Fabian Geyrhalter / Brand Strategist. Creative Director. Coach. Author. Speaker

Why Most Companies Get Branding Wrong (And How to Fix It)

Fabian Geyrhalter knows how to build brands that last. As a brand strategist and creative executive, he has worked with industry giants like Marriott, Warner Brothers, and Match, and his expertise has been featured in Inc., Forbes, and The Washington Post.

In this episode, Fabian breaks down the true essence of brand strategy, why most companies get it wrong, and how to evolve your brand without losing its soul. We discuss the Jaguar rebrand disaster, the Walmart evolution, and the critical mistake most founders make when naming their company.

Fabian shares his headsmack moment that changed his entire career and offers powerful insights on how brands should position themselves in 2025. Whether you're launching a new brand or rebranding an established one, this episode is packed with actionable branding wisdom.

Key Takeaways:

1. Why brand strategy must come before visual design
2. How to create a brand DNA that stands the test of time
3. The crucial balance between consistency and evolution
4. Strategic naming considerations for long-term success
5. Building a compelling brand atmosphere that connects with customers

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Guest Bio
Fabian Geyrhalter is a renowned brand strategist and creative executive specializing in guiding companies through brand transformations. He has worked with global brands like Marriott, Warner Brothers, and Match, and his expertise has been featured in Forbes, Inc., Entrepreneur, and The Washington Post. His creative work has won over 50 international awards, and all four of his books have become international Amazon bestsellers. Through his consultancy Finien, Fabian helps businesses create branding strategies that accelerate growth and impact.

Paul Povolni, the founder of Voppa Creative, has been a creative leader for over 30 years, with clients around the world. He’s led teams in creating award-winning branding and design as well as equipping his clients to lead with Clarity, Creativity and Culture.

Headsmack Website

Transcript

Paul Povolni
Hey, welcome to the Headsmack podcast. My name is Paul Pavolny and I am excited to have another Misfit with me. Fabian, I'm going to mess up your name. Geyrhalter.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Yep. Wow. Awesome. Very good. Yeah. Cool.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Very good.

Paul Povolni
Good. All right, Fabian Geyrhalter. I am excited to have him with us. He is a brand strategist and creative executive with deep expertise in guiding companies through their brand transformations. He has been sought out by companies such as the Marriott, Warner Brothers, Match, Honeywell, Arojet, and Randstad. His thoughts on branding have appeared in publications like Ink, Forbes, Entrepreneur, and the Washington Post, and his creative direction has won over 50 international awards.

Now all four of his books have become international Amazon bestsellers and go to resources for entrepreneurs and marketers alike. Fabian, how you doing man?

Fabian Geyrhalter
Nice intro, doing well. Thank you. Thanks for having me. It's gonna be fun.

Paul Povolni
Yeah, looking forward to this conversation. If you have any interest in all about branding and brand strategy, you're going to love this conversation because Fabian is an expert in this and he wrote the book on it. He wrote several books on the topic and his content and his wisdom and his insights are going to be amazing for you if you want to build a brand. So Fabian, I want to hear a little bit about your origin story. I love superheroes. I love everything about origin stories to find out.

who you were and how you became who you are now. so share a little bit about your origin story. Obviously you're not from LA and so I want to hear a little bit about that and then also how you kind of got into what you're doing now.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Yeah, no, totally. I'm going to try to keep it fairly brief. So I'm originally from Vienna, Austria. I came to Switzerland to study at Art Center College of Design, which is a design school. I studied communication design, which back in Europe, they called graphic design, communication design, which I love because that's what you do. You communicate through design rather than doing something pretty, which is graphic, right?

So did that, then the campus closed and they gave us the amazing opportunity, why don't you go to the other side of the world and finish your studies in Los Angeles? yeah, that's why I finished my studies right out of school. I became a creative director in a very small pharmaceutical event type company. It wasn't the most glorious of positions in the beginning coming out of school. You're thinking you're gonna do something really like crazy cool.

Paul Povolni
Yeah.

Paul Povolni
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter
It was really crazy cool though, because I got my visa through it. I was able to work in the US, coming from Europe. And I was able to, within three years, build an entire creative team, which is crazy coming out of school. So it ended up being really great. Then I became the creative lead at an interactive agency, where I was overseeing the Acura creative account from the design perspective. So that's the...

Paul Povolni
Wow, wow.

Fabian Geyrhalter
the luxury or the mid-level luxury brand of Honda, right, Acura. And that was cool. And then the minute that I had my green card, I started my company. I'm like, I'm out of here. So there might've been a time before where I was already freelancing, but yeah, my first client was MGM. So very Los Angeles United Artists and working with a lot of movie studios at that time, which was...

Paul Povolni
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni
Yeah.

Paul Povolni
Yeah.

Paul Povolni
Wow.

Fabian Geyrhalter (09:28.6)
really, really fun. And I did everything for everyone, right? I'm like, you know, like the kids six years out of school, I'm like, interactive, sure, print, sure, brand, sure, whatever it is. You know, my first intern was like in my loft studio. like, was just like, it was slowly growing. And then it ended up turning into a small brand agency, which...

Paul Povolni
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni
Right.

Fabian Geyrhalter
which I was running for like a good 12 years. were up to 18 people at some point serving all kinds of clients. But yeah, there's gonna be most probably a head smack moment coming up soon in that story. So that's why I'm gonna have a hard stop right here. So yeah, so that.

Paul Povolni
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, yeah. And I do want to get to that, but I do want to also backtrack a little bit because, you you mentioned you, went to school for, for design and graphic design. How did, how did that, were you a creative kid growing up?

Fabian Geyrhalter
Yeah, you know what, I was a creative kid that as a kid, I was able to draw when I turned into my teens, I was not a great like illustrator. wasn't, you know, that was not my gift. But I was like an idea kid. Like I always liked to come up with concepts and strategies and like design ideas than the execution. I'm like, who's going to do this for me? Right. So that was right. And God, I'm like, I'm going to date myself here, which is okay, because I turned 50 like

Paul Povolni
Ha

Fabian Geyrhalter
four days ago, but I'm like, you know, back in the day, that's when Photoshop came out. That's when like all of these tools came out and it was like perfectly timed. Then suddenly I was capable to study graphic design even without being the hands-on amazing illustrator and drawer and renderer, right? So that enabled me to actually, you know, figure out, you know, ideas to execution.

Paul Povolni
Yeah.

Paul Povolni
Right.

Fabian Geyrhalter
But I'm still, and to this day, I'm more drawn to the strategic part and coming up with the concepts and then the pixel pushing. I'm okay having someone else do it. And I hope Chessy, my creative director, is not listening to this.

