Frank Mackrill / Aussie branding guy (G'day Frank)

Many founders and businesses struggle to clarify what their brand actually stands for, leading to scattered messaging, ineffective visuals, and wasted rebrands.

A clear, single-minded brand strategy not only simplifies decision-making—it creates a brand customers remember, trust, and choose.

In this episode, Frank Mackrill demystifies what strategy actually is and how it directly shapes a winning visual identity. Stick around to learn how to turn your brand from confusing to compelling.

5 Key Takeaways:

• Why strategy isn’t tone, values, or vision—it’s how you plan to win
• The importance of standing out visually in a saturated market
• When (and how) rebranding makes sense
• The power of being a “single-minded” brand
• How to simplify complex brand ideas into something people remember

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GUEST BIO:

Frank Mackrill—aka G’Day Frank—is a Sydney-based brand strategist and identity designer known for his bold use of pink and even bolder branding insights. Founder of G’Day Frank, he helps companies in real estate, tech, and FMCG industries around the globe create memorable brands rooted in clear strategy and standout experiences. With a background in TV production and a no-fluff approach to branding, Frank empowers businesses to clarify who they are and how they win—using one concept at a time.

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

Hey, welcome to the Headsmack podcast. name is Paul Povolni and I'm excited to have another misfit with me. I have G'day Frank with me and it's good to have him on. Frank is an Aussie branding guy from Sydney, Australia with a pension for PINK. His branding business is G'day Frank and works with clients around the world to develop their brand strategy, identity and brand experiences for clients in real estate tech and FMCG related industry. G'day Frank.

Frank (01:19.674)
G'day, Paul, how are you doing?

Paul Povolni (01:21.246)
Doing pretty good, man. The welcome is built into the name. And so that makes it a lot easier. So, so I appreciate you being on, man. I know it's a little early for you on the other side of the planet. And so I appreciate you being on this earlier. You're a morning person.

Frank (01:28.096)
It is that salutation helps.

Frank (01:40.846)
Oh, I wouldn't say so I have to be because I've got two little kids, but probably more that little night out at the moment, probably to my detriment as well having two kids that wake up at like 6am. So yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:42.732)
yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:51.531)
man, yeah, I had an Aussie on here and he's like, yeah, I'm up at 4am. I'm like, 4 o'clock only comes, 4 o'clock comes once a day for me.

Frank (01:56.846)
No, that's definitely definitely. Yeah, now I've been working at waking up for a couple of meetings with some Americans at 630 and even that is pushing it for me. Yeah.

Paul Povolni (02:07.077)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Four o'clock, man. It's either bedtime or dead time. I did. It's not a thing for me. So g'day, Frank. So do you have to teach Americans how to say g'day the proper way? Do they try and say it and they just mess it up?

Frank (02:10.88)
Yeah, that's it. Yeah, yeah.

Frank (02:22.414)
they're pretty good with it. It's usually those from the Asian, continents or continent, and areas that they usually use. They usually say G day and it's like, well, we'll get, we'll get there. It's all right. Yeah, exactly. Or like, it's funny. Like you can tell someone's a bot when they send you an email and it starts with, hi G day or hi G day. And it's like, no, that's not my first name. Like, yeah.

Paul Povolni (02:34.015)
That's a totally different thing. Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Povolni (02:45.855)
That's funny. Yeah. I tell people that you, if you want to make it sound right, you probably got to do it in either a Hispanic or Italian accent and say the word gray. And, it gets, it gets a pretty close to the Australian way of saying it. don't say good day, which most people try and say it, but yeah, man, I appreciate you being on.

Frank (02:59.701)
Yeah.

Frank (03:07.692)
Yeah, thank you. Yeah. Just to finish on that little point, the best one is people say have a good day and it's like, no, no, no. Again, that's not how we use it. No, no, you're from originally from Australia. So you get it, but it's just, yeah, it's fun.

Paul Povolni (03:16.457)
Hahaha!

Yeah.

Yeah, you gotta say, g'day, g'day. gotta, forget the D. Yeah, that's why I say, say the word gray, but in an Italian accent or a Hispanic accent and you'll get it right. G'day, g'day, g'day, g'day. Well, man, I'm excited to have you on, man. And we have got quite the colors going here. I have got the blue purple, you have got the pink and so, totally opposite. So what's the story behind the pink?

Frank (03:25.912)
Just start with it. Yeah.

Frank (03:30.53)
Yeah. Gay. Gay. Yeah.

Frank (03:44.951)
Yeah.

Frank (03:48.938)
funny thing is I used to have that kind of blue in my colors, in terms of my business colors. So yeah, the pink, and it's funny since starting to use pink, I found some other guys, especially in branding that do use pink. I know you had Jacob Cass on the show and he's, he's like the, like not the polar opposite. He's like, he's, he's a, what do you call it? A synonym for my brand in a sense, he's so similar in terms of his path, but slightly different, obviously, but,

Paul Povolni (04:11.775)
Yeah, yeah.

Frank (04:17.996)
Yeah, pink was just picked out of nowhere other than to say pink for girls, blue for boys. So I had this like Navy kind of blue and this pink. And then it just got to the point where they were clashing and I said, look, well, I'm just going to just hero one, make branding simpler, try and walk the walk. And, pink's standing it out as the, hero color in it. And especially the stereotypical thing for a guy is not using pink. So many people are against pink.

Paul Povolni (04:36.328)
Yeah.

Frank (04:46.484)
like I've leaned into it a bit like a bowerbird but for pink rather than blue. So yeah that's kind of where it's come from.

Paul Povolni (04:50.719)
So tell me a little bit about your origin story. Usually I like to start off just learning a little bit more about you, kind of where you got started, and then you can go as far back as you want to go. But tell me a little bit about Frank. And that's not, that's your middle name. That's not even your first name, but.

Frank (05:07.49)
Yeah. Yeah. So that's probably the first start. think I could start with my actual name is Reagan. I use Frank because Reagan is a bit hard to spell, remember pronounced. I get a lot of Regans and weird spelling. I thought, you know, let's just make it easier, just like a brand should be and go with my middle name. Both my grandfathers were named Frank from my father and mother's side. So I thought it was nice fitting kind of tribute to them. They're no longer with me and you know, that's how the business started is that.

Paul Povolni (05:23.23)
Yeah.

Frank (05:36.322)
But yeah, origin story wise, I am no superhero. I don't attest to be my origin as a designer. Let's say started. I could go all the way back to being a kid, like many kids in the nineties drawing Ninja Turtles. And my grandparents thinking I was a prodigy because I knew the names Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello and Michelangelo. And my mom's like, no, mom, they're just turtles. He's no genius. He's no genius.

Paul Povolni (05:51.046)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (05:56.447)
Hahaha.

Paul Povolni (06:01.503)
He's no renaissance man.

Frank (06:05.472)
He's no Renaissance master. and so that was the kind of it. And then, you know, going through school, math, sciences, English never really tickled my fancy. Like most designers, art is typically the thing that a lot of creative minded sort of kids gravitate towards. And, it probably wasn't until maybe year eight or nine, so eighth or ninth grade that I was introduced to Photoshop. And this was probably Photoshop version.

six, maybe back in 2003. And yeah, the art teacher introduced our class to it. And I was like, this is so much better than Microsoft Paint. Because we're all just like dicking with it in like computer science classes or whatever. And yeah, I took took to it like a duck to water just trying to learn it and learn it and learn it fast forward like 20 years later, I still don't know the ins and outs of Photoshop, like some guy like picks imperfect.

