Speaker0: How the brand is felt, how we feel as me, part of like a consumer group.
Speaker0: How do we feel? How do we see brands?
Speaker0: For example, if the message does not come to us and we cannot adjust,
Speaker0: process them, we will not like react to the brand.
Speaker0: We will not react to the loudness, rather like how we feel.
Music:
Speaker1: Welcome to StartupRed.io, your podcast and YouTube blog covering the German
Speaker1: startup scene with news, interviews and live events.
Speaker1: Hello and welcome everybody. This is Joe from StartupRed.io,
Speaker1: your startup podcast and YouTube blog from Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Speaker1: Today, I have Jacob with me.
Speaker1: What if your startup's most powerful growth engine isn't your tech,
Speaker1: pitch tech or GTM strategy, but how your brand makes people feel?
Speaker1: On today's startuprate.io, we sit together down with Jacob.
Speaker1: Tirpid? Tirpid? Is that pronounced right? A serious mind who enjoys exploring
Speaker1: new brand shapes, the way we connect from advertising design to marketing,
Speaker1: and what truly defines the essence of lasting, meaningful branding.
Speaker1: Jacob is the founder of creative brand agency Yes, Yes, and Two.
Speaker1: His work has directly or indirectly influenced a range of international brands,
Speaker1: including Audi, Belvoir's Chocolate, the European Commission, Fight World Chess,
Speaker1: Husqvarna Motorcycles, Icos, KTM, Loki, Marvel, Mattel, Noteback,
Speaker1: Pernod Ricard, Red Bull,
Speaker1: Remark Cars, Salzburger Land, Sebastian Professional, United Colors of Benetton, and many more.
Speaker1: Jacob isn't here to talk about logos, design, or slogans.
Speaker1: He's here to offer a fresh perspective on how the often overlooked biology and
Speaker1: psychology behind branding can quietly play a significant role in a startup success,
Speaker1: why it matters, and how we're connecting to brands in today's world.
Speaker1: With over 18 years of experience in branding, marketing, advertising, and design,
Speaker1: Jacobs brings a deep understanding of why branding matters, How subconscious
Speaker1: brands signal, build trust long before the metrics do.
Speaker1: And where the smartest founders today are shifting from B2B or B2C to H2H, human to human.
Speaker1: We unpack the emotional language that customers feel but can't describe.
Speaker1: How to brand authentically from day one, even with no budget.
Speaker1: What do startup teams often get wrong about culture, storytelling,
Speaker1: and the story behind their own product or mission?
Speaker1: Why investors feel brands before you fund your round?
Speaker1: If you found a CEO, investor, or simply somebody building something meaningful,
Speaker1: this episode will help you understand why brands matter from day one before
Speaker1: your pitch deck or presentation and offer fresh perspective on how to build
Speaker1: a more cohesive brand for stronger long-term success.
Speaker1: Jacob, that was quite a long intro. Welcome to StartupRate.io.
Speaker0: Thank you again for giving me this opportunity. Thank you for a really nice
Speaker0: introduction. I felt like a prima donna somehow.
Speaker1: Jacob, you believe startups don't win by just being louder, but by being felt
Speaker1: in every aspect what led you to this perspective
Speaker0: Absolutely that's a good question that I was trying to reach out trying to understand
Speaker0: through my journey of educational and next experimental how brands are,
Speaker0: extrovert only create introvert the message that we try to position as a brand
Speaker0: wants to hit the emotional tones.
Speaker0: When the brand hits the emotional tones, we are rather talking about how the
Speaker0: brand is making us feel rather like what is loud.
Speaker0: Because I do believe that loud is not coming from having just like colors,
Speaker0: logotypes and different messages painted on the wall or in the cities,
Speaker0: but rather like how we feel about the brand.
Speaker0: And by that, I think that I came to a conclusion that it's more important for
Speaker0: us consumers than brands.
Speaker0: And we feel the brands rather like that they are allowed.
Speaker1: So basically, you go back to the theory that most of what we say is not in words,
Speaker1: but it's in the feeling of how we convey the message.
