The sale is never the real goal

Micholas, thank you so much for the invitation and it's a pleasure to speak with you today.

Continuing on. Sure. I I spent a really great amount of time there at Kendall King and and learned a lot and grew a lot in my career and had some pivotal moments. And at the time I really saw an opportunity to expand what I'd learned and share it a little bit further upstream with clients. at Kendall King, we were working with them to do some final sell-in to retail. So let me back up a second. Kendall King is a retail marketing group that really helps brands in store and help them with their displays and then also how to get in. and I I really enjoyed that and learned a lot and also saw a lot of opportunity to help those brands make some decisions a little bit earlier in that path to maybe ward off problems. And I just have that that entrepreneurial spirit and It was a lot of the world was coming together to say you really should do this right now. And so I took that opportunity and in consultation with my family and went out on my own. And it's been a a what do I call I call it a thrilling journey as entrepreneurship is.

When I when I went joined Kendall King, I was a designer, strictly. So I was helping solve what a brand looks like in a display in store or how does it come to life. because of my background before Kendall King, I was also helping create meetings and trade show type exhibits, exhibition stands and meeting environments in order for these brands to really come to life. So I did a lot of that. But then what really the pivotal moment was working on the client like as a client account representative or the client contact is what I'm trying to say. And that work came when I was with Nickelodeon. So that's a kids brand here. You know, I'm sure you may be familiar with SpongeBob and so on. So that really was a moment where I kind of shifted from the guy who's designing and creating to being that client contact. What was interesting though is that that dynamic didn't change a whole lot, but it was more in my my own mind frame. sometimes as you're a a young designer and going through some different companies, i it's sort of sales and and design are two different things. And I've really learned that they're they're one and another. And if you're a really good designer, you're a good problem solver, but you're also really good at asking questions. to ensure that you that everyone is heading down the right solving the right problem, I guess.

Primarily retail. and s a lot of the clients, it turns out, are more on the sport side. So I've worked a lot with major league soccer here and recently the US Soccer Federation. So US Soccer men's and women's teams. And that is to to help their teams really set up set them up with tools, visual tools, concepts. strong packages to present to retailers and their product partners to to sell in to retail. So for instance, for this past World Cup, there was a lot of concepting and and sell-in going about two years ago, and all that work kind of came through and then ended up, I ended up doing the most recent packaging design to express their brand. So that was really a fun, fun piece of it.

Yeah. A lot of it comes from they've got a specific event that's coming up. so you know, we can use the World Cup as an example. that's pretty widely understood. so those brands will come and they'll say, you know, we have an initiative, a really big initiative, and a lot of different retailers will want a specific look or maybe a specific message. Or they have a particular product that is exclusive to them. so I'm helping that brand understand how they can be harmonious across all of retail and their customer communication, but there's an ex a specific experience that is both specific to the retailer and their customer. so in the United States, for instance, a a Walmart has a particular look and and a genre of customer. And I don't mean that disparagingly in any way. and and then it that's different from what a dick's sporting goods or a sporting goods specific customer looks like and how they shop and what their mindset is. So it's important to really make a consistent brand statement, but then very specific and look and feel different enough for each shopping experience and retailer.

Sure. Sure. A lot of that comes through a formula that I've developed. And that formula is intellect plus emotion equals action. So intellect is exactly whatever the thing is. A protein drink, that's it. What is it and what is it for? The emotion is. Is what does the brand or retailer want the customer to experience, or what do you want them to feel at that moment of interaction? And you can get very deep with it. It doesn't have to be, I want them happy, or you know, it's I want them to recall a childhood memory or a sense of nostalgia. and then the equals action is what do you want them to do? And the easy answer is I want them to buy it, but that's not correct. What ultimately would you like the customer to do? You want them to share it with their family. You want them to make their holiday celebration more joyful or more nostalgic. So with a formula, like in mathematics, if you have one or two of those components and need to solve for the other one, it gives a clear path for doing that.

Sure. And I'm not sponsoring the brand by any means. but it's yeah, it's like, hey there, everybody. Anyway, so that's a really great question. So I think what you know, I obviously know from an intellectual point perspective that this is a protein drink that's gonna give me needed protein fast as a liquid, and I've it's got little signs on there that it's 30 grams of protein and it's not a lot of sugar. So that's just some mental all right, this is this is gonna be good for me. Now, from a the emotion.

is I think it's a very sorry get my camera in here. I think the can, you know, it's slender, it fits in your hand, it's a good amount, but it's also it feels very accessible. It's not very medical, but it also has like kind of this tech looking font that means that it's progressive. So I get a sense of there's some research behind this. I get a sense of security. So if I'm thinking about emotions, it's easy to slip into other thoughts. I am I think it's re I feel refreshed. I feel confident. I feel that there is some intellect behind what I'm having putting my body. I'm not just trusting, trusting branding. In other words, so I've got that strength emotion. And what I do, the action that I've done is make it part of maybe not daily, but A weekly routine, and I and I share that also with my family, with my son, to make sure he's getting the protein as a growing teenager that he gets. So that's how that works. a lot of times, when I'm working with clients, they know what it is, they sort of have an idea of an emotion, or they sort of know what they want the customer to do, but it brings a lot of clarity to that, and it gives them either a guideline or a framework in which to develop everything else moving forward. And that framework can also help the brand make decisions that are not emotional as they go through their their execution.

