Well, June is here, so I guess it's…summer?! For those of us wrapping up the school year with our kids, it's a frenzied period of field trips, sports days, and an ungodly amount of artwork being sent home.
At Cider HQ, we're also transitioning off of a long-term, embedded project with a certain luxury e-commerce resale platform, and getting back in our consulting zone. We have some exciting projects on the horizon, and lots of new partnerships to activate!
In this issue of The Pour, we'll be reflecting on the value of external expertise in positioning a company, sharing a small love letter to ‘agency people’, spotlighting a new source for small business photography & collaboration, and hearing from a brand leader about the importance of listening to your customers. I hope you enjoy it!
Cheers,
Laura
I recently came across a LinkedIn post that suggested it's a waste of money to hire an outside agency until you've hammered out the foundational strategic elements of your company's brand. You know, questions like, “Why do we exist?” and “If our brand were a person, how would they act at a dinner party?”
While of course I'd agree that any creative exploration should wait until that strategy work is completed, I felt (and feel!) the need to pipe up in favor of an outsider's value in guiding an organization towards a truly robust brand strategy.
Clients of mine have, for years, had to listen to me drop my favorite home-grown aphorism:
Trying to position your own company is like trying to deliver your own baby.
It just doesn't work; you can't get the right angle.
While it makes some folks* squirm, I stand by it. Building out a brand strategy requires a mix of perspective, objectivity, and freedom you just can't have when you're a company employee. Here are three things an outsider can do that an insider can't:
Gather unfiltered opinions. Stakeholder interviews can be a bit like therapy: a safe space to share. Folks are free to be candid in a way they never could when talking to a colleague. That honesty, collected at scale, from an impartial party, is gold dust.
Say the quiet part out loud. While diplomacy and professionalism are vital, a consultant is ultimately paid for her expertise, and as a result is both allowed – and I'd argue obligated – to tell it like it is. Sometimes, this involves surfacing uncomfortable truths, or spotlighting new and gnarly problems. Removing dynamics like reporting lines, political alliances, and longstanding history can be really helpful here.
Bring in unexpected inspiration. When you've gone through a brand development process with dozens and dozens of clients, patterns start to emerge, sometimes in the least expected places. In the past year alone, I've drawn inspiration from work in insurance to inform an ad tech project, and drawn from luxury fashion to inform a territory for kids' yogurt. It's hard to zoom out far enough from inside a single company or industry.
*The men. It's always the men.
Launching a business is hard. So is standing out in our increasingly visual world with imagery that can truly differentiate your offer (without going bankrupt in your first month!). The Collab Collective is a young business in Washington, DC that's taking on this challenge by bringing early-stage brands together to create strategic content that helps them all grow. Part content photography studio, part networking group, part partnerships broker, TCC has a really interesting and take on what it can look like to go to market these days, especially for female-founded businesses.
And pro tip? Claire takes a mean headshot! Be sure to sign up for their headshot sessions - just check out my new LinkedIn snap for my testimonial…
Do you know someone who might enjoy reading The Pour? Please pass it along.
