Branding Beyond Products: Discovering the Emotional Connection with Kim Rozdeba

Freddy D: 00:00:56

Today's guest is Kim Rozdeba, a dynamic strategic brand expert whose remarkable three decade career has helped shape some of the world's Most iconic Fortune 500 brands.

Kim has led multimillion dollar advertising and marketing campaigns across industries as diverse as agriculture, pharmaceuticals and telecommunications. From backpacking through Europe on just $10 a day or carrying the Olympic torch, Kim's life is rich with adventure, leadership and inspiration.

As the author of Brand Queens and the newly released Loyalnomics, the Power of Branding, Kim brings deep insights into the art of branding and customer loyalty.

A former VP of communications and public affairs for a top global brand, Kim now enjoys retirement in Calgary as a husband, father and soon to be grandfather while continuing to mentor, write and inspire the next generation of brand builders.

Freddy D: 00:01:58

Welcome Kim Rozdiba to the Business Superfans podcast show. How are you this morning, Kim?

Kim Rozdeba: 00:02:04

I'm good, Freddie, how are you?

Freddy D: 00:02:05

We're excited to have you on the show. Tell us a little bit about your backstory that created Rozdeba Brand and Company.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:02:14

Well, it goes back 30 odd years. I started off in advertising and marketing. I worked for a large oil company. At one point I did a lot of sales promotions.

One of the highlights of my life was the torch relay. The first torch relay in Canada. I worked on that. I actually ran as an escort runner for about a week with the torch.

That was one of the highlights of my life. I actually went to an agency environment as well. I worked for one of the larger advertising agencies in Canada which was Ogilvy and Mather.

It's about the seventh largest in the world. I worked there, went to a small agency and then went client side.

For the last 20 years I've been doing not only marketing communications but corporate communications as well. Today when I talk about brands, I talk about it from a very holistic standpoint. And I'm excited to be on your show so we can talk about it.

Freddy D: 00:03:06

Yeah, let's look at how important branding really is.

You look at Apple, they've got a brand that's been around for decades and they brand fans, or what I call business super fans that line up for the latest gizmo they put out. What's their formula that they've put in place because there's a strategy there that keeps those people loyal.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:03:31

So Freddie, let me back up just a second. Define to you what a brand is from my perspective. There's a lot of definitions out there. Sometimes they talk about it from a benefits perspective.

I have a definition, I paraphrase Maya Angelou and a Brand isn't about what it says or does, but how it makes its customers feel. So the net impression of a brand is how does it make me feel? A brand is owned by the customer. We influence that every touch point we have.

With Apple, if you look at the technology, there are probably other phones or gizmos that are out there are actually better from a technical perspective. But it doesn't matter because what really matters is what people feel. And they trust that product. They're addicted to that product.

There, you know, used to be. But they put out a new product, like a new phone every year. And that hype creates demand for people to say, I want the latest and greatest.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:04:41

Right.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:04:44

So when you build a brand, it's bigger than a product. Marketing is really important, but it has to be bigger than just marketing your product.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:04:57

Right.

Freddy D: 00:04:57

That makes sense because people buy on feeling and then they justify it. Logically.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:05:03

Yeah.

When you talk about buying a house and you ask somebody all the rational reasons, it's close to school, there's transit, this, that, at the end of the day, it was none of those. It was how the house felt, the lighting, the smell, what reminded you of being at home.

There's all these emotional attachments that we have and they're not rational. So you're an engineer. My background is economics. We can rationalize anything. The emotional side was really hard for us to grapple with.

So we go to the numbers because it's the safest place. You do need numbers, don't get me wrong. You need numbers to understand where you're going and whether you're getting to where you're wanting to go.

Freddy D: 00:05:45

Yeah, I'm fortunate.

I'm one of those guys, a right and left brain because I used to be an engineer, but I've also evolved into sales and taken products from zero to millions globally. I had to think about how to create the market, create demand for the product, the branding.

When I started at the company decades ago, it was like, here's a product nobody knows about it. Do what you got to do. I had to develop a brand messaging and strategy. We set up 60 resellers around the world and the product is still going today.

And we coined name Machining Intelligence back then because it was a computer aided manufacturing software product, not realizing that decades later AI would be the big cool thing. But it was, you know, machine intelligence had an ability to, based upon geometric shapes, decide what the tool paths were and everything else.

