Thomas Ordahl Q&A

I’ve been wanting to start a series of conversations with smart, interesting people that I know to bring in fresh perspectives. I’m hoping not only to push my own thinking, but to have a bit of fun.

I couldn’t have asked for a better first guest than Thomas Ordahl. Thomas and I met early in our careers. We became good friends and eventually business partners. Most recently Thomas was the Chief Strategy Officer at Landor—the world’s biggest brand consultancy. Last year he left to start his own firm: OrdahlCo.

Thomas is the best brand strategist I know and he’s got a real knack for explaining big ideas in a simple and easy way. He can be reached at [email protected].

This is Part 1 of a two-part conversation—I’ll released the second part next week. Thanks for watching.

Michael: Thomas, thank you for being here. This is the first in a series of Q & As that I want to do with people to bring in other perspectives from people that I know, or whose work I know, to broaden the lens a little bit and make it so that it's not just me talking.

I'm delighted to have you as the first person that is joining me for these and just to give background, you and I met in the late nineties in New York working at Siegel and Gale at a very particular moment in time in the development of how brands are built and understood.

We then became business partners at 1066, Group 1066 in New York, and we had a wild ride there. And then you've gone off, since then, first at Avid, and then at Landor, where you were the Chief Strategy Officer until last year when you left to start your own business, OrdahlCo, which I'm sure we'll also talk about. And so, you're one of the smartest people I know, and certainly the best brand strategist I know. It's always fun to get your perspectives and I always learn a lot, so thank you for being here.

Thomas: Thank you for inviting me.

Michael: I promise we won't do too much of the ancient history—the old guys reminiscing about the world as it was before. But I'd love to start at the beginning of when we started out: New York in the nineties, the dotcom era. Brand was changing. I'd love to just get your perspective on why that moment was such a pivot in the way that brands are created and exist in the world.

Thomas: Yeah, I mean it was a frothy time. I always joke that I'm like an interloper into the brand world. I snuck in through the back door. At the time I was a digital strategist, which now is funny to think back on. But at the time, I was a digital strategist and entered Siegel and Gale as that. And then from there learned about brand and then became a brand strategist. But I came in through the back door and really, I think my origins of interest in brand was that we were building things. You were building businesses, you were building platforms, websites were meant to do something, right? They were meant to. Either they were transactions, or they were relationship building, and they're providing new services and replacing analog services with digital services. So, there was a sense of making something.

And what I loved about that, and where I think it was a pivot was the old world of brand pre-dotcom was very much a graphics business. It was making design systems and logos, and it was very visual, voice, writing. But it was communications; it was meant to shape communications.

And I think what was very exciting about the time that you and I started up in the world was that brand was beginning to govern a much broader set of considerations. How something works. What was the checkout experience? What was the UX experience? We had a lot of information designers and user experience designers. We were contemplating brands and the context of a much broader set of considerations with a more diverse team of people that were all building this thing.

So, I think what it did for a lot of us is opened up our minds to the power of brand to be a rubric, to drive much more than just comms, And look, that was always true, but it really came into play coming out of the dotcom era, where it was like, wait, this brand thing actually can be a governing tool or a framework for decision making for almost every aspect of a business. And that was a very exciting sort of moment to step into it. It got me very excited about the promise of working in that industry, in this industry.

Michael: Yeah, it also forced companies, I think, to really consider their identity because you had a website, which at the time was 640x480 pixels. It was very small, and the entire company had to funnel in through that thing. Suddenly, you had to decide, what is the navigation?

Thomas: What's the most important thing? Yeah, that's a great point. Because before the internet, and again we sound like ancient times, but it was rare to experience a brand in one experience. You know, it was like brands were diffused across lots of unrelated touchpoints. So that aggregation of all of that, and concentration to one application, was also a very new thing. It forced a lot of difficult decisions and difficult considerations for businesses because there was nowhere to hide.

Michael: Yeah. Up until that time it was the annual report. That was the only thing. And organizations would spend a huge amount of money putting out a physical annual report, and that was the only time that you had to do that. You had to have one unified view of what the organization was.

