Strategy Through Brand: Carving the Path for Your Organization

Jonathan Morgan [00:00:00]:

Welcome to The Strategy Gap, a show for leaders who want to bridge the gap between strategy creation and strategy execution. I'm Jonathan Morgan and along with Joe Krauss, each episode we have conversations with strategy and operational leaders on key issues in strategic planning and strategy execution. If you're looking to actually accomplish your goals, this is the show for you. Welcome back everybody, to another episode of The Strategy Gap. Joining us today is Cheryl Farrdem. Cheryl brings to the conversation many years of experience and honestly, a type of strategy we don't discuss often enough on the show, and that is brand strategy. As the founder and chief strategist of signal brand innovation, she is a leading expert in creating and activating brands that people love. She specializes in aligning businesses and brand strategies to propel organizations forward.

Jonathan Morgan [00:00:53]:

And through her experience with over 100 emerging, established and global brands, she helps build magnetic, high performing brands and fosters exceptional brand leadership. She's worked with brands including Nike, Coca Cola, Petsmart, Fairmont Hotel and Resorts, and many, many more. She holds graduate degrees from Cornell and Columbia universities and is a respected author and speaker in the industry as a visionary who transforms brands into powerful business assets. Cheryl, welcome to the show.

Cheryl Farr [00:01:23]:

Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

Jonathan Morgan [00:01:26]:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's kick things off, really talking about brand strategy. I think probably not for better or for worse. Probably for worse. Most people hear the word brand and brand strategy and they think, what are the colors, what are the logos? What are the things that we're going to build for our company as a brand image and those really image aspects. But when you think about brand strategy, how do you define that and how do you typically engage with organizations that are going through a brand journey?

Cheryl Farr [00:01:53]:

Yeah, that's a great question. How we define brand is your brand is not your logo, it's not your colors. Those things simply represent what your brand stands for. Your brand is really two things. It's the perceptions that you own and the promise that you make delivered at all points of contact to create a total brand experience. Perceptions you own and the promise you make when you think about those, that promise obviously is really clear. It's what commitment do we make? That's the heart and soul of our brand that we get up to deliver every day across all we say and do, show, say and do. And then those perceptions that we own, that's the idea of what do we want? What do we reinforce so consistently, so repeatedly, consistently, across all touch points with our brand? That they're the things people say about us.

Cheryl Farr [00:02:43]:

Right.

Cheryl Farr [00:02:44]:

Whether they're. If I'm in an Apple store, whether I'm interacting with my Apple product, or I show up at the store, or I need a customer service online, or I'm interacting with the website, or I need a new pure earbuds, whatever that looks like. They're reinforcing a certain set of perceptions over and over and over again, to the point where Apple doesn't have to tell us what they're about. We're experiencing it, we say it about them. And that's really what brand building and perception management is all about. And the thing about that is that brands are delivered by people. So when you set a brand strategy, you are really setting what that brand stands for and who you want to be consistently at all touch points and managing those perceptions with extreme intentionality and consistency so that people are saying what you want them to say about you, they're thinking about what you want them to think about you. People are going to think things about your brand, whether you manage them or not.

Cheryl Farr [00:03:48]:

You might as well manage them.

Joe Krause [00:03:50]:

And when we look at that topic, I mean, there's a lot of very famous examples of maybe people not living, not owning the perceptions, and not keeping up their promises. A good example would be last summer there was a major meltdown in United Airlines. Their CEO famously snuck away and took a private jet to where he needed to be while everybody was stranded at the airport. And he was able to survive that. But it's still talked about pretty much all the time. I'm in a frequent flyer group on Facebook and they still mention it. So I guess the question I have is, how do you impress that upon people to say, you only have to mess up once for people to not forget it and destroy everything you've built. So you cannot have a momentary lapse of, oh, I have to get there, so I'll take the private jet, I'm the CEO.

Joe Krause [00:04:32]:

You got to sleep in the airport with everybody else and try to fix the problem. How do you impress that upon people in a very real way?

Cheryl Farr [00:04:39]:

100%. You're absolutely right. How do you impress it on people? Brands are managed from the top down.

Cheryl Farr [00:04:46]:

Right?

Cheryl Farr [00:04:46]:

You tell brand is all about leadership. This is something that I preach all the time. It's brands are managed from the top down. They're not managed out of your marketing department, they're not managed from the middle of the organization up. Your chief brand officer really is your CEO. And if your CEO is behaving in a way that is out of sync with what you expect from the organization, that's going to pervade the entire organization. So you really have to, in any organization, you've got to start at the top. And if they're trying to make change from the inside, inside up, I really insist that we go and make sure that we have C suite buy in.

