EP376: Mastering Brand Implementation: The 5 Pillars of Success With Darren Horwitz | TenTen

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Stacy Jones: Welcome to marketing mistakes and how to avoid them. I’m Stacey Jones and I’m so happy to be here with you all today and I want to give a very warm welcome to Darren Horowitz. Darren is the founder of 1010, a leading brand implementation firm that helps organizations plan, build and manage brand change. With over 20 years of experience in branding, advertising, and television production, darren has a proven track record of delivering measurable results in brand optimization. His resume includes an early career working in entertainment at Geraldo and Montel Williams and HBO Cinemax before moving over to the agency worlds of McCann Erickson, Interbrand, and future brand. With the brand implementation process built to focus on efficiency and optimization, darren builds client planes and management models from any starting point.

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Stacy Jones: Today, Darren and I are going to be chatting about the five pillars of successful brand implementation planning and the power of a well defined brand plan. We’ll learn what works from Darren’s perspective, what should be avoided, and how some businesses miss the mark. Darren, welcome. So happy to have you here today.

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Darren Horwitz: Thank you so much, Stacey. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you and your listeners. Thank you.

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Stacy Jones: I am delighted to chat with you today because what you specialize in, so many brands don’t actually launch and do things correctly. So what I’d love to do is start off talking about how you got to here today to make you this master of brand implementation.

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Darren Horwitz: Well, thank you. And it was interesting, and I’ve heard this from people who’ve been on your show where they hear their own BIOS and it’s a weird sensation. I didn’t realize that the television side was in there, but it makes complete sense. But, yeah, I grew up in a TV household and my father was a news producer for Cronkite and went on to other shows, what’s now? Nightline and things like that. So I grew up in a household where there were tight deadlines and a lot of stress and constantly trying to put things out there for people to see and experience.

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Darren Horwitz: And I then having, as you mentioned, going on to where I less news and more tabloid, but worked at Geraldo and Montel, started to experience this firsthand and really understanding the need to learn a little bit about somebody else’s language and then be able to translate it a little bit for others to then action things. So learning a little bit about that. Once I got into branding, I started in more what was then corporate identity. And it was really just I was a production guy behind a computer screen, just building out mechanicals and files that no one ever spoke to. But the industry evolved from corporate identity into more branding and the request became more sophisticated in the needs of the agencies to deliver more sophisticated products and services was there.

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Darren Horwitz: And as I started to go through branding and see things evolve, I also took part of my experiences, where at the time, the department in production, were always left holding a bag of garbage. So some account person would set up a timeline. They’d write a scope, you’d have a few hours, what you thought might be a few hours for your team to do something. They’d work through the work. Everybody would run over, go out of scope, eat up budget. And by the time it got to the production team, we had no money, no budget, no time to do things. And it became very frustrating. And again, being used to deadlines and deliverables, we understood that, but this was a little bit excessive and very hard to deliver. So we put our hands up and we decided to work backwards.

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Darren Horwitz: And what we started to do was think about all the different branding work streams that were needed. Think about the timelines involved to get things done, who needed to be involved. Think about the scope of work and the steps required and then start to work with the other departments to allocate hours for each step of the way. So that by the time it got to us in production or at that point became implementation, we knew we would be covered. And what were able to do was gain the trust of other departments such as creative or strategy, to really be able to build out these plans and these scopes with them in mind. They trusted us to make sure that they were covered.

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Darren Horwitz: And so from there, it just turned into I started to hit a little bit of a sweet spot in, oh, deadlines, timing, hours, budgets, things like and it was, there was a defining moment. Had a lot of help along the way from others, but there was a defining moment where Humana insurance was going through a rebrand. And somebody came to me and said, hey, we have this client, they’re going through a major rebrand and they want to know, how much is all this going to cost? Do you have any idea what it’s going to take? And I said, yeah, actually I kind of do. And for what? I don’t know. We can figure this out. And so it was the first time that a production guy kind of stood away from the desk and became a little bit more client facing.

