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Benton Crane on The Squatty Potty Unicorn and Engineering Virality with Humor [Episode 15]

Release Date: 01/30/2020

Trust is a Core Competency with SC JOHNSON CCO, Alan VanderMolen [Episode 42]

Damn Good Brands

After a 30-year agency career that included notable stints with Edelman and WE Communications, Alan VanderMolen was named Chief Communications Officer at CPG giant SC Johnson last year. Alan oversees both internal and external communications at SC Johnson, reporting to CEO Fisk Johnson. In this wide-ranging conversation with Lippe Taylor CEO Paul Dyer, Alan delves into the importance of trust, keys to revolutionizing sustainability practice, the importance of internal comms, advice for aspiring leaders, and what it was like joining SC Johnson at the height of the pandemic. Below...

Mondelēz CCO, Russ Dyer on Oreo’s Real-Time Content Engine, Inventing Your Own ESG Best Practices, and the Importance of Having a Hunger for Networking [Episode 41]

Damn Good Brands

Russell Dyer is the VP & Chief of Communications and Government Affairs at Mondelēz International. At Mondelēz, Russ is responsible for overseeing all external and internal communications as well as government affairs for Mondelēz International, a Fortune 150 and the global leader in snacking. Russ joined Mondelēz in 2015 as Vice President, Global Communications. In that role, he was responsible for all strategic communications plans, overseeing the worldwide external and internal communication activities. Prior to joining Mondelēz, Russ spent 2 years at Kraft, and before that, Russ...

Galderma VP & GM, June Risser [Episode 40]

Damn Good Brands

June Lee Risser is Vice President and General Manager for the U.S. Galderma Consumer Care business. A strategic business leader with a passion for building great brands, June is responsible for leading the U.S. commercial organization for the Galderma portfolio of consumer-available brands, including Cetaphil® Gentle Skin Care products, celebrating 70 years of healthy skin in 2017 and Differin® Gel,  first FDA-approved, prescription-strength retinoid acne treatment available over the counter since 2017. June joined Galderma in April 2016 as Vice President of Marketing...

LEVI’S Global Brand President, Jen Sey [Episode 39]

Damn Good Brands

Jen Sey is the global brand president at Levi Strauss & Co., where she is responsible for marketing, design, merchandising, and brand experience. Jen has been with Levi Strauss & Co. for more than 20 years, holding a variety of leadership positions within the Marketing, Strategy, and Ecommerce teams. In 2013, Jen became the global chief marketing officer for the Levi’s brand and in 2018 was appointed senior vice president and chief marketing officer, overseeing marketing for the company’s portfolio of brands. Jen has been named one of AdAge’s "Top 40 Marketers Under 40" one...

GODIVA CMO, John Galloway on Bringing Sweetness to 2020 [Episode 38]

Damn Good Brands

John Galloway is chief marketing and innovation officer for Godiva Chocolatier, the 95-year-old Belgian maker of premium chocolate. He joined the company in 2018 after nearly 30 years in marketing, including substantial stints at Pepsi and Hard Rock. John came to Godiva from a position as CEO of Beautiful Day, where he worked for three years to roll out the lifestyle brand startup. Before that he was with Hard Rock for eight years, handling advertising, public relations, loyalty, and social media for 208 hotels, casinos, cafés, and music venues in 75 countries. At PepsiCo, he...

Origin Stories: SWAG.com CEO Jeremy Parker on the Startup Hustle and Lessons Learned from Jessie Itzler & David Goggins [Episode 37]

Damn Good Brands

Jeremy Parker is the Co-founder and CEO of , the eCommerce platform for purchasing promotional materials that people actually want to keep. When you think of the promotional products industry, you might think of cheaply made items you pickup conferences only to eventually throw away. Or, god forbid you've ever had to order promotional products yourself and are aware of the nightmare of dealing with shipping inquiries, quality issues, and all manner of inconvenience synonymous with that industry. Swag.com's mission is to take the pain out of ordering customized promotional material with a focus...

