Want a Life of Freedom? Here’s the Big Shift You Need!

You know you have to put a lot of thought and emphasis in it, and you really want to represent who you are through that, branding, and today JP is going to talk about that, and he’s going to show you some different tools, techniques and give you some great advice on how to make that big shift. So I am so excited to have you on the show today. You are amazing. I love what you’re doing.

I’ve always been intrigued with branding. I love you know, me and myself, I’m a very creative person, So I love branding. I love you know going in and really diving deep into something and really changing it around, and really thinking out of the box. Because when you do branding, you really have to think out of the box.

But you cannot too far out where people are going to lose you. So you really have to have that happy medium. So, you know, before we begin, tell everybody a little about yourself and what you do, and then we’ll get into how to make that big shift. Well, thank you very much.

JP: Yeah, I’m JP and we run a brand consulting firm here in Toronto look at in Toronto, but you also have an office in China and Shanghai, and we do work around the world, so there isn’t, I travel around two hundred thousand miles a year visiting clients, doing audits and analysis. So at the core of what we do is we’re transformational designers. We look at change management for brands. We look at how do we ensure that the brands are relevant and stay relevant because there’s so much happening in the marketplace, you know, from you know a shift and behavior consumers today, the young consumers, they’re not drinking liquor, they’re not driving cars, but doing other things and how to brands stay in touch and remain relevant with them.

And then you’ve got disruptive forces happening in the marketplace where they’re changing the business model. You know, think of hotels. You know, yeah, hotels dominated the travel industry, and now you’ve got Airbnb in a variety of other one of these time share and I’ll found the platforms that are eating away and becoming the largest hotel chains in the world. And so you’ve got these transformational, disruptive brands in the world, and so how do you remain relevant? And so we’ve been doing this for thirty five years helping companies and the listeners.

You probably touch one of the brands that we transform. If you go to a dairy queen girl and chill, if you go to a pizza hut cafe, if you’ve gone to Midas, you Pepsi, if you eat quicker products or Lays chips. We have had a touch and impacted those brands. And what’s important to understand is the dynamics and the model do we use to transform these brands.

Applies to large multinational corporations, it applies to mid sized companies, it applies to startups. It actually applies also to individuals who are looking at and maybe a career change. Maybe they’ve been downsized, or maybe they’re just frustrated with their current job and their career and they’re going, I need a change, I need to go somewhere. The same steps and the same process applied to all of these. Obviously, the investment level, the amount of research you would have to take for a large organization, the onboarding and the aligning, you know, and the large corporation with the different silos versus being an individual. Obviously those things add to the complexity of the process. But what’s important is the steps you take to transformation are the same, and the model we use applies to anything. 

SC: Right. I love that you know, when it comes to making the shift, what would you say are some important steps that people have to consider before they actually dive into it and start making those changes.

JP: It’s a great question. When you think of making a change, the first thing you need to do is determine what’s the destination. You know, what’s the endpoint.

We often say in our conversation in the discovery stage of the process, we think we have four questions that we ask and these apply to executives of large corporation and applied to individuals. And the first question, and these were developed by a gentleman by the name of Dan Sullivan who has a platform called Strategic Coach, which is incredible. I attended for three years his seminars and courts. They definitely helped define our processes and the way we look at things.

But the first question is if we got together and had a cup of coffee a year from now or maybe two years from now, and we were celebrating the success of the program, what you’ve achieved, what would that look like? What would you say, what would you how would you define that? And that is the vision and state if you like, And often we’ll say, draw some pictures of what that looks like, you know, go on Google and download it because and create an image of what that looks like. And I think that that’s really important. The second question is if we’re having a cup of coffee and you’re really discouraged that it failed, that you haven’t achieved what you wanted to do, What were the barriers that cause that to happen? What are the things that you had to overcome to cause that to happen? And I think that’s important to understand that as you go on this journey of transformation, that you’re gonna have some hurdles, you’re gonna have some barriers, you’re gonna have some issues you’re gonna have to overcome, and it’s good to understand those at the beginning of the journey. Question number three is what are the measurements that are telling you’re on the right track.

