EPISODE 71

Derek Welcome to Brands Made Meaningful conversations with the team at Sussner about how purposeful branding inspires unity, identity, and powerful change for growth-minded organizations. Welcome back to another episode of Brands Made Meaningful. We are recording episode 71 today, and we’re talking about the little things – the little things, the details, the devil’s in the details.

Tucker Yeah, we’re talking about the importance of details. This comes from a book called Unreasonable Hospitality. This is a book a lot of clubs that are high functioning use. It came out a couple of years ago. It’s all about service and service industry. That’s super applicable to what we do for sure. But for this conversation, it really has to do with consistency. It talks about how too many people are using slight variations of brand colors or maybe logos or messages or tones as they write from the brand. This idea of treating the little things inconsistently really creates this lack of professionalism for clubs. Many people think, Well, who cares? If our primary color is bronze and if we have three very, very slightly different shades of bronze – like bronze is bronze is bronze – it doesn’t matter that much. And I think that that mindset really can be a slippery slope as you talk about brand.

Derek When we say consistency, what we don’t mean is a rigid lack of flexibility. If you’ve had the chance to listen to a previous podcast episode where we talked about having a flexible, adaptable, responsive brand identity system, we talked through how having the right number and the right variety of the ways in which your brand is implemented is incredibly helpful for the mediums and the ways and the places in which your brand shows up. When you think about those ways and places and that variety, though, to make sure that that system shows up the right way intentionally and consistently is the bulk of today’s conversation. We see so many inconsistencies in varieties in how colors that are chosen don’t translate to digital because they weren’t thought through what that would look like or how not even intentional versions of a logo show up in different places in a club, for example. Or how in the back entryway, two generations of the logo is still on the entry sign for the members, but on the front door sign is another version. And then on the monument sign, as the entrance to the community, is a third version. But nobody can tell you why. Nobody understands why. And what that does is create a lack of professionalism. It starts to affect the perception of how you’re coming across and how people are experiencing to you. And I bet this happens all the time and people just quit noticing it. It’s like the scratch on the wall or the door that after a while it just sort of blends in and you don’t see it anymore. But it is seen by guests and by new members and by fresh eyes. They’re the ones that are picking up on this.

Tucker Absolutely. And what we’re going to dive into today is how that consistency across visual and verbal components really matters. But the other thing is understanding how your experience is consistent with the brand that you’re trying to convey. We won’t get into that too much today. But think about consistency. Think about what you look like and what you sound like and then how you experience that within the tournaments and events and social activities and things like that. Is it all consistent? Do all those little things contribute to the brand we’re trying to build together? That’s a huge part of this as well.

Derek This is important from a variety of points of view within a club. It should be important to a board member, especially if you are overseeing the committee that’s in charge of the brand. This is incredibly important to the communications director and the people that are implementing this. But let’s dig in. When we think about these people and their roles within a club or at the club, or even people like us who work on behalf of a club, what are some of the key reasons why people should be concerned about consistency with their brand?

Tucker So overall, it comes back to that professionalism that you’re talking about. When we work with clients, we call it professionalism in presentation. How do we show up and how does that look? Great. How does that sound? Great. But how does that look the same and how does that look consistent? But that breaks down into a bunch of different smaller buckets like, how do we build professionalism in our presentation? The first one, and I think that when you talk about membership directors or communication directors, they’re going to attach onto this one, is brand cohesion ensuring that every aspect of the club and all of its areas and implementations are consistent with that brand identity. It really creates this strength in understanding what to use, where, how it gets used, and looking consistent. I think our last conversation talked about this a ton to say we have all of these different components. How are we going to use this in a way that feels natural? It feels right, but it really feels cohesive. Like we’re building an environment for this brand that makes people go, Yeah, this all feels like my club.

Derek It feels effortless, feels on point. When you think about when you wake up in the morning and on that day you’ve got an important meeting with a customer or with a client, or you’re going to dinner with your spouse or some friends, you’re thoughtful about the clothes that you put on. You’re choosing very intentionally what goes with what. You’re picking the colors and you’re doing so with purpose. Maybe it’s a bit of a stretch of an analogy, but when you’re looking at how that brand shows up, you’re being intentional with the cohesion, with the consistency, with what goes with what, and it makes everything so much more effortless.

