Brand Positioning 101: How to Tell a Memorable Story

The Evolution of Branding: From Company-Centered to Customer-Centered

Rebecca Vogels: Yeah, absolutely. So I really think branding has changed in the last few years and how it has been in the past was that, you know, you would look at your brand values. You were asking questions like, what does our company stand for? Who do we want to be? What are our values? And I actually. And I think that’s been in the air. It’s not just me, but I feel this perspective is changing right now. And the reason for this is also interesting. It’s because every one of us, us personally, has a personal brand, you know, that we are expressing on Facebook, on Instagram. We all stand for something. We all present our lives online. For example, you might stand for being a vegan or being into fair fashion, or being an activist, standing for promoting gender equality. We all have our values, we personally stand for. And that means what companies have to do is also changing, which is like, instead of asking, what are our values as a company, it’s more about how can we as a company add to the personal brand of our customers? So, in other words, what does making business with us mean for our customers? Like, what value do they get for their own identity?

Louis: That’s an interesting way of putting it. I never thought about it this way, which is why it’s interesting to talk about it. So I want to dig more into the past and how brands used to do it, because. So do you think that it’s not valuable anymore for any companies to think about what they stand for and the values they have as a brand?

Rebecca Vogels: Oh, absolutely. I think it’s actually crucial to still think about your own company values and how to define them as well. In fact, I was recently at, or not recently in March, actually, at the south by Southwest, listening to a talk on how brands nowadays really have to stand for. Really have to stand for something. So they actually need to have stronger and stronger company values to have a position on certain Issues. It’s like almost political, I would say. But what has changed from how it used to be is that in the past, it used to be like branding used to be centered around the company. You know, it was like, you know, they’re like, what does the company logo look like? What’s the web design? It was like centered around the company brand. Whereas nowadays branding, I feel, is centered around the customer. So it’s like, what can we as a brand provide to the personal brand of our customers? And in a way, it goes. It also like, I feel this idea is also not new. I feel it has also been expressed by Seth Godin, who was also on your show a while back. And the way he expressed it was like, you know, companies tell stories to customers that customers tell themselves. So that basically digs into the same area of this new branding approach.

Louis: So I agree with you. But there is one caveat. I think there’s something that I would say. I don’t think that good brand strategist or companies who understood what brands really were even 50 years ago, I don’t think they didn’t consider customers. In fact, I believe that good brands from the very start understand that they need to connect with people. They want to make sure that the attributes of their brands, what they stand for, is also something that people connect with. However, I would say that the vast majority of companies didn’t understand that in the past, and now that those companies start to understand it at the minute, they start to understand that, oh yeah, actually, you know what we are selling to customers, maybe we should give a shit about what they think. And so that’s the only thing I would say. Do you know what I mean?

Rebecca Vogels: Yeah, that’s a great point. Maybe it’s also because nowadays as marketers, we have so many more ways of getting to know our customers, because everything is out there. Everyone presents themselves online in their profile. So nowadays if you do the buyer Persona analysis or something, you cannot just look at what Mary is 35, she’s living in a dormouse building and so on, but you can actually go to her profile and you can see how she communicates, how she communicates in Facebook, on Instagram, Mary here in this case, just an example. So if she is in your target group and one of your friends, you know how she’s communicating on WhatsApp, what Instagram stories she’s posting, what hashtags she’s using, what her humor is like. So I feel we have like a super detailed way now of understanding not just some demographics about our customers. But really ways of connecting with them.

Louis: Yeah, we are living in an age where it hasn’t been easier to talk to customers. So there’s no excuse, right? You can reach out to them via video chat, via chat, via email, via real life conversation. You don’t have to move from your office. There’s no excuse anymore. You don’t even need to literally get out of the building to talk to customers. Right?

Rebecca Vogels: That’s true. Yeah.

Louis: So let’s talk. I want to go through a proper kind of step by step with you, proper methodology. And what I want to go through with you is how can you as a company, even if you’re a small company, how can you make sure that your brand connects and add values to the personal brands of our customers? Because it seems like more and more people care about what they stand for as individuals, what they believe in. So let’s go through that. Let’s say we are one of your first clients in your consulting. And one of the things we want is to reposition our brand. We want to make sure that our new brand connects with people. And you would actually say, well, actually we need to connect with them on a personal level. We need to add value to our personal brands. So how do you go about that in practical terms? And what is step number one?