JP: It could be I want to work less hours, or I want to contribute socially to this cause or that cause, or it could be money. I want to make twice as much money. I want to own that beautiful home that I’ve always inspired to own. But it’s good to understand what are the metrics you’re going to evaluate to tell you that you’ve achieved your goals and that you’re on that track tours those goals.

And the last thing is what is you know two or three words that capture the end definition? What are the keywords you know? The words could be independence, it could be empowerment, it could be enjoyment. So what are the three key adjectives that you can help frame, Because you know, it’s funny how the mind works. The mind only remembers three things. The more you add to what you’re trying to remember the fewer things you remember.

And so if you could crystallize in your head, in your mind three key adjectives you want to accomplish, you’re going to accomplish them. Your mind works, it will drive your behavior to achieve those adjectives. And if you put pictures around that, right, the endstate is those have huge impact. Yeah, that’s so true.  

JP: So that’s how you start on the journey. The other, the other factor that I think is really important is to break down that journey into steps. We call it the trust ladder, right, and so we look at J.C. Penny. Why did it fail? Really smart people, it was the right strategy. You know, the ideas were right.

They did one thing wrong. They went from step one the step step t tent in one step and they lost the customer in the journey. Yeah, what are those steps that you need to take as part of that transformational journey and monitoring that you’re on the right track, because the reality is that your vision five years up from now, if you create a vision of who you are and what you stand for, the reality along that journey, you’re going to have to make some shifts that vision may change slightly. You may learn something that has a huge impact on the success of your vision that you may need to modify, right, And so having those steps allows you to do course correction, allows you to measure your progress.

I think of writing a book. Many of you are, probably your audience, are thinking, I’d love to write a book. I like to be an expert, you know, but writing a book is so complicated. I’ve written now three books.

I’m on my fourth book, and I had the same kind of challenge. Oh my god, writing a book. Time commitment of writing that book. You know, how do I write it? Right? It’s a simple formula.

It’s a trust ladder all over again. What’s your What is your point of view? One point of view that you want to communicate in the book? What is that one salient point? And make that salient point disruptive. It could be counterintuitive, it could be challenging the current paradigms. What is that one salient insight that you want to communicate your audience, and then deconstruct that insight into supporting factors of that insight and the reality.

Each one of those supporting factors is a segment of the book, right, right, you know, if the book has twenty chapters, right, twenty blogs, right, seventeen out of words to twenty four outer words. Halfway by doing that, you are halfway to completing your book. Yes, what you’re doing is filling in the gaps between the spaces, which is a lot easier once you’ve written twenty chapters or twenty blogs if you like, it’s a lot easier than to fill in where the missing and where the connecting points are happening. And that’s really how the a book.

And it’s about again the trust ladder are building no steps, breaking that vision of what what is that, what’s that key message you want to communicate in your book, and breaking it down into chapters, twenty chapters, fifteen chapters, and then writing one chapter or the other. Everybody can write. Everybody can write with you know, Grammarly and now chap GPT, everybody can write. Everybody can do great research.

Right, It’s about just breaking it down, realizing that there is a way of getting up to completing the book, and then ensuring that you have that that point of view at the end of the book. And I would say it’s the same thing in rebranding. When you think of rebranding We always start with what is what is your equities? What are the things that you own? So if you’re an individual, you know what’s your equities? What are the things that you’re really strong at that you could amplify as an expert company? What are the equities you own that no one else can take away from you? We call it the foundation. But what’s important to understand is where are the white spaces? And the white spaces are typically unmet consumer needs, right, they’re typically you take Tesla, what’s the unmet consumer I want to drive an environmentally friendly car, but I don’t want to spend one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

I want it to be accessible and you know inexpensive, right right? And so what is that need state that the current market is not fulfilling? And how do I create a product of service or a point of view that fills that need state? Because without that you just get lost. You know, there’s so much noise out there in the marketplace from a standpoint of social media, marketing, advertising, and even product offerings. There’s like thirty thousand new products launched every year. Only a handful of them succeed, right, because they’re lost in the So it’s really important to the understand what is that hidden need state? And I would say even go further, what is that emotional hidden the state? We call it the Blink Factor.

You know, forty percent of all communications visual, eighty percent is color and shape. That eighty nine percent of all decisions we make as human beings are emotionally driven. Buying a car, a house, meeting someone dating, They’re all emotionally driven factors and a huge impact on your life. And so understanding what is that emotional unmeant need that you could fulfill the marketplace right there as an author, an expert, or as a brand, that’s how we start the process.