Paul Povolni
Right.

Paul Povolni
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So how did you, how did you learn about graphic design? Because, know, for most people, for you, for kids, that's really not part of, you know, what they think. They don't really think about graphic design. They think about art. They think about creativity. They think about creating pretty things, but graphic design or, know, or art with strategy. when did that awareness come to you?

Fabian Geyrhalter
I like the way you said art with strategy because that's really what it is. Listen, Paul, from like age eight on, I was into music and my dad was a musician and I just started collecting records. Like literally with eight, nine years, all I wanted was records, right? Which to this day I'm doing and I've got like, know, like 2000 of them now, but it's like back in the day, a record was

Paul Povolni
Mm-hmm.

Paul Povolni
Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter
50 % graphic and 50 % music, right? Like you have that visual and then what it did to me, it actually branded an artist or a band. And then I knew how the next release, it's gonna have the same logo of the band. It's gonna have a visual that's a, and it's kind of subliminal over like my teenage years. It really taught me about creating conceptual art, creating, you know,

Paul Povolni
Yeah, yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter
strategies that have to go through an entire album. So like a year or two with like different singles that have to all come. It's literally brand architecture, it's brand consistency. It's really funny and I never really thought that much about it. So thanks, Paul. This is really good. This feels good.

Paul Povolni
Right, right.

Right? Right.

Paul Povolni
Well, the reason I, yeah, yeah. Well, and the reason I bring it up, cause I'm, I have a very similar story to yours is, you know, I was a creative kid. I was a creative thinker. was an out of the box thinker. was, you know, kill the sacred cows, you know, questioning things very creative, but I wasn't that great at drawing. And so, you know, as a kid, you know, I was like, you know, my mom would say, well, what are you going to do with your life? You know, how are you going to make a living drawing pictures? Right.

And, you know, I would, I would see other kids in school that were like these amazing, at least in my mind, it was like, that looks like a photograph, you know, it was like, and I would, would be like, I can't draw that well. And it wasn't until I, a teacher recommended, have you ever thought about communication arts? I think they called it then or something, you know, I'm a little older than you, but, you know, and I was like, well, I don't know what that is. You know, they're like, well, they, create the advertising and things like that.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (14:05.67)
And I was able to go to a agency in and spend kind of like a week of job experience, work experience at an agency. And I saw that they took other people's art and they took other people's photographs and they took other people's things and they put it together in a nice way. And I'm like, I think that's what I want to do because I can't draw those pictures. You know, I can't do the art, but I can really kind of.

Fabian Geyrhalter (14:27.15)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Paul Povolni
strategically put that stuff together in a beautiful way. So it's very similar story. So that's why I'm always curious as to where that trigger happened for you.

Fabian Geyrhalter
like that. And you know, what's interesting, and this is kind of its own little head smack moment there. When I when I turned 18, and it was time to figure out like, where does he study? What is he going to do? Right? I wanted to become a snowboarder. I was big into snowboarding. It was my thing, right? It's the kid who just wants to like, I want to do this forever. Right? And the parents are like, not a good idea. Like, that's not a good idea. And I'm like, it's a fantastic idea. And they're like, well, didn't you like graphic design? Isn't that what you want to do? And so

Paul Povolni
Yeah, yeah.

Right, right.

Paul Povolni
Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter
We basically got to this point where we just said, you know what, let's have someone else figure this out for you. And back then, and this was so cool, still blowing my mind, there was a guy in Vienna who was basically a job psychologist. He was basically a guy you went to for two days straight. It was really intense, where he just asked you, it was like gathering insights, right?

He asked you all kinds of questions, did everything from math tests to like physics to like creative tests to, and then in the end he had this chart, right? Two days later and everything from your intelligence quotient to like, it was scary. Like here's an 18 year old who like thinks he rules the world and it's like, this is really who you are. And I'm like, my God. So we sat there, my parents and me and he basically revealed what's going on with this kid, right? Paul, you're not gonna believe this. This was amazing. It's like, he's like,

Paul Povolni
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni
You

Fabian Geyrhalter
I have never in the years that I've done this had a chart that is identical with someone else's chart. And I'm like, God, who's this person, right? The person was an art director in New York who came from Vienna and then he made it to New York and he became an art director. Fast forward three years, I'm a creative director in LA, right? I mean, it's kind of like crazy, right? So that was a pretty cool moment.

Paul Povolni
Yeah.

Paul Povolni
Wow, wow, wow. Yeah, Yeah, yeah. And well, and it's realizing that creativity has many forms as well. And as I mentioned, design or good design is art plus strategy. Design without strategy is art. It's got to have that component of strategy to it.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Exactly, exactly.

Paul Povolni
And so, as you ventured out onto your own, and at what point did you start formulating your own idea around brand strategy? How early on did that start formulating and what were those influences? Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Very late, very late. I was very much brand focused in the sense of execution, right? Design. I loved creating logos. I was very hands on until very, very late in the company formation. And at some point I finally gave it up. But it really didn't happen until I collaborated with someone else on the project. And that person was a brand strategist and she came in and she did the whole thing. And I'm like,

This is half weird, half cool. Like I'm not sure what to do, what to make out of it, right? And then the more I worked with clients afterwards, I'm like, this thing is missing that she did, but I think I can do that too. And I actually think I can do it in a different way, right? So I briefed my team back then to like, let's start formulating our own process, which of course there's nothing proprietary around it. These are all, I mean, maybe there's like 20 % out of a hundred percent of like these exercises that, you

we came up with, but usually this is kind of like a framework, right? And it's more about how you use it, right? And so for me, it started with like a three hour session, right? And then it turned into a four hour session. And, you know, I charged like a couple thousand dollars for it. you know, like now it's like a full day, eight hours, right? We charge $14,000 for it. And it's like me with the entrepreneur or the C-suite in a room and literally within a day.

Paul Povolni
Ryan.

Fabian Geyrhalter
we derive the brand strategy. We figure out the positioning. We figure out how to differentiate. We really figure out where the brand goes. And I like that because as I started working more and more with startups that need to go at the speed of light, they're like, we don't have time for PowerPoint presentations and buy-ins and you tell us the strategy and then we come back. And that's how it used to be. It was like a creative presentation. Here are three ways you can go. Let's meet again in two weeks with more charts.

Paul Povolni
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (18:54.07)
Right? Yeah.

Right. Right.

Fabian Geyrhalter
And that's not how I work. I'm like, come on, like get it out of the person and then make sure it fits correctly into the marketplace, but then let's go, let's just move on. So yeah, so at some point I started doing this and actually that was my key Hetsmack moment of how this whole thing came about because it really changed the way I work, the way what gets me excited.

