Alex Center links package design to fashion
How Brands Are Built
Today's guest is , a designer and podcaster and founder of the award-winning design and branding studio, . From 2006 to 2017, Center worked for the Coca-Cola Company, helping build the brands Vitaminwater, Powerade, and Smartwater. Today, he and the team at CENTER are building the next generation of icon brands partnering with companies like United Sodas of America, Apple, HEYWEAR, Good Light, New Balance, SIMULATE, and Liquid Death. One of the reasons I wanted to talk to Alex today is because his agency, CENTER, is a contributor to the new edition of . CENTER pitched in on the pages about...
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Designing Brand Identity book launch at Noise 13
How Brands Are Built
This episode of How Brands Are Built is a live recording of an April 25, 2024 book launch for Designing Brand Identity, sixth edition, held at in San Francisco. The event included a panel discussion moderated by Rob Goodman. The panelists were Dava Guthmiller, founder of Noise 13, Rob Meyerson co-author of the sixth edition of , and Robin Goffman, creative director for the book. The discussion includes thoughts on rebranding, trends in branding, and how Rob and Robin first got involved with Alina Wheeler (the creator and author of Designing Brand Identity, who passed away in December, 2023)....
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The Brand Names Report: A walkthrough and summary
How Brands Are Built
Back in February of this year, I released the first Brand Names Report, an analysis of polling data on brand names from Brand New, the leading brand identity review site edited and written by Armin Vit. From July 2020 to June 2023, visitors to Brand New cast a total of 22,769 votes across 131 brand names, rating each as Great, Fine, or Bad. These polls are the only easily available opinion data on brand names that I'm aware of. And while the data is far from perfect (I'll walk through some weaknesses on this episode), I wanted to see whether it could tell us anything useful about which...
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Fabian Geyrhalter builds and launches successful brands
How Brands Are Built
Rob Meyerson and Fabian Geyrhalter discuss brand strategy's balance of innovation and foundational rules, touching on brand creation challenges and successful launches in the evolving marketing landscape. Today’s episode is special. It's an edited version of a LinkedIn livestream chat with Fabian Geyrhalter, founder and principal at FINIEN, "a purposefully small consultancy based in Los Angeles." Fabian is a brand strategist and creative director and host of the Hitting the Mark podcast. He's also written several best-selling books, including How to Launch a Brand and The Brand Therapy Book....
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Rob Goodman uses content to drive business outcomes
How Brands Are Built
Today's guest is Rob Goodman. Rob specializes in content strategy and creative content production, with experience at companies like Google, Wix, and Webflow. He's delivered award-winning branded content, content strategies, and comprehensive content calendars for these companies and other clients, helping brands transform into publishers built for engaging today's audiences. Rob also hosts his own podcast, Making Ways, about the intersection of art and music. He interviews bands, like Melvins and Nada Surf, and the visual artists they collaborate with to create album art, music videos, and...
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Season four wrap-up: How brands (and branding professionals) can do good
How Brands Are Built
It's the summer of 2021—one year since the . And if you’re wondering what that has to do with the season-four wrap-up of a podcast about branding, let me tell you: in early 2020 I had a plan for season four of How Brands Are Built. But in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and protests around the world, my plan changed a bit. 2020 was already a pretty awful year for most people, and it just seemed to be getting worse and worse. So I started thinking about whether there was a way I could use this little platform of mine to do some good—or at least talk about something positive. That...
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Diego Segura goes through the doors that open
How Brands Are Built
Diego Segura is a design apprentice at , an independent strategy and brand experience design company with offices in New York City and San Francisco. In this episode, Diego describes how he discovered graphic design, his decision to drop out of high school, and what it's like being an apprentice at a prestigious branding and design company. This is the second part of a two-part series; the episode begins with a continuation of . Brian shares his side of Diego's story—how Diego first got in touch, how he became a full-time employee, and why, on one of their early days together, Brian...