Understanding Your Ideal Customers and Their Values

Rebecca Vogels: Yeah, a few steps. I think the first step is really digging deep and understanding your customers, where they are coming from, exploring their identities and seeing how they are communicating and how you can actually add value to a problem they are facing in their lives. The second thing to understand is that it’s actually not about your product when you do marketing. And the vc, Silicon Valley VC Judy Lur, put this very adequately. I think she said, she has this quote where she says, people don’t care about your belly button and they don’t care about your product. And I think that’s a super important thing to understand that people, they care about what they can do about your product and they care about how your product makes them feel. For example, if you look at beer ads, they’re not about how good the beer tastes or something, but they rather show like community, friendships, celebrating life. So they’re not advertising the product per se, but they’re advertising a feeling.

Louis: Right. But how do you go about it? So that’s all super interesting, but if we’re working together and you tell me this in the meeting, I’ll say, okay, I kind of feel that I agree with you, but how do you help me to figure that out? How do you help me to figure that out in my own business, what do people care about and who are my customers and how they communicate?

Rebecca Vogels: Good question. I would actually look at the existing customers you already have and then see and really ask you what customers you want to attract, which might be two different things. Right. And then I would go from there to thinking about how you can actually tell the story of your business so that you can attract these customers and that you can tell a story that your customers can tell themselves. Right.

Louis: And I love this concept. So you would, step number one, you would identify your ideal customers. And in a normal business, we talked about this concept a few times in the podcast. So you would normally go and identify the most profitable customers of the company. Like what type of, what subset of customers are actually bringing the most revenue, are the happiest, are not draining your customer support departments, the ones that seem to be the happiest using your product, you try to understand who those people are.

Rebecca Vogels: Exactly. So it might be the customers you already have, or it might be someone else you have in mind. This really depends basically how you want to position your business. Like who is your target market, do you want to talk to startups, do you want to talk to SMBs and so on. And your existing customer base definitely can give you a clue, but you might want also want to talk to a different customer base and then you need to figure out how to get there and what it is that you’re actually attracting other customers in the first place and how it can, how you can change your brand so you can attract a different kind of customers, for example.

Louis: So in what scenario would you like to, let’s say you have a profitable business and you have happy customers, some of them are super happy. Why would you go about trying to find new type of customers if the ones that you already have are already spending money with you and are happy with you?

Rebecca Vogels: It really depends on how you want to position your business. If you’re super happy with your customers, and that’s amazing, that’s something to celebrate. But if you want to position your business, for example, you want to attract higher paying customers, then you would need to change your branding, for example. But if you’re already happy with the one you have, that’s perfect, I would say, right.

Louis: And I assume, I mean when you have a branding, when you’re thinking of brand positioning and you’re thinking of updating your brand, it usually comes from a place where you’re not necessarily acquiring the right type of customers or you wish you had more of these certain type of customers.

Rebecca Vogels: Yeah, Exactly.

Louis: So in this example, let’s take the consideration that we have a lot of, we have some customers, they are paying us, but they’re not paying us enough. And we’d like to get higher paying customers, people who spend more, who would potentially spend more with us.

Rebecca Vogels: Right, Exactly.

Louis: Yeah. So, okay, that’s step one. We talked about this in many episodes. So we talked about it during the Job to be Done with Claire Sri Lantrop. We talked about it during Buyer Persona analysis with the CEO of the Buyer Persona Institute. We also talked about this during our call our episode with Mark Ritson recently around brand strategy. So I know that a lot of, a lot of listeners will be accustomed to how to pick the right market. So let’s assume that we have a subset of customers that we want to go after. What is step two, then? How do you go about this story that you mentioned?

