Moving brands beyond the Friend Zone: Doug Zarkin on building emotional customer connections

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Description

In this episode of The Curiosity Current, hosts Stephanie Vance and Matt Mahan welcome Doug Zarkin, Chief Brand Officer at Modern Performance and Recovery Brands and author of "Moving Your Brand Out of the Friend Zone.

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Doug Zarkin is the Chief Brand Officer at Modern Performance and Recovery Brands, where he specializes in creating meaningful consumer connections and revitalizing iconic brands. With an impressive career spanning leadership roles at Pearle Vision, Victoria's Secret Pink, and Avon, Doug has established himself as a visionary in brand transformation and customer engagement. He is the author of "Moving Your Brand Out of the Friend Zone," a groundbreaking book that explores how brands can transcend surface-level relationships to build lasting emotional connections with customers. In this episode, Doug shares invaluable insights on creating brand love stories, the "thinking human" approach to marketing, and the delicate balance between data-driven decisions and human intuition. His expertise in transforming brand-consumer relationships and establishing meaningful customer connections makes this conversation essential for marketers, researchers, and brand strategists looking to enhance their emotional engagement strategies in today's digital-first marketplace.

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Transcript

Doug Zarkin:

I believe that whether you are making $50, $500, $5 million or $5 billion a year, everybody is looking for value from the brands that they trust. Value equals experience as your numerator divided by price as your denominator. Premium brands can charge a premium price if they deliver an amazing experience. And so as long as your delta between your numerator and your denominator is significant, you can charge whatever you want.

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Stephanie Vance:

Hello, fellow insight seekers. Welcome to The Curiosity Current, a podcast that's all about navigating the exciting world of market research. I'm Stephanie Vance.

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Matt Mahan:

And I'm Matt Mahan. Join us as we explore the ever-shifting landscape of consumer behavior and what it means for brands like yours.

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Stephanie:

Each episode will get swept up in the trends and challenges facing researchers today, riding the current of curiosity towards new discoveries and deeper understanding.

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Matt:

Along the way, we'll tap into the brains of industry leaders, decode real-world data, and explore the tech that's shaping the future of research.

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Stephanie:

So whether you're a seasoned pro or just getting your feet wet, we're excited to have you on board.

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Matt:

So with that, let's jump right in.

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Stephanie:

Today, we're thrilled to welcome Doug Zarkin, a visionary in the world of branding and consumer engagement. Doug is the chief brand officer at Modern Performance + Recovery brands, where he's redefining how brands connect with their audiences. With a storied career that includes transformative leadership roles at Pearle Vision, Victoria's Secret PINK, and Avon, Doug has a proven track record of revitalizing iconic brands and fostering emotional connections that drive loyalty and growth.

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Matt:

Doug is also the author of Moving Your Brand Out Of The Friend Zone, a groundbreaking book that challenges brands to go beyond surface-level engagement and build true, lasting emotional connections with their customers. Today, we'll explore Doug's insights on branding, his innovative thinking human approach, and how technology intersects with the art of creating brand love. Whether you're a seasoned marketer or just curious about the future of consumer Insights, this episode is packed with inspiration. Doug, welcome.

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Doug:

What's up, guys? How you doing?

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Matt:

Doing well.

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Stephanie:

Great, thanks.

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Doug:

I'm sure you confused your audience. Guy worked at Avon, Victoria's Secret, PINK. Yes, I can fit a bra, and I was an Avon lady. So, that should get people to click in right away.

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Stephanie:

For sure. So jumping right in, Doug, your book, Moving Your Brand Out Of The Friend Zone, is all about creating meaningful and lasting emotional connections with customers. Before we drive into the strategies and frameworks that you outlined, first, I just want to say, I read your book this weekend and I loved it. And for me, it was particularly illuminating because while I work cross-functionally with marketers and marketers are often my clients, I do not have a lot of firsthand knowledge of brand marketing, especially. And I really enjoyed the way that you describe both brands as like the people and the culture of the company, almost like a living organism, and the importance of the connection between brand truth and human truth to create brand love. So all of that said, can you tell us, like, what inspired you to write this book?

