Didn't See It Coming By Marc Stoiber

'Personal brand' is an overused, increasingly meaningless term. What it should stand for is clarity in who you are, and what you stand for. But it has been co-opted by the get-rich-quick-self-help crowd, and devolved into little more than superficialities - what you wear and who you hang out with.  So it was with a cynical eye that I opened an email from my friend Mark Busse, asking me to take a look at his personal brand document. The document floored me. It was an intensely personal exploration into every facet of Mark's personality, both intimate and bold.  I jumped on the phone immediately with Mark, who revealed it was an exercise he had conducted with a personal coach. Not only had it helped him gain clarity into what really mattered to him, but it provided a compass for decisions - both personal and professional - he might make in the future.  In fact, Mark recounted that he had shown the document to a prospective employer. The employer was floored, and offered Busse a job on the spot. Tellingly, B

Brand storytelling is both powerful and perplexing. We all acknowledge that a good story 'sticks' better than any list of brand features or benefits... but we also know that crafting a memorable story is damn hard. What's worse, there are no easy step-by-step processes or manuals that enable you to generate a decent brand story.    Well, actually, I found one.    Park Howell is a brand strategist who specializes in dissecting, analyzing, and generating great brand stories. His podcast, The Business of Story, is one of the top business podcasts in North America. And he's just written a killer book called Brand Bewitchery, which tweaks the classic  Hero's Journey to fit the business paradigm. It works!    In this podcast, Park and I dig into Brand Bewitchery, and why it works for business. We also cover a wide swath of topics - hey, we've known each other for years, and this was a wonderful time to catch up on tall tales and adventures.    Liked this podcast? Here are a few more you'll enjoy Bootstrap

I've known Len Laycock for years. His stunning home furnishings design / retail brand Upholstery Arts was a beacon on the Vancouver scene - not least of which for its impeccable sustainability cred.  Fast forward a few years, and Len is launching another green brand. Horizontal.eco is a stunning bed that features innovation, striking design, and sustainability built in.  What's the secret to launching a values-based brand? That's what we talked about on the show, dipping into anecdotes from Len's career as Director of Marketing at IKEA, his 17-year experience building Upholstery Arts, and his new venture Horizontal.  Liked this podcast? Here are a few more you'll enjoy The innovation story every frustrated entrepreneur needs to hear Test or trust? The idea validation debate rages on Building your own brand? Start with my book BrandDIY, and my BrandDIY facebook group. Want my insights straight to your inbox? Sign up for my newsletter. And please, if you enjoyed this show, share it on social media and

Sarah Darcey aspired to build a fashion styling brand. But with a great job, her aspiration never left the back burner.  COVID-19 changed all that.  For months, Sarah was confined to her apartment. The more time she spent staring at the wall and reflecting, the more she knew she had to make her dream happen.  Discouraged by advice from fashion insiders, she decided to fast-track her road to fame with a crazy challenge: to style 50 items in her apartment in 50 days, and document her adventure on video.  Today, as she nears the 50 item finish line, her creativity and spark have inspired viewers to cheer her on, offer styling gigs, and more.  I got a chance to chat with Sarah about her inspiration, the limitations of the fashion industry, the roots of her idea, and the cool movement she wants to start. I hope you enjoy the conversation! Enjoyed this entrepreneur's story? You'll like these, too: Delivering brand disruption, one order at a time Doing a successful pandemic brand pivot Want to check out Sa

As COVID and the economic meltdown grind on, we're seeing yawning market chasms emerge that are ripe for brand disruption.  One of the most glaring is the massive gap between 'big' retail and, well, all other merchants.  The poster child for big retail is Amazon. Granted, the giant has delivered an excellent product for these strange times, enabling us to do our shopping from the hunkered-down safety of our homes. But when you contrast that with the crippling effect the shutdown has had on local merchants - 35% of whom are expected to never emerge from the enforced closure - you see that we're losing something important here. Local retail is what makes our cities dynamic and vibrant. They stitch our community together. What's more, they're a critical piece of our financial ecosystem: the dollars we give them are recycled back to the rest of us.  The last thing we need at moments like these are maudlin, overwrought commercials from big corporations reminding us how much they care about frontline workers. Sp

