Olivia: Alright, Jackson, pop quiz. What's the fastest way to kill a great brand? Jackson: Easy. A terrible product or a really cringey advertising campaign. Like, celebrity-singing-about-insurance levels of bad. Olivia: Close, but wrong. According to our book today, one of the fastest ways to kill a great brand is with good advertising. The kind that’s slick, memorable, and makes promises your company can't actually keep. That disconnect, that broken promise, is the real killer. Jackson: Whoa, okay. So a great ad can be a Trojan horse for a mediocre company? My mind is already a little blown. What book are we diving into that’s flipping the script like this? Olivia: We are talking about What Great Brands Do: The Seven Brand-Building Principles That Separate the Best from the Rest by Denise Lee Yohn. And what makes her perspective so powerful is that she's not an ivory-tower academic; she lived this. She was the Vice President of Brand and Strategy at Sony, right in the trenches, trying to align a massive, complex global company around a single, coherent idea. Jackson: That’s some serious real-world cred. So if it's not about ads, where does a great brand even begin? In the marketing department? Olivia: Not even close. Yohn argues it begins in the last place most companies look: inside. With the culture.

Olivia: Yohn’s first, and maybe most important, principle is that great brands start inside. They don't begin by crafting a clever slogan; they begin by cultivating a corporate culture that actually lives out the brand's promise. Jackson: That sounds nice, but a little abstract. What does that even mean, to "live out the brand's promise"? And does it actually work? Olivia: It’s the absolute foundation. Think about this staggering statistic from Gallup: only about 41 percent of employees actually know what their company stands for and what makes it different from the competition. That means a majority of people showing up to work every day are just… winging it. They can't deliver a great brand experience if they don't even know what it is. Jackson: Huh. So you have this army of people who are the face of the company, and they have no idea what the mission is. That’s terrifying. Olivia: Exactly. And the perfect story for this is the turnaround of IBM. In the early 2000s, IBM was seen as this big, slow, irrelevant dinosaur. Their new CEO, Sam Palmisano, knew the problem wasn't just their products; it was their culture. It had become arrogant and insular. Jackson: So he launched a massive, expensive new ad campaign, right? "Think Different... again"? Olivia: He did the opposite. He launched something called the "ValuesJam." For 72 hours straight, he opened up IBM's internal intranet and invited all 300,000-plus employees to have a massive, chaotic, completely open online conversation about what IBM's values should be. Jackson: Hold on. A 72-hour global chat room? That sounds like a CIO's nightmare and a massive productivity loss. How does an internal forum translate into selling more computers or services? Olivia: Because it wasn't about a slogan; it was about creating a new social contract. Tens of thousands of employees participated. They debated, they argued, they shared stories. And out of that beautiful chaos, three core values emerged that everyone had co-authored: "Dedication to every client's success," "Innovation that matters," and "Trust and personal responsibility in all relationships." They weren't just words on a poster; the employees felt they owned them. Jackson: Okay, I can see how that would build morale. But did it change how they actually did business? A lot of companies have values that are just empty words on a wall. Olivia: This is the brilliant part. Palmisano knew he had to prove it was real. The "ValuesJam" revealed that frontline managers were often hamstrung by bureaucracy. They couldn't even spend fifty bucks to solve a client's problem without mountains of paperwork, which completely contradicted the value of "dedication to every client's success." Jackson: Right, the classic big-company problem. Olivia: So, Palmisano made what he called a "$100 million bet on trust." He gave every single one of his 22,000 frontline managers a discretionary budget of $5,000. No questions asked. They were empowered to use that money to make a client's problem go away, right then and there. Jackson: Wow. That’s not just talk. That is putting your money where your values are. You're telling your employees, "We trust you to do the right thing." Olivia: Precisely. And that’s how you build a brand from the inside out. The customer doesn't see the "ValuesJam," but they feel the result when a manager instantly solves their problem. The internal culture directly creates the external customer experience. That's what Yohn means by "brand as business."

