Brand Builder

The Owl's Brew story is a case study in brand building, with all of its challenges and triumphs, its strategy and its serendipity. But I'd argue that you can actually sum up the Owl's Brew story with two words - No compromise.

A lot of brands looking to scale focus on optimizing and growing in the market they’re already in. But at a certain point, you’ve got to think bigger. In order to achieve scale, you have to break into new markets. And that’s what this week’s episode is all about. Alejandro Restrepo is the co-founder and COO of Ekoa, and he’s embarking on the ultimate market breakthrough - taking a successful suite of brands in Brazil and entering the U.S.

This week on Brand Builder, we hear from Oliver Bogner, the CEO and founder of brandable. Brandable is a CPG platform focused on innovating, curating and creating brands that enable people to live their best lives. Think of it almost like an entertainment studio, but for CPG brands. Oliver has a big, audacious vision for brandable: he wants to become the “Millennial Unilever,” with a suite of brands that will be around for the next hundred years.

What does your brand stand for? If you’ve never considered it, now’s the time. Today's consumers - especially Millennial and Gen Z - vote with their dollar, and want to support brands that make a difference, not just a profit.

Fresh from Expo East, SnackNation's Clara Kim joins the show to talk about the best products, flavors, and trends from this year's show. Plus, learn how to get the most out of your next trade show. 

This week Jordan is going back to school, because our guest is Brenda Bailey-Hughes, a Sr. Lecturer at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business - and Jordan's former professor. Brenda is a communication expert, and she has coached executives in Fortune 500 companies around the world, helping them understand their audience, build a personal brand, and become more effective executives. In other words, Brenda’s here to help you nail that next big, important meeting.

Think about the one thing you love to do. It could be a task you perform in your job, in school, or in your everyday life. This is the thing that energizes you when you think about it, and motivates you to get up every day. When you're doing it, time seems to fly by, and you walk away with more energy than when you started. This is your unique ability, and designing your life (and work) to spend more time doing it is the secret to greater happiness and productivity.

Is happiness something good leaders should care about?  Ask most business leaders fifteen years ago, and you’d be hard pressed to find one who thought that happiness was a primary concern. Work should be about results, right? Happiness is incidental at best.  Or so we all thought. There’s no one in the world who understands the power of Happiness better than this week’s guest, Jenn Lim, the CEO and Chief Happiness Officer of Delivering Happiness.

Our guests this week are Becky and Jeremy Dahl, the creative minds behind Bex Brands. Together they lead an agency that specializes in packaging design, brand identity, and brand management in the packaged goods industry (i.e., they are the perfect guests for Brand Builder). If Bex Brands sounds familiar, that might be because they’re the agency behind the transformative brand refresh and packaging redesign for Lily’s Sweets (episode 116).

Our guest this week is Steven Izen, the CEO and founder of Lokai. In simplest terms, Lokai makes bracelets that promote balance. In every Lokai, one of the beads contains water from the top of mount Everest and another contains mud from the Dead Sea - a reminder to stay humble in life’s high points and hopeful in life’s low points. But while Lokai bracelets symbolize balance, the brand is coming out with a new functional product line that promotes balance in a much more tangible way. 

This week on Brand Builder, we're talking about one of the most important aspects of your brand, yet one that so often ends up being accidental, un-strategic, or even an afterthought. The name. Whether it’s your brand or a new SKU or product, a name is the ultimate first impression. To help us, we’ve got a professional naming expert - Aaron Hall, the Group Director of Naming at Siegel+Gale.

Our guest this week is Jane Miller, the CEO of Lily’s sweets. Lily’s make a line of delicious chocolate bars, baking bits and baking bars that have less than 1 gram of sugar per serving.   Jane’s background is as a high level executive at places like Heinz and Frito Lay, and she joined Lily's with a specific goal in mind: help scale the business. With a new look, new SKUs, and the rising tide of awareness around the drawbacks of too much sugar, the brand is poised for mainstream success.

This week, a conversation with Omaze co-founder and CEO Ryan Cummins.  Omaze is an online fundraising platform that offers once-in-a-lifetime experiences and exclusive merchandise in support of charitable causes. 

Believe it or not, employee happiness should never be your goal. Not according to today’s Brand Builder guest, David Hassell. David is a serial entrepreneur and the CEO and founder of 15five, software that makes continuous employee feedback simple, and helps drive high-performing cultures.

How important is my logo? Should I hire a full time designer?  Do I need to rebrand? Can I rebrand? What's a brand book anyway? This week we learn the answer to all these questions and more from veteran Creative Director Eric Wilkinson, who teaches us the secrets of creating an irresistible brand identity.