, like what do they see? Like you know, and start there. Is

Nico Johnson  46:27

there a corollary for someone who's listening that's not the C-suite? Maybe they're marketing or sales and or HR ops. Is there a worksheet or exercise they should maybe take into the company?

Aimee Tuck  46:40

I I think the interviews are really powerful. I mean, I say staff and leadership. I mean, you know, it doesn't like don't stick with just the C suite. I think those you know, just understanding what people think about the company is really valuable.

Nico Johnson  46:57

Who's a thinker outside of your field whose work you keep returning to?

Aimee Tuck  47:02

There is a book by it's a dual author and it's Jeff Rosenblum and I'm looking at the title now because I'm going to get the authors wrong. So, but I'm it's Jeff Rosenblum and Jordan Burke and it's called Friction, and I absolutely love this book.

Nico Johnson  47:24

Yeah, it's got a matchbox as the cover. Yeah, love it. Yes, friction, fantastic. I love it. You're the. Do you know? I think in 950 plus episodes, you might be in the five people who have pulled the book down and shown it to the camera. Thank you. That's amazing. You're welcome. I like I said, I read a lot. Yeah, I wanted to share two others that also from someone, a friend of ours who reads a lot, and I feel like when I get on the phone call with Spencer, he's always just like holding up the next book I should be reading. Last year this time it was this book by April Dunford called Obviously Awesome. Have you read this one?

Aimee Tuck  48:02

I have read other stuff by April Dunford, but I haven't read that one yet.

Nico Johnson  48:05

Yeah, so this one is great. How to nail product positioning so customers get it, buy it, love it. Excellent. Fits with this context. And then I've read a lot of storytelling books. The one that Spencer most recently recommended to me, which I bought from Thrift Books, not Amazon. Is by Annette Simmons. It's called The Story Factor. Oh, that's a good one. Yeah, have you read

Aimee Tuck  48:32

it? I have read part of that one. I didn't. Yeah, I was. You know, you get into those brain spaces, and sometimes it's

Nico Johnson  48:39

so thick. I mean, come on.

Aimee Tuck  48:41

Sometimes it's like, yeah, yes, this book is good. I need to read it another time. Does that make sense? Oh, oh,

Nico Johnson  48:46

for sure.

Aimee Tuck  48:48

Yeah.

Nico Johnson  48:48

But she has a whole section on the psychology of stories' influence, which I think is fascinating. It talks about everything from the human condition to connect before you convince. Something I've heard Spencer say on calls. Like I love when you're working with a practitioner, and you can find in the things they've referenced the ways they've anchored them in their own sales product and and tools. And I look forward to reading Friction and finding exactly how seeing see if I can identify the ways that it has helped influence you as well,

Aimee Tuck  49:23

and this is another one. Oh my

Nico Johnson  49:25

gosh, that one is right here on my shelf, building a story. But if I didn't give it away, so Donald Miller, I remember a good friend of mine, Ryan Hamilton, actually calling me and talking about how he had built his website based on the building story brand framework. The and I was like, that is genius, and it really is. It's actually very smart to do that. Donald Miller has a whole work like he has a whole worksheet on how to how to do that. I'm not trying to send anybody down the path of like studying. More of other people because I really think that before you buy any of those books, you should buy powerful branding. I agree by Aimee Tuck, where where a lot of this information has been distilled and synthesized into the clean energy sector, specifically with examples. Okay, finish the sentence. You know a company's brand is healthy when

Aimee Tuck  50:19

when you know exactly what they stand for,

Nico Johnson  50:24

Aimee. And I'll make this really actionable because you built the book that specific way. If you're a founder or executive listening, or if you work for a founder who you know should be benefiting from this, go grab the assessment that Aimee recommended and use it to start a conversation with your leadership and even your marketing teams. If that's not you as the marketing leader, don't begin by asking whether you need a new website or a logo. Please begin by asking whether the company is actually aligned on the things that support the visual identity. For the rest of you listening from inside the organization, Aimee's made a set of practical worksheets that we talked about, and they're available for exactly this purpose. Pick one that corresponds to the problem you already see. Take it to the person who can help you get something done about it. We'll link to the things, in particular the assets worksheet and the interviews worksheet, so that you can download those and start to get a taste of exactly how powerful branding the book sort of operates, and I just want to say once again, Aimee, thank you for doing the hard work to make this practical and for joining us here on SunCast to explain it.

Aimee Tuck  51:33

Thank you. I appreciate being on. I appreciate all of the wonderful questions you asked. Is

Nico Johnson  51:38

there a place that you like to be found, and is there a website dedicated to the book,

Aimee Tuck  51:42

so you can actually get to the book from my website, which is corbaecreative.com, and that's c o r b a e creative.com. You can find me on LinkedIn or Blue Sky, and if you want to go directly to the site that I'm selling the book on, it's on lulu.com, which is L U L u.com.

Nico Johnson  52:05

I love it, Aimee Tuck. Thank you for all that you're doing for this industry, helping us move beyond the bad approach to an understanding of branding, and really dig the roots deeper to help hold this industry up.

Aimee Tuck  52:20

Thank you, I appreciate it.

Nico Johnson  52:22

Here's the question: I hope you're carrying away from this conversation: Is your brand something that your company can actually use to make decisions, or is it mostly something the marketing team maintains and puts forth out in the marketplace? Because if Aimee is right, then the real test isn't whether everybody is using the right logo; it's whether the important choices that your people are making every day reflect a shared understanding of who the company serves, what it values, where it's headed, and the things that are not negotiable as a result. I especially want you to think about that non-negotiable, evolving, and responsive framework. I think it's a really helpful way to bucket the assets as you begin to dig in and think through that asset worksheet. The market changes, your customers change, your products, of course, evolve and change. Some parts of the company are going to move with them naturally. That is to be expected. Other parts are the actual reason that people recognize and trust you in the first place. Figure it out, knowing the difference between them. That is the leadership work that we have to engage in. We'll make sure that you've got links to Aimee's book and the downloadable resources and worksheets in the show notes. Of course, you can find that at SunCast Media. But if you're listening on whatever platform, we'll link to it there, and I want to thank you for listening all the way through. It means that you found something valuable here, as promised. If you didn't listen all the way through, you didn't hear me say this, but I'm glad that you were able to realize the promise of this episode. I hope that you will take action because that is actually worth more than just listening. I want to thank our partners who help make sure that we can keep the lights on. They sponsor this show. You've heard their ads throughout, and I hope that you'll go give them a nod as well. Check out whatever it is that they are offering that speaks to you, or share this episode with someone else who you know is also a seeker, a builder, a creator on the front lines of the clean energy transition. Remember, you are what you listen to. Thanks again for showing up, Solar Warrior. It's half the battle.

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