The brand awakening: Strategies for standout nonprofits with Peter Wilken

Lee Wochner:
What the heck is branding strategy? And who needs it anyway? Well, it turns out everyone and every organization, that’s who needs it. Branding strategy helps to determine what you do, how you act, and what you accomplish. Without branding strategy, you risk just wandering around hoping things work out. With good brand strategy, you can work miracles. Today’s guest, Peter Wilkin, is just such a miracle worker.

He’s an internationally recognized branding and advertising expert. Peter has run agencies for such big name entities as Ogilvy, Leo Burnett, and BBDO, working in places such as London, Singapore, Manila, and Kuala Lumpur. He’s also the author of Dim Sum Strategy, a terrific book, and the founder of the newly launched Lighthouse Brand Strategy Academy, which seeks to democratize brand strategy and to coach chief brand officers.

So how is brand strategy relevant to nonprofits? What is a brand DNA? And what’s the best use of artificial intelligence in developing your branding? Peter joins us today to discuss those and other items on this episode of That’s What C Said.

Jaclyn Uloth:
Welcome to the podcast that lightens the tension when things sort of get hard…
That’s What C! Said, the Counterintuity podcast, featuring interviews with leaders and doers who have helped to make our world a better place through their actions — and especially through marketing, communications, and embracing change. Here’s host Lee Wochner.

Lee Wochner:
Peter, it’s nice to have you with us today. I have to say again, how smitten I was with everything you were talking about when I met you a year and a half ago at a conference in Florida, and then bought your book, and then actually read your book, and festooned it with 15 tape flags that I still refer to on a weekly basis. So thanks for being here.

Peter Wilken:
Well, thank you so much for inviting me and it really is my privilege. And that’s wonderful to hear you’ve got something out of the book. And as you know, when we met, there was an instant kind of connection of like minds and some of the ways in which we thought. And I think, you know, I felt a bit of a cheat being a keynote speaker because I learned as much from you as you definitely took out from me.

Lee Wochner:
Well, you did a funny thing. You did an onscreen test of brain thinking, types of thinking or something. And as I recall, you and I were the only two in one color quadrant out of the 25 people present.

Peter Wilken:
That’s right, we were in the far right conceptual creative thinkers, challenges of conventional wisdom, holistic thinkers, the conceptualizers corner. That’s right, so that’s how we really connected.

Lee Wochner:
So when you say, and by the way, I’m taking that as just flattery because that’s exactly where I want to be. And it’s also why I need other people who are far better at systems and processes and all of those necessary things. So that quadrant that you and I are in is really attached to things like creativity and meaning. And to a great degree, I think we could say that that’s brand strategy, correct?

Peter Wilken:
It’s definitely in that quadrant. And if you were gonna ask, you know, what is brand strategy? It is a lot to do with that, you know, stretching thought, but putting order in onto, into your business. You know, I’m often asked what brand strategy is, how you would define it. And it’s literally that combination of two words, brand, which is the desired perception in your mind, a brand is a perception, no more than that. It doesn’t exist physically. It’s what you want to stand for in your most valuable customer’s minds. It’s a territory in the mind. And strategy, which in its most simple form is choice. So brand strategy is basically the choices that you make to create that desired territory in the mind or that desired perception. Yeah.

Lee Wochner:
So let me ask you an intentionally, blindingly naive question. Okay, so why is that important? Why is brand strategy important?

Peter Wilken:
Well, it’s hugely important, you know, for two levels. I mean, another way in which I explain brand strategy is that it’s both a map and a compass. And so it sets a direction, if you like, a course to follow, and it gives you a plan of action with goals and priorities to use limited resources to achieve your vision. So your map, if you like. But most importantly, also, it’s a compass.

So it identifies those associations that you want to build in the hearts and minds of your most valuable customers to attract and retain them and to rally employees around what you’re doing and to raise your perceived value as it were. So it’s hugely important. Again, Scott Galway identifies three kinds of levers that you can pull or press to improve your business. You can raise the cost of what you do, your goods or your services. You can lower the price to increase profitability. Or the third one is to raise your perceived value. So when people talk about brand strategy, that’s all about raising your perceived value. And it’s more often than not the most efficient way of actually improving, growing your business and improving your profitability if you know how to do it well. There is a fourth lever, it’s called innovation, just in case someone wants to catch me out, but those three are the big ones.