Origin Stories: Jordan Silbert & Q Mixers [Episode 35]

Damn Good Brands

Jordan Silbert is the founder and CEO of Q Mixers, the premium brand of cocktail mixers. The idea for the company came to him while he was drinking top-shelf gin mixed with low-quality tonic with friends and asked himself, “Shouldn’t my tonic be as good as my gin?” Next came years of experimenting before he devised the perfect blend of high-quality ingredients and ample carbonation that became the brand’s first product. Today the Brooklyn-based company has 11 products and is distributed by all major retailers, in addition to being stocked by discerning bartenders everywhere. Before...

BAYER US SVP of Corporate Affairs, Ray Kerins, on Crisis Comms and the Role of Communications in the Covid Economy [Episode 34]

Damn Good Brands

“Let's all work together to find a solution, as opposed to figuring out what this person did wrong, or that person did wrong. There's no time for that anymore. People are dying, and we have to find the solutions.”

Mentor by J&J President, Diane Gomez Thinnes [Episode 33]

Damn Good Brands

Diane Gomez-Thinnes is Worldwide President at Mentor, one of the world’s biggest makers of breast implants for aesthetic and post-surgical breast reconstruction. Diane has been with the Johnson & Johnson company since 2016 and held the title of vice president for U.S. marketing and global strategic marketing before ascending to the role of president in 2019. Before Mentor, Diane was a marketing executive for medical device makers Ethicon and Cordis. She began her career as an engineer in the oil business and has a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Princeton as well as an M.B.A. from...

Best Buy CCO, Matt Furman on Storytelling Over Data & Championing Truth in the DEI Discussion [Episode 32]

Damn Good Brands

“If you speak to 100 people, a third of them didn't listen, a third of them forgot what you said, and the other third didn't believe you. And so you’ve got to speak, and you’ve got to speak again, and you’ve got to speak again.”

More Episodes

Here are some of the main takeaways from our visit with Benton Crane, CEO of Provo, Utah-based Harmon Brothers

The most effective creative collaboration starts in a vacuum. Benton said that, in every Harmon Brothers project, four writers are tasked with writing four separate initial scripts. No exchanging notes, no bouncing ideas off one another. Then, the client is called in for a reading of each script. Until this moment, no higher-up in the agency has seen or weighed in on any of them. This may seem like a huge risk, but the clients love it because it allows them to get involved in the raw creative process, resulting in a superior final product that is closer to what they want.

Test EVERYTHING. Every Harmon Brothers campaign undergoes an insane amount of testing - for instance, in the conceptualization stage, the initial script is read to 10 semi-disinterested people. During the reading, their facial reactions are captured on video. A scorecard referred to as a "laugh graph" correlates the reactions to each part of the script in order to gauge whether it's a hit or not.

Learn from Pixar and Create a Brain Trust. Harmon Brothers operates a Pixar-style creative brain trust that exists in part to identify weaknesses in the scripts, storyboards, and shoots. Benton said this group never overrides the agency’s quintet of creative directors but do offer constructive feedback for them to ponder and utilize (or not). This concept was borrowed from Pixar who operates similarly. You can learn more by reading Ed Catmull’s pinnacle book, CREATIVITY INC.

Learn REAL Storytelling Structures like Joseph Cambell’s Hero’s Journey. Benton spoke about how humans are hard-wired to pay lasting attention to stories featuring a protagonist on a quest. He said the hero’s journey formula is a solid-gold framework to approach ad-writing with because no other archetypal structure makes as deep of an emotional connection with audiences. However in Harmon Brothers ads, the viewers are positioned as the hero INSTEAD of the product. Instead, the product is the ‘sword that slays the dragon’ or the bridge stands between them and the prize—typically a happier life.

Thank you for listening to Damn Good Brands, don’t forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen!

Key Links

Benton Crane LinkedIn page

Harmon Brothers website

From Poop To Gold: The Marketing Magic of Harmon Brothers by Chris Jones

Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull

Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen by Donald Miller

Squatty Potty ad

Poo-Pourri ad

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Produced by Simpler Media

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