How do you do a successful pandemic brand pivot? COVID has spawned a cottage industry of advice on  shifting the tactics of your brand - amping up the education and free value to your followers, reaching out more often, focusing on empathy over persuasion, etc etc. But so much of it seems, well, timid and incremental. And - speaking as a focus group of one - most of it is absolute shite. If I log onto one more webinar that delivers lame advice taken from the back cover notes of a Seth Godin book, I swear I'll walk off a bridge. Where are the awesome pivots? Where are the titans forging brave new paths forward? Well, I found one. And as luck would have it, he was right in my backyard, here in Victoria, BC. Matthew Watson is the CEO of SendtoNews, the biggest sports video service you've never heard of (I can't take credit for that handle - it was the headline of a great Toronto Star story). The company provides engaging, up-to-the-moment official video clips from major sports leagues to publishers. They eve

Outsider marketing means getting an 'outside the jar' perspective on your company's positioning, messaging and selling. Here's why it's more important than ever. The economy is melting down. Everywhere you look, companies are ducking for cover, going under, or struggling to stay alive. Or are they? Times of disruption deliver opportunities for companies agile and aware enough to seize them. Smart companies are already engaged in finding those opportunities, and retooling. Their goal is to slingshot out of the disruption stronger than ever.  Karen Hayward is a Managing Partner with Chief Outsiders, a national consulting firm that delivers fractional CMO's to mid-cap firms on limited engagements. Today, that means her team is working with a lot of CEO's who need slingshot strategies. I chatted with Karen for my podcast. Her insights were sharp, her tips thoughtful, and her personality infectious. I hope you enjoy the interview as much as I did.  If you enjoyed this interview, you'll like these ones, too:

Chris Meade, his brother, and his best friend were just sitting around watching ESPN when an idea for a cool game hit them.  Today, that game is on the shelves at Amazon, Wal-Mart and Home Depot, to name a few.  It's called CROSSNET, and it comes with a story that'll inspire every entrepreneur frustrated by the deluge of data and get-rich-quick advice flooding the internet and social media. Enjoy! Liked this podcast? Here are more stories you should check out:  Turning ugly constraints into beautiful innovation Test or trust? The idea validation debate rages on Want my insights straight to your inbox? Sign up for my newsletter. And please, don't forget to share this story!

As an entrepreneur, I know how easy it is to be swept up by a new idea, ignoring lukewarm or contradictory feedback from potential customers. 'They don't get it' or 'They don't know what they want', we blithely say while charging forward. Truth is, consumers do get ideas they like. And if your idea isn't resonating in its most rudimentary form, chances are developing it further won't solve their problems - or yours.  Customer discovery is a methodology for testing pain points, and crafting solutions to answer them. It's not a new concept, but it is all too often ignored by entrepreneurs.  To provide a better understanding of customer discovery, and how to apply it, I spoke with Christopher Naismith, an entrepreneur using the methodology to effectively develop a new product in the commercial building management space.  We defined customer discovery in common sense terms, and went through steps to conduct it that every startup founder could follow.  Hope you enjoy the conversation. Here's to using customer

Oh, the stories I could tell of pitched battles over idea validation. I've seen the debate swing like a pendulum between test and trust through the years. In the pre-digital days - back when dinosaurs and mad men roamed the savannah - creatives like myself battled researchers over the validity of focus groups and mall intercepts. Usually, we'd be given leeway to trust our intuition on ideas... until a concept bombed. Then, like Dad busting up the keg party, researchers would be brought in to restore a bit of sober adult thinking to the proceedings. Fast forward to the birth of the internet. In the raucous pre-bubble days, we witnessed the rise of dot coms with more investment money than sense. Insane advertising (remember the E*Trade monkey?) made us laugh, but not buy. As the pendulum inevitably swings, so too did the forces of testing. Which brings us to today, where data gathering and testing rule the roost. Kevin Indig caught my eye with a recent Linkedin post, where he took the position that far too

