PODCAST · business
How Brands Are Built
by How Brands Are Built
On How Brands Are Built, branding professionals get into the details of what they do and how they do it. Other podcasts about branding focus on news, opinion, and high-level theory. They can give you a 30,000-foot view of branding; How Brands Are Built is where the rubber meets the road. In each episode, Rob Meyerson, a San Francisco-based brand strategist, interviews other strategists, designers, writers, namers, and researchers to help you understand how brands are really built.
Episodes
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Alex Foss says good research starts with good questions
In this episode of How Brands Are Built, I talk with Alexander Foss about research—why it matters, what makes it valuable, and a few pitfalls to avoid. Alex and I first worked together at Interbrand, where he was on the strategy team before moving more deeply into research and insights. In our...
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Robin Goffman is all in on Designing Brand Identity
On today's episode of How Brands Are Built, host Rob Meyerson of Heirloom speaks with Robin Goffman—brand thinker, design strategist, and founder of Studio RBG—about her career path, her approach to creative work, and her experience designing multiple editions of Designing Brand Identity. Robin...
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The Q&A episode
A few weeks back, on LinkedIn and Instagram, I asked whether anyone had questions about branding, naming, or other topics I might be able to speak to. My plan was to do a Q&A episode—and this is it. On this episode, I answer questions from branding professionals and others about branding, naming,...
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Jacob Cass ran a wildly successful summit
In today's episode of How Brands Are Built, host Rob Meyerson speaks with Jacob Cass, designer, brand strategist, and founder of Just Creative, about his recent venture: the Brand Builders Summit. This innovative, four-day virtual event featured 24 speakers and attracted over 20,000 attendees…
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Alex Center links package design to fashion
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…
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Designing Brand Identity book launch at Noise 13
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...
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The Brand Names Report: A walkthrough and summary
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…
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Fabian Geyrhalter builds and launches successful brands
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...
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Rob Goodman uses content to drive business outcomes
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…
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Season four wrap-up: How brands (and branding professionals) can do good
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…
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Diego Segura goes through the doors that open
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...
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Alina Wheeler has a doppelgänger named Blake Deutsch
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...
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Nirm Shanbhag sees brand architecture from the consumer's perspective
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...
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Emily Heyward builds brands that inspire obsession
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…
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Armin Vit has a little grid in his mind
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...
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Sunny Bonnell reframes your vices as virtues
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...
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Dava Guthmiller makes the invisible visible
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…
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Dr. Jason Chambers explains the origins of racist brands
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,...
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Special episode: Rob on IG Live with Ilya of Studeo
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…
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Special episode: Rob on the JUST Branding Podcast
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...
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Mini episode: David Aaker on game-changing subcategories
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...
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Mini episode: Brands reacting to COVID-19
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...
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Mini episode: Brad Flowers and The Naming Book
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...
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Mini episode: Career advice
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…
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Season three wrap-up: How to build a brand experience
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...
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Denise Lee Yohn fuses brand, business, and culture
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...
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Myra El-Bayoumi doesn't mind blowing up the process
My guest on today's episode is Myra El-Bayoumi, Strategy Director at Character, a branding and design studio with offices in New York and San Francisco. Before Character, Myra held senior strategy positions at Landor, Siegel+Gale, and Interbrand (which is where I met her). Myra also holds an MBA...
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Alan Brew sees corporate narrative as the evolution of positioning
Alan Brew has been in branding since 1985. In this, episode he takes us back to that year to explain how he got into the industry and what he's seen change since then. Along the way, he's worked with clients like Chevron, Elsevier, Tech Data, Royal Bank of Canada, Delta Airlines, and Huawei, as...
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Ana Andjelic helps brands design for social influence
Ana Andjelic is a strategy executive with wide-ranging experience on the agency and client sides. Recent roles include Chief Brand Officer at fashion retailer Rebecca Minkoff and SVP, Global Strategy Director at Havas LuxHub. Past agency experience includes time at Droga5, HUGE, The Barbarian...
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Dennis Hahn makes brand culture by Swarming
Dennis Hahn is Chief Strategy Officer at Liquid Agency, a brand experience, strategy, marketing, and design agency with offices in San Jose, Portland, and New York. Dennis is responsible for the methodologies Liquid uses to address the strategic challenges of clients like John Deere, HP…
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Caren Williams plays creative brain games with clients
Caren Williams and I met in 2012 at Interbrand San Francisco, where she was a Director of Strategy. Caren's since become an independent brand consultant, working with brands like Google, Sunrun, and Sandbox VR. One reason I wanted to talk to Caren is because of her diversity of experience, which...
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Fabian Geyrhalter builds a brand platform in one very long day
Fabian Geyrhalter is the principal and founder of FINIEN, a Los Angeles-based branding agency. Fabian's also a prolific writer; you can find articles he's authored in Forbes, Inc., The Washington Post, Entrepreneur, and Mashable. He's also written two books: How to Launch a Brand, and his latest,...
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Ken Pasternak plots impact versus effort
Today's guest is Ken Pasternak, President of Two by Four, a full service advertising agency based in Chicago. On the episode, however, you'll hear me introduce Ken as President and COO of Marshall Strategy, a San Francisco-based brand identity and strategy firm he cofounded in 2002. A few months...
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Jeremy Miller helps you unlock your team's creative genius
Today's guest is Jeremy Miller, author of the bestselling book, Sticky Branding, and founder of a strategic branding and business development consultancy with the same name: Sticky Branding. One thing that makes Jeremy different from most strategists I've talked to is the way he got into this...
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Season two wrap-up: Five themes for brand positioning
This past season, I had a great time reconnecting with old peers like Miriam Stone, Tim Riches, and Erminio Putignano, as well as getting to talk to some other branding experts I'd previously only known through their writing and speaking engagements: Allen Adamson Gareth Kay Adam Morgan Laura…
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David Aaker got religion on the power of stories
He's been called "The Father of Modern Branding." If you've ever read anything about branding or brand strategy, my guest today requires no introduction. I'm talking to David Aaker, author of over a dozen books and hundreds of articles about marketing and branding, Professor Emeritus at the Haas...
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Tim Riches builds bridges held up by brand pillars
Today's guest is Tim Riches, Group Strategy Director at Principals in Melbourne. I met Tim in Singapore, at FutureBrand. When I joined FutureBrand's strategy team in 2011, Tim was running the Singapore office and serving as Chief Growth Officer for all of Asia Pacific. He left shortly after I...
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Miriam Stone uses the sticky note method
This week's guest is Miriam Stone, an independent strategist who works with agencies around the Bay Area, including lifestyle branding agency Noise 13, where she's Strategy Director. In addition to her brand consulting work, Miriam's helped create and develop brands from inside the organization…
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Allen Adamson thinks Jerry Seinfeld would be a great brand manager
This week's guest is Allen Adamson, Co-founder and Managing Partner of Metaforce, a boutique, hybrid marketing services firm focused on growth strategies. Allen was previously Chairman, North America of Landor Associates, and has written four books: BrandSimple: How the Best Brands Keep it Simple...
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Erminio Putignano connects big ideas and tiny details
Erminio Putignano is founding partner and managing director of PUSH, a brand strategy and design firm based in Melbourne, Australia. He's also an adjunct professor at the School of Economics, Finance, and Marketing at RMIT University. When I met Erminio, we were both working for FutureBrand…
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Adam Morgan asks clients what they hate most about their category
When Adam Morgan wrote Eating the Big Fish: How Challenger Brands Can Compete Against Brand Leaders in 1999, he introduced a new term to the marketing, advertising, and branding worlds: "challenger brand." Avis, with their "When you're only No. 2, you try harder" campaign from the 60s, is the…
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Gareth Kay believes brands should show, not just tell
Gareth Kay believes brands should show, not just tell Gareth Kay is cofounder of Chapter, a San Francisco-based creative studio. Before Chapter, he was Chief Strategy Officer at Goodby Silverstein & Partners, the advertising agency known for work such as 1993's iconic "Got Milk?" campaign for the...
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Laura Ries has six brand positioning principles
The concept of brand positioning was introduced to the marketing and advertising world in the 70s and 80s by Al Ries and Jack Trout in a series of Ad Age articles and a subsequent book titled Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind. (If you haven't read it, Positioning is definitely recommended...
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Marty Neumeier wrote a business thriller
Within the branding community, Marty Neumeier needs no introduction. But just for good measure, here's a quick rundown: - Director of Transformation for the Liquid Agency - Author of The Brand Gap, hailed as one of the best 100 Business Books of All Time - Also wrote Zag: The Number One Strategy…
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Wrapping up season one: Tips for the naming process
Today's episode marks the end of season one, but certainly not the end of this podcast. Plans for season two are already underway, and I'm very excited about some of the guests who've already signed on. But I won't be ready to release those episodes for a little while, so…to make sure you're the...
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Eli Altman started freelance naming at age sixteen
Eli Altman runs A Hundred Monkeys, a naming and branding agency in Berkeley, California. A Hundred Monkeys was founded by Eli's dad, Danny Altman, in 1990. Eli grew up helping his dad come up with name ideas, and the second he was old enough to sound like an adult on the phone, he was taking on...
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Scott Milano does sprints in the morning
Scott Milano is Founder and Managing Director of Tanj, a boutique brand language firm specializing in names, taglines, stories, messaging and voice strategies, and copy. Scott has over 15 years of experience in verbal identity and has worked on names like Scott's worked on some big brand names,...
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Laurel Sutton could talk about linguistics all day
Laurel Sutton is a co-founder of Catchword, a Bay Area naming firm behind names like Asana, Vudu, and many of the activity trackers from Fitbit, like Zip, One, Flex, and Force. She is also the Information Officer for the American Name Society; but Laurel's not only a naming expert. She's also a...
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Jonathan Bell starts with coffee and a sheet of paper
Jonathan Bell is Managing Director of Want Branding, a brand consultancy with offices in Miami, Denver, and New York, and clients like Bose, Royal Caribbean, and Call of Duty. Jonathan has about 30 years of experience in the branding industry, during which he's completed over 800 projects and...
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Amanda Peterson considers CamelCase a crime
On this episode, I spoke with Amanda Peterson, formerly the Head of Naming and Leader of Brand Management at Google. While there, she helped establish Alphabet, Google's parent company, as well as sister companies like Waymo, Alphabet's self-driving car company. Before Google, Amanda headed up...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
On How Brands Are Built, branding professionals get into the details of what they do and how they do it. Other podcasts about branding focus on news, opinion, and high-level theory. They can give you a 30,000-foot view of branding; How Brands Are Built is where the rubber meets the road. In each episode, Rob Meyerson, a San Francisco-based brand strategist, interviews other strategists, designers, writers, namers, and researchers to help you understand how brands are really built.
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How Brands Are Built
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does How Brands Are Built have?
How Brands Are Built currently has 55 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is How Brands Are Built about?
On How Brands Are Built, branding professionals get into the details of what they do and how they do it. Other podcasts about branding focus on news, opinion, and high-level theory. They can give you a 30,000-foot view of branding; How Brands Are Built is where the rubber meets the road. In each...
How often does How Brands Are Built release new episodes?
How Brands Are Built has 55 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to How Brands Are Built?
You can listen to How Brands Are Built on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts How Brands Are Built?
How Brands Are Built is created and hosted by How Brands Are Built.
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