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Doug:

You're very generous with your words. Thank you. It came out of a real passion that I've had throughout my career to be in a position of leadership. Yes, I've always wanted to be a leader because I love the idea of unlocking that superhero inside of everybody. You know, I think part of your job in the C-suite is to help everyone realize that they can be a marketing superhero. They just have to have the courage to put on the cape, as they say. And I've just enjoyed it so much that when I'm in front of franchisees or in front of leadership team or in front of my own team, I find and have found that I explain things a certain way, you know, consistently consistent, predictable, some would even say. And I got some really good feedback from some colleagues and some of our franchisees when I was at Pearle Vision. And they said, you know, you always take the complexity and make it simple. You should write a book. And I was like, oh, no, I can't spell at all. So if you read the book and found typos, don't tell me. I'm also a five-time assault and battery victim of autocorrect, which is something that's still keeping me up at night that I wrote an entire chapter. And the autocorrect said, do it when I meant to say don't do it. But I decided that the best way I could make a contribution to help people kind of unleash their own potential was to put these thoughts into a book. And I talk about it as a guide because it is not a roadmap. It is not an instruction manual. A guide is just that. You are an active participant on the journey. And I like to say about marketing and about building a brand, there is no right way. There is no wrong way. There's just a way. So hopefully I've given you some anchor points throughout the book to think about, about how you build your personal brand, but also the brand that you're entrusted with.

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Stephanie:

Yeah, for sure. I love that. In your book, you emphasize the need for brands to create deep emotional connections with their customers. It's a theme that comes up over and over again. Can you unpack what it means for a brand to truly transcend the friend zone, especially in today's fast-paced digital first market?

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Doug:

Being friends with your customer is okay, but it's not great. And the reason why I say that is because being friends is different than being best friends. I'm married 21 years. My wife is my best friend. There are things that I say to her that I don't say to anybody. And that level of intimacy in the world of business allows you as a leader to not worry that your customer is going to run to the next hot internet brand or that they're not going to come back or that you don't need to entice them with discounts and deals to get them to come back. It gives you a sense of commitment. I think in today's fast-paced digital world, as we talk about it, we spend so much time measuring things that we've lost the nuance of just because you can measure it doesn't mean it's meaningful. And so the idea of moving out of the friend zone is really an appreciation for the fact that it's not about more. It's about better. More isn't better. Better is better. And the philosophy of the book is really rooted in understanding how consumers make decisions and choices and what you can do as a marketer to affect those in a digital world, in a linear world, in the world that we're living in, and honestly, in the world that we're going to.

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Stephanie:

Yeah, I feel like I'm hogging the questions here, but I have one more little follow-up in this area, which is, of course, around everyone's favorite topic, AI. But I guess I wondered, how do you think this dynamic is evolving with the rise of AI-driven personalization? And I had a couple of thoughts when I read your book. I was like, oh, well, you know, I mean, it does allow us to have more personal, like it puts personalized communication right at your fingertips. But there is that danger then of just everything being run by AI chatbots. And how do you balance thinking about that?

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Doug:

So I love AI. I use AI in a very measured, specific way, mainly to help me curate how I communicate in email. I look at my career and I can think of moments where I've gotten an email and I've sent back a fiery email and then like, I'll look at it a week later. I'm like, oh my God, can't believe you said that. AI allows me to take the tenor and tone and bring it to a level that allows for a more productive conversation. AI can be a marketer's best friend, but AI, much like data, is only as good as the inputs. You know, I like to say that data doesn't make decisions for marketers. Marketers make decisions using data because data is honestly only as good as the questions that you ask. AI is only as good as the inputs that you put in. So your voice is your voice. AI may help you refine your voice, but it shouldn't create for you your thinking, much like data shouldn't tell you what to do. So I think it's a tool in the box. You can't ignore it, embrace it. It's kept me out of HR jail, which is pretty darn good. And if I was gonna write a second book, I would have, here's the email that I wrote, and then I put it in AI, and here's what I sent. And I think it'd be pretty funny.

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Matt:

I love that. I think this is probably a related topic from your book. I wanted to carve out a little space to talk about it, but your book has a concept in here that you refer to as thinking human, a thinking human approach to branding. In an industry like marketing where data, automation, like AI, dominate decision-making, a lot of organizations, how can brands strike that balance between human intuition, if I'm interpreting thinking human correctly, and data-driven insights to really build these connections?

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Doug:

So let's go back to what the premise of thinking human is. Thinking human is based in this very simple concept. Imagine if every customer that walked in your door was the only customer that walked in your door. And that door could be virtual, it could be brick and mortar, etc. Why would you treat them? Why would you talk to them? Why would you deal with their problems? There are very few brands that live in today's world that really think human, that really treat every guest, every customer as if they were your only one. And so for me, that philosophy. Transcends whatever medium you're in. It is a rooted concept that guides your development of your customer service brochure, your customer experience, even how you talk to people in your advertising. If you're thinking that every person who watches your commercial might be the only customer that walked in your door, what would you really want to say to them? What would be that 30-second message? It's very powerful.