SC: I love that. I love that you know what when when it comes to you know, starting the process, how do you how do you know when you’ve actually figured out you know, the right brand in you know, like you know you want to when you create a brand, you wanted to represent who you are. You know, what your company represents, and there’s so many ways of doing it. You have.

You know, some people use colors, you know, you know psychologically each color to represent certain things you can use, you know, you can want to be vibrant and really catch their attention and then send a message through the color. You know, some people want that tagline that people are never going to forget. You know, is there a specific way that certain things that people should focus on when they’re creating their brand and is there a way to do it? You know, do you focus on one thing or you try to do a combination of things when you’re trying to get the perfect brand to represent your product or service.

JP: Yeah, it’s a great question, and the reality is you have to be very careful because when you try and do too much, you at risk of fragmenting.

We call it brand incoherence, and the great brands have one thing in common. They’re very coherent. They’re very on point. No matter if you meet them on a social media, if you go to their stores, read them about them in the newspaper.

The message is always consistently delivered. So the first thing I would say is you have to have a clearly defined position. And that’s where you come back to the value proposition. What is your value proposition? What’s your brand personality? How do you define that brand? Those three words? What are those three words? What problem are you? What is a timeless challenge you’re solving? For your customers that when you solve for them, you’re actually solving for your brand.

Also, these are all questions that we ask because that is the point of the needle, pointing to where you want to go, and then everything else should line up to supporting that. And so your logo, if you’re all about like we did a healthcare brand, it’s all about compassion. You’re not gonna use black, use aspirational colors. You’re gonna use oranges and yellows and reds.

Right. Those are passion colors. Right. But if you’re, for example, a bank and you want to reinforce trust and trust is a really important factor, you’re not going to be using red.

You’re going to be using blues. Right. Understand that color has psychologically as a huge impact on delivering that message, but it starts with the position and the brand personality, and then you take that brand personality and you build your image around it. And so colors shapes.

Is that hard edge or is it soft? Like your logo, you know, find a balance in life that’s soft. You’re trying to be comforting in that message. You use a hand script of your name, that’s because you want to personalize that message. Right.

You could have had like the advisor with your name could have been in the same font, but then you would come across as being impersonal, right corporate and so understanding that the font you use, the colors you use. An icon or no icon, you know, what’s the role of the icon? Icons? Are people get excited, let’s an icon, But the reality is it takes forever. You’re not McDonald’s. It takes forever.

The bil equity in that icon unless big bucks for media dollars, creating an icon is actually a distraction to what you’re trying to communicate in building your brand, your name which is the important thing, which is a trademark, and then you build your we call branding big idea. You take that brand personal I that value proposition, you say, how do I personalize that? From a messaging standpoint storytelling, use storytelling, and that all leads to a coherent strategy that everything, all of those moments of truth that a brand that someone comes in touch with you are consistent. It could be you’re launching a podcast, you want to be an expert in something. What is that hidden need state? What value bringing to your audience based on that need state? What’s the personality and how you communicate, what’s a tone of the message, what’s the timeless challenge you’re overcoming, right, to help your audience overcome.

I think those are all really important things that irrespective if you’re an individual or a large corporation, you’re asking the same questions, right. I like that. Now. I also heard that it’s also good to rebrand yourself every few years, like maybe some people five six years, you know, they give themselves a certain amount of time, and you see a lot of companies they start to freshen up the look.

They may not go to the extreme. Some I’ve seen a couple of few companies go to the extreme and they put a whole new brand on, and then some of them kind of just like buff it up a little bit and freshen it up. Is it good to change the brand a little bit after so many years? Absolutely? You know again it’s you know, every brand faces one timeless challenge and that’s called relevancy, and so you constantly need to adjust your brand and so on one on one spectrum. Look at Walmart and Jaguar, right, those are right now, they’re hot in the media.

Yeah, just launch this refresh. They’ve just up their logo. They just made it a little bit more contemporary. Yeah, because the brand is not hurting, they’re doing really well.

They want to remain relevant and stay fresh. Yeah, and so they’re doing a brand refresh. I’ll call it minor evolutionary. Jaguar went revolution.