Rebecca Vogels: Exactly. Then the next step would be to tell a story about your brand that your customers can tell themselves. For example, in the case of, of Nike, Nike is basically telling their customers, you know, if you wear our shoes, that means you’re, you’re active, you’re, you’re, have, you’re healthy, you have a great lifestyle. You like, literally jump into, into life and life’s decisions. And the Nike tagline, you know, slogan just do it basically illustrates that. So that is basically the story Nike tells their customers that they can tell themselves. So in your case it would be what is the value that your customers have by doing business with us? How can they profit from our business relationship? What’s the story they tell themselves? Because they use, for example, an app that tracks their heart rate. And that, for example, in that case would mean, okay, they’re listening to their health, they want to live a healthy lifestyle. They also want to be in control. And that’s basically the story you have to figure out that you can tell so your customers can tell themselves. And there’s a, it’s called like a three room principle by Julie Lure, which is about like as it says, the three rooms. And it’s a concept on how to go about telling your story. And the idea is that you’re basically zooming in, into your product. So in the first room, the first room is your context. So you don’t talk about your product in your first room. You talk about the context you’re in, which area you’re in, what problem do you want to solve, and so on. The second room is the value you provide. So what is it actually that you’re delivering to your customers? For example, the brand Pampers, you know, the baby diaper brand. If you look like advertisement by Pampers, it’s super interesting. Their value is not as you would, as you might think, okay, they deliver this great diaper and so on. Their value is also not that the kids are happy, but if you look at advertisement by Pampers, the value is that the parents can sleep through the night. So that is their value. And that is the second room Judy Lehr talks about. And only in the third room it is about your product. So where you’re allowed to say, okay, what makes your product great?

The Three-Room Storytelling Framework: Context, Value, Product

Louis: Okay, so let’s go through that in detail because I feel those could be our next steps in a sense. And you started to talk about this company selling, you know, those gadgets you put on your hand, you put in your, on your wrist to monitor your heart rate, for example. So let’s take that as an example. Let’s say that you are working with us and this is the type of product we sell. And let’s say we want to reach out to those people who have a bit more money than the one we’re selling it to. Let’s say we used to sell to, I don’t know, students and millennials who are, who don’t necessarily have jobs that are as well paying as maybe a generation under. I’m just making overly, I generalize a lot here, but just trying to take an example and we want to reach those 50 plus year old people who are into running to get fit so that they can live a long life, a happy life. I’m already saying providing a value here, but what is the context then for this example you talked about the first room. How do you go through the context? For this particular example,

Finding the Story Context: Beyond Your Product Features

Rebecca Vogels: the context would be living a healthy life. So the context is not about. If you want to use this example of having a heart rate, maybe specifically for running. The context would be living a super healthy life, making healthy choices. You know, if this would be an advertisement, you would see like people eating like healthy fruits, going out for walks, laughing, maybe doing like a yoga class or something. So it would not be about the actual product. Then the value would be understanding what it means to live a healthy lifestyle. That’s the value the product delivers, but also the value of the second room. And only in the third room, the product would you talk about. So here’s how it works. It’s perfect for you because it gives you, it gives you exact heart rate when you run. It keeps you updated. Maybe it also does like, you know, in A case of emergency, just to feel safe. It can make like an emergency call, stuff like that. And maybe you can also like have a, you know, you can like show like it has maybe some things how to show it to your doctor afterwards. That would be the third room, the product.

Louis: So you’re obviously a specialist in this area and it’s natural for you to come up with those examples quite fast, right. Without doing a lot of research, you make assumptions that seems to be quite aligned with what people actually try to do. But let’s take the perspective of someone who doesn’t have a single clue how to do this and might sell a product. But you know how it is, right? You sell a product yourself or you sell a service yourself. And it’s so super difficult to remove yourself from this. So how do you go about setting the context when it’s your own product?

Rebecca Vogels: I completely agree. It’s super hard to do this yourself because that’s what you’re working on every day. You’re working on your product. And it’s super, super hard to actually first of all tell your own story. And then as you said, basically remove yourself out of this story to focus on the value you’re bringing to your customers. And I mean, one way to do it, to go about this is really ask people in your target group, like interview them on what is the value for you. How can I add to your, how could my brand, you know, add to your personal, personal brand or personal identity? Could you walk me through how you’re using my, my app, for example, and really get in touch with people using your product?

Louis: So do you do that face to face? Do you do that via survey? How do you typically do this exercise?

Customer Research Methods: From Face-to-Face to Drunk User Testing

Rebecca Vogels: There are of course different ways to do this. I think if you’re in early stage, I would recommend doing a face to face meeting with people who are maybe not your friends and might answer in favor of your product, but with people who are in your maybe tech or startup environment, whose opinion you trust and just ask them, what’s the value for you personally? What do you get out of this product? What does it mean using this product? Or also how does this product, how does using this app make you feel?