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Matt:

Very cool. Kind of on the flip side, are there specific data points or consumer behaviors that tend to over-rely on the data at the expense of fostering that kind of emotional?

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Doug:

Oh, yeah. I mean, geez, customer service. Are we allowed to curse on this podcast? Holy s***. Is customer service one of those that does not think human? How many times have you had to scream into your phone, representative, or you get somebody human on the phone, and the first thing they say to you is, and you can almost hear the pages in the manual flipping, I'm really sorry that you're upset. Don't be sorry I'm upset. Be sorry you upset me. Products have a unique ability to fail 20 to 30 days after their warranty. If I spend $400 on a pair of wireless headphones, I'm not gonna mention the brand, but you can figure it out, and one of those headphones stops working. I didn't drop it in water. I didn't step on it, just stopped working, and I bring it into your store, and I talk to your smart person who works in the store, and I say, this wireless headphone that I bought a year ago isn't working, and they say, well, you actually bought it 13 months ago. What we can do is we can give you a $50 credit towards a new pair. Oh, I want you to fix it, or give me a new one, because it was a couple hundred dollars. This isn't, you know, a stick of bubble gum. I think there are so many brands that just err on the side of stupid, because they could turn an advocate into an adversary, and I talk about one of the examples in the book with Restoration Hardware, which, I mean, it's a true story, but for those of you that haven't bought the book, I encourage you to, but in the book, you'll hear the story about how I bought a, I was remodeling my house, and I bought a ceiling fan for my bedroom. One night, my wife and I are downstairs, and all of a sudden, we hear this crash, and I go upstairs, and the ceiling fan had dislodged from the housing and crashed on the floor and broke. Fortunately, nobody got hurt. I called Restoration Hardware the next day, and I said, listen, do you guys still carry this phone, this fan? And they said, yes, we do. I said, unfortunately, I need to buy another one. And I used the word unfortunately, just because I didn't really want to spend the money. And the customer service person said, Doug, why unfortunate? You didn't like the fan? And I told the person the story, and she goes, you're not buying this fan. Again, I'm giving it to you. She's like, it shouldn't have happened. And I'm so glad that nobody was hurt. I said, but it's out of warranty. She goes, I don't care. She said, I'm sending you a new one. I said, do you want me to send you pictures? She goes, no, I trust you. You've been a loyal customer with us. I saw that when you remodeled your house, you bought X number, $1,000 worth of stuff. We want to make this right. First place I go to buy anything is Restoration Hardware. There are very few brands that operate from that mentality. And that was not about the free fan. That was about the empathy, okay? And that doesn't cost money. And I will tell you, that $1,000 fan, let's call it, they've been paid back 10x by the amount of stuff I bought from them. And the way I talk about it. So, you know, all the free advertising that I've given them because it was a great story. And there are plenty of stories that I have in my experience, and I'm sure you guys do as well, where the opposites happen, where they're penny wise and pound foolish.

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Stephanie:

For sure. And, you know, I think about that a lot. And at AYTM, our company, I sort of had our client supporting verticals. And we talk a lot about how issues that arise for clients are their opportunities, right? It just matters how you treat it. So yeah, you can show up and just be in triage mode, or you can show up and say, how can I turn this moment that's negative right now into a real positive for this person? And yeah, it's a big part of our culture here. And that really resonated with me.

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Doug:

Reputation commerce is a really big deal. And if you don't understand that what people say about you may not be reality, but it's the actuality, you can just be woefully ignorant and not realize why your business is down. You could be doing great work, but treat customers terribly and people don't come to you and you're like, well, is my product bad? No, your service is bad. The how is bad. The what is great. The how is bad.

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Stephanie:

Doug, your book talks about creating brand love stories. With so much emphasis on customer advocacy and loyalty, what role do storytelling and narrative play in moving brands from the friend zone to the forefront of consumers' minds?

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Doug:

Huge. Consumers make emotional decisions before they make rational choices. And it is imperative, imperative that you can break through the clutter and connect with somebody on an emotional level. One of the tools that I use a lot is a company called System1 that does testing, really gauging the emotional dynamism of your ad. And they assign a star score to it. They do about 10,000 ads a year. And it helps you really understand not just your message, but your resonance. And I think it's so important, especially in today's marketplace, that if you have 30 seconds with a consumer, that unless you are the cure for something, you have to really have the humility to recognize that you have to tell a story. Your story is your brand. Your brand is a set of emotions, attributes, feelings, and perceptions. How do you convey that? I love storytelling.