They changed their logo, the look of their car. They eliminated the Jaguar icon. Well, they said, there’s an icon there somewhere, and you see why didn’t they do that, Like why did they abandon all of their core equities, because that’s very dangerous, Like very few brands actually succeed on what Jaguar is doing. And I would venture that they’re going to be in trouble because they lost the cachet of their brand with their brand Sanders for But the reason they did it is that the younger consumers were not considering Jaguar when they’re considering luxury brands.

I am sure that in the study they did, reports said, you know, when I’m considering the luxury brands, I’m thinking of Lexus, BMW, you know, you know some other brands, you know, Rover, but I am not thinking of Jaguar anymore. Right, And so that relevancy is a big issue for Jaguar, and so they had to do a bold move to re engage their audience because the audience they’re having were dying and they were losing them and so the move they did. The danger there is that you’re disrupting your current customer base. So people who like the icon of the Jaguar, like the hood ornament, like the tradition that Jaguar represented, the you know, the British automotive tradition.

Yeah, they’re going to go somewhere else. They’re going to go to range Rover. They’re going to go over to a BMW or maybe a Cadillac. They’re going to make that shift because they’ve lost that emotional connection to what the brands stood four right.

I think a lot of times too is that you know, it’s mostly our age or older that could afford Jaguar. Younger generation hasn’t got to that point yet. And to be honest, they’re not driving cars, you know, that’s the other dilemma, right, they’re not, Yeah, their car sharing or or they’re taking mass transit, or they’re walking, or like in Toronto, they’re bicycling. You know, we have bicycles everywhere with the vision that more and more consumers, people are going to bicycle to work.

Now, I wouldn’t do that today. It’s minus you know twenty you wouldn’t go too far? No goal, No, no, not for me, but but yes so so degree? You know that’s that is by There are two dimensions we always look at. Number one is readiness for transformation? Is the individual ready to make that change? Is the company ready to make that change? Yeah? What is driving the need for change? And what I mean by readiness? Are they silo structured? Is the transformation being driven by one department not by the entire organization? You know what happens then they start fighting? Yeah, so are you ready to make that transformation? Is the organization or the individual ready to make that change? Number one? Because if you’re not, don’t start. Number two, which is also very important, is the degree of change.

So what are the market dynamics, you know, competitive set dynamics and even company culture dynamics, which is what happened to Jaguar. They’re necessitating you to make that change? And how bold to change? On that spectrum? From zero being no change, ten being a new brand? Where do you fill in that slider in change? And then you have to make a decision. As we learned many times in research, the organization may think we’re a three change, so not a lot of change. When you go to research, you find out customers want you to be a nine or a ten.

Yeah, and so be ready to make that bold change of customers are looking for change from the organization.

SC: Right right, there was actually what they had a couple of comedians making fun of Walmart and one or two other brands because they they did change their logo and their brand, but very slightly, you know. They they buffed up the color a little bit, you know, and and they changed the edges just as a tad but pretty much if you compared it to the other is almost identical, just a little bit a little bit more fresh, are you know?

JP: Yeah? Absolutely? And yeah, there was a lot on social media. The other one that I wrote a lot on is X that a changing name from Twitter to X.

Yeah, and changing a name of a brand is also very risky, Yeah, because you’re you’re basically creating confusion. Yeah. Still I still call it Twitter. I don’t know do you call it Twitter? Do you call it? I like it?

SC: I like Twitter much better and I like the bird I miss my little bird.

JP: You know what you’re missed about? It is a bird? Is an emotional connection, Yeah, the living thing, right, you can relate to living things. Yeah. X is very personal for a platform that talks about personalization of communication and sharing ideas and feelings, it’s the opposite. The brand is impersonal.

It’s cold, it’s technology. It’s not about community and connection and so you know brands. Yeah, yeah, he’s very wealthy. He can do whatever he wants.

Doesn’t mean he’s right. When I look at Twitter and I look at that black X, I feel coldness. I feel isolated. I feel that it just like one way or the high way kind of feeling.

When I look at Twitter and the blue, that blue little bird. I don’t know this something about the blue little bird, but it it it attaches to me. There’s something that it draws to me. And and there’s like I can feel a connection.

