1.
The Brand Book 2021
Brand Managers, CMO’s & Founders Guide To Building A Brilliant
Brand in 2021 & Beyond
1
TheBrandBook2021
Danny Denhard - December 2020

2.
The Brand Book 2021 Introductions
2020 Has Been A Once In A Lifetime Experience
TheBrandBook2021
has been a once in a lifetime experience.
We have seen our worlds
fl
ipped upside down and
businesses of all shapes and sizes impacted.
We saw companies scrap, some just survive and others
thrive in the most testing of times.
As we move towards 2021, we will see another shift in
habits, a shift in expectations and a shift in how we see
ourselves and see ourselves through brands. Gaining an
experience through your brand of choice will be essential.
2020
2021

3.
Help For 2021
Six Brand Leaders O
ff
ering Help For 2021
TheBrandBook2021
I reached out to a number of brand leaders from the charity
space, startup ecosystem, pharmaceutical, gambling, FMCG, e-
gaming and the agency space to quiz them across a number of
important areas to provide Brand Leaders, CMO’s, founders and
business leaders guidance for the future and o
ff
er actionable
insights to leverage for the rest of 2020 and for 2021.
The brand leads answer a number of important questions, with
thought provoking points and a series of great directives for you
to digest and take forward to implement with your brands and
organisations.

4.
4
TheBrandBook2021
The Questions

5.
Q1 What does Brand mean to you?
Q2
Q3
Why do you think Brand and Marketing is often
misaligned? Or are the two misunderstood?
Which brand do you think just gets it and delivers their
brand every time?
TheBrandBook2021
The Questions

6.
Q4 What is the best piece of (brand) marketing you have
seen over the last twelve months?
Q5
Q6
Brand Marketing is going to get harder with more
brands
fi
ghting for our hard-earned money for the
much desired short term results, what are two brand
tactics that will get the best cut through?
What is the best piece of advice you would give to
struggling brand managers getting cut through
currently?
TheBrandBook2021
The Questions

7.
Q7 What are the three actions for brands looking to gain
cut-through right now?
TheBrandBook2021
The Questions

8.
8
TheBrandBook2021
The Brand Book 2021 Q&A

9.
9
TheBrandBook2021
The Answers - Click Name To Read Their Thoughts
> Harry Lang - Buzz Bingo
> Sophie Greig - JustGiving
> Simon Swan - Pharmaceutical
> Julia Rast - Xaxis
> Pierre Dadd - Consultant
> Anna Brook - Consultant
> Danny Denhard - Focus

10.
HARRY LANG
MARKETING DIRECTOR - BUZZ BINGO
Harry Lang is a strategic brand and digital marketing expert with over twenty years
of experience, the last
fi
fteen of which have been in the online gambling industry.
During that time he's been responsible for brand strategy and channel marketing
delivery for some of the biggest gaming brands in sports betting, casino, poker,
bingo and esports.
He's now the Marketing Director at Buzz Bingo, the UK's biggest bingo business.
TheBrandBook2021
https://www.linkedin.com/in/hclang/
Harry Lang

11.
1. What does Brand mean to you?
For me, ‘Brand’ is everything that gives a product meaning. These
things usually include a brand’s personality, positioning, mission,
vision and tone of voice.
I like to remember that branding refers to the stamp cattle men
would burn into the hides of their herd – these stamps would identify
the cattle and make theft easy to prove. This idea of ‘identity’ is
central to how I perceive brands today – they aren’t physical
attributes, functions or benefits – they’re the ethereal things that can
take a boring product and make it fascinating to consumers.
The wonderful thing about creating, developing and building brands
is that it offers a tremendous freedom of expression – one electric
car manufacturer can be safe, reliable, understated and even a little
boring, like Toyota, while another can choose to be edgy, futuristic,
kooky and obscenely fast like Tesla. Both manufacturers sell a shed
load of cars, but their brands mean they appeal to drivers in wildly
different ways.
2. Why do you think Brand and Marketing is often misaligned? Or are the
two misunderstood?
In my own experience, the times brand and marketing have become seriously
misaligned were when there were separate teams responsible for them. That
meant different leadership strategies with different personal and business
objectives. Ideally, I’d always have the team responsible for brand
guardianship (including architecture, guidelines, design style and brand
building campaigns) as a part of the marketing team as a whole. The brand
team execute a strategy that the entire marketing team, with input from the
rest of the business up to and including CEO, has had a hand in defining.
These scenarios have eventuated because the purposes of a brand and
marketing strategy were misunderstood. You can’t have a marketing strategy
without a brand strategy so your brand architecture and design style must be
in place before you start spending money on channel marketing.
A relevant and motivating brand architecture plays a vital role in managing
perceptions of your business and ensuring consistency across all
communications – both internal and external.
Every time you communicate with customers, suppliers, employees, investors
and journalists, it’s essential to reinforce a consistent, positive and
differentiated perception of your brand. This consistency breeds efficiency,
and this efficiency builds a more cohesive, believable perception of your
brand’s attributes.
Harry Lang - Brand Q&A
TheBrandBook2021

