3 Strategies to Build a Quality Brand, Live from PSFK Part 1

Recorded live from the PSFK conference, Drew speaks with two professionals that explain 3 strategies on how to build a quality brand. Both guests focus on how a brand can help people think about big ideas and create change in their own lives and in their communities.

Jordan Schenck, Head of Global Consumer Marketing at Impossible Foods, explains how a brand can spark change across multiple business platforms. She and her team are always trying to go the extra mile by creating a brand that transcends the consumer world and focuses on starting important conversations that are continuing to make the world a better place.

Amber Case is a Research Fellow at MIT and is an expert in “calm tech,” an area of research that focuses on eliminating unnecessary tech systems by keeping the element of the human touch. She wants to see every marketing professional avoid distracting systems, and get back to the heart of working for a quality brand.

Click here to listen to these inspiring conversations.

What You’ll Learn

Creatively market your mission-led brand

Jordan explains that in order to effectively market a mission-led brand, you have to go beyond spouting off your values. People are always willing to follow a quality brand, but you have to first get their attention. Your job as a marketer working for a quality brand is to get people into the headspace of getting behind a message they can support.

Help people make beneficial decisions they can feel good about

Quality brands push people towards decisions that are better for their communities, themselves, and the world we all live in. That the mindset Jordan and her team believe in at Impossible Foods. They are always trying to go beyond being a consumer brand and start bigger conversations about how the brands we follow can ultimately influence and change the world.

Know when to use AI to make your life easier, not full of distractions

Amber is a supporter of calm tech – a method of using technology that allows you to still be human and not become immersed in complicated technology systems. She explains that quality brands are well designed and built for optimal human use. Truly great products take more time, but they can help people do tasks in a more focused, efficient way. If you choose to use artificial intelligence (AI) in your company, understand that AI systems still require human insights. If not, your data will be flat and not useful.

Timeline

[0:01] Drew’s overview for this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite
[1:38] Jordan Schenck from Impossible Foods is Drew’s first guest
[8:27] How Impossible Foods maintains brand integrity across multiple platforms
[10:49] Impossible Foods is helping people make decisions they can feel good about
[15:04] Jordan’s key insight into marketing a product brand
[17:14] Amber Case, MIT Research Fellow, is Drew’s second guest
[22:00] AI is not about replacing humans
[25:29] You have to know what can and cannot be automated

Connect With Jordan Schenck:

Impossible Foods’ company webpage
Connect with Jordan on LinkedIn
Follow Jordan on Twitter
Follow Jordan on Facebook
Follow Impossible Foods on Twitter
Follow Impossible Foods on Facebook

Connect With Amber Case:

About Amber
Amber’s book: “Calm Technology: Principles and Patterns for Non-Intrusive Design”
Connect with Amber on LinkedIn
Follow Amber on Twitter
Follow Amber on Facebook

Resources & People Mentioned

Connect with Drew

Meet the Guest

Jordan Schenck is Head of Consumer Marketing at Impossible Foods. She came to Impossible as the first marketing hire and has spent the past three years scaling the brand. Prior to Impossible, Jordan worked with Allison Johnson’s WEST consulting new economy startups on groundbreaking ways to enter and build market and Wieden+Kennedy repositioning brands like Equinox and Gap. Her approach to building brands is driven by creating emotional experiences and targeting the heart of burgeoning cultural trends.

Amber Case studies the interaction between humans and computers and how our relationship with information is changing the way cultures think, act and understand their worlds. Case is currently a fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society and a visiting researcher at the MIT Center for Civic Media.

Quotes from Jordan Schenck and Amber Case

Jordan - "If you push for the stretch demographic, early adopters will follow and you're going to get everyone along the way"
Amber - "Brands can help us get our time back, but they're going to have to think about different senses and different modes of interaction and different tempos. If they can get us to slow our life down a little bit, they'll do really well."