Welcome to “Brand Champions,” where we dive deep into the art and science of building unforgettable brands. Join us on Advertising Champions TV as branding gurus share their secrets to creating brand loyalty and driving impact. Discover the strategies behind iconic brand stories and learn how to stand out in a competitive marketplace. Today our hosts, Mike White, spoke with Mike Guerrieri and Zack Hanebrink.
Mike Guerrieri
President & CMO at Vanbrey Media
Website Address: https://www.vanbreymedia.com
Short company description:
We help David compete with Goliath. It’s that simple. Vanbrey Media is a South Florida based marketing agency that levels the playing field for small and medium-size businesses, by producing creative at a Fortune 500 level for a fraction of the price. Our specialty is storytelling.
We connect you with your customer in ways SEO and PPC alone cannot. If you work with an agency that places your media, we’re happy to partner with them providing content, or we can place it for you on all major social platforms, ad display networks and ConnectedTV.
We can produce your TV commercial, radio ad, and social media content. We can write and distribute your blogs and newsletters, design your logo, build your website and more.
Zack Hanebrink
Co Founder and Fractional CMO at HookLead
Website Address: https://www.hooklead.com/
Short company description:
A digital marketing agency for SaaS focused on growth, leadership, and full-funnel performance.
How do you help a brand maintain consistency across multiple channels and platforms?
Guerrieri: We help companies maintain a consistent brand experience at every touchpoint of the customer experience. We go beyond the colors, and messaging and tone, to make sure the receptionist answering the phone and the look and feel of the office, product or service matches the brand promises set forth in the outbound marketing.
Hanebrink:By starting with positioning and keeping it consistent across channels.
What strategies do you use to build and maintain brand loyalty in a competitive market?
Guerrieri: I’m a firm believer marketing only gets you in the door. You have to deliver on the brand promises from the very first customer experience. I can share a story about a bar and restaurant in Miami who delivered on this big time. We only had to get them in the door once and they were hooked.
Hanebrink: Delivering value through the product and communicating and reaffirming the value via marketing communications.
What’s your approach to navigating a brand crisis and rebuilding trust with audiences?
Guerrieri: The first question to ask is ‘did we do the thing that created the brand crisis?’ If we are being unjustly vilified or painted in a bad light, we defend ourselves. If we are guilty of whatever the issue was, be candid, be apologetic, and promise to take corrective action. In my years of crisis comms, I’ve found audiences/customers are pretty forgiving if you’re candid with them.
Hanebrink: First, I slow down and get the facts straight, because the worst crisis moves come from reacting before you know what happened, who it hit, and how bad it really is. Then I own it plainly: what went wrong, what we’re fixing, and a timeline we can actually hit, with no corporate-speak. In SaaS, the people I care about most first are existing customers, since they’re the ones deciding whether to renew and the ones prospects will ask about you. So I get sales and customer success talking to accounts directly, watch for churn risk, and feed what we hear back into the messaging so it speaks to real concerns instead of assumed ones. From there, trust comes back through follow-through, a string of small promises kept rather than one big apology, and marketing stays quiet on the big claims until we’ve earned the right to lean on customer proof again.
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