Mark Vandegrift 
Welcome to another season of the Brand Shorthand podcast. I'm your host, Mark Vandegrift. And with me as always is our spectacular strategist, Lorraine Kessler. How you doing, Lorraine?

Lorraine Kessler 
Yeah, I'm not feeling so spectacular today.

Mark Vandegrift 
Oh come on. Just because we have 15 inches of snow on the way, right?

Lorraine Kessler 
Well, Sunday's gonna be bad, but that's all right. We're fine.

Mark Vandegrift 
Well, we made it to season four and that's a pretty rare accomplishment in the world of podcasting. Lindsey did a search on Google and said that those that reach the 100 episode milestone is only 4 % of all podcasts.

Lorraine Kessler
Oh my gosh. 

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, so we're only five away after this episode.

Lorraine Kessler
Okay, well, when we do our true crime thing and I tell all of my podcasters that I'm part of a community that were that they're mentioned on Brand Shorthand that could bump our numbers.

Mark Vandegrift
Should I tell everyone to start subscribing now before we get to that episode?

Lorraine Kessler 
Yes, yes. Subscribe now, like, share, please, please. We're desperate. We're desperate.

Mark Vandegrift
Yep. Tell your friends, all of that. Good. Well, I thought the way we kick off this season would be to catch everyone up on things that have happened over the last three months because we haven't been around for November, December, or January. So there were a few updates sent your way that we thought maybe we'd talk about, but I'm kind of giving you carte blanche guidance here, you pick what you'd like to talk about. I mean, we have things like Santa meets leading edge AI, leaders that are acting like leaders like Coke. What do you want to talk about today?

Lorraine Kessler 
Well, let's talk about that. That was a pretty interesting debut by Coca-Cola of an AI spot over the holidays that was very much about Santa meeting AI, classic Santa meeting classic AI. And it is acting like a leader. They're leading edge in terms of how they're presenting the brand on the technology to the market. I just found it interesting that in looking at social that there was this backlash, but it was mainly from kind of pundits because consumers really, the scoring for consumers of that ad, and I hope we're gonna show that to are viewers, okay. The scoring for that was very, very high on consumers and I think it just proves a very simple point about marketing. The audiences don't spend time thinking about your brand and how the commercial was created and behind the tech, they just look at the storytelling. I mean, are you delivering a story that's of value, that engages them, that they take something away emotional? And this definitely does. So they don't think about brands the way we do in the biz. And I think it's just something, it's age old advice, as old as Coca-Cola and Santa as icons together is that you bore them with your story, you're going to lose them. And if you, great storytelling always wins, no matter the contrivances, no matter how you got to that. So classic Coke, classic holiday sentimental story, I think that's a win.

Mark Vandegrift 
Well, it must've been good enough because they did a second one that way and that's, you know, you got the first one out there. You hear all the blah, blah, blah. Oh, I can't believe this was created by AI. It's horrible. But you know, but it always represents about that much of our, of those that ever consumed any advertisements. Most people, when I said, oh they have another AI, generated commercial out. They were like, what do you mean? So, to your point, people don't know how things are created or how they're produced or whatever it is.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah. And AI, and I think you've said this many times, it's just a tool. It's no different than animation, right? Or special effects. It's a tool. The creativity is in how the story was crafted. It's not like AI produces itself, right? Like, we wanted the spot and AI does it for you. No, there's real creative people behind the scenes who are working with the tool to create this story.

Mark Vandegrift
Right, yep. Good. Well, we have another one. Say goodbye to Holiday. Billy Joel, he's my man. Hey, he's getting better, by the way. You knew he fell. 

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, no I didn't know that.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, and had all that. So I'm excited because if there's any old guy, if you want to call him that, that I would go still see in concert, it's Billy.

Lorraine Kessler 
Yeah, did you watch the documentary on him? Yeah, I thought it was really good.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yeah. It was well done. I was impressed.

Lorraine Kessler 
I thought it was very real. It was very authentic and real and I enjoyed it a lot. The story, the way it was spun out was good.

Mark Vandegrift 
Do you ever listen to his SiriusXM channel that he has on every so often?

Lorraine Kessler 
I've caught glimpses of that. I haven't really delved into it.