Paul Povolni (06:34.335)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (06:42.847)
You

Paul Povolni (06:57.343)
I don't think anybody does. Yeah.

Frank (07:02.432)
No, exactly. Yeah. I'm definitely no picks imperfect on YouTube. but yeah, it was just this fascination with design and graphics. And I also gravitated towards, advertising and magazines and things like that. So it was like Photoshopping, magazine covers and stuff like that, just in spare time for just shits and giggles and maybe for some school projects. my dad was like getting towards the end of school. He was like, mate, what are you going to do?

After this, you're like, obviously we want you to go to university. You've got all the, you know, uh, opportunity available to you. And I was like, well, I'd like to do like design, like graphic design kind of thing. He's like, okay, really? And I was like looking at all these kind of TAFE colleges, which isn't university. It's like another, uh, version, um, which is a little bit cheaper. And my dad was like, look, if, if you go to a job interview and you get two people that are doing the exact same thing, uh, and you're one of them and you have a university degree.

Paul Povolni (07:47.295)
Thank

Frank (08:01.068)
And they have a TAFE degree. You might get a hiring person that says, well, they've committed to four years doing university. So that might be the person. So if you're comparing apples with apples, and there's just that one little thing that might stand out, the university degree might help you. So I was kind of encouraged. Yeah. Go do a uni degree. did that for four years did bachelor design, visual communication, topped my year graduated with a Dean's award and whatever it was. and, and that got me a job into.

Paul Povolni (08:27.022)
Right. Wow. Okay, yeah.

Frank (08:30.062)
TV production, but it wasn't as a producer of TV. was still a designer working in a development department of coming up with new TV shows and pitching them to TV networks here in Australia and even overseas into different markets. So that was fun, like seven years and met a whole range of different people and

Paul Povolni (08:49.343)
Just going back a little bit before you talk about your own business. So when did you learn about the existence of graphic design? Because, know, as a creative kid, know, being artsy and doodling Ninja Turtles, you know, that's one thing, that's art, right?

Frank (08:55.502)
met my wife there, we got married, had a kid and then I said, well, I want to start my own business. So back in 2018, well, yeah, yeah. Yep.

Paul Povolni (09:18.587)
And design is strategic art. when did you learn about the difference and like what captured your attention towards that?

Frank (09:25.282)
Yeah, probably like I mentioned before of the magazines and advertising, like I'm a total sucker for advertising, like it works on me like too well. Like even just a Facebook ad. yeah, like a Facebook ad, it'll just like, yeah, I want that. But yeah, probably that kind of thing and understanding layout and imagery and type and everything kind of coming together. I found that much more interesting than drawing because my

Paul Povolni (09:31.655)
Yeah, yeah. You better stay off TikTok,

Paul Povolni (09:40.499)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (09:53.939)
Yeah.

Frank (09:54.22)
drawing and painting just totally sucked by the time I was in high school. Like I just, I never got past that Ninja Turtle drawing as a five year old kid. And so that kind of tickled my fancy, guess. And again, with advertising, photo shoots and things like that, that just were really cool to look at in my mind. I still, you know, I still like watching advertising, like good ads and spot the crap ones, but

Paul Povolni (10:01.177)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (10:19.955)
Yeah.

Frank (10:22.956)
That was kind of where I wanted to maybe go with it. at some point, like my thought in my mind, if I was to become a graphic designer and knowing what that was, I probably didn't know exactly the term, maybe I might've been taught it in, in high school. just don't remember the exact inception moment of when graphic design really became apparent. But, you know, the kind of lane way where you go was probably working like an ad agency or something. Like if I wanted to do these things, I'd probably need to work in an ad agency.

Paul Povolni (10:32.639)
Right, right. Yeah.

Frank (10:53.07)
And like that was the port of call after finishing uni was like sending out a resume and some kind of portfolio work to all these ad agencies. And I nearly got accepted into ad school here in Australia, which is like, you know, teaching people how to do copywriting and all that kind of stuff for ads and missed out by one person was slightly better than me. And so it was like the bees dick away. I could have been working in it still today and could be a whole different story. But yeah, that's probably the reason that got me into it. And

Paul Povolni (10:53.402)
Yeah.

Frank (11:22.968)
having that eye for layout and typography and things like that. think probably, yeah, was the starting point.

Paul Povolni (11:29.621)
Yeah, and so then you launched out on your own. You're heading into that story. So what made you decide to launch out on your own?

Frank (11:37.294)
Uh, I think I got to the point where we'd had our, uh, first kid and, um, uh, I'd seen my dad work for himself for many, many years, like nearly his whole life. My whole life I'd seen him work for himself as a contractor, but he was in a completely different industry. He worked in the music industry. He was a tour promoter, uh, worked for two tour promoters. And then before that was a band kind of tour manager for the band Genesis and Phil Collins.

like really big kind of acts. and, know, would work with, you know, in Australia, if it was the Rolling Stones or Elton John, or kind of pick a name and probably they, if they came to Australia, he worked with them. and seeing him kind of work from home and, know, go away on tour, obviously, but still working from home, having that diligence of a family life and things like that. I like, that's the kind of blueprint. And I was starting to find people, you know, on Instagram, like looking around.

Paul Povolni (12:05.969)
Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (12:30.984)
Yeah, yeah.

Frank (12:35.116)
that had kind of, guess, a freelance business or like a solo kind of business where they, you know, work from home or wherever, and was able to do this with people from around the world. And now that, you know, zoom and Skype was like available to do video calls and things, I was like, this, this could be the time. And I've always wanted to do my own thing. I didn't want to work for somebody, I think for the rest of my life kind of thing.

Paul Povolni (12:47.506)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Frank (13:00.846)
I thought, maybe this is the opportunity and started like buying books and watching people on YouTube and all this kind of stuff to kind of get myself up to snuff with business rather than just design. I knew I had the design jobs. was just kind of, okay, well, how do I charge for things? How do I run this business? How do I support my family? Yeah. So that was kind of the idea. Yeah. 2017 and then quit 2018.

Paul Povolni (13:10.887)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (13:17.253)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (13:28.039)
Wow. And so you launched the business and, know, straight from the get-go, you were like thriving and doing amazing and just bringing in clients, right?

Frank (13:36.864)
Yeah. I mean, luckily, very luckily. It's not the story that everybody has, obviously, that goes out and does this. And they might do it a different way where they have a little bit of moonlighting, where they do it on the side while still working full-time job. I kind of went cold turkey and just went, I'm quitting. But I did it with a safety net and kept my employer as a client. So I said, look, I want to go and do my own thing. If you'd still like me to do this stuff for you, I'll do it for this rate.

Paul Povolni (13:43.486)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (13:54.461)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Frank (14:06.478)
and I'll commit to doing as much as I have been in here, but I want to be able to do work for other people. It doesn't need to be in this industry. If you, I'm sure you'd probably not want me to work with your competitors and I'm fine with that. but I want to do this. Would you be interested in seeing how this goes for let's say 12 months and we'll sign a contract and I'll say goodbye. And in a weird kind of way, so it's like goodbye, but not forever. And that, yeah, that gave a very good platform to work from.

Paul Povolni (14:30.574)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Frank (14:36.674)
and then it was just a matter of hitting up people I knew and just slowly getting a name out there and it, it worked. Yeah. Luckily.