I’m not sure what why, but I guess the because maybe because I like birds, maybe because it’s the soft color, you know, maybe the blue, you know, but I I I kind of I draw much more to that and makes it much I feel much more friendly, you know when I when you look at that. But when I look at the X, I get very turned off, and I get it’s just it doesn’t it doesn’t feel like a friendly world that I want to go into. It kind of feels like the black tunnel, you know. And then the other one feels like you’re going into the heavens and it’s a free to be free be you know, do what you want, and you know, and and uh, it’s just a different kind of atmosphere.

I think, Well, you know, icons are we call visual metaphors, and icons a visual metaphor. So when you think of the blue bird, what do the visual metaphor is? Birds or social animals? They fly and flow. Uh, they make a lot of noise. Yeah, they chatter a lot of chatter.

Right. Well, isn’t that what twitter is all about? Yep? Yeah, what is X stand for? X? Is? It identifies a place, but it also says no, and X says failure. Right, you have a deckmark. And so psychologically, the visual metaphor of X is I’m I’m opposed to socializing, right, or it’s about me, It’s it’s not about the community.

And so visual metaphors really talk to the emotional connection as part of the blink factor that we talk about is is that shape color? Yeah, message more than all the words around it. And so ensure that you’re when you’re doing that transformation. You know, we talk about pick three or four images that capture the end state. Make sure one of those images captures the visual metaphor of that state, of that experience, because that then being the springboard for all your communication strategy.

SC: Yeah, yeah, so that’s true. And then on the flip side, you know, when you look at transformation, and we talked about barriers, the most common barriers are can be bucketed into two or three categories. Number one is a misalignment. Misalignment could be I’m not aligned to where the market’s going, but misaligned could be internally where we as a group are not aligned to where we want to go, right, And that misalignment is probably the biggest killer of transformation programs.

Either you’re not going to the right direction, or the people inside the organization, even if it’s only three or four people, yeah, going in the same direction, and that creates conflict and confusion and all of that capital of building that brand gets lost. Yes, you’re sending mixed messages to the marketplace, right, that’s number one Number two is followed by misalignment. The other barrier is that you’re solving the wrong problem right, or it’s a or you know what I mean by the wrong problem is you’re solving a problem that people don’t put a lot of value in, right, And very often that is a result of an organization that has technology. Oh look at we discovered this new thing.

How exciting that is. It’s unique, no one else has it. Let’s launch it. What they don’t do is say, okay, but what problem is this solving? Right? Right? And is the are consumers willing to pay for that problem to be solved? Right? And it may be the newest, best thing in the world, but if it’s not solving a problem, it’s not going to succeed in the marketplace.

And that’s number two on the list of and number three really is you know, we talked about a coherence. It’s it’s tied to the misalignment is you know, are we sending mixed messes to the marketplace? Are we fragmenting our marketing dollars? Are investment even for a startup, You’ve got so little to spend, you know, are you sending so many different miss messages that that investment that the message is actually not getting through, and those are the big barriers for transformation that either an individual organization needs to consider. I agree. Now, tell me a little about your services, the services that you and your company provides.

Yeah, so, so we have a range of services. It really starts with the circle of transformation. So we do positioning, We do consumer research, we do stakeholder research, so we do interviews, we do customer journey mapping, understand what are the friction points along that journey that customers have engaging with you. Awre they engaged socially, physically, what happens after they buy your product.

Yeah, that’s all part of what we call discovery and strategy, and we’ll do a lot of that work up front to create the foundation for understanding and learning because without that, again, it’s back to those barriers of transformation. We may be going in the wrong direction, we may be solving the wrong problem, and we may be fragmenting the message because we’re trying to accomplish too much. And so that’s the discovery stage, and we define those and we define the position personality. Then we do what a lot of branding firms do.

We do the identity. We’ll do the e commerce website, the website, the app create. We do a lot of retail stores, so we’ll create the physical environment. We’ll work with behavioral scientists.

We have two on staff on understanding how do we shift the behavior the employees benefit from these changes because it’s not you know a lot of a lot of what happens in transformation must happen internally and not externally. So how do we change the mindset of our employees. We do that that at least training, and then from there, obviously we do NPS scores and more research. We do the packaging for that retailer.