Paul Povolni
Right, right.

Fabian Geyrhalter
the way I look at projects and outcomes. And so there was a pivotal moment right there that made me work in a certain way.

Paul Povolni
Right. So w you know, when you started, when you, when you became aware of brand strategy, cause it's, almost seems like it's a, a new thing or a, a trendy thing that wasn't talked to. didn't, it doesn't seem like it was talked about as a deliverable, or as a line item or a, part of a proposal, it almost seemed like it's become a new thing. So, so when, for you, when did that

separation happen and what was that early version like and what is the version like now?

Fabian Geyrhalter
Yeah, I it happened about 14 years ago. And it's interesting because when you say that the whole strategy part became kind of a thing, I do have to sadly take a little bit of credit for that because I was on Chris Doe's podcast and it was all about Fabian, you're doing strategy? What does that mean? How does that work? What's brand strategy? And I basically told all of these hundreds of thousands of kids out there that if you're a graphic designer, you too could become a brand strategist.

Paul Povolni (20:27.61)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni
So it's your fault. Yeah. Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter
And now it's like the world is littered with brand strategists. And it's like, it's amazing. Yeah. No, but really what happened is that my agency at the time was going through a pivot. I had to change things. had to basically grow up running the agency. And I hired this guy called David Baker. He's a guy that comes into like smaller creative agencies and he helps them position themselves.

which even though that's what a lot of creative agencies do for clients, that's what, you know, and it was so cool because he came in, he charged back in the day and that was about 15 years ago now, he charged like $10,000 a day. And I'm like, my God, like I hope this is the right thing to do, right? But something really pivotal happened in my mind. So this guy comes in.

Paul Povolni
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (21:23.29)
Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter (21:28.96)
And he's a hero already because he charges $10,000 a day and he sits here, right? And he wrote the books, right? And I'm like, my God, like this guy. So a couple of things happened. A, you trust this guy wholeheartedly, right? Because you're spending a lot of money and he wrote the books. And then you do what he says because of all of that, right? And so I was sitting in this conference room for a full day with him and he interviewed my staff and we go back and forth and we do charts and all of this stuff.

Paul Povolni
Yeah.

Paul Povolni
Right.

Paul Povolni
Right, right, right.

Fabian Geyrhalter (21:58.51)
And then at the end of the day, he basically helped me reposition my agency, which was good, but what I learned the entire time, I'm like, I wanna be like you. I'm like, I know you tell me to do these things, but I wanna do this. I wanna go into people's offices. I wanna charge a good amount of money, create really good strategy that's gonna change their entire future around. And I want to be that leader that can do that. I wanna write the book. And so literally fast forward a year later,

Paul Povolni
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni
Yeah, yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter
I'm launching my first book. I start doing brand strategy workshops in a day and it totally different from him, but like I used his blueprint. And so the money I spent on him was so well that because it really changed. I've done in the last 15 years, I've done 200 plus of these workshops now flying around the world, know, like, you know, seen amazing places and really, really made a huge impact on those companies. And it feels, it feels amazing.

Paul Povolni
Wow. Wow.

Paul Povolni (22:53.1)
Yeah, wow. it's all your fault. So I understand that. Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Not all of it, but I do take credit for some of the fault, which you need to have someone to blame, and usually it's the consultant, and that's what I am, so blame me on this, yes.

Paul Povolni
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I've had Christo on the, the podcast as well. And he, you know, we talked about the kind of the evolution of brand strategy and everything. He didn't blame you. So, so he's, he's not holding you accountable for.

Fabian Geyrhalter (23:16.12)
Well, he's taking the credit. That's what he does. And you know what? He might have talked about brand strategy a long time before me, right? Could easily be, but it was just interesting because here's this guy who was a designer, like everyone who's listening. And suddenly he's like, it's not that difficult. And you can make good money. And everyone's like, what? So.

Paul Povolni
Yeah.

Paul Povolni
What? Yeah. Yeah. So, so, you know, and with everybody saying, yeah, I could do this. I could make good money. Where do you think that strategists that are out there doing it, where are they getting it wrong and where are they getting it right?

Fabian Geyrhalter (23:47.49)
I mean, I think it's so easy to get wrong. look, I I'm still nervous every time I do one of these workshops. I do one today, you know, later, a half day workshop, right? And I'm like, I'm still nervous every time I do it, because I feel like there is, there's a really good amount of pressure on getting it right. If you promise that you can do it in a day or you can do it in a half day or whatever it is, right. And that company is going to change direction.

And that company employs people and there's a future and there's private investment in it. And there's all kinds of private equity. It's not just like, hey, I'm a designer and I think I can have a questionnaire and fill out a couple of points and that I call brand strategy, because it's not. It's like there's emotional intelligence, there's reading the room, there's figuring out like the economy and the competitors and feeling like who is in the room, who's really...

Paul Povolni
Right, right.

Paul Povolni
Right.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Who needs to call the shots? Who should get depromoted? There's so much that needs to come together magically. It's like when a band goes onto a stage, which is ridiculous, right? But I mean, the minute that you're not nervous anymore and you want to really please and you want to read the room, you want to figure out what's going on and do the improvisations and whatever it is, the minute you're not nervous, you're calling it in, everyone knows. Everyone knows. You feel it.

Paul Povolni
Right, right. Right.

Paul Povolni (25:07.65)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, true. Yeah, absolutely. Right.

Fabian Geyrhalter (25:11.84)
Right. So I think with a lot of brand strategists today, they come from the graphic design world, which is a very different kind of thinking. Right. So you and I, we already come from the strategic thinking creative part and not the paint by the numbers creative part or like I can create pretty things. Depends on which school you come from.

Paul Povolni
right?

Paul Povolni
Right, right. Right.

Right. Well, and that is true because it's not just collecting enough information to make something pretty. There's so much depth that goes into a proper strategy. And with having the right strategy, there's so much value to it, even down the road in how you're communicating, how you're presenting, how you're positioning, how like there's so much involved. It's not just let me get enough information to make something pretty for you. And hopefully you'll like it.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Yeah, exactly. It's not a creative brief. We're not building a creative brief. We're building a platform for a brand to completely change, right? It's amazing.

Paul Povolni (26:03.79)
you know, right.

Paul Povolni
Right, right. Well, somebody once said in brand therapy posts, they said that branding shortens the journey from maybe to definitely. What did you mean by that?

