Kim Rozdeba
Appearances
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
A brand isn't what it says or does, but how it makes its customers feel. It's a personal commitment from a brand to that person. They don't look at it and go, you're serving a million people. You're serving me.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
So I got to start with the first, there's 20 entrepreneurial women in this book called Branding Queens. And they all, how we came up with the name was each one of them was referred somewhere in the media of Queen of Something. So it was kind of an obvious, it was like aha moment for me. I had several other titles before that, but it started repeating itself. I'm going, this is it.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
This is what the book should be called. But The first woman that I actually, this started the whole idea, was the champagne Veuve Clicquot. Very familiar. Huge fan. So if you translate Veuve, it's widow in English. I didn't know that either. And I go, why would you put widow on a champagne bottle? I didn't know that it was actually a woman behind the champagne house.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
So it got me intrigued to go, okay, there's a woman behind this product. She started in 1810. Napoleon was raging in wars around France. Women were basically second-class citizens. How did this happen? So that was my journey. That was the start. And then I go, and why did she put widow? Well, you have to read the book to find out.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
So then I started saying, well, is there other women out there that I'm not aware of? There's quite a few that I am, and they're actually in the book. But are there others that I'm not aware? And I started digging. And the hard part was, as you go back in time, I mean, brands are a relatively new concept. They really came into their place back in the 1970s.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
20s, 30s, boomers, all the different brands that came up during the boom. 1940, there was a lot of brands that started. Prior to that, everything was just sort of a commodity. There was no printing presses and stuff. There was no way to communicate personal attachments to these things or where it came from. And that's kind of the intent, right? Is people want to know where this... Is it safe?
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
So yes, the part I really enjoyed was I've got probably a wry sense of humor and Every once in a while, the torch would go out because the fuel that was fueling it in the actual torch would run out and then you'd have to refill it. And you'd see somebody and it's no longer lit. And I'm going, oh my God, what did you do? And they're going, I did nothing.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
Is this a reputable organization? Am I going to die if I eat this? These are important things to know. But there were. There were women out there. Bissell, the vacuum cleaner. In a lot of cases, they started with their husband. They were joint in the business because they intimately knew the business. Their husbands passed away fairly young, particularly in today's world.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
Did they have to continue with the company? In a lot of cases, they didn't. A lot of cases they had like four or five kids, but they wanted to, and they saw the vision of what this brand was, and they actually built the brand. So I took situations here where they actually took whatever they had when they started, and then did they actually grow it? And did they actually make an iconic brand?
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
And did they have enough evidence attached to it that they actually did get involved in building the brand themselves? So they just weren't an icon associated with the brand. And I found 20 women. The youngest is Sarah Blakely Spanx. Just recently stepped down as the CEO of her organization. I think she's got three kids, three or four kids. But these are fascinating stories.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
They're fascinating stories because in many of these cases, they had no experience of building a brand. They had no experience of building a product. And when you think of building a product, I'll go to Elizabeth Arden. She's a Canadian. She was born in Canada. And she moved to New York City and she started working, a cosmetician, doing a lot of facials and stuff.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
And she came up with a product, a cream. She called it a jar of hope. So she already understood the why, what she was doing. And the why usually doesn't come right when you start. Apple didn't understand what they were doing at the beginning. It took them a while to figure out their why. And most products and most brands, this is the case.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
You don't really start with something big, colossal, you're going to change the world. You're just trying to make a product that's better than any other product and it's affordable and you can actually put it at a distribution center and you can put a retail plan, you could get employees, all of these things.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
So the interesting aspect to all of this is all these women had to learn and they were ferocious in their ability to learn different things because they came with just their passion. If anything, most of them came with is they knew that there was a problem and they were the customer in a lot of cases.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
And I go, well, we're going to have to go back to Greece now. What are we going to do? And I said, do you have a light? Do you have a match? But yes, there would be horror. But there is the eternal flame that is with it. And it is encapsulated so it's protected. And that's where you light it from. So it comes from there all the time. So you don't take a match and light it.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
I mean, don't be hard on yourself that you have to be a brand as a person. You know, I took the challenge and said, I'm going to build a brand. It's a lot of work to build a personal brand. And I don't know if all of us need to be a personal brand. Sometimes I think this is a social media platform wanting all of us to build content, right? It's to keep all the social platforms full.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
And again, as I said, be yourself. Do you need to present a, particularly on LinkedIn, a professional brand? viewpoint of yourself? Yes. But that shouldn't stop you from having your cooking Instagram, your TikTok.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
I know quite a few people have TikToks for hobbies and to have all these different things and not feel that you are deviating from your purpose or your goal because that puts you in a box. That consistency puts you in a box because that's what a brand is. It's going to be consistent all the time. It's going to always act this way. And human beings, we can change, right?