12.
3. Which brand do you think just gets it and delivers their brand
every time?
Coming from the online gaming world, it’s hard for me to look
beyond Paddy Power. In brand terms, they’re the dream client – an
astute and respected part of the Flutter empire that’s a serious
financial and commercial organisation from a business perspective
and the opposite as a brand. Its positioning as ‘your witty Oirish
mate down the pub who doesn’t give a shit’ gives it tremendous
scope and they’ve historically stretched that scope to the Nth
degree.
Paddy has the financial clout to come up with a reactive idea on a
Monday, execute it with high production values in a matter of days
and launch with a decent seeding budget at the weekend. Sailing
close to the bone is a prerequisite of their positioning so they
overstep the mark once in a while (‘The Last Supper’ OOH
campaign being a memorable but fantastic example) but they
usually know how to read the room, so get it right more than they
get it wrong. Even their advertising F-ups pay dividends – with
every banned campaign bagging a bunch of PR in the press
thanks to the slothful attempts of the ASA to take them off air….
Paddy Power is the only online gaming brand for whom organic social
is a mainstream acquisition channel with a reach in the millions. A
team of genuinely funny writers pump out regular, highly sharable
content which simply can’t be replicated by the competition –
hundreds of identikit sports betting brands have neither the
imagination nor the brand capacity to be funny. It’s the perfect
example of a brand creating an impenetrable fort through its
positioning from where it can watch its rivals fighting toothlessly over
scraps outside the battlements.
Harry Lang - Brand Q&A
TheBrandBook2021

13.
4. What is the best piece of (brand) marketing you have seen over the last
twelve months?
As more than six of the past twelve months have been spent in Covid-
induced lockdown, I’m going to pick a reactive campaign from a brand that
rarely fails to impress. BrewDog’s tie up with ALDI was initiated by the
supermarket’s efforts to ‘borrow’ some equity from the brewer’s well-liked
Punk IPA beer. BrewDog’s founder and CEO James Watt Tweeted his intent
to produce a complementary Yaldi (latterly Aldi) IPA and, with social media
enjoying the light hearted counter rucking, soon enough the beer was in
production and on sale in ALDI supermarkets nationwide with a percentage
of profits going towards the BrewDog sustainable forest initiative. While Watt
has previous form in this kind of punkish innovation you have to give credit
to ALDI’s social team (and their bosses who empower them to think on their
feet). This was a good news story, start to finish, initiated through social
media and ending up with a new beer and a few more CO2-gobbling trees.
It’s lovely, it’s imaginative, and it’s wonderful that in an age of data defined
marketing, a product can go from conversation to production to distribution
just because it sounds like a good idea.
Both ALDI and BrewDog came out of the exchange looking like heroes and
the costs involved were marginal. Good ideas, on-brand and well executed
with a bit of blind faith and smattering of bravery – a brilliant, if accidental,
campaign.
5. Brand Marketing is going to get harder with more brands
fighting for our hard-earned money for the much-desired
short-term results, what are two brand tactics that will get the
best cut through?
Despite protestations to the contrary, TV and VOD remain
hugely significant in building brand awareness and equity so
despite the sometimes prohibitive cost, if you need to create a
fan base then these are definitely channels that should be near
the top of your shopping list.
Harry Lang - Brand Q&A
TheBrandBook2021

14.
6. What is the best piece of advice you would give to struggling brand
managers getting cut through currently?
Be Braver. Even the most unassuming brands have scope to be more
interesting, more engaging and more relatable. Look at your architecture,
really question the areas that are generic (every set of brand guidelines
I’ve ever seen has this problem – words put in for the sake of it rather than
to progress the brand’s positioning, personality and tone of voice). Most
importantly, question the brand’s positioning in your direct response
media. Many (if not most) brands spend more on DR than they do on pure
brand marketing, however there’s no reason your DR campaigns can’t
better represent your brand values. Banners can be more engaging, call to
actions buttons can ping more brightly, landing pages can say things
better and more concisely, DRTV campaigns can amuse rather than just
sell, customer service teams can better represent the brand’s tone of
voice – customers can be entertained.
I’ve always maintained that a great marketing and brand strategy isn’t
about ballsy statements and single propositions (they look good in a
presentation but are frequently forgotten in the heat of battle) but more
about hundreds of micro optimisations – changing and improving
EVERYTHING. The brand is the sum of the cumulative parts, working
together seamlessly towards a common objective so it’s about working
longer and harder to implement these nuggets of change.
7. What are the three actions for brands looking to gain cut-through right
now?
Read the Room – brand purpose is trending but coming across as lip service is
a constant risk. If your brand genuinely has something to add to society then
frame your objectives, position them at the heart of your strategy, invest in that
area, empower all team members to believe in what they’re doing and ensure
everyone collaborates to reach your shared goals. Only then will your purpose
feel genuine and generate warm fuzzy feelings among current and future
customers. Get it wrong and you’ll look like you’re virtue signalling, trying to
piggyback on a cause to gain societal brownie points, which isn’t a good look...
Marketing as an opportunity, not a cost centre. In tough times, such as
recessions, brands that invest in marketing tend to win in the long term, and
yet the majority of businesses knee jerk towards budget cuts and team
trimming. These short termers will find the cold of economic winter lasts far, far
longer.
Be Different – look at any sector and you’ll see one enduring consistency –
everything looks the same. Your job as a marketer is to elevate your brand
above all others and give customers the best reasons to invest their hard-
earned cash in you, not the other folks. As Bob Hoffman so succinctly stated in
his ‘8 Principles of Brand Marketing’:- “The most fundamental objective of
brand marketing is to achieve fame. Fame is an unequalled business
advantage”.
Harry Lang - Brand Q&A
TheBrandBook2021

15.
TheBrandBook2021
SOPHIE GREIG
HEAD OF BRAND - JUSTGIVING
Sophie is Head of Brand at JustGiving, the most loved fundraising website - helping people raise
money for the charities and people they care about.
With a background in social media, content and product marketing, she’s passionate about taking
a creative and user-focused approach to shaping brand strategy
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophie-greig-2ab513102/
Sophie Greig