I had to position that with the strategy and branding that attracted people to the product and then it became a hot product.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:06:47

Brady, you've touched on something really important today. The products are not physical in nature. We used to a computer, you see it, you feel it, you touch food, you see it, you smell it, you eat it.

But a lot of the products today are digitally based.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:07:07

Right.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:07:08

Uber is a digital product. They don't own any vehicles.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:07:13

Right.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:07:13

Airbnb, same thing. They don't own any places. So what becomes really important is the brand, right?

Kim Rozdeba: 00:07:23

Exactly.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:07:23

You have to actually start with the brand. Historically. Go back to Apple. Apple started with a product. Most companies start with a product that solves a problem.

You make the best solution possible. You stay up overnight trying to figure out how to make this product. You make it affordable. You want to make it easy access.

You look at all the logistics of building that product. Brand doesn't enter the picture until you actually start becoming successful, because the consumer will start building that brand.

But you can influence it. And if you don't influence it, they will take it somewhere that you may not want to go.

It's like an actor that becomes a character and it's so successful as a character, and then they want to do some other type of genre and their audience won't allow them because this is what they have expected from that.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:08:24

Right.

Freddy D: 00:08:24

They get typecast.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:08:26

That's right. You can have that with brands in the sense that if you get so tight. A good example of Midas Mufflers, it started off, all they did was mufflers.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:08:38

Right.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:08:39

Today it's called Midas. Midas Mufflers is only piece of the business that expanded their business. Dunkin Donuts, good example. It was just donuts and coffee. Not anymore.

So it's Dunkin. So it's really important to understand your why. I have a book out called loyalnomics and I have five Cs of branding and the five Cs of branding.

The first one is commitment. And commitment is your why. Eventually you have to get to the why, because that's your brand.

If you can't figure out your why, your every piece of messaging that goes out, you have nothing to measure it against to be successful. And what people buy is the why. You know, why should they trust you?

In this world today, where you do a lot of online buying, you put money in and you're expecting something back. So there's a huge trust level there built on your why.

Every transaction you have, the customer is going to be asking, should I be trusting this company? If you overwhelm them with delight, you're going to build that trust faster. Than anybody else. So that's the first one, which is commitment.

The second one is construct. Construct is really the easiest one, I think, for most people to understand. It's the logo. You know, it's your color palette, it's your name.

Your name is really important. Your personality. What's the brand's personality? Is it going to be fun, light? Is it going to be serious? You need to actually construct that.

And then, you know, you look at the senses. What senses are you going to tap into? Are you going to be a visual brand? Are you going to be more from an audio perspective?

Food has the luxury of taste, right? If it doesn't taste good, that could be a problem. Or it could be a benefit if you actually turn it around, particularly if it's a health product.

And then the next one is community. A lot of people say to me, why community? I thought it was going to be customer. Customer is hugely important, but so do your employees.

They are your brand ambassador.

Freddy D: 00:11:00

Exactly. That's one of the things I talk about in my stuff, which is creating business superfans. It starts with the culture and the company.

Because if you've got team of employees that are not happy where they're working, that energy comes across when they're talking to prospective customers, existing customers, suppliers, distributors, complimentary businesses. People get put off by that versus a team that's energized, happy. They love where they're working.

They're going to be telling everybody about that, and they're going to go above and beyond to take care of the supplier, the distributor, the complementary business. You calling community? I call them stakeholders.

Same thing when someone is in a bind and your supplier is going to say, okay, I've got two people that requested me for delivery today. Kim has always been on top of me, recognized me on my birthday, appreciated everything else.

And John is always complaining about deliveries and everything else. You know what? I'm gonna take care of Kim right now. And that's the real difference that people don't realize, but it happens. It's real world.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:12:14

And the other piece to that is the influencers. And influencers are those that may not even be buying your product, but they have influence.

It could be reporters, social media, influencers, where they recognize the value that you're bringing and the importance of your why. So don't miss those people because they can influence many out there.

PR is a good example of this which gets into the content, particularly for small companies, don't have marketing budget. But can you start actually getting messages out there through other people's? Voices by building those bridges with your suppliers.

It's building bridges with influencers, associations, various associations in your community, others that have a voice that can become really important not only in good times but also in bad times when something goes wrong and you need somebody in your corner becomes really important. So your community is pretty big.

Freddy D: 00:13:23

Absolutely correct.