Mark Vandegrift
He's to me, he's just a master storyteller. I mean, you look at his lyrics and that's what sets him apart is, you know, of course his, his melodies and everything else are just amazing. And being a pianist myself, I love to hear that part of it, but just what an incredible storyteller he is. I'm surprised he hasn't gotten involved more in the advertising realm.

Lorraine Kessler 
Yeah, I always thought a really cool thing would when he did Italian Restaurant would be to make that make a Broadway play with his songs as a backdrop. And you'd have to write a script of some sort. But I just thought, God, his songs are just so able to be put into the Broadway genre, I guess. Yeah.

Mark Vandegrift 
Easily. I mean, if you can do it with Abba, you can do it with Billy Joel.

Lorraine Kessler 
Yeah, so anyway it is goodbye not only to holiday but goodbye to Hollywood, With the next story you asked me to think about and I do want to talk about the pairing of two pioneering innovators, Warner Brothers Discovery with Netflix, right? I mean this is big news, $72 billion in terms of the purchase. But, you know, Warner Brothers has this legacy, this history as being one of the big five of the golden age of movies along with, I think, let's see if I can get them all. There's Paramount, there's Columbia, there was Republic, MGM, yes, and Warner. I can't believe Republic is even in this list. That was owned once by the O'Neils who owned General Tire. I don't know if you knew that at one time.

Mark Vandegrift 
No, I didn't. Yeah. And you don't hear that name much anymore. Republic, not in the area of entertainment.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, I thought you meant O'Neill's.

Mark Vandegrift
O'Neils, all I knew about O'Neill's was it was a retail.

Lorraine Kessler
Department store. That was yeah, that was part of I think that was part of the same family but I mean this is an impressive portfolio blending Warner's impressive portfolio from you know legacy movie hits like Citizen Kane to more newer things that they they really brought through HBO to, and HBO, I mean people maybe don't remember is home box office. It was the first idea that you don't have to go to the cinema and you don't have to have date night to watch a quality movie at home. And it was, as I recall as a kid, it was the first pay for TV stations. I remember my father saying, this will never catch on. And look at us today. This will never catch on.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yeah, never. That's so funny. At home box office. I'm like, yeah, that's what that stands for. I like totally forgot, but that was great positioning, wasn't it?

Lorraine Kessler 
yeah, it was perfect positioning and luckily they didn't just start with HBO. People gave that to them, but people in the early days understood what they were trying to market was we are just like horseless carriage, first automobile. We are the home box office. You don't have to go to the box office to see movies. So that was really revolutionary. And so you have that great bulk of work both from HBO and Warner Brothers history, combining with Netflix, you know, who's got these big hits like Stranger Things, and has, I think, been known for some of its other breakthroughs, products, or programs. And then there's also, in this whole portfolio, news and sports, because there's CNN and TNT and Discovery Plus. So it's a pretty big offering. And I was real interested to see that Ted Sarandos, the co-CEO of Netflix, said, our mission, which is our purpose, has always been to entertain the world. I always think that's kind of funny. It sounds grandiose, but no less grandiose than Jeff Bezos saying, the Amazon of everything, right? We're going to sell everything. I think there's a lot of good things to say about this. It's a very key strategic alignment because it's more of everything. It's more choice for the viewing segments, whether you're older and you love older movies, whether you want to catch the hottest new things, whether you're a sports watcher, whether you're a news junkie. So there's more resources now for creating this content. Right? And that's, it's all about the velocity and the quality of the content you can create. And, you know, kudos to Peter Drucker. It's a way of bringing more customers in the funnel. Yeah, they're going to be serving more customer segments or personas, people who watch for different reasons. But that's how you bring more customers in the funnel and more reasons for subscribers to stick because just, I know that people churn, you know, you can cancel anytime a lot of these stations. And so I'm less likely to churn if something's up and coming or I'm finding the content that pleases me more. So I think that's all really good. What could possibly go wrong?

Mark Vandegrift 
Well, than being bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger until you finally break.

