The complex nature of the brand experience with AnyRoad's Jonathan Yaffe

F2000 brands are investing hundreds of millions (or billions) of dollars a year on experiences in order to build brand love, and Jonathan Yaffe, Co-founder & CEO of AnyRoad, is on a mission to solve this problem. Having gotten his first job out of college 22 years ago with Red Bull's marketing department, he was awed by the fact that Red Bull was investing over a billion dollars a year on experiences. The problem was that there was no data to determine if, or how well, this was changing brand perception and consumption habits of their customers.Jonathan Co-founded AnyRoad with his brother Daniel in 2013. Daniel was the founder/publisher of the premier lifestyle magazine about alcohol culture. In addition, he wrote a book called Drink More Whiskey, and the research for this book took him all over the world to sample different whiskeys and visit amazing distilleries. This research provided him with experiences and brand loyalty he will never forget. Given the impact of these experiences, it seemed the logical next choice for Johathan and Daniel to move into this business full time and solve the data problem.They discovered that companies investing in experiential marketing were winning the race for loyal customers and those who didn't invest in experiences were left on the sidelines. Brands are spending inordinate sums of money on experiences and have no data to determine if what they're doing is working.Jonathan talks to Carol about pivoting from calling on small businesses to the F2000 and what wasn't working with small businesses. The pivot came four years after their founding in 2013 when they were close to shutting down the business. It was brought to their attention that enterprises desperately needed the data that AnyRoad supplied and the pivot has been extremely successful. It's also important to note that pivoting is not uncommon with first-time tech founders, but what's important is their commitment to the company.With rapid revenue growth, AnyRoad is increasing its headcount and has to determine the best way to do that as the company doubles in size without ruining its culture. This is the age-old challenge with high-growth companies. Learn more about Jonathan and AnyRoad: https://www.anyroad.com/You can find more information on all our episodes at verticalelevation.com/podcasts, and you can find Carol on Twitter @carolbschultz or LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolbschultz/.