Part 1: Creative and Disruptive Branding Strategies with Dain Walker, Founder and Principal of rivyl
Episode Summary:
Dain Walker, Founder and Principal of rivyl, joins Tejas Mehta to share what branding truly means and how to build a unique branding strategy to stand out from the competition and get attention in a busy market.
Key Highlights:
- 7:35 – 12:56 – The True Nature of Branding – Most people see content as a means to make money versus a platform to entertain or give value. For Dain, branding is about being personal, having a special idea, speaking uniquely, and being more interesting than the competition. For example, Harley-Davidson doesn’t say they make quality motorcycles to empower men. They say they are about rebellion and freedom. And if you want to feel masculine, get on a Harley. Nike doesn’t sell shoes or fabrics or soles or shoelaces. They sell the feeling of confidence. It’s more about how people feel and a lot less about what the thing is. Branding is what drives content and how people are rewarded or how they feel when they interact with it.
- 12:56 – 17:09 – Stand Out and Be Different – When Dain and his team started working with business owners, they discovered that most business owners had no clear idea what they were doing. Dain started specializing in helping business owners get clear on what they want to convey in a specific way, create their own vocabulary and story and be something different from their competitors.
- 17:09 – 25:45 – Getting Attention in the Busy Market – On his LinkedIn profile, Dain mentions he has a process to nail your brand message to help you scale your company fast. Most people try to skip the branding step because they see it as a luxury to have a brand. Often, brands use too much generic messaging. Dain states that you must define the specific target audience you’re trying to interest. Or, as Dain points out, the tribe. Then you have to create a personality or position that feels relevant to that audience and build this unique world around them by using special messaging, photography, colors, fonts, and other elements.
Part 2: How to Differentiate Your Brand and Win on Social Media with Dain Walker, Founder and Principal of rivyl
Episode Summary:
Dain Walker, Founder and Principal of rivyl, joins Tejas Mehta to discuss how to differentiate your brand, the importance of having a big vision, the impact of branding on social media, and how to win as an agency owner by getting into the content game.
Key Highlights:
- 0:39 – 7:20 – Brand Differentiation Starts With a Bold Vision – Branding is not just about messaging and design. It’s about the whole belief system of your business, including mission, values, and culture. Your brand has to start with a big idea and vision. Dain calls it BHAG, which stands for big hairy audacious goal. Then you’ve got to build your own story.
- 7:28 – 10:00 – rivyl’s BHAG – By 2030, Dain and his team look to create a college campus for people that want to learn brand strategy and design and then go launch an agency or go work as a brand manager for somebody else without having to go into crazy debt with a college or a university. Dain’s ambition is to make rivyl Australia’s and Asia Pacific’s largest brand consultancy and design agency. He also wants to set up a huge online library system where people can educate themselves on everything from color theory to logo design and everything else in between.
- 10:05 – 16:18 – The Branding Impact on Social Media – If you’re at a party and there are 100 people you’ve never met, unconsciously, you will start judging them. People do this with brands on social media by tagging them in categories like power, simplicity, status, reliability, etc. As a brand, you must think of a clear impression you want to leave on people. Also, remember that people walk into social media to learn something or entertain themselves. So come up with something valuable that will cover one of these reasons.