Louis: Okay, so you talk to people and then let’s say that’s a small company, you talk directly to people and then let’s say you have a bigger client, a bigger brand, more employees. How do you like to typically find out this type of information?

Rebecca Vogels: I mean a very typical thing is to do user testing. I had an interview once with The VP of strategy at Hotel Tonight, you know, the hotel booking brand and the way they set it up is they regularly have, like, user testing every two weeks. And it’s super interesting how they do it. They actually just bring people in every two weeks and they. They ask them about. About their experiences booking a hotel, basically. So it is not about actually, does this feature work for you? But that is, I have to say, of course, one step ahead of a small company. But still, the concept is super interesting. Hotel Tonight really thinks about how does this whole booking process work, and what are some questions we might not even have thought about. They don’t go in with a predefined set of questions or expectations, but they just bring these people in and talk about it. And I thought that was really fascinating. Another example, that was just a few weeks ago, I think there was an event in San Francisco that was called Drunk User Testing, which I also thought really, really interesting. Because the idea was that a lot of time when you’re, say you’re using the Uber app to take you home, chances are you come from a bar, you were at a friend’s party, you were out late, you might have had a glass of wine or two. And so the app needs to be super simple for you to navigate. Right. And that’s what this Drunk User testing was about. It was like an event that brought people together where people had a drink and were also testing out apps. And I thought the concept was really interesting. And also not just because, I mean, think about how we are using apps. It’s not that we are, you know, we had too much to drink all the time, but so much of the time, you know, we’re doing something else on the side. We’re busy. We might have lunch while, you know, sending a tweet or Instagram story or whatever, but most of the time, we’re not maybe paying 100% of our attention to this app. And that is why these events can really provide value.

Louis: Yeah. There’s even this guy, I think this conference is probably organized by this guy who started it as a service. He’s like, I’m getting drunk. No, I’m making my mom drunk. Or something along those lines. And I make her use your website, and you pay me for it. And it’s like the best user testing. But then I think he had to stop because the mom was getting too good at doing that. But that’s the right point. I do, for example, work with two screens, and assuming that people using your app or your service or product has 100% of that attention on it is a mistake for sure. So that’s a very good point. So going back to the context and the value and then the zooming in into the product. So give me, let’s talk about another example because to be honest, even though I know about branding, probably not as much as you do, I’m still a bit confused between the context and the value. So what is the main difference between setting the context? So in the example of the heart rate monitor that you do when running, you talked about having a healthy lifestyle and seeing your grandkids grow up and making sure you can spend quality time with your family. And then what’s the difference between that and the value then?

Rebecca Vogels: So the whole principle of the three rooms is basically zooming in. So it’s like if you have a lens, you would zoom in. So your context is the whole surrounding, like the whole area where you’re in right now. But it’s also what is going on in your market and what makes you relevant at this point of time. And the value is what value can you bring? Because we said people like 50 plus. So what value can you bring to this customer segment?

Louis: Okay, but then it means. So the value is actually in this example to make sure that they live a healthy lifestyle. Right?

Rebecca Vogels: Am I not exactly. It’s that they live a healthy lifestyle and with they it’s the 50 plus year old people.

Louis: Right.

Rebecca Vogels: So then the context could be also living a healthy life in general, I would say.

Louis: Okay, okay, okay, okay. So yeah, I think I know what you mean. So thinking of zooming in, you think about the core jobs to be done, the core thing that people want to achieve. And usually it surrounds around the same kind of thing, basically to be happy.

Rebecca Vogels: Exactly.

Louis: Whatever it is, it’s always surrendered to being happy. So the heart rate thing is to live a healthy lifestyle for the Pampers as an example is to sleep through the night. Because it’s actually like as parents, probably the one main thing that you want when you have a newborn baby is to sleep and it’s all about being happy as a whole anyway. So you zoom in and then you move on to the value. So what does the product, how does the product or service help you to fulfill this in the context? So how does Pampers apply to this? Making sure that you’re happy. So it connects with the fact that you want to sleep through the night and it helps your kid. Your kid doesn’t cry, doesn’t wake up, doesn’t feel like wet or uncomfortable. Because Pampers actually absorb Everything. And they won’t wake up.

