Finola Howard (00:02.0)
Hi everyone, and welcome back to Your Truth Shared. And today I want to introduce you to someone else who's in the brand space, because I love brand. You know I love brand. I think it's the cornerstone of your marketing strategy. It's the essence of who you are. And I think it's always really good to get other perspectives from other professionals and what their perspectives are around this space. And I want to introduce you to Mark Rust from Consequently Creative.
And he said something, which was, this is the thing I really loved, strategic storytelling with measurable results. That's what I want to explore, because we never put those two things together. So welcome, Mark. So delighted to have you.
Marc (00:47.384)
Thank you so much, Vanola. We're doing this. I'm very, very excited, and I know that we're going to have a fantastic time.
Finola Howard (00:49.274)
you
Finola Howard (00:54.626)
Yeah, I love it. Tell me, let's start by saying what drew you to brand? And second part of that question, tell me why your business is called Consequently Creative, because I never got to ask you that.
Marc (01:07.092)
Okay, sure. Well, what drove me to branding is, I mean, to tell you the truth, it's from childhood. I've always, you know, been artistic and wanted to do something artistic. But at a very young age, I grew up, well, originally I grew up in the United States and at a young age I moved to France at nine years old with my mother. And I did not speak a spit of French.
and it was a new culture, total culture shock. And yes, I went to bilingual schools and stuff, but it was difficult to learn a new language. But there was one thing that made it much easier to understand and absorb, and that was TV advertisements and commercials. And so my mother would be watching TV shows and she would call me into the room when the commercials would come on.
Finola Howard (01:53.858)
Okay?
Marc (02:02.315)
and I'd sit and watch the commercials and I just loved the commercials because I, they were in French, yes. And I would argue that I definitely learned French through commercials. But what's fascinating is that a commercial brings magic. And I define magic as the right message with the right music, the right actors, the right product, the right positioning. It's fun, it uses humor.
Finola Howard (02:05.84)
Were they in French or in English? Okay, I love us.
Finola Howard (02:13.434)
Okay.
Marc (02:30.391)
There's all this stuff that comes together and that juxtaposition of elements creates magic, meaning something you can't ignore, something you remember, whatever it is. So that's really how I fell in love with branding was from a very, very young age. And then that went on to, you know, posters. I, yes, I had rock posters on the walls of my bedroom, but I also had advertisements on my bedroom walls that I just thought were great. And that's where I learned.
the power of a message, the power of branding done right. There's nothing that gives more power to a message than good graphic design, you know? And that fascinates me. So that's one thing. Sorry.
Finola Howard (03:13.316)
I like there's a quote on your LinkedIn that says, and it's a quote from a testimonial from one of your clients that says, Mark, simply put, we gave you an $80 million company and you made it look like a $120 million company. I'm not sure that small to medium sized businesses truly understand the impact that brand can have, that visuals, that a color or some device or some form of messaging.
can have a direct measurable impact on your company. Do you want to say a little more about that?
Marc (03:45.664)
Yeah. Well, sure. I mean, we judge a book by its cover. We make choices based on psychosomatic decisions that are made deep within our being. You know, we are human after all. And when you go and purchase a car, are you buying the most safe, fastest car that's going to last with the best warranty? Not necessarily. I think most people are probably driven by color.
Finola Howard (03:51.598)
Hello.
Marc (04:14.838)
when they buy a car.
Finola Howard (04:15.805)
Mm-hmm. And not just women, like everyone says that only women think like that. Do you think men think like that?
Marc (04:22.036)
Well, no, no, absolutely not. That would be crazy to think that. think everybody appeals to how things make them feel, how things look, and how they relate to something personally. So that has a direct impact on the valuation of a company as well. If you have a company that you're trying to sell or you're trying to get the value of and it looks terrible, that
that's not gonna give a good valuation, right? People aren't gonna be interested into it. You're not gonna attract the right people. So the way you get there is by things that, know, branding to me isn't just colors and logos, okay? It's not just the look and feel. It's also how, what is the alignment within the company? How people act on behalf of the company? How do they sell? What is the sales process?