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Darren Horwitz: It was the first time that we started to talk about what it would take to go through a rebrand. And it was really the first time that I started to see this moment of what organizations needed to go through a rebrand and how we might be able to help them. And more importantly, as we did it, were able to identify millions in savings through the different strategies. So for humana, we identified a $22 million savings by taking a specific rebrand strategy and thinking through how they converted things. And then obviously they were elated. And it worked. And we rebranded and then from there, I started to really realize that it’s not about doing production, it’s about producing. And so I saw this opportunity to shift the focus of what I did from production to producer, really going back to the television experience.

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Darren Horwitz: And from there I saw this moment where I love what I do. I just really wanted to do it in a way that I want to do it and really focus on this and not I was being pulled too far away from the work at the agency. So I decided to found 1010 and really just focus on how do we help organizations and agencies go through this change. So our clients are both agencies and client direct corporations or businesses. So a long winded way, but getting to I started in television, started in production, worked my way through a different type of production, but then bring it back around to, hey, I think there’s a need to really help.

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Darren Horwitz: Organizations navigate this and be able to translate a little bit about what everybody does and plan a path that’s effective and efficient in what we’re doing to bring them through a brand launch.

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Stacy Jones: I think you’re the first person I’ve ever talked to who has made himself a showrunner of a world of agency and brand.

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Darren Horwitz: Yeah, but it was out of well, thank you. Yeah, it was out of necessity that it was out of necessity. I had to protect the teams that were working and making sure that we could pull off what were the last ones to deliver something. So if you were to equate it to the shows, it was going on air. And if we didn’t have our act together, there’s no such thing as dead air. Right. I mean, that just doesn’t happen. Or it does, but you don’t want it, so yeah, that’s exactly right. So thank you for bringing that back around like that.

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Stacy Jones: Of course. So I can fully understand and I’m on the same page of no one wants to be the agency that is paying for their clients work. And that is something that happens of agencies of all sizes where you take a bigger bite off than you possibly can chew and you get so in the weeds on the little stuff that you burn and turn all of that energy and effort before you get to the final product. And then you have just nothing left to actually get you across the finish line. So really what you are is a process engineer as well, is what I would assume where you’ve come in and you’ve actually established and identified core processes that you have to go through in order to get to the end result.

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Darren Horwitz: I’ve never heard it put like that, but I like that I’m going to use it. Thank you. And I think that’s right. And I think it comes in two different forms. It starts from the fact that I traditionally don’t ask anybody to do something that I haven’t done myself. And so I really have an understanding of what it takes to let’s make it easy to create a business card or to create a PowerPoint template, because I’ve built them myself from scratch. I’ve worked with designers. I’ve gone through this process. I understand the duration and the steps involved, and then I understand where things can go sideways and how to get back on track quickly. So that’s part of it in the process.

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Darren Horwitz: I think the other part is that what I’ve really been able to do, again, with the help of many others in Honing, what we offer from a planning perspective is how to get in quickly and assess the needs of an organization. Really put together a strategy that everybody can rally around, that they can socialize, that they can manage expectations, point out where there’s variables or buffers needed to account for the things that you cannot account for, but really give them something solid that is actionable. And that’s the one thing that we really that’s quarter who we are at 1010, which is everything we do has to be actionable. And so from a process engineer and an efficiency standpoint, it can’t just live in a deck and look nice or on a poster. It has to be actionable.

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Darren Horwitz: And so what we’re delivering are not just the understandings of what one is about to embark on, but also the steps that they should take to get there, regardless of who does the work. Me, an agency, internal teams, doesn’t matter. But again, I’m going to use that. I like that. Thank you. Of course.

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Stacy Jones: And so when you start working with a client for the first time, what’s your first steps to get this ball rolling?

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Darren Horwitz: So we typically depending on when we’re brought in, and we do quite a bit, but from let’s call it rebrand implementation planning or rebrand planning, you’re either leading up to a launch or you’ve already launched. And now we’re filling gaps in either point in time is okay, but let’s start with the more common, which is we have not launched our brand yet. We start by trying to wrap our arms around what you do as an organization. Where does the brand live? What does it touch? What’s needed? In what order? And then ultimately, really, the biggest thing people ask is, how much will this all cost? So we try and solve for that. But it’s coming in with what we call a plan, an activation plan or an implementation plan. And it just starts by, let’s just ask people what they brand today.

