The E-commerce Leader

[00:00:00] MV: Folks, welcome back to the e commerce leader. been a couple of weeks since we recorded last time I recorded, we talked about selecting a target market for your first Amazon brand, your first product as the start of your first brand. And really that was about finding a profitable niche. And then actually speaking to humans.
[00:00:20] And, validating your ideas and even some initial designs as well. So that’s a start. But of course, that’s not actually a brand. And a lot of people get stuck there or just never move on from that. But today we’re going to talk about the hard graft of designing, branding and packaging. And then going and getting it made as well.
[00:00:39] If we have time, we’ll talk about the launch, but I think that’s probably going to be a separate episode because there’s a lot to deal with, but at the end of it, you have your own defensible brand and you can make crazy money selling your brands. I, a friend of mine, biggest win I’ve heard of. I think he sold his brand for eight figures recently.
[00:00:54] Might even be more. It was crazy money. so if you get this right, there is a lot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Jason, you up for discussing
[00:01:03] JM: this? Oh yeah, man. I love this topic. branding and packaging is fun stuff to talk about. And so, yeah, let’s, let’s dive in. It’s going to be, it’s going to be a good conversation.
[00:01:13] Absolutely.
[00:01:14] MV: I think the branding and packaging branding in particularly, I feel that you’re the branding guy. I quote you sometimes to my clients. I have done in the past in terms of, you know, the branding iceberg, which I know you didn’t create, but you you utilize very well and then I’m probably going to be the person that’s better at the boring sourcing stuff because I’ve done it a lot.
[00:01:31] Is a lot of work, but at the other end of it, you’ve got your brand. So let’s talk about branding and packaging first. That’s the fun bit, right? So the importance of branding and brand identity. Tell me your thoughts on this, Jason, because I think you’re the, you’re the man for this
[00:01:43] JM: stuff. Well, I mean, I think the initial conversation has to do with who your ideal customer is.
[00:01:50] And what you’re putting in front of them that they need and doing it in such a clear and compelling way that it’s a no brainer for them to say yes. the, the brand concepts are many, many concepts about how to, you know, create a brand. but I would, I would just say, you know, starting with a good assessment of what’s already out there in the marketplace, is a good place to look at the, brand competition.
[00:02:14] and then really ask yourself the question. How can you stand out now? The iceberg metaphor that you mentioned a moment ago is sort of a nice thing to think about. This is sort of a visual idea, and that’s that there’s brand elements that are above the waterline, if you will, like how an iceberg floats.
[00:02:34] And then there’s brand elements that are below the waterline or invisible. So the visible and the invisible brand elements or attributes. I think the biggest thing to think about with the branding is that a brand isn’t a logo. Necessarily by itself and a brand isn’t a name by itself. A brand really can be deeper than that and should be.
[00:02:54] And it really gets to the heart and soul of what you’re promising, to do, for the customer. So the brand promise is really the place to start in my view. So with a brand promise, you can go from there and build from there. You can find a name that’s unique. and Anyway, I could go on and on but what are your thoughts on that?
[00:03:12] What are your thoughts on iceberg metaphor and brand promise?
[00:03:14] MV: Happy to have you go on because the thing is, you know a lot about this stuff and I’ve learned a lot from you in the past about this. yeah, I agree. I think that the when you introduced me to the iceberg, metaphor and the fact that it’s a brand is not.
[00:03:28] The visible stuff, the logo and the name is what we feel about it. After all, Apple is just the word for a piece of fruit. Amazon is is a river until these days when we think about amazon. com, which only changed its brand from amazon. com to Amazon everywhere a few years ago because everyone now thinks of Amazon as in the people who deliver stuff to your door rather than a river in the rainforest.