Fabian Geyrhalter
Yeah, that somebody is me. So it's basically the whole idea is to get someone to buy into something, right? To get someone to believe in something, to have a joint vision and to share an excitement for your product, for your service, for your brand, right? And so if you have the right brand strategy and you really identify why you exist and why

you will connect with a certain audience. You might not connect with another audience, which is great, but the audience that you're going to connect with, that spark is really what brand strategy is and brand design and all of that. And so that distance is extremely shortened if you figure this out quickly and strategically and you create a blueprint rather than, well, let's try a couple of Google ad campaigns and see what sticks.

Paul Povolni
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (27:23.47)
Yeah, yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter
It's a good way to do it after the fact of like, let's test creative, but you don't test strategy like that, right? Like that is something that really needs to be, it needs to be very emotional, you know?

Paul Povolni
Yeah, love that. so, so, you know, before we continue, one thing that I like to ask, you know, people that are involved with branding and brand strategy in particular, is, know, even the conversation about, know, what is a brand and what is branding and, know, what, is the difference between the two? And, do you have a different definition that you've kind of leaned into that you like right now? Cause mine's constantly evolving. and

Fabian Geyrhalter
Mine too.

Paul Povolni
So what's your current version of the difference between brand and branding?

Fabian Geyrhalter
Okay, well, I have every time I'm asked this question, I have a different answer. So let's see what it could be today. So look, I today, in January 2025, I see, I see a brand being a product or service with a soul, right? And that does not mean that it's like, you know, you know, yoga, you know, crazy, like, it's soul. It's like, no, you're human.

Paul Povolni
Ha ha ha ha.

Fabian Geyrhalter (28:36.59)
There's a personality. It's a personality you can connect with. It's like when you go through your feed of TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X, whatever you do, the brands that you follow yourself, because you want to hear from them, there is no difference in the way that you look at those posts than you look at the posts of your friends. You interact with them, you read them, you're interested. That is a brand. That's soul, right? That there's something there. You opt in for that, right? And branding is the vehicle

Paul Povolni (29:00.75)
Yeah, yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter
to get you to that and to keep that spark alive. So that's really the difference. Branding is what fuels it and brand is the vehicle that connects.

Paul Povolni
Right. And yeah, and that's, that's, that's a great definition. That's, that's one that I haven't heard. And I like that too. You know, the way I usually define it is, know, your brand is what people think and feel about what you say and do. And branding is everything you say and do. yeah, yeah. I mean, it really is because in, 2025, um, everything you do, every interaction, every word, every image, every video, every, uh, if you've got a physical engagement, every.

Fabian Geyrhalter
I like that, I like that, yeah.

Paul Povolni
walk through the door, every approach to the park, all of that stuff is branding, but it's not your brand. so, you know, saying that I have a brand is not, like you have a logo and it's very, very different. And so when it comes to creating a brand, what does, you know, you wrote the book on it, you wrote on building a brand. What, what are some of the, you know, when it comes to launching a brand, what are some of the first things that you start with?

Fabian Geyrhalter
Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Exactly.

Paul Povolni
that you help an organization or a company with? What are some of the first things that you say, okay, here's what we need to start settling to build this foundation of where you're gonna go next.

Fabian Geyrhalter
And a lot of this, it's interesting because it's the simplest of questions in a way, right? But it is complicated because it changes depending on the organization, right? So I had a client call me, a potential client and a former client called me yesterday and he's like, Fabian, we need to rebrand. We want you to do everything. me, you know, like I sent you the check, let's go. And I'm like, hold on, let's talk about this, right? Like why and where does it hurt and what is the, right? So there is a formula.

of how to create, let's say you're starting a company and you have budget and you say, let's go. There's an absolute formula, right? Brand strategy, brand name, logo, and then, you know, all of the brand files and kind of like the style sheet and really figuring out everyone's going to sing the same tune. That's how it usually is done. Most often than not, it's more complicated than that where it, and that's why brand strategy again, is so important to really define what needs to happen.

And I think it's really exciting right now, this day and age where brand, well, not that you probed me on brand and branding, would say branding, right, is evolving in the sense of it's more and more organic, right? Like that idea of seeing these still 400 page style guides sitting on someone's desktop or now on some website that you forgot to log in, right?

Paul Povolni
You

Fabian Geyrhalter
It's not how it works anymore. You still need to have that, but you need to evolve. It might easily be that you set brand colors in January and come July, you feel the need based on the environment and the site guys and how things change and competition coming in that you want to add a tertiary color. You want to suddenly do this element and that's how it should be. Like it's crazy if you stay so rigid for like three years or five years, which quite frankly,

Paul Povolni (32:10.22)
Right, right.

Fabian Geyrhalter
This is what 20 years ago we all used to preach. This is it, you're good for a long time, go. But I mean, in order for you to stay relevant, AKA on social media, as a brand, you need to move quickly. There might be a whole new platform out tomorrow that needs your assets to behave a different way, to be animated, to be... So it changes so dramatically.

Paul Povolni
Right? Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Povolni
Right, right.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Remember when that app came out where it was all about voice and it was all about talking. It was all about like, what was it? Not chat room. was something. You remember, right? All right. We're going to get like, everyone will say it in the comments and we're going to get like, but it was funny because it was this big thing for like six months and then it was gone. And like, I never heard about it, right? Like it's like, but if you're a brand,

Paul Povolni
yeah, yeah, yeah. I totally remember. Now I've forgotten the name of it.

Right, right.

Fabian Geyrhalter (33:08.81)
do do that? You don't even have a voice. You don't even have the people to do that. Like I'm talking a big brand, not a D2C startup brand where the founder is the puppet, right? But like literally. So that's why to answer your question in a long-winded way, you set the standards, but then you empower the teams on the client side to have fun with it, to play with it, to expand upon it. Let's check in in two months from now.

What needs to change? What changed? Do we need to coarser line? That I think is how great brands work these days. And I love being a part of that. I love jumping in like two months later. like, what happened? And sometimes people just go rogue like they always used to do, but sometimes they're really great design elements being added or new. Like, hey, we changed some of our headlines and we think this could become a tagline. Is this future proof? What do you think? And it's like, well, let's talk to the CEO about the vision map. Like where does the company go?

Paul Povolni
Right. Right.

Paul Povolni
Yeah. Yeah.

Right.

Paul Povolni
Right, right, right.

Fabian Geyrhalter (34:05.9)
I think it's future proof. Let's go. Right. So.

Paul Povolni
Right. Right. Right. And that comes from a place of strategy because, know, anytime you bring in a new designer, whether it's a freelancer, whether it's a new hire, they want to put their creative spin on stuff. And so they can quickly break a brand. But if you have a strategy for evolution, you know, and I always kind of use the, idea of, you know, execute, evaluate, evolve, execute, evaluate, evolve. And it kind of cycles around and you've

Fabian Geyrhalter
Yeah.