Lee Wochner:
I’ve shared this story before. I’m a lifelong Apple advocate. And before they brought Steve Jobs back and Apple was dead in the water with 3% market share and one felt like a fool for being an Apple advocate. There were none available in the stores and you were looked at, scant by anyone else. I remember driving into Hollywood and seeing that these huge skyscrapers now had the think different campaign. And I had no stock in Apple at the time, but I just, it made me feel so good inside that there was one for the team there, the team I was on. And, and I, and it associated me with Gandhi and John Lennon and Albert Einstein. And of course I’m a genius and a creative genius because they would have liked Apple and I do too. So there must be something to this brand thing.

Peter Wilken:
There definitely is. My goodness, Lee, I look at you and me and we’ve got enough gray hair there. I’m totally with you on the Apple thing. You and I, being in the creative industries and being kind of, let’s call us black sheep a little bit on that creative quadrant. I was with you there being one of the pioneers with Apple. When they were first, can you remember those gray blocks with the little bubble and things like this. And everyone looked at you incredibly strangely if you worked on Apple, because nobody did. There was less than 4% in the first two or three years that were using it. And it was mainly the creative industries. I remember working at Ogilvy in the early days of my advertising career, when we won the IBM account and we were mandated to use IBM machines instead of Apple. And that almost cost the company its best people. It was that strong an affinity for the Apple brand. Not that it was anti-IBM who were terrific within their own product, but the belief and the identifying with the fact that you were different and that you thought differently and this said something about you and you were more creative minded, was so powerfully ingrained. And also the systems were superior, they were easier to operate and things like that. So yeah, how do you take them back?

Lee Wochner:
But so I had an Apple II Plus. That’s how far back I go with this. So brand essentially is a metaphor when you think about it. And metaphor is important because it delivers meaning more quickly so that we can grab onto it and move. And so you go through the supermarket, you’re not sure about the generic cereal. But when you see corn checks, for instance, well, you know what that’ll be in it, and it saved you the time in picking it. And it might’ve cost you a dollar more, but generally you don’t care. So this is, so branding is really worth it whether you’re a commercial or a nonprofit enterprise, because again, you want people to understand who you are and what you do quickly in a metaphoric sense. Is that right?

Peter Wilken:
Well, absolutely, but it’s not just that, doing the shortcuts to associate with what you stand for and what you deliver and what you do for people, although that really helps. I’ll rewind back again to say, why is brand strategy important for everybody, whether you’re a nonprofit or in the commercial sector, it’s about connecting with people and communicating what you stand for and belonging within that community and what value you bring to them, what it is that you promised to them your overarching commitment. You know, and I should, I didn’t really answer your earlier question about why is brand strategy important from the analytical side. You and I come automatically from the creative side, but you know, there are really some hard proven facts here which some of your listeners would like to hear. And you know, you’ll, you know, into brand really well. Um, and they have studies that show conclusively that strong brands outperform, uh, the stock market by 73% over a 10 year period. So there’s some real tangible difference. You know, 60% of consumers prefer to buy brands that they’re familiar with. We know this. So, um, you can basically, if you’re, if you’re a crafter or defined as a, as a premium or a well-known stronger brand, you can typically command premiums of anywhere between 20 and 50% over your rivals. So this really does convert into hard dollars and cash and business. It’s not just fluff at all. It’s hard, hard business.

Lee Wochner:
So, okay, and by the way, you’re preaching to the converted. I know this is true in everything you’re talking about. So Peter, you’re a well-known brand strategist. So let’s ask, let’s find out when you start to work with a client, right? Why do clients come to you? Do they know it’s a weak brand? I mean, why do they hire you?

Peter Wilken:
Yeah. That’s a great question, Lee. And to be honest, it really does vary. Most clients or most relationships that I start with on the consulting side start at…what I would call, and I don’t mean to insult anyone here, especially not the designers, but on the superficial packaging design. So they think they need a rebrand, they think they need a refresh, things are a little bit tired, perhaps somebody’s told them their website’s looking dated or things aren’t quite going right for them. There may be other symptoms that are underlying that, but it typically starts with that, we need a rebrand. What they don’t tell you is underneath that, is that the real issue is that the relevancy of their product or service is diminishing. They’re under competitive pressure. There’s a competitive incursion. The dynamics of the category have changed. They’re losing energy within the organization. They’ve lost focus temporarily because the dynamics of the marketplace have changed. So it’s much, much bigger strategic implications behind the reasons why they initially come to you as a brand strategist. And so, you know, typically I start by pulling it back and having very candid conversations with the leaders, typically the CEO, the chairman and the leadership team, and doing some investigative discovery work with a few well-chosen questions on basically understanding where their potential need is. You know, you use the same tools, strategic health checks and things like that to ask them some straightforward questions which aren’t designed to trip anybody up. They’re just to basically point out that there’s a need and where is that real basic need. So that’s where I kind of start and I could tell you a little bit more about that if that’s of interest.