Paul Povolni (14:37.203)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (14:45.916)
Yeah. Well, now you talk a lot about branding. So when did the transition for you happen from, because they said you got interested by Assean advertising. When did the interest in branding come about for you?

Frank (15:01.184)
Yeah. So look, in my role at the, in the TV production space, it was pretty much branding. was coming up with an identity for a new show. you know, my producers would come up with the name and the whole kind of plot behind it. And was a lot of the time it was for reality shows and, you know, unscripted TV. And it was coming up with like a pitch deck, but not just like a PowerPoint. was like a beautiful brochure that they could go in and really sell it with tits and feathers and everything.

Paul Povolni (15:07.934)
Okay.

Frank (15:30.254)
And I punched out, I reckon about 500 of them over seven years. Like it was a lot of stuff. And a lot of it was duplicate stuff. Same ideas pitched over and over. I can't tell you how many times we tried to pitch a certain show. Um, but, uh, yeah, it was a lot of documents, um, that were made and, even other bits and pieces that we, did along the way, even, you know, working with.

Paul Povolni (15:35.757)
Wow. Wow. Yeah.

Paul Povolni (15:42.437)
You

Frank (15:55.34)
shows that were on air and, you know, doing livery across the side of an A320 aircraft up in Asia for Asia's Got Talent or the Asian version of The Apprentice. So yeah, some cool stuff that we did and, you know, working with celebrities and all the rest of it. But so that was, yeah, that was kind of design. So it was doing logos, it was doing typography, was doing colors and kind of tone and feel and all the rest of it. So the visual aspect, especially.

Paul Povolni (16:02.299)
wow. Yeah, yeah.

Frank (16:24.974)
Um, and then I thought, well, like I could do this for maybe other businesses, like every business needs a logo. Every business needs colors and type and all the rest of it. And yeah, so I'm learning more about branding just, you know, in my own time and through the role that I was still working in. And then, uh, I was like, well, could, yeah, could definitely do brand identities. Like this could be a thing. This is like visual identities. And then started to learn about, you know, messaging and then this word strategy started creeping up in that kind of research.

Paul Povolni (16:31.943)
Right, right, right.

Frank (16:54.498)
But it wasn't until I started doing the business that strategy became in became a part of the fold. So yeah, that's where kind of the branding idea came from. And the whole business, good day, Frank wasn't to be a graphic designer. was to be a branding services business.

Paul Povolni (17:11.249)
What was, you know, once you started launching into, into your own business and then you, you mentioned, you know, launching into talking about strategy. What was the first.

Lesson that you learned about brand strategy that changed everything for you and how you did business.

Frank (17:26.51)
I searched and searched and searched for an answer that was right to me. And this is a really hard thing about strategy in a sense that it should be very simple, nobody can agree on what it is and what should it involve and what the output should be. And so this word strategy and becoming a brand strategist and you can make 10 K by just using your thinking was very attractive through a very novice.

Paul Povolni (17:38.239)
You

Paul Povolni (17:48.927)
Okay.

Frank (17:54.232)
person entering the space and I make no admission that I was thinking it as total bullshit, but it got to the point where I was like, logically thinking this isn't it. This doesn't feel right. A tone of voice, your messaging, your purpose and your vision and your values. That's not a strategy because inherently I have those things without being strategic as a person.

And even my brand identity is more to me than just how I look. It's how I sound is the things I say, the purpose that is either realized or unrealized when I wake up and roll out of bed. And I have certain values and traits and, you know, morals and the rest of it. So that to me, like became this identity. So it was like, well, what's the strategy then? Like what, like, if I think about it in like war planning strategy is not how we feel and how we communicate. It's.

Paul Povolni (18:38.602)
Yeah.

Frank (18:46.848)
It's how we plan to win. And it took until I reckon only two or three years ago, probably three years ago now, that I came across a marketing professor at the time. He's now not a professor, I don't think, but his name's Mark Ritson. And he put out a few articles that he does as a contributor to marketing week, outlining this is what strategy is. Whether or not you call it marketing strategy or brand strategy, this is it. This is how a brand

Paul Povolni (19:12.25)
Yeah. Yeah.

Frank (19:16.728)
can win. And you do it with these steps of market orientation, research, reviewing what data you have to work with, and then looking at segmentation, looking at your targeting, the position and then your objectives and that strategy. Anything beyond that is tactic stuff. That is something that you can either have set and forget like your branding, which probably shouldn't change for 10 years or more, if not longer, and your marketing pricing, placement, product, product and promotion.

Paul Povolni (19:31.919)
Yeah.

Frank (19:46.67)
And once I got that, I was like, this is, this is what I've been missing. And that was, that was the light bulb head smack moment, where it was like, dude, this is strategy. This, this is what I've been looking for. Fantastic. I'm fine now.

Paul Povolni (19:51.961)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. And so, so when you approach a client or a client approaches you, and you need to help them with that strategy, what's the first thing that you try and, they might have the right ideas. might have the wrong ideas.

when it comes to strategy or they might have no idea. They're like, I want a cool logo. Make it cool. Make it like my competitor. So what's some of the first things that you start talking to them about that just kind of gets them aligned in the right direction when it comes to a brand strategy?

Frank (20:21.624)
Yeah. Yeah, that's it. Make it good. Yeah. Yeah.

Frank (20:37.614)
first is like, what's what's what working or what's not working really, you know, what could be better? What what what do we want to be doing better here? And then kind of figuring out is this something I can help you with? That's kind of the first protocol. The second is, who's your target? That's really where strategy comes on, like, who are you trying to target? And what with what do you have to work with that is going to solve that person's problem? And that's market orientation.

Paul Povolni (20:48.959)
I'm

Frank (21:04.238)
Um, and then as a result, say, okay, well, if you've got, can fill this gap of, of helping somebody, it'd be at a product, be at a service. Um, who's going to need it, who are all the different people that can need it and what situations can they need it? Um, or what situations would they think of buying this and needing this? And that's segmentation and another thing called category entry points. And then that leads into, okay, well, who can we use our budget to target?

Great. It's this particular person or this particular person, or maybe you want to mass market. It depends on where you are. If you're a startup or you're bit further down the line. And then once we've got that down on paper, if it hasn't been on paper with them already, some clients are good. They have all this stuff and it's like, fantastic. We don't really need to do anything different. We just need to do more of the same. That's fine. We just need to tick the box and say good.

Paul Povolni (21:54.779)
Yeah.

Frank (21:57.59)
We covered it then we can do the fun stuff. can do the marketing, you can do the branding, you can do the repackaging of your stuff if it needs it. If you want to change your logo, do you really need to change the logo? Could we just change the messaging maybe? But yeah, like you kind of alluded to, maybe 80 % of people go into branding conversations saying, we don't like our branding. We don't like how we look. We don't like how we sound. And it's more the aesthetic kind of things rather than looking at the internal.

Paul Povolni (22:18.998)
Right,

Frank (22:25.454)
And so the conversation is like, yes, we could do that. We can absolutely do it. Yes. Your logo is probably a bit shit. Um, but we want to make sure that if we're to do this, it's going to be worth it to you. And we're going to make sure that it aligns with everything else you're doing and aligns with who you want to help. Cause if it does, and then it's just making something look pretty and you're going to like it, but your customer is probably not going to pay attention to it. Give two craps about it. And you've just, you know, wasted 10, 20, 30, 40, however many thousand dollars.

you've invested into this. So we want to try and get it as good as possible. And again, at the end of the day, strategy isn't, isn't predicting the future. You know, you'd like to think it is you could blow smoke up your ass and say, yeah, we predict the future. But it's a hypothetical. It always has been a hypothetical and it is hard to measure brand success compared to, you know, marketing outcomes in terms of measuring an ad or anything, but you know, long-term, this is what if every brick.