Paul Povolni
got to constantly be in that cycle, even as a brand, you execute, you evaluate where things are at and all kinds of metrics on that and you evolve and then you execute that and then you evaluate and evolve. And I think a perfect example of that is something that happened recently is even Walmart. What are your thoughts on the Walmart? Now, some people calling it a rebrand. I would call it more of a refresh or an evolution, not a revolution.

Fabian Geyrhalter (34:45.87)
Exactly.

Fabian Geyrhalter
It's like a touch. It's like, poof. Look, this happened during the crazy fires last week here in LA. So the last thing I looked at the stare at the two Walmart logos and like the tiny little nuances. But all I know is that it was a very tiny nuance. think a lot of time what happens is we like to judge logos and how they change based on

Paul Povolni
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni
Right.

Fabian Geyrhalter
our own naive way of seeing that brand. And I say naive, not because we're all idiots, we're all not, but we have no idea what happens inside the company. We have no idea what goals need to be met. We have no idea why these changes are made. We really don't. To the outside, it's just like, is it nicer or is it less nice? Does it feel more useful or not? So we all like to talk about it, but it's all completely useless, our opinions about it in that way because

Paul Povolni
Right.

Paul Povolni
Yeah.

Paul Povolni
It's all subjective, yeah.

Paul Povolni
Right. Right.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Because like you and I know, and a lot of people listening, there's a lot happening in the boardroom. And we don't know why that happens. There was a rebrand that we did where all we did is we filled a shape that was empty with a color. And the color that we used was like 10 % hipper and 10 % brighter than the original color. That was it, right?

Paul Povolni
Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter
and we got paid good money and we did it all in one month, but it was literally, if you just looked at that and you're like, great, so you filled it and you changed the color, that takes me 30 seconds. But that was an international financial institution. They're all around the world, that color. You can't make huge changes. Walmart, what are you gonna do? it, what a missed opportunity? No, you gotta slow changes, just to kind of keep up with the times.

Paul Povolni
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (36:29.08)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni
Yeah.

Paul Povolni
Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter
And there are real reasons, right? There are real reasons because it's not as competitive anymore. It looks stale. Something needs to give. Like the product is usually innovating like crazy, but the brand is falling behind. And that's when people call me. They're like, we're doing so well in product, but we don't even like our brand. It's like we haven't even touched it. Right? And then you need to speed up to get the brand to the level above the product. And then the product catches up, but guess what?

Paul Povolni
Right.

Paul Povolni
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (37:08.82)
Right. Right.

Fabian Geyrhalter (37:10.87)
At some point you got to keep playing that game. And that's why I'm saying it is organic. And I think that's what happened with Walmart. Again, I haven't studied it because there were more important things to do last week.

Paul Povolni (37:20.09)
Right, right, right. Well, and the way I see it too, and I haven't fully looked into strategy and all of that behind it, but from a surface, from a subjective opinion, is what I'm seeing is, and you had mentioned this earlier, is as technology changes, as culture changes, we never thought about app icons before. We never thought about avatars before. We never thought about favicons. We never thought about that stuff when it came to brands.

And so we have to evolve our brand and our branding to match what's happening in culture. And so what I see even with Walmart is, you know, they fattened up the letters to make readability better. It's a cleaned up font, a tighter font, the little star or burst icon. They've fattened that up and tightened it up so it works nicely on apps and smaller and things like that. they're little changes, they're little refreshes, it's a little evolution. It's not a revolution, it's an evolution.

Fabian Geyrhalter
smaller. Yeah.

Yep.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Yep.

Paul Povolni
that is aligning itself where culture is. They've richened the blue. The blue was a kind of a more of a faded blue and they've made that richer. And so now they've got a very clear, strong color palette. And so I think there's value in looking at where a brand can evolve, right? But here's another one that I wanna ask you about is one that didn't have an evolution, that had a revolution and it sparked a lot of controversy. And you probably know where I'm going is Jaguar. What are your thoughts on?

Fabian Geyrhalter
I don't say that because of the question, I say it because of that subject, right? Because it's just, boy, I mean, it has been discussed so much. look, I mean, I actually owned the Jaguar at some point. I mean, there is a lot of legacy and it is really, really, really harsh to just completely eliminate that legacy.

Paul Povolni
Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter
And suddenly you start celebrating all the other ones that do these small touch-ups because they keep it alive, right? With Jaguar, I think the biggest problem, half the problem is yes, you just eliminated the legacy, which for someone like Jaguar is a very, very big deal and most probably not the smartest move. But if you back it up with a campaign that, you know,

Paul Povolni
Right. Right.

Fabian Geyrhalter
car designers can do overnight or I can do in any AI program right now that has absolutely no depth. And it's all about we're going, we're a lifestyle brand now, we're going to be more fashion, we're doing all this stuff. It's like, oh my God, did you miss the mark? And then, I mean, the funniest thing was the weeks after. It's like,

Paul Povolni
Right. Right.

Paul Povolni (39:59.96)
Ryan, Ryan.

Paul Povolni
Brian.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Read the room, read the room. No, read it now, please. no, no, no. How about now? And they're like, no, we got to stand. We got to stick to this. It could have so easily just fizzled out and like we all forget about it. Kind of like a Hollywood, you know, start doing something really bad. And then suddenly two years later, they're in a new movie and everyone's like, I don't even remember. Did they do something bad? You know, they had that opportunity. Look.

Paul Povolni
Hahaha

Paul Povolni
Yeah.

Paul Povolni
Yeah, yeah, Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter
I hope they're right. I hope they're cooking up something that you and I have no idea about, but based on their defenses and everything that they showed coming out of the brand department and the car design department, it's been one ginormous train wreck, car wreck.

Paul Povolni
So what would you advise them based on what you know and just some assumptions, because obviously you weren't in those rooms. You don't know the boards that were put up, the strategy that was discussed and all of that. But what would you tell them for a company like that that looks like it made a mistake? How would you advise them to reset?

Fabian Geyrhalter
I would, two words really, call Fabian. And that's it. Everything else, everything else you got to put the coin in. No, mean, mean, it's, mean, God, I mean, they got so deep into it now, right? That like, you know, after the, after day one, after day two, and there's a whole PR crisis, you know, people that can figure this out. Because at this point, this is no longer a brand problem. This is like so much deeper.

Paul Povolni
What's that website? Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Povolni
Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter
This is like a PR crisis. is, mean, the stock fell, like car sales fell. I mean, everything, it literally, and this is a fantastic point actually, Paul, right? Where we talked about it before, where how important is brand strategy and execution? Well, if your stock price plummets and if your car sales go down like crazy based on the logo, maybe there is a lot of power in brand strategy, right?