Speaker1: You talk about invisible language, invisible branding here. Can you unpack what
Speaker1: it means for early stage founders?
Speaker0: When it comes to invisible languages, we usually perceive in branding in terms
Speaker0: of what we can track or what we cannot deal on a daily basis.
Speaker0: Meaning that brands are more powered by emotional stage, which our brain biological
Speaker0: part is also working in this aspect.
Speaker0: Then we have the most necessary component like for success, like to be trust,
Speaker0: to be trusted from like consumers as like partners, communication ways.
Speaker0: And the third one, the third part of the invisible brand is definitely human to human direction,
Speaker0: because it's coming more from biological aspect, how we are operating through
Speaker0: the day, how we are communicating, how we are perceiving the messages and how
Speaker0: we actually understand the brands and what the brands are trying to understand.
Speaker0: So I would say that emotional part, trust and human to human direction,
Speaker0: these are the core of foundational, the invisible branding.
Speaker1: So you talk about what you feel when you see, when you experience branding.
Speaker1: I was wondering the first mistake what what's the branding trap every startup falls into early on
Speaker0: I would definitely say that
Speaker0: the first trap that many of startups dive
Speaker0: in is they are all the best in what they do they are all the best how they are
Speaker0: polarizing and creating the product the service they would like to push on the
Speaker0: market and then at some point they neglect the brand aspect.
Speaker0: They neglected the storytelling, they neglect how conveyed the message,
Speaker0: the product, the service that they would like to position on the market actually
Speaker0: delivered to the consumer, to the end users.
Speaker0: And this is something that it's as a startups,
Speaker0: They could start not just working on the logotype, but rather like to starting
Speaker0: with the storytelling to be authentically different from the other brands.
Speaker0: And this would help them in order like to be a little bit different and not fall into this trap.
Speaker1: You talked about in the past, internal first.
Speaker1: How does internal branding drive external impact and the other way around?
Speaker0: As we talk about internal branding, it's always what team do we have around us?
Speaker0: What kind of people and who are helping us to develop the branding,
Speaker0: to push the branding out?
Speaker0: And internal branding, it's the most important because if internal branding,
Speaker0: our team does not fill the brand, does not live with the brand,
Speaker0: external branding will hardly survive in the market. Why?
Speaker0: Because we will have to push so much effort into building internal branding.
Speaker0: While we will do this, we will neglect the most important part because our competitors
Speaker0: marketers will already step further and to be better and better to work on external branding.
Speaker0: And they will be able to understand the consumers better, they will be able
Speaker0: to reach the consumer better.
Speaker0: So by this, if we don't have the right team, if we don't have the right homogen
Speaker0: team, how we communicate that we believe in the product that we have,
Speaker0: external branding will be hard to survive because external part is just extended hand of internal.
Speaker1: Age-to-age, human-to-human philosophy.
Speaker1: You reject the classical categories of B2B and B2C.
Speaker1: Actually, that also makes sense for me. Instead, say it's all age to age, human to human.
Speaker1: I have to smile thinking about that, thinking about the involvement of AI in the future.
Speaker1: But anyways, what does this right now exactly look like?
Speaker0: H2H, B2C, it's just another categorization. B2C, business to consumers, business to business.
Speaker0: But on the other side, behind those names are actually like human beings who
Speaker0: are actually feeling, who are feeling how we communicate,
Speaker0: how we propose something, how we offer, what kind of solutions do we have.
Speaker0: So rather, like to think, oh, this brand or this product goes out to certain consumers.
Speaker0: Think about human to human, how it would be when you try to push the product
Speaker0: to your family or to your brother, you talk to him as a person,
Speaker0: as someone who actually would feel something about, because again,
Speaker0: in all aspects we are wired by biology.
Speaker0: From biologically spectrum, we are emotional creatures.
Speaker0: And again, like being emotional, being human to human, we build trust,
Speaker0: we build understanding and slowly we can build something meaningful in terms
Speaker0: of having like our group of consumers,
Speaker0: that actually believe in us in a brand.