Paul Povolni (22:57.449)
Right.

Frank (23:23.522)
business and brand you buy into that has successfully made you buy them time and time again has done all this stuff. Why are you any different? That is what I keep coming back to in terms of a point to say this, this stuff matters and you can't discount it as much as you want to. Yes, it's the first thing off the chopping block that you want to do. You want to delete and take off your, balance sheet, but you know, this is a customer's not going to know you exist unless you, you are there in front of them. So this stuff matters.

Paul Povolni (23:32.291)
Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Povolni (23:51.403)
Yeah. And so with the strategy, you know, you've taken them down that path. How, how does strategy inform visuals? Cause we've seen a lot of businesses lately, it seems like everybody's rebranding. And we've seen some successful rebrands and we've seen some unsuccessful rebrands. So, so how does the relationship between the strategy work that you've talked about

Frank (24:06.578)
huh.

Paul Povolni (24:16.319)
How does that translate into visuals and in a good way? And how, how, how do you know when it's wrong?

Frank (24:23.002)
the customer will tell you if it's wrong. That's the straight up answer. Not just marketing people on LinkedIn, but yeah, the customer tell you it's wrong because they won't buy. They'll stop buying. Jaguar might be an example of that depending on how things go in the next few years of rebranding and completely about facing their current target market in search of a new one. But in terms of your strategy, this is the kind of weird one in terms of,

Paul Povolni (24:24.942)
Hahaha!

Paul Povolni (24:32.158)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (24:41.215)
Right.

Frank (24:50.238)
saying, how does the strategy influence visuals? If the visual could always be anything it wanted to be, because it can, because if you go to me or you go, if someone goes to you, Paul, and someone goes to somebody else, they're going to get three different visual outputs based on what we bring to the table. And I guess that's a point to say that if you come to me, this is what you're probably going to get in terms of a, a style that either I have or, an experience that I have that brings my kind of vision to it.

And that's why you're hiring me specifically, rather than somebody else. If you're working with a team, then it's a little bit of a different sort of situation again. But again, if you went to Landoor and Pentagram, again, you're still going to get two probably different outcomes. If they were the same, might be coincidental, who knows. But in terms of that linear process from strategy to visual execution, and even messaging and audio branding and the rest of it.

Paul Povolni (25:21.472)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (25:35.84)
Yeah, yeah.

Frank (25:46.062)
you know, if, the strategy is a very simple idea and can be extrapolated into every other touch point possible, that's, that's the kind of blueprint blueprint that you want, I think, at least. if you put the strategy at the center saying this is who we are, what we believe this is kind of core idea that sums up the whole brand, very simply that the receptionist can understand it all the way to the CEO and everyone in between in terms of the marketing agency or the customer at least.

sees it in some way, shape or form, depending on the situation that's helpful. but you know, if the brand is at the end of the day, trying to fit other criteria, not just the strategy to say, is who we are. This is what we believe. This is how we want to position ourselves against the competition. You know, based on that last point, you know, visual might just be as simple as one competitor is using yellow. One competitor is using green. One competitor is using red. We're going to use blue.

Paul Povolni (26:20.223)
Yeah, yeah.

Frank (26:44.098)
That is as strategic as you can get on a very simple level. Again, strategy doesn't need to be exceptionally complex. It needs to be exceptionally simple in that, you know, we're just making decisions to make sure that a customer remembers us and thinks of us and then goes and buys us if we're available. That to me is the end all be all. And if you're making these strategic decisions along the way in visuals, in messaging,

Paul Povolni (27:03.931)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Frank (27:13.934)
to make you stand out, make you separate from the competition, to maybe position you against somebody else. Like Avis, you know, famously did saying, we do, we try harder because we're number two. things like that, that, that informs this idea of who we are, in that external, communication, be it visual, be it messaging, be it the vibe, I don't know. Like, it really depends on what someone's experiencing.

Paul Povolni (27:34.303)
Yeah, yeah. And so you had recently posted on, I think it's a puppy, the drink company is a puppy. Yeah. And so for, know, for some, for somebody that comes and says, well, does, does design matter? Does visual strategy matter?

Frank (27:52.62)
Yes. Yes. Yeah, Poppy. Yep.

Paul Povolni (28:03.603)
You know, of course that's a good, good example. And like you mentioned, Jaguar will. Well, it'll be a good example in a couple of years. It's too soon to tell. so what do you tell somebody that says, well, how does visual brand strategy make a difference? How do you, do you, what do you tell them?

Frank (28:21.774)
How do you quantify it? Yeah. Again, without testing, you don't know. And again, it depends on the market of everything else around you. And I'd suggest that this, that Poppy, the example here is Poppy's potentially being acquired by Pepsi for $1.5 billion. And that's like the headline story. Yes. Packaging matters because this is what Poppy used to look like. It used to be called mother and it was in this very sort of, um, inane brand that you could easily pass by on the shelf and think it was just rosewater.

and it turned into this very vibrant, engaging can that at the time when it was introduced on the shelf, there was nothing like it. And this category of, I don't know what it's called, but it's like adding either prebiotics or probiotics or some other benefit to it's like a functional soda. think that's what they call them. it hadn't really exploded yet. I think Poppy was just at that forefront of being there at the right place at the right time.

Paul Povolni (28:52.33)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (28:59.775)
Right.

Frank (29:20.534)
And then having enough investment because they had several stages of investment from different angel investors and things and VC firms that catapulted their ability to be available at tremendous scale in as many places as possible across the U S that allowed them to be this brand that is just everywhere and becomes ubiquitous in the market to say that this is the leader because they are everywhere. had the most shelf space. They have the most identifiable brand.

that you can see in this space compared to the less better options of Pepsi and Coca-Cola and everything, which is funny that Pepsi acquires them. But yeah, in terms of the visual thing, to say to somebody, well, this is the hallmark example. It's like, yes, it's great, but there is a tremendous amount of other different factors that are going on, including the visual, the packaging, that is a win.

Paul Povolni (30:00.183)
Right.

Paul Povolni (30:17.125)
Right.

Frank (30:19.554)
Because it's, it's, it's silly to say, and I didn't include this in the original post until I edited it. Cause I know a lot of people were like, are you telling me it was just the packaging and the rebrand and the name itself? It's like, no, you can't be that silly to think that that's the only reason why this succeeded. it's gotta be, it's always gotta be a collection of marketing, branding efforts, and some sort of strategy behind, also sales distribution, know, just getting into these big stores like a Walmart or whatever.

Paul Povolni (30:35.135)
Right, right, right.

Paul Povolni (30:40.447)
Thank you.

Frank (30:49.806)
You know, it needs to be done. It's not just the packaging loan. It, it could help get you that, next round of funding. It could help you get into that shelf because it stands out from all the other competitors and, know, supermarkets are looking for different things on the shelf. don't want duplicates of the same stuff over and over because there's such a saturation. So yeah, there's by all means something that can be done there in terms of visual to stand out in addition to product function.

Paul Povolni (31:09.597)
Right, Right, right, right.