Tucker Going back to your analogy where you’re going out to dinner with your spouse and you’re making a decision on what you wear and how that looks and how that gets put together cohesively, that leads right into satisfaction. So that example to me is to say, well, my wife’s going to be much happier with me if I think through these things and I show up looking like I’ve thought about this and this is what I want to wear. There’s that level of satisfaction. The members are the same way for most of these clubs say, I want to belong somewhere that builds things with intention and cares about the way it looks and cares about the way that I see it so that I feel like I am a part of something that is meaningful. That really puts intention into those things. That’s hard to do if you’re not considering all the little things like you had said. Guests see that one scratch on the wall. Or maybe if a painting’s a little bit crooked, they will see that. You will not because you walk by it every day. Members see that type of stuff all the time when they say, Hey, why are our emails like this? I’m not understanding why we’re using green if all of our brand components are blue. Is there a reason for that? I don’t get it. That type of satisfaction is huge when we talk about showing up in the eyes of members and our guests.

Derek The general manager example is great. You and I walked through a club recently. We were given a tour by a general manager and that’s exactly what he was doing. He was talking with us and he was giving us a tour and showing us around. At the exact same time, he was taking notes of a scratch, of a turned corner of a pile of books that wasn’t quite right, and of a floral arrangement. He was incredibly gracious to us and at the same time hypersensitive to those details. And when all of those details are in place and nobody sees the scratch and nobody sees the little bit of water spilled next to the flower pot, that will set the club apart. When you consider that same level of attention applied to your brand, to your brand identity, you will come across as more professional and more thoughtful. People might not notice the details because they’re not going to see what’s not there because you’ve already fixed or taken care of or curated the way that they should experience, but that will elevate perception. And I think when you’re coming down to a walk-through of a prospective member looking at two different clubs and the details are taken care of at one of them and the details are clunky at another, I think that’s going to make a huge difference in that competitive advantage.

Tucker Absolutely. There’s this branded system that really shows up to those potential members. Remember the first time you walked through a house when you were about to buy a house, you see all of that stuff for what it is. Members are the same when they walk through a club. The way that we’ve used all of these components in different ways, I think that people stand up and say, Well, maybe the way we can have a competitive advantage is if our branded color is red and everybody else’s is blue. Well, yeah, maybe. But what really is going to matter are the little things throughout the club and the way that we’ve thought about how we implement this. Our brand is our identity. So when we think about how our identity gets played out, that’s the difference between feeling like a generic club and feeling like a one-of-a-kind club. To understand how that comes through. And that goes back to my light conversation around it’s visual and it’s verbal and it’s all those great things that we like to talk about because it’s a core component of what we do, but it’s also experiential. It’s the events that you hold. It’s the way that someone greets you at the front door. It’s the way that people talk to you as you walk by. Those things matter more, in my opinion, than making sure of all these little things. That’s the little little components that really, really, really make an impact on someone.

Derek Most of what we’re talking about so far is focused on the external or the members. We’re talking about the member experience and maybe the guest experience. But this is, I would argue, equally as important when it comes to the experience of the staff, of the team, of the people who are living your brand, representing your brand to the members and the guests on a day-to-day basis. And I think we need to be thoughtful about how important it is to align that staff around these consistencies in language so that they’re saying it in the right way and they’re providing experiences to the members and to the guests, not only in a way that upholds the expectations of the club itself, but also to allow them to do so consistently to where they’re not even having to think about it anymore.

Tucker I have not been to a club yet in which I haven’t been blown away by how much work each member of staff does. I have walked through all of these areas and said, Wow, the communications director is in charge of all of this communication. That’s incredibly impressive. Whoever manages the facility at a club is in charge of making sure all of these facilities look amazing. That’s impressive. And so this also comes back to those little things. They pile up. If we let a couple of those things slip, and I can see how because there are so many little things to take care of, in order to have those little things get taken care of from a brand perspective, it always comes back to brand standards to say, Do we have a robust set of brand standards that allows our staff to do their job well and not guess on how these little components of brand get nicely sprinkled throughout their entire work? That’s our job and our team’s job to make sure they have the tools that they have when they go to work and do their tasks on a day-to-day basis.

Derek We’re jumping to how do you do this, how do you manage this, how do you train on it, and that is the brand style guide, brand standards, brand book, etc. The collection of how we talk, why we talk that way, what we sound like, and what we look like is the Bible that captures all of those brand details that allow you to share and train on what is our vision, what are our values, what do we value here, and what do our members value here. That’s a whole other conversation.

