Host: Lifang He has nearly 20 years of experience with some of the world's most influential tech companies, including Apple, Amazon, Ring and Bloomberg. She now leads a consultancy specializing in brand strategy, product innovation, and is the author of the new book, Brand Power Built In, How Tech Products Really Win Hearts and Minds. Lifang, welcome!
Lifang He: Well, thank you. Thank you for inviting me. I did listen to the podcast, and good to be here.
Host: In tech in particular, brand has kind of become a dirty word, whereas product is what people associate with being the money maker, but that's wrong. Why is that wrong? What are some of the common myths or misconceptions about branding, and how does branding work differently, in particular for tech products?
Lifang He: Yeah, really great question. I think you know, this really goes to what motivated me to write this book. After spending years of launching and building tech products. I kept seeing the same problem again, again. And like you said, brand is often misunderstood. And when people think about brand, they think about campaigns, logos and stories and something that really burns resources. And on the other hand, product is the thing that actually makes money. So when it comes to making decisions and how companies operate, and they often treat these two things separate. But to customers, they don't see these separations. It to them, it's just one experience, right? This really motivated me to write this book, and I help people understand how to rethink brand for tech products and services. And I think, you know, the biggest myth is that people see the disconnection between product and and brand. And I think that's something that we have to rethink, particularly
for tech products. The product experience is the brand experience, and brand strategy is product strategy, and to customers is really how they perceive you and enact with you, and they really don't see those separations.
Host: Perhaps a really well known example of this, and one that you have personal experience with, is Apple. You know, you worked with Apple for a while, talk about how that ethos that you've just described was really embodied there.
Lifang He: That's right. So I had the privilege to work on Apple for many years, and I worked on iPhone launches globally, and it is the place where I really learned about how brand and products are fully integrated and really deliver a great customer experience to Apple. You know, when you think about the Apple products, you don't really separate the Apple brand and their products from their keynotes to product experiences to advertising campaigns and marketing. It's super connected. And to Apple, particularly advertising and marketing, is their product as well. And I think that's the level of detail and a craftsmanship it requires to deliver cohesive experience is it's very hard to do, but when it works, it's really exciting to customers. And I think, you know, today we live in a kind of digital world, and people may enact with your products and services or learn about your products and services from different places. And it's not linear and and this is quite different
from, you know, maybe 20 years ago, when broadcast was the main thing to hear about a product. You know, when you think about Coca Cola, you maybe hear about it, and then you have the product. And maybe the product didn't change that often, but for tech products and digital services, you enact with them every day. And really the experience itself creates a foundation for people to form the perceptions and the relationship. And I think that's a really big learning.
Host: A lot of leaders tend to see building a brand and innovating a product as being things that are actually in conflict with each other. How do you dissuade people of that way of thinking?
Lifang He: That's right. This comes from the misperception. When people think about brand, they think about brand as, like, really large campaigns, you know, like that requires a lot of budget. You know, to certain extent, it's true, but I think, you know, brand power is really built from everyday execution and daily decisions. And I give you example, and particularly for startups and, you know, for anyone who wanted to create something new, naming is one of the most difficult decisions, but it's also a one way door decision. For example, when ring first started the ring video doorbell, and the founder, Jamie simnov, invented a connected doorbell at his garage, and he went to shark tank to pitch to the sharks. And initially he called the product Doorbot. The product was really innovative, but people couldn't really understand the larger vision beyond a connected doorbell. But Jamie and his team rethought about how he could tell the story in a way that really
helped people understand the vision. So later, he and his team rebranded to ring and really create a large vision around it. And you know, to ring means kind of the sound of the doorbell, but it's also the ring of security, like it started with the front door, but also around the house and to the neighborhood. And that kind of vision really helped the company expand to new areas. And you know, they started with the doorbell, but later they introduced indoor cameras, outdoor cameras, alarms and neighbors, app and subscription plans. So that's just one example of when it comes to brand, right? It's not about, you know, like the largest campaigns, it's really about what you do from that moment and how you can inject that thinking to really connect with customers. And this is a big opportunity for a lot of companies, and particularly for startups, and when they think about something new, how can they inject that brand thinking to product and to me, like brand strategy is
the product strategy, and it really shapes what companies built and how customers experience it. So those things are all connected. They're not very separate.