If let’s say they’re doing a like for Walmart their private label program, we did that for them. You know, how do we bring that brand to life at all those moments of truth. The other thing we do is advertising. We don’t buy media, we don’t place media.

We will develop the branding big idea, and then we’ll give that as a briefing document to the agency for execution. I love that. I love that. Now, if we had to look at today’s conversation and you really wanted to point out some important factors and what are some of the things you’d like to emphasize to the listeners today.

Well, the first thing is that change is good. You know, we all are resistance to change. We see it as a big obstacle, a big risk. But change is good.

You should always be looking at, you know, to your point relevancy of you know, do we adjust or do we change change your mind chain, But you should always be looking at if you’re someone working in a large corporation, how do I stay relevant either for my employer, for me, for for my life. You know, where are my unique selling proposition and my proof points in what makes me unique? Right? The first first thing is change should be welcomed. Point number two is change happens in steps. It never happens in bowl steps.

It happens in consecutive steps. But it has to start with a vision of the end goal that ain’t goal. May change dramatically as you go along that journey and realize some of these things that you thought were the end benefit just it. But if you break it down into steps, it will allow you the chance to adjust or reaffirmation that your vision that you had was accurate.

That’s number and number three, which is really important is whatever change management you do it has to be anchored in an emotional connection, and it has to be anchored in emotional values that people can live with because we’re you know, branding is about connecting proct services to people, right, right, And don’t forget the people part. That’s what’s driving the purchase. You know. I always say, people, you know, don’t vote with their pocketbooks.

They vote with their head and their heart. Yeah, up in the pocket book, but it starts with their head and their heart. And I think it’s important to understand that what you’re trying to accomplish as a brand as part of the transformation is building deeper emotional connections. Right.

JP: That’s so true. That’s one hundred percent true. Now, also tell me about three books that you’ve written. I want to hear a little about that.

Okay, So in twenty fifteen I wrote a book called The Belonging Experience, and really the book way ahead of our time, because today belonging is so critical that it’s the buzzword. I think twenty twenty four or twenty twenty five will be belonging. That’s really about the fact that we’re we just finished actually a big study on loneliness. The fact is we’re becoming more and more lonely.

Yeah, all of these social media and people criticize them for a lot of negative things, but the reality it’s not the platform, it’s us. Yeah, ime less human and we’re craving for that human connection, that sense of belonging. So I wrote that book, The Sense of Belonging, How brands could create communities. I like that.

The second book I wrote was Desire by Design, and that really talked about how do you move a brand from functional needs to emotional needs? How how do you become a random People desire They don’t want this brand, they don’t want to be on your show. They desire to be on your show. Right, there’s an emotional demand there that’s happening. And so I wrote that book just for COVID.

Also wrote a third book called The Business of Graphic Design. It was with I think seven other writers we wrote this book. It’s in its third reprint, so I think we’ve sold about thirty thousand books. Wow.

It’s geared to the design professional on how to run their practice. And then the fourth book, which is now at the publishers is called The Think Blink Manifesto, and it’s taking a lot of what I shared with you on this show and providing real world examples and principles and tennis for seven tenants to the think Blink and manifesto that we share that you can apply to as an individual or a large corporation. Oh. I love that.

SC: I love that. Where can people find these books? Amazon dot com? I love it? Or you can come to our website WWW. that’s SLD dot com and go under resource under insights tab and you’ll see publications. You’ll find all of our books there. Oh. I love it.

JP: And if people want to get in contact with you, is there a certain way they can contact you? Yeah, they can just email me at J. P. Lacroix That’s JPLACROIX@SLD.COM,  I love it. You can find me on LinkedIn.

SC: Oh, great, great, awesome.

I you know, this has been an amazing interview. I really enjoyed this. I I love branding, I love the whole concept of it. And you grave such great advice today.

I must say that you had a lot of great insight and a lot of great advice for people. Because it can be a very touchy, you know matter. You know you want to do it. You want to do it the right way, Like you said, you don’t want to be like J.C. Pennies and go from A to M and then all of a sudden you lose customers in between. You want to do it the right way. So you really gave some great advice on how to do it the right way today, and I really thank you so much for putting all this information out to the listeners and for being on the show.

Thank you very much, Thank you. You have a great day. We’ll do by now.