Episode 303 / Brett Marchand / Plus Company / Chief Executive Officer
Everyone Can Start a Brand, But What Does It Take to Make It Succeed?
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In an era where technology has levelled the playing field, Brett Marchand offers a compelling perspective on the future of brand creation. As CEO of Plus Company, he brings together experiences ranging from P&G to launching his own tech startup. The core of his message : "Are we measuring what all this stuff [data] is doing to actually help us either build a brand or sell product?"
This philosophy underpins his approach to modern marketing, where data and creativity must work in harmony. Brett argues that barriers to brand creation have dramatically lowered. Manufacturing, distribution, and marketing have become accessible to almost anyone with an internet connection and a vision. However, he warns that looking like a brand is not the same as being a successful brand. Creativity remains paramount. "Brand and creativity, and what is your purpose and how do you fit into people's lives" are critical elements that separate genuine brands from mere digital facades.
The democratisation of brands - his shiny new object - doesn't guarantee success; it simply provides more opportunities. On the podcast, Brett shares insights about measuring meaningful key performance indicators and understanding the true impact of marketing efforts. We also discuss how technology enables brand creation, but human creativity, purpose, and strategic measurement remain the true differentiators in a crowded marketplace.
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
Brett Marchand 0:00
The fundamental thing is, are we measuring what all this stuff is doing to actually help us either build a brand or sell product? If you forget about that, I think you get lost.
Speaker 0:16
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Tom Ollerton 0:49
Hello and welcome to the shiny new object podcast. My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of automated creative, the creative effectiveness ad tech platform, and this is a podcast about the future of data driven marketing. Every week or so I have the pleasure and the privilege of interviewing one of our industry's leaders about where this industry is going, and this week is no different. I'm on a call with Brett Marchand, who is CEO of Plus Company. Brett, for anyone who doesn't know who you are and what you do, can you give him a bit of background?
Brett Marchand 1:19
Yeah, good to see you. Tom, or talk to you at least. Yeah, I'm the CEO, plus company owns a bunch of agencies, mostly North American wide, but also we are social, which a lot of people know, I think you know a little bit about. And I'm I started as a brand. I'm Canadian, born and raised in Canada. I started at P&G, so I was a brand marketer. I went from P&G to Campbell Soup to Molson. I did a fairly famous campaign when I was at Molson, and then I became an ad ex, and most of that has been at what was called Cossette, and now has become Plus Company. So I've sort of, you know, started running an office, and then eventually the country, and then eventually the company.
Tom Ollerton 2:01
Fantastic. And what a journey. So, okay, you've been brand side, agency side. You've come up through the ranks, the top job. What's been your biggest screw up to date? What has been that mistake you made, where you were red faced and you're head in hand, but actually looking back, you're glad it happened.
Brett Marchand 2:20
I mean, a lot, by the way, I think. But interestingly enough, I had a, had a section of my career, which was actually between being a client and in the agency world, where I started a tech company with three partners, and we made, we basically made the software that allowed you to do customization in the footwear and apparel business. So if you've ever been on Nike ID, you know, you get on you, you design a shoe for yourself, and then it magically gets manufactured and sent to you. So in 1999 actually, we started developing the software for companies to be able to do that, whether it was for a person on the other end or it was for companies, because retailers like to have sort of unique items. And yeah, we built that, launched it, spent a lot of my own money, my partners' money, and investors' money to build it. The dotcom crash happened, which then impacted everything, and it was a miserable failure, and I lost everything, literally everything. So, but I also, you know, we had 40 or 50 employees who all lost their jobs pretty quickly. So yeah, that was a pretty miserable failure.
Tom Ollerton 3:46
So what did it teach you?
Brett Marchand 3:49
Well, I learned a bunch of things about that. I mean, first of all, timing's everything, and particularly with technology, I think it's really important because, I mean, now, you know, everyone uses this kind of technology and software. You just, you know, you go on a site and customise something, and it's and it just happens, but at the time, you know, you know, internet speeds just weren't ready for a product like that. But also the VC community, and obviously this, you know, the dotcom hysteria. So a bunch of things were happening. And I think it's not just that timing is everything. It's also be extremely careful not to jump on the horse, because everyone else is riding fast, and that you have to be very careful that when the wind for everyone is blowing in the same direction, that maybe it's going to shift.
Tom Ollerton 4:47
And so what was your mental process for picking yourself up from that, right? Because that's hard man, like 40-50 people, all your money, all your best mates' money, and sounds pretty much it was out of your hands. Maybe you were a bit early. Perhaps, to your own admission, but that's going to be really intellectually and financially crushing. How, how did you pick yourself up? Did you just shrug it off and say, whatever? Or was it a bit more complicated?