Frank (31:19.756)
or benefit or service benefit or function. So yeah, again, I'm not, yeah, again, silly to think that visual alone is going to do the job, but if you don't have it and it looks like crap, no one wants to pick that thing up off the shelf. It's not going to get your attention. So at end of the day, know, it does take a leap of faith to go from awareness to consideration to then, you know, actually buying the thing. And if awareness...

Paul Povolni (31:46.771)
Right,

Frank (31:48.302)
is predicated on the visual predicated on the promotion and everything. then consideration is based on the product benefit or feature or whatever. Um, great. Or if it's just this one, I like the look of this one. Nice. I want to be seen with this one. So instead of a Voss water, I want to be seen with a liquid death more at a concert. You know, which one is going to tickle my fancy. So like again, there's no hard and fast rule, think in saying that the visual is

Paul Povolni (32:16.383)
Right, Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Right.

Frank (32:18.25)
is 100 % foolproof in terms of its impact. You can go into it, make a nice visual. It looks appealing, but no one still buys it because the product sucks. And it can't polish a turd kind of thing. know, it's, it's one of those kind of, you know, things to not rely on. the same with anything, you know, even if you're cheaper price, it doesn't mean that people will buy.

Paul Povolni (32:36.223)
Hahaha.

Frank (32:47.63)
So there's never just one haad and phos thing.

Paul Povolni (32:49.695)
Right. Yeah. Yeah. I agree with that. Cause you know, you can say, you know, it's, uh, the, the design makes a difference and it makes a difference, you know, but you could also, uh, there's a, there's a term in Australia that I don't know whether they still use it, but when I was there, they used to call up whoop whoop, know, where it's like, could, you could be a great looking brand in the middle of nowhere and you're not going to be successful. Um, you need to be positioned in the right places. You need to be.

Frank (33:06.125)
Yeah.

Frank (33:12.619)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Povolni (33:16.777)
visible in the right places, you need the right exposure. And then like you said, you also need to deliver. mean, if it's, you look great and you're in every single store and when people try your product, it stinks or it's terrible. It tastes bad. It behaves bad. It breaks quickly or whatever. You've got to have a lot of factors in it, but design certainly is one of those that helps you get attention once you're in the right place. And if you have the right product, right.

Frank (33:44.064)
Exactly. It's kind of like table stakes. Like you kind of got to be in it with all these different factors because everybody else is doing it. So you really got to find that thing that is going to give you that leg up if it isn't already. So if everyone looks pretty bland on the shelf, you come in with something that's just completely goddamn out there. Like there's an olive oil brand. I can't remember the name of it, but every olive oil is in a dark green glass bottle. And then this company comes along with

label stuck onto a plastic bottle with a nice easy screw, you know, nozzle to pour out your olive oil and it disrupts. And I'm sure there'll be five other copycats from that. It's not, it's not, into like, it's distinctive, but it's not differentiated. It's differentiated for two seconds until somebody copies it. So, you know, we, still got to be distinct in some ways. there's, yeah, I mean,

Paul Povolni (34:21.755)
Yeah, yeah.

Frank (34:39.342)
There's just too many factors to say one thing is the holy grail. Put it that way.

Paul Povolni (34:43.626)
Right. So talk a little bit about the single-minded brand. Talk a little bit about what that means and how you use that in your strategy and in the way you serve your clients.

Frank (34:55.726)
Yeah, I think this is the pitfall that you end up falling into is that there's so many different ideas that your brand or a client's brand could fall down, like in terms of rabbit holes, that it's like, yeah, we could be this or we could be this or we could be this. And then you kind of say, well, I don't want to lose part of that. And I don't want to lose part of that. We want to kind of be a few of these different things. And then we ended up finding that we've got all these different messages and you know,

Paul Povolni (35:11.263)
the

Frank (35:23.308)
Now, where do we use which one where, or maybe could we have three different targets and have three different messages? And it's like, yeah, you probably could. Absolutely. You could, you can probably have three different brands as a result. But if we're coming to the table with one single minded idea of this is what we want to do. This is who it's for. This is the reason why this is what we want to say. this is how it's going to look. And everything in each of those kinds of columns is the same kind of simple idea.

Isn't that going to make it easy for us to just keep putting it out there, keep putting it out there, keep putting it out there so that at end of the day, our customers isn't going to see us every day like we do. They might see it, you know, once every year and, but every year that they do see it, maybe at Christmas time, for instance, we show up and they remember it because they've remembered seeing it before and it's made, remained consistent. And it's this very simple idea that doesn't take a lot of my brain cells to remember and commit it to memory and then.

Paul Povolni (36:12.08)
All right. Yeah.

Frank (36:21.044)
again, recognize it. So if we keep this simple minded idea, it keeps everybody clear and confident in the idea. It's very applicable to apply it to new things that are made and new things that are produced in terms of messages and advertising. So there's a lot of different things that can make, you know, a single minded message or concept easier to work with, consistent.

Paul Povolni (36:26.559)
Thank you.

Frank (36:50.762)
And to give you an example, this one's a bit of a, not R rated, but like MA rated kind of in terms of the brand. A friend of mine reached out and said, look, I've got this greeting card business. And I was like, yeah, I'm very fully aware of it. want to buy some. And she said, look, I want to make this a little bit more legit in terms of how it looks. it looks a bit naff at the moment. Can we bump it up kind of thing.

Paul Povolni (36:54.175)
Yeah.

Frank (37:19.694)
was like, yeah, absolutely. What does this brand represent? She's like, I, it's just swear words on greeting cards, like a birthday card or whatever, but written in this like swishy Edwardian kind of script font, Edwardian might be not the right descriptor, but this swishy kind of nice elegant font. And it was like, you know, happy birthday, fuck face kind of thing, like something like that. and from there, she said, look, what, what,

Paul Povolni (37:27.27)
So.

Paul Povolni (37:38.505)
Yeah.

Frank (37:48.558)
I don't know what this really brand really represents. It's fun. People like it. It's engaging. You could be sent to for a whole different rate, rafter reasons, but at the end of the day, it gets really good reactions out of people. you know, depending on if you like the person or not, like it's still getting a good reaction. I was like, well, that's fantastic. And the name of the business was called um, country cards. So country with a K and cards with a K. So trying to circumnavigate.

Paul Povolni (38:04.597)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Frank (38:15.886)
censorship of the word that starts with. And I was like, well, the end of the day, you're trying to create a reaction here. So we're just trying to create a country reaction. And this is like the simple, single-minded idea that permeated into everything that we do. And so the messaging was, um, cards you'll swear by, um, and, um, simple, what is we do? We create greeting cards with swear words on them.

And we want to help elicit this country reaction in that, you know, when we send a product to a person, comes with a little baggie of confetti. Confetti starts with a K so confetti. and when somebody opens the card, that shit falls out everywhere and they're like, like I have to go. And it's a reaction. It's a kind of, it's like, you see you NT kind of thing. but also when she sends it to a customer that buys it. So the person that's going to give the card.

Paul Povolni (38:44.614)
Yeah.

Frank (39:14.198)
at the end of the day, they also get that reaction too. Cause she shoves in a heap of that confetti in the parcel too. So they get that reaction and like, you got like on a thing and it's fantastic. And it's just very simple idea. And that again, comes into the logo. So the logo had that asterix kind of symbols. So when you bleep outwards, little asterix symbol on a card, like really, really simple. And, if another thing was that she had, it was like a business card idea.

