Episode 14: Brand Strategy with Peter Mirus of Build

"I don't take the technology for granted. It has always been important for me to understand the technological underpinnings of the products that I'm working with." -Peter Mirus What influenced his interest in Branding and Marketing: I learned a lot from my father who was in publishing and an early pioneer in the dial up bulletin board systems. As a teenager, the process of marketing, branding and advertising was a lot of interest to me. It was very primitive but also wildly exciting time to be involved in technology and marketing because there were literally these entirely new pathways of reaching an audience that people have never considered before. Approach on Brand Strategy: I look at brand comprehensively and in a very holistic way.  It is a broad ecosystem of moving parts and sometimes, it can be a challenge for an organization. There is an educational process that needs to take place where the clients need to become aware that the brand is more than just the visual representation of their logo mark, the marketing collateral, their website and so forth. How you express yourself as a company verbally and how you behave as a company using your unique mark, your name, your logo hopefully distinguishes you and whatever your business property is from competing companies.   Comprehensive view on Brand: It is more of a sum of the company's positioning, its messaging, its visual identity, and in a more abstract sense that emotional and intellectual relationship that you have with your customers. Perception is the better product reality. No matter what qualities you want your brand to portray, it can never be greater than how it's viewed and experienced by the audience.   How can this become a challenge for an organization? When they start to internalize what a brand is, it becomes apparent that it's not just going to be the sort of marketing visual face lift for the organization that true brand transformation actually impacts how people behave inside the organization. And also to some extent how products are made, how they are presented, and how they are designed. How to become a good Brander and Marketer: Marketing and Branding is really about the customer. You'd want the customer to show you the path or the potential customer. You're not just basing it on your own ego. Creative process and your ability to create that sort of mysticism for your client that you're doing the brand work for and impressing them with that sort of mystical creative process. Marketing and Branding should be, to a certain extent, more technical. There is a lot of room for creativity but there is also this very technical very logic driven aspect to it. It's the desire of the customers.   It's your knowledge of the market that really is going to make that opportunity for you. Definable value for the disbelievers: That does come from clients that have experienced marketers and branders talking about the brand in some sort of this mystical creative sense. It's something that isn't as grounded and connected in their work experience to be relatable and therefore it doesn't seem as tangible to them. I've encountered in the marketing space as well, typically from more creative shops that are focused on the visual representation of the brand and usually that is the aspect of creative people wanting to be creative and not taking the time to really have quantitative or qualitative evidence that suggests how the brand should be portrayed. This give and take in the industry between that creative force that's definitely necessary in the intellectual technical approach to building a brand.   * For clients specifically, what I emphasize is that everything that we do is gonna be grounded on research. It can show us a clear direction or some sort of indication of the direction in which we want to go. Significance of Brand Strategy Process: