We’re doing things a little differently on this week’s episode of the podcast! Hosts Larry Roberts and Sara Lohse each chose one of our own favorite brands whose values and missions align well with our own.
We start with Sara’s choice of Cards Against Humanity, a card game company whose branding verges on demarketing, but truly knows its audience and uses its platform to do good for the world. We look at self-deprecating humor as a branding tactic, the use of social movements to promote a company, and the importance of remaining authentic.
After, we dive into Larry’s choice of LEGO, which to this day is his favorite past-time. Looking at each of LEGO’s brand values, we see how clearly they align with the brand experience and how important values like imagination, creativity, and fun are no matter what age we are.
Key takeaways:
1. Demarketing and Authenticity: We highlight how Cards Against Humanity uses demarketing and self-deprecating humor effectively to create a strong brand identity. Their approach might be unorthodox, but it resonates with their audience and aligns perfectly with their values.
2. Navigating Controversy: Cards Against Humanity is no stranger to controversy, often infusing political stances into their branding. We discuss the potential risks and rewards of merging politics with business and the importance of staying true to your brand’s core values.
3. Understanding Target Audience: Both brands exhibit a deep understanding of their respective audiences. Cards Against Humanity knows their crowd’s sense of humor and boundaries, while Lego taps into the universal love for creativity and fun across various age groups.
4. Importance of Brand Values: The episode emphasizes the critical role of clearly defined brand values. For Lego, values like imagination, creativity, and quality are not just words; they are the foundation of every product and interaction with the brand.
5. Longevity through Consistency: Larry’s admiration for Lego showcases how consistency in brand messaging and product quality can build an enduring legacy. Lego’s commitment to their core values, despite minor hiccups like missing pieces, keeps their audience engaged and loyal.
Transcript
Larry Roberts [00:00:09]:
What is happening, everybody? I'm Larry Roberts.
Sara Lohse [00:00:12]:
I'm Sara Lohse and this is branded: your comprehensive guide to creative branding.
Larry Roberts [00:00:16]:
And on this episode of the podcast, we're going to take a deep dive into a couple of our favorite brands and take a look at some of their values, some of their mission statements, and really just some of the techniques that they use to build their brand. And Sarah, I got to say, from our choices, there's a definitive contrast in.
Sara Lohse [00:00:37]:
Styles here just a little bit. I chose a company that is very much aligned with my values, know, Kindness and Positivity. Cards against humanity.
Larry Roberts [00:00:52]:
Okay. Sarah against humanity. That should be fun to look at. Know, I kept things on the straight and narrow. I kept things in line with my desire to be innovative and fresh. I chose Lego. I'm a huge fan of Lego. I have several Lego builds here in the studio that are just off camera, and I love it. I love what they bring to the table, but I love it for a variety of different reasons. So why don't we, if you don't mind, we'll save Lego for the second half and we'll clean things up on our way out. But why don't you lay the welcome mat down with some Cards Against Humanity?
Sara Lohse [00:01:34]:
I adore their branding. I think they do such a fantastic job. And I said as a joke that it aligns with my mission, but it actually really does. But you wouldn't know that just from the product. And I think kind of something that they do is almost demarketing. So the concept of demarketing is when you're trying to reduce the sale of an item because you're low on it, so you almost market against it. They almost do that in all of their marketing. It's just like, yeah, this is pretty stupid. You don't need this, you could buy it. But why?
Larry Roberts [00:02:16]:
Well, I don't have cards against humanity. I don't think I've ever bought the game or a Deck or however. I don't even know how they come, to be honest with you. But I am familiar with the packaging and it's really very straightforward and simple, if I recall, and I have not looked it up prior to this episode. And I did that intentionally because I kind of wanted to just draw back on my familiarity with the brand. But it seems like everything is typically just black and then they just have a block font for their messaging. Am I right there?
Sara Lohse [00:02:49]:
Yeah, it's pretty simplistic. Some things that they've put out have been a little more creative, but it's very simple black and white, and I mean, that gives them kind of brand recognition. So if you go on their website, on their just like, about page, the first thing it says is, cards Against Humanity is a game. It's made of cards. You put the cards together to make jokes. It's pretty stupid. That is on their website. And that is fantastic. I don't know why I love it so much. Have you ever seen those signs of small businesses that will advertise the worst reviews they've ever oh, yeah.