Jackson: Okay, so once the inside of the house is in order, you can finally start talking to the outside world. But Yohn has another curveball for us. She says great brands avoid selling products. What are you supposed to sell? Hopes and dreams? Olivia: Exactly! You sell an emotion, an identity, a feeling. People don't buy products; they buy better versions of themselves. The product is just the souvenir they take home from that emotional experience. Jackson: That sounds like something you’d hear in a yoga class, but I think I get it. Give me an example. Olivia: The quintessential example is Nike. In the late 80s, their ad agency created a spot that was all about their running shoes—the technology, the design. They showed it at a big company meeting, and… crickets. It was met with dead silence. It celebrated the product, not the person. Jackson: It was an ad about Nike, for Nike. I can see why that wouldn't land. Olivia: Right. So the marketing chief sent a memo back to the agency with a simple, brilliant instruction: "widen the access point." Stop talking to elite marathoners and start talking to the 40-year-old who's thinking about jogging for the first time. The agency came back with a series of ads showing everyday people—sweating, straining, pushing themselves—and at the end, three simple words appeared on the screen: "Just Do It." Jackson: And the rest is history. That campaign wasn't about shoes at all. It was about giving yourself permission to try, to be brave, to achieve something. Olivia: It was about the feeling of accomplishment. Nike sold you the feeling of your own potential greatness; the shoes were just the gear you needed to unlock it. Now, contrast that with the tragic story of Kodak. Jackson: Oh man. "A Kodak moment." They owned a phrase in the cultural lexicon. How did they lose it all? Olivia: Yohn uses Kodak as the ultimate cautionary tale. Everyone blames their failure on the rise of digital photography, but that's not the whole story. A Kodak engineer invented the first digital camera back in 1975! They saw it coming for decades. Jackson: Wait, they invented their own executioner? How is that possible? Olivia: Because Kodak’s leadership couldn't escape their own definition of their business. They saw themselves as a chemical and paper company that sold film. They were in the business of selling products. They weren't in the business of what their customers were actually buying: the preservation of memories. The "Kodak moment." Jackson: That's fascinating. It's like how Apple doesn't sell you a phone; they sell you access to a creative, minimalist lifestyle. The phone is just the ticket to get in. Kodak was selling the paper ticket, not the movie. Olivia: That’s a perfect analogy. When digital came along, Kodak tried to compete by making digital cameras and printers, but their heart wasn't in it. They were just selling more products. They failed to translate the feeling of a "Kodak moment" into the digital age. They sold the what, not the why. And in doing so, they became irrelevant.

Olivia: Exactly. And once you know what feeling you're selling—once you have that internal compass—it becomes incredibly easy to do the hardest thing in business: say 'no.' Jackson: Saying no to what? Opportunities? Money? Olivia: Yes. To all of it. Yohn combines two principles here: "Great brands ignore trends" and "Great brands don't chase customers." It's about the discipline of focus. It's about knowing who you are, and more importantly, who you are not. Jackson: Okay, but turning down money? In this economy? That sounds like a recipe for going out of business. How did that not backfire? Olivia: Let me tell you the story of Shake Shack. It’s a beloved burger chain, and their CEO, Randy Garutti, was constantly being asked to do catering or launch a food truck. It was a guaranteed revenue stream. They even went so far as to buy a vehicle for the food truck. Jackson: Smart move. Expand the brand's reach. Olivia: But then Garutti stopped and asked a crucial question: Can a food truck deliver the Shake Shack experience? The vibe, the community, the feeling of being in one of their parks or restaurants? He realized it couldn't. The food would be the same, but the brand—the feeling—would be diluted. So he scrapped the entire idea. He said no to easy money to protect the brand's integrity. Jackson: I can't imagine a CEO saying, 'We bought the truck, but... nah.' That takes serious guts. It's a long-term play over a short-term win. Olivia: It’s the ultimate long-term play. And it extends to customers, too. Take Lululemon. For years, they had a notoriously strict 14-day return policy. Unwashed, unworn, tags on. No exceptions. People complained it was harsh compared to other retailers. Jackson: And telling customers they can't return something? Isn't that brand suicide? The customer is always right, right? Olivia: That's the myth! Yohn argues the customer is not always right. Lululemon's former CEO basically said, "We aren't a department store. We're for people who are serious about their gear." The strict policy was a filter. It was a way of saying, "If you're one of us, you'll get it. If you're not, that's okay, we're not for you." It wasn't about alienating people; it was about attracting the right people. Jackson: So they're deliberately creating a tribe, not just a customer base. They're sorting the lovers from the haters. Olivia: And the lovers become evangelists. It’s the same reason The Rolling Stones outlasted all the bands that tried to copy The Beatles. The Beatles were for everyone, which was amazing. But The Stones were for a specific type of person—a little darker, a little more rebellious. They had a point of view. They weren't chasing the pop charts; they were being themselves. And that's why they're still filling stadiums 60 years later.

Olivia: When you put it all together, you see it's not seven random rules. It's a single, integrated system. It's a sequence. You start inside with your culture, which defines the unique emotion you're really selling, which then gives you the clarity and the courage to say 'no' to everything that doesn't fit. Jackson: It completely reframes how you look at the companies you interact with every day. It’s not about what they say in their commercials, but what they do—and maybe more importantly, what they choose not to do. That's where the real brand lives. Olivia: It’s the difference between a brand as a costume you wear and a brand as your skeleton—the thing that gives you structure and allows you to move through the world with purpose. Yohn’s ultimate message is that your brand isn't what you say you are. It's what you do. Jackson: That’s a powerful thought to end on. It makes you want to hold the companies you support to a higher standard. Olivia: Absolutely. And we're curious to hear from our listeners. What's a brand you love not for its product, but for the feeling it gives you? Or a time you saw a brand make a tough choice that actually earned your respect? Share your stories with the Aibrary community. We'd love to hear them. Jackson: This is Aibrary, signing off.