Lorraine Kessler
I think something. Yeah, I think what could go wrong and often does is size. Size and the unwieldiness and if they allow ego to get in the way. And things like who's going to have more of the sway or power over the production of different things? Like who's going to have more say? And you know, I just point to like when Ford sold. Well, when rather Jaguar sold Ford, Jaguar sold its brand to Ford, Ford made all Jaguars look like Fords. And I just, I'm hoping that kind of mediocrity, that kind of blending doesn't happen. But they understand the distinct audiences they're serving, because there's many of them now. And they are able to not only produce content that pleases them and it's authentic, but that they market it effectively against those signals. So we'll see. It's a lot to handle.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah. Well, you mentioned Stranger Things. Can you believe the collab's going on right now? I mean, Lego and Pandora and even Eggo Waffle and Doritos and Gatorade and Spotify. I mean, you talk about having Stranger Things show up everywhere. What do you think of it?

Lorraine Kessler 
Well, I think it's the marketing of series and film kind of on steroids, right? So you have a phenomena in Stranger Things. And so this co-branding with these products, and the products you named are kind of legacy products. They've been around for a while. So while they have a great brand equity, what they kind of lack, I would say, is hotness. So you take a hot show like Stranger Things and you align your legacy brand where people can get bored pretty easily what's new and different. And you put it with a hot property. And I think there's some virtuous sharing that goes on. so I think there's nothing bad with this. I think it's smart for the brands that you mentioned and it's also smart for the shows because it gives them all that extra exposure to audiences that they probably couldn't reach in any other way quite that way. So I think that's pretty good.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yeah. Well, the other one that did a lot was Wicked. And I'm not even sure if that, this, is it the second half of the movie or the second movie of, I don't know, whatever it was, it was like second half of the story of the entire story. You know, releasing it a year after the first, which we saw the first one and thought, Oh this has potential, but it was just such a weird like, cut it in half and then come back a year later and watch it. And my wife and I have yet to see it. We just, I don't know, the interest isn't there. And I thought I'd be more interested in going to see it. Did you get to see it yet?

Lorraine Kessler 
No, and it's not for lack of trying, that interest isn't there because Universal produced Wicked is a sister company of NBC. And NBC, particularly the Today Show, like beat this horse to death. I mean, it's like every time you tuned in to Today Show, they're featuring the actresses. They're featuring someone singing something from Wicked. They're cutting to it behind the scenes at Wicked They had some of their cast. it It frankly turned me off where I don't even want to see the movie. So I don't know if that other people have that, you know, personality maybe I have. But but it's like the last movie in the world I want to see because it was shameless that the hawking of this film and then when I read the reviews, the reviews were very like, meh, you know, kind of what you're saying, the first one, it was kind of left them flat, wasn't as good as the Broadway. And then you have to watch the second one. And why would you watch the second one if you weren't thrilled with the first one? So I tell you, it's not for not trying because they beat that drum to death. I mean.

Mark Vandegrift
When you talk about collabs, they had Dunkin, they had Dawn, Cascade, Secret Deodorant, Swiffer, Gain. I think some water bottles did it, Yeti and Owala maybe. Lego, Pillsbury cookies, Crocs. 

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah. I didn't see that.

Mark Vandegrift
I think there's a Monopoly board game with it, an UNO game. I mean, like, holy cow, Wicked's everywhere. And what's that gonna be like in about I don't know, six months.

Lorraine Kessler 
Well, there's a thing to be said for over exposure. I mean, right? It can reach a point where I'm no longer interested. And I'd be interested if any viewers feel that way or feel like it was overdone.

Mark Vandegrift 
Well, I saw, going back to Stranger Things, I saw a lot of comments that they were disappointed in the last episode.

Lorraine Kessler 
Yeah. I would say it started bright and it ended, mmm yeah, meh.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah. So then you think, well, what does that do for my brand? Like if I were a brand manager and said, eh that really fell flat, that didn't help me a whole lot. I'd be asking maybe for some money back or something. I don't know.

Lorraine Kessler 
Well, I think people like Seinfeld who quit when they were ahead, think that's the way to do it. I think you peek and you quit and you maybe, because people want more, you wait a decade or so before you come back. But I think that franchise, I think the worst thing Stranger Things would do is come back with another year or episode or season. I think that would be wrong. I think they need to take a break now.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, we have the brand of the year that's been announced by someone that you might not realize even ever created a brand of the year. Guess who it was? Yelp. 

Lorraine Kessler 
Well, I know because Lindsey told me. 

Mark Vandegrift
So Yelp as a brand of the year called Dave's Hot Chicken. Have you eaten at Dave's Hot Chicken?