Lee Wochner:
Well, yeah, so if someone is either starting or restarting a brand journey, can you give us a sense of what that’s like?

Peter Wilken:
Yeah. And again, I don’t impose a process on it, but we developed a process, or I did with my co-founders at the Brown Company called Brand Scented Management. And it really tried to simplify this journey, if you like. I now package it into what I call the CBO roadmap. And it’s basically what we call a 4Ds process of discovery, definition, direction, and delivery. And so the process starts with asking the right questions of your stakeholder group discovery and finding out what are the current perceptions in a top of mind. What do people think and associate with your brand typically you know if you’re a large non-profit organization or if you’re a large commercial organization you know you’re buried in your business and more often than not the people who are leading those organizations have been in that situation on that organization for years, sometimes decades. And so you don’t think outside of the bubble. You’re immersed in your world. You’re used to the language, the conventions of the category, the acronyms you use, and all of those things, you’re blinded to how the outside world actually perceive you at a basic level. And you forget that there are millions and millions of brand impressions every day. And you’re fighting for that attention in busy lives where people have got their own other issues. They’re not thinking about your organization or your brand 100% of the time. They’ve got children to drop off, they’ve got meals to make, they’ve got their own business to work on, they’ve got problems here. And so, you know, you’ve, so I start with the, what do people think of you? When you say, you know, the entrepreneur center or whatever one of your clients are, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Is it an association of a person or a product or is it often nothing at all? And so quite often that exercise itself is shocking enough because the number of pauses and ums and errs and you think, oh gosh, they don’t really know much about us at all. So, you know, that top of mind awareness is really quite revealing. But you don’t have to dig too much deeper with a few prompts. You can start getting people talking and then they bring those associations and the rich associations rise to the top like cream and you can identify those. Those are the most telling things because that’s what’s sticking. You know, it’s not what you think you are. It’s not what you’re telling people. It’s not even necessarily what you’re spending a lot of money on social media campaigns or ad campaigns. It’s what people are taking out. So that starts with the discovery process and it’s structured. You know, you take them through the five streets, your customer, you know, your category, your competitive frame, you’re inside the company and the organization and things like that, and, uh, and then I try and get them to boil down, um, into. Uh, what I call the three core truths, which again is a tool you’re probably familiar with, identifying the category conventions, the category truths, what’s everybody doing? What’s the cost of entry? And what you need to do stand out differently? What’s the consumer truth? After everything stripped away, why do they really relate to you or brand your business? What is their need that they’re maybe not telling you, but you really understand? And then at the base of that triangle, Where does your brand fit in to marry the two? What’s the reason you exist there and what’s the promise and the benefit that you deliver that combines something different within the category with the underlying consumer truth? So yeah, many aspects of discovery. Go on.

Lee Wochner:
What one of the things you referenced a moment ago was our gray hair. And and I don’t know if this has been your discovery. But my discovery is that as I’ve developed more gray hair, I’ve begun to realize there are things I actually don’t know. And so I don’t argue what I don’t know with people who may know better. And And one of the things that you wrote in your book, Dim Sum Strategy, that I, one of the 15 tape flags that I enjoyed so much was, you’re not hiring us to be experts in your field, you’re hiring us because we are experts in our field. Why was that important to single out?

Peter Wilken:
It’s interesting you should pick that one out. And I agree with you, by the way, it doesn’t matter how old or how much gray hair you’ve got, you never ever stop learning. And if you really think you know it all, absolutely not. I just, you know, I coach, you know, you know. Well,

Lee Wochner:
I know less every day is what I’ve discovered.