How do they treat their customers? What does customer service mean to them? What are their values? Those are all things that are going to provide an overall reception for your audience. And your audience is gonna say yes, or they're gonna say no. And they're gonna say yes, and when they do that, many times, most often,
It's on very very deep connections that they can't necessarily explain, but it just feels right.
Finola Howard (05:52.144)
So when we talk about brand in that context, we're talking about culture. And very often that's not readily understood. They often equate culture as being a HR perspective, not a brand perspective. Even though employer branding, which is about helping you get really good staff and members into your team, I don't think people readily realize that brand, even if it's visual, is also
informed by this thing of values, informed by culture, making it real. Can you tell me your experience of that of how do we help people understand that brand is far more reaching than that? Marketing, actually in our conversation, we chatted about how marketing reaches far more in a business, in a society than we realize.
Marc (06:39.787)
Yeah, well, I mean, you the the you have to open up people's eyes to the power that branding can have and the way that humans relate to each other and the way humans relate to the products that they choose to purchase and engage with and there's one story that I really love because you know, you can't always explain these things right but
making an effort to understand these things is definitely going to help you. And the example that I have is that I read this book from Rory Sutherland where he said that there was a coffee shop in his neighborhood that went out of business. And a few weeks later somebody came in and moved into the coffee shop and made it look better. And it was another coffee shop. And a month later that one went out of business.
And then a few months went by and somebody else started moving in and fixing up the shop to something else. And he was thinking, my goodness, I hope it's not another coffee shop because this place just doesn't work for coffee shops. It was a coffee shop. But this time people put a gate around the front of it and they put benches out front and they made it look very, very different. And there was a line out the door and people were buying coffee from there.
And does this mean that benches make coffee taste better? It does. Benches do make coffee taste better. Because these people understood what is the formula that you need to create in order to understand that branding is not just your product and the look of that product or your logo above the store. It's far more than that. And that's how you can start.
Finola Howard (08:13.24)
Mm-hmm.
Marc (08:34.821)
seeing that there's a different type of engagement and you can start measuring with different methods than before.
Finola Howard (08:43.066)
How can they measure? Give us an example of a measurement. Because, you know, when we talk about you can sell your company for a large, for a larger amount if you have really strong branding. But we're in, if you're in the thick of your business now and you're growing your business, how do we measure that without selling, you know?
Marc (08:59.818)
Well, you can measure that on a lot of different things. You have visitation, visit metrics, audience engagement. These days we have far more measurement capability than we did, say, 10 years ago. Social media engagement, how people are tracking conversations around your brand, understanding all the different movement that happens before a sale and after a sale.
All of these things can be measured. And I'm not saying that they should, that you should be obsessed with measurement because I definitely think that paralysis by over analysis doesn't help. We still need to run with passion and run with what we care about the most and attract people on those levels.
Finola Howard (09:50.79)
But in order, because again, we have the skeptics, right? They'll be saying, the skeptics will say, well, we just had our sales reps were better or this was better, but how do you measure brand? Say if the brand is in existence, just for people to understand it or maybe poke at it a little bit more. Like it's easy to measure the difference brand makes when you introduce, when you have a before and after, or when you have a sales price or something like that. But the difference between a coherence in messaging and coherence in positioning,
Marc (10:12.595)
Mm-hmm.
Finola Howard (10:20.826)
How can people, listeners, measure how they're doing in their brand?
Marc (10:26.535)
You know, everybody has their own way of doing that, but it can be around the alignment that your audience makes vis-a-vis your brand. So that might be on brand clarity that you're measuring things. know, the, the, we're all looking for the same thing. We're all looking for more sales and more engagement, right? But we, we also are, are failing to look beyond the sales metrics.
Finola Howard (10:28.998)
Mm.
Finola Howard (10:45.926)
Mm.
Marc (10:56.233)
to the other nurturing that is required in order to grow a business in 2026. If you're growing your business on metrics that were important 20 years ago, then you're not seeing the full picture. And the full picture today is that there is a different type of engagement based on different set of values. And not to get into it,
too deeply, Fanola, but there's drastic difference between the needs that Generation X had versus the needs that Millennials and Gen Z have. And those metrics would be totally different. I don't think that Generation X, we measured on value and how people relate to your brand on a deeper level, et cetera. Those are things that are very, very important to these audiences today.
