Today's guest is Alex Center, a designer and podcaster and founder of the award-winning design and branding studio, CENTER. From 2006 to 2017, Center worked for the Coca-Cola Company, helping build the brands Vitaminwater, Powerade, and Smartwater. Today, he and the team at CENTER are building the next generation of icon brands partnering with companies like United Sodas of America, Apple, HEYWEAR, Good Light, New Balance, SIMULATE, and Liquid Death. One of the reasons I wanted to talk to...

This episode of How Brands Are Built is a live recording of an April 25, 2024 book launch for Designing Brand Identity, sixth edition, held at Noise 13 in San Francisco. The event included a panel discussion moderated by Rob Goodman. The panelists were Dava Guthmiller, founder of Noise 13, Rob Meyerson co-author of the sixth edition of Designing Brand Identity, and Robin Goffman, creative director for the book. The discussion includes thoughts on rebranding, trends in branding, and how Rob...

Back in February of this year, I released the first Brand Names Report, an analysis of polling data on brand names from Brand New, the leading brand identity review site edited and written by Armin Vit. From July 2020 to June 2023, visitors to Brand New cast a total of 22,769 votes across 131 brand names, rating each as Great, Fine, or Bad. These polls are the only easily available opinion data on brand names that I'm aware of. And while the data is far from perfect (I'll walk through some...

Rob Meyerson and Fabian Geyrhalter discuss brand strategy's balance of innovation and foundational rules, touching on brand creation challenges and successful launches in the evolving marketing landscape. Today’s episode is special. It's an edited version of a LinkedIn livestream chat with Fabian Geyrhalter, founder and principal at FINIEN, "a purposefully small consultancy based in Los Angeles." Fabian is a brand strategist and creative director and host of the Hitting the Mark podcast....

Today's guest is Rob Goodman. Rob specializes in content strategy and creative content production, with experience at companies like Google, Wix, and Webflow. He's delivered award-winning branded content, content strategies, and comprehensive content calendars for these companies and other clients, helping brands transform into publishers built for engaging today's audiences. Rob also hosts his own podcast, Making Ways, about the intersection of art and music. He interviews bands, like...

It's the summer of 2021—one year since the murder of George Floyd. And if you’re wondering what that has to do with the season-four wrap-up of a podcast about branding, let me tell you: in early 2020 I had a plan for season four of How Brands Are Built. But in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and protests around the world, my plan changed a bit. 2020 was already a pretty awful year for most people, and it just seemed to be getting worse and worse. So I started thinking about whether there...

Diego Segura is a design apprentice at Collins, an independent strategy and brand experience design company with offices in New York City and San Francisco. In this episode, Diego describes how he discovered graphic design, his decision to drop out of high school, and what it's like being an apprentice at a prestigious branding and design company. This is the second part of a two-part series; the episode begins with a continuation of my conversation with Brian Collins in part one. Brian...

Brian Collins is Chief Creative Officer of COLLINS, an independent strategy and brand experience design company with offices in New York City and San Francisco. Prior to founding COLLINS, he spent a decade as Chairman and Chief Creative Officer of the brand and innovation division of Ogilvy & Mather. Brian's also a teacher—a professor in the Graduate Program of the School of Visual Arts since 2001—and sits on the Board of The One Club. Among many accolades, Collins has been named as: ...

Today’s guest is Alina Wheeler, best known as the author of Designing Brand Identity: An Essential Guide for the Whole Branding Team, now in its fifth edition. One of my favorite memories of this book is seeing it on a desk when I arrived to my first day on the job at Labbrand, where I worked in Shanghai. I already knew the book, but seeing it in use, so far from home—that's when I really understood how influential of a book it is. In fact, it's been translated into Chinese, Spanish, Arabic,...

Nirm Shanbhag is the Chief Strategy Officer of Sid Lee USA, an international creative company. He’s also my old boss. Back in 2012, he was running the San Francisco office of Interbrand, and he hired me as Director of Verbal Identity. Before Interbrand, Nirm earned his MBA from London Business School and worked in advertising, at firms like Mullen and McCann. He also ran his own, independent agency, Notch Strategy, for about six years between his roles at Interbrand and Sid Lee. Nirm and I...

Emily Heyward is co-founder and and Chief Brand Officer at Red Antler, the leading brand company for startups and new ventures. Red Antler is the branding firm behind brands like Casper, Allbirds, Keeps, and Burrow. They also work with established brands like American Express, HBO, Google, and Gap. Emily was named among the Most Important Entrepreneurs of the Decade by Inc. Magazine, and has also been recognized as a Top Female Founder by Inc. and one of Entrepreneur's Most Powerful Women of...

Today’s guest is Armin Vit, co-founder of UnderConsideration, a graphic design firm, and editor and writer for Brand New, the leading site for reviews of corporate and brand identity design work. Born and raised in Mexico City, Armin—along with his wife and partner, Bryony Gomez-Palacio—have created multiple other design blogs, co-authored books, and organized events like the annual Brand New Conference. I was excited to talk to Armin about design trends, blogging, and the pros and cons of...