Paul Povolni
Right.

Paul Povolni
And you're a laughing stock, yeah.

Paul Povolni
Right. Right.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Because if that would have done differently, if it would have been dealt with differently, if it would have been rolled out differently, maybe what they have is really genius, but the rollout was the problem, right? Maybe that's the case and we don't know that. And for whatever reason, they don't let us in, but most likely it's not that.

Paul Povolni
Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Povolni
Well, and even with the logo, don't, I don't absolutely hate the logo, but I think the logo in the context of everything else and the messaging and what's where they seem to be going with it is what really made the logo even terrible. I don't think the. Yeah. I don't think the logo was a terrible logo. I mean, it feels a little cosmetics, but you know, it, it wasn't terrible. but I think that you're right in the, in the campaign rollout, the messaging, the visuals.

Fabian Geyrhalter
That's exactly right.

Fabian Geyrhalter
It's fine.

Paul Povolni
Everything else can, quickly mess somebody up. And, like you said, the stock went down and the, the, the, the fans of it just were like devastated. They're like, my goodness. I, I dreamt of getting a drag car or I used to have one or whatever. And it's like, I feel like they've, they've, they've killed something precious to me. Yeah. Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter (43:09.74)
Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter (43:13.39)
aspiration is gone. There's no more aspiration. If you're turning into a fashion label type lifestyle brand that happens to make cars, no one trusts you with cars anymore, nor will anyone buy your lifestyle swag. So now what's going on with that brand? I mean, you completely lost your reason for being, right? And it's so sad, right? When we think about the...

Paul Povolni
Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter
You know, I mean, it's a legacy that goes so deep into an entire country and a culture and like a dream that we all bought into. It's like how we said at some point we want to own a Mercedes or at some point this and this. Jaguar is that kind of thing. And they already over the years, I mean, the reason I drove a Jaguar is because they had an entry level model. I think it was an XF or something, right? And I'm like, my God, I can get a Jaguar for the same price of an Audi as Elise. I'm going to get the Jaguar.

Paul Povolni
Right, right.

Paul Povolni
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (44:01.86)
Yeah. Right.

Fabian Geyrhalter
I mean, my wife called me a jag ass after that, but you got a Jaguar and it was tons of fun, but it's like, but now I wouldn't, there's no more aspiration to ever want to get your butt into that type of car, right? Like.

Paul Povolni
Right. Right. So, you know, so these are huge brands that made big mistakes and, and, and I guess Walmart didn't really make a mistake. I think it's a great evolution. I think it's a great refresh. I think it's a, I think it's a great thing. so bringing it down to your, your, more average people, you know, your more regular people, you know, to, to not make similar mistakes to Jaguar. what are some strategy points that you would say,

Here are some things before you do a revolution, not an evolution, Walmart was an evolution, before you do a revolution, here are some things to consider when you're doing a rebrand.

Fabian Geyrhalter (44:58.76)
I think the number one thing is get your team. Look, mean, if you can hire a brand strategist to go through the process, absolutely, right? An outsider help formulate that opinion for you, with you. It's absolutely fantastic. Self-servingly so, of course, but I truly believe that, right? If you can't, just get into a room and really rethink.

what happened over the last months, over the last years, where's the product at, where's the service at, who are we really servicing now, who will we service in the future, who are these people, what do they care about today, how does our brand fit in with them, how does our brand fit in with the competitors while standing out, fitting in, standing out, it's always like this little like, you gotta do both a little bit, right? And then,

Paul Povolni
Yeah, yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter
rewrite your positioning, rewrite who that audience is, why we exist, what our benefits are that we give to our customers. And the big why, it's like, why do we do what we do? What's the fist in the air? And everyone has a fist in the air, right? And for some of them, it's silly and it's not changing the world. Like, we're gonna feed the homeless. It doesn't have to be that. You have to have the fist in the air of like, whatever, quality, that's fist in the air, whatever. There needs to be something that everyone internally and externally feels like.

Paul Povolni
I love that.

Paul Povolni
Right.

Fabian Geyrhalter
That's it. I call it the brand DNA. What's your DNA? And the DNA should not change with any new product launch or with any, like the DNA should remain the same for years and years and years. And once you have that DNA figured out, then you can say, okay, now level set, what do we really need to do? Sometimes it's not even a logo problem.

Paul Povolni
Yeah.

Paul Povolni
Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Sometimes it's a naming problem where you're like, hey, our name is so descriptive of the company. And it was descriptive back when we started it 20 years ago. And that's literally a phone call I had yesterday with a client. It's a naming problem. It's not the design. Sometimes it's just a marketing problem.

Paul Povolni
Wow, yeah.

Paul Povolni
Yeah.

Paul Povolni
Yeah. Yeah. Even Apple became, took away Apple computer and just became Apple because they had to evolve and say, we're not just about computers anymore.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But those decisions are usually made too late. so the problem is communication in companies usually. It's like, here's the marketing department. Here's the sales department. Big line in between the two. No, they should constantly be in communication. And then there's like the PE firm that comes in and says, hey, you got to change your whole identity to be more modern. OK, marketing department, do that.

Paul Povolni
Yeah.

Paul Povolni
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (47:37.71)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter
They're not talking to sales. They're not talking to the CEO about the future vision. you know, like it's all like just quick meetings, quick emails. It's not let's get everyone in the room and really hash this out from all perspectives.

Paul Povolni
Yeah, you said something there that you kind of like said so briefly, but it's so true is looking at where your audience is. And it might not be the audience that you initially started with. And this sometimes could happen with rapid launches. Like, you know, you, you, you, you put it in the market, you test the market and then the market tells you, you know, and, know, sometimes you could even launch a product or even, even branding that you think you understand the audience, but another audience suddenly gravitates to it.

And becomes a primary audience. And that's where you got to do the execute, evaluate, evolve, because you might have launched rapidly, quickly, get it to market, test the market, you know, minimal viable product. And then you find, you know what, we're actually attracting more of this group. And so that's when you've got to be willing to evolve as a brand. And like you said earlier on is so many people, they think that once the brand is set, we're good for 50 years, you know, and.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Totally.

Fabian Geyrhalter (48:37.55)
Yeah. Yep.

Paul Povolni
You're not, you really are not in 2025. are not, um, you, most of what you do is soft, you know, and what I mean by soft, it's, it's pixels. It's changeable. You know, most businesses are soft when it comes to their branding. They don't have signage above the door. They don't have, uh, you know, signage, you know, around a building there, they're virtual, they're international. so changing and evolving is a lot easier when you're soft, when you're pixels.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Exactly.