Paul Povolni (39:21.129)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (39:35.775)
you

Frank (39:43.596)
where she'd give it in the, into the package to send out and say, give this to somebody, that needs it. And it was just to say, something that was really heartfelt and nice. can't remember off the top of my head what it was, but to create some kind of reaction from them as a nice gesture, or it could be hand this business card to someone and say, you look like a total cunt, like whatever it is. it was just this interesting brand that had a very good.

Paul Povolni (40:02.751)
Yeah.

Frank (40:13.518)
platform to work from that was very simple. And for any future product that she would make, it had this simple idea. Does this product create a country reaction? If it doesn't, then it's not our brand. So there's no point in putting it under this banner. If it doesn't, then we put it under a sub brand or something like that. And that's a very simple example of a very simple single-minded idea.

Paul Povolni (40:35.951)
Yeah, yeah, I like that. And so, you know, not all of all of your clients are going to be like that. And I'm probably gonna have to bleep out a bunch of stuff. but, know, yeah, Australian Australian language and American language are very different. So might have

Frank (40:41.994)
No. Yeah, sorry.

Paul Povolni (40:51.091)
might need to cut some of that. But for another type of business that, whether it's a chiropractor a coach, an accountant, how would you share that idea with them about being a single-minded business?

Frank (40:52.332)
That's okay, yeah.

Frank (41:14.222)
Again, it comes down to what they really are about and what kind of experience I think they deliver. And maybe, maybe if that's any different to somebody else, but there's some, there's some idea that it is always something you can just sort of pull out and it can be one word. could be five words, whatever it is that you can distill the essence of this brand into something that is just very simple and elegant to work with.

like the, go back to that person, Mark Ritz and that encouraged this idea of what strategy can be in terms of the process. So if you can't get it down onto one page, like your strategy down to one page, you're doing it wrong. Like, yes, it takes an ungodly amount of information sometimes, but it requires this distillation of information into something that is coherent and doable, which is another, definition of, of strategy by, another individual. I can't remember his name off the of my head. I've got his book behind me.

Paul Povolni (41:56.075)
Yeah.

Frank (42:12.142)
George, George, George Martin, Roger Martin, sorry, Roger Martin. and you know, strategy is a hypothetical guide for, put you on a playing field to win. It's coherent and doable. And so, yeah, if, if it isn't coherent, if it's not simple enough to, to then be able to go out and do it, then, it's not going to be easy to give to a client to then go out and succeed.

Because at end of the day, can only handhold a client for so long. And my thing is, I don't want to give you something that is too complex that if you don't have someone like me here to do it, then you're up the creek without a paddle. It's not going to work. There's a couple of examples in the product space that I could give. KitKat is always one that picks up a lot of traction in terms of very single minded idea of positioning. And it's just like, we believe breaks are good.

Paul Povolni (42:43.999)
Right.

Paul Povolni (42:54.673)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Frank (43:11.01)
That's their single-minded proposition. And that, that is a hallmark into the product itself, breaking chocolate, that it's used at a time when you should be taking a break. It's the whole philosophy. And if that can be found in a brand, if you're a personal trainer, if you're a business coach, if you are a real estate agent, there is something in there that makes you guys you, and might be the reason that someone does pick you because of it potentially again.

Paul Povolni (43:19.249)
Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Frank (43:39.958)
someone might pick me because of my personality and because I'm just this Aussie pink branding guy that is Frank by name, Frank by nature in terms of the application of what it is I do and just keep it short, sweet and to the point. If it's not, then it just complicates it for people. People can't remember complex information and people don't care about your brand as well enough to want to dig deeper into something that yes has more substance and a bit more nuance to it, but

Paul Povolni (43:42.771)
Right.

Paul Povolni (43:54.609)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (44:01.492)
Yeah,

Frank (44:09.834)
Let them find that maybe out over time as you introduce more things and a bit more of a dynamic brand over time. you know, for a client of mine, and everyone hates this kind of example of saying, you know, treat your business like their family kind of team like their family. But when you literally are a team of family, lean into it kind of thing. Like if you're, you're a husband and wife team that run a business that have your team that a cousin, like you have.

Paul Povolni (44:12.949)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (44:20.383)
Yeah, yeah.

Frank (44:38.184)
people in your team that are cousins with each other or another husband and wife that's part of your team. Like, and it's just a whole dynamic of family individuals that work with you. Say that we are the fam, like this is the example I did for a real estate agency. We are the foster family that you get to choose. And they were based in a town called Foster. And it was just this like fun kind of thing that we are a family kind of business because we are run by family. And that's our team culture. So that's a single.

Paul Povolni (44:57.221)
Yeah, yeah, nice.

Paul Povolni (45:04.209)
Right, right.

Frank (45:08.354)
very simple idea to get your head around and to make the experience what it is. Yeah.

Paul Povolni (45:14.204)
Right, right. Well, and think a lot of people fracture their brand because they are trying to be a lot of things to a lot of people, or they don't have the clarity to distill it down into one idea. Locally here, there was a location that had several Italian restaurants, and they closed down, and they didn't succeed for whatever reasons.

Frank (45:27.704)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (45:40.595)
the sign went up or the announcement went out that another Italian restaurant was going into the same location, you know, and it's like, well, so what's going to be different about this? I, and if somebody shared it on social media and I asked the question, so what's, what's different about this one than the other two that failed? And, somebody had posted and said, well, this one, you know, they're going to have not only Italian food, but they're also going to have all these other types of food as well. And I'm like, that's not a good thing. That's actually a bad thing.

Frank (45:47.192)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (46:10.759)
you know, it's, it's, don't know what the, what else is on the menu, but you know, you don't go to an Italian restaurant and they expect sushi, you know, donuts and, and, you know, pancakes and, you know, you, you want to go to an Italian restaurant and have an authentic Italian experience. And so, you know, to me, that's a good example of somebody that has kind of lost their way in there trying to be all things to all people. And so they don't become known.

Frank (46:19.213)
Yeah.

Frank (46:29.934)
Exactly.

Paul Povolni (46:38.761)
for one thing and a lot of brands that are successful is when you think of their name, you think of a certain thing, whether it's a feeling, whether it's a solution, whether it's a quality, whether it's whatever it might be, you think of a single thing and that's what you're saying, right? Is to get that kind of clarity is what takes businesses to the next level.

Frank (47:01.762)
Yeah. Look, given your example there, like if you were to say that, you know, being all things to everybody, like there is research to say that mass marketing to as many people as possible is how you do grow a brand in many spaces, especially the product space. You kind of need to appeal to as many people in the market as possible. Otherwise you're probably not going to grow exponentially. You'll stay stagnant. You'll keep having the same kind of buyers, but if you want to get to the kind of the next astral line, you need to find more buyers and you can offer different things.

you know, Apple isn't just known for the iPhone that are known for a lot of different things or Amazon, same kind of deal. but yeah, it's depending on what you get people to remember you for. Like if it's not the product or the service, maybe it's something else. Maybe it's just a deliver on a certain promise of quality or, know, if it's Domino's, if we don't deliver your pizza within 10 minutes or whatever, it's free. or, know, yeah, I'll leave it at that, but things like that way somebody is

Paul Povolni (47:58.41)
Right, right.

Frank (48:00.074)
somebody is remembering and choosing you for a particular reason, lean into it. Yeah.

Paul Povolni (48:05.895)
Yeah. And so for somebody that is struggling with that, what's one of the first tools that you pull out of your toolbox to help them get that clarity?