On the podcast today: Sunny Bonnell, co-founder of Motto, one of the leading branding agencies in the country, with clients like Google, Hershey's, and Twentieth Century Fox. Sunny and her co-founder, Ashleigh Hansberger, recently wrote their first book, Rare Breed: A Guide to Success for the Defiant, Dangerous, and Different. Sunny says the book started with a question: "What if you could take the parts of yourself that other people criticize—traits they call defiant, dangerous, and...

In this episode, I'm talking to Dava Guthmiller, founder and Chief Creative Officer at Noise 13, a brand strategy and design agency based in San Francisco. She's also cofounder of In/Visible Talks, and annual conference that celebrates the art of design and creativity, and In/Visible Project, which includes a collection of other events that bring people together over the process, inspiration, and challenges for design and creative professionals. Throughout the conversation, we touched on...

Season four has arrived, and my first guest is Dr. Jason Chambers of the University of Illinois. The theme for this season will be a bit looser than past seasons, but I'm hoping to get perspectives on the social impact of brands and branding. In other words, are brands a good thing for society, overall? In light of what's happened in 2020-the pandemic, protests for racial justice, increasingly extreme weather as a result of climate change, and even the U.S. presidential election-this topic...

On June 11, 2020, Rob (creator and host of How Brands Are Built) joined Ilya Lobanov of Studeo on Instagram Live for a chat about brand strategy and naming. Ilya is an Australia-based designer and strategist who teaches multiple branding classes (available on his site and Skillshare). Given Ilya's design background and Rob's naming experience, the conversation often covered similarities between design and naming. This special episode features the entire IG Live conversation (including live...

Rob joins Jacob Cass of JUST Creative and Matt Davies on their new podcast, JUST Branding. We explored best practices for naming, positioning statements, and conducting discovery for brand strategy through the lenses of the company, client, and consumer. Rob shared actionable tips and real-world examples that will help you build a better brand.

Today's episode features a rare repeat guest: none other than David Aaker, Professor Emeritus at the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley, Vice-Chair at Prophet, a global marketing and branding consultancy, and prolific author of books and articles about branding. Last time David was on the podcast, we talked about two of his books, Aaker on Branding, 20 Principles that Drive Success, and Creating Signature Stories. We also talked at length about his brand vision model. If you’re interested...

Generally, I try to make the How Brands Are Built podcast evergreen. I want listeners to be able to go back any old episode and find that the conversation—whether it’s with a namer, a strategist, an author, or some other branding professional—is still relevant. But this episode is different. It’s April, 2020, and we’re in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. To say the least, it’s been disruptive. (And not in the cool, buzzwordy kind of way.) Early on in the crisis, I read news of Zoom making...

For the second mini episode of the podcast, I’m talking to Brad Flowers, founding partner of Bullhorn, a marketing company in Lexington, Kentucky. Brad is also the author of a new book entitled, The Naming Book: 5 steps to creating brand and product names that sell. Regular listeners know that naming is an area of focus for me, so when I heard about Brad’s book, I couldn’t want to read it and ask him a few questions. We started out talking about how there aren’t too many books about naming...

This is the first of several "mini episodes" of How Brands Are Built. Hopefully, you saw this mentioned on social media or in the newsletter: between now and the next season (TBA), I'll release a few short episodes on a range of topics—no consistent through-line, just some interesting, snack-sized branding content. I reached out on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook asking for feedback on which mini episodes would be most interesting or useful. If you’re one of the many people who...

Season three of the podcast featured my most wide-ranging conversations yet. I talked to guests about topics such as naming, social influence, and fusing brand and culture. Like last season, I talked to a mix of popular authors and speakers, like Jeremy Miller and Denise Lee Yohn, as well as some people I've worked with closely at agencies like Interbrand, Siegel+Gale, and BrandingBusiness. Thank you to all my guests this season: Jeremy Miller, founder of Sticky Branding; author of Sticky...

My final guest for season three of the podcast is Denise Lee Yohn, author of the bestseller, What Great Brands Do: The Seven Brand-Building Principles that Separate the Best from the Rest. She's also an in-demand keynote speaker, and has appeared on CNBC, Fox Business, NPR, and in the Wall Street Journal discussing business and branding issues. Denise cut her teeth in lead strategy roles for the advertising agencies behind campaigns for Burger King and Land Rover, and has held client-side...

My guest on today's episode is Myra El-Bayoumi, Strategy Director at Character, a San Francisco-based branding and design agency. Before Character, Myra held senior strategy positions at Landor, Siegel+Gale, and Interbrand (which is where I met her). Myra also holds an MBA from the University of Toronto Rotman School of Management. Given Myra's experience, I wanted to get her perspective on the similarities and differences in brand strategy approach, philosophy, and deliverables among...