Because I had one gentleman that I talked to on the show many episodes back and he brought up the fact that he turned people that were not able to afford his service into superfans. Though they couldn't afford what he was providing. They liked the way he handled things, they liked what he was doing.

And just like you said, they're influencers. I call them super fans. But they would still recommend him as a solution to people even though it wasn't something that they could afford.

How you handle that situation to transform them into influencers, Superfans.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:14:07

There's a lot of interesting things out there. When you see a brand that you respect, there is a desire to be part of, as you said, superfan.

So yeah, so the, the next one, which is when you talk about marketing is content. Content is all of those touch points that you have control over. Those controls are everything from advertising, social media, pr.

But the one that I think that a lot of companies don't utilize as much is leadership. Having your leader of your organization, if you're the leader, having yourself out there and providing a perspective for the brand.

People like people, right?

Kim Rozdeba: 00:14:55

It's hard from people.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:14:57

Exactly. Mascots are a wonderful way of doing it because you can control the messaging all the time.

Mascots don't get old and you can tweak them as time goes on. Whereas a human being gets old. If your brand's 150 year old, having cornflakes with really great on it, it's been around for over 100 years.

It's a connection for human beings to connect to the brand. So it doesn't stop the leader of the company to also be part of that brand.

It's a tricky situation because these people are always going to be in front of the brand. Microsoft, we saw a change there. Same with Apple. If you are the brand, like Oprah Winfrey, there's a challenge of transitioning that brand.

But if it's clearly articulated what the brand stands for, the person doesn't have to be the brand. Martha Stewart, for example, there are products out there today that have Martha Stewart stamped all over it.

The brand is the quality that Martha Stewart demands.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:16:02

Right.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:16:04

So whether she's there or not, it is accreditation that comes with the qualities that Martha Stewart stands for.

Freddy D: 00:16:12

And that's what she built. She built it from that perspective.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:16:16

Agreed.

Freddy D: 00:16:17

So you know, that's how you create a timeless brand. Like you just mentioned, Kim, the individuals can change, but the brand lives on. Brought up Apple. Steve Jobs was the guy behind Apple.

Well, he's gone, but Apple still goes and is just a different chief at the helm. We could go on and on about all the different brands that have been around for hundreds of years.

You go to Europe and look at some of the brands over there. They've been going on for decades and centuries in some cases. And it's because of what they built that brand on wasn't on an individual.

It was really what it stood for. And that's an important message for a small to mid sized business owner.

What does your brand stand for and how does it resonate with everybody in the community or all stakeholders? How does that resonate with everybody?

Kim Rozdeba: 00:17:17

So Freddie, you touched on a really important aspect which is my last C, which is consistency. And if you're going to be a brand that's going to be sustained over a long time, it has to be consistent.

And when you talk about what it stands for, it has to be consistent. So the last C is probably the most important C for a brand to survive.

And that's what are you putting in place to ensure that you are consistently delivering on your promise and that the customer is feeling what they expect to feel from what you're delivering. This is where the other side of the brain becomes really important processes. Data collection, what are you doing with it?

It's the rules that you put into place. I call this the magic. Disney is a really good example. You go to Disneyland or Disney World and you're on the second floor.

There's a whole mechanism of tunnels and operations below to make that second floor run smoothly and seamlessly. That's where the magic happens. All the stuff that happens behind the scenes to make sure that cup of coffee is delivered anywhere in the world.

Freddy D: 00:18:40

The same way that goes into McDonald's, for example, they created systems to make sure that it's done a certain way. So you can go to any McDonald's virtually anywhere in the world. The menu may be a little bit different, but the process is exactly the same.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:18:59

There's training and your employees need to understand what your brand stands for. You also need to have all the metrics in place so you can continually monitor the success of what you're trying to accomplish.

If you're not, you got to fix it there's another component which is trends and competition. Things change. There's disruptors out there. There are things that happen out of your control. How do you respond to that?

You need to understand all metrics to ensure you're continually delivering on what your customer wants.

Freddy D: 00:19:38

Oh, absolutely.

Because how many businesses have we seen over the decades that were big, dominant players and there's a disruptor that popped in, they didn't pivot, and next thing you know, they're gone.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:19:53

Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:19:54

And it's happening even today because you've got. Amazon changed the game completely. Netflix changed the game completely.

Blockbuster used to be around and was the dominant player for movies to rent movies. And Netflix came around and they says that's never going to go anywhere. Let's review what the result of that conversation went.