Speaker1: And now a very interesting aspect for me before we go into short ad break would
Speaker1: be for me, how do you see AI working on this in the future?
Speaker1: Meaning from H to H to H to I to H.
Speaker0: Oh, that's a nice question. And of course, there will be like so many benefits.
Speaker0: But on the other hand, we were still missing the humor intersection interfering,
Speaker0: because in the end, it's not just about the emotion,
Speaker0: which AI can still not like reach them or like to give you the perfect answer,
Speaker0: but rather like to be understood,
Speaker0: to be felt like the warmest of people, you know, like when someone looks into
Speaker0: your eyes and say like, okay, I understand you, like I have you.
Speaker0: And by this, AI is like a fantastic tool that will help like even the branding will like escalate.
Speaker0: But in terms of we are not there yet,
Speaker0: that would be replacing this human to human connection,
Speaker0: because sometimes we might also do a mistake to leave some aspects too far away from us.
Speaker1: Guys, we'll be back after a very short ad break. Jacob, you're doing much better.
Speaker1: Guys welcome back thank you for sticking with
Speaker1: us this is joe talking to jacob about screw
Speaker1: uh forgetting b2b branding b2c
Speaker1: branding it's all human to human even though we are not really sure yet how
Speaker1: the ai will get involved into that let's talk a little bit about the investor
Speaker1: lines here What does emotional branding mean from an investor's perspective
Speaker1: and how do they usually react to it?
Speaker1: How does it show up in the pitch rooms?
Speaker0: Also in this matters, I do believe that investors, as they are just like humans
Speaker0: on the other spectrum with whom we are communicating,
Speaker0: they are looking for a brand, product, service,
Speaker0: which are trustworthy, meaning that like the first front battle that they come
Speaker0: across to is the person who is representing the brand,
Speaker0: who is representing the company, and investors are also keen to understand them.
Speaker0: Where they are coming from, how they are wired, because in the end like financially support,
Speaker0: is important and based on trust and how the trust is connected to the CEO,
Speaker0: to the inventor, to the startup and what kind of product do they want to position out.
Speaker0: So I believe that like emotional branding, when it comes to these certain matters,
Speaker0: it's also about the trust.
Speaker0: The trust is the first like fence that it has to be crossed in order to reach
Speaker0: hands and say like, hey, I trust you. I know that you will deliver.
Speaker0: I know that you will do good. So I have trust in you that you will be able to
Speaker0: pull and to do what you said, what is your pitch desk.
Speaker1: I see. I was wondering because usually our audience is more in the Series C stage,
Speaker1: meaning companies of 500 plus employees thinking about doing M&A,
Speaker1: that's really something big there.
Speaker1: And I was wondering, this scale dissonance as startups grow,
Speaker1: how can their brand stay authentic and what does it mean emotionally for the
Speaker1: team and their audiences.
Speaker0: This is the one big of a challenge because somehow we live in a huge,
Speaker0: fast, world-based market that we would always like to position something new,
Speaker0: but in the branding, it's just the opposite.
Speaker0: When the brand escalates, when the startup grows, they usually neglect one important
Speaker0: thing. They do not need to change their story.
Speaker0: They do not need to add more elements to the brand, but rather keep them simple.
Speaker0: Keep them as it was at the beginning because that will also lead to authenticity,
Speaker0: like how authentic they are.
Speaker0: Because authentic comes like not to be a copycat, but rather like I will go
Speaker0: my own line, I will do my own visual presentation, I will have like my own branding,
Speaker0: I will have like my stories.
Speaker0: When it comes that brands and startups are growing,
Speaker0: usually they neglect the fact that they need
Speaker0: to stay authentic by saying the same story as they did like at the beginning
Speaker0: because otherwise they are just getting too much noise when they are adding
Speaker0: new components because of the marketing pranks,
Speaker0: because of the marketing speed,
Speaker0: when they are adding new components as like new slogans, new keywords,
Speaker0: new words, new messages.