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Darren Horwitz: And it’s very straightforward. And the common mistake that we see is that we often hear from a marketing team, oh, we know what we do. We have it. We’ve already created a list of everything that’s branded, and the first thing we do is say, well, are you sure? You know, are you just thinking about this from a marketing standpoint. Have you asked others in other departments what they do? Oh, well, not really. It’s just from our point of view, all right, well, let’s bring other people to the table, legal it. We want a representation from different disciplines. And what ends up happening is you will ask somebody if they use the brand in a certain way, and marketing would say, no, we never do that.

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Darren Horwitz: And inevitably, somebody from the other end of the table says, hold on, I do that all day long and that’s my job and I need these things. So two things end up happening. One, we get a better sense of what’s branded, but more importantly, they start to learn from one another and start to talk to one another and really understand their business just a little bit better. From a rebranding perspective, it’s interesting and it happens all the time, and every time it happens, I’m like, yes, it’s a win that we’ve uncovered this and we’ve demonstrated just a little bit of value at the onset. But it’s always about wrapping our arms around what’s branded today as the starting point.

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Stacy Jones: And once you’ve figured that out and you’ve gotten everyone and all the stakeholders on the same page and kind of sussed out what the landscape is ahead of you, what do you do then?

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Darren Horwitz: It’s analysis, I think, just to take a step back. The way we approach planning is twofold. One is you’re focused on your brand launch and what has to happen at that point in time. And that’s what it is. It is a point or points in time, and there are all these events or communications that need to happen, and we want to capture that. There’s a strategy that’s what are we trying to achieve, to whom are we trying to launch? And we’re trying to capture that as well. So that’s part of this. But because it is a point in time, we kind of put it in a little bit of a silo there and capture it because it then impacts other parts of a rebrand. As I mentioned, the next part is really understanding what gets branded today.

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Darren Horwitz: With COVID we had to really take a workshop and what used to be in person and put it online, which is great. So now we can survey as many people as we need to very quickly to assess where the brand lives and in what order things are needed. Do I need something as we launch? Do I just need answers so that when I launch, I can do business as usual or hey, it’s a fact sheet, nobody faxes anything anymore. We have it, but it’s so far down the path, it’s not a priority. So we start to understand the needs, and then we start from there to organize the thoughts and we start to say again from the brand touch point side, okay, these are all the things that you brand now we need to understand what tools are required to support the transformation.

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Darren Horwitz: So oftentimes our clients will work with agencies or the agencies that have brought us in. They have an initial scope of work to design a brand. What’s the logo, what’s the color, the font? And maybe they’ll go so far as to say, I need to understand how this brand lives a little bit with maybe in what we would call notional design. So show me some brochure covers, show me what a PowerPoint could look like, show me what a sign could look like. And then they’ll start to think about some basic guidance. But that’s it. That’s that initial first scope and there’s strategy and there’s verbal and there’s all other things.

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Darren Horwitz: So what we’re looking to do, by understanding where the brand is being used and what’s being delivered as a starting point, we look to close that gap and identify all the different work streams that are needed to bring one through a launch and beyond to support the transformation of all the different branded touch points. So it could be a PowerPoint template, pretty straightforward. It could be a signed family and guidelines and somebody to partner with to actually create the signs and put them on the side of the building. It could be a website. And again, there are really easy things to focus on, but then there is this gap of, well, what do I need to then translate that into scalable tools that everybody can use as we launch? So that’s the second thing, is to organize thoughts, uncover what’s needed.

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Darren Horwitz: From there, we put timing to that and we start to think about I kind of geek out on Gantt charts and starting to think about how everything works together. We’re operating both at a 30,000 foot level as well as a three foot level. And we’re really trying to make sense of everything and when things can happen, in what order. And we build these timelines, we map that back to when they’re trying to launch and what’s realistic, whether they can hit a certain deadline or if they’re launching in two weeks, it’s not reasonable to put a sign on the building in two weeks. So what does that look like? And then from there, going back to the biggest question is, so what’s all this going to cost?

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Darren Horwitz: And so we look at this as a conversation around what can your agency partner take on, what can your internal teams take on? What should your agency partner take on versus your internal teams? How do we allocate or earmark budget for that? As well as what’s the cost of a sign? What’s the cost of a business card? What’s the cost of anything? So we earmark hard costs as well, and that’s how we start to get to our budgets. So by the end of this, what we get are two things, or three things.

