Face Off: Building Brand

- How's it going?

I don't really enjoy public speaking and that kind of stuff.

Does it worry you to see yourself...?Yeah, even more than what I'm going to say.- What I want to say...

This is not public speaking. There isn't much public.

Yeah. Anyway, around two years ago...- Two years ago?

Both Factorial and Putos Modernos released a billboard.

When I joined, there was nothing more than paid ads, blog banners or sponsored posts. All in all, highly targeted campaigns with no creative strategy behind."Fuck it, let's do what we're good at and let's do something people will talk about. Something that has a creative strategy and a story behind", I said.

And I was already thinking: "Whoa, Human Resources?" When we told you this was for Human Resources because everyone said so to me when I started I was like, "What the fuck is that?" For me it was like: they fire you. Or maybe they're sending an email with your paycheck or contract, but I never imagined them as human beings, if that makes sense.

I always thought they were...There is indeed a problem, probably due to the words."Human Resources" is kind of a controversial name because humans are resources themselves, but there is no alternative which may seem... Talent something?

Talent department, what do they call it?They call it "People".

Isn't it a bit too generic?Yeah, it sure is.And then, when I'm thinking about it, I say that Human Resources precisely and ironically doesn't have many resources.

After digging a bit deeper, we found how about the 80% of the HR people felt their work was all about Excel and paperwork, and very little about people, which, ironically, made them feel pretty under-resourced.

That's when we said: "Heck, why can't we tell it through an action and do it with people like Putos Modernos, who already have their own audience?" And then, the dichotomy came.

We want to get to our target audience, don't we?Why a billboard?

When we were shown that billboard of yours with that storytelling, there was something I really liked. It was like: "We're saying that whenever HR has a problem, every person in a company does, as well." When HR goes downhill or the proceedings are all crappy both the intern and everyone else in charge know.

I found it very, very, very powerful to release it and say "Let's get to work." How was the experience in your...?

Like the first briefing you had or...No idea. We agreed, sure, but I'm not really sure this is the format I'd have chosen.

Yeah, we went through what you were saying.That vision or unfamiliarity regarding what a HR department is which is a dual challenge.

First of all, an average citizen probably won't know where the department's role ends.

It's like a giant, full of pages Excel.And second, obviously, even if they're aware it may not be the sexiest department to work in or promote.

From there on, we thought: "Boy, we didn't really know Factorial that well.

We knew them as the business story of Catalan founders who had raised lots of money, but we weren't that sure about it either." And that was the question: they're not a B2B company and a billboard is by definition, a mass medium, which makes it more B2C.

We saw that a brand doesn't have just one type of audience, but many of them.

Among them, we can count the investor as part of it.

Then the future investor or the worker who may also demand something, even if he's not the one in charge of HR.

There are countless B2B companies that advertise B2C companies.

Intel, for example.You can't just buy an Intel microprocessor, without a computer.

They've always focused a lot on Intel Insight and they've even sponsored the Champions League, as well.

No judgement. "This may not be the usual, but is it possible?", we asked to ourselves."It sure is." We knew there could be a play on an interesting channel, so we went for it and from there, the conversations began.

There was this fact which was...Never mind, let's just say it was a fun fact.

When you showed us the billboard, the first thing we thought was that it was full of text."Oh, my God!" was our first reaction.- They wouldn't charge per word.

It's too much text.I support the idea of making a more memorable message instead of a bigger text.

It was like: "And where in the world is Factorial?" That was the first time I went against the idea of: Factorial has to be seen, but they were like "Not Factorial, the story." That way, people would be interested in the storyteller.

But the first thing was like: "First, I need people to see a story and a problem." Having so much text in any media outlet, regardless of its size since they're made to be seen briefly, is already surprising because it's counterintuitive. You wouldn't expect it.

It can be kind of conceited to ask people to continue reading the ad.

Like what the heck is that amount of text?What are you forcing me to read, for fuck's sake?

And then, obviously, aside from the big amount of text it had to be catchy or tell you something.

And this is where we tried to turn the brief into a partly fictional, maybe partly real story about how, with so little time to finish the billboard we had passed the buck to the trainee, who had done it without consulting or getting validation, among other things.

The lack of management led to a poor management of HR stuff.

And that's the problem Factorial had.That story is not real at all, duh.

Doesn't happen.We never put the work off until the last minute or let trainees do it.

It worked, and it was the first time we said for real..

Well, it was said, since...It's something I really trust, but it was said that it was necessary to invest in the brand, in these actions.

How come? After releasing here, in Spain, that billboard we launched a global campaign in five countries at the same time.

We hired agencies in each country and in each of them we tried to make some noise in a similar way, based on an insight that I think had never been realized before. We came to the conclusion that it is necessary to tell a problem in order to have someone wanting to know where the solution is.

And that was the first time they said: "How about we focus on the problem instead of the product?" That was definitely a turning point. I mean...

Congrats.People can't buy stuff they don't even know that exists, after all.

That's true.A brand is necessary so we can make us known If you're gonna sell something but people have no idea...

"Who are you?" Before selling something, it's like asking someone to marry you and being asked if we even know each other.

But when you move down the funnel from consideration, from brand to conversion, we need less poetry and more prose.

And that's where a discount works better than a narrative.

Although, as we were saying, at the top of the funnel for brand consideration, building a brand isn't just a matter of making the logo bigger, at all, but expressing what's your brand.

Your brand's style, your own point of view.There's a lot of brand in the solution to the problem and in how it was presented.

There is obviously a problem that's being solved by the brand and it can be approached to with humor, self-parody or boldness.

Using such an expensive media for something like this sure is daring, huh?