What goes into a killer elevator pitch? Turns out, many of the same things that go into a great brand. On March 3rd, I'm going to be the lead judge at an event where participants compete with their elevator pitches. Not only will this be a fun evening, but I'm certain we'll see that we all get the same things wrong when it comes to creating a memorable pitch. The event organizer, Pascale Hansen, had a preliminary call with me to get my thoughts on the subject for an event promotion podcast. She was kind enough to share the recording. Hope you enjoy it as much as we did. If you enjoyed this podcast, sign up for my newsletter to get notified when new episodes come out. Putting your own pitch together? Read my book Your Ultimate Presentation first.  Finally, don't forget to share this podcast on social media!  

Spirit Bay is a whole new kettle of fish when it comes to real estate marketing. The village, on the southern coast of Vancouver Island in Canada, was developed based on traditional principles of community design: Building light on the land, with homes following the contours of topography – instead of blasting the entire site level, Designing narrow roads with plenty of twists – ensuring slow driving and more walking, Building hundred-year-homes with materials that outlast (by far) those used in other new homes, Tapping renewable heating and cooling using ocean thermal, Working in partnership with the First Nation band that owns the land, to ensure their values are built into the Spirit Bay manifest. Now for the rub. Perception. Spirit Bay is a textbook case of how to get sustainability right, and sometimes wrong, in real estate marketing. It was, for me, a journey with a definite learning curve. I was asked to do a presentation on the marketing of Spirit Bay by the Urban Design Institute. Prior to

Solar lighting as a brand is beset by misperceptions. People still overwhelmingly believe the lights break, the batteries don’t last, the whole category is a cheap, Home Depot novelty. Winning hearts and minds over to solar may be a big challenge. But the reward for breaking down the misperceptions will be huge. Justin Taverna, co-founder of First Light Technologies, is determined to make First Light that breakthrough brand. I’ve known Justin and his First Light co-founder Sean Bourquin a number of years now. I helped them streamline their brand message then, and I’m helping them figure out how to reach more customers now. Justin and I sat down a short while ago to talk about the evolution of the solar lighting brand, the a-ha moments he’s had, and the brand space he believes First Light can stake in consumers’ minds. If you liked this podcast, make sure to share it with your 5,000 closest friends using the social share buttons on this page. And if you'd like to talk about your brand, drop me a line at m

Quick, name two top tech cities. San Francisco, and, ummm... Exactly. Being a top tech city and being known as a top tech city are two quite different things. I challenge that the difference all comes down to brand. Here in Victoria BC, my hometown, we're blessed with an exploding tech industry. Even better, we have an amazing tech city brand. At least part of that is due to the hard work and creativity of people like Dan Gunn, CEO of VIATEC.  I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Dan and unpack the elements of the Victoria tech brand. Among other things, we dug into... What's in a name - and why Tectoria (the name created as an umbrella for everything from conferences to VIATEC's building) is a great one, The complexities of creating a brand in a city where virtually none of the stakeholders sell their products, The brand power in Fort Tectoria - an HQ that is open to the public as well as VIATEC staffers and stakeholders The connection between tech, spilled wine bottles, and inflatable kil

