Four Steps to Building Brands Backwards! AKA humans first | Michelle Grant | TEDxBocaRaton

[Music] thank you so there is one word that I live that I breathe that I think about every single day and that word is brand think about the shoes you put on this morning think about the shirt you decided to wear think about the car you drove here today even the toothpaste that you brushed your teeth with you may or may not remember the moment but

Secret what are the three words Angel fantasy push-up let's try one more when you hear these three words what brand do you feel do you see just do it Nike brands are so powerful we don't realize it but they impact how we feel they impact our minds and that's such a beautiful thing and what I've learned as I build Brands is the best of two ingredients

there's two and they both start with tea it's Timeless think about your favorite Brands they've navigated so many generations so many genres economic up and downs and then the number two secret is Timely now being timely is the harder part you wouldn't believe it but these are real products do you want your toothpaste brand making you beef lasagna raise your hand want your favorite water to

make your new broth raise your hand sometimes they get it wrong and you wouldn't believe how often 95 of products made by Major Brands are a fail they don't succeed that is so sad because I grew up with so many friends and you want to know who those friends were they were Brands because I grew up in rural Pennsylvania I grew up in the corn fields

in a small town called new Smithville who knows where new Smithville is no one and in that small town in rural Pennsylvania there was one Indian family guess whose it was mine and so how did I connect with the people around me well Brands were in my DNA Brands were the way that I connected with the communities and the people that I saw if you were

wearing Calvin Klein guess what I told my mom we're going to TJ Maxx I need a CK sweatshirt if kids were wearing Nike shoes I begged my parents for the money to buy them and what I realized is it doesn't matter what the brand is saying it's how the brand makes you feel that connects you with the people around you and so I didn't realize it

then but that's when my career had started so looking back Brands were my friends and so I took that a step further I went to college and I studied Finance had nothing to do with the brand but somehow it pulled me into New York City and I ended up working for the biggest retailers in the world Federated with Bloomingdale's VF Corporation with Nautica Victoria's Secret and

realized that these Brands were giving me the best education I possibly could have building Brands the traditional way now how is that done so you get data reports and you start looking at what the gaps are and then you start to think about how do you fill those gaps very logical you sit in these conference rooms and you have Focus Group after focus group you're looking

at the statistics you're looking at the shareholder reports you're looking at market research and Market surveys and then you make the product and you spend so much money making that product you know that product's gonna win right five percent of the time and then you spend even more money convincing everybody that they have to have it and that was really really valid and it definitely worked

I mean think about these Brands billions of dollars double-digit operating income but something changed what's in everybody's pocket right now a cell phone the digital age changed everything social media started to become part of everybody's lives and all of a sudden things were moving at a faster Pace but more importantly you were seeing different types of people you've seen people like me on an ad but

it was Instagram or Facebook and everything needed to be reversed engineered so I thought but when I would bring that into the conference room that idea wasn't as welcome so I decided to go out on my own and try something different what if we actually left the conference room what if we went and met with the people what if we asked them what they wanted now

we have this way to connect with people all around the world so quickly on just one scroll and so I did that I decided to build bran backwards I decided what if we actually created communities what if we had dialogues with them and actually thought about what would that feel like what if your focus groups were actually an Airbnb with wine and cheese and those surveys

that we were doing in the conference rooms what if they were a poll on Instagram and what would happen if we actually this went to them and spent time with them to understand how their lives were changing well I tried this and I quit my job to try it it seemed very utopian and ignorant at the time but I just said what if my husband was

very pleased so was my daughter she was one and the results were explosive we asked them what's the image what's the words what's the tag lines and then once we had statistical data so we felt it was good but we started with a human so we don't know if it was we put that up on the web and you know what happened we got 133 000

emails in 48 hours 300 000 sessions globally we actually shipped to every state in America in 45 days and 165 000 ambassadors across the country and then you take that a step further we ended up having a thriving website five stores in America lines at Nordstrom and Target and that led to our acquisition within three years now the question is was that strategy or was that

luck and I didn't know the answer to be honest and so I did it again this time focus groups were on tick tock and this time what I thought would be a survey was a happy hour so you just gotta go to where the people were and so here's the four step rules and how to build a brand backwards if you want your brand to be

timeless and you also want your brand to be Timely there's four steps that we can take to have an impact step one shape your purpose why are you actually doing this so many people start with the product first they see this Gap in the market they say I think that we should create something that doesn't exist they look for the white space and they try to