Finola Howard (11:53.094)
But I think your key message here is to just go deeper. I mean, that seems to be the message from a marketing perspective everywhere. But even in your measurement, and I'm liking that you're calling this out, that not just to focus on the sales figures, not just to focus on that numerical stuff, but to actually dig into maybe, you know, thinking about really actually understanding your customers and what drives them and really bringing them into the fold and going deeper around them because they will have greater success if they dig deep enough.
Marc (11:56.911)
Absolutely.
Marc (12:22.756)
Absolutely. And I'm not saying for no other that there aren't people that are going to be like, come on, this is absolute bullshit. It's all about the sales metrics. And that's that at the end of the month, how many products did I sell versus the month before? And how can I change that? That is definitely one way of looking at things. But when we're looking at things on a deeper level that has to do with engagement that is different, you might start discovering
that there is a different path to a sale than what you thought before. Maybe a path that isn't as immediate. Maybe a path that has to do with positioning your brand instead of a one-time sale or instead of focusing on the product only. You're starting to focus on value. Value that you bring to your audience. Understanding your audience in a deeper level and having that deeper connection that then translates to trust.
Finola Howard (13:22.768)
Hmm.
Marc (13:22.79)
And trust is priceless because then you start having something that transforms around your brand. Your audience becomes your brand advocate when you have trust. Those are things that are very, very important. How do we achieve those things? It's only by being absolutely consistent. And every time that you come into contact with your audience, you're bringing trust to the table. So this changes everything.
Finola Howard (13:33.382)
Mmm.
Marc (13:48.419)
Now, okay, well then now I'm not gonna be maybe so pushy about my branding. Maybe now if I'm a car salesman and somebody comes into the dealership, I'm not gonna focus on getting them to test drive right away. Maybe I need to focus on the reasons why they need a car, what they're looking for. Maybe it's safety. Maybe they want a sporty car. Maybe it's something else that I haven't discovered yet.
But actually taking the time to look for deeper connections around value is going to allow you to have an engagement that you weren't expecting.
Finola Howard (14:28.742)
I love that.
Marc (14:29.765)
And this isn't just for products, it can also be for services and everything. It's the way we treat each other. And my whole motive, Fanola, is that I feel that we've focused so much, and we've done a great job with it. We've focused so much on the brand experience, the audience experience around a brand. We haven't focused enough on the connection, the relationship, and that's what I want to do. That's what we try to do at Consequently Creative. Bring it back to the relationship because ultimately,
It's about me relating to you. And that shouldn't change.
Finola Howard (15:07.053)
You know, people talk about relationship and connection a lot, OK? And I still think they stay at a surface level with the idea of relationship and connection and how important that is. But when you dig and integrate that thinking into the business, you start to see all of the connections in the business of going deeper in it, that it actually transcends kind of
the nice little fragmented silos that you see in large businesses and even in small businesses. But if you dig into relationship, you start to, you know, throw down Chinese walls and go, actually, maybe here I should, as you said, spend a little bit more time of why they want this car, why they need that type of car. Or perhaps I need to add another offering to the mix because I've jumped too far ahead with too big an offer.
that they're going to walk away from. So you actually really start to build a proper ecosystem that's nurtured around their customer journey, around every aspect of it, if we dig deep enough. Because there's so much lip service, I think, and I just love your perspective, so much lip service, I think, around the words values, the words non-transactional, relationship-based marketing, all of that kind of stuff. But I'm not sure they're deeply understood enough to have a really profound impact on a business.
that actually allows you to 10x versus 2x or 1x.
Marc (16:39.534)
Absolutely. Well, one example that comes to mind while I was listening to you, Fenola, is Apple. The Apple Store has something called the Genius Bar, right? And the Genius Bar, people view it as a place they can go to anytime. You can make an appointment and you can get service on your iPhone, your product, you have a product explained to you, anything you need around Apple products.
I met with an Apple executive once and he told me that the only reason for the Genius Bar is to preserve the relationship.
It's all about that.