16.
1. What does Brand mean to you?
Brands are about feelings - and as we all know too
well, feelings are complicated. So, I think it’s easier
not to define what brand is, but rather what it isn’t.
My favourite definition is summed up by American
author and speaker, Marty Neumeier, guru of all
thing brand, design, innovation, and creativity, who
said “A brand is not a logo. A brand is not an
identity. A brand is not a product. A brand is a
person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or
organisation.”
A brand isn’t what you say it is. It’s what everyone
else says it is.
To me, it’s the promises you make and the trust you
earn by delivering on said promises. Both of which
are rooted in human emotion.
2. Why do you think Brand and Marketing is often
misaligned? Or are the two misunderstood?
The purpose of brand and marketing respectively are
often misunderstood. The truth is that whilst they’re
both travelling in the same direction with the same
mission of success, one (your marketing) is constantly
adapting to a changing world, whilst the other (your
brand) is staying the same - which is why it can
sometimes seem as though they’re not aligned.
I believe that the role of marketing is to grab a
customer’s attention, but the role of your brand is to
keep their attention and drive recognition and loyalty.
In essence, whilst your marketing strategies change,
like a moral compass your brand has to be consistent if
you want to build trust, remain relevant and beat your
competitors.
Sophie Greig - Brand Q&A
TheBrandBook2021

17.
3. Which brand do you think just gets it and delivers their
brand every time?
This one’s easy. Glossier has taken the beauty industry by
storm, tearing up the marketing playbook and building a
community of superfans with their authentic and down-to-
earth brand which is a huge hit amongst millennials.
Their idea was simple – connecting with everyday people to
develop beauty products that people actually want. Remaining
laser focused on their community and listening to what they’re
saying about skincare and make-up looks to identify gaps in
the market. In short, they ask – and then most importantly,
they deliver.
Just one of their incredibly smart moves was taking advantage
of micro-influencers, relying on existing customers promoting
Glossier products on their personal accounts in authentic
ways - with no #ad to be seen. Whether they’ve got 50 or 500
followers, their recommendations are more likely to be trusted
within their own social communities, so it’s a powerful and
cheap advertising win for Glossier.
Their content marketing is exemplary, by using genuine, authentic
language, every one of their social media posts feels as though
it’s come from a friend. No sales-y language in sight. They’ve got
their visual identity nailed too. In fact, a colleague recently
described the paint on her newly-decorated walls as ‘Glossier
pink’. Proof that the Glossier brand is easily recognisable, and
appeals to the Instagram obsessed generation who can be found
queuing down the street to get into their limited stores and pop-
ups to take snaps of the aesthetic. That’s right, UGC (user
generated content), free advertising and another win for Glossier.
Their new GlossiWEAR collection shows you just how well they’ve
cultivated their brand. If people are willing to part with their hard-
earned cash in order to walk around wearing a hoodie or tote bag
with your brand logo on it, you’ve made it. Put simply, Glossier
knows who they are, they know who they’re not and as such,
they’re in it for the long run.
Sophie Greig - Brand Q&A
TheBrandBook2021

18.
4. What is the best piece of (brand) marketing you
have seen over the last twelve months?
There’s been a tonne of clever brand marketing in the
last 12 months but my favourite are those brands that
have stayed consistent despite the ‘unprecedented’
changes to our everyday lives, which have left many
brands scrambling.
*Enter stage - Innocent smoothies*. The creative folks
in their marketing team must have a whole load of fun
conjuring up such genius over in Fruit Towers. Their
most recent ‘pre-lockdown’ campaign gave us all
some much-needed light relief, reminding us of a
simpler time - before the world went a bit nuts. It’s
fun, witty, cheeky and everything I love about
Innocent as a brand.
They’ve leveraged the power of human emotions to
get a commercial advantage as all good brands do.
“Remember this? This is called a conversation. It’s like a
Zoom call, but in 3D and you have to wear pants.”
They approach marketing in a human, relatable and
entirely accessible way, leaving you wondering how they
could possibly top their last campaign with the next.
Sophie Greig - Brand Q&A
TheBrandBook2021

19.
TheBrandBook2021
SIMON SWAN
HEAD ECOMMERCE
Simon has worked in marketing for over 15 years working for start-ups, public sector and
blue chip building out marketing strategies and building teams operating in FMCG,
publishing & telecommunications sectors
https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonjsw/
Simon Swan

20.
1. What does Brand mean to you?
To me brand is a set of consistent
principles that relate to or engage a
(specific) audience by answering their
needs/wants through a product or service
2. Why do you think Brand and Marketing is often
misaligned? Or are the two misunderstood?
Brand is built over time.
And by it’s very nature it needs to build trust, awareness
and consistently deliver over time to the audience it
engages with. In other words it’s built for the long term.
Where marketing becomes misaligned is when
marketing is viewed in separation of what the brand is all
about i.e. “marketing in silos”, not measured to the
direction of the brand, short term efficiency goals.
There will be a need to drive short term marketing
activity for the here and now but it needs to be balanced
with the long term too
Simon Swan - Brand Q&A
TheBrandBook2021

21.
3. Which brand do you think just gets it and
delivers their brand every time?
To not go with the more obvious but I’ve liked
John Deere. It’s a brand that has stood the test
of time since the 1800’s building a trusted brand
with an audience within agriculture providing
support to local farming communities through to
multi-nationals (all operating in the same
market).
I’m also a big fan of numatic international and
their Henry Hoover which has been around
1970. Devised with coming up with a simple
“friendly face” its a great example of a
distinctive asset that has stood the test of
time...all done through word of mouth
4. What is the best piece of (brand) marketing
you have seen over the last twelve months?
During Covid, I’ve loved the IKEA advertising, how
they’ve adapted their creative so quickly to align
much closer to what we’ve all been feeling under
their slogan:
“Conquer the great indoors”
Simon Swan - Brand Q&A
TheBrandBook2021