Lorraine Kessler 
Yeah. I have not had it. Have you? It's right. It's right here in the venue.

Mark Vandegrift 
It's right down the road. I ate there once and I won't eat there again.

Lorraine Kessler 
okay.

Mark Vandegrift 
I was, but let me just qualify that for our listeners because I know we have a lot of listeners that are big Cane's fans and I'm not a Cane's fan. I'm not a Bojangles fan. So like all of those are sorry I'm just not a fan. I love Chick-fil-A. I sorta kinda like KFC. Okay. I'm one of those.

Lorraine Kessler 
Yeah. One of the few.

Mark Vandegrift 
One of the few, maybe, and then maybe a few other places, right?

Lorraine Kessler
How about Culver's? Culver's has really good chicken fingers.

Mark Vandegrift 
No. Thank you. 

Lorraine Kessler
Oh no, really.

Mark Vandegrift 
I won't even that's another place I stay away from. I'm I just cannot. I don't know. It must have been a bad first impression, but holy cow. Get me far away from Culver's. 

Lorraine Kessler 
Oh really? I like Culver's.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yeah, not a fan, so anyhow, but you know, that's why we're allowed different tastes. I'm sure that's why all these different chicken places exist, because they're. 

Lorraine Kessler 
Right. Well, that's why you're allowed your bad taste and I have good taste. 

Mark Vandegrift
We usually like the same things though. We've always said that

Lorraine Kessler 
I know we do. That's interesting. That's interesting. We usually do. 

Mark Vandegrift
So what do you think about Dave's Hot Chicken?

Lorraine Kessler 
Well, I watched all these little TikTok videos that seem to pop up. First of all, it's crazy. Have you watched these with first of all there's these TikTok videos of them just slamming their mouth full, sauce squirting out everywhere. And one of the sandwiches has, I think, macaroni and cheese right in it, you know? And they're just eating like they're in some sort of speed eating contest. But the food does look, it looks incredibly like, I want that, but it's really bad for it. It looks like if you really want bad food right now, like bad for you, healthy-wise, not bad tasting, then dog-gonic go to Dave's Hot Chicken. And so I'm going to have to try it just to, I'll have to do it after I work out because I'm sure it'll probably give me my second heart attack and I don't really need that, but that's what it looks like.

Mark Vandegrift
I just don't want you to be disappointed Lorraine. I know how you are when you get built up on something and then you're disappointed. You get overly disappointed. So I'm just warning you. I think you're going to be overly disappointed, which may mean it put you over the edge. I don't know. Well, of bad recipes, did you know Lay's chips has bad recipes? Did you hear about that move?

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, they just told you, Hey...

Mark Vandegrift 
Our recipe stunk.

Lorraine Kessler
Their recipes stunk. We're really fixing it. What? I thought it was too interesting that they said, hey, people don't know that lays are made from real farm-grown potatoes. What do they think people think they're made of? Like, is it Bill Gates' synthetic potatoes? I'm like, what? Like, what? Where did you come up with that insight that people don't know potato chips are made from real farm-grown real potatoes? I didn't even know there was a faux potato, right?

Mark Vandegrift 
I didn't either. And what I thought at first was they were going for the Domino's play where Domino's had to fix their recipe because everyone thought their recipe was so bad. But this isn't the same thing. This is about ingredients. You know, like maybe you should have taken the page out of Papa John's and, you know, real ingredients instead of fresh ingredients or something like that.

Lorraine Kessler
They're removing the artificial flavors. Well, of course, this is because of Robert Kennedy Jr. pushing on them to get rid of the artificial flavors and colors. So the way that they spun the story was, in my opinion, is kind of a diversion. You always like doing that diversion thing. People were doing that. Look over here. Look over here. Is that, we're going to do a whole campaign telling people that our potatoes are made from our potato chips are made from real farm-grown potatoes and by real people, not AI, delivering real joy. Okay, so snark at that. But I think that was all a cover for the fact that they're removing these artificial flavors that they've been putting in, and colors, for how many years just to make sure that all of us light up When we're in our caskets. And by the way, somebody told me, who told me this? I think it was someone who's in the health field. Yes, someone in the health field who was an operating nurse who works for a company that writes guidelines for nurses. Some research has just shown that people, that more direct funeral home directors are saying that they need to use less embalming fluid today because people come pre-preserved from all the food we're eating. Yeah, like we're eating so many preservatives that, yes, we need to verify this.