Finola Howard (17:20.453)
I an example. I'm another example of that. I worked with a VP in Barnes and Noble several years ago, and he told us this story of he was with his boss. I don't know how high up he was in Barnes and Noble, but clearly high up in Barnes and Noble. And they were doing a junket of touring lots of different Barnes and Nobles, checking for cultural fit, checking for consistency. And they went into this one store and all the people
Marc (17:41.829)
Mm-hmm.
Finola Howard (17:48.921)
that were working there was, no, no, no, look at the coffee bar up there. It's full of students and they're not buying anything. Right. And the guy was delighted that they were there, even if they weren't buying anything. They were possibly taking things, books off shelves and just reading them and putting them back. And the reason that he loved it was because he knew that later, because they were given this gift of being able to be there and have a coffee in Barnes and Noble.
Marc (17:57.721)
Yes.
Finola Howard (18:18.401)
later they would be loyal customers of Barnes &
Marc (18:22.945)
Absolutely, absolutely. And that sort of vision may come at a short-term price, but it has a long-term benefit for sure. And who knows what that benefit is? mean, you know, maybe down the road, you know, even with Apple, for example, let's say Apple comes out with keychains tomorrow. Or maybe keys are going to be obsolete, but something else like lampshades, I don't know.
Finola Howard (18:34.117)
I love it.
Marc (18:52.869)
People are going to be lining up around the block for an Apple Lampshade and you'll probably have people being interviewed on TV saying, my gosh, I don't know what I did with my lampshades before, but this is changing my life, right? Because they've got such a deep engagement with these fans, right? I'm not even calling them customers anymore, they're fans. That no matter what they do,
Finola Howard (18:53.157)
I like that.
Finola Howard (18:59.215)
Yeah.
Finola Howard (19:08.591)
Yeah.
Finola Howard (19:13.957)
Mmm. Mmm.
Marc (19:20.76)
They have the connection. The connection's already there. All they need to do is drop a product into that connection.
Finola Howard (19:27.653)
Noooo
Marc (19:30.037)
And so I think that for, you know, the customers that I have that you have, the clients that we have, they need to start understanding and wondering, okay, well, how can I look at my business today? How can I really, really understand my audience? I think every moment that you spend trying to understand your audience more, you're actually building your business. And if you can put yourself in their shoes,
Finola Howard (19:30.319)
Good.
Marc (19:59.394)
You can start being in a unique position where you can almost anticipate what they're going to need. And you can ask them what they need. I mean, I have clients where we start a project off with them and we ask about their clients, their audiences, and they have an idea, but they don't absolutely know because they've never created that deeper connection. And I'm not saying it's easy.
It's hard to do. That's why you need to hire professionals for it, but you need to consider it.
Finola Howard (20:35.205)
When we spoke last, you have this lovely quote, which was, give them reasons to believe.
Marc (20:42.838)
Yes. Yeah, the reasons to believe are is that is very important to us because it starts with the audience. You're starting with the audience needs, you know, and that's magic. And by the way, Fenolla, you always uncover something fascinating, you know, and that fascinating thing drives excitement within a company. Years ago, I was working with a senior living company.
And this was a company that had senior living communities that they managed. it was for, you know, seniors moving into assisted living, memory care living, et cetera. And they had always marketed to the resident as their number one audience member, right?
Their number one audience was the residents of these senior living centers, these men and women who had come of a certain age and were moving in so they could have more independence and be taken care of, right? And with that, they showed pictures of the bedrooms, pictures of the facilities, talked about what the menus were, what you ate, what the activities are, all that. All those things are very, very important. But when we started working with this company and we started interviewing,
and understanding their audience a little bit more, we came across an audience member that changed everything. And that audience member is actually the primary audience, and their primary audience is not the resident. It's somebody that we identified as the adult daughter.
Finola Howard (22:34.853)
Mmm.
Marc (22:35.767)
The adult daughter is the person who is the primary audience because the adult daughter was somebody that takes care of her parents. She's no longer a daughter, she's actually a caregiver. And this person needs to transition to think, you know, I just want to have a feeling that my parents are in the right place. I want to, and once they get that,
Finola Howard (22:50.756)
Yeah.