Rebecca Vogels: Absolutely.

Louis: And then the last thing is, this is where you start. Our patented technology absorbs 50% more than our competitors. Blah, blah, blah.

Rebecca Vogels: Exactly, Louis. Yeah, that’s exactly the thing. And also in the terms of Pampers, I mean, it’s obvious, but you’re targeting the parents and not the baby. So it’s the parent story you tell. And it gets more convincing when you talk about the technology, that it lets your baby stay dry. That’s why they sleep through the night, and that’s why you as parents can be relaxed and have a happy night sleeping.

Louis: Right. So let’s say we have set, we’ve talked to people, we send them surveys, we did user testing, we even drank to get to this point. And we understand the context of value and how the product relates to all of that. So now how do we create a story? Because the example of Nike is a famous one and every single brand strategists out there probably mention it twice a day at this stage. So, yeah, let’s do it. A super simple tagline, and it tells a bigger story and it’s so powerful and they haven’t changed it in I don’t know how many years. So it’s super tough for other brands to do the same. Right. And how do you come up with a story that is simple to understand, yet powerful for people to connect with?

Rebecca Vogels: In this particular case of like having a heart rate app, I would tell an individual story. So I would tell the story of one person using this heart rate app. And maybe that was a person who was born with a heart condition and never felt really comfortable exercising. But with this heart rate app, it’s possible to really control the heart rate in every second and also make sure not to go beyond a certain rate and tell the story from. So tell the story from a single perspective. It’s very, you know, they’re like, if you look at storytelling, there are like a number of ways how to tell a business story. There are like three core stories you can tell. The one I illustrated right now was like sort of the impact story of what companies. If you’re a tech company, you would call the use case or a customer case study, something like this, like telling your story from the impact your product has and also like connecting it to the context, your value and your product. And in this case, I just outlined of the individual story, the context and the value would come first as well. And only last. The product would only come last.

The Three Core Business Story Types Every Brand Should Know

Louis: Right. So that’s the. The case study style of Story so everybody can relate to it. You can almost pick a real customer, a customer who got value out of it, the before, the after, what happened, and everybody’s happy ever after. So that’s one type. Then you mentioned two other types. So what are the two other types of stories? Business stories in particular.

Rebecca Vogels: Then of course, you have the origin story that is like how your business came about. I think in the case of Nike, it was the story with the waffle iron that makes the special Nike soles. Right. And so the origin story is basically how you came up with your business idea. And it doesn’t mean to put yourself first. It also might mean to put a problem first that you were facing. And then from this problem, for example, your dad wanted to start running, but he was concerned about his heart rate and so on. And you could tell it from this perspective that this got you the idea for this product in the end. And the third one is the vision story. So what is the vision you want to. You have for your company? But there are a lot of other story types. It’s also like, what story do you tell on your website? How do you tell this story when people first visit your website? How do you present your product? How do you want people if you have this heart rate? Apple, what’s the thing you’re after? Do you want to feel people to feel okay, now they have come to the right place to feel great about exercising, feel super healthy. And then of course, tell this story not just with the words you’re using, with a nice tagline and so on, but also with the colors and everything.

Louis: Yeah, I love those. I mean, I’m a big fan of storytelling. I mean, it sounds stupid saying that, but because it’s one of the core components of how people absorb information. And throughout thousands of years in the past, we gathered around fire. We gathered in groups in small communities. And the way we didn’t have TV or iPads, the way we were entertaining ourselves, the way we were communicating with each other was through stories. And this is why it’s so powerful. So that’s why I said I’m a big fan of it.

Rebecca Vogels: Absolutely.

Louis: But to go back to it, and I love this example. There’s another example that springs to mind because I feel that they are perhaps probably the best example in my head of brand positioning recently is Dyson. Dyson selling those vacuums without cords that don’t lose suction. Right. And I’m. And it’s amazing that I’m able to remember that because I barely watch TV yet I Remember it? I remember it. And this is pretty much the only thing they say. And I think the type of story they use was the founding story. Originally the guy is an engineer and he tried many ways to create those vacuums that didn’t lose suction and blah, blah, blah. And now they’re talking about technology a bit more. But what I want to stress here is you might, when you pick a brand and you pick a new positioning, you might want to go overboard by telling many different stories. Maybe you want to tell the founding story because it’s super interesting, but then you want to tell stories about customers, then you want to tell stories about something else and then you want to talk about all of those attributes that your products have from experience. Rebecca, do you feel that you have to pick your battles and really go super simple and repeat your message over and over again or do you prefer to have a wide array of things to say?