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Stephanie:

Yeah, I do too. I do wonder, how do you reconcile this storytelling and building that story and your story, which kind of becomes your brand to some extent, with the need for brands to remain agile and adapt their messaging in response to, especially like market conditions. And it reminds me, I mean, this question also reminds me of this great quote that you have in your book from Esther Perel, where you talk about that relationships just need to be fostered over time. They have to be cared for and consistently recalibrated.

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Doug:

The whole premise of the friend zone is really rooted in whether you're married or single, you've all undoubtedly encountered a moment where you had feelings that were stronger for somebody than they had for you. And you went in for that moment of truth, whether that was the kiss or the hug or the confession, and they kind of said, whoa, wait a minute, I don't feel the same way about you that you feel about me. Let's just be friends. And that was kind of how I came up with the title. And I think it's indicative of what we as marketers have to appreciate, which is in today's landscape, there are way too many choices and options to not be authentic, to not be transparent. And if you don't appreciate the fact that a consumer that gives you their trust is giving you more than just their money. And so if you could look at that higher calling, not as an obstacle, but an opportunity, again, it's going to shape everything that you're doing.

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Matt:

Another thing you talk about in the book is brands getting stuck in this space of familiarity without excitement. That's kind of one of the indicators that you're headed towards the friend zone. How can brands identify when they're on the slope, when they're headed in that direction?

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Doug:

Oh, it's easy. It's so easy. Big misses in sales forecasts. Lifetime value of your customer starts to diminish. Retention rates start to decline. Basically, someone's upgraded. They're going for a bigger, better deal. It's kind of like, how do you know a relationship in your personal life is kind of on the end? Well, intimacy goes away. Your desire to spend time with them isn't great. All of a sudden, you start to notice they have an annoying laugh. All of those things in the world of business are available to us because we have analytics. The question is, are you smart enough to know what those analytics are, right? Just because it can be measured doesn't mean it's meaningful. And I think part of the skill of a C-suite executive is in understanding what should be measured and what is meaningful. And I will tell you, I spent a lot of my time in my job fighting about what we should be measuring and what is meaningful. Because you can measure almost anything. But what really is going to determine where your brand stands in the mind of the consumer?

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Stephanie:

You mentioned that, like, I think you said you shouldn't have more than like five KPIs.

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Doug:

Five KPIs. If you think about it, and I do this not just in business, but I try to do it also in the development and the way that I work with my team and kind of grow my team members. If you're spending less than 20% of your time on anything, you're not going to make progress. So it's really imperative to get narrow and deep, focus on those key things. That doesn't mean that other things aren't important, but that just means that they're just not as important.

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Matt:

So you mentioned the KPIs. You mentioned some ad testing. When you're looking at, you know, the tools and techniques you have at your disposal to transform your brand into something that is, like you say, meaningful, not just memorable, what is out there that a marketer can use? Like, are there any go-to tools or techniques that you can point them to, you know, ways that they can help make that transition?

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Doug:

So I think every brand should have a brand health tracker, which gauges the foundation of where you stand in the mind of the consumer. Are you a brand that has really good awareness, but not good educated brand awareness? Are you a brand that is not trusted? And you can measure that through your reputation score. You can measure that by your engagement on your Facebook posts. You've got to get a sense of where you are. Like you really just have to get a sense of where the heck you are in the ecosystem to then figure out what you need to do. There's a lot of ways to get real-time feedback. The best way to get real-time feedback, get out of the boardroom, go work in your store. If you're an e-commerce brand, get out of the boardroom and go work in customer service. You want to get a sense of what you really stand for? Go work in customer service. You will hear the good, the bad, and the ugly. And you'll be able to very quickly assess whether something is broken or something is in need of being tweaked or if something is working.

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Matt:

I love that. There's something to the context, the power of situational context and firsthand observation that just data and stories and information on paper just can't recreate, right? Absolutely. Moving Your brand Out of the friend zone challenges marketers to reimagine their brand's value equation. Looking ahead, what do you think the next frontier is for brands striving to create this kind of love and loyalty in a world where, as we all know, attention spans are just shorter than ever?