Blockbuster's gone and Netflix is still here.

Now Netflix is actually putting movie studios out of business because they're delivering what you just talked about and they've created a brand and the others didn't pivot. Very important statement that you made there, Kim, because you need to be agile.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:20:37

Right. Go back to my first C, which is the commitment. If your commitment's big enough, you can pivot. Go back to the example of Midas Mufflers.

Mufflers was a piece of the vehicle. Now they were able to change their why to be much bigger.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:20:58

Right.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:20:58

And customers will allow you to do that if you're performing at a very high perspective and from a trust perspective, they can assume if you're good at this, you're going to be good at something else.

Virgin Enterprise, Virgin Airlines, Virgin this, Virgin that same thing allows you to dabble in various products and services because your why is much bigger. So make sure when you're formulating your why it's big enough and relevant to your customers as well, so that you can pivot.

Freddy D: 00:21:33

Oh, absolutely. Bringing up Virgin, Richard Branson. He's not the brand. Virgin's the brand. But he pops out like we talked earlier, like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

They're no longer with the brand they helped build, but they're still indirectly associated with it. You think of Bill Gates, you still think of Microsoft. And Richard Branson pops up every now and then just to create the fun.

He's not out there checking, making sure the pilot's qualified and the plane's got gas in it. He's out there playing flight attendant or he's on his cruise ship.

He's not making sure the captain knows where he's going and the boat's got everything it needs. To do. He's out there having fun with the people. So he's amplifying the brand and he becomes a brand ambassador. And when he goes away, the brand.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:22:23

Still lives on living the brand.

Freddy D: 00:22:26

Exactly.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:22:27

And a lot of founders of companies, you'll find when they leave, if that brand is not clear, that company is going to alter until somebody picks up the pieces and actually starts articulating what the brand is.

And you see that quite often companies that have been bought out from larger organizations and nobody really has understood the brand because the founder lived it, felt it, but maybe didn't articulate it so that others could live that brand. It takes a while. You've seen some of these companies, as I said, they falter.

If there's a smart operator that can figure it out, an agency that can also help. But a lot of cases, if you don't have that measuring stick of what it stands for, then you can interpret it however you want.

Freddy D: 00:23:22

And that goes back to what you said earlier, Kim, was the fact that you can't just keep it in your head. You've got to get it involved your team.

Because if the team understands the brand and they get emotionally connected to the brand, they become brand ambassadors, AKA super fans of that business and the mission. And now they're involved emotionally. And that's how businesses. All of a sudden you see your business and what it skyrocketed. What happened there?

Well, everybody was on the mission, knew what the brand was, the messaging was correct, and the energy took off and it becomes contagious.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:24:15

It's beautiful when it works. Yeah, absolutely.

Freddy D: 00:24:19

You know, I still remember the product name. We came up with what I mentioned earlier with the machining intelligence. It was called Cam Works, Computer Aided Manufacturing Works.

That name still exists today. And the branding of the name says what it says.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:24:37

Yeah, I don't know if, you know, Liquid Death. Don't know that it's a canned water. It's in a can, like a beer can. They started off by building the brand first before they came up with the product.

They knew it was going to be in a can. And the reason it was going to be in a can, they came up with Liquid Death because it's a cool name.

If I told you a liquid, you would never have thought water.

Freddy D: 00:25:00

No, I don't think of water at all.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:25:02

What's the distinguishing difference between tap water and spring water?

Freddy D: 00:25:08

Filtered water, osmosis water.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:25:12

Water. H2O is H2O. And there's some great videos on YouTube doing taste tests of various waters.

There was one done in New York City, tap water and bottled waters. And they did a blind taste test. New York City was the best. You can't tell the difference. I love wine.

I like to think I can tell good wine from bad wine. But you can put two waters in front of me and I won't be able to tell you which one is better. So the brand becomes really important.

And they started this. It was ingenious. They had discovered that when bands are on stage, they would have Red Bull cans up there.

Well, the Red Bull cans, you can't drink more than one Red Bull in an hour. But they would put water in them because they had a cool can. They didn't want to put a water bottle because that's not cool.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:26:01

Right.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:26:02

Red Bull's cool. So that was the genius of putting it in a can.

The other part to the puzzle was that there is a recycling program for aluminum cans so they could talk about the environmental impact. It's cool because you can put an interesting graphic such as Liquid death. Your mind can go a lot of places. Liquid death.