Peter Wilken:
If you ask my wife, she’ll tell you I do know everything, or at least I pretend to know everything. But I know for sure, no, I do not know that, and I learn all the time. But this particular thing was an interesting one, and it really came out of, I guess, sometimes some frustration and sometimes not. With often pitching for new business, people will come up to you and say, well, this actually happened to me. So, well, what experience have you got building flat package cardboard packaging in the southern states of the US? And I said, well, none. And I said, if you’re looking for brand strategies like that, there’s maybe half a person in Missouri who would. And so I’m making light of something to exaggerate the case, but the point is often people say, well, what do you know about hotels and how much have you experienced Femcare? Can you really do that? And what about insurance products? How are you with that? And how many, let’s talk where you’re at, nonprofits have you worked with, environmental conservatism. Tell me what you’ve done in that field before. that it’s useful to have some context and experience and know the lay of the land and the language and some of the acronyms and the shortcuts in there. And there’s a comfort level with that. Most of the dramatic change in dynamic insight that you have. You don’t need to be in category expert in that to be able to bring it. In fact, you’re more likely to help them if you bring external category insights into bear on their categories. And so, you know, I use the analogy of going to see a doctor. And you know, if you, you don’t need, when you go in there, for your doctor to basically, know exactly what profession that you do for them to be able to make an accurate diagnosis. It may help to know that you are an outdoor worker, that you’re a farmer, you live in fresh air or you’re in the sea or you’re an office worker and you stuck to a desk up to the point to be able to make a diagnosis but they don’t need to know what your profession is. They bring their expertise to bear on making an accurate diagnosis and that prescription and referring you to other specialists if you’re required explanation of that point.

Lee Wochner:
Well, you know, our agency is named Counterintuity because we believe that we bring fresh insights and think about things a little differently than the people within the organization. So there’s value in bringing fresh insights and asking new questions, whereas if there weren’t, everybody would be their own perfect brand strategist, which we know doesn’t work.

Peter Wilken:
Absolutely right. And the other thing as well, you will have experienced, we talked about this, I think, a little bit, that I love Counterintuity name, by the way, and that is so you and so your brand, and I’m sure you bring huge value to your clients. The thing that you will have experienced as well is that change occurs at the periphery, and it’s often the outsiders who come in from different categories that get thrust into a new environment, that apply wisdom from completely different worlds that would never have been thought of if you were still within your category bubble, as it were. Or sometimes they’re naive young greenhorns that come in and they’re not afraid to keep asking the questions that people have been being told no is the answer to for years, but the timing has suddenly changed or the circumstances have changed and now the answer is yes. So there’s a balance to be had because of course, it does help to bring some kind of comfort and knowledge. And that is part of the discovery process as well. It helps you and I as brand strategists to immerse ourselves in those worlds. There’s so many examples of this. I used to think, we will always get labeled for one kind of thing. You know, although we’ve moved on, you know, people relate to me as an ad man, the X madman, they relate to that series. They said, Oh my God, you ran BBDO in the Asia Pacific, you worked for you ran agency for Ogilvy and DB. And that’s what you did. And, and I used to kind of resist that for a long time and thinking, well, yeah, I did that, but I actually set up this specialist brand consulting firm and that’s what I did before that. And then now, you know, I’m doing brand strategy in this. And I said, well, yeah, but when you were running the ad agency, they’ll come back. So you go with the flow. But the reality is, you know, we, especially if you’re on the creative side, you may have many skill sets. And I’m not saying that about me. I’m just, I’m saying that about. others, but you do still have to get known for something. And even if you are the most talented creative person, artistic person in the world, you will get associated with one thing. So Picasso is known for his Cubism. And that’s what we think of. We think of Guernica when we think of Picasso first. We do not jump to his blue period when he had nothing to do with Cubism. We don’t jump to his sculpture. And we certainly don’t jump to his skill as a portrait artist, which is amazing when you see the work that he did as a 15-year-old. And he was capable of doing all of that. So the truth is, the best brand strategists, and counterintuitive, we can’t within this, you’re actually skillful at doing many, many things, and you can work cross categories. I found, I’ve kept my… portfolio of work very broad, but what I do, I try and focus down. So I start with saying, look, I’m the brand DNA guy. If you really want to understand who you are, what you stand for, why, and how you’re going to differentiate yourself in a relevant, credible, differentiating and compelling way, start here with me. Now, that is just the start. It goes way on to that, to driving change throughout the organization. But that’s too much for them to swallow in one go. So, you know, DNA guy is good enough for me. But I’ve ended up working for universities, technology companies, political parties, non-profit organisations, YouTube companies. The principles of building a strong brand and they apply across the board. So for me, I don’t narrow my categories, but I narrow my offering.

Lee Wochner:
We’re going to take a short break, but when we come back, we’ll be having a further discussion with branding expert Peter Wilkin. We’ll talk about brand, of course, and we’ll also talk about artificial intelligence, some general wisdom, and some other fun stuff. Stick around.

Jaclyn Uloth:
Hi, this is Jaclyn with Counterintuity.

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Lee Wochner:
We are back with branding expert and guru Peter Wilkin. Peter, I wanted to ask you, you were talking about brand DNA, and there were two stories of yours that I really enjoyed. I’m gonna pick one because it made so much sense to me. Can you talk to us about Shangri-La hotels? Because it just to me, it exemplifies why brand strategy and branding are so important, that case study.