22.
5. Brand Marketing is going to get harder with
more brands fighting for our hard-earned
money for the much desired short term
results, what are two brand tactics that will get
the best cut through?
1) Don’t be afraid to invest in the brand
and 2) Diagnose on marketing spend and what
its achieving? The reaction for most businesses
will be the need to cut back on advertising and
promotions (and that’s understandable when it
comes to keeping the business afloat).
But now is the perfect time to diagnose and
assess what marketing channels you’re
currently investing in and which channels are
supporting the business (depending on the
business goals). Don’t be afraid to cut back on
channels that are not delivering but look to
invest and double down on the channels where
you see the opportunity
6. What is the best piece of advice you would
give to struggling brand managers getting cut
through currently?
Speak to your audience - a good thing to be doing
is finding the time to speak to your customers and
the general public to understand their own
thoughts on “cut through” i.e. the view from the
public on a more national/localised level as to what
they’d like to see. Working from home/away from
the office could be a great time to set up zoom
calls with customers (working with your customer
service dept!) and get permission to see if they
would be willing to chat through their opinions e.g.
what brands are standing out to them? What do
they do differently? Which channels do you
remember seeing the brand?
Simon Swan - Brand Q&A
TheBrandBook2021

23.
7. What are the three actions for
brands looking to gain cut-through
right now?
I recently listened to a great podcast
called Call to Action by Giles Edwards
where he interviews George
Tennenbaum, a copywriter and
creative director who summarised it
really nicely: You need to focus on
Impact, Communication, Persuasion if
you don’t vault the first, the other 2
don’t matter so again focus on what
impact you’re going to make and to do
that, you need to be getting out into
the field, speak with the public
understand what good advertising
means currently
Simon Swan - Brand Q&A
TheBrandBook2021

24.
JULIA RAST
GLOBAL SOLUTIONS & INNOVATION MANAGER
Julia Rast is a digital and programmatic strategist with a passion for developing advanced,
groundbreaking media solutions that elevate client business outcomes. She is leveraging the full
suite of Xaxis’ services to demonstrate the impact that programmatic has on media investment and
sales outcomes.
With her extensive experience she identi
fi
es, incubates and deploys innovative solutions globally.
As a manager on the Global Solutions and Innovation team at Xaxis, she uses her programmatic,
data and analytics background across a range of cutting-edge solutions including Audio &
Podcasts, Conversational Advertising, and In-Game Advertising.
She is curious by nature, an explorer at heart, with a passion for driving diversity and inclusion
across the business.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/julia-rast-14b22458/
TheBrandBook2021
Julia Rast

25.
1. What does Brand mean to you?
The meaning of brand goes beyond its physical
appearance or visual presence. A brand means
a set of experiences and associations an
individual has with a part of a company, a
product, a service or with its employees. A
brand evokes a type of feeling that drives desire
to stay connected and being associated with its
core values- and relates and identifies with
those virtues as being an element of the
individual itself.
If done right and connotation with the brand is
positive it feels as comfortable as wearing your
favorite piece of clothing. Adopting a brand as
part of your identity should give you comfort,
confidence, feeling of belonging and act as an
enhancement of who you are. The attachment
to the brand, pride and loyalty we feel for it
comes from a deep emotional connection that’s
been established over unanticipated time.
2. Why do you think Brand and Marketing is often
misaligned? Or are the two misunderstood?
Having a deeper connection with a brand means it
comes from personal experience. Marketers
haven’t always understood what drives emotional
motivation to purchase their brand. Without
synergy between what makes a sale and the effort
to extrapolate those sales, the output of marketing
often misses its purpose. It’s often the lack- and
expertise how to measure and capture these deep-
rooted principles and ideas individuals have about
the brand that causes interference on the
marketing- and brand relationship.
Therefore, it’s essential for marketers to have a
research- and analytics strategy to extract the
fundamental and intrinsic values brands evoke with
existing consumers. Subsequently that process
serves as an explorative journey to stock your
database with information about future prospects
that could enable you to identify unexplored
audiences you as a brand can interact with.
Julia Rast - Brand Q&A
TheBrandBook2021

26.
3. Which brand do you think just gets it and
delivers their brand every time?
Bit partial here, but I have to say Heineken
which has incredible marketers that understand
the history of the brand, its identity, their
audience and most importantly listens to society
to grow their brand.
The most profound example is likely Heineken’s
collaboration with the James Bond franchise. All
though they’ve had a working relationship for
over 10 years, never before did the character
drink an actual Heineken on screen. In 2012,
Daniel Craig who then portrayed Mr. Bond
swapped his loved vodka martini ‘shaken not
stirred’ for a casual green bottled beer. Despite
core fans slamming the product placement, it
helped positioning Heineken as a premium
drink. Everywhere you travel nowadays,
Heineken is on the menu and people drinking it
are seen as wealthy.
Remarkably, before this worldwide partnership,
Heineken was known for their local-and regional
adaption to the global commercials, adhering to the
local cultural values in each country. It’s
decentralized marketing efforts allowed them to gain
brand affinity- and loyalty.
By converting their glocal marketing efforts into
global strategies they adhered to the fast-changing
behavior of their consumers, who due to further
burgeoning of aviation and its expanding reach could
travel everywhere and became global citizens.
Concomitantly, Heineken now is really striking the
right chord with it’s commercial ‘Connections’. With
its simple message: 'It's not the best get-together, but
it's the best way to get together' they set the
example by using their media budgets to educate
society how to still have a social live but be socially
responsible to other individuals. They manage to
stay true to their brand, while also be emotionally
resonant for the end user.
Julia Rast - Brand Q&A
TheBrandBook2021