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Darren Horwitz: We get a plan that starts to map out what one does today, what they’re trying to do tomorrow, when they’re trying to do this, and the timelines that go with it, what they can take on internally, where they need help, how much they should budget for all of this over a year or two years or three years. We have a catalog of everything that needs to change because we’ve done our surveys and we’ve captured the different types of branded touch points. We have a clear brief of who’s doing what and we also have a summary and an executive summary of how this is all going to roll out at a higher level.

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Darren Horwitz: So the details in the appendix and the executive summary up front so that they can start to socialize this internally with leaders and key stakeholders, gain buy in, not war people with the gantt charts, but really think about this from a socialization level, but know that it’s actionable. So does that all resonate? There’s a lot in there. Sorry?

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Stacy Jones: There’s a lot. No, there’s a lot. Excellent. I think really I keep on saying you are this a showrunner, you are a process, you are a project manager. So your team comes in and you really are project managing at a very high level of understanding what the overall scopes are so that you are able to actually secure more success because you’re looking at all of the issues.

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Darren Horwitz: Yes, I would like to clarify that because it’s a point of clarification. So I would say that we are project architects in that we know how to set everything up very well. We know how to define what’s truly needed. What we often tell clients is that you absolutely need PMO support, you need project management support and we are not the ones to do that because I think that gets to a whole level of specialty that just is not what we do. But to your point, we recognize what’s needed. We set this up for a transition so that it’s a successful transition to a project management operation and they can really dig into the weeds there.

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Darren Horwitz: But yeah, it’s a little nuanced, but I would say we are definitely teeing it up so that a project manager could take over or multiple project managers depending on the size of the organization.

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Stacy Jones: And so when you’re doing all of this, what are some of the issues that typically come up where things go awry?

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Darren Horwitz: So many. I think that so there is the planning part. Again, I think as I mentioned earlier, the challenges there are being very marketing centric and the watch out is it’s not just from a marketing point of view. You need to really understand the needs of an organization. You need to understand what others do. We call it rebrand empathy. And you really need to understand that there are so many people out there that do so much that you probably have no idea they’re doing. And you might take it for granted, just like they might take what you do for granted. I think that’s a common watch out that we see. I think that timelines are great, but they’re only as good as the day they’re written and everything shifts and especially when you’re going through an organizational change such as a rebrand.

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Darren Horwitz: And I think you need to add for flexibility. Prior to forming 1010, we worked on, my colleagues and I have a lot of old colleagues who are now working with me, we worked on rebranding American Airlines at Future Brand and same process, built out a detailed Gantt chart, maybe 300 lines of data going into the program. And this was well beyond the planning. This is actually now getting into the details, working with their project management team. And every day it was well, you said on line 247, it should start now and end there. And we kept having to explain that yes, that is the right timeline, that is the right duration. But the reality is the step before didn’t happen. The step after has changed and we need to flex. So the snapshot of time is only as good as that moment.

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Darren Horwitz: And you need to allow for flexibility. Sometimes launch dates change, sometimes they move up, sometimes things get pushed out. We’ve seen all of that. So I think it’s about understanding that there needs to be built in flexibility in all of this. I would say the other thing is some of the common watch outs are most people haven’t gone through this before and sometimes clients are really good and trusting and say, I haven’t done this, I need the help, I need the expertise, I don’t know what I don’t know. And other times they don’t say that and it’s interesting to watch and both are perfectly good people and they’re trying to do their best. But it’s really interesting to see when someone thinks they know what’s coming and they have no idea. It’s just fascinating.

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Darren Horwitz: And I think the idea of acknowledging you need help there are people who specialize in this just like there are people who specialize in design or there are people who specialize in writing. And it is okay. But the sooner we can get in and start setting you up for success, or anybody can set you up for success, the better off and smoother a launch is going to be. And I think that’s where people are so focused on launching a brand in that moment in time, they forget about the what’s next. That’s a big watch out. So I hope I’m answering your question.