And they built a web video promoting this brand. And it got thousands of views, up to million. And then people started saying, where do I get this product? So let's figure out where to get it.

It was designed in us. There was no manufacturing in the United States that could handle this. Most of the cans were where beer was made.

And it didn't necessarily have to go from where the water is. They couldn't find anybody that could bottle water effectively and affordably in the United States. So they had to go to Europe.

They found somebody in Europe that was able to do this. Ship products from Europe to the United States. Cost money to do that. And they did. Next problem that they had was distribution.

When you look at Coca Cola, you see their trucks and vans going all over the place. It's a huge infrastructure. So they went to Amazon and put it on Amazon. A case of 12, I can tell you, isn't going to be cheap. And it wasn't cheap.

They got capital, got a whole boatload of this stuff and they sold out. Today it's a multi million dollar business. They've actually expanded beyond water. They have a distribution network.

Today the network, I believe is partnered through some larger company. But it started with a brand.

Freddy D: 00:27:54

They created a demand.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:27:55

Crazy.

Freddy D: 00:27:56

And it created a following. And once you have those two, you're right.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:28:01

And they were super fans because they were willing to pay whatever it was to have this product. When you think of it, it's young kids that want to look cool. They don't want to drink alcohol, but they want to look cool.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:28:15

Right? Right.

Freddy D: 00:28:18

Very interesting. So let's go back through the five C's again. What are they? I want to make sure our listeners get this part of it so they can write it down.

What are the five Cs?

Kim Rozdeba: 00:28:29

They could buy my book. So the first one is commitment. That's your why. It's your vision, your purpose, promise. The second one is construction. It's the what.

What does your product look like? What does it feel like? What's the name? Third one is your community, your super fans is what you want to drive, your community.

The next one is your content. Content is all your communication elements.

Everything from advertising to the packaging of your products, how you're going to present your company, your annual report, all the elements, all the touch points. And then the final one is your consistency.

How are you going to make sure that you deliver Every time you have to deliver your product or your service, how is that going to be consistent to ensure that you're building the customers experience and how they feel about your product or service?

Freddy D: 00:29:38

And where can people find your book? What's the name of the book again?

Kim Rozdeba: 00:29:42

The book is Loyal Nomics. It's.

Freddy D: 00:29:47

There you go.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:29:48

Okay.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:29:48

There you go. You can find it on any online retailer, Barnes and Noble, Amazon. There's an audible version if you'd like to listen to it.

There's an ebook and a hardcover book out there wherever you buy your online books.

Freddy D: 00:30:04

Do you have anything for our listeners?

Kim Rozdeba: 00:30:06

Yeah, so I have a website. My website is B E B A R O Z D E B A dot com. I do a blog. There's lots of interesting articles about branding and different things that I've learned.

There's some tools and resources there if you want to, for example, want to build a mascot. I've got a whole bunch of questions and tools to help you determine whether a mascot is a fit and what kind of mascot should you have.

Freddy D: 00:30:38

Interesting. Yeah, some brands have mascots and some don't. But it's a way of memorizing that brand.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:30:47

It makes the personality of the brand more human.

Freddy D: 00:30:50

Kim, it's been a pleasure having you on the Business Superfans podcast. Great conversation, great insights. Your five Cs are very important to think about their brand and their story.

And more importantly, what's the emotional connection you want to create with everybody and create a legacy that lives on? That's the story.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:31:14

I really enjoy being on your show. I know you're passionate. I'm passionate and when you get two passionate people together.

Freddy D: 00:31:20

We could talk for hours on this stuff.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:31:23

We sure can. I enjoyed it. Thank you.

Freddy D: 00:31:25

Well, look forward to having you on the show again down the road.

Kim Rozdeba: 00:31:28

Thanks.

Freddy D: 00:31:32

Hey superfan superstar Freddie D. Here before we wrap, here's your 3A playbook. Attract, advocate and accelerate your business power move for today. Here's this episode's top insight.

Your brand isn't your product, it's the feeling you create. And the more trust and emotional connection you build, the more unstoppable your growth becomes. So here's your business growth action step.

Audit every customer touchpoint today and upgrade one moment to deliberately spark trust, excitement or belonging because feelings fuel superfans. If today's conversation sparked an idea for you, share it with a fellow business leader and grab the full breakdown in the show notes.

Let's accelerate together and start creating business superfans who champion your brand.