Cheryl Farr [00:05:30]:

Because if the C suite isn't on board, it's not going to happen. You're going to have experiences that are disconnected. So a great counterpoint to your united example, which is a fantastic one, is when Southwest had their meltdown, their technological meltdown a couple of years ago, where everything came to a halt and their CEO, it said, we'll do better. We knew that we were behind technologically. Here's what we're doing to fix it. And what ended up happening was two things. One, they own the problem. They didn't shirk it.

Cheryl Farr [00:06:05]:

Number two, Southwest has always been so consistent and so connected to their customer, so in it with their customer, that people were willing to forgive. Even people who, like Miss Christmas, were willing with their families were more likely to forgive. Because it's a bank, right? When you're delivering on your brand and people know what you stand for and know what to expect from you, doesn't mean that things aren't going to go wrong or you're not going to make mistakes, but you're building equity, you're putting pennies in a penny jar. And so as you're creating a bank of loyalty and a bank of grace, kind of. And so when you are consistent, even when something goes wrong, if you are doing the right thing and you've built up that loyalty, you've built up that equity, you filled that penny jar. Even if a few pennies come out, people are willing to forgive. Customers wanna, they want reasons to stay connected to the brands that they love. So if you can leverage your brand to build love, to build those connections, reinforce those connections, be who your customers want you to be, and show up every day the same if something goes wrong, because it will, because we're all human and brands are delivered by people, and people make decisions, you can get back on track, and your customer will embrace that, and they'll embrace your willingness to get back on track.

Joe Krause [00:07:33]:

It's funny you bring up southwest, because famously, in the last two weeks, they have announced, due to a variety of reasons, they're going to start doing red eyes. They're going to get rid of the whole ABC class boarding. That's literally what people really enjoyed about that brand. That's what differentiated them from everybody else. And so people sat in a boardroom and decided, let's take what makes us special and let's make us like everybody else in the hopes of, obviously, revenue generation. How do you, your experience, like, explain these, like, perplexing decisions that you, maybe you see from the outside? And it's like Southwest is unique and special. This is going to have a ripple effect. But somebody across the board, because I'm sure the decision had to be made over 100 different meetings, they came to the conclusion, let's abandon everything that made a special in the hopes of growth, I suppose.

Joe Krause [00:08:19]:

How do you explain that?

Cheryl Farr [00:08:20]:

Yeah, that's a great one. And I've got news for you. I'm perplexed by that as well. Maybe there's some, look, there's a reason most of the industry has gone one way and Southwest has gone another sides of that equation. Sure, there's a lot of money to be made going that way, but Southwest has found an ability in the past to be profitable above and beyond any other major domestic airline by doing things their own way. But it does. When I saw those changes, I felt perplexed by that, too, because it felt like a kind of betrayal of the southwest ethos and the southwest value set. And the first thing out of my mouth when I shared it with my husband was, if southwest starts charging for bags, they are sunk.

Cheryl Farr [00:09:13]:

Right?

Cheryl Farr [00:09:14]:

They are sunk because it does feel like pulling closer. Southwest has done such an incredible job of convincing the flying public that they are different, that they are authentic, that they are sincere. They're in it with you. They want it to be easy and accessible and without all of the strings attached that come with all the other, and all the nonsense and noise that come with all the other airlines. The bureaucracy man seat assignments start to add a lot of bureaucracy.

Cheryl Farr [00:09:49]:

Right?

Cheryl Farr [00:09:49]:

A lot of tearing, a lot of extra charging. This is the no nickel and dime airline. So it feels at first glance, I love them to prove me wrong, but it feels at first glance like those decisions were not made with true brand filters in mind, and maybe that will pay off for them. But I'm skeptical.

Jonathan Morgan [00:10:16]:

Yeah. And it's likely we'll never actually know the answer. We'll just be able to watch from the sidelines and make our own assumptions. Obviously, there's some assumptions there that maybe there's either so much loyalty that they can take a step in the other direction, or maybe there's a conflict to something you mentioned earlier, between the marketing strategy, hey, we have this brand that people love, and the actual leadership strategy. Are we living out the choices that we're supposed to make that ultimately enhances our brand and delivers that to customers. So I want to build on that point a little bit there to think about organizations that may be going through this transformation or facing a decision like this one that we just talked about. Obviously, if you have a leader that's very good at this, they're going to think about that inherently in themselves. But how do you go into an organization that maybe traditionally thinks about brand as a marketing piece and transform that into a leadership component that then is consistent across all those decisions?