Peter Wilken:
Yeah, for sure. Bear with me while I take on a little journey on this. Shangri-La, everyone knows them. They’re this amazing Asian-based luxury hotel resort chain. They came to us when we were the brand company in Hong Kong because they knew us to be expatriates in China or in Hong Kong and they were looking to expand their hotel network into North America. And so they kind of wrongly assumed that we would be the right people to help them position their brand as they came into, funnily enough, it was in Vancouver was one of the first places they were looking at. And they were looking at competing with the Grand Hyatt’s and things like that. And they were thinking, well, do we need to kind of compete with this very masculine, bold, you know, hard granite and brass and leather you know, look that seems to be appealing to the American businessman and how do we, you know, do we need to change our offering in this way? And of course, you know, they got completely what they didn’t expect, which was with our early discovery work. instantly telling them what we instinctively knew, which is that is not you at all. You know, Shangri-La is feminine, it’s caring, it’s about traditional Asian values delivered in a contemporary way. And it’s it boiled down to where we ended up with their DNA, which was all around being natural Asian hosts, being very feminine, caring, respectful, trustworthy, and you’re home away from home. It ended up that the image that they really related to in the end was an Asian Audrey Hepburn. Sophisticated, elegant, real panache style, never aging, enduring, but graceful, feminine, and caring with that element of mystique. Anyway, so. That ended up driving and we developed this brand DIN-A which ended up kind of dictating their positioning on a worldwide basis. They didn’t go down the emulating or copying their competitors. They stood apart and we said look this is the Shangri-La experience and the people who come to the Shangri-La want that kind of experience and they want to walk in and see your grand chandeliers, but done with contemporary Asian art. They want that traditional Asian values and caring. And so give it to them. And those people that want the opposite, let them go. Don’t try and convert them, be who you are. But it led onto a whole other series of much long, long engagement. They were of sorting out their brand family architecture. They had four-star business hotels in China who were all trying to jostle to get the aspirational Shangri-La name, but they actually weren’t delivering against the quality. And so we again had to remind them that you’re defined by the lowest common denominator, not the highest. And if you start putting Shangri-La names on hotels that are delivering less than that, the first person to travel from the Singapore six-star experience to, you know, the Beijing outside, you know, hotel is not going to get them. So we ended up, you know, and an already established name called Traders Hotels, which was also very, very good, but putting lines of delineation between them about what the Shangri-La experience was and what the Traders experience was. So they weren’t doing things, I know it sounds trite, but they were doing things like sharing scales of economy in terms of towels and linen and soaps and things like this. And it was just not. No, so we said, no, there’s a clear line of delineation. When you’re a trade is you’re here. When you’re Shangri-La, you’re here and so on and so forth. It’s a long story, but a good example of being true to yourself and doing the homework to truly understand your DNA. That is why you exist. To serve your customers beyond just making money? What is it that you’re giving them? What are your true beliefs that stand you apart from your competitors? What is your overarching commitment to them, the promise that you make to them and what benefit do they get from you consistently delivering against it? And then how did you go about doing it, your culture and the way in which you do it, which is often the differentiating factor. And those elements together with your icons and your attributes create your brand DNA and that becomes a guiding light or beacon for everything you do and everything you say as an organization. So, our brand company was really a change management agency from a brand perspective. That’s with hindsight exactly what we were.

Lee Wochner:
You know, the hotel thing, it’s so clear to see the difference in branding. I was in London in October on business and I spent three nights at St. Eremans, a really nice area of town, I mean the Westminster area, really nice area, right? And it was 600 pounds a night. Oh yeah, wow, indeed. And then when that was over, the meeting I was there for, I went to the place where I would stay, which was I think at Hilton. It was at Hilton. And it was, I’m not kidding you, 20, 30 steps away. And it was 189 a night. And the only difference I, yeah, the linens, the towels, the way you’re greeted, the garb of the doorman, and there was no breakfast. But, and I’m dating this lovely woman who upgrades every room we ever stay in. And I say to her, You know, sweetheart, really all I need is a Motel 6 and a jacuzzi that I can sit in outside and have a cigar and some bourbon. I mean, and wifi. I mean, I don’t need all these other things, but you know, she’s got a jillion Marriott points and good for her. And she loves Marriott the way I love Apple, so I get it. So Peter, let’s talk for a little bit about artificial intelligence. Because we’ve talked a little bit about creative tools and ways to fish up identity. And you and I now find ourselves in this place where we are writers and we’re writing about meaning and identity and drawing metaphors and parallels. And now there are algorithms and bots and artificial intelligence theoretically creating things. Let’s set this up with the first question of Let’s assume that we’re gonna be using artificial intelligence. Is there a way that people should use it in their branding?