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Stacy Jones: Maybe it’s just that certain types of breeds of people are just risk takers and they like stressing and angsting and staying up all night and watching things fall apart because they don’t actually have a system in place.

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Darren Horwitz: Maybe. But if they are one of 40,000 people or even one of 400 people, they’re still the rest of the organization that needs to go. And I think that’s something to consider. Change is not easy. No matter who you are or what you do, change can be stressful and changing a brand is no different. I think that you have a whole organization of employees or staff or people or however you want to refer to them and your clients or your customers that are about to experience this change. And so the sooner you can get in front of this, not just from what the branded experience is, or the touch point is, or do we need to change over our sign, but also consider the communications that you need to provide people with. I say changing touch points is one thing and somewhat straightforward.

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Darren Horwitz: Changing people is completely different and you need to bring them through this journey. And there’s a great framework and I did not come up with it, but I believe it’s. No believe live advocate and the idea I don’t know, have you heard of this framework before? You have? Okay, so for your listeners and again, I think this is great as you bring people through a brand change. No, I know what we are doing. I understand what we are doing. Believe. I believe that this is right for the organization and what it means live. I understand my role in this and what I can do to support this advocate. I can now teach others. So when we think about bringing an organization through a rebrand, we’re often looking at how to cascade that information down.

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Darren Horwitz: And again, going back to the launch component, we think about the communications, not just the touch points. We think about what are your objectives, what are you trying to say? We look at audience segmentation, understand what their needs are, what our expectations of that audience might be, and therefore how do we support this. And I think it goes back to that idea of if we want to make everyone a brand ambassador or a brand champion, then we need to bring them through this journey and really make sure that they have what they need. No differently than bringing people to the table and say, how do you use the brand today?

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Stacy Jones: Yeah, I’m sure having stakeholder as well as support buy in is essential and that causes everyone to actually work together a little bit better versus having all of those naysayers who are continuously pushing everything off the cart.

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Darren Horwitz: Yeah, I think you find two types of people who give pushback. One might be at a leadership level where they have a bottom line or a business to protect and they want to move quickly, or they have an objective that they see and they need to do things for whatever the business rationale is. And you can work with that, you can understand some of that and you can just plan accordingly, but then you have it at the employee level where maybe they’re just I think that the watch out there and to bring them along is to engage them and to really think about how to engage employees. And hopefully organizations recognize that we’re not just swapping a logo out, but we are actually really transforming what we do.

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Darren Horwitz: It’s one thing to say, yeah, we’re changing our logo, but again, I think it’s an opportunity that’s much bigger to change the brand, to change how people experience it internally and externally. The touch point, the letterhead or the sign, these are just little manifestations. But the people who speak to this, who want to promote what they do for a living and are proud, or we want them to be proud, we have to give them the help to get there. It’s really interesting to see people go through a journey, and it’s also really interesting to see when you don’t have the time or the opportunity to get in front of them as quickly as you would like. And I think that goes back to proper planning.

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Stacy Jones: And so how can our listeners, if they’re interested in themselves, in figuring out how they need help with brand implementation, reach out to you?

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Darren Horwitz: The usual channels of LinkedIn, our website, I would say they can go to Tengroup.com Mistakes, so all spelled out tentengroup.com mistakes. I am on LinkedIn, Darren horowitz horwitz. And happy to help and always happy to have a conversation with somebody and see what their needs are and see if there’s a way in which we can help them or point them in the right direction. It’s not always about working with us, but we do believe in proper rebranding and organizations being successful, so we’re happy to help in any way we can.

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Stacy Jones: Well, Darren, thank you so much for providing all of your thoughtful insights and guidance. And obviously you have set up a framework that has been proven to work so you know what you are doing. Really appreciate you sharing your insights and time with us today.

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Darren Horwitz: Thank you. Stacey. Appreciate your time. Thanks so much, of course.

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Stacy Jones: And to all of our listeners, thank you for tuning in to another episode of Marketing Mistakes and how to avoid them. I look forward to chatting with you this next week, and until then, have a great one. If you have any questions in the middle of this time frame of how you can get your brand more integrated into other people’s content, product placements, celebrity endorsements, influencer marketing, reach out, I’m happy to chat or I connect you with our team. Have a great one.