Branding Breakthroughs – Mario Natarelli, Managing Partner at MBLM – Awakening Your Company’s Brand for the 21st Century

Richard Jacobs: Hello, this is Richard Jacobs with the Future Tech podcast. My guest today is Mario Natarelli managing partner at MBLM, which is spelled MBLM. The website is Mblm.com and Mario is a trusted advisor to executives and he looks to help them leverage their brands. So we’re going to get into that. So Mario, thanks for coming. How are you doing?

Mario Natarelli: I’m doing well. Thanks for having me.

Richard Jacobs: Yeah, I hear tons of people talk about brand and branding, but know the definition of a brand seems to be a little bit elusive. So what is a brand to you?

Mario Natarelli: Well I guess the reason it’s so confusing is it’s being used probably in a lot of inappropriate ways and certainly being overused brands. I guess the technical definition is the sum total of everything you feel or associate with a product or service. At least that’s what the textbook says. What we’ve learned, I think over the years is that pick a brand like a relationship. You build these bonds with these products and services and those bonds are nurtured over time. They can either grow or they can dilute they can even be severed if something goes dramatically arise. So brands and the products and services that they represent are kind of valuable assets for companies and for people.

Richard Jacobs: Okay! So again what constitutes a brand for a company for a new one how does it start a brand and develop it in front existing one? Does it have to find out what his brand is out in the marketplace when people think about it, we just have to decide, oh, this is what we want our brand to be.

Mario Natarelli: Well, so Brand is the logo, that logo is really just the representation or name is just the representation of the brand. I think the simplest way to think about a brand is the essence, story, and experience. The foundation of a brand, what it stands for, that’s a positioning what we call it. Essence, right? Its core and think of that like the foundation of the brand. It’s generally something you don’t change over time.

It’s true for you specifically over your competitors and something that stays firm and consistent on top of that we build a story or a narrative. How does the brand communicate? What is the voice, the style, the kind of tone and manner of the brand and its communications? And then ultimately a Brand has an experience, right? How does it come to life and touch points, whether it’s digital or in the real world and great brands have a strong essence story and experience, really great brands do that really well and they do it well consistently and for people who are trying to start a new brand that, think of those three things as kind of a key stepping stones for how you create a great brand.

Richard Jacobs: So what’s an example of an existing really large brands? The one that you think does really well and one that you think misses the mark?

Mario Natarelli: The big ones that maybe everyone would know? Yeah. Well, everyone, I think this is kind of like a sport for many of us, right? Thinking about from the outside what our great brands, we actually build an annual study and measure who was building the most intimate brands, who are the brands that people really want to know, be attached to or have strong emotional connection with, and the top-performing brand this year in that study is in the US is Disney.

And it’s a great example of a brand that you know, has a strong definition, stands for something very clear in most people’s minds. This idea of family-oriented entertainment and it does a consistently great job with delivering on that, whether it’s in content or in experiences at theme parks and related kind of services that it offers.

Richard Jacobs: Okay! Then maybe another large brand that you think needs some help. They’re big, they’re out there I guess be down on them, but which one do you think maybe is not so clear, clear as it could be? We’re not executed as well.

Mario Natarelli: Yeah, that’s interesting.

Richard Jacobs: Which brand needs to hire you in your opinion?

Mario Natarelli: Well here’s the brand that I’m sure they don’t think they need to hire us, but here’s a brand that I think we could help and that’s Amazon. It’s a really great performing brand doing extremely well. However, I think it’s a brand that’s growing faster than it can actually manage. It’s a brand that also stands for so many things to so many different people in so many different areas of its business. So I think we could help a brand like that better articulate its essence, helping improve the story that it tells and design an experience that’s more consistent and I think best in class

Richard Jacobs: What do you do when your company starts to do so many different things that it’s not possible to maybe have one name for it like Amazon. Like how would you know, it’s a suggestion and again, just opinion, but you think Amazon needs to rename some of its products and not even call them Amazon anymore or something else just so that in people’s minds they can’t try to think of everything all in one name.

Mario Natarelli: Yeah. I think they’re growing even more ahead of their own, the streams and ambition, so I think in some cases this is just a kind of speed wobble, in some into some parts of their business. The financial services, they have so many different products and services in, in that particular area that I’m sure they could use some harnessing.

I don’t necessarily think they need to create a new name for that area or some of their other areas. They’ve acquired really strong brand in whole foods and they’ve so far decided to leave it alone and they’ve done that in some other areas like audible and some other businesses where they’ve acquired and not changed the brand.

So they do seem to be running independent brands and sub-brands at the same time. I think as I stay mature and as time goes on they’ll probably get a better grip on all of these sorts of moving parts. I think ultimately all companies with big diverse portfolios have a similar challenge. Even Disney, right? It’s acquired marvel and its acquired star wars and it’s acquired all these other kinds of content brands that it’s now trying to figure out how to harness. It’s trying to compete on the streaming platforms. So it’s got to create a brand for that a called Disney plus.

So really it’s really hard to find any great company these days that it doesn’t have some form of a challenge around its portfolio.

Richard Jacobs: So what kind of assistance do you tend to provide? What size companies? What is like some examples, situations that are common where you come in and you help?

Mario Natarelli: Yeah! When a brand is facing a moment in time either it’s acquiring another company, it’s needing to scale its growth aggressively entering a new market or it’s adding a new service or offering. Those tend to be kind of pain points or moments when they’re looking for help and those are what I would call kind of upstream, those our business strategy, business imperative moments, right? Something’s changing in the business and they need to change or affect that in their brand. Another example of when clients come to us which are downstream, their technology or their touch points are failing them, whether it’s their website that needs to be re transformed or their retail strategy isn’t working effectively over the campaign needs to be rethought or reconsidered. They need to drive more traffic or they need to raise sales and those kinds of challenges are different and usually required different kinds of skills and services.