Rebecca Vogels: I actually prefer to have a couple of these stories at least in the draw so that you can pull them out when you need them or for different occasions. A website is a whole complex story in itself that is very hard to describe, pure story based story architecture term. But for the other stories, what I would do is start outlining these stories and then I feel you’ll probably come back to all of these stories at some point. Whether it’s like in a press interview or with your customers on a sales call. I think there are plenty of opportunities to actually tell the story. Because Louis, as you said, stories are a super powerful tool to connecting with people. And if you tell a story, you make connecting with your customers so much easier right there. It’s a super powerful tool to relate to something and to care about something and that’s what makes it so interesting.

Louis: So how does it all connect with the personal brand aspect? So you mentioned at the start, and I think we touched on it, the context, the value that we’re providing. How do you make sure that people can, that your product adds to people’s personal brands?

Connecting Brand Stories to Personal Identity

Rebecca Vogels: I think you will notice how people resonate to your, your stories in particular. So if the stories you’re putting out and with stories in this case, I mean, I know it’s super misleading stories and storytelling is such a buzzword, but stories can also be like these tiny elements you have for example in a Facebook post. And I feel like you will find out in these, maybe call it like these micro moments or micro interactions you with your customers, if they resonate with you with how you tell the story. If that’s like in a Facebook post or in a chat or how your customer service is interacting. That is something. And that ties back into what we talked about earlier. You can find that out by looking at the data or by asking the customers you’re interacting with if you’re indirectly touch with them, by asking your friends what or not friends and acquaintances and the startup ecosystem what they think about it and make sure that the stories really resonate with the people you’re talking to.

Louis: Right. Well, Rebecca, thanks for going through this exercise with me. I know it’s not easy to come up with a step by step approach like this live almost because I don’t like to cut anything in podcasts. So usually the episode what you’re listening to right now in your ears is the unedited version of the conversation. And so thanks for doing that, switching gears a bit and talking about storytelling, branding, personal brands. What do you think marketers and people listening to this podcast right now should learn today that will help them in the next 10 years? 20 years, 50 years?

The Future of Marketing: Empathy and Emotional Design

Rebecca Vogels: Yeah. I think an important thing to focus on is empathy. And I know it’s not particularly sexy, it doesn’t have a KPI attached. It sounds maybe fluffy, but I feel really trying to listen to your customers. Not only listen, but really figuring out how they are talking to each other, what they are feeling. That is something that will become more important in the next 10 years, I think. Last weekend I read an article in the New York Times that was titled why am I crying all the Time? And it was not about how it was about like how TV shows and everything around us has become so emotionally dense in a way, you know. And I thought that was really interesting because I feel that focusing on the emotional side and game designers have done this long ago, that they focus on that games are basically navigating your own emotions and brands have caught up with this, I feel. So emotions and designing for positive emotions will become or are already a huge part of marketing and empathy. Meaning understanding these emotions in customers would be the first step.

Louis: Right. And what are the top three best resources you would recommend our listeners? And before that, actually you can think about this answer. I just want to go back to what you said around why am I crying all the time? I have a need to watch every single crime series on Netflix, every thrillers, everything related to killing. This is the only thing I can watch from start to finish. The emotion attached is just that I like to be scared a bit. I like to feel, you know, and I’m addicted to it at this point. And Netflix knows that, obviously. So we are only. My wife and I are only shown crime TV shows and stuff like this. So my evenings are usually full of that. But to be honest and to be, to be serious for a bit, it’s actually true. Brands are catching up with this. Excuse me. And things are going to get saturated. But I do believe though that a lot of companies still have no clue on how to do this properly. So there is still a huge opportunity for anyone who understands and who can empathize with their customers to do a better job.

Rebecca Vogels: Yeah, exactly. It’s also like these strong emotions are super attention capturing, which makes them so for brands, so intriguing because it’s so much harder now to capture your audience attention and by triggering really strong emotions you’re able to do that.

Louis: Right. And so to repeat my question, what are the top three best resources you would recommend listeners?