To me, podcasting is a passion - I simply love bringing guests on who have an interesting perspective on brands, marketing and communication, and I love sharing their ideas with my audience. If someone gives me business because they enjoy my podcast, that's icing on the cake. Nice, but not necessary. So it was very interesting to me to read this story in the New York Times about 'Peak Podcast' - a state where monetization and get-rich-quick podcasting schemes seem to be ruining the industry. Hey, podcasting is about building my brand, but for how long?  To that end, I invited Craig Thomas on my show. Craig does guest relations at CallForContent, a company that helps podcasters get more listeners, grow their show, and all the other noble things podcasting is supposed to do. Over the course of half an hour, Craig and I chatted about the evolution of podcasting, what podcasters absolutely have to get right to succeed (in all senses of the word), and what the future holds. It was an entertaining conversation. E

The Calgary Stampede - the greatest outdoor show on earth - just wrapped up. This year, the show was marred by the tragic deaths of 6 horses in the chuckwagon races, sparking outrage among fans and activists alike.  Is it time for the Calgary Stampede to evolve its brand? Or can it weather the storm? I went on the air with CFAX's Mark Brennae to talk about the Stampede's brand, and what elements of a brand need to evolve in order to keep it vibrant, current and prosperous. Enjoy!  If you enjoy this show, please share it with the social buttons on this page - and please subscribe to my podcast on iTunes. 

My journey through the world of marketing has had its fair share of ups, downs, goods, bads and uglies. So when University of Adversity podcast host Lance Essihos dialled me up to relate my stories to his audience, I happily obliged. Our little chat covered a lot of ground. From getting my start as a writer in a country where English wasn't the primary language, to the ad factories of New York, to learning how not to run my own agency, to my current role as brand consultant, we went through it all - and we didn't pull any punches. I hope some of these stories help marketers and entrepreneurs. And if you're neither, there are some pretty fun misadventures to smile at. Enjoy! If you enjoyed this podcast, please share it on social media. And sign up for my newsletter to get my insights straight to your inbox. 

On Friday June 21st, the UK enacts a regulation barring gender stereotyping from advertising. It's a noble initiative but, I believe, a futile one. Advertising, to paraphrase Malcolm McLaren, is all about sex. Sex sells. And with sex come stereotypes of gender that are hard, if not difficult to shake without dire implications for the bottom line.  Yes, I believe things will improve. They've already dramatically improved. But legislation will not eliminate stereotypes.  In this interview with CFAX's Mark Brennae, we explore the journey of gender stereotypes in advertising - from the abysmal 60's to today - and try to find the path forward into the future. It's an entertaining conversation. Enjoy! If you liked this podcast, please share it on social media. And don't forget to subscribe to my newsletter to get my insights straight to your inbox. 

There's never a shortage of great marketing and brand-related stories. But we really hit the jackpot the last little while. So I went on the air with Mark Brennae of CFAX to talk about it. First, what's up with Drake? Is he the new Toronto Raptors mascot, or a genius marketer? If you haven't been paying attention, the rapper is front and centre at Raptors games, and his visibility has gone through the roof during the playoffs. How much exposure is too much? Which brand benefits, and which brand pays? It's all in the first half of my show with Mark.  Second, the EU election happened yesterday, and the results were certainly not what populists were expecting. But had anyone really paid attention to the complex worldviews of euro-constituents, the rise of the Greens may have made perfect sense. Worldview thinking is something we marketers do as a matter of course. I talk about it during the second half of my show with Mark.  Did you enjoy this show? Do me a huge favour and spread the love with the social medi

The other day, I was strolling through Costco, and saw McDonald's coffee pods on sale. I was amazed - not so long ago, I was working on the McDonald's account as a creative director and writer, and the coffee was our Achilles' Heel.  How did they do it? I mean, people were now not only ordering java at McCafes, they were buying the stuff to take home.  To answer this question (and gaze into the McDonald's crystal ball) I sat down for a chat with my friend - and former McDonald's marketer - Brad Gamble. Brad and I have known one another for 20 years...which made the conversation casual, and fun to listen to.  Enjoy! If you like this podcast, drop me a line (marc@marcstoiber.com) and let me know. As well, don't forget to share this episode on social media. And hey, if you never want to miss out, subscribe to my newsletter.