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
Sometimes if you see famous people who are brands and they change not for the good, that has a detriment to the brand. So we know that. But I don't want to be the king of England or the queen of England in the sense of being confined of a personal way of being presented. That's not a life, I don't think.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
Stephanie, I really enjoyed it. Thank you.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
I actually was living in Toronto at the time. So I actually ran it in Ontario in minus 15 temperatures. But I didn't realize how incredible it was an honor to actually be with the torch until my first evening that I was running in with the torchbearer. The torchbearer was beside me. And you run beside them just to make sure, again, we would always sort of tell them, don't rush it.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
Enjoy this moment. Because people would just want to, you know, and we were tired because we've been running all day. It was to our advantage that they went slow. But when we came in this morning, older lady came running up to me and grabbed me and hugged me. And she said, God bless you. And that was my introduction to that whole week, four days of running with it.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
The people, the incredible emotions, the feeling, you could feel the emotional in the air when you come into a venue where, again, we'd stop, we'd have some speeches. After we went out with a group of runners or torchbearers, we would take them back and then we would do a debrief with them. And that debrief was quite emotional.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
And the team that went out, because we take a whole team out and then they'd be in a... And then we, but, you know, each one would have their turn and then they'd go back into the caravan and we'd go back with them. And then a new group would come out. They became instant friends. They shared, you know, pictures and addresses. And yeah, it was very memorable.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
And as I said, very honored to have been able to have done that. Yeah, that's a long time ago, now that I'm thinking about it, 35 years. But every one of them, like I see the ones that happen all over the world, I'm captivated because, yeah, it is something that is truly amazing. And I had the opportunity to work with some Olympians, and these are incredible people.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
Incredible in the sense of they've put their whole life on hold for a sport. Obscure sports. where there is no audience, there is nobody cheering them on every day. So they do need to be able to have that endurance and that perseverance.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
I'm going to give you my definition of what a brand is to start. There's lots of different definitions out there. They talk about benefits. They talk about attributes, talk about tonality. But I've sort of taken a quote from Maya Angelou and I've kind of rewritten it. And it's a brand isn't what it says or does, but how it makes its customers feel. So the end result of a brand is the feeling.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
So marketing, marketing can help with the feeling, but marketing is really talking about product attributes. It's about action, creating an action. You want somebody to do something, maybe have a promotion, something. Maybe you have a sale. Maybe it's a launch. But branding is about how people feel. Reputation is part of that. A lot of people say, you know, the most important element is trust.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
And it's true. You look at your personal relationships. You know, the foundation is trust. So you have to build that trust as well.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
So there's two questions there, I think. One is if you're an employee and two, if there's about you yourself. So let me talk about an employee first. From an employee's perspective, you could be an advocate of the brand. And the great thing about having advocates, i.e. your employees, people trust other people's opinion.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
So if a person is out there talking about your product or your brand in a favorable way, that's a good thing. Ideally, these are your employees because they know your brand better than anybody else. On a personal level of building your own brand, I'm still not completely sure. There's a need to build a LinkedIn profile. There's a need to have a good resume.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
I'm not sure unless you're a consultant or if you're a leader and you are the face and voice of a brand that you need to have a personal brand. If you follow the metrics of a brand, if you want to dissect a brand, being a box of cereal is not a goal for me. Yeah. That is a brand. A brand is about consistency and about controlling the messaging and all the attributes of that.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
And human beings are much bigger and better. I mean, we're emotional. We have many things to offer. And sometimes we change our minds, right? We do different things. We're multidimensional, not like a box. So there is parts of branding that we can utilize, absolutely.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
But outside of being a voice for the brand, being out there doing content, writing content, being out there doing podcasts, going the extra step to build your brand, I'm not sure everybody needs to do that.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
So as a leader of an organization or of your consultant or you're a lawyer, a doctor, should you have a presence? Absolutely. Today, it becomes more important because people want to understand your why. It's about the why. It's about your purpose. It is about your promise. It's about your values. And people want to know that.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
If they're going to be dealing with a company, they want to know the values of those people that are working in that company. in particular, the leader of it. So understanding that commitment, your personal commitment, it's not like you're morphing the brand's commitment because you've got your own personality attached to it. You have your own things that you are keenly interested in.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
You know, every time I see a new CEO in an organization, they bring different aspects to the brand. They take things and they may actually highlight things that are still within the brand, but it's of their own interest. So you have to have that passion attached to it.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
And you can see some of the leaders, I love the people that were passionate about certain topics because they live it and they breathe it. And you pick up things that you would never pick up before from that passion.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
All right. So the five C's, the first one is commitment. And it is about your purpose, your promise that you're going to deliver every day. The second one is construct. And construct is the logo. It's the graphic design. It's the color palette. It's the tonality. It's the five senses. What is it going to feel like? What's it going to touch? Does it have a scent? What's the scent going to be?