Peter Wilken:
It’s a great question and it’s definitely not just flavor of the month, it’s flavor of the year. And I do think that, you know, last year, 2023 when they’re in introduction of Chat GPT in particular will be as pivotal as the introduction of the internet in terms of the way in which things are done differently. But again, one of my maxims is with age which I would like to think it’s a tinge of wisdom, which I know you have, is that nothing is ever as good or as bad as it first seems. There’s an awful lot of fear around AI, but there’s an awful lot of good around it as well. So your question to answer it more directly, how can we use it within branding and brand building? It does change the game, I think, but only again, the way in which you treat it. If you treat it as an assistant for you rather than you being a slave to it it really is a very powerful tool. So we were talking earlier about discovery for instance. So I use generative AI to be able to help me narrow down categories and insights with specific questions on for brands that I’m researching and you can dramatically accelerate and enrich your understanding through the use of artificial intelligence to identify what I would call research insights within your category. When it comes to things like developing or understanding tools and frameworks and you know my Dim Sum strategy book is all about tools and frameworks, you can now at the touch of a button find every single brand strategy framework or tool that you want for nothing, if you know how to do a proper prompt on Chat GPT, which pretty much everyone does, you can find it for nothing. It’s there. So what is the perceived value in what you’re doing if you’re kind of trying to give tools to people? Well, the big value for me is in it’s not the framework or the tool, it’s actually the substance and the human interaction of it. So again, I use the imaginary story again of saying, look, if you need to have your appendix taken out, you can go to a surgeon who is looking at his YouTube video of how to do an appendectomy, who’s actually hired in and bought in the operating theater, he’s bought all the masks because the equipment is cheap now, he’s got an assistant there, in fact, he’s already done the assistant bot on the steps to follow and he’s all ready to go, he’s there. Or you can go with a surgeon who’s done, you know, 2000 successful appendicitis, where would you go? And so there is so much that you can and you can’t do. Now you and I can tell the difference between humanly interacted, generated copy and writing and things like this and business strategy. But many clients won’t and I have to be brutally frank here without upsetting any of your noble listeners I think. But the reality is half the clients out there don’t appreciate or value great strategy and great creativity anyway. I’m sorry to say that, but that is often the truth. And they need to be educated as to why that’s important. And for them, this is just another way of saying, well, we can tick that box and do it even cheaper now. Hey. Why bother paying any kind of strategist or any creative director or designer to do anything here? I can go to 99designs, no, I can go to Fiverr. I don’t even have to pay 500 bucks for this now. Forget about the 5,000, forget about the 50,000. I can get this for 20 bucks, you know? And the quality, in fact, I can get it for free. And some of it, to be honest, is adequate, but more often than not, it’s not, and you will tell the difference. You will tell the huge difference. And…What it doesn’t do is ever bring in that instant level of human connectivity and understanding and prioritization and understanding to what question to ask at the right time and when to interpret, that AI has still got a lot of catching up to do. Having said that, it can be a very liberating thing as well in taking some of the more mundane backend tasks away. So I hope that answers your question. How do you use it?

Lee Wochner:
Well, you use the word understanding, and AI understands nothing so far. I mean, when you talk about human level understanding, which creativity flows from, and certainly which branding has to come from, I understand the qualities of your brand. And so here are those qualities that we need to put out that match with people’s perception of your brand, because you have to give them back what they already believe, but synthesize better. AI has no facility for doing that. AI aggregates and concatenates inputs and then gives you back a variation of the input in response to what you asked for. So AI can generate some things, but it certainly has no understanding. And with regard to the technology, I mean, I’m not missing my IBM Selectric 2, right? I was delighted to have it. When I was a teenager, but I’m not missing it. And I love writing on a laptop and I’ve been doing that for years. So, and I’ll say something else. There are people who can frame a room, right? They can put up studs, they can pound some sheetrock and that would be me. And then there are master carpenters. And a master carpenter is a quite different thing. And…AI won’t be competing with Mr. Shakespeare or any other level of writers. And if you really want your marketing to stand out, it had better look and sound human. Now, if you want to attract Mr. Google, then you can write to the algorithm, which to me is a completely different set of circumstances. Then you’re writing to the algorithm. You’re trying to trick it into generating you as a response in search. But the idea of it being creative. In most ways, we’re not there yet, and we’re not going to be there soon.