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Doug:

Well, I don't want to gloss over the fact that that is my theory of relativity, Pythagorean Theorem. The brand value equation, which I believe that whether you are making $50, $500, $5 million, or $5 billion a year, everybody is looking for value from the brands that they trust. Value equals experience as your numerator divided by price as your denominator. Premium brands can charge a premium price if they deliver an amazing experience. And so as long as your delta between your numerator and your denominator is significant, you can charge whatever you want. Where brands end up in the friend zone or end up in brand hate is when that relationship starts to flip. Where you're charging a heck of a lot, but you're delivering a terrible experience, okay? So to me, it's focusing on the fundamentals. Part of what I've seen happen in the world of marketing is a lot of distractions. There is no panacea. There is no one thing that you should be doing. What you need to be doing is caring for your brand. What you need to be doing is being intellectually honest with yourself and understand where are you? Where is your brand in the mind of the consumer? Sales can be deceiving. You can be profitable and not be proficient. So part of answering your question really starts with understanding, are you profitable and proficient? Are you profitable and not proficient? Are you proficient and not profitable? Whatever that answer is, it then will guide you to what the next steps could be. So it's not a one-size-fits-all answer, but again, as what I try to talk about in the book is how to really start that diagnostic so that you can inevitably come up with what is the right thing to do for your business.

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Matt:

So on Curiosity Current, we always like to talk about trends. We're a market research podcast. Love to stay up to date on just what's going on at not just a micro level, but a macro level as well. When you look at things in your space as a marketing leader, thinking about all the work you've done with the book, are there any other emerging trends, whether in consumer behavior, technology, broad cultural shifts that are particularly exciting to you? Or particularly concerning to you right now?

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Doug:

Concerning is the fact that we are moving way too slow when it comes to the evolution of linear to streaming TV. And I say that because linear local television is incredibly powerful, but linear TV is really challenging because it gives you app. There's nobody can tell you if I run a television commercial, does it sell product unless it has a QR code or really baked in call to action, right? Like direct response television, yes, can tell you if it's moving the needle. But you run a 30 second ad on Jeopardy!. Is it really selling product? You kind of don't know unless you really look at the lift that comes from the website. If you have a call to action. And again, even that's sketchy. What I love about streaming is the measurability. The fact that I know that somebody had to watch my ad. I know where they watched it, meaning the zip code. I know the device, I know the time of day, and I know the network. So I think that's something that's concerning. Can I tell you something that's really exciting? I love the fact that people are starting to get annoyed with too many emails. And I hate it as a marketer, love it as a consumer, because I can't even begin to tell you how many really silly, ridiculous emails I get a day. And I'm not talking about business emails where somebody's soliciting me for a relationship. I'm just talking about like selling me stuff and how my name gets out there, how my email address gets out there. It's offensive. I spend more time cleaning out my spam box than I probably should. So I'm kind of glad that email is on its kind of way back to level set because everybody jumped to it. I also kind of like the fact that people are getting back into the direct mail game. Snail mail is pretty cool. I like going to the mailbox. That's why Amazon Prime is so cool. Everybody loves getting something dropped off at their door.

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Stephanie:

It's true, yeah.

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Matt:

That's really interesting points.

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Stephanie:

All right, Doug, we really appreciate this conversation today. It's been really enlightening. And like I said, I think your book, it had a lot to offer me in particular. It was really easy to connect with so much of what you were saying. And I'm excited to apply some of that, even in my own role in the company.

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Doug:

I hope you will leave a review and I hope you will encourage your followers to go to Amazon. You can get it in paperback or Kindle. And if you like it, let me know. And if you find a typo, please don't tell me.

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Stephanie:

I will never tell you. There were no typos. So what would I even say? To wrap things up, though, what is one piece of advice that you would share with future leaders in marketing, insights, these related fields who are looking to thrive in this ever changing field?

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Doug:

But marketing is about positioning, which is about the art of sacrifice. You know, I use the buffet analogy. Nobody feels good after eating at a buffet because the human body isn't designed to eat pizza and chicken and fish and lobster and apple pie and ice cream. It's just not. Your marketing plan is not a buffet. So marketing is about positioning, which is about the art of sacrifice. And the more you can appreciate that more isn't better, better is better. I think the better you're going to do.

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Stephanie:

You have to curate the plate.

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Doug:

Correct. Curate the plate.

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Stephanie:

Well, thank you again for your time. It's been an absolute pleasure.

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Doug:

You guys are great. Good luck with everything.