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
So it's all of those things that you can construct in making a brand. The third one is community. And a lot of people go, oh, I thought it was going to be customer. And customer is part of your community. But actually, your community is much bigger than just your customer. And we touched a little bit here already on about employees and the importance of employees as being advocates to your brand.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
So they're a key target audience in your community. But the other one really is a really interesting one is influencers. There's media influencers. There's podcast influencers. There's a whole number of people out there that can amplify your brand and give credibility to your brand. So that's your community. And then the next one is your content. And in content is your marketing.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
Marketing fits in there. It's your advertising. It is your public relations. A lot of brands, when they start out, they can't afford advertising. PR, that's free advertising. So that publicity, you know, you can't pay for. I mean, if it's really good publicity, it's made some of the brands very famous very quickly. You get Oprah Winfrey to talk about your brand and you are set.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
But outside of that, it is about leaders. It is about your voice. It is about how do you present yourself in the industry as a whole. So it's not just advertising and it's social media as well. And then the final one, the final one is probably the one that doesn't have as much sizzle. And that is consistency.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
And consistency is about how do you replicate every transaction, every touch point that you have with your consumer over and over and over and over the same way. But it's not just the same way because you're trying to ratchet up because once you've met expectation, the expectation goes up again.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
So you have to continually build a system, training, policies, governance, all of these things to make sure that what's being delivered is being delivered everywhere, every place, every time the same way and also improving that delivery every time. Oprah Winfrey said she denied being a brand for many years until one day she discovered that one of the key elements of a brand is consistency.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
And she goes, well, yeah, I've always been consistent. So therefore, I must be a brand.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
Yes.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
So I'm going to go back to my definition, which is, it's a feeling. You have to get to that promise because it's a personal commitment from a brand to that person. They don't look at it and go, you're serving a million people. You're serving me. And my expectations are a certain level. And you build that over time because that consistency becomes really important because that promise is delivered.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
I mean, think of your personal situation. If somebody doesn't deliver on a promise, Your trust level changes. Now, there's situations, you know, that you'll give them the benefit of the doubt. And you'll do the same with a brand. If a brand falls down, and they do all the time, you know, systems fall down, things don't work. Employees have a bad day. You know, you have a bad experience.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
The question is, how do they fix it? That becomes the important element to all of it. That's where the accountability comes into because everyone has to be accountable and delivering. And if you don't, somebody has to fix it and acknowledge that. And people are willing to give the benefit of the doubt if a brand doesn't deliver. But if it doesn't deliver over time consistently...
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
then they have to reevaluate. I mean, banks, banks is a really interesting one because how many times do you change a bank? I've got two banks I deal with. One, my parents actually started and I had an account with it when I was a kid. And the other one I started from university because they were on the campus.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
I've gone to others, come and gone, didn't treat me as well as I thought, but it has to be really something really big to make that change.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
I was an escort runner. Yeah. So I was with it for four days. So there would be parts. So it got too dark and unsafe for having just regular people run with the torch. So we would have running groups or we would run with it. to make up some time. So if there was some time or some areas that were either difficult to run, steep hills, whatever, we would do that to keep the thing going.
The Action Catalyst
Branding Queens, with Kim Rozdeba (Marketing, Promotions, Customer Relations, Olympics)
St. Regis Hotel, high luxury hotel, beautiful hotel. They empower their employees who are accountable for that service delivery, every one of them. If there's a problem, they have, I believe it's about $2,000 at their discretion to solve a customer's issue. They don't have to go anywhere. They don't have to get approval. Every employee in that company can solve up to $2,000 a customer's problem.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: The 5 C's of Branding
Talk to me about what you call the five C's. All right. So the five C's, the first one is commitment. And it is about your purpose, your promise that you're going to deliver every day. The second one is construct. And construct is the logo. It's the graphic design. It's the color palette. It's the tonality. It's the five senses. What is it going to feel like? What's it going to touch?
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: The 5 C's of Branding
And then the final one, the final one is probably the one that doesn't have as much sizzle, and that is consistency. And consistency is about how do you replicate every transaction, every touchpoint that you have with your consumer over and over and over and over the same way.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: The 5 C's of Branding
But it's not just the same way because you're trying to ratchet up because once you've met expectation, the expectation goes up again. So you have to continually build a system, training, policies, governance, all of these things to make sure that what's being delivered is being delivered everywhere, every place, every time the same way and also improving that delivery every time.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: The 5 C's of Branding
Oprah Winfrey said, you know, she denied being a brand for many years until one day she discovered that one of the key elements of a brand is consistency. And she goes, well, yeah, I've always been consistent. So therefore I must be a brand.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: The 5 C's of Branding
Does it have a scent? What's the scent going to be? So it's all those things that you can construct in making a brand. The third one is community. And a lot of people go, oh, I thought it was going to be customer. And customer is part of your community. But actually, your community is much bigger than just your customer.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: The 5 C's of Branding
And we touched a little bit here already on about employees and the importance of employees as being advocates to your brand. So they're a key target audience in your community. But the other one really, it's a really interesting one is influencers. There's media influencers. There's podcast influencers.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: The 5 C's of Branding
There's a whole number of people out there that can amplify your brand and give credibility to your brand. So that's your community. And then the next one is your content. And in content is your marketing. Marketing fits in there. It's your advertising. It is your public relations. A lot of brands, when they start out, They can't afford advertising. PR, it's free advertising.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: The 5 C's of Branding
So that publicity, you know, you can't pay for. I mean, if it's really good publicity, it's made some of the brands very famous very quickly. You get Oprah Winfrey to talk about your brand and you are set. But outside of that, it is about leaders. It is about your voice. It is about how do you present yourself in the industry as a whole. So it's not just advertising and it's social media as well.