27.
4. What is the best piece of (brand) marketing
you have seen over the last twelve months?
Very recently US congresswoman Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez called her 9.1 million followers on
Twitter to join her playing the popular game
Among Us. The multiplayer video game is an
enormous hit among Twitch celebrities. Almost
700,000 people tuned in her livestream to
watch her in action. Before she actually started
playing, she urged her audience to vote in the
upcoming presidential election on November
3rd 2020.
On a monthly basis nearly 40 million people in
the U.S. flock to Twitch to consume content. Its
audience almost entirely consists out of Gen Z’s
watching Twitch celebrities in action. A
demographic not only politicians, but also
brands have a hard time connecting with, due to
their extensive use of ad blockers and
subscription eager behavior.
The appeal from the U.S. congresswoman
showcases how forward thinking enabled the
democratic party to work on building connections
and creating brand affinity with a hard to reach
audience. An audience that in last elections could
have made the difference and is therefore crucial to
have convinced to vote in Novembers election.
Julia Rast - Brand Q&A
TheBrandBook2021

28.
5. Brand Marketing is going to get harder with
more brands fighting for our hard-earned money
for the much desired short term results, what
are two brand tactics that will get the best cut
through?
A lot of marketers really want to make a difference
and cut through advertising clutter. One way to do
that is critically assess your omnichannel strategy
and make sure everything is integrated properly.
From a digital point of view, programmatic
advertising facilitates centralized buying, easy
access to premium inventory from multiple
sources, all connected through a demand-side
platform.
Having your marketing efforts integrated creates a
holistic view of campaign insights and the ability
to optimize fluidly across device and channel in
one central platform.
Executing campaigns programmatically has two
big advantages:
A. Its automation nature allows you to manage your
impression frequency and cross-cap between
channels, mitigating the audience overlap you
might face while executing on direct basis with
publishers. Additionally, it’s more cost-effective as
the automation process cuts out irrelevant
interfaces for you.
B. Programmatic advertising enables brands to have
better targeting precision. It gives the ability to
deliver brand messages at the right time, at the
right place and in the right context. This
empowers marketers to cut through advertising
clutter and reach their audiences effectively.
Julia Rast - Brand Q&A
TheBrandBook2021

29.
6. What is the best piece of advice you would
give to struggling brand managers getting cut
through currently?
Although it might be inevitable to cut marketing
budgets, it is pivotal for brands to keep
investing in their share of voice in an economic
slowdown. Losing your position in the mind of
consumers can impact short- and long-term
sales.
It is essential to apply audi alteram partem,
meaning consumers won’t lose their willingness
to buy products suddenly. They’ll only be more
sensitive to brand messages that are more
thoughtful to the situation they are in. Brands
that succeed in establishing an emotional
connection by providing supportive information
about how their brand can help deal in these
new situations will enjoy competitive advantage
over those who stick to their everyday brand
messaging.
But beyond everything, this new way of living and
coping with forces of nature are a learning curve for
everyone. Failure is part of success, because without
failure there is no recovery, no improvement and no
opportunity to optimize the situation and get better
at the things you do.
Julia Rast - Brand Q&A
TheBrandBook2021

30.
7. What are the three actions for brands looking to gain cut-
through right now?
It all comes back to creating an emotional connection between
consumer and brand. For marketers that means creating
strategies that grab people’s attention in a creative and
prominent way:
1) Rethink your marketing strategies and identify new ways how
to reach them. Many marketers have preconceived ideas about
running brand messages through gaming supply, because they
wrongfully think it’s not brand-safe, not measurable and not a
premium environment, with only young boys playing games in
their bedrooms. All of which is not true. Globally, there are 2.7
billion people gaming, two third of moms are gamers, while
mobile is surpassing tv consumption making it the preferred
source of entertainment and in-app advertisement is brand-safe
and 100% measurable. In other words, gaming is a great
marketing vehicle to connect emotionally with a large audience
that is exposed to your brand while they are having fun.
2) Understand what consumers moves to act. If there is one thing that’s
being missed the most, it’s the social aspects of life. As a brand you’re
there to add value to people’s experience. By facilitating a dialog
between consumer and brand you hit two birds in one stone.
Conversational ads are scalable rich media formats that allow a two-
way conversation between consumer- and brand. The user-generated
format will provide a personalized experience, where the brand can
produce tailored advice based on the input from the consumer.
Consumers interact with the brand based on their own terms, while
marketers will get to learn and gather data what drives consumers
motivation in order to provide added value.
3) Sound is an extremely effective strategy to influence consumers. It is
through sound that we can give meaning to what we see. It generates
an emotional response that can increase ad effectiveness at moments
where visual ads can’t reach consumers. Digital audio- and podcast
ads facilitate 100% share of voice between consumer and brand. All
though audio advertising is not new, many brands miss out on the
opportunity because they know to little about how this form of
advertising works. Digital audio ads are a unique opportunity for
brands to connect with their audience while they don’t have to
compete for their attention.
Julia Rast - Brand Q&A
TheBrandBook2021

31.
PIERRE DADD
MARKETING CONSULTANT
Pierre is an experienced brand and marketing director with over 20 years of experience working
for brands such as LEGO, Disney, Auto Trader, BBC, and Checkatrade. Passionate about building
purposeful brands with powerful stories, in 2018 Pierre founded DBMC Brand Consultants -
where he strives to build brands that mean more to both internal and external audiences.
His work was instrumental in transforming Auto Trader from a functional to emotive brand,
shedding its perception as an online car dealership to a modern and relevant digital brand that
continues to sit comfortably within the FTSE 100. His clients come from a number of sectors
including Ed-Tech, Ride-hailing, Food and Beverage, Entertainment, and Automotive.
TheBrandBook2021
https://www.linkedin.com/in/pierredadd/
Pierre Dadd