Larry Roberts [00:03:28]:
Yeah. It's interesting you bring that up because a creator friend of mine, and I don't know if you know him or not, but Joe Pardot, he has a very successful YouTube channel where he does clips from Shark Tank. He'll take the Shark Tank pitches, he breaks them down into individual videos, and he adds his own comments and his own business savvy to the videos as well. And for those of you that are new to social media or new to YouTube, it can be a very hostile place. But Joe literally takes his worst reviews on YouTube, and highlights mean he uses that for all of his social media posts, and it gets a ton of additional attention.
Sara Lohse [00:04:07]:
I don't know why I love it so much. I used to live in Baltimore, and I think it was Pickles. There's a really famous bar outside of Camden Yards where the Orioles play. I think I got that right. And it was called Pickles, and it's where everyone went for the games. And one of the competitor teams, they gave it terrible reviews just because it was the fans of a team that was competing against them. So their banner outside said, like, the worst rated pub in Alberta, Canada, or something like wherever this competition team was from. And I loved that and I've seen it done with come try the worst burger Joe from Yelp has ever tried, or all things like that. I think it's so funny when businesses are self deprecating because it just feels so human.
Larry Roberts [00:05:06]:
Well, I think it makes people relatable. You'll see comedians do that as well. They have that self deprecating humor. But there's a bit of a cautionary tale there, too, because even from a comedic standpoint, if you get too self deprecating, you start to lose people. People start to go, maybe this person really doesn't have what they think they have. The humor starts to fall off, the branding, the messaging starts to fall off because it gets lost in all the negativity. How do you feel that cards against humanity leverage that self deprecating approach, but they manage to tread that fine line and not cross it?
Sara Lohse [00:05:47]:
Oh, I think they cross every line ever made. And that's kind of the beauty of their brand. Every line is crossed. But I feel like everything that they do, even if it is framed negatively, they actually do it for a positive reason.
Larry Roberts [00:06:05]:
Well, that's what I'm getting at, is that they definitely cross lines. They cross a lot of lines, all of the lines, but they don't do it to a point where they lose their audience. And that's the line that I'm talking about. They manage to maintain that audience. And while I've never again bought the game, I know they've sold millions and millions of copies of the game, and it's extremely popular. And I have played the game I think you and I have actually played the game together. It's very common to find somebody that has the game itself. So how do they do that? How do they tread that fine line and not lose their potential sales or lose their clients and customers?
Sara Lohse [00:06:44]:
I think the biggest part is that they really know their audience, so they know that the audience will be on board with whatever they do. And they have such a strong brand reputation that even when they do things like, did you hear about the Bullshit Box?
Larry Roberts [00:07:07]:
I did not.
Sara Lohse [00:07:08]:
All of their expansion packs are called different boxes. It's like the giant box, the big black box, whatever it is. They had one called the Bullshit Box, and it was literally a box of bullshit that they mailed to their customers.
Larry Roberts [00:07:23]:
Who legitimate, like cow chips. Like here in Texas, we just go out into the field, and that's what they sold.
Sara Lohse [00:07:30]:
They were $6 a box. It was called the bullshit box. I'm pretty sure the messaging even said, this is literally a box of bullshit. But because of how their messaging is, people didn't take that seriously. They thought they were just self deprecating, and that's how they described the box. And then they ordered it and received a box of bullshit.
Larry Roberts [00:07:50]:
Okay. Somehow I didn't know about this little stunt.
Sara Lohse [00:07:53]:
It was huge. Everyone heard about it. But the profits from that were donated to the cattle ranchers in Texas.
Larry Roberts [00:08:03]:
Okay. All right. I can see that now, because otherwise, I could see there being tremendous backlash for them to leverage a very committed and faithful customer base to literally sell them a box of Poop.
Sara Lohse [00:08:17]:
But at the same time, it's like they told them exactly what they were getting. So I feel like they know their target audience so well to know that their target audience would have found that hilarious.
Larry Roberts [00:08:27]:
Well, how did it go over? Did their audience find it hilarious?
Sara Lohse [00:08:31]:
Probably.
Larry Roberts [00:08:31]:
Oh, so we don't know.