Host: Does that brand identity work as a long term asset, not only for growth of the company, but also for standing out in what has become, as you mentioned earlier, a very oversaturated advertising market?
Lifang He: That's right. So I think today AI is really accelerating product development and and it's so easy to write a code to generate a video Create Copies, but it's very hard to stand out and in the sea, in the ocean of sameness, and how can any products and services, any company, stand out? And this is where a very strong brand identity, voice and story could help. And going back to the example we talked about, about ring, right? I think the shift from the initial robot to raining. It wasn't a cosmetic change. And this is a story and a product and a brand decision rooted in what they wanted to build and where they wanted to take the business in the next five years, 10 years. So that's just one example of how decisions like naming and brand identity could become a long term asset, and it is an under leveraged kind of opportunity for a lot of companies when they when they first start out. And this doesn't just, you know, speak to startups. It also applies to any
companies when they launch new products and services. And at Amazon, we launched a lot of new products and services, and this is a kind of area where the decisions can have a long term impact on customer adoption and business growth. So it's very important to spend a lot of time early on to get that right.
Host: I'm glad you mentioned Amazon. You know, you were actually a Head of Brand at ring for a while, as well as Amazon, where you helped turn Amazon pharmacy into one of the fastest growing brands in the US within just three years of the launch there. But what was the key to that strategy?
Lifang He: So Amazon, pharmacy is one of the projects I feel really proud of. We know that health is one of the most human topic we all care about, but it's also one of the most complex areas for a lot of people. And so for pharmacy, I think the biggest. Thing we did collectively together is we really think about the entire customer journey, end to end. And when you shift from, you know, buying your medications at local pharmacies to buying medications online, that's a very different behavior, and requires customers to really, you know, trust the experience, trust the service, and also to learn about how it works. So I think, from product, from brand and marketing standpoint, we really rethought the entire experience and make shopping for medications as easy as shopping in anything on Amazon, but also building that trust with customers, because it is one of the most important decisions you wanted to have, and you wanted to have trust in the medications you take, and this is
very important to a lot of customers who have chronic conditions where They really need to take care of their health. So it takes a lot of collective work from the entire team across brand, product and customer services to put customers and the center and look at the end to end experience.
Host: Since we're sharing some stories from some pretty well known brands here, there's another you mentioned in the book about Nike, how Nike lost $28 billion with a B by basically prioritizing the wrong type of marketing. What went wrong there? What can
Lifang He: So Nike is one of the most iconic brands I really admire and and this is a story that I feel like leaders can learn from. I think, you know, a couple years ago, Nike leadership made a decision to accelerate direct consumer program so they really lean into direct channels and fueled by performance marketing and moving away from traditional partnerships and retail footprint. And on the other hand, they also wanted to really simplify the categories. You know, in the past, they re they organize the categories around the specific sports people really love, you know, basketball, soccer, football, and they shifted to very simple categories as women's, men's and kids. So I think, you know, in those decisions, they started to move away from the brand that really made Nike successful, and people really loved about Nike, and that was a big hit. And I think quickly they reversed the strategy and going back to the core, reinvest in brand marketing, reorganize their
product categories around specific sports people passionate about, because at the end of day, it's about the passion and the sports that really connected people and and why people love Nike. And I think it's really interesting lesson for a lot of leaders, and it's a hard one, because it's always challenging to balance the short term and the long term, and also like being innovative.
Host: You know, we're only as successful as what we can measure when companies enact these sort of principles and think this sort of thing through, how should companies be measuring brand strength? What metrics actually matter and which ones are just kind of for vanity or for show, what measurements really make a difference when we're trying to figure out if we're on the right path?