Frank (48:15.798)
Get everything out of your mind. I mean, a lot of people, when you go into this, I find it hard to do it themselves because they've got so many different ideas of what could be in an uncertainty of what should be and what can be and all the rest of it. You get it down on paper logically and go through the kind of steps of, know, why did we start this? Why do we want to do keep doing this? What's our interest in it? And it might just be to make money. That's fine.

But you know, who is going to benefit from this? is it? We really can help you. Is there anyone that we've got in our blind spot that we just haven't seen that is somebody that we could help more than whoever's buying us now, which seems to be in decline. We've to find somebody else that might like this. If not pivot our business like Jaguar, there's a declining market of aging men in the sixties to nineties.

people aren't younger people aren't buying Jaguars, they can afford them maybe what do do different? That kind of thing. And so yeah, you just need to get everything down on paper, I think, and take away the subjectivity of what it is you do, because you're so attached to it, you're so close to it, that you don't have this 100 foot view down of your business.

Paul Povolni (49:26.482)
Right, right, right.

Frank (49:32.382)
And it can take somebody else coming in objectively that doesn't give a crap about your business. They want to see you succeed because it reflects good on you. But at the end of the day, they're also thinking about the end user, to make sure that what it is they do for you is going to work. And they come in objectively. come into a project objectively half the time. I don't even understand what half of my clients really do. Other than this is the experience that I want my clients customer to walk away with. I want them to have.

Paul Povolni (49:32.895)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (49:54.291)
Yeah, right.

Frank (50:01.964)
this amount of awareness of this brand to make it very easy so that they can understand. And they're probably in a space where as a customer, they would understand it if it's a very specialized service. but I don't need to understand the full hints and outs of your business to be able to help you. it's not an expectation that I have to love your product either. funnily enough, I do work with a couple of brands that I do love their products. I consume them every day, but

others, you're not so much and I don't have to, to be able to help you, but it's getting all those ideas down on paper and making it logical, making it very sequential in terms of this is what we do here. This is what we do here. This is what we're to do here. This is what you can do next. I can't help you with all these things, but if that helps you in some way, I hope that is a value to you. And, you know, from doing those kinds of early conversations with clients, they say, damn, how do you.

Paul Povolni (50:43.753)
Yeah, yeah.

Frank (50:56.696)
take all of that and put that into something simple. I was like, I don't pay attention to everything. You can't, you have to strip away the stuff that isn't really that meaningful. might feel like it's meaningful to you, but really to the customer, it's probably not. Or to your team, it's probably not something everyone can get behind because it's too specific or too subjective. We've got to kind of strip the fat and make it as lean as possible with the most impactful.

Paul Povolni (51:03.037)
Right.

Paul Povolni (51:10.883)
Right

Frank (51:23.694)
bit of protein, let's say this is put it into some kind of context of analogy, to really work with it and get out there and people can, you know, dig in kind of thing. So yeah, having someone externally come in to just make sense of the mind, gavs them that you're having of everything you could do. This is why people do therapy. You know, you go to a psychologist or a psychiatrist is exactly the same kind of thing. You feel a bit like a

Paul Povolni (51:25.492)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (51:45.0)
Yeah, yeah.

Frank (51:49.198)
psychologist trying to unpick somebody's brain here and put it down on paper so they can see it nice and neat. But I think that's what you kind of need to do. And creative agencies do this all the time. They get other creative agencies to do their branding or their team that isn't so attached to it compared to the owner and the founder. like I work with a lady that I subcontract out as a

Paul Povolni (51:56.575)
Ryan.

Paul Povolni (52:02.163)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (52:06.335)
Right, right.

Frank (52:15.412)
branding person for her marketing arm of her business and she wanted to rebrand and it got to the point where it was like, you need to pull back a bit. This isn't for you. This is for your customer here. We're trying to put your customer in mind to make sure that we position this business for the kind of client that we want to attract. Not what you aesthetically like. And she's like, okay, yep. No, get it. Yep. I need to just pull back a bit here. And yeah, it worked out. So

Paul Povolni (52:35.355)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (52:39.647)
You

Frank (52:42.668)
Yeah, we just get in front of it. We just get in our own way sometimes in terms of, that block.

Paul Povolni (52:48.581)
Right. Yeah. know for me, designing my own stuff is the toughest thing ever. Like designing my own logo and all that stuff. Like I've had the same logo for like 20 years, because once I finally settled on it, I'm like, I am not changing this. is. But, but I think it happens for every kind of business. And I think you're absolutely right. And, know, sometimes you do need the outside professional to come in and look at it objectively because we do.

Frank (52:53.154)
Yeah.

Frank (53:03.244)
Good, that's a good thing though. That's a good thing.

Frank (53:08.684)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (53:18.419)
do get too close to things. do get the sometimes forget that it's not about us. It's, we've got to keep the audience in mind, our customer in mind, and it's not our preferences and our likes and, and the stuff that gets us excited, but we've got to look at who are we trying to serve and reach and how do we make ourselves attractive to them? Cause not everybody has subjective superpowers that

You know, not everybody Steve Jobs, like if Steve Jobs said, I want to do stuff this way because I want to. Yeah. He got to do that because he had a very good instinct about him, but not everybody gets that privilege. I don't think, and I don't think everybody deserves it because they just because.

Frank (53:56.046)
Yeah.

Frank (54:01.356)
No, it's Yeah. Very true. Yeah, very true. And personal branding, I feel exactly the same way about it. Like everyone says, you know, personal branding, it's to be kind of inherently about you. It's like, yes, absolutely. But then they kind of need to hammer it up a bit because otherwise you can just go about your life without having to publicize yourself.

Like that, there's some kind of end goal there. If it's not to sell a product, there's some kind of reason why you want to show up publicly, have people remember you and listen to you. Give them a reason to give them it, make it as easy as possible to remember you. That's why you use pink like it's going out of fashion. it's just those simple things you can do to make it about them. Because if it's only just about you, then you may as well just start, you know, instead of record it, putting a phone in front of face and recording that.

Paul Povolni (54:43.56)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (54:47.684)
You

Frank (54:55.214)
Just talk to a brick wall because like there's no, why make a personal brand if, if it's generally going to be about you, it's just so narcissistic. So, you know, if you're going to do it for the right reasons and it's, well, not right reasons, but for a reason. And there's always going to be some tight long tail down the road. If it's to help your business or, you know, to maybe be this influential person to help others. Yeah. Make it easy for other people to remember. So again, it's not just about you. It's about them.

Paul Povolni (55:02.471)
Right. Right.

Paul Povolni (55:23.391)
Right, right. And so, you when it comes to, you know, creating the visual brand, one of the things, you know, and we've talked about simplifying quite a bit, you know, when you present a brand to somebody, you present only just one option, right? Why is that?

Frank (55:37.25)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. again, clarity. Like I don't want to my clients so much to think about where they have to, throw one child away. You know, that's what it kind of ends up becoming. of preference of do I pick this kid or this kid? Can we mush the two kids together? No, we don't want to Frankenstein children. that that's kind of what it becomes in terms of a, a individual product. So

Paul Povolni (55:50.143)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Povolni (55:59.017)
Yeah.

Frank (56:06.562)
Look, I, I try and make it a rule not to do more than one concept for that kind of reason, just clarity and aligning it with a single-minded idea. And I know you've had Jacob Cason here talking about that for the exact same reasons he's said is why I do one concept, but that isn't to say that you can't have two concepts. If you want to pay for it, we'll do it, but I want to try and make them as polar opposite as possible. there isn't that, that opportunity for clash.

of bringing them together and having to massage them together because you don't want to lose this part. And you want to don't want to lose this part. You want to somehow push them together. So can we use this color with this one? Or can we use this font with this one? Sure. You kind of can in some instances, but it becomes here. just a bit of a, a mishmash and it happens so often. And I kind of think that if that's the approach that you is going to happen, you may as well go to two different agencies. may have two different providers.