Sara Lohse [00:08:33]:
I don't remember, honestly. I just know that it was Black Friday of 2014. They were $6 each, and profits went to Heifer International, I think.
Larry Roberts [00:08:44]:
Okay.
Sara Lohse [00:08:44]:
But I love that when all of the anti abortion heifer I do. I rescued a baby cow the other day. We know this.
Larry Roberts [00:08:54]:
Yes, that's true.
Sara Lohse [00:08:56]:
When everything was going on with all the anti abortion laws and everything, if you weren't buying from their website, you had the option. If it was in one of the states that were pushing for anti abortion laws, if you had the option to donate $5 to an abortion fund, and if you said no, it was automatically added.
Larry Roberts [00:09:19]:
Oh, wow, okay.
Sara Lohse [00:09:21]:
Like, something like that. And people were pissed, but only the people that they wanted to piss off. So they didn't care.
Larry Roberts [00:09:30]:
Yeah, but I think there's a cautionary tale there, too. In that when you start bringing your politics into your business and your brand, you're automatically alienating one side or the other. And it leaves the question there for me, as people that are listening to our podcast, most of which are entrepreneurs, probably lower to mid tier entrepreneurs just getting started trying to establish their brand, there's some messaging there that could be a cautionary tale for them as well. Would you want to inject your politics, or politics in general, into your brand?
Sara Lohse [00:10:06]:
I think the way they did it, it's nothing new. They've been steadfast on this for a while. So back when the whole Build The Wall thing happened, did you know about that one?
Larry Roberts [00:10:18]:
No. Here's my thing. I try to steer clear of as many politics as possible. It gets bad no matter what. There's going to be negativity involved. And for me personally on my brand, I don't want to get anywhere near any of those very volatile topics.
Sara Lohse [00:10:38]:
We're not getting into politics.
Larry Roberts [00:10:40]:
I don't know if you're picking up on my desperation here. To save this episode.
Sara Lohse [00:10:43]:
I am not speaking politically for myself. I'm speaking of how Cars Against Humanity has put it into their branding. Because when everything was happening with Build the Wall, cars Against Humanity bought a plot of land on the border so that they could not build the wall there.
Larry Roberts [00:11:03]:
So they built private property and they leveraged a mainstream news story to get attention for their product, which is actually ingenious genius. Yeah. Is it ingenious or just genius?
Sara Lohse [00:11:15]:
Both.
Larry Roberts [00:11:16]:
I don't even know. Anyways, it was very smart on their part to get that attention.
Sara Lohse [00:11:22]:
Yeah. They've always been very open about politics, and they're just very authentic. I mean, it goes back to authenticity. And big name brands also have to stay authentic. It's not just the personal brands. And solopreneurs authenticity is so important. And that's why I think, in my opinion, that's why it works for them, is because it's always kind of the same thing, and it's just how can we take what we already do and still make it surprising?
Larry Roberts [00:11:59]:
Yeah, I think that's great. The authenticity part definitely plays a significant role there. And if they've been in that position since they started their big marketing campaigns, then, hey, that's a great approach, and you want to stay consistent and authentic to what you've established and your audience base and what they expect from you as a brand and what they understand your values to be. So I love the fact that they're committed to what they're doing and they stay the course regardless. And as a business owner, as someone that's trying to build a brand, that's what you have to do. So regardless of what that stance is, and even if you do want to bring politics into building your brand, you just have to stay that course. And while I'm not going to drop any brand names right now for this episode, but if you look in the news, there are brands out there that are struggling right now because they ventured away from their authenticity. Now they're trying to right the ship, and they're struggling because they didn't stay the course. So if you do choose to go one way or another, regardless of what it is, you have to stay the course. You have to stay authentic, and you can't try to ride a Hype train in order to extend your brand, you have to stay authentic, and you have to stay consistent.
Sara Lohse [00:13:18]:
I need to add one thing there.
Larry Roberts [00:13:20]:
Go right ahead.
Sara Lohse [00:13:21]:
It just made me remember I don't remember how many years ago it was, but the BIC pen yeah. Tried to put out pens for women oh, wow. As a new product line.
Larry Roberts [00:13:32]:
Okay.