So then fast forwarding a little bit, going from the nineties to the aughts. We then had our business, Group 1066, which was a heady time. And one that certainly formed a lot of my opinions and my theories. You and I together, not just me, we were creating a lot of that. Can you share a little bit of perspective on what that was like?

Thomas: I laugh often about one of the things I remember us saying. I don't remember who said it, either you or me, “If you're having problems writing your value proposition, how about creating some value?”. And that was I think the raison d'etre; you could almost distill our motivation under that. I think at its worst moments, and I don't want to be cynical, but it's worst moments, branding can be performing a sophistry to try to make something that's not that great sound better than it is, which never works. And I’ve never tried it, I don't do it, and I refuse to do it. But you could say cynically, that's branding at its worst. And I also think conversely, I think we saw the opportunity to look at innovation and product development through the lens of brand. So, mostly we were focused on "How is brand going to inform innovation, product roadmaps, new product developments?". Which, we may have been slightly ahead of our time on that one, I don't know. But we did great work. And I think the fact that we were so rooted in how it was gonna show up in the actuality of the business in terms of the offer, the service, how it's being delivered, how they're evolving and innovating, we had a kind of bias. We had that bias built in versus, again, just doing sort of comms-oriented positioning and messaging. So anyway, that was our rallying cry and that was our purpose, and it was amazing for a while.

Michael: Until it wasn't.

Thomas: Yeah. Till 2008 then… Yeah.

Michael: I think that it's still very hard to get people to think about brands in that way. A frame for decision making about how innovation should work or about how an organization should work is not the first way that people think about brands almost 20 years later. Do you not agree?

Thomas: I'm not sure I agree. I think there’s varying degrees. I think what's almost interesting is that there's businesses that are struggling with innovation and I think they maybe have a hard time seeing how to connect branding to drive and refresh and renew their refreshed innovation. Then, interestingly, the businesses that don't even really talk about brand, but their brand is so hardwired into their DNA that it informs all their innovation. Dyson being probably the best example where, as I understand, I think Dyson's hostile towards the B word. But in a sense, there's no business that is more informed by a central guiding set of principles. I think it's very clear and as a buyer -- Elsa just got their hair dryer, which costs like a fortune, and she's been raving about it. But it's interesting as you look at their evolution of that business. At the core, there's something at the center of Dyson, which is very clear. It governs their innovation, their product development process, their packaging, their voice... it's brand, whether he likes it or not, that is brand at its best.

Michael: And you said something very important. "He". Is it easier if you have a founder who is very much making those decisions because that?

Thomas: But Apple has carried on. And I would say Disney. Everyone has their fits and starts, but Disney is certainly another one where I find the people I've ever known that were part of the Disney organization, and this is not executives, this could be people that are just in the service experience at the parks and all that. The brand is in the DNA. It's almost on a subconscious level. There's such an understanding of what the brand is, so the interesting thing is the businesses that are very, that are very brand led, it's often almost hardwired, it's almost reptilian brain level.

To get to that is possible, but that's a lot of work. So, it's, it's a funny thing I think, that the people that don't get it, it's hard. The people that get it, it's there.

Michael: I remember being at Microsoft, when Microsoft had the stores, it was a very different thing hiring people to work in the stores versus wen you'd cross the mall over to the Apple store and the people who were working there inherently understood what it was. They were the real hardcore fans. They loved the products, they loved the company, they loved the brand. And not only did they love it, but they also understood it because they grew up with it and internalized it. Microsoft wasn't as easy to build that sort of culture.

We talk about culture and the role of brands in culture and these large organizations all the time. The retail experience was an opportunity for the public to walk in and to see it on display in a way that you couldn't otherwise. You can't walk into corporate HQ and go sit down in the cafeteria or pop your head into a meeting. But you can definitely do it in the retail space.

So, in terms of how you help companies, or other organizations to foster those sorts of cultures where the brand is understood at that fundamental level so that it can be a tool for understanding this is who we are, this is what we do, and how we do it.

Can you talk a little bit about how you, can build that?

Thomas: It's very similar to culture broadly. It's just to what extent is it being led by brand. And in terms of culture, meaning employee culture, a lot of it is so interesting. We've all worked in big companies and see culture, like what are the things people think they have permission to do and what are the things they don't think they have permission to do?