Brett Marchand 5:10
No, it was definitely more complicated. I mean, I, you know, I was lucky. My wife was working. I mean, she was carrying the load, not just working, but also, we had two young kids at the time, and, you know, we had to get a rented house, and she was paying for that, etc. I think I was off work for three months, and then I, interestingly enough, I then went into the ad business. So I, yeah, I was bit depressed for a couple of months, you know, because you felt like I felt like a failure, and I was the CEO, I was the company, it was my idea in the first place, and I was sort of driving, like, unfortunately, driving a lot of this sort of, you know, spending and not, you know, not putting on the brakes probably soon enough, etc. So, yeah, and, and, I think I thought it was three months and I was okay. But, you know, in in hindsight, it was probably three years I went through that. Luckily I, you know, I ended up at my first agency. Role was at one of the Lowe agencies. It was actually a very good agency that was bought by Frank Lowe called Roche McCauley and partners. Geoffrey Roche, who was the founder, was just, you know, a visionary, creative guy, and we did really well. And so that probably helped more than anything, you know, that I found a new career, and I learned a lot from him, and we did really well together. So, yeah, I think that's, that's what helped. But it took a long time.
Tom Ollerton 6:40
It must have been interesting. You going into an agency environment with all of that experience and that, that pain and anguish, because you must have been bulletproof. You know, when people were complaining about a bad situation, you must have been like, that's not a bad situation. Let me tell you about bad situations. But anyway, I would love to know another time. I'd love to know more about that story.
Tom Ollerton 7:03
So let's bring it all back to data driven marketing specifically. So what is your best bit of data driven marketing advice you've been brand side, you've been startup side, now agency side. What bit of advice do you find yourself as being true and find yourself sharing most often.
Brett Marchand 7:21
I guess I have believed this for a long time. When I started at Procter, I was working on marketing mix modelling, and this is in the 80s, I have always thought that the most important thing you have to measure is whether it's working or not, like at the end of the day, you know, advertising and marketing is about selling stuff to make money. And there's so much data out there, and by the way, a lot of it is really good for generating insights, you know, finding a competitive advantage, figuring out, you know, what an individual consumer wants. I mean, listen, I started basically a company that was the book mass customization, but, but I always think that the fundamental thing is, are we measuring what all this stuff is doing to actually help us either build the brand or or sell product? And people forget that. I think often I have discussions with clients that are that have huge data teams that are doing an immense amount of measurement and data science and using AI and but at the end of the day, they don't actually know whether it's having an impact or not thinking. If you forget about that, I think you get lost.
Tom Ollerton 8:31
And what's the one question to ask to work out, if you are measuring the right things?
Brett Marchand 8:35
Is there a KPI that's meaningful for your business, and are you measuring it in a in a comprehensive way, so that you understand all the things you're doing in marketing, or actually making it, you know, an impact on that KPI? Most people can't answer that question, by the way.
Tom Ollerton 8:49
No, of course. My version of that is, are you going to do something differently based on this bit of data that you're capturing about your marketing? If you go that's interesting. Then it's just noise, right? But if it, if it tells you something where you're like, right? Okay, I now know neat. I now know what I need to go and do, then it's right. I mean, that's what we talk about at automated creative a lot, is people don't need more, like, more data, more decks and more dashboards.They need inspiration, right? You need data that tells you what the next thing you should do. You should be hands in the air going, Yes, brilliant, this thing I need to do. And if your data is not driving inspiration, it's just noise, then, yeah, to your point, you're just collecting a bunch of things that don't tell you that the business is moving in the right direction or not.
Brett Marchand 9:36
I worked at P&G. It was really interesting. I mean, you know, it's, like, it's really a great company in many, many ways, P&G, at least. And the five years I spent there, I just, I still use what I learned in that company every single day. I really do. And when I got there, like it was about brand share, it was about market share in your category, that was fundamentally what we measured. You know, the first thing they made you do as brand assistant was write, it was write a monthly review and and it was all about market share, like, how did your market share? How did things impact that market share? The Good, the Bad, the what did you learn? Etc. And I always just found that super valuable. And I think it's a reason that that company's done so you know so well for hundreds of years is that, you know, it's super focused on one thing. So I learned a huge lesson at P&G about that.
Tom Ollerton 10:32
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Tom Ollerton 11:09
So your shiny new object is the democratisation of brands. So when you said this, I didn't, wasn't quite sure what you meant. You've explained it to me now, so I would love it if you could explain what that is to the audience, so we can get into it.