Marc (23:03.18)
then they can focus on what it feels like to become a daughter again. becoming a, you know, and allowing her parents to become grandparents, for example, and focus on all those beautiful things around that. But when we discovered that that's who the audience was, it changed the messaging, it changed the marketing, it changed everything. It changed this type of content that they were delivering on, you have a parent.
who needs to go into a senior living facility. Here's how you pay for it. Here's how you do that transition. Here's how you have those difficult conversations. All of this information that wasn't the main focus before had now shifted to bring value to the person who was waiting as the primary audience. So that's what's cool about this. We always discover something that's remarkable.
Finola Howard (23:38.158)
Hmm.
Finola Howard (23:54.405)
Hmm
Marc (24:00.928)
And you think, my goodness, this is fantastic. Changes everything, right?
Finola Howard (24:06.371)
When you change a customer, right, your choice of primary customer, did you get much resistance? Because it's scary to change the primary customer.
Marc (24:17.494)
You know what we didn't. It made sense. It made sense.
Finola Howard (24:19.439)
Just makes sense. Yeah, I just knew it was coming as you're telling the story. It does make sense.
Marc (24:22.87)
Yeah. And we visited some senior living communities. And one time we were in the elevator and there's a woman who was there in her 50s and we knew who she was. She was an adult daughter. And she was going through this and we interviewed her.
Finola Howard (24:41.507)
Why do we become blind to who the true customer is, do you think? Why do businesses become blind?
Marc (24:50.229)
Because it is the business's job to grow what they're working on right in front of them. So they focus on a product, they focus on a service, they focus on the day to day. And the day to day might be, in the case of a senior living center, helping seniors with their lives, right? And that's your focus and you put blinders on.
Finola Howard (25:18.224)
But is that a message? Because I often talk with clients about staying in the weeds. Like you've got to look up in order to actually see what's going on around you as a practice.
Marc (25:18.889)
A lot of-
Marc (25:30.012)
Absolutely. Absolutely. think that leaders are quite ineffective at marketing because they don't look up and they put blinders on because they're so focused on their product. And many have the feeling that they know more than their audience because they're so focused on the product. But the rules need to change around that because the more you understand your audience's needs,
the better you're gonna be at providing a solution. Now watch out, I used the word needs. I didn't say what they want. You know, your audience might want something totally different. Well, hey, in the case of the smartphone, the audience clearly wanted a phone that had a keyboard on the bottom of it. That's what they wanted. And that's what, well, and that's what BlackBerry was, right? And it was good for a while, but that's not what they needed. The world needed.
Finola Howard (26:06.469)
Mmm.
Finola Howard (26:18.309)
Hmm
Marc (26:29.236)
the most versatile piece of technology possible.
Finola Howard (26:34.458)
But even you saying that about leaders focus on, you know, the focus on the everyday, but leaders shouldn't focus on the everyday. That's the whole nature of leaders. Leaders are supposed to have their head up looking, not being visionary, looking at where, where am I taking this beautiful business of mine of ours or whatever. It's really looking up.
Marc (26:47.699)
Absolutely.
Marc (26:57.758)
Well, that's the role of a good CEO. A good business owner should actually turn their back and look outwardly to the environment that they're in and understand the environment that they're in. because the reason they started this business because there was a need. So as time goes by, need to, once the business has grown, you need to have that effort to be able to
Finola Howard (27:03.141)
Mmm.
Marc (27:26.437)
let go a little bit and understand and make sure that you don't lose sight of what of how our environments change and how customer needs change etc etc
Finola Howard (27:40.111)
Talk to me about storytelling and scaling, okay? And when someone, a business owner or CEO is wanting to scale a business, talk to me about how storytelling can play a role in there.
Marc (27:54.291)
Well, to me, storytelling is about making sure that everyone that you come into contact with understands.
how remarkable your product or your service is. It's about that. Storytelling to me is also the path and the strategy that it takes to go from conventional to remarkable. And if business leaders can entertain the idea that
Finola Howard (28:25.391)
Mmm, I like that.
Marc (28:38.511)
Anything that may look conventional actually does have a remarkable story that deserves to be told.
Finola Howard (28:45.038)
Hmm.