I do. I believe so I mean the a color color theory is a whole or we could we can go on like that for a for a long time, but it's a part of that's the refreshing. part of that is that it is not edgy. So a lot of if you think of monster drinks or you know, they're they're dark and they have a lot of neon contrast, this is a little bit more on the clean side on the white, and then the white is often associate obviously with medical so that there's true without saying it because they can't, but there's some, you know, there's medicinal or health benefits that that that are implied with this. So I absolutely think it's a it's a meaningful piece. Also, from a production standpoint, they have b screens or just a few very easy colors that are easy to manage within their own their own piece. So I think there's a lot of factors that this group thought through from from the start to the finish, or if we can think of it from the end result backwards, I think that's successfully doing that.

Right. So Nutri you can send your payments to both Mikolas and myself. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah.

please. Yes.

Sure. It's it it's going to be incre ever increasing. right now I am a believer of what I'd call the pendulum effect. So right now everybody's going deep into AI. You know, AI is everything. In some cases, AI big businesses are relying on AI to make decisions or inf heavily influence decisions. and You know, we I think time will tell if that's right or wrong. What I do believe, and I think you saw you're starting to see this a little bit, is that authenticity is going to be the other side of that. People are going to be craving and almost being very discriminatory in the favor of authenticity. And anything that appears to be AI or fr from a from a visual standpoint and video standpoint, people Are going to shy away from it at the very least. what I'd really like about AI is it is a tool, much like gosh, go the telephone, much like the computer, it can be a tool, but that does not replace intellect. It does not replace our ability to have compassion and understand emotions, which is key to that branding piece. AI, I'm not gonna say it won't do that. I would be very concerned if we're gonna start to engineer emotions into things. that's probably a path that would be a little bit rough and and an engineer personality with deep emotion. I think that would be concerning. that said, I think It's going to be rough for a little bit for some sectors, but I do have faith while continuing to learn myself that the pendulum will swing back and that authenticity will will eventually dominate.

sure. Yeah. It's it's kind of similar to, you know, a new company saying, I just need a logo. So I'm I'm going to just have my brother or sister put together a graphic design design of a logo. yes, you can get a shape with some words, but they're you're gonna end up doing it again down the road. And w so when you're thinking of a brand or when a and when a brand is going to retail. It's more, and many of them understand this, so I don't mean to be sound like they don't, but it's way more than how many times can I show my logo in a store? You really have to convey and get them in the sense of what does this brand mean? What is the feel of the packaging? What is the cleanliness of the display? What are what are they adjacent to? Are they partnering up with other brands? That's the other piece that we can help with. because an especially a new or a competing brand, sometimes they need to bring a friend, right, to help them kind of elevate or bring them into a new customer base. So that is something that is will be, if needed, will be worked with with the brand. And part of that and part of that expertise that I have is that sell in. Everybody talks about the end customer experience, but before any of that can happen, you need to speak and get through the retailer and the specific buyer. And that piece is really helping them mitigate risk and how to so that the buyer doesn't think they're going to be stuck with a bunch of product or unhappy customers. You have to show them that this going with this brand or this particular product is going to be. you know, successful in these ways. And here how we've already thought about, you know, for instance, in World Cup, what if the team loses early? Does that matter? What if there's a whole mar myriad of factors. So from logistics to world events and all all different things. So really preparing that brand for the package that goes to that retailer for success. And some of it too is understanding that you may want to have a wonderful big display, but actually what winning looks like for them is getting additional placement on shelf. Right. And that's that would be a win for them. So that's kind of what I work with work with them on.

No. Yeah, I yeah. and part of that is is a little bit of my approach. I do not walk in with preconceived notions. I think it's very easy, especially with large national brands, to go in with that notion. And really what that helps me do is is ask questions. and maybe some of them sometimes are dumb or perceived, but they are they're really trying to dig into why. something is a certain way or why something wants to be a certain way. And when I see dig, coincidentally, that's part of reason why the name of my company is Dig Big. I want to dig further into what they're looking for. and and that was part of the genesis of the name. It's also a play on my last name.

Sure. Sure. really kind of looking into now further into content development. So working with and talking with a couple other companies about really helping them bring some some long form content together and what that can look like, and and really developing properties from the beginning, entertainment properties from the beginning and what that might look like. So that's kind of a a a new thing and I look forward to maybe sharing with you the next step as that kind of comes to fruition and I can talk about it.

yeah. thank you. It's been a pleasure speaking with you really from both a a a former fellow Prague resident and and just I really admire what you're doing. thank you. So the best way is to hit me up on LinkedIn. So it's just at Adam Herbig, H E R B I G is my last name, and send me a message there. you're welcome to email me Adam at Digbig L L C dot com.

also, you know, follow me on Instagram. I don't post a ton right now, but there's some fun life and professional things in there and so I welcome that as well.

Thank you. I really appreciate it and look forward to seeing your other episodes and meeting your other guests.