[00:03:50] so the point is everything could be branded and the logo for amazon is frankly nothing special as it is an a to z With a smile in between with an arrow on it. It’s nothing that It’s not earth shatteringly beautiful. So I think you’re right and the reason that Amazon, for example, it’s not a great e commerce Example in some ways because it is kind of a service these days and it’s a marketplace But it is associated for me with certain things that I care about and that they committed to from the very beginnings of speed of delivery maximum, Selection and, you know, really treating me like a God.
[00:04:20] I think that’s the kind of, work that I think we need to do, isn’t it? That the invisible stuff, the stuff that I want to associate. My customers to associate with in the future. Yeah, yeah. So the next question is, how do we go about this? I guess, yeah,
[00:04:35] JM: you can’t do it in a vacuum. So amazon is a good example because I was thinking what is the brand element of amazon when and you said the first thing that I had in my mind as well, which was speed.
[00:04:45] And so, a lot of people make the mistake of saying that, they want their brand, promise to be quality and all the brand experts will say to you that that’s a non starter. And the reason it’s a non starter is because that’s an assumed, it’s assumed that your product is going to be a quality product.
[00:05:04] And so you can’t camp on that. doesn’t matter if you think it’s better than the competition, that’s not a brand positioning. and so what you’ve got to do is get clearer than that. You’ve got to see what your competition is lacking in and not doing what weakness they have and then create a strength around that.
[00:05:22] So, for example, Amazon clearly was competing for many years with brick and mortar retailers and what is the inherent drawback for brick and mortar retailers? Well, you have to get in your car, go down there, see if they’ve got it. Then if they do, you can get it, but all that time and energy is wasted. If, you know, in many ways, it’s just wasted, compared to what Amazon delivers for you.
[00:05:45] And so the, the brand promise has to be something that is, uniquely possible by you. and, stands out in the marketplace as a competitive strength, the better the brand promise, the better the overall. Company that, you know, the, the brand you create accretes to the value of the business and totality.
[00:06:04] And so I would just say, you know, you’ve got to start with this. And if you’re rushing to create a private label product and, and you haven’t really thought about this and you want to blow past it with just a name, just, oh, I’m just going to name it, whatever you’re making a fundamental mistake. It’s a big mistake, you know,
[00:06:24] MV: it’s huge.
[00:06:24] And I think what’s, I think even coming up with a duff name is not so terrible. There are some names that I can’t think of myself in my head, but that aren’t amazing that have survived a mediocre name because the products or services are fantastic. I can’t think of one. Microsoft, for example. I mean, it’s a pretty lame name.
[00:06:42] It’s to do with microcomputers and software. It’s not the greatest name, but it’s a huge household name because they, they managed to do that from their promise, which is not by the way, the highest quality, let’s face it. Skype is kind of still in beta. It keeps asking me how the quality of my call was.
[00:06:54] I’m like, dude, you’ve had 20 years to figure this out. Don’t ask me that. So it’s not about quality, but they are ubiquitous. They are everywhere and they’re affordable and they have a different brand promise for say Apple, which is about kind of quality, but didn’t camp on quality that that was kind of.
[00:07:09] That became something people experienced, right? That became associated with the brand. But the brand promise was more about being unique, being creative, innovative. Yeah, and I think you’re right. I think a lack of here’s the thing. broadly speaking, businesses about making a promise and then delivering on it.
[00:07:23] Now we’re going to talk about the delivering on it piece in a second, which is the hard, hard work. And you’ve got to do that. If you don’t do some hard work, you’re not adding value to the supply chain as a whole. Then you won’t get paid. But, if you aren’t willing to make a bold promise that’s very specific, then you’re right.
[00:07:39] You haven’t got anything that’s going to stand out and you will just get chopped on price and you’re guaranteed to lose because the Chinese factories don’t have to even really make a profit as I understand that they get a rebate at the end of the year. So you will always lose on price as well.
[00:07:52] JM: Yeah, I totally agree.