Speaker0: Everything starts just like to blur away, which is not authentic anymore,
Speaker0: because it's far from what they've been at the beginning.
Speaker1: So should they stick with what they've been in the beginning?
Speaker1: Or should they start to adapt to the new reality?
Speaker1: Most people will listen to this. I have to give them some commentary.
Speaker1: You really had to think and look up in the air.
Speaker0: You know, it's like you have to be flexible enough to stay authentically the
Speaker0: same as you were at the beginning.
Speaker0: Because, for example, I will give you a really good example.
Speaker0: Be authentic. Like when you slide through the media, I see like,
Speaker0: like I will give you like a really analogy, which is off from the branding, but has a good meaning.
Speaker0: When you see a person who is doing something in the gym, you see how well built he is.
Speaker0: You will not, you say like, I would like to be that person, but you are not
Speaker0: becoming that person right away.
Speaker0: So this means that like if you are adapting too much on the trends,
Speaker0: on the current setting on the market, you will also lose your path from who
Speaker0: you were and how you would like to communicate your brand.
Speaker0: Because brand is not like you need to change, you need to always constantly adding something.
Speaker0: The brand is also stay consistent, be present, be yourself, be authentic.
Speaker0: And that's how you will build the trust and
Speaker0: trust is an emotional thing which comes from biological aspect and we are basically
Speaker0: all wired emotionally i mean we have like five seven basic emotions then we
Speaker0: have like 25 27 like the rough one and 100 plus emotional components which are adding so,
Speaker0: we we are not like reasonable creature we are like emotional so the trust is
Speaker0: like one thing that it's like, again, human-to-human communication.
Speaker0: And again, like to go a little bit deeper to the question you asked,
Speaker0: how to stay authentic or should the brand change to the current trends or to the current settings?
Speaker0: I would say yes, they need to be flexible enough, but not too much because they
Speaker0: will lose their own personality.
Speaker1: Um, if I would wrap up, no, no, we're not at the end.
Speaker1: Would I wrap up, have to wrap up everything you said in one sentence,
Speaker1: guys, you're doing marketing for people or not, and not Vulcans.
Speaker0: To wrap up would be definitely the brand.
Speaker1: What happens when a startup's external brand is stronger than its internal one?
Speaker1: And how do consumers resonate with that?
Speaker0: Resonates, consumers resonates. with external branding by trust,
Speaker0: by believing in branding.
Speaker0: It's one amazing study among many of them,
Speaker0: humanizing brands that the same brain area activates as we would talk to a close person.
Speaker0: So meaning that external branding, consumers are also feeling betrayed at some
Speaker0: point if external branding is not orchestrated good or internal branding is not like polished good.
Speaker0: So meaning when consumers come across to several brands or like communication
Speaker0: points, they might feel rejected,
Speaker0: they might feel insulted, or they might felt also like betrayal because the
Speaker0: brand did not fulfill one of their needs.
Speaker0: This could be like when they reach to customer service and they had to wait
Speaker0: for like half an hour or like the customer service person was a little bit rude
Speaker0: because that's a human tool on the other end.
Speaker0: And he had like a bad day and he replied really, I don't know, too emotional.
Speaker0: And the consumer felt like betrayal because the brand did not fulfill one of the needs.
Speaker0: And external branding is one of the crucial points when it comes to communication,
Speaker0: because everything is based on trust.
Speaker0: And when the trust is there, we are emotionally open to accept new things,
Speaker0: to accept the brand, to be part of the brand.
Speaker0: But when something does not go along, of course, we pull back a little bit,
Speaker0: we are not interested anymore.
Speaker0: Or in the worst case scenario, we go to other brands.
Speaker0: But this everything could be prevented if at the beginning startups would,
Speaker0: pour much more time into it to to build this warmth through human communication consume you have been.
Speaker1: Talking about biological branding activating certain areas of the brain certain
Speaker1: regions, how branding activates brain regions, and what's happening from the biological aspects.
Speaker1: What should founders learn from this?
Speaker0: When we dissect brains, we put them into four levels.