What are the "nos" that they're telling themselves and the "yeses" they're telling themselves and "How are things done around here?". As I someone I worked with once said, that's the definition of culture. And most of that, in my experience, is reinforced through micro decision making all the time.

And you can talk about, these are the things we stand for, these are our values. But if it's not being applied and evidenced in practice on a frequent basis, it doesn't happen. And that's where it tends to fall. And so there must be two things. One is, we must really believe in the things that we're saying. And then we have to apply them, and we have to apply them on an ongoing and consistent basis. We have to get rid of people or whatever that aren't applying them, and we have to call out when we've missed them and -- we have to. It takes a kind of constant reinforcement on a micro basis, that’s where I see it work the best. That starts with the top, it starts with the CEO. We've all known leaders that make a claim and then in practice they go against it and to me that just kills the whole thing. That, just that. That leader sets the tone, and then it has to be applied consistently. And when that begins to happen, then it becomes part of the operating framework and the DNA of the organization. But it happens in thousands and thousands of micro moments, micro decisions. Having led teams over the years, large practices and all that, I've seen so much of how the culture of the team and all that. It's really cultivated and sustained through lots of tiny decisions, micro-behaviors that you're seeing evidence of countless times a day. And are people lined up around is what's important, what do we stand for in those moments? And I think that's the most important thing.

I think it's the human behavior of, don't eat that mushroom, it's poisonous. I think, an interesting dimension – and I’m about to get too esoteric, but is -

Michael: Let's get esoteric

Thomas: I know you love getting esoteric

All right. So getting esoteric. One of the things that's interesting is how much of our -- and I think this does relate to the deep, esoteric side of brand, is the role of memory. And you could almost ask yourself, are brands only remembered?

Because a lot of it is a memory, and I think that goes back to just human behavior, going back thousands, even millions of years. You remember the last time you ate that mushroom you got sick. Or somebody died, so avoid red mushrooms or whatever it is. And then you get into superstitions, the last time that bird crossed over in front of us, a tornado came or something. Or the full moon always does this, or whatever it is. Pattern recognition. Humans are very good at pattern recognition and they're good at in our memory, and we compose memory. That memory can be positive or negative. Red mushroom's really dangerous, but the blue mushroom is delicious, and we have the best dinner of our life when we picked those blue mushrooms. And so, I think brands are almost memory keepers and so you, think “Oh, I should buy because we all have that.”.

We'll be in the market to buy a white goods product that you almost never buy. Let's say, once every 20 years, or 10 years you get a new washing machine. They’ve done a lot of studies on this, right? You're pulling into memories from when you were a kid, like what did your parents buy? Or like tires or in auto insurance is a big one like that. A lot of the insurance products were, "My dad was always a State Farm guy, and so I'll be a State Farm guy" and like I trust it even though it's a very old memory.

I think it's a very interesting part of the nature of branding. So now here's what happens though, is you have memories. You’ve got a fixed idea. This is The Plaza Hotel, in New York it's been in movies and it's fancy. And I have this vision in my mind what it's gonna be, and I'm gonna go there and we're gonna have this experience like I've seen so many times. And then the experience doesn't match it. And that's the breakdown. It can happen, or it changes it, or exceeds it and it can deliver different directions. It can can match it but push it a little bit. “Oh, I knew it was old fashioned, but now it's a little bit cooler or whatever.”. Or "Geez, this is the plaza? I thought the Plaza was a real fancy hotel." Or whatever those things are, right? And that's one of the tensions of brand management, is you have to honor some of the memories and that gets into a whole area, which I don't ever know a ton about, but I always find endlessly fascinating: semiotics. I think is that’s a fascinating kind of subset of the branding world.

What are these associations we carry around that build mental models that you need to, as a brand deliver on? Fancy five-star hotel. There's certain semiotics they're expecting. I used to joke that a bidet in the bathroom was like a semiotic queue for a five-star European hotel. Even though I think most people never touch a bidet. But it's gotta be there.

Michael: Nice to have it though!

Thomas: So there are these mental images that we carry, which you have to both not violate, but often you have to then also learn how to move them or adapt them or evolve them. How do you take the Tiffany blue box and bring it into the digital world?