Sara Lohse [00:13:34]:
First of all, terrible. But they asked Ellen DeGeneres to be, like, their spokesperson and do a commercial for it on her show. And she's like, sure, of course I'll do it. And the entire thing she did was making fun of it because us and our tiny girly hands can't handle a pen made for men or something. The only thing they changed was they made them, like, pink, but they had to market it as pens for women and probably charge more for them.
Larry Roberts [00:14:03]:
Yeah.
Sara Lohse [00:14:03]:
And it was just the dumbest thing.
Larry Roberts [00:14:05]:
Exactly.
Sara Lohse [00:14:06]:
Clearly did not know their target audience. They clearly did not know who they were asking to be their spokesperson, and it blew up in their face. But I will never forget it. I thought it was the funniest thing, pens for women, because I have to throw out all of my pens. I didn't even know I was using men's pens.
Larry Roberts [00:14:26]:
Get rid of that Mont Blanc, because that's a pen for a man. It's so ridiculous. And that's what I'm talking about, is jumping on those Hype trains, trying to leverage some political movement in order to grow a brand, when that's not your authentic A, approach to building your brand or defining your brand or your brand values. And B, it's not authentic to what your brand represents. You're literally trying to leverage attention, which we all want to do and need to do. But if you do that, that better be your values, and you better be consistent with it.
Sara Lohse [00:14:59]:
Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm going to use the man pens. I'm not buying all new pens.
Larry Roberts [00:15:06]:
I don't blame you. I wouldn't either. I actually have pretty small hands for a dude. Even though I'm a bigger guy, I got little tiny fingers. They're still skinny out of all the body parts that got fat on me. My fingers weren't one of them. They stayed skinny. Even though I got pretty big there for a while. The fingers never did get chunky. So maybe I need to look into those pins for women and see if they fit my hands a little bit better.
Sara Lohse [00:15:28]:
If they ever made it to production, I will send them to you.
Larry Roberts [00:15:32]:
Thanks.
Sara Lohse [00:15:32]:
Merry Christmas.
Larry Roberts [00:15:34]:
So the brand that I chose, much less controversial, much less opportunity to lose their direction there, I chose Lego, man. I chose Lego. I've always loved Lego. I love what Lego represents, at least in my mind. I have their values from my perspective. And interestingly enough, and saying that word is difficult when you look at their website, and I'm pulling it up here right now, their values are in line with my exact thought process of what I see when I see Legos. Their brand values include imagination, which is amazing. As a kid, I had a ton of Legos. I didn't necessarily have Lego sets. And to be honest with you, I don't really remember how they packaged Legos back know, today I still buy Lego sets, but they're designed to build one product, but at least like buckets. Well, that's kind of how I remember it, because I just remember having a hodgepodge of just tons of different kinds of Legos. The long, I don't know, six dotted bricks of Legos, the little two bricks of Legos, the little angled Legos maybe using for like a roof or something. But I had all these just mismatched components that I would use and leveraging my imagination. I would build anything. I would build houses, I would build spaceships, I would build planes, I would build forts for my GI Joes, but anything that I could imagine, that's what I would build with my Legos. And if you go to their website and you look at their brand values, the very first thing they have there is imagination. So I love that. And as a content creator, and as somebody that loves to build and develop brands, the imagination component of Legos has carried with me throughout my entire life. If you look to the other side and their list of brand values, the next one's creativity, same thing, man. It helps spark that creativity. And it still boggles my mind when I build these massive Lego sets, because that's the Lego sets that I still buy. They have to have I like to have at least 2000 pieces, but the more pieces the better. I love these massive Lego sets. And when I look at them, I go, oh, my God. How creative does somebody have to be to be able to look at these bricks and go, I can build a Batmobile. I can build the Titanic, I can build the Taj Mahal, I can build all of these amazing structures, and somehow they can find a way to build it out of these little blocks. And it's just crazy, the creativity there. So that translates well as a brand value for Lego. Fun. They're still fun for me. I still love it's. One of my favorite ways to just chill on a Sunday afternoon is to clear my desk off of all my podcasting stuff and I break out my Legos and I lay all the individual bags out. And then I have my little instruction book and I have my little piles of Legos, and I just check out. Man, I throw on some cool tunes, got my headphones on and I'm in Legoland. And I am having fun. The next value they have is learning. Teaching creativity is a very difficult thing to do, but there's a ton of opportunities to learn from building Legos. How do components work together? How could I leverage this piece to accomplish this goal? So it's problem solving, it's mathematics, it's measuring. There's so many different ways to learn new skills using Lego. So they're spot on with those brand values, and then the last two are caring and quality. I do question the quality, because Lego, you could probably fix this if you're listening to this episode. It never fails, ever. Not one time have I bought an actual kit to build some sort of specific model that at least one piece wasn't missing. And I have to reach out to Lego and go because there's a whole list. If you've ever built anything big from Lego, you get an instruction book sometimes.