Fabian Geyrhalter (49:12.28)
Yep.

Paul Povolni
And you've got to keep that in mind.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Absolutely. And you know, I learned it, I learned it the hard way, because I started a product startup a couple of years ago, next to my main gig, it's called ToneOptic, and it's for for record storage, because I'm a record guy, right? And so I created these things. I have a lot of work, I had a problem, I had to fix it for myself. So I assumed a certain target audience, and I created a brand for that.

Paul Povolni
Yeah. Because you have a lot of records to store. Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter
And then suddenly my creative director is putting out this thing and I'm about to approve it. And I'm like, hey, hey, Jesse, the colors are completely different. What are you doing? Like, what's going on? She's like, like, why did you do it? And she's like, I felt like the brand needed it. And I'm like, my God, this is so good. It's like, she literally just made an executive decision, basically saying like, look, like it's evolving. Like there are younger people out there now that like it and there's like,

Paul Povolni
Ha ha ha ha.

Fabian Geyrhalter
we need to suddenly bring in a different color. And that's how quote unquote, the style guy changed that moment. And it's like, that makes sense. I sense it too. Like we, we feel a little stale and we feel like we're it's new audience that needs to. So, but it's hard to do that as a company, as a corporation, right? To get to those moments. So I think that this almost like when you go to a chiropractor, you know, like every three, four months, like that brand chiropractor where it's, it's not surgery. It's just like, what do we need to tweak a little bit just to keep

Paul Povolni
Right?

Paul Povolni
Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter
to keep ahead of the curve. Yeah, get the alignment, exactly.

Paul Povolni
Get your alignment, yeah.

Yeah. So, so, you know, what else would you advise? And I can't believe we're already running out of time here. this has been amazing conversation. what are some other things, you know, as we talk about a refresh, or even as we talk about, you know, launching a brand, which is what your book's about. I definitely encourage everybody to go to Amazon and buy all four of your books. but what are some other things that, you would advise somebody when, they're launching a brand, when they're just starting off?

What are some additional steps that they need to be really mindful of if they're going to be built to last?

Fabian Geyrhalter
I think I hinted at it before, but when it comes to naming, it's one of those things. It's like you're so tempted to give your company a name that describes your product, but your product will pivot. Like, that's a 60%, 70 % chance, right? And like you just said, your target audience will likely shift as well, right? And so if you have a logo,

Paul Povolni
Yeah.

Paul Povolni
Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter
You can do what everyone does and you can update the logo either like, you know, like surgery full on or just chiropractor, right? But you can change your logo. You can't do that to a name. You can't just suddenly like you have to have a new name, which is a huge deal because it's extremely expensive. I mean, now we're talking about legal fees. We're talking about education. We're talking about like SEO. We're talking about everything. If you have a product, you have to redo all the packaging. If you have a service, you have to redo all of your material. It's not a rebrand.

Paul Povolni
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni
right?

Paul Povolni
Right.

Fabian Geyrhalter
visually suddenly becomes a walk in the park when you actually have to change your name, it becomes a huge deal. So if you're a founder and you're starting a company and you're thinking about a name and then you see all of these super weird names out there, like my consultancy is called Finian, right? It's like, what does that mean? Well, I love to tell you, but you have to ask and it's okay because people still remember it. And it's like, there's Tesla and there's Adobe and there's Amazon. And when you think about it, it's like Adobe is a clay hut. Tesla is a different person who invented something, not you, right?

Paul Povolni
Yeah.

Paul Povolni
Hahaha

Fabian Geyrhalter
And like it goes on and on and on. Peloton, no one knows what Peloton is unless you're actually really, really in the scene, right? So it's all of these words, but the words become meaningful because you brand it, right? So much rather go for a name that might be weird in the beginning, but you brand it like Bonvoy by Marriott. I mean, this is crazy. This is a French word for an international.

Paul Povolni
Right.

Fabian Geyrhalter (53:14.7)
rewards program for Marriott Hotels. It's called Bonvoy. It's hard to say, it's hard to like everything, right? But they pushed through it, they branded the heck out of it, and that's what it is now. Instead of calling it something like Member Rewards Plus, that has no soul, and it might change because you do more than member rewards, right? You do member experiences, whatever it is, right? But that would be a huge, huge thing. Just make sure that when you name the company, go so wide.

Paul Povolni
Right. Yeah.

Paul Povolni
Right, right, right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter
with the name that either it's meaningful on like again, the brand DNA level or like a big strategic level, or you can change the meaning as you go. If you need to, you can pivot the meaning, right? But that's so important that like if you get that wrong, it's gonna cost you, you know? The good thing is you can pay me for it. So that's the good thing. So screw it up and call me.

Paul Povolni
Right, right.

Paul Povolni
Right. Right. Right. And, and yeah, yeah. And then call me when you need help. Yeah. And you're, super right. And I think a lot of people, they, they, they angst over the name, having a ton of meaning, but like you said, sometimes you give it the meaning, you know, Apple, you know, it's a, it's a fruit, you know, Google is, is a misspelling, you know, it's, it's a

Fabian Geyrhalter
Yep. Yep.

Paul Povolni
You know, and so, you know, you give it the meaning and you don't have to think that I've got to come up with. And for some people, it doesn't really matter. You can call Bob's electrical services. mean, you know, that's, that's fine. But you know, if you can come. Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter (54:38.84)
But Paul, Paul, might change. Bob's electrical services might at some point have to go to solar or something different. And then they call it electrical and they're not doing electrical. So even that, and you know, if Bob is not around anymore because Bob's dead now, sorry, Bob, rest in peace. But now it's like, now it's like Bill, who's the son who's taking over. Where's Bob? It's, well, he's dead. Well, that's a great story. It's like that, that makes me feel really warm and fuzzy, right?

Paul Povolni
Right, right.

Paul Povolni
Right. Right.

Right, right, right, right. Yeah, I love that. I love that. And so you've got a name, you've settled on name. You know, what's next? The logo?

Fabian Geyrhalter
Well, you created the strategy, you've got the positioning, right? You figured out the audience. You now derive the name. So now you build it on a strong platform and you have all these tools, right? There's a strategy, the name is a branding tool. All of these are tools. Then the logo is next, right? Now you set the logo. And once the logo is done, you create the full on, I call it brand atmosphere, right? So you've got your product or your service in the center and around it is this atmosphere.