Tucker When we look at long-term plans and I say it a lot to our clients and I say it a lot to the club members that I talk to just in a personal world, they talk about how does what you do affect the club long term? And when we work with clubs, that is a big part of what we’re trying to solve. These little things are an everyday piece for you. Absolutely. But how these things evolve every day is long term to say, how do we make sure that a brand can be flexible, something we talked about in our last episode, and consistent, what we’re talking about here, but really long term around the evolution of all the different pieces and parts of our club? Think about, Hey, we’re going to build out a new facility. Okay, that’s a big deal. So how a brand gets placed into that facility is a big conversation. I think that will be taken really seriously. But how our brand gets placed in our emails and our communications and maybe our menus on food and beverage throughout the season and throughout the years and maybe from one year to the next year to the next year to the next year doesn’t get talked about as much. And so those little things can make a difference. When you talk about sitting down at your club and noticing the way that the menu looks really impacts the way that you think about that situation. The way that the signage looks when you drive in changes the way you look at the situation. Those things left untouched, those books misaligned on the table if you will, go unnoticed for long enough and will snowball into this need for completely redoing things. And if you don’t take care of these things week in and week out within your brand, it will snowball to the fact of, gosh, we need to completely redo all of this now. And that turns into this much larger initiative that is unnecessary if you take care of it every day.

Derek If you’ve been strategic in how you planned your brand and if you have a brand book, brand style guide, and brand guidelines, for example, opening that new facility and then determining how to implement your branding into that facility – no brainer. You basically already solved the majority of that. You already have the assets, the fix, the messaging, etc. That should be a relatively simple conversation. If you don’t have that solved and thought through ahead of time, then it can be a lot of work to try to figure out how to implement that into that new facility, that new amenity. And that’s a high, high risk then that it will not be implemented consistently. Or to do so consistently is going to require way more effort if you don’t have something already set up to help that long term. I think the branding aspect, there’s short-term and there’s long-term, and we’re all about helping this be a long-term solution that can be leveraged.

Tucker Wrapping up, the little things in your brand are not just about the visual aesthetics. I think that that’s incredibly important. I think when we get into the way that we use color and the way that our signage looks, and if that’s consistent, that’s all that really matters. Those little things within all of the components really do matter, but it’s more than that. It’s about creating consistent experiences and that has to do with the visual and the verbal components of those experiences. When we want to build a brand, the little pieces of that brand feel consistent with the experience of being at the club, and that’s a really, really big deal.

Derek This is a differentiator. If you have a pool and the neighbor club has a pool and you’ve got a great golf course and so do they, this level of consistency in how you show up to your members and to your guests and to your staff can be the differentiator between this choice and that choice, whether it’s to join there, to visit there or to work there. If you can’t differentiate on amenities, differentiating on the consistency with how you show up with respect to your brand in that experience can be a really key way to do so.

Tucker And I would advise clubs to think about their brand strategy to say, what do we want to be and how do we want to be seen. That’s going to tell you how what consistent looks like for you. So when we talk with clubs, I think everyone assumes that professionalism and presentation and the little things being taken care of mean that you are a five-star resort. That’s a luxury feel. That could be the case, but that might not be the case. We’ve worked with lots of clubs that say we want to feel approachable. We want to feel like someone can sit here and feel at home. We want to feel comfortable. We don’t necessarily want to feel like a place where you can’t relax and all of those components. That goes into it too. So just because we say professionalism, that doesn’t necessarily mean extreme formality across all the different components either. So think about your strategy. Think about how it’s all consistent. Think about how the little things are stemmed from the big idea that you’re trying to share and communicate with all of your members.

Derek See how the little things matter. And just like in some of the other metaphors and examples that we talked about to construct, to build, to curate a robust, comprehensive brand identity that is compelling, that is differentiating, that tells your own unique story, requires close attention to all the little things. The little things make all the difference.

Tucker Little things mean everything.

Derek Fun conversation today. Looking forward to the next one. As always, if there’s a topic around brand that you or someone in your organization would be interested in having us have a conversation about, please drop us a line and we will be happy to add that to our upcoming queue.

Tucker All right. Thank you.

Derek Until next time. Sussner is a branding firm specializing in helping companies make a meaningful mark, guiding marketing leaders who are working to make their brand communicate better, stand out, and engage audiences to grow their business. For more on Sussner, visit Sussner.com.