Speaker0: One is spinal cord, then it's hindbrain, midbrain, forebrain,
Speaker0: and forebrain is like 80% of capacity that we have.
Speaker0: And in forebrain, we have also the limbic system, which operates emotionally.
Speaker0: So we have the hippocampus, which is part of, and in our limbic system,
Speaker0: which is in the middle of the brain, works for memory and emotion.
Speaker0: This fellow is like in the shape of a seahorse and we have it like on both sides
Speaker0: so we store the memories like with emotion there, how we feel about the brand, how we see.
Speaker0: And when we talk about biological aspects, we are always wired that the final decision,
Speaker0: comes from emotional part because that is how we react to certain messages or
Speaker0: to brand or like what the brand wants to say, or even to communication or like
Speaker0: interaction between humans.
Speaker0: And biological part for startups is, it's good and founders should take one message out of,
Speaker0: that would be good to be emotional in terms how we position the brand,
Speaker0: how we position the messages.
Speaker0: How we talk about the messages, how we talk about storytelling.
Speaker0: Emotions are not always the bad things.
Speaker0: If they use the right thing, the brand will grow because, again,
Speaker0: everything leads to trust.
Speaker1: We're getting close to the end. We're now talking a little bit about branding
Speaker1: for movements. What is the difference between a typical startup,
Speaker1: a product-led brand, and a movement-led one?
Speaker0: I would definitely say that movement is above everything because people are
Speaker0: reacting, people are like emotionally.
Speaker0: And if I can give you like an example, movement, like one example that majority
Speaker0: of us know and we can resonate is like when the Nike campaign started,
Speaker0: just do it. That was the moment.
Speaker0: That was not just the product. That was not just the brand.
Speaker0: That was not just something that happened, but rather like the whole moment
Speaker0: because just do it triggered like different population to start actually doing
Speaker0: something, to go to the gym, to have a new job,
Speaker0: to find a new partner, to start a family.
Speaker0: And that was the moment that grew. And the beauty of this is that the brand
Speaker0: still stick with this slogan because it's, again, built on trust.
Speaker0: And movement is something that startups can start at the beginning of the journey.
Speaker0: Because they don't talk just about the product, about the service that they
Speaker0: are trying to position on the market,
Speaker0: but rather like this product or this service will help you to live your life
Speaker0: better or at least to have more emotional part components to it,
Speaker0: which is beyond just having a product or selling a product or like offering the product.
Speaker1: We're getting to the last question
Speaker1: of an interview here, a little bit of reflections during the closing.
Speaker1: What's one belief about branding you wish every founder knew from day one?
Speaker0: One believes it's definitely to work more on human-to-humor, on invisible branding.
Speaker0: To have more human connection,
Speaker0: less words, less text, but rather like brand can be extremely impactful if there's a true connection,
Speaker0: if there's something meaningful and how to reach the consumers.
Speaker1: Actually awesome closing words.
Speaker1: And keep in mind, guys, you're not doing branding for robots or Vulcans.
Speaker1: Just realize a lot of people who don't know Star Trek wouldn't know what a Vulcan is.
Speaker1: Mr. Spock, you're making marketing for people, humans, and you should touch
Speaker1: them at an emotional in place. Would that be about right, Jacob?
Speaker0: I would agree 100%. We are talking about human beings.
Speaker0: We are talking about people.
Speaker0: And in this area, this is the fantastic opportunity because I know that startups,
Speaker0: I know all the CEOs, investors have a fantastic product that are worth to see the daylight.
Speaker0: And sometimes the pity is because they don't know how to reach the consumers
Speaker0: with an awesome product or they are using the wrong words or they're using the wrong aspects.
Speaker0: This could be done internally in the team, be authentic and talk humans.
Speaker0: That's how the belief starts.
Speaker1: Talk to humans. I think a very good last sentence.
Speaker1: Jacob, Thank you very much. It was a pleasure having you as a guest.
Speaker0: Thank you very much. It was really nice to talk with you, and I wish you all the best. Thank you.
Speaker1: Thank you. Same here. Bye-bye.
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