Richard Jacobs: Do you think you could help a place like radio shack or toys, those seem like I don’t know if anyone could have fixed them. What do you think caused those brands to fall apart?

Mario Natarelli: Yeah, I think the pain points and the symptoms for all three of those different, let’s take seniors first. You know, here’s a longstanding retail brand that really missed the signals on how retailing had moved into the digital universe, right? So Amazon is a great example of what Sears could have been more like instead of maybe waiting too long or not moving quick enough, saddled with either too much real estate, you know sort of an articulated offer inventory that wasn’t necessarily appealing a brand that kind of feeling sort of dated and stayed and the combination of all those forces led it to do its demise. It’s probably a brand you couldn’t easily resuscitate and I think that the same is true for radio shack. It to a different degree, but similar challenges.

Richard Jacobs: Yeah! RadioShack seems the most lost, so joke.

The CEO didn’t even know what they did at their own company, that’s a shame.

Mario Natarelli: It is a shame when you see these brands die, I remember both family and there are moments of those brands that really did add a lot of value to people’s lives and it is sad when something like that happens to upbeat, well sort of established company with a long history.

Richard Jacobs: Yeah, it’s weird. It seems like many companies will never go away, but yet over time they do. It’s weird you think that some of these mega-brands will never die, but I mean, what if one day Google is gone or Facebook has gone, do you think nothing lasts forever and your parents will the life cycle, do you think that or can that be.

Mario Natarelli: I truly believe that. I think there’s a sort of famous saying with family-run businesses that they struggle in the second and third generations to maintain growth and the sustainability because the founders are the original sort of spirit behind the company have died off and I think corporate giants have similar challenges whether multiple generations of leadership, right? Who would’ve thought Facebook would have faced the kind of challenges that they’re facing now? And are they really going to, whether the challenges that they’re facing, are people ever going to trust that brand? And where would it be if it didn’t know an Instagram or whatsapp or some of those other assets that are doing very well? You know, you couldn’t have even comprehended that four or five years ago and today you’re literally asking the question sincerely. It’s amazing.

Richard Jacobs: Yeah True! And is there any fund case studies that you can share that you’ve done and you know what the outcomes were? Any ones that come to mind?

Mario Natarelli: Yeah, I think the business is organized in three ways. We help clients with services our traditional agency structure. We also have a part of the business that does research around intimate brands and then we have a software part of the business that’s focused on tools to help clients build greater intimacy with their customers and just to choose, given the name of your podcast is to choose an example on the technology side. We build proprietary tools to help clients build intranet extranet or build more connection and cohesion behind different stakeholders in the company, and a good example of that is the work we’re doing with PayPal.

So this is a company that rebranded probably five or six years ago and at the time they had about 12,000 employees and a bunch of partners and, and service providers around the world and we helped build software that connected them in a more unified way so it included social collaboration, included asset management, included helpdesk and real-time tools to help people find what was this brand about, how can I put it into action effectively, where are the tools and the tip templates and things that I need to get my job done if I’m an employee or if I’m a partner.

And so we’re four years in managing that tool for them and it’s probably one of our better examples of a piece of technology that’s helping build stronger bonds with stakeholders at that brand.

Richard Jacobs: So in that example, you had to actually improve the employee experience and change it in order to change the brand that was like an inward-looking thing versus outlook.

Mario Natarelli: Yeah, great point and great brands start inside, right? So a great culture, great bonds with employees. I think he’s key for any successful business and especially one that wants to promote a meaningful, compelling brand. No one’s going to believe it if the employees don’t first. And you know, as everyone says, they’re your biggest evangelists and the most important evangelists. So you’ve really got to get that right first.

Richard Jacobs: Okay! So any common do’s and don’ts for companies and individuals listening, even if they’re pretty small or just starting out, they’re on their way, but they’re maybe they’re struggling.

Mario Natarelli: Yeah, I think, I think one of the challenges that I would suggest that this isn’t a once and done thing that both the challenge of branding and technology are kind of two sides of the same coin. They take constant investment in nurturing and they can be as much as an enabler of success as also a barrier. So I think it’s to keep that in mind would be my suggestion.

Richard Jacobs: Okay! Who would be an ideal client for you, company size, situation, etc.? Were there any parameters in there?

Mario Natarelli: Not really! I mean, we’ve done everything from branding people to companies of every size scale. So generally any company with maybe more than 50 million in revenues an ideal starting point for us. But we’ve certainly worked on things that are smaller and startups.

Richard Jacobs: Right! And what’s the best way for people to get in touch with questions and to get help?

Mario Natarelli: Yeah Mblem.com and mblm.com is our website and you can reach Natarelli@mblem.com

The Brandon Massey study is free for people to explore. So if you’re interested in seeing which brands do really well at building intimacy, that information is free on our website as well as other resources that you can take advantage of.

Richard Jacobs: Oh, so essentially you have some examples, or I don’t know if there are case studies, but examples of brands that you think are really excelling.

Mario Natarelli: Yeah, we have both. We have case studies of our work as well as independent research that we’ve conducted on brands that are doing this very well in three different geographies.

Richard Jacobs: Okay! Well, that’s great. That’s a good resource. So, well, Mario, thank you for coming. I appreciate it.

Mario Natarelli: It’s my pleasure! Thank you.