Rebecca Vogels: So one resource I really recommend is go to south by Southwest. That’s a conference I really, really love. It’s like a tech conference, a music festival, a comedy film, and so on. And it feels like it’s like once a year in Texas, Austin. I’m sure many of you know this conference already or have been. And for me it feels like once a year. You basically get caught up in various areas, what’s going on in the world. And it’s also a lot of fun. So that’s great. The second thing I can recommend is the book by marketer Michael Norton. He’s a professor at the Harvard Business School. His book is called Happy Money. It’s actually not, not a marketing resource, but it shows Michael Norton’s thinking, which is really, really nice. It’s about how we spend money to make us happier and more satisfied. And the third one is basically Anything by Seth Godin.

Louis: Who’s that?

Rebecca Vogels: Yes.

Louis: Never heard of him.

Rebecca Vogels: Yeah.

Louis: What is your favorite book from Set?

Rebecca Vogels: I think Purple Cow.

Louis: Yeah. I have to agree. It’s funny because Seth, I never thought that he was this kind of practical marketer in a sense. I mean, he has super good ideas, he’s a great thinker and makes you think and stuff. But when I challenge him in the podcast to come up with a very practical thing, he didn’t flinch. And it was really easy for him to do that. I wish he was writing a bit more about practical stuff that apply to everyone’s life. He does that sometimes, but not every time.

Rebecca Vogels: And that’s true.

Louis: Sometimes it doesn’t change, sometimes it does change. But yeah, I would appreciate him to do a bit more of that because he knows this, but I know that he sticks to the great thinking because he wants people to figure things out on their own as well. So yeah. Rebecca, thank you so much for your time.

Rebecca Vogels: Yeah, thanks Lulu.

Louis: Thanks for your insights. Where can listeners connect with you and learn more from you

Rebecca Vogels: on my brand new website? It’s alloftheabove.com thanks. Thanks for having me.

Louis: You’re very welcome. That’s it for another episode of everyone hatesmarketers.com and this is the moment where I tell you to subscribe to our email list. So before you leave and go to another podcast or listen to another episode, I don’t treat email list the way people usually treat their email list. I really treat that as a one to one conversation. So I’m going to send you very short and personal emails every two weeks. I would say I’ll inform you of guests in advance, I’ll share with you my numbers and how many listens we get and I’ll also ask you for your feedback in terms of the questions we can ask future guests. And perhaps I can also have you on the show someday. So don’t be afraid to subscribe. I’m not going to spam you and you can always unsubscribe for sure if you wish. The second thing we need from you is your harsh and honest feedback. We know that this show is not perfect yet and we always can improve. So you can send us your email [email protected] Good or bad, please feel free to send me an email and the last thing I’d like from you is that if you did like the episode, please share it to your friends, your colleagues or whoever might like it. And also please review it on itunes or another service that you might use to listen to your podcast. Because if you leave us a five star review, it means that more people will be likely to listen and we can spread the word quicker. So thank you so much once again and au revoir. And that’s it for another episode of everyone hates marketers.com thank you so much for listening. I’m super, super grateful. I’d love for you to consider subscribing to my daily newsletter Monday to Friday called Stand the Fuck Out Daily. I send very short, hopefully interesting, surprising, shocking, entertaining content to help you stand the fuck out. It’s at everyone hatesmarketers.com you can subscribe for free and obviously unsubscribe whenever you want. I’m just gonna read a couple of emails that I got recently as a reply. Juma said, your content attacks the mind primarily, which is such a good thing because most of us are skilled at what we do, but we don’t have the courage to do it our way. Mark, who just subscribed couple days before, said, this is my first issue of your newsletter. Love it. Glad I subscribed. Brianna Said, I just realized this morning that my email Habit is now to 1. Came through the list 2. Select all unread industry email except your yours 3. Delete and don’t think twice. 4. Quickly scheme yours. Amy said, Also loving the new content is coming from you. It feels really lovely. Candle said, I like your writing a lot. It really resonates. There’s so much out there. It’s good to touch the authentic. And Chloe said, where is the I love this email button? Brilliant. I hope you subscribe. You’ll be joining more than 4 14,000 subscribers at this stage, which is crazy. It’s the size of a small stadium. Anyway, thank you so much. See you on the other side.