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Alina Wheeler has a doppelgänger named Blake Deutsch
How Brands Are Built
Today’s guest is Alina Wheeler, best known as the author of now in its fifth edition. One of my favorite memories of this book is seeing it on a desk when I arrived to my first day on the job at , where I worked in Shanghai. I already knew the book, but seeing it in use, so far from home—that's when I really understood how influential of a book it is. In fact, it's been translated into Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese, French, and other languages—and it's used by brand, marketing, and design teams, undergraduate and graduate students, and brand and business consultancies all...
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Nirm Shanbhag sees brand architecture from the consumer's perspective
How Brands Are Built
Nirm Shanbhag is the Chief Strategy Officer of USA, an international creative company. He’s also my old boss. Back in 2012, he was running the San Francisco office of Interbrand, and he hired me as Director of Verbal Identity. Before Interbrand, Nirm earned his MBA from London Business School and worked in advertising, at firms like Mullen and McCann. He also ran his own, independent agency, , for about six years between his roles at Interbrand and Sid Lee. Nirm and I have worked together quite a bit—first at Interbrand, then as independent consultants. We’ve been...
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Emily Heyward builds brands that inspire obsession
How Brands Are Built
Emily Heyward is co-founder and and Chief Brand Officer at , the leading brand company for startups and new ventures. Red Antler is the branding firm behind brands like Casper, Allbirds, Keeps, and Burrow. They also work with established brands like American Express, HBO, Google, and Gap. Emily was named among the Most Important Entrepreneurs of the Decade by Inc. Magazine, and has also been recognized as a Top Female Founder by Inc. and one of Entrepreneur's Most Powerful Women of 2019. She's also the author of a new book, . I asked Emily what makes Red Antler different from other...
info_outlineAna Andjelic is a strategy executive with wide-ranging experience on the agency and client sides. Recent roles include Chief Brand Officer at fashion retailer Rebecca Minkoff and SVP, Global Strategy Director at Havas LuxHub. Past agency experience includes time at Droga5, HUGE, The Barbarian Group, and Razorfish.
Ana also has a PhD in sociology and has published dozens of articles about luxury and fashion branding, the experience economy, social influence, content strategy, and more. Her writing has been published in The Guardian, Fast Company, AdAge, Adweek, LeanLuxe, Luxury Daily, Glossy, Campaign, and Form Design Magazine.
In 2018, she was listed by Forbes as one of the top 50 Chief Marketers in 2018 who "serve as models of a new, emerging and disruptive chief marketer." She's been recognized as one of the "Luxury Women to Watch" by Luxury Daily and one of the top 10 digital strategists by The Guardian.
I kicked things off by asking Ana about her PhD-why she chose to pursue it and how it's impacted her career. Then we talked about a term she writes about "social currency." I asked what it means and why it's important. Next, we talked about how she defines "brand experience" and what brands should do to create compelling brand experiences and social influence.
Ana says, "These days, the strength of the brand is how successfully it can defy the strength of the algorithm." To do so, she suggests brands must exhibit at least one of her 4 Cs of the modern brand:
- Community
- Content
- Curation
- Collaborations
Throughout the interview, Ana lists quite a few brands she's interested in because they're "trying something new," including GOOP, Casper, Net-a-Porter, The Upper House (a luxury hotel in Hong Kong), Rapha (cycling clothing and accessories), Tracksmith (running gear), Away (luggage), Glossier, and MUJI.
Wrapping up the conversation, I asked Ana for book recommendations. She likes Value Proposition Design (by the authors of Business Model Generation), This is Service Design Thinking, and a series called Brand. Balance., which she describes as "little booklets [that explore] what iconic brands have done right ... a deep dive into the brand aesthetics, identity, and then the brand expression." She also recommends books in the field of behavioral economics, such as those by Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, and Bruno Latour.
Lastly, Ana offered some advice to young and/or junior people in branding and marketing:
"I overall believe that people need to think more. They're too trusting of ideas-they just adopt ideas without critical thinking. Whatever can inspire junior people, or advance their critical thinking ... I would advise that. And then, ... I cannot underscore [enough] the importance of observation and being very aware that one's own perspective is limited. So, that means travel, expose yourself to other cultures, observe how people behave, observe obstacles, how they overcome obstacles in their behavior, and just be very open."
To learn more about Ana, visit her website or find her on Medium, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.