Cheryl Farr [00:11:12]:

That is a great question. Here's the pain point that I'll tell you that why? I get calls from organizations that understand what the pain is. Often the calls that I get are because there's a need to tell a new story inside and outside the organization. It's not just about what does our marketing say. It's about either we've lost focus on the story we're telling about who we are, or the world has changed around us and we have to tell a new story. So one of the things that we see right now is a world that has changed a lot over the last five years. Market forces, right? We've all come through Covid, market forces have changed in all kinds of industries. People are making choices in different ways.

Cheryl Farr [00:12:04]:

We're living differently. We're choosing workplaces and education and homes and how we spend our time and how we spend our dollars in all different ways than we used to. And so competitive environments have shifted so dramatically that people have to find a new way forward. And really smart leaders understand that that comes down to telling a new story that we can really all rally around inside and outside the organization. It's not just a marketing message.

Cheryl Farr [00:12:37]:

Right.

Cheryl Farr [00:12:38]:

And that's why it's got to start at the top. I like to say that we live in a post consumer world, that there are no longer employees and customers. And where are the employees inside the organization and customers outside the organization? All your employees are your early adopter consumers, right? That's all they are. They are choosing to opt in and be your most loyal buyers in some ways, right? They're opting into your story. They're representing the brand. They're your brand champions, your brand advocates, your brand enthusiasts. They're your brand representatives. If they're not all in, how in the world can you expect your customer to be all in? And so that really telling that story inside the organization so they can tell it outside the organization is really critical because when all you're doing, organizations that just look at their brand as their mark and their logos and their messages.

Cheryl Farr [00:13:38]:

Customers are not dumb. That story has to come. That's simply a promise. How do you pay it off in their real engagement with the brand. And so that plumb line, that promise has to be a plumb line throughout your whole organization and everywhere your customer shows up, whether it's at the customer service desk or in the product or even in the invoice they get. That's got to be a through line. And that promise has to be delivered at every level because if it's inauthentic, customers have really great b's detectors. That's what went off with the Southwest news, right? Our antennas went up and went, wait, this feels inauthentic and this feels out of alignment with the story.

Cheryl Farr [00:14:24]:

I understand who I understand southwest to be, and this is where my skepticism came in. They could have and maybe they still will, but they didn't do a great job of telling us a story about why this change could be in alignment with who they were or how they could contextualize it in a story that we deemed authentic. It felt out of sync. And so that's really how we sort of connect to organizations is when they understand that they have to tell a new story inside and outside that organization and really then figure out how to bring it to life.

Joe Krause [00:15:04]:

This is not brand bashing day, I promise, but this story du jour is the new CEO of Starbucks, lives in southern California and Newport beach, and Seattle is the home of the headquarters of Starbucks. And they have a hybrid work from home policy. The way they brought him into the fold was like, you can have the personal jet to do a super commute pretty much every day back and forth from Seattle, by the way, were a green company. Our logos green. We also are thinking that green initiatives are important in our carbon footprint and working from the office is important. And then we make at the highest level in the organization an exception that nobody else has been afforded. And so once again, it's a, to your point that you made earlier, it has to be a story that you're telling internally and externally. I guess the part that I'm still unclear about, and I guess because it is brands or people doing things, people doing people things.

Joe Krause [00:15:52]:

How could you constantly see stories like this where they're making these odd choices? Because somebody had to realize this wasn't going to go over well. This gentleman's going to be taking a private jet 6000 miles a week to be in the office. But they still said, you know what, I don't care. I don't understand how that happens. And you see that all the time. So maybe are there techniques or different ways that you've seen that you can safeguard those types of decisions, like, what have you seen to prevent the most obvious bad choices that are being made out there?

Cheryl Farr [00:16:21]:

Yeah. So I look at that and I see hubris in the organization, and that's maybe what's happening at Southwest as well.

Cheryl Farr [00:16:30]:

Right?