32.
1. What does Brand mean to you?
Brand is the emotional connection you have with your
audiences. It’s the image you project in their minds (both
internal and external). Brand is not about the functionality
of your product or service - but the emotion you create by
standing for something more. Steve Jobs (sorry to quote
Apple) said it best when he said (when re-launching Apple
in the ’80s) that Apple is about ‘more than just making
boxes’ and that Apple will never succeed if they go to
market and talk about ‘bits, feeds, and speeds’. The now
infamous ‘Think Different’ campaign was instrumental in
changing the way we think about brands. Building your
brand starts with defining a distinctive, emotive, authentic,
and future-facing positioning. Everything should then hang
off this.
The benefits of brand are well documented but it's worth
remembering that this emotional connection is so
important because statistics show that 90% of purchasing
decisions are based on emotion and that businesses with
a clear purpose over profit grow 6x that of their purely
profit-driven rivals.
There’s a channel of thought that ‘purpose’ is purely a fashion at
the moment - save the world, getting behind a movement i.e.
Black Lives Matter etc. Purpose isn’t about saving the world -
and brands that jump onto that bandwagon do themselves a
disservice by looking very inauthentic and doing damage to
their brand health. Think about all the brands that started
suddenly telling us that they were ‘here for us’ at the start of the
pandemic! For Lloyds bank and their ‘by your side’ campaign,
this was fine as this is how they have positioned themselves
long-term. For Vodafone and [insert any telecoms business], it
didn’t feel authentic.
For me, saving the world or getting behind a movement is and
should be an articulation of your purpose. SKY is a great
example of this. ‘Believe in Better’ started as a purpose to mean
believe in better programming, better quality service, and THEN
manifested itself into CSR programmes such as ‘pass on plastic’.
If it’s relevant to your purpose, then getting behind a movement
can be extremely beneficial and powerful. If it’s not, then it can
do more harm than good.
Purpose isn’t a gimmick, purpose is drawing a line in the sand,
it’s throwing down the gauntlet and stating ‘this is why we’re
here, this is who we are’.
Pierre Dadd - Brand Q&A
TheBrandBook2021

33.
2. Why do you think Brand and Marketing is
often misaligned? Or are the two
misunderstood?
I don’t think Brand and Marketing is misaligned, I
think Brand is often confused as marketing, or in
many cases, that Brand is design, a logo, a
campaign etc. Design, communications are
articulations of the brand (just as a CSR
programme is) - but brand is something that
everyone in the organisation needs to deliver
day in day out.
I think it’s interesting that Brand is seen as a
specialism within marketing when in reality I
think it could be led by anyone in the business
(within reason).
Brand marketing is itself a misnomer as every
piece of communications and audience touch-
point should in one way or another be an
articulation of the brand.
3. Which brand do you think just gets it and
delivers their brand every time?
I have previously mentioned SKY - and I always think
of them as a great example of delivering on-brand
with their ‘believe in better’ positioning. What I
believe it means;
TV - bringing you the best programming/content
Mobile - innovative products such as the data
‘rollover’
Betting - Betting Better, with innovative betting
products
CSR - pass on plastic
There are no doubt more examples. But you can see
their purpose come through in everything they do.
They don’t just say it, they strive to do it. I am also led
to believe that it is also an internal mantra for them.
It's consistent, aspirational, authentic, and emotive.
Pierre Dadd - Brand Q&A
TheBrandBook2021

34.
4. What is the best piece of (brand) marketing
you have seen over the last twelve months?
I love what KFC has been doing. They stay
relevant, humble, and play on their brand codes.
Who can forget the chicken shortage they had
when they had literally no stock - their ads that
came out with the ‘FCK’ headline.
Then, as we were in lockdown and all very
quickly tired of the ‘we’re there to support you’
mobile phone ads...they did something different.
As lockdown ended and the re-opened, they
played off their core audiences who had been
trying to make their own KFC...and failed...with a
new campaign titled ‘Were back. We’ll take it
from here.’
5. Brand Marketing is going to get harder with
more brands fighting for our hard-earned money
for the much desired short term results, what are
two brand tactics that will get the best cut through?
I think this is very dependent on the brand in
question. Long and short-term tactics are proven to
be somewhat symbiotic i.e. you can’t have one
without the other. You need to build brand
awareness and consideration for the long-term, but
you also need to drive immediate performance.
My advice would be to follow the 60:40 rule - 60% of
the budget on brand building, 40% on short-term
tactics. But always staying true to your purpose!
Pierre Dadd - Brand Q&A
TheBrandBook2021

35.
6. What is the best piece of advice you would give
to struggling brand managers getting cut through
currently?
My advice would be to go back to your purpose and
ensure this is robust and has support from senior
stakeholders from the top down. With this in place
your brand look, sound, and feel will flow more
naturally, and you will have a lens to guide your
decision-making.
From a creative perspective, it very much depends
on your objectives i.e. short-term direct response
advertising through to pure brand advertising.
Above all - be consistent and stay true to your brand
- but be very clear on your objectives otherwise you
will feel somewhat rudderless.
Pierre Dadd - Brand Q&A
TheBrandBook2021

36.
ANNA BROOK
BRAND MARKETING CONSULTANT
Anna Brook is an experienced startup brand builder. She has led brand marketing in-
house for companies including peer-to-peer parking app JustPark, online estate
agency Yopa, and pet food retailer Paws.com.
As a consultant, she now works hand-in-hand with startup teams to develop their
brand into their killer strategic advantage.
Her clients range from idea stage all the way up to global household names, like
Deliveroo.
TheBrandBook2021
https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-brook/
Anna Brook