Paul Povolni (56:35.23)
Right.

Paul Povolni (56:54.559)
Yeah.

Frank (57:03.502)
to produce something. And I think at the end of the day, I want to come to the table with something that I wholeheartedly believe that I think will work based on all the other things that have come before it in terms of message and strategy and even your internal identity of what your culture is. Does all this align and does this even position you against the competitors and, you know, help you stand out and all these different factors to keep in mind? Yeah, I want to come to the table with one good idea.

and, and put all my eggs in that basket and believe it. And if they say, no, I don't like it. I am fully prepared to go back to the drawing board. That's fine. I go into that knowing that that is a potential, occurrence, but it has never happened, which is lucky for me. I'm going to keep touching wood here that the process of not just doing visuals only, if there's other stuff at the beginning that acts as a bit of a

Paul Povolni (57:32.676)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (57:40.393)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (57:49.961)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Frank (57:59.698)
a of a brief you would say, but also it's a tick box to say, yes, we've agreed on this, we've agreed on this, we've agreed on this. Okay. So if this aligns with this, why wouldn't we not, why would we disagree with that? And again, it can come down to subjectivity and somebody vehemently not liking it. don't fire with it. They don't feel it at all.

Paul Povolni (58:10.116)
Right, right. Yeah.

Frank (58:20.67)
And you, you got to take into account that someone is going to say, you have to see this day in day out and they really don't hate it. They're not going to go into meetings and selling with confidence with something that just don't like. And I don't want to do that to somebody. I don't want to give them something that just hate and they just have to use it. God. But in that same breath, sometimes it grows on people. and I'm not expecting somebody to love a first concept on first sight. it might grow on them over time.

Paul Povolni (58:32.424)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (58:38.655)
Right. Right.

Paul Povolni (58:47.709)
Yeah. Right. Right.

Frank (58:49.944)
But if they can put themselves in the customer's shoes and see that, look, it stands out from the competition. It helps get attention. It helps communicate this message and the vibe and the position that you want to communicate. You know, why not kind of thing. And if there's no good reason for why not, then they really kind of got to look at themselves and say, well, look, I can't really help you further. If you don't want to see it this way, it can be unfortunate, but yeah.

Paul Povolni (59:17.297)
Right. And the reaction could be very subjective and that's when you need to pull them back down into the strategy of what got us to this point, right? Because you you subjectively reacting to something, that's not a great gauge for if a solution is right or good or appropriate because you know, the strategy and you know, as a creative, you have taken the time to take all of this strategy, all of this information, all of this

Frank (59:25.868)
Yeah, yeah.

Frank (59:36.311)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (59:45.383)
know, inspiration and funnel it down to a single solution. And, if you're, if you've done the right things and kept it aligned to the strategy, then whether they like it or not, it's still a good strategy. Now they, you know, like you said, they could still hate it. and they're ultimately, they're the client and ultimately they get what they want, but still you've got to kind of bring them back into saying, you know, I've served you to the best of my ability with this strategy. So give me some more information on what specifically you don't like about

Frank (01:00:00.877)
Yeah.

Frank (01:00:15.362)
Yeah, exactly. And if there's not enough information to suggest why it's not liked, then maybe it is doing things like a focus group to really test it on actual customers. And if, if again, if that shows people don't like it on first value, then yeah, sure. Let's go change it. Cause there's some proper objective data there from an external source that is saying this is why it doesn't work. and that I am fully for, but yeah, to say, just don't like it. And I don't know why is a bit of a kick in the teeth.

Paul Povolni (01:00:27.507)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:00:35.411)
Ryan.

Paul Povolni (01:00:45.364)
Yeah, so what do you tell them when they say, I'll know it when I see it.

Frank (01:00:51.366)
Sometimes it just gets to the point of saying, look, I think we need to part ways. Unfortunately, like, it doesn't seem like I can help you here. there's not, if there's no clear direction of what I can do better for you, if this isn't solving it for you, then look, I wish you all the best kind of thing. And everything that comes with that kind of sign off that hasn't happened for my clients, which is good. If they've wanted to take it in house, that's happened before once.

Paul Povolni (01:00:52.671)
Yeah.

Frank (01:01:20.398)
they decided, you know, we're not too sure about this. It might not be even anything we need right now. And that particular client hasn't changed anything since. So again, they probably didn't need it. so yeah, it's just one of those things that you, it crops up sometimes. and some people can be difficult and some people, you know, don't know what they want. They have this kind of kneeling feeling and that's fine. but you know, sometimes you just can't help everybody.

Paul Povolni (01:01:47.75)
Right. Now this has been an amazing conversation. I've really enjoyed this. We've had some technical issues. I've had my AirPods fall out of my ears in the middle of that conversation. Did well. The video will get to enjoy that. The audio won't get to see the AirPods slowly oozing out of my ear and falling to the ground. It never happened.

Frank (01:01:54.446)
You did well.

Frank (01:02:05.098)
It never happened. It never happened, Paul. It never happened.

Paul Povolni (01:02:08.464)
But this has been amazing. if people want to get a hold of you, if they want to follow your journey, you post some amazing content, definitely encourage you to check out G'day Frank on the social. So how do they get a hold of you,

Frank (01:02:20.046)
Instagram and threads at g'day Frank. So G D A Y F R A N K and then website is the same. So g'day Frank.com on LinkedIn. You can find me Frank McCreel. It's a bit hard, bit of a harder one. So Frank and then A C K R I L L.

Paul Povolni (01:02:37.499)
Awesome. And what kind of people do you help and what kind of people do you not help?

Frank (01:02:41.918)
not help. People that aren't interested in branding, guess, people that I do help. Look, a lot of the people that do follow, I guess, on social others like me. I'm not trying to help everybody. But a lot of through osmosis, I guess people are seeing my stuff and, and engaging with it, which is great. But in terms of clients here, anyone that's in the FMCG space, so products on shelf, especially in supermarkets.

Some tech businesses, especially a lot of AI businesses seem to be now popping up, working with a few of them. then, yeah, some other kind of related industries, especially real estate specifically is another one that I'm working with. So if you're within those kind of spaces, reach out. not, if you're in any other space, I'd be happy to work with you.

Paul Povolni (01:03:12.539)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:03:29.382)
Awesome, man. Well, thank you so much. This has been great.

Frank (01:03:32.376)
Thanks, Paul.

Paul Povolni (01:03:35.135)
All right. Well, technical difficulties, man. That was so stupid that my air pod fell out of my ear. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the good thing about Riverside is you can actually mute one person's audio. And so I'll just mute my audio for when I'm hunting for my air pod on the floor. But this has been great, man. And I appreciate you coming on and being patient with.

Frank (01:03:42.574)
No, you're right, mate. saw it. I just thought I'd just keep going and keep the show alive.

Frank (01:03:55.532)
Yeah, that's good. Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:04:04.413)
my technical difficulties that now I've got to figure out why.

Frank (01:04:05.944)
No, mine the same. Mine the same, my dude. Please don't apologize. It's the technology's fault.

Paul Povolni (01:04:10.653)
Yeah, yeah.