But the esoteric part of it goes back to memory. I think we all as humans carry around a storehouse of memories. A lot of people's dreams, like what they envision. you think about a vacation you want to go on. Say you want to go to Cape Cod. You went to Cape Cod and you were a kid when you were like 11 and you’re going to go bring your kids there now. And it may come down to, “I just want to go to an ice cream stand and eat in the hot sun on the sand.”, or whatever. I want to eat an ice cream cone. The tens of thousands of dollars you've spent to make this Cape Cod vacation happen might for you really, if you think about it, come down to, “I want to have this one moment of eating an ice cream cone with my kids like I did when I was 11, and it was so fabulous and so great, and it's this memory I carry around with me.”.

Memory is a really interesting area to probe in the analysis of the sort of esoterisms of brands. They're mental models. Brands are mental models we carry around and they have to be fulfilled, they have to be pushed. That's the give, that's the tension. That's the give and take of brand management... relevant, differentiated, but not losing the equities you've built, but also not just resting on them.

As I always say, you have to stand for something but never stand still. Brands have to move; they’ve got to adapt and change.

Michael: Yeah. And, trying to do that for something that is recognized by millions of people or billions of people, but then everyone has a very subjective experience, right? That memory is my memory. It's not your memory. You have a different memory.

Thomas: This is one of my other esoteric views, it was a prediction, but I think it's true now. I think it's always been true, but I think it's going to become truer in the future, is. Who owns brands? Brands more and more I think will be owned by their customers more than by the brand itself.

And that's already really true and it's getting even more so. I wrote an article about it a number of years ago, I think brands might be like memes in the future.

Michael: Like what?

Thomas: Like memes. Think back to -- and this is kinda dating us as two old heads, but think back to the Grateful Dead, when there was a whole culture, there were habits, there were norms. There were clothes, it was a whole little micro cultural economic system.

Michael: Language, products, the whole.

Thomas: Behaviors, everything. Food they would eat, I remember you would go to Dead shows in the eighties and nineties, and it was like you were visiting a foreign country, and where did that come from? No one set those rules. But what was interesting is you had businesses started selling into it. I think that's happening now. Again, I wrote this thing, I'll send it to you. I wrote it a number of years ago, but business will start actually selling into brands, and then the buyers will then be the arbiters of whether it's on brand or off brand.

So, if you wanna start selling, I don't know, Grateful Dead t-shirts, tie dyes, you better make sure you're really understanding the nuances of that culture you're trying to sell in to.

Michael: Yeah.

Thomas: Or I think one of the most brilliant brand builders of all time, one of my favorite brand people of all time is Jimmy Buffet. One of the greats, incredible. The whole Parrothead thing. he sold, like he sold, retirement villages. I mean he, turned --

Michael: Margaritavilles.

Thomas: There's one in Times Square! He turned that thing into one of the most successful, fascinating brand stories of all time.

But again, how much did he sit down and write out? This was a kind of co-creative thing where he was as much a participant as he was a controller of it. His audience, all those Parrotheads, all those people living into this dream of being a beach bum or whatever, that fantasy that came out of a song that was as much theirs as it was his. The Parrotheads own it as much as he does. So that's a world I think that's only going to get more true.

Michael: This Scottish philosopher from the 18th century, Adam Ferguson, part of the Scottish Enlightenment, had this idea of spontaneous order, which are the outcome of human action, but not human design. Like language, right? There’s no central committee deciding what the English language is or what is allowed in English or not allowed. Yes, you can annoy your English teacher, but it, evolves organically. And this is, I think, one of the most interesting areas of innovation and how new things can get created now.

Thomas: Totally agree. Yeah.

Michael: Open-source software is an example of that, where there's no company. Think crypto, the way that these crypto brands which are created, not because there's some, central marketing committee for Bitcoin or Ether or whatever. It's these communities that have built up around it and then they become the marketing organization for it.

?Thank you so much for watching/reading part one of my conversation with Thomas Ordahl. We’ll release Part 2 of the conversation next week, where we will get into the current state of brand and kind of look ahead a little bit into the future.