37.
1. What does Brand mean to you?
I can’t be the first person to suggest that ‘brand’ needs a
rebrand. The default assumption tends to be that your brand is
akin to your logo. ‘Fluffy’. A nice to have.
Actually, brand is a core strategic tool. It’s who people think you
are. As brand people, it’s our job to define who we want to be as
a company, then help the business execute on this strategy.
As Dolly Parton said: “Find out who you are, then do it on
purpose”!
Done right, your brand should:
- Give you clarity, direction and inspiration to make good
business decisions, quickly.
- Speak precisely and consistently to your target customer,
attracting them and keeping them close.
- Help you spend efficiently on projects that nail your objectives
and marketing that performs.
- Unite and galvanise your team, making it easy to hire and keep
the right people.
2. Why do you think Brand and Marketing is often misaligned? Or
are the two misunderstood?
Brand and Marketing are often seen as synonymous. The risk here is
that the all-important Brand Strategy process gets skipped, and the
team launches straight into executing campaigns without having laid
the strategic foundations first.
Nailing your Brand Strategy means getting your marketing
fundamentals in order, so that you can control your brand as much as
possible. It supports your business strategy as a whole and flows into
everything - from your visual brand and tone of voice, to your
campaign executions, sales pitches and product roadmap.
Anna Brook - Brand Q&A
TheBrandBook2021

38.
3. Which brand do you think just gets it and delivers their
brand every time?
I’m seeing great brand work from Dutch chocolate makers,
Tony’s Chocolonely. They have a strong purpose: to end slavery
in the chocolate supply chain. And they deliver this message in a
quirky, characterful way. They’ve really grasped the idea that
your brand should exist everywhere - across every single
touchpoint, not just on your homepage and packaging.
So - their chocolate bars themselves are unevenly shaped to
make a point about inequality in the chocolate supply chain.
They take out full page ads that focus solely on their purpose.
And even their employment contract is the most incredibly on
brand, colourful, jargon-free thing you’ll ever see.
Having never heard of it a year ago, I now see Tony’s
everywhere, have a thorough understanding of what they’re
about thanks to how consistent and bold they are with their
brand via every touchpoint, and buy it regularly!
4. What is the best piece of (brand) marketing you have seen over
the last twelve months?
I’m a big fan of brand campaigns that you can see are based on deep
customer insight. They’re the campaigns that grab hold of their target
customer - and stay with them.
For me, Squarespace aced this when they told small businesses and
freelancers everywhere: "A website makes it real". It's such a powerful
idea - simple but multilayered, and undeniably true. Building your first
website does make your business “real” to the outside world but, even
more fundamentally, it “makes it real” for you. It's that big, tangible and
often scary moment when you put your offering into words and send it
out into the world. I thought about "making it real" recently as I
launched the first version of my consultancy business website, and I
built it with Squarespace.
Anna Brook - Brand Q&A
TheBrandBook2021

39.
5. Brand Marketing is going to get harder with more brands
fighting for our hard-earned money for the much desired short
term results, what are two brand tactics that will get the best
cut through?
As always, this depends massively on the individual brand, its
target customer, market context and available resource. But I do
think that, when times are tough, a channel like Referral
becomes all the more interesting.
If someone you trust sends you a recommendation, you know
they
1) Think you’ll like it, based on their personal knowledge of you
and
2) Rate it themselves - they wouldn’t risk their social standing
by recommending their friend something crap. These trust
factors and elements of personalisation become all the more
powerful in a tough, competitive climate.
6. What is the best piece of advice you would give to struggling
brand managers getting cut through currently?
If you’ve found that your operations have slowed because of disruption
in the wider world, could there be an opportunity to focus on revisiting
your strategy? I’ve noticed a few startups that are usually running a
thousand miles a minute using this unexpected downtime to get to
know their customer better, challenge long-held internal assumptions,
and generally focus on answering important strategic questions.
It’s so easy to assume that we know our audience intuitively (“they’re
just like me!”). Or to think our customers behave in rational, predictable
ways all the time. Reality is, people are messy and often contradictory.
Could you take the opportunity to interview your customers one-on-
one? Ask them open questions, give them permission to speak freely,
and listen closely to the language they use to talk about their
experiences.
This kind of in-depth, qualitative research is solid gold for anyone
looking to build a brand that’s relevant, resonant, and based on
insights - not assumptions.
Anna Brook - Brand Q&A
TheBrandBook2021

40.
DANNY DENHARD
FOUNDER - FOCUS
Danny has two decades of experience in the business world, working across all business
shapes and sizes, including tiny start ups, agency side, ran his own consultancy, went through
a successful IPO, working both sides of mergers and acquisitions and most recently working in
and for listed businesses.
Danny was responsible for Europe's largest Crowdfunding platform between 2016 and 2020.
Transacting over £220m from 7 million people across the world.
Danny was a key part of the leadership team that oversaw strategy, transacting £1.7b in four
years.
Danny has vast experience in Marketing and Growth leadership roles, including running multi
million pound budgets, maturing agencies and developing dedicated Product o
ff
ering, to
being on senior leadership teams.
Danny is known for his personal and operational approach to business and business
leadership, having been a leader across Product, Growth and Marketing Departments.
TheBrandBook2021
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dannydenhard/
Danny Denhard