Brett Marchand 11:22
So if you think about, I mean, P&G is probably a good example, right? I mean, we all know that brands started because people were manufacturing things, and they want to, you know, they were, they were better, and they're therefore they branded them because they wanted to tell you that it's worth, you know, buying this thing and paying more for it because, you know, it's a product of quality and consistency and all those things. And so, you know, the the ability to manufacture something and do it in the right way was the first thing that made a huge difference to, you know, brands, and then you needed a lot of money to be able to talk about it, right? Because distributing that message was expensive. You know, in the early days, it was through newspapers, and of course, it's, you know, expanded greatly through the decades. I think everything has changed when it comes to that. So, you know, manufacturing tariffs right now, aside for a second. I mean, almost anyone can manufacture like you. You need very little money to manufacture something in, usually countries like Vietnam and China and other places, and be able to ship it almost anywhere, at least on the product side of things. Or, you know, you can start a consulting company overnight. Or you guys have started a company with two of you. So, you know, the barriers there are much lower. Second of all, you know, the internet changed everything, because you could talk to a giant swath of the of the world, you know, again, without having to spend millions of dollars on production and TV or or some other areas. And then E commerce actually changed that even more, because you didn't have to pay for listing fees. You didn't need a whole lot of money. You didn't have to be able to, you know, get Walmart to be convinced to bring your, you know, put your product on their shelves, etc. And then, of course, the pandemic accelerated all of that, because people were at home, so they couldn't go to retailers, and they were in front of their computers, and they computers and their phones to buy things and, you know, and now AI has accelerated it even more because you can actually develop a brand, you can come up with a logo, you can design the product, you know. I mean, you can build a website. You don't even have to pay somebody to code anymore. So I just think it has fundamentally turned this idea of brand on its on its ear. I mean, some of, I mean, I still am a huge fan of brands like, you know, Nike and McDonald's and, you know, Adidas, and I don't know, you know, I still love Mercedes and Audi's. I think they're great. But you can build products. You know, some of the best products in those categories and other categories are actually brands that have come out of nowhere in in only the last year or two. And think the the environment, the infrastructure, all these changes that I just talked about have created this new era of almost anyone can build and distribute and market a brand today.
Tom Ollerton 14:29
Thanks for the little history of why that all came about, that was really nicely put together. However, I gotta push you on this right? I think it's really easy for people to make things that look like brands, as opposed to actually being brands, right? So, you know, you and I throw up the the Tom and Brett burger company, right? And we and, yeah, you can throw up a website without any coding. You can order some cheap patties online and get delivered to our burger restaurant. We can do a logo and put on T shirts, you know, business cards and. Whole thing. Probably even get chat GPT to design the menu and all the variants and the pricing and stuff. But... and you will look like a brand, like you will have all of the hallmarks of a brand, but until you have that thing where it's the mental association, availability and the motion associated with those things that make up a brand, ie, you know, the logo the shop, the whatever the power of it's distributed, and I think that that's the kind of curse of AI is it's given people the impression that they're doing the thing that works, because it looks like the thing that works, but actually, it's not actually doing the job. So, yeah, you've got, you've got a logo that looks like a logo, but unless anyone recognises that logo. The logo is not doing the job.
Brett Marchand 15:42
I think you're right. I mean, I mean, it's my latest shiny new object. It's one of the things I've been thinking a lot about. I mean, not just for the last year, but for the last few years. But I agree with you, I don't, I'm not sure that that means success. I think actually, if you're a big brand, if you're a Procter & Gamble or Adidas or an Audi, I think they're think you have the right to be successful. I think you It changes the way you have to think about things, though. I think if you ignore all these other brands and this democratisation of brands, I think you do it at your own peril. Um, I think this is Starbucks. Is a good example. I am a, you know, I have been a huge Starbucks fan from the first time I went into a Starbucks in 1993. I always thought what Howard Schultz was doing there was absolutely brilliant on a branding standpoint. But meanwhile, you know, as you know you're, you're in London, there's a coffee shop, you know, on every corner, and a lot of them are marketing in a way that they never could before. They've got apps that you can order from, you can see how they're rated versus the other coffee shops. Never mind the Starbucks around the corner on whatever you're looking at, Google Maps or Yelp or etc. And I think it's hurt the Starbucks brand. I think they have been challenged in a way that they haven't been in a long time. And this is the reason why, I don't think anyone's talking about it, but I think that's actually the fundamental issue for Starbucks right now.