Cheryl Farr [00:16:31]:

At the end of the day, your brand filters have to be. They have to come alongside your business. Your business filters, they have to come alongside your brand strategy. Brand strategy is a set of decision filters. The perceptions that you want to own, that promise you make, they have to be a lens through which you put every decision. And when you make exceptions like that exception that you just pointed out that Starbucks is making, that causes confusion not only among us, but it causes confusion inside the organization, because then you create a world where it's okay to be a company of exceptions, and all of a sudden, those things that you thought you really held true don't hold true anymore. And so I'm not suggesting that I know they made this shift for a reason, but that seems like a cascading series of decisions where the brand filters got put aside. And there's going to be a reckoning there.

Cheryl Farr [00:17:38]:

There's got to be a reckoning there because it's going to. Starbucks is a brand that has intense internal loyalty and intense external loyalty. And that's not a mistake. That's something that is completely out of alignment. And look, it's not easy. I'm not suggesting that this is easy stuff, right? Starbucks saw falling numbers. They saw some things happening that were not in alignment with their business goals. So they turned to somebody who made a big splash, right? Made a big difference at Chipotle.

Cheryl Farr [00:18:13]:

They want to make a big difference, too. And so that was very enticing. And it probably made it very easy to say, oh, well, we can make this exception for the CEO, but as a very dear german friend said to me once, a fish stinks at the head. And this is where, if the CEO won't say true to the brand, that is going to actually start to negatively impact that brand. So it's got to be held at the highest level of the organization. And I think this is where you see, I would suggest, Joe, that one of the things that happens is you start to get, when you look at the maturity curve, you start, brands that start to make these dissolving decisions are starting to hit a part of the maturity curve that's going to start to force some reinvention not very far in the future. They're getting over a certain hump that's actually probably if we went back and studied, it would signal, we'd be a signal that they're moving into a later maturity phase that's going to force reinvention down the line. Yeah.

Jonathan Morgan [00:19:26]:

And I think it's very easy for us and probably for our listeners as well to see these examples, hear them in the news. And it's very obvious the mistakes that organizations are making. Probably the harder thing is to point out the good examples that organizations are doing. So I was originally going to go, hey, what are mistakes people are making? But I think we've covered that at this point. I'd love to hear the, a couple of examples that you've seen of organizations that really embody this throughout the internal aspect, their people, their leadership, the consumers. And it kind of shows what good looks like for other organizations.

Cheryl Farr [00:19:59]:

Oh, yeah, that's a great question because there are actually a lot of great examples out there. One of them recently that I was looking at was Minnetonka monkeys. Does anybody, you know, Minnetaka Moccasins. Right. A huge brand.

Jonathan Morgan [00:20:13]:

I do, yes.

Cheryl Farr [00:20:14]:

They've been in business since, I think, 1947. Right. They have recently looked at their heritage.

Cheryl Farr [00:20:22]:

Right.

Cheryl Farr [00:20:22]:

Looked at their brand internally, re examined it. It really had been built. It's a beautiful brand, great product, but kind of really built on co opting native american culture. And they've looked at that, and if you look at their website, they tell a really great story. They looked inside and said, that can't be our story anymore. We really need to be about honoring the native peoples of this nation and really lifting up native artists, native makers, because we're a brand that out of love of those styles and love of that came out, but ended up co opting that native culture. We now have to put that native culture authentically in the center of our brand. And they've not only retold that story, but put their money where their mouth is.

Cheryl Farr [00:21:19]:

Lifting up native artists, using native artists to design their shoes and their new styles, showcasing those native artists, telling their stories. I think it's an awesome, awesome story of a brand that has looked within and said, we're still making a great product, we're still doing really well, but we're kind of out of sync with what's happening in society and how we're really thinking about culture and we're thinking about our role, the role our brand plays in the stewardship of storytelling. And so they've retold that story and reposition, I think, really beautifully to really tell a new story, stay rooted in who they are and tell a new story for where we are today. And I think it's really cool. I think it's a great example.

Joe Krause [00:22:14]:

It's interesting you say that it's for a company that has a primary product and they were doing fairly well and they wanted to tell a new story that makes sense. And then to add to the, the good news train here, I mean, Allbirds is a brand that I personally enjoy, a wonderful sneaker. And they've always made wonderful sneakers. They actually just got an email before they're saying we have a new one. Okay, great. But what they started to do about a year ago was saying, well, we're so good with sneakers, why don't we make shorts? Why don't we make tops? We're going to be, we're going to be an apparel company as well. And it actually really, really took a hit on the revenue. Like where they were having major, major almost insolvency problems because they thought they were good at one thing and as a result, let's go all in on this other thing that they maybe had no business understanding with their brand.

Joe Krause [00:22:57]:

So how do you guide brands in terms of they're always probably in the search of growth, especially if they publicly traded, they have to have certain targets every quarter, otherwise bad things happen. So they look for growth everywhere and they make sometimes odd decisions regarding, let's try this other thing over there. So how do you organically grow in your experience, a brand so that they do more of what they're good at as opposed to maybe looking for some random tangents that probably in the reality, if they were honest with themselves, they knew weren't going to pay off in the beginning.

Cheryl Farr [00:23:27]:

That's a great question. It all comes back to your filters, your brand filters. What are you really about and really digging into? I use a simple filter that if there's one thing I want to stick within an organization, is the filter I use to look at an organization. What's true to who you are, what's written on your DNA that why do these people get up and come to this place to work every day? What's really true to who you are, what's meaningful to your target customer, those you have and those you want? What makes you dramatically different from other choices they have? So true, meaningful, different. You're looking for that intersection of true, meaningful, different, true to who you are, meaningful to your target customer, those you have and those you want and dramatically different from other choices. I will tell you that the thing that gets neglected most in that equation is true that people aren't looking at, whether that's looking at their core values or their core, what they really stand for or what they are just good at. Even from an operational standpoint, making and distributing shorts is not the same as. And making, distributing marketing shorts is not the same as making distributors and marketing shoes.

Cheryl Farr [00:24:44]:

Right.

Cheryl Farr [00:24:45]:

And so the question is, I think what they need to do is really look very closely and be honest with themselves about what's true to who they are, what's meaningful and what's different. I've been helping a b, two b organization go through a transition where the technology that's their primary business is actually going to be probably obsolete in ten years. So they've had to step back. And as they innovate forward, really say what's true to who we are, what do we do that nobody else does, what's in our heritage? How did we innovate in the first place? To go back to sort of, okay, what caused us to bring an innovation into our category in the first place and sort of dissect that and say, not what the innovation was, but what was the need we saw, how did, what approach should we take? How do we get that approach adopted and sort of break down the DNA around who they were that caused them to innovate and be a first mover innovator in the first place? And what was meaningful about that? What equity do they have with their customer because of that? The role that they play on their customers lives? And then what is different? What do they do or what are they known for that's different from what other companies do, other organizations do, and to find their way forward and where they're going to innovate.

Cheryl Farr [00:26:08]:

Right.

Cheryl Farr [00:26:08]:

There's space for future innovation that people will understand, that will make sense. Of course they're going there. They're really making, they're looking at ways to make the lives of their loyal customers better. And they're not chasing what other people are doing. They're looking for new ways to innovate.

Cheryl Farr [00:26:28]:

Right.

Cheryl Farr [00:26:28]:

Where's the gap? So I think that's where you can stay. You can actually grow, do new things. Sometimes you have to, you have to do new things because the changes in consumer behavior and the competitive environment just demand it. The question is, how do you figure out how to use that brand lens to say, this is actually where we can go credibly. This is why customers we have and customers we want will respond to that, not have that disconnect go off in their heads. And here's where we're filling a gap in the marketplace where it's why it's blue ocean rather than red. I don't know the decision behind all birds decision to grow into clothing categories, but it makes you wonder, did they go out and look for partnerships instead of saying, oh, we're going to innovate and grow and build new? What are the ways to move into categories that maybe are better done in other ways rather than going, oh, we're going to do it on our own? I don't know. It may be a great decision for them or not, but really, that's really how I guide my customers to say as they're looking forward and casting vision for growth.

Cheryl Farr [00:27:42]:

This is how, this is our opportunity to grow forward in a way that's going to minimize our business risk and maximize our market success.

Jonathan Morgan [00:27:53]:

Yeah, I really love the lens there of the true, meaningful and different. I think if you now, as you say it, I'm thinking back about all the topics we discussed earlier, and it's, you can go through and like, okay, that one was probably a violation of they weren't true to themselves or they were trying to do something different that was different from the original reason. They were different. Right. There's all these reasons that they violated those policies. Most of the people that we talk to on this podcast and our listeners, they're involved in more. I'll call the traditional blend of strategy. Right.