Sara Lohse [00:19:45]:
Like the Ikea manuals.
Larry Roberts [00:19:47]:
Exactly. Very similar to the Ikea manuals. And if you go to the back, there is a listing of this piece and the part number and how many of those you're supposed to have. And I literally have to call Lego and say, I need part number 57231. And then they're very responsive, though, so they apologize. They're very responsive. You typically get the part in about a week, and then you can finish your build. So even though there might be some mistakes in the bags, they're always very quick to rectify that. So the quality is still there. It just can be frustrating when you're so close to finishing that batwing and you're like, oh my God, I can't wait. And then you go, oh, I can't finish this. Frustrating.
Sara Lohse [00:20:27]:
I haven't played with Legos in years, but I have a degree in psychology. Okay, one of my first psychology classes.
Larry Roberts [00:20:37]:
Should I lay down for this? I mean, do I need to get on the couch?
Sara Lohse [00:20:41]:
Yes. And how does it make you feel? I think it was honestly just like Intro to Psych, and it was a hybrid class, so the learning part was online independently, but then we would come together every other week for an in person that was really hands on. And the first thing they had us do was they gave us all Legos. And you had to break into groups and they were just like, you've got like ten minutes, just play with Legos. And it was a really fascinating experiment because it showed the differences between how female and male brains were working. Because every group that was mostly female made like a house. They made something very secure, something very typical. It was just that we all made houses. I was I also made a house. But then the groups that were mostly boys. They made things that were like, fantastical. They made spaceships, they made helicopters, they made rockets. All of these things that I never would have thought to make, because I think that's kind of the difference between how girls and boys are kind of raised with toys. I got dolls and toy kitchens and all this stuff that's very tangible. And they got things that were more creative in a different sense. The Legos that they use to build these fantastical things. And it was just so interesting because I don't think there was any variation. Every female group did a house and every male group did something. I don't even remember what they were because a lot of them are ridiculous.
Larry Roberts [00:22:29]:
That's the cool thing, is that we had that creative freedom to build something ridiculous. And I know I built ridiculous things back in the 80s. Robots and GI. Joes and Transformers and all that. Those were the things back then. So of course, I tried to replicate and build those things myself. So very interesting observation in that experiment. But again, going back to the values for the brand itself, I love everything they bring to the table. And if I can leverage those things in what I'm doing, all of those values, I love having the opportunity to leverage their brand values in doing everything that I do today. I try to leverage imagination in the content that we create. Try to leverage creativity in designing cover art for our podcast, launch clients, or creativity in developing AI based applications. Everything has to be fun. I don't want to do anything that's not fun. Matter of fact, fun would probably move up to my number one slot here. If I was to reorder the values on the Lego site, Learning. We talked about it on a previous episode. I spend a large portion of my day watching YouTube videos and reading newsletters and learning each and every day. And then those caring and quality. I always want to deliver a quality product with everything that I do, and I honestly care about every customer or client that I have. So I want to see their success. I want to see their growth. I want to see their creativity. So I share a ton of values with my brand that Lego has with theirs. And that's why I focused on their brand for today.
Sara Lohse [00:24:13]:
And Lego, if you are listening, he really likes the Batman sets, and I like the you know, just so you not totally not asking for anything.
Larry Roberts [00:24:25]:
But you know what? We are asking for something. If you've listened to this episode and you found some value in today's episode, this was a fun conversation. We got a little bit deeper than we typically go in our episodes, and that's cool. I think it shows an evolution of our brand. So if you found some value yourself in this episode, do me a favor, smash that subscribe button. So Sara and I can continue to bring you this amazing content each and every week. And until the next one. I'm Larry Roberts.
Sara Lohse [00:24:53]:
I'm Sara Lohse. See you later.