Tom Ollerton 17:26
I think about coffee too much. Not that I'm a massive coffee aficionado, but there's a certain amount of brands that I think what they do is they they raise the floor, right? So before things like Starbucks, right? You had, certainly, when I was growing up, we had, like, I don't know, Nescafe granules, right? If you wanted a coffee, that's, that's kind of what you did there was, there wasn't really any, if you had a French press or something, if you were a bit fancy, but generally speaking, it was that. And then all coffee shop coffee was pretty much the same thing. And then Starbucks came along and kind of made that, you know, the base level coffee, the everyman coffee, like, so much better. And whereas now, like, what you look at something like Blank Street, right? And they've, they've kind of taken it, taken it up a notch, you know, they kind of lift that thing up and then, Nespresso, they sort of made home coffee, just that, that little bit better. Some might argue, I wouldn't argue, but, but there you go. So, so you get these brands that kind of lift the floor to make the make the base thing better. Some brands are like, kind of Ferraris or whatever, just kind of make the best car better, Tesla, you could argue, and all that kind of stuff. So, so what? So in that world, what is the, what is the role of the democratised brand? Is if everyone can make a nice looking logo and website and do an order through an app and all the rest of it, like, what's really going to matter? Is it creativity, or is it timing, or is it strategy? If everyone can make a brand overnight for no money and dropship it from China, you know if that all starts again. If it does, what's really going to matter? Because if it's been the level the play field has been levelled, something's going to win. So who's going to win?
Brett Marchand 18:58
I think creativity is a huge part of that. And, you know, it's right now, it seems to be less important. Think a lot of brands have sort of rushed to the bottom of the funnel because of all the things we just talked about, right? You know, because of what's happening with E commerce, what's happening with other brands, what happened with the pandemic. You know, as the world moved online, because of the pressure on delivering against sales objectives, etc. But I think, I think brand and creativity, and, you know, what is your purpose and and what's it, you know, how do you fit into people's lives, and how you talk about that in a meaningful way? I think, is one of the, one of the most important things.
Tom Ollerton 19:44
One of the scariest things I saw, and I'd love to get your view on this. I'm doing a podcast challenge with my nephew at the minute, where we listen to a new podcast show every day for a year, not like a series, but the whole new production every day, which seemed quite eye opening. And I found this podcast called, like, cool things to do with chat GPT. And it said, like, here's five businesses you can start with a with chat GPT tomorrow. And any ideas, Brett, can you pick two of those five?
Brett Marchand 20:12
Another chat GPT.
Tom Ollerton 20:14
I mean, I don't know it was. It's a tough it's a tough question. The first one was a branding agency. They're like, look, you've got Chat GPT. You can just set up a branding agency tomorrow. You can design websites, you can design logos and come up with names. I was like, I was like, oh, no, no, you can't. You can do something that looks like a branding agency, but it designs the artefacts of a brand, but doesn't design a brand. And then the other one, the only other one, and this is like, so telling how popular this show is. It might not be popular at all, but the other thing was an email marketing agency. And like, I'm sure you've seen your inbox like, everyone else's just explode with people constantly, constantly trying to hook you in, going, Hey, Brett, quick question, or like, do you like making money, Brett, and all the stuff that you you know, then you'll probably got 50 of them in your inbox, as we've been speaking as do I.
Brett Marchand 21:09
I delete at least two every morning.
Tom Ollerton 21:12
It's crazy, but it must... someone must be making money out of this. It's madness. But do you know they don't like... and email marketing in a B2B context is very hard, and that is very difficult to get right. You know, as I'm sure you'll have attested to.
Brett Marchand 21:27
But let's be honest, right? Like being able to start a branding agency has never had very high barriers, ever like, you know, there's, I don't know what the number is, but there must be hundreds of 1000s of brand agencies in the world, and have been for decades, like, you know, successful ones, whole different story, as we know. But I, you know, there's not that many barriers to be able to start a brand agency, branding agency. And I, you know, listen, AI makes it even easier. I agree. But that does not mean you're going to be successful, because there are, you know, many, many other things that you have to do to be able to a run a business like that successfully, but also b be able to help clients, and especially big clients and enterprise clients, do the things that they need to do to differentiate themselves, particularly in a world of democratisation of brands. So I, you know, I think chat GPT is, I'm not sure that they're right about that.
Tom Ollerton 22:21
Well, look, Brett, unfortunately, I've got a tonne more questions, but we're at time now, frustratingly. So, if someone wanted to get in touch with you about the things we've talked about today, where's a good place to do that and what does make a message that you will respond to?
Brett Marchand 22:36
Email me? Brett.marchand@pluscompany.com that's the best way. And don't try and sell me something, and I'll respond. I promise.
Tom Ollerton 22:44
Brett, I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much.
Brett Marchand 22:47
Yeah, me too. Thanks, Tom.
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