41.
1. What does Brand mean to you?
Brand is the layer outside of business.
It is the extra layer that adds more than the product can, it
build affinity, connection, and guidance where the product
can struggle to.
Brand is the difference between buying a item to buying a
product to investing into a cognitive relationship.
Without that cognitive connection you are likely just
another product or item competing in an ultra competitive
space.
2. Why do you think Brand and Marketing is often misaligned?
Or are the two misunderstood?
Brand is typically seen a policing function, you can do this, you
can say that.
Marketing is typically the act of attracting as many customers to
the product suite as possible.
The two can be at odds and can misalign quickly, the brand
should be a coaching function and help Marketing have clear
messaging and clear identity for potential customers, users and
fans of the product.
Both functions can forget to internally market themselves and
the work they have undertaken and delivered.
Being aligned and formally agree the steps you are both are
going to take is essential for Brand and Marketing success.
Danny Denhard - Brand Q&A
TheBrandBook2021

42.
3. Which brand do you think just gets it and delivers
their brand every time?
There are many brands who get their space and delivers
brilliance, I would say most recently you cannot look to
much further than Adidas, particularly their recent
advertising in football.
Adidas’ Arsenal adverts and campaigns have really shown
they understand the connection with the fans, the love of
nostalgia and what fans missed, their second family.
Proving that you know the unspoken connection is what
large brands do that smaller brands can only dream of.
4. What is the best piece of (brand) marketing you have seen
over the last twelve months?
This would be between Apple and Adidas.
Apple’s ability to make even the most expensive products seem
game-changing via their advertising, their marketing and to
leverage FOMO is someone very few other brands get close to,
especially in the luxury space with a challenging 2020.
Apple’s addiction to quality and highest quality of advertising is
part of the fandom around Apple and the deepest level of
connection to a brand.
Adidas’ most recent advertising campaign with Arsenal turned
an advert into what felt like a movie.
The connection that Adidas built instantly is exactly what brand
and brand marketing has to be.
Danny Denhard - Brand Q&A
TheBrandBook2021

43.
5. Brand Marketing is going to get harder with more
brands fighting for our hard-earned money for the much
desired short term results, what are two brand tactics
that will get the best cut through?
Building a deeper connection with existing customers and
enabling the customer to truly know the connection and
a
ffi
nity to you as the brand.
Many brands will struggle to prioritise in this way however,
brands will have to known for very speci
fi
c items or
products alongside going that extra mile.
Being able to turn a customer into a fan is powerful,
turning a fan into an advocate is something only a few
brands truly can do, if you can control the brain and the
heart of your customers they will invest into your brand
time and time again.
6. What is the best piece of advice you would give to
struggling brand managers getting cut through currently?
Find your foundation, rediscover your voice, test and iterate,
being more connected with your fellow team members, Product
team and tech team will enable you to increase internal trust
and cut through and you can build out a deeper connection with
your potential customers.
Spend dedicated time with the retention marketers and Growth
team this will enable you to help coach and build out your brand
messaging into your existing audience and an ability to appear
in front of audiences who are not quite sure on the product but
will be tipped over the edge by the brand and that emotional
connection where possible.
Show the deeper connection, show the times you are added
onto a shopping list and how you have to be the brand on that
shopping list vs others.
Danny Denhard - Brand Q&A
TheBrandBook2021

44.
7. What are the three actions for brands looking to gain
cut-through right now?
The
fi
rst is to build deeper connections with existing
customers, build on the products they have brought into
and build out layers of trust, connection and a
ffi
nity into
the brand, tell more stories, connect their story with other
customer stories and why it is important.
The second is to build a hero moment for the customer,
once the customer is built as the hero, they will know it is
their product, their brand.
Lastly bring happiness, at any time humans look for hope,
a hero and happiness, if you want to gain cut-through
appeal to our human cravings and create connections to
hope, happiness or a hero.
Danny Denhard - Brand Q&A
TheBrandBook2021

45.
45
TheBrandBook2021
The Important Questions For You To
Answer In 2021

46.
The Questions For You To Answer
Do you have Brand respect?
Is your brand respected so much so they will buy you again based on
your brand and trust you have build?
TheBrandBook2021
Do you own the cognitive brand space?
Do you own the relevant brand space for your customers?
If you had a product or advertising mistake will customers stay with
you or will they leave you?

47.
The Questions For You To Answer
Does your brand deserve loyalty?
Does the brand beat the product expectation and di
ff
erentiate you vs
your numerous competitors?
TheBrandBook2021
Are you a brand that other brands will want to partner with and work
with in 2021 and beyond?
Growth is always at the forefront of every businesses eyes, is your
brand an unfair advantage and can you leverage brand over product
marketing?

48.
The Questions For You To Answer
Do you regularly make it onto customers lists?
Will you be listed on the next shop? Next Birthday Present list? Next
payday?
TheBrandBook2021
Is your brand part of your
fl
ywheel?
Does your brand add more traction to your Marketing or Growth
fl
ywheel?
Is your brand high or low frequency?
Are you being thought about and used regularly enough to be
considered?
Are you going to be a brand that is as relevant in a Hybrid o
ffi
ce as
you were in an o
ffi
ce
fi
rst environment?

49.
49
TheBrandBook2021
The Brand Book 2021 Recap

50.
• Give your product meaning, be more than a set of products.
• Give your brand and internal teams freedom don't be overly
restrictive.
• Connect with your customers, go deeper than the transaction, be
human.
• Build a message and a theme you stand for, to connect the dots
through your brand and product lines.
• Be trustworthy, be familiar, make global feel local.
• Bring happiness.
• Offer a chance to celebrate or look back
• Know what is short term and what is long term. Plan for short, medium
and long to build layers of connections.
• Create great experiences and enable technology to empower your
customers
• Create the hero.
• Enable Marketing and Brand to be connected and within the same
department. Align the goals.
• Offer more be memorable, be different, stand out, be brave and bold.
• Offer hope
TheBrandBook2021
The Brand Book 2021 Recap

51.
51
TheBrandBook2021
Thanks for reading.
Danny Denhard // danny@dannydenhard.com // @dannydenhard
December 2020.