Yeah.In fact, I suppose Bernat's first reaction, which I know of because due to an interview for Itnig was: "The heck is this?" "How can we use this?" Our listeners must know that a billboard in an pricey place is very, very expensive. For real.

A seven-figure sum, probably.Now then, how are we...?

That tweet sure is gonna sting.What are we going to do?

Part of the provocation and the disruption comes from that.

That's branding too.Showing people you use a billboard differently from other brands is branding too.

But you see, we may be also facing the possible risk of backfire.

By proving that the brand matters and that it can be measured since, well, there are some things that can actually be measured such as organic growth and searches, topics, social media numbers.

Yeah, you can't have something as measurable and trackable as running a paid ad.

A brand doesn't automatically bring in business.But let me refute that theory, since with every burger Vicio sells they sell a bit of their brand, as well.

Vicio's brand does the work for different audiences.

First, the investors. When a venture fund puts so much money into a brand new burger joint that's becoming a chain or having Messi throwing in 15 million euros is because they loved it, not because they're the creators of Smash Burgers. These already existed.

That's when investors' money becomes immediate business and they are investing it in a good brand because back then sales promises were still just promises, still hypothetical.

That's why I think it's dangerous to separate business from brand.

A brand is a long-term business that must endure, at least for me.

Just like we just said.There's no better business than creating a good brand.

Agreed.The worlds' biggest brands, are big businesses too, for example.

Disney, Nike, Apple.Our current challenge is not dying from success.

Once you prove the brand works, people often start with an intense marketing.

Like you said earlier, which I think is a great and smart move, don't do too much. Do less, but better.

Also, when talking about a fast-growing startup company people tend to do a lot, they test and AB-test.

And then, there'd be someone wondering how can you do that.

By maintaining consistency.It's like, why don't you create five different messages?

We have five strong markets where we're releasing brands.

And then, now... Sorry, I meant running campaigns.

Now we tend to have an overall concept and then run activations in each market depending on what needs what needs to be reinforced. You may think "It works. Push it."

The inertia of a business is contagious. For example, why do fashion industry or luxury industry take care of the brand?

Because both knew that they were selling insights.

That a 500€ Dior's cold cream works even if it's just the same or not better than the cheap version of 3€ from Mercadona.

On the other hand, in tech and engineering, the beta phases the "done is better than perfect", the pure maker mode is kind of like a tyranny of doing which makes sense, but what I'd say is that logic is a bit malicious because while you can test and test a product as much as you want, there may not be second chances in communication to make a first impression.

You see, testing in communication, or at least normally, don't always imply mistakes. I mean, there can be mistakes, of course.

In fact, there are brands who take advantage of the mistakes they've made to make fun of it or run new campaigns about it.

I love how Ryanair handles it.They hate their haters.

They take advantage of the hate they receive in social media to roast their haters.

In communication, everything is allowed, and mistakes are not the exception.

As we said, communication is mainly about long-term thinking

Change it every day, and a brand gets so diluted it's no longer a brand.

Something that happens to us in our daily life is that we wonder what to do that hasn't been done already.

To be honest, when we go for crazier or more disruptive ideas I hate that word, by the way, is not as difficult, but we're like "What if this has already been done?" with traditional advertising.

There's a part of me that doesn't feel bad about having the same idea someone else had. Just try and make it better.

I don't think you should give up on doing something that has already been done.

I don't agree with that at all.What do you think?Sure, this is almost getting metaphysical, but it depends on how we define that idea.

For me, execution is a big part of my idea.The starting point and the execution can match, but that's uncommon.

Not only in advertising.We had Hi5, Friendster and more before Facebook.

What did Facebook improve? The algorithm and the dashboard.

It's about how you execute it, how you sell it, the brand you build...

Another debate, more philosophical, about which we could talk for...

Which is originality vs. creativity.I don't believe in originality, I find it too pretentious.

If you think about "originality" as a word, it's like me and my inner genius are the origin of things.

Creativity is about mixing things I've previously seen consciously or not. And then we have inspiration as the amount of things you, consciously or not, mix together ideas you've seen in a film, while walking around the street or watching Cannes Film Festival, who knows.

There are also things that are common ground. Not obvious, just evident.

If you, for example, sell soap, at some point it's easy to say it whitens or that it whitens better.

Some may show it with small cartoon characters fighting the stains with their technology and some others will show it with a fake journalist and a perfect housewife with no stains at all and carrying her basket.

Whiteness, however, is not owned by any soap brand. It is basically the customers' insight who want their shirt to be as white and clean as they bought it.

Talking about copy, how do you feel about having copycats?

The bright side is getting credit for marketing campaigns that you haven't done, because that has happened to us every week.

That's cool, and therefore, funny.When there is a bad campaign, we say it's not ours. Otherwise we just say nothing.

But what happens? What's the good thing about it?Not that we think we invented humor in advertising or copy-based ads at all, which sounds too pretentious. We believe that when we get credit for campaigns that aren't ours proves there is a recognizable touch or style, which means that we are definitely a brand.

And the proof is that people understand there are things we have monetized or created, and if other brands are inspired by what we do, no matter how much I like to say that there's no need to worry about having copycats, but whenever they stop appearing.

Nobody copies what isn't worth copying.In fact, Putos Modernos comes from a graffiti we saw so it'd be pretentious to send a copyright claim by certified mail.

Now then, if we see someone copy-pasting us...Let's just say it's riskier for the copier than the copied.

What if the audience...?It's happened thanks to our fans, our so-called soldiers.

When someone copies us, there's no need to send us a certified mail.

The copycats are already having their asses kicked in the comments without us having to take action.

If it's not that obvious, we call it even.But if they just copy-paste our job, they're the ones in trouble, not us.

Alright. Wanna grab a beer?Let's grab a couple.Three, if they're small.