Peter Wilken:
So you answered your question much, much better than I did. I’m gonna use your answer again, but no, I’m not joking aside. You’re so right. I think we shouldn’t be afraid of it. We should embrace it. And we should never forget to factor in the human elements. And again, in my book, I talk about vested interest in inertia, and if we really carried AI to its logical conclusion, we would be reinventing some very, very high-end jobs. We’re talking brand strategy here, but I’m talking things like, I’ve been consulting to a group of orthopedic surgeons, incredibly well-skilled, professional, dedicated people.

But in part of the radiologists now, AI is more efficient at diagnosing X-rays than the humans are, much more. And so much in fact that it’s made their jobs redundant. But do we still have radiologists? We absolutely do, because there is a huge vested interest in not discarding a 30-year career. Now, the reality is, there ain’t going to be many more radiologists. Hungary’s already stopped training them.

So they can retool and refashion into using their skills in a different way that’s gonna be more valuable, but those kind of changes will happen.

Lee Wochner:
I don’t think anyone can stand a thwart technology and say, stop here. You shall go no further. So you’re either going to bend it to your will or you’re going to get run over by it. And I’ve generally been a supporter of technology. And I think technology is going to clean up a lot of the problems here on planet Earth before we choke ourselves to death. So I’m all for it. But the idea that you can hand your marketing over to AI is silly. And I think for practitioners at the high end in particular, there’s gonna be lots of opportunity and there will be lots of need because Chad, which is my nickname for chat GPT, Chad doesn’t know anything about people. So let me ask you a couple more questions in the fleeting moments we have left and you and I could talk all day. I mean, and we should do so at some point.

Peter Wilken:
Yeah, I would love to.

Lee Wochner:
What, I know you’ve consulted for a number of, you mentioned universities and such and nonprofits and political parties and such. What do you think is the single best thing nonprofit leaders could do right now to improve their marketing?

Peter Wilken:
Yeah, I mean, that is a great question. I would start by thinking from my experience, and I’ve worked with nonprofits here as well, and my wife runs one, and which we helped develop their strategic work for, and it’s an incredibly rewarding area and profession to focus on. But it tends to, and I go, I know I’m making generalization, so forgive me if I’m doing that, but it tends to rely an awful lot on volunteerism as well. And not, I mean, the larger ones have huge professional organizations behind them, but what they tend to do better than most is community. I found that I would really play to that strength more often than not the not-for-profits are bound together by a common shared interest. And that interest is really telling whether or not it’s a medical disorder or the passion or an interest for, you know, fresh air and environment or an understanding of what social community really means, whatever it is, it really that group together and I think nonprofits have got many things that they could teach the commercial sector in building communities and doing that on often quite limited budgets. And so I would say really play to that strength because I think the world is moving more that way into truly owning and understanding who it is that you’re serving and what value you give to them. And more often than not, they don’t do enough investment in articulating that so that they’re absolutely clear. And in the bid to kind of…often generate funds and get out there and advertise, they’re casting it wider than necessarily than they should and because they haven’t got the confidence of really knowing where that interest group lies and often than not it’s stuck within a geographical community when it should be a global one because that interest is you know mirrored many times over around the world more often than not. So I would think, I would say think bigger, play to your strengths. do a little bit more in articulating your positioning around your brand DNA. I would say that, because I’m a brand DNA guy. And then go forth and play into your community and build up from that, because you do that better than so many others do it.

Lee Wochner:
I think that’s amazing advice. I grew up in the age of broadcasting and broadcasting is over and now everything is narrow casting and specializing. And to some degree, that’s really what you’re talking about. And I agree with you utterly. I have tribes of friends and there are friends who I see regularly. And then there are friends I know only through Twitter and we belong to the same music tribe or the same book tribe. Exactly right. And if I wanted to market to them, which I don’t, but if I wanted to market to them, that’s a market. Absolutely so. So Peter, I want to ask you, again, there’s so much we could talk about. What are you working on now? What is next for Peter Wilkin?