Mark Vandegrift 
What? So less formaldehyde when we die?

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, you just, so there's a benefit. Eat Lays. Eat the bad stuff.

Mark Vandegrift 
Ha ha! What if you get cremated? Do you burn faster or slower? Or is there some kind of plastic smell when you burn?

Lorraine Kessler
I don't know, you just, you... Well, they ask people to step back so they don't inhale the plasticizers. But I mean, I was just like, you are kidding me. And he's like, no, we're like looking into this right now. I'm like, that's insane. But yeah, so eat more lays the regular way and save on funeral costs. Don't use that much less embalming fluid. Pass on to your children.

Mark Vandegrift 
Well, we could talk about a lot of different things. Let's end with one more because I think you did some test driving of some Honda vehicles and Honda came out with a new logo and was just wondering your thoughts. Cause we've talked logo changes in the past and we usually laugh about them because it costs 50 million to do the logo change and they rotate it or they give it a little different this or that. What's your thought on it? yeah.

Lorraine Kessler 
Yeah, the Verizon, the Verizon, yeah, that was quite a big, and actually it went the wrong way in my opinion. Hey, I think this is an improvement. They test-drive, they test-drove this in their EV vehicles. It's not just as simpler. I always argue, who said you need to make the logo simpler? But in this case, they haven't lost the identity. You look at that and you know it's Honda and it's more of an evolution than a radical change. And I think it's strong, you know, and all that. But, you know, it doesn't mean anything. It's about, we're, I'm glad I didn't read, maybe you did, at least Honda didn't come out with some highfalutin BS about dressed up as kind of an elite explanation, like we're all idiots. As to what this logo symbolizes and means and why it needed to be changed and like, oh my God. So good for them. They didn't do that. I think they kept it simple. The identity is clear. They stripped away what I would call non-essential for a cleaner look. And I still recognize it as Honda. And I think most people will recognize it as Honda and not even think a nanosecond that they changed their logo. And so.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yeah. Well, that's a subtle thing. I think new website, people always want to say, oh we have a new website. No, just launch the website and let people consume it. And don't worry about announcing that you have a new website. I'm kind of the same way with logo adjustments. Just let consumers take it in. And if someone happens to go, oh they changed the logo, I guess I never realized that. That's kind of in my, in my world, I think that's a win. Because you and I know design, the best design tweaks are ones that are subconsciously received until someone points them out. And it's good feeling. Yeah.

Lorraine Kessler 
Right. And then I said, yeah. So, and most times where people are going to see this logo the most is on the vehicle. Most times. So they consume it almost subconsciously, like a billboard before they realize, oh they did change their logo when they see collateral or whatever, if ever. So yeah, it's a good change. I just don't think it means a lot in terms of brand meaning. And it only means something in terms of aesthetics and identity. It's small. You know, one of the things I brought up to a class I'm teaching at Walsh University, which I think just occurred to me, it was kind of interesting because words matter. When I started in the business in 1981, no one even used the word branding ever. Lindsey, do you remember when you started? Wasn't branding used all the time? Talked about branding, right? Okay, all right. When I started, we didn't call it branding. And listen to Bob Hoffman on this too. We called it marketing. It was just damn good marketing, right? You market your name, you market your logo, use your logo as an identifier, you market well, you find a way to reach the customer, you have an engaging story. These are all the basics, right? But interestingly, when I had such a hard time with a lot of my business to business clients convincing them they needed to spend on marketing. Never had a problem telling them they had to spend on branding. The change of the word created a different mindset. Because marketing in the mind, I think you're not creating something. It's something you're doing. But if you say branding, people realize I'm creating a brand, a thing. It has tangibility. And I just think, I know that's kind of off the skew by what we're saying, but that logo is part of the branding. So you're creating a brand, part of it is the identifier, more important is the meaning of what that company stands for. But I think that shift in language was needed and very important.

Mark Vandegrift 
That's good. Good way to end today's episode. Thanks for being here to kick off season number four and I think episode like number 95 or something close to that. So let's wrap up the episode today. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks to our listeners for joining us in the new year and the new season. Don't forget to like, share and subscribe, subscribe and subscribe some more. And until next time have an amazing day.