create that but actually what you should be doing is saying what's the conversation that we're missing in the world where is that place that humans are yearning to connect and what does that topic look like here's a great example when I started my first company it wasn't about the bras it wasn't about that product what we saw is women were looking for a way to feel

passionate purposeful and confident and that's where the conversation started how do we make women feel more comfortable in their skin and that led to deeper and deeper learnings around products that actually weren't in the market same thing with beverage was it about the latest and greatest drink that I thought which should be could be on the Shelf it was actually about how do we make Wellness

fun how do we look at products that make us smile that exude color that feeling bring all these things that make humans actually feel euphoric and so it sounds wide and it sounds hard and it sounds big but it's not think about all the humans here in the room today you have a like-minded purpose you want to learn something new you want to hear something new

you want to feel something new find those people just like we found each other today you can create a common purpose across this country but it starts with one common theme we find that unique mindset doesn't have to be about the demographics we don't all have to be the same age we don't all have to live the same place we don't all have to wear the

same brand but find that common theme and find that common demographic mindset excuse me and then have the conversation and here's what's the cool part you'll start to build your brand before you even have the product you'll also start to build a product that's the right product now the right product in this example of when I was creating an Intimates brand I thought wasn't a better

bra it ended up being when I spent time with these people they were wearing sports bras sixty percent of the time what were they doing sixty percent of the time not working out if you're wearing a sports bra but you're not working out why is that happening because it's more comfortable the initial question was how do we make women more comfortable in their skin the answer

was there all along it was taking athleisure and mixing it with lingerie to create a word I create a new category create a new product if I never brought these people together I never was going to be able to co-create and cultivate and so that's what you really want to do with step two you brought your purpose together you started to create your community and now

you can co-create and cultivate same thing with Wellness I thought that we wanted to create wellness and make Wellness fun now how can you make Wellness fun obviously candy candy is fun wrong we brought our community together in another mindset in another conversation and you know what these people told us they said we don't want candy we don't want powder we don't want pills we want

to drink and we want that drink to taste good and look good and feel good and we want that can to stand in our hand I want to post it on Instagram had I never had those conversations had I never created these communities which by the way can happen in real life it can also happen in the screen I would have spent all my time and

money making the wrong product and what's more expensive than money time so I would have wasted money I would have wasted time and then I would have to get rid of all that and start all over again versus just starting at the beginning people the secret sauce is humans the secret sauce is just sit down have a conversation and build on that conversation you're going to

find this momentum we'll just continue to start and then build and build and build and then the other fun places you get to put it on Instagram or Tick Tock in this case you can ask them anything that you're curious about and now they're your allies they're your friends they're going to give you the truth whether you like it or not they're going to tell you

is this the right flavor they're going to tell you is this the right can or the right product but here's the other important Elevate element of co-creating and cultivating it's not a one-way Street most brands will talk at you towards you they want you to sell their brand right so they're going to say I created this product you're gonna love it you're gonna wear it enjoy

versus a two-way street a two-way street feels like I invited you into this experience before I even created my product I wanted to know how I could make the world a better place by talking to you you're wearing a bra 60 of the time it's sports bras and you're not working out that's super interesting more importantly though how do you spend your time and how do

you have fun what actually is the way that you have a euphoric moment that is memorable create moments that matter to them don't do it in a conference room maybe you're doing it at SoulCycle or Fitness Studio maybe you're doing it on a walk maybe you're doing it at a happy hour or at the beach the point is is get into their lives and understand what

matters to them create that two-way street and that two-way dialogue and you're going to see they're going to be there for you just like you're there for them and when you do that they're going to be so encouraged to partner on Tick Tock to partner in real life and not only will you have your Community First you'll have your first customers and now you've created your

purpose you've created your community you've cultivated and co-created you didn't create something on your own and push it out you co-created something with a community so now you can truly deliver on a product that the world actually wants no toothpaste with beef lasagna what you actually end up with is a product that the world has been asking for and it's been in front of us the

whole time we just never asked we just never stopped to start with the humans and so with that when you build a brand backwards we say don't reinvent the wheel throw out the wheel don't start by spending all of your money on creating a product and then thinking about customer acquisition on the end create the Community First it starts with the humans and when you start

with the humans you are going to find that you're creating a product that not just makes humans wake up and want to purchase they're going to smile they're going to be so excited to bring that product to life with you and now you've changed the world now you've made an imprint so what we like to say is today bras and undies tomorrow the world thank you

[Applause] [Music]