Peter Wilken:
Well, thanks for asking. I mean, I am, I love what I do, like you do love what you do, which is having that smorgasbord of being able to have the privilege of being invited inside organizations and helping manage change through their brand and through giving them, you know, really effective brand strategy that drives change. So I still play my fractional CBO or chief brand officer’s role for a small, select counter of clients here. And I enjoy that. But what I’m trying to do now is I’m on a kind of mission to democratize brand strategy. And I know that sounds all very noble and oh yes, wow. But I really do. Get huge benefit from it when you know you’ve impacted somebody’s life in a positive way. And I had a wonderful call this morning from somebody out of the blue. I’d never spoken to before who’d read the book and at an influential time in his career and he jumped out of Disney and has developed his own strategic work. And so it’s very rewarding doing that. So I have, I spent the last year in a bit reinventing myself again to be able to provide scale to what I offer and bring the principles of that Dim Sum Strategy book to life, the principles of brand-centered management, and make it affordable and accessible to a much broader community. So I’ve created what I call the Lighthouse Brand Strategy Academy. And at the moment, it exists in the kind of top end form of a CBO masterclass, which is a very comprehensive six module, six lessons in each module, 36 short videos, five to eight minutes each, all instructional and packed up by Worksheets. And with the intention of helping entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, brand managers and aspiring brand hone their craft and build stronger brands by becoming better brand strategists following this process. So that exists at the moment. I am in the process of making it even more affordable and accessible by creating a community on Circle at the moment. And that’s the hard bit, building that up and getting some critical mass, but inviting people in, you know, just for a few dollars a month to a community that is driven by…a common interest in building stronger brands more effectively. So that’s what I’m doing. And I call that the lighthouse. And you know the metaphor of a lighthouse and brands, but should I spell it out again? For listeners benefit.

Lee Wochner:
Sure, of course. I grew up near lighthouses, by the way, in Atlantic City, so I’m well versed in lighthouses, but yes, please do.

Peter Wilken:
Yeah. So, well, it’s a perfect metaphor for brand building, because lighthouses are buildings of purpose. They’re built to last centuries. They’re built on foundations of solid rock, which are your unchanging, unyielding values and beliefs that should never waver. They command significant territories, and they shine this kind of bright beacon of hope and light out through the darkness to illuminate, and they send messages that say, this is who I am, this is what I stand for, this is what I believe in, do you believe in what I believe in? And if so, come to the light, and if not, that’s all right, we can move away. So people don’t know that every lighthouse beacon in the world is different, is unique. It has a different number of beams, or color, or flashing sequence, so that any… captain on a ship can identify where they are from the lighthouse beacon. And of course, it warns of danger and it lifts the mist and helps clarify decision making in navigating your path forward. That’s why the Lighthouse and it kind of works well. And that’s what we’ve done, created this virtual Lighthouse, which is a journey which helps people from the bedrock, understanding of the basic fundamental essentials of what it takes to build strong brands, what a brand is, what makes great brands great, why brands fail and how to avoid them, to right up to the top to really mastering what it takes to be a cheap brand officer that not only… defines what it is your brand stands for, but drives that change through your organization.

Lee Wochner:
So you’re truly using branding to shine a beacon of light and hope through the darkness of marketing.

Peter Wilken:
Will you be my marketing guy early? That’s brilliant. I better… Thank you.

Lee Wochner :
Just as just as that EPT would do, I just put your words back to you.

Peter Wilken:
You’re so much better than Chat GPT. You better send me that one again. I’m gonna use that. I’ll give you a…

Lee Wochner
You’re using you are using branding to shine a beacon of light and hope out through the darkness of marketing Yeah, indeed Peter if somebody wants to reach you, what’s the best way to reach you?

Peter Wilken
Yeah. Remember that?

Peter Wilken
Well, through, I mean, hopefully you’re going to provide an email link and I can provide a link to my website. And if anyone is interested in this Lighthouse program, I’ll give you a link into that CBO Masterclass program. The community is just about to come in the next couple of months. So that would be great. So I’ll send you all of those links.

Lee Wochner
We will. Of course.

Lee Wochner
We will certainly do that. Peter, this has been a load of fun for me. I hope it was fun for you. I hope the listeners have gotten a lot out of this. And for sure, we will put in the show notes and such and in all of our marketing out about this as we try to shine a light ourselves that illuminates Peter Wilkin. So thank you so much.

Peter Wilken
Well, no, thank you so much. And I really hope that your listeners got some value out of that. Great talking to you again, my friend. We have to we have to honestly talk more of offline on this and work out a way of working together more.

Lee Wochner
Indeed, looking forward to it.

Jaclyn Uloth
Thanks for listening we’re glad you came. That’s What C! Said is produced by Lisa Pham and engineered by Joe Curet. It’s available on Apple podcast, Spotify and where ever you get your podcast. Please like and follow the show. Visit Counterintuity.com to sign up and learn more.