Lifang He: Yeah, really good question. I think this is a part where it's very, very difficult. And I think the biggest challenge for measurement is fragmentation and very siloed measurement when it comes to making decisions about, oh, where to invest and and if it is worth investing, say, brand related initiative against all the other priorities. When the metrics are siloed, you can't really understand the full impact, right? So one of the opportunities for leaders to look at is, how can you create a holistic view of all the metrics you know, from awareness to perceptions, to adoption, engagement and retention. And if you can connect the KPIs from brand metrics with business outcomes, and help people see the direct correlation between how the input metrics drive the outputs. I think that's the key. Every company might be different, because every business is different. But the lesson is, it's very important to look at metrics in a holistic way, because what happens is that
when you when or when leadership or senior leaders make decisions, they can't make decisions when. Siloed metrics. And this happens a lot, and when teams put a lot of effort to drive initiatives, they know sometimes, oh, this really works, but without the full picture, it's hard to know the full impact of it. And I personally learned firsthand from these experiences, and it's really liberating when you put both long term metrics and short term kind of performance and sales results all together, and that can connect the dots.
Host: You alluded to AI a little bit earlier. Obviously, AI is part of every conversation. Now, I can just see people at home or in their car listening to this and going, great. I'm going to go to chat GPT, I'm going to type in build me a great brand, and I'm going to do the three or four things that it says, why shouldn't they do that?
Lifang He: I think they should do that, right? Like AI. Gives us a lot of great tools, but those tools are not enough. I think, you know, we're at kind of a transformative moment, and at any tech transformation, you know, think about when people move from web to mobile. Today, we're moving from like to AI. We should, you know, be open to technologies and great tools, but tools are not enough, and that can replace the strategic thinking and the decisions and the human efforts to build great brands. And I think you know, for products and services to win hearts and minds, it's less about just one moment or one decision. It's the totality of the experience people have with the products and services. And those decisions reflect a lot of things. Like, you know, how you name the product, how you build your website, how you tell your story, and the design of the experience, and how you market it outside of the company, and where people learn about you, and when people start using the
product, the onboarding experiences. So I think AI can accelerate speech and make things become a little bit more efficient, but the hard work still stay the same. And you know, the positioning, the design, the story you wanted to tell, the problem you wanted to solve, AI is not going to do that, and that really requires strategic thinking and more thoughtful thinking to be able to win customers over. And truthfully, it's harder to win because the internet is going to be flooded with a lot more information and a lot more products and services, and it's even more challenging for businesses. So you know, at this moment in time, brand becomes a true differentiator, and both for startups and for existing companies, and they really need to make their product experiences even better and strengthen their customer relationships to really build for the long term.
Host: A lot of the principles we've talked about today are things that are very important at the beginning, getting off on the right foot, setting up the right foundations on day one, a lot of our listeners are just getting started, or they're starting something new. Maybe they have multiple businesses, but others might be pretty far along in their business already, and they don't have the ability to set something up on day one. What can they do to pivot now from the position they're in, even if they're years into this business?
Lifang He: Yeah, it goes back to the problem the products and services try to solve. Be very clear about the customer problem you try to solve. And figure out how you solve that in a very clear way. And this is the part where positioning comes in, right? And it is about, you know, figure out your unique value proposition to the customer problems you try to solve, and then building the best product and services to to solve those customer problems. And in execution, I'm sure there are paper cuts areas where things can improve, right? And the experience around the website or around the product experiences, you know, onboarding or email, I think those are all the opportunities for companies to improve. And I think it takes time to kind of drive towards the long term success, but it's, it's across all the entire end to end experience. And I think that's opportunity for companies who already launched and who wanted to continue to improve.
Host: It has been wonderful talking this over with you today. The book is out now, of course, where can people find that? Where can they learn more about you outside of the book, or connect with you?
Lifang He: They can find my book where books are available, and they can, you know, connect with me on LinkedIn, if you have comments, any feedback and any ideas, I would love to hear from you. And you know this is really the beginning of educating people and sharing the big idea with with everyone, and I would love to stay in touch and hear from our listeners.
Host: Wonderful, Lifang, thank you so much.
Lifang He: Thank you. Really appreciate the opportunity. Thank you. Cheers.