[00:07:53] So let me just give a couple examples to stand out just as, you know, kind of make, make things simple to think about. So,I always like to talk about Mike Brown’s, coffee product. it’s called. A death wish coffee and, it, it, I first met Mike and heard about this, I think in 2013, maybe we sat next to each other at a conference and, and his, His concept was very interesting to hear about, and, you know, you think about coffee and you’re just like, how in the world could you make a unique or different coffee?
[00:08:21] And he was a, he was a coffee shop owner, a small shop in upstate New York, and every morning his coffee, customers would come in and they would ask for this, whatever his strongest coffee was that he had. That’s what they wanted is give me the strongest. You got, you know, it’s like 5 a. m. They’re going to work.
[00:08:37] And, yeah. That put an interesting question in his mind, which is what is the strongest coffee available, like the coffee beans. And he started, you know, researching it and he found that he couldn’t find out, he couldn’t figure out. No one had a claim to the strongest coffee. Which was in his mind really odd because people drink coffee for the kick, you know, for the caffeine.
[00:09:01] And so you’d think somebody would have claimed that positioning as the strongest coffee, but no one had. And so he knew how to, you know, roast [00:09:10] coffee and get it all sourced and all that. And so he figured out the formulation that created literally, the strongest coffee with caffeine, you know, milligrams or whatever it is.
[00:09:21] Yeah, milligrams of coffee per ounce, and he even had big companies, come in and test it. And, there’s a beautiful, beautiful article that was in, I think it was Huffington post and it basically had these cute little coffee cups with little pipe. It was like a pie chart made out of, you know, it’s kind of a coffee cup and it showed visually that death wish coffee had the most.
[00:09:46] caffeine, you know, per cup and that was his unique angle. And then he had a name to create and then name to create was something for that working class person who was up at 5 a. m., you know, grinding it out. And so he wanted to shock them to be, you know, confrontational. So death wish, and he had a, he had a reference in his mind to the old 1970s movie with Charles Bronson.
[00:10:08] and so death wish coffee, it was it I’ve seen that now in. Literally grocery stores all over, America, it’s all over, you know, the, retail and online. And so that was, that’s a nice story, I think, in for a lot of ways, because it, it was a large consumer segment brand opportunity that, you know, he wanted to go after a big category.
[00:10:29] Yeah. And yet he found a way. And I do think that’s the situation. Many entrepreneurs are in. There is a way to do it. If you find an angle, if you don’t find an angle, it doesn’t matter how small the niches, you’ll still probably fail. But if you find it a good angle, then you can make. space for yourself even in the biggest categories.
[00:10:50] Yeah,
[00:10:50] MV: absolutely. No, I love that story. It’s fantastic that you met him I’ve obviously heard of death wish coffee is an incredible e commerce success But a few few lessons that are starting out to sort of generalize it so that people can Think about it for themselves. The first thing is yeah, he was a coffee shop owner So he knew the category and you don’t have to be in the same category As you’ve been working for the last 20 years, or if you’re obsessive, like there’s a rugby ground near me, which is a bit like American football, only without the padding.
[00:11:15] So like, if you’re obsessed with a particular sport or activity, or you have to get up at 5 AM or you run a coffee shop or a pastry shop, you have an insight that other people don’t. So I think it’s silly to abandon that. It doesn’t mean you have to stay with it, but you should at least start with the things you know, understand.
[00:11:29] Second thing is he’s responding directly to customer question. The question they ask is what’s the strongest coffee. And he went and sort of created the answer to an existing question. He didn’t think up what people wanted. They told him, or they asked him for it literally. So, I had a really good business coach, Dan Bradbury, who said, look, one of the simplest ways to create products is find out what people want, go get it and give it to them, so find out what they want as market research.
[00:11:54] Yeah. Go get it. It’s the sourcing, which we’ll talk about. That’s the painful bit. You’ve got to do some work and then give it to them as the marketing and sales and find out what they want is the really important bit. And I think he did that really, really well. And then he took the trouble to go and find out how to create it.