Marc (28:47.827)
then they can start really opening their mind to what growth is and really business growth is, vis-a-vis the needs that we just talked about. And one example is I could make butter, for example. Well, butter is something you can buy practically everywhere, right? But butter should be pretty cheap, right? But if you have a butter, and that's a conventional product.
Finola Howard (29:04.389)
Mmm.
Marc (29:16.914)
If you want to make that remarkable, you start thinking about, well, why do I have this butter? Where does this butter come from? Well, it comes from cows. Okay. What kind of cows? Where do these cows live? Do I want to bring value into that? Maybe I want it to be organic. Well, how am I going to do that? Well, I'm going to allow my cows to go out into a field. You know, maybe I'll produce less butter because they go out into a field and...
They enjoy life and they eat green grass, et cetera. There's so many things that you can do, so many stories you can build there.
Finola Howard (29:52.463)
See, I like this because you're telling a story now that is storytelling, right? And I like this from conventional to remarkable.
But I don't think people realize that this is marketing. This is branding. Like of.
Marc (30:09.267)
Yes. No. Well, wait, because let me just tell you about this butter. Maybe at the end of the day, you have an organic butter that has a picture of one of the cows on it featured. There's a cow, Meet Betty, our cow, because you name the cows. And maybe there's a story about the family, the family farm that owns, that produces this butter, and it's organic. people, is this butter more expensive? yes.
Finola Howard (30:13.221)
Okay. Yes, please, sorry.
Finola Howard (30:18.82)
Yeah.
Finola Howard (30:26.776)
Of course.
Marc (30:39.027)
much more expensive, much more expensive. But people buy it for different reasons. Because they identify with this butter and it makes them happy. And the branding is nice and the branding is not just the logo, which is super cool, but beyond that, it's also the whole story. And they talk to their friends about these stories too. You know, and maybe they won't call it butter anymore. They'll call it Betty's butter, you know?
because all of a sudden it has become remarkable. It has become worthy of a story. And I'm not saying this is for everybody. Of course there's a market for conventional butter, right? And some people, that's all they want, right? But not everybody. And if you go out of your way to understand your audience more, then you can build that story. And that's where that transition comes, where you're gonna be more receptive.
Finola Howard (31:14.757)
of a story.
Finola Howard (31:37.059)
I love that.
Marc (31:37.5)
You know, the way we get to it is that we meet with business leaders during workshops and we dig down into the reasons why they believe in what they do. No matter what it is, it doesn't have to be a product. doesn't have, it could be a product, a service, a piece of technology, anything you want. But I want to know why are you doing this? What makes you excited? What gets you up in the morning? What is your passion?
What are some of your other passions that drive this? Because all of that is what makes you more interesting as a person, and it makes your company more interesting.
Marc (32:19.665)
You know?
Finola Howard (32:20.759)
What would you like to leave people with today? Apart from everything you just left them with. But if you wanted them to take an action today, an action, not even just a thinking piece, is there an action you'd like them to take?
Marc (32:34.459)
I won't
Well, I want you to think about what gets you the most excited about what you do. I want you to distill it down if you can to the passion that drives you. And then I want you to bring simplicity back to the table because I feel that a lot of businesses explain things with their own jargon and it just doesn't resonate with their audience anymore.
Clarity will outweigh cleverness any day. Don't try to be clever. Try to be clear. And if you have passion, yeah, if you have passion, people will know it, okay?
Finola Howard (33:18.287)
That's a great message.
Marc (33:26.215)
Don't try to be clever, try to be clear. And you know, we all know what I'm talking about. Anytime you have a headline that talks about quality or talks about strategy or makes these promises, you know, that's fluff. know, quality is not something that you say that you have, it's something you show, right? Strategy, that doesn't mean anything these days. It doesn't mean anything to your customer.
Finola Howard (33:26.341)
I love it.
Marc (33:56.357)
You need to be absolutely clear in your message. We do this for this need and show that you're passionate about it.
Finola Howard (34:07.279)
Perfect. Thank you so much, Mark.
Marc (34:11.313)
Vanilla, thank you for having me. It's pleasure talking to you. And it is so easy. So, I've had a great time.
Finola Howard (34:16.485)
Hahaha!
me too.
Marc (34:22.103)
We'll talk again very