Users need to poke through this atmosphere. So right now, if they get to know the Finian slash Fabian brand, they see me with allergy eyes and I look like I haven't slept. And that's my brand. But it's like one part. Hopefully, they're to go to my website and they're going to see other things. And they're like, this is actually good. But you see a trade show, a website, a social media post, or whatever it is. And you poke through it in order to get to the product. So I call it the brand atmosphere. So once you have all of these components,

Paul Povolni
Wow, yeah.

Paul Povolni
Ha ha ha ha.

Fabian Geyrhalter
you start designing a couple of pieces. You start designing, you know, a hang tag or a social media post or an email signature or an E blast or, and you start playing with the colors and the designs and really going back to the brand strategy. How do we need to evoke that love? Like what can we create that actually brings it all together? And then you settle on something and you say, those are, those are the colors. Those are the fonts again, have fun with it.

Paul Povolni
Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter
try to stick to it. If you need to make a change, let's talk and make a change if it's really appropriate and let's keep it organic. But there still needs to be some sort of guardrails, even though the guardrails are further and further away, right? You still can't bounce out of certain guardrails, right? Like it still needs to be your brand, right?

Paul Povolni (56:58.23)
Right, right, right. Well, and, and, and, and that consistency that also develops within those guardrails and that, and that atmosphere, right? Because that augments the power of an impression, you know, when you, when you put something out there, if there's a consistency in voice, in look and feel in everything that you're doing, it just kind of multiplies the impact when it's everywhere consistent. It feels like it's omnipresent when, when you're that focused in.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Yep.

Fabian Geyrhalter
think that's what we fight all the time. It's like, it's like the difference between the fight between, between consistent and still. And it's like, we always have to fight that, right? Because it has to be consistent for me to immediately see, this is that airline, that's that airline, right? And then it has to be modern and exciting enough to be like, it's that airline, and they're cool stuff, and they're moving up.

Paul Povolni
Mm-hmm. Right, right.

Paul Povolni (57:45.54)
Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter (57:54.21)
No pun intended, right? I'm working with Nail Line now, so it's like in my head. But it's like, that's the kind of thing, right? So where is that fine line? And then like I created a campaign yesterday for Nail Line and they're like, wow, we should go to Safe Route. And then the CMO is like, no, no, no, we should go to New Route. And then the designer is like, but it's so different. And then the CMO is like, this is our moment to push the brand up a little further, right? And now we're gonna dance off the disc and then we're gonna dance a new dance.

Paul Povolni
Right. Yeah.

Paul Povolni
Right, right, right.

Fabian Geyrhalter
And that I love, right? That idea of like, okay, we're pushing it little, it's not consistent anymore. Yeah, but it's a new consistent, right? Like, I love that. And it has to happen at some point. And sometimes it's a campaign and sometimes it's a big refresh, but yeah.

Paul Povolni
Yeah.

Paul Povolni
Right, right, right.

Paul Povolni (58:37.85)
Yeah, I love that because, you know, the difference between consistent and stale, there is a fine line. And I would almost say that stale is, never changing, but you can be consistent within these pockets of seasons and say, you know, we, we have now moved into this new season and we are going to be consistent with it in that season. And then as we evolve, then we are consistent within that season.

But, know, it's not consistent. It's not a timeline. It's almost these pockets of seasons that you stay consistent within that season where stale is, well, we created that logo, you know, 50 years ago and this is who we are and this is what we're about and we're not changing anything. And that's when you get stale and irrelevant. And so I love, I love the way you've described.

Fabian Geyrhalter
You know, just to add to that, I think it's really interesting to look at car companies and the way that a car's grill, right, like the front of a car, how it is evolving every season, right? Every time there's a new car coming out, which is every year, usually, right? There are every four or five years, it changes completely, right? But it still has the DNA. There's still something where you can see this is an Audi and this is a Beamer and whatever.

Paul Povolni
Yeah.

Paul Povolni
Yeah, yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter
But usually during those five years, it's just these small incremental updates that still excite people to get the latest model. I think it's a really good analogy to how branding should work. It's this constant evolving.

Paul Povolni
Ryan.

Paul Povolni (01:00:00.46)
Right. Yeah. Constant improvement, constantly constant awareness of the culture, constant awareness of the times, constant awareness of the seasons that allows you to, and competition and technology. mean, you know, we haven't even talked about AI, but you know, just the technology of phones changed everything. The technology of social media changed everything. And so you've got to have your hand on the pulse.

Fabian Geyrhalter (01:00:12.066)
The competition too.

Fabian Geyrhalter (01:00:23.512)
Yep.

Paul Povolni (01:00:27.704)
And if not you, then you need to call Fabian or somebody else that stays in touch with this stuff. Yeah, that's right. Contact Paul or Fabian at paulandfabian.com. Yeah. That's not really, that's not an existing URL, but this has been amazing, man. I'm sure we could talk for another few hours, but I know you've got a heart out. How do people get a hold of you? Who can you help? Who can you not help?

Fabian Geyrhalter (01:00:31.316)
Absolutely. What do mean somebody else? there anyone? Who do you see? There's only the two of us.

Easy. Exactly.

Hahaha

Paul Povolni (01:00:56.842)
And what's the best way to get ahold of you?

Fabian Geyrhalter (01:00:59.234)
Yeah, I think who I can help. We talked about quite a bit, right? It's like, usually I work with companies that go through a transition. So it's like either like a CEO change, CMO change, a change in competition, change in landscape, a PE firm comes in, know, whatever it is. And I hold hands during the entire, you know, like rebrand and transformation of that. It's usually a three month process. That's really at the core of it.

I do help a lot of designers and brand strategists as well. I've got like mentorship, know, opportunities. I've got calls for entrepreneurs to just talk with me for like 15 minutes running by something, you know, by me. So you can go to finian.com, F I N I E N.com or resource hub.finian.com. or hit me up on LinkedIn. I've got a very uncomplicated last name should be, should be walking the park.

Paul Povolni (01:01:48.529)
And I'll put those links in the show notes as well for you to get ahold of Fabian and, and, uh, you know, learn some great stuff. Enjoy his, uh, therapy, his brand therapy on, every Thursday and, is it Tuesday? It's every Tuesday, brand therapy Thursday and enjoy that. Well, man, Fabian, this has been amazing. I appreciate you coming on.

Fabian Geyrhalter (01:02:02.134)
It's thirsty, brand therapy thirsty.

Fabian Geyrhalter (01:02:10.112)
Hey, I appreciate you having me. This was a it was a good talk. It was it was brain therapy talk. That's what it was. It felt great. Yeah, I'm feeling good now.

Paul Povolni (01:02:14.402)
Yes, it was. was. was. Me too. This has been fantastic. Well, you have a great day. Take care.

Fabian Geyrhalter (01:02:20.63)
Absolutely, you too.