[00:12:10] And that’s, that’s the sourcing
[00:12:11] JM: piece. Yeah. So those are, those are kind of positioning and brand promise things. Let’s talk about the naming for a minute before we move on. So, you know, picking a name is hard. and, I’ve done it well and I’ve done it badly both. And, I think the thing that I would just encourage people to do is to take time and to really research the, elements associated with brand names.
[00:12:33] And, there are a lot of different structures, you know, For businesses or for products? Let me just mention a few. you can just use the last name. you know, Vizi. I need a vizi. would that be a good product name? I don’t know. you can have a comp. I could, I could see that big
[00:12:47] MV: somehow. A brand vizi that was really strong coffee.
[00:12:50] I think people who know we would say that. I’m like, I need a caffeine. Get get the be .
[00:12:56] JM: There you go. see, see how fun that was. It was our last name. compound word, like you mentioned Microsoft previously. So that’s an example of a compound word. A portmanteau is a mashup of two words abbreviated together.
[00:13:09] Oh, that might be Microsoft. Maybe a portmanteau. I guess it’s hard to define the difference. You can use initials, which is, I think, generally speaking, most people would say the worst. Idea, you know, IBM, UPS, stuff like that. It’s very hard to be memorable. but people do it, you know, a descriptive, word is frequently used, a descriptive word.
[00:13:30] It’s helpful because for Google purposes, you know, if you use a descriptive word in your name in your URL, and, people are searching for that phrase or term, it really helps you a lot. And, so, you know, there’s a lot of great examples of descriptive, terms. Whole foods is. Sort of a classic. It’s very basic.
[00:13:50] Two words, isn’t it? Whole foods, but it’s created a brand for itself and it’s descriptive. it resonates. and there are many others. neologism is a new word that you just make up, and, just come up with something crazy. You can have a geographic. name, you know, the, London times or whatever, stuff like that.
[00:14:09] and you can co optinate a word like the Amazon river was co opted, of course, right? Google was a math term before Google googled it. and so, you know, you can co opt words. So there, you know, there are a lot of different ways to approach it. Now, once you start to think through that, I would just say the biggest tip I can give is use a lot of you know, Googling and researching use sites like name picker and others where you can make sure the site is actually available and the name is available to you.
[00:14:41] Obviously, you want to see if the, you know, URLs available if there are many other. That are almost identical, just, you know, almost the same exact thing. Move on. You know, you’ve, you, you don’t have a winning idea. You don’t wanna be confused with a 15 other, companies that are almost identically named.
[00:15:00] You wanna have a unique name, and it is not impossible. It is hard, but not impossible. And so, take your time, get something fun and interesting, and appropriate, and then Google the, the crap out of it to make sure it’s totally available to you. and then go from there.
[00:15:17] MV: We’ve got the crap out of it.
[00:15:18] I like it. just a couple of other thoughts. Name checker is really good. Let’s name check without the second e. So name checker, is really, really useful for checking things like that. I think the other thing I would be very careful about, especially with physical products, it’s a pain in the ass. The everything to try to change the name on the branding and packaging on the actual product So before you go and mass produce something go and check the trademark situation if you check the trademarks in a similar class, so for example, if you’re selling coffee, you don’t need to worry about you know, death wish being something to do with a heavy metal band in the music category because clearly nobody would get confused.
[00:15:56] And then the other thing is be just a little bit careful of descriptive words like whole foods might have been quite a difficult thing for the lawyers to get through in America. In Britain, you can kind of do a lot of things that you want here. Life’s a lot simpler. It’s a very small country and we have a simple unified central system, but America.
[00:16:12] it seems that trademarks, they can get a bit funny about things that are descriptive if they are too literal. So it’s a good point. Yeah, good point. The nice way around that is to change one or two letters. So for example, I’m interviewing a lady from manuscripting, which is the same as sort of manuscript, but with an I instead of manuscript.