Jonathan Morgan [00:28:21]:

Strategic plans, organizational plans. They may not always have some actual focus on brand within their plans. When you work with organizations that are trying to go through this journey, obviously they still have their plans they're trying to accomplish. How do you recommend that they incorporate the two together? Is it they have a big portion of their overall plan that's focused on brand? Is it that they're taking each of their decisions through this true, meaningful, different lens? How do they successfully make that transition to think about both of them?

Cheryl Farr [00:28:52]:

Yeah, that's a great question. Your brand filters should actually be ideally embedded into that strategic planning process.

Cheryl Farr [00:29:02]:

Right.

Cheryl Farr [00:29:02]:

Because your brand, think of your brand as a kind of visioning tool. Who can we be at our very best? What's our achievable vision for the future? What commitment do we make to make the world a better place and the lives of our customers better? So you can start to see if that's what your brand is about. Then you create filters that say, okay, here's the filters are fundamentally your perceptions that you want to own are levers for achieving that commitment. Okay? So you can start to see how bringing those into your strategic planning process starts to be a natural fit. Because if you've got the vision cast for the future, the story you're telling out in the marketplace to your employees, your investors, your customers, about where you're going, and the vision of the better world you're painting, and you've got a set of levers to push on and decision filters to use to live that story. You can then see how that needs to come into your strategic planning process and be part of it, alongside your business goals and business objectives, alongside your operational realities and your operational objectives. To say, how are we focused on and aligning everything in order to deliver on that commitment and achieve that vision? So I think of them as often. They're gaps in the process.

Cheryl Farr [00:30:26]:

Right?

Cheryl Farr [00:30:26]:

There are gaps they don't have. They're focused on where the business can go, but they haven't really articulated that vision and stayed focused on what's theirs to own, what is true, meaningful and different, what that commitment is. And their commitment is that they're making to everyone engaged in the brand. And when you bring that into your strategic planning process, it becomes a really great filter for not only what to do, but what not to do.

Joe Krause [00:30:53]:

And it's a point we bring up here quite a bit. The idea of a strategic plan just can't be a collection of great ideas because it'll be big, especially if you have good people. It's all about what you strategically decide not to do. And ultimately, what you decide not to do shouldn't be a function of the skill sets you have, the budget you have in place. But above all, that would be how does this impact the brand, the perceptions that we own, the promises that we intend to make? And then that should be the first order, the first cut. And then it's like, do we have the skills and the funds, and do we have all these other things? So I think that that'll resonate with a lot of the people that are listening to this, that are listening to us. For more traditional, how do you build a strategic plan? What you're referencing is even more important than before you put pen to paper. Let's have a real honest discussion about what we're doing and why we're doing it.

Joe Krause [00:31:36]:

And anything we put in the plan that detracts from that, especially if you're an established company, needs to really be scrutinized and have real conversation about it.

Cheryl Farr [00:31:45]:

Yeah, and let's use that southwest example.

Cheryl Farr [00:31:47]:

Right?

Cheryl Farr [00:31:48]:

If Southwest was really staying focused on what their true, meaningful and different was. They are starting to undermine that difference.

Cheryl Farr [00:31:55]:

Right?

Cheryl Farr [00:31:55]:

That difference that moves them moving from blue ocean crawling into red ocean. Maybe there was a really good, maybe they did sit in there in their strategic planning process and say, okay, there's a really good reason to do this. So now how are we going to use our filters to tell this story to our customers in a way that will make it feel like a natural evolution, not a disconnect. And it feels like that step was missing, doesn't it? At least right now, to us? Sure. For sure.

Joe Krause [00:32:24]:

And in honor of the strategy gap, making sure that we keep our promises and our perceptions, we typically, as we draw to a close, have a question that we ask every one of our guests. Because this has been a fantastic conversation, we could probably extend this to a three hour if we needed to. But all good things, but all. Ultimately, the question we always ask is, as a strategy practitioner or somebody who's really done it all, if you can transport back in time and tell yourself at the beginning of your strategy career, one bit of advice, what would that look like? What would that be for you?

Cheryl Farr [00:32:54]:

Oh, that would be. That. Make it crystal clear to your clients that brand is a leadership exercise. Brand is about leadership. It's not about marketing. It's not about your color. It's not about your logo. It's about how you lead inside your organization and live how you live that brand out.

Jonathan Morgan [00:33:15]:

I think there's no better way to close out the conversation there than that piece of advice. So, Cheryl, thank you very much for joining us and looking forward to talking again in the future.

Cheryl Farr [00:33:23]:

You are welcome. This has been a pleasure and what great questions. Thank you so much.