[00:16:29] And so that’s perfectly trademarkable. They’ve trademarked it, but it sounds like manuscript and it’s all about journaling. So super smart, naming strategy. The name of the lady that I’m interviewing has been a few weeks, I suppose, but that’s a super smart way of doing it. The only other thing I would say is this, I see a lot of people, you must see this as well, Jason, they get very, very hung up on the name.
[00:16:48] I think taking your time is important. Having said that, if it becomes the single block that stops you moving forwards, I think you’ve just got to pick something that is reasonable and get on with it, in my experience. Is that too brutal, or do you, do
[00:17:02] JM: Well, it’s a tough, it’s a tough call, man, because as the sign on the old country road said, pick your rut carefully, you’ll be in it for the next 20 miles.
[00:17:12] you know, you, you pick your name and then you live with it and. So I, it is a tough one. I, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t, hurry through it if you’re having a mental roadblock on it. Brainstorm with more people, spend more time on it. I wouldn’t pick something you certainly don’t like, that’ll be a recipe for, you know, heartache for a long time because, you know, you have to assume this is going to be a successful venture and so that means you maybe you’re going to be with us for 5, 10, 20 years, maybe your whole life.
[00:17:40] You don’t know. so it is a tough call. Yeah. On how much to compromise, you know, I, I would say you have to really, really like it a lot. Okay.
[00:17:49] MV: Fair enough. No, I mean, I respect your, your thinking on that. There is no, easy way of crunching this one. I just think another thing to do is get some help. If you’re getting stuck, there are people who specialize in naming because it is that important.
[00:18:02] Just like there are specialists in pricing. and if you’re getting stuck, I mean, you could do worse than spend, you know, Two, three, 400 bucks because somebody on the lower middle level to get a name done for them. If you like it, I think that’s money well spent, particularly if it stops you spending three months on doing it yourself and coming up with something of the same quality.
[00:18:19] Right. [00:18:20] So I would
[00:18:20] JM: also just suggest you workshop it, you know, just talk to your friends, talk to your ideal customers, float it out there, get feedback and listen to them. Don’t be defensive. You know, you, you have this sunk cost fallacy in your mind. Once you get something you like, you have a fixation on it, but listen to people’s feedback.
[00:18:36] If they say, no, I don’t know. Or I’m confused by that. Or, or it could be, you could be meaning this and you know, there’s a double entendre. you know, that, that could be, something to really hear, hear people’s point of view on. I think you’re
[00:18:50] MV: right. I think commercially speaking, I mean, you’ve got to like it yourself because it’s your identity as a business.
[00:18:55] Good point. But I think commercially speaking, what’s more important is that it’s not bad. We sound a bit negative, but it just really, for example, Jeff Bezos very nearly named what is now Amazon abracadabra. because it’s a B and it would, everything was listed alphabetically in those days and the internet.
[00:19:10] So it would appear very high in search results. Good thinking, but a horrible
[00:19:12] JM: name
[00:19:13] MV: compared. Well, I mean, it’s the thing is that a lot of people thought it sounded like cadaver, meaning dead body. And so he, he, he nixed that. So the fact that it’s called Amazon and that’s associated with big things, I mean, that’s, that seems so kind of obvious now, but that wasn’t the first choice.
[00:19:27] So, yeah, being wise about getting rid of things that are confusing or even off putting or offensive to your potential consumers. I think you’re absolutely right. And by the way, the tool that I would use to do that cheaply and quickly is pick for you, especially if you’re looking at an American audience, you can break it down by demographics and be quite specific and so yeah, come up with three or four options and then do a poll and as you say, actually listen to the results.
[00:19:52] wow. So yes, even naming that there’s a lot that goes into this stuff, right? So we have to keep moving for now, but whilst recognizing that it’s going to take some time and effort. And as you say, we’re going to live with it for decades worth getting
[00:20:03] JM: right. Yeah.