Episode 3: The MAGIC of Inclusive Branding – Podcast Transcript

 

Nichole Pitts

Welcome to The Ethintegrity Podcast, Hilary. It’s so great to have you.

Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.

I’m excited for you to be here and to talk about branding and storytelling, and how we as entrepreneurs, even big businesses, how we do business more ethically and also include and enmesh DEI into what we’re doing, how it can be comfortable with the messaging that we’re putting out.

And as we evolve and grow, do our businesses really reflect our current values and what we’re doing? So I absolutely enjoy everything that you teach and you talk about. How did you get into branding and marketing?

Yeah. You know, it’s funny. I chose business as a major in college because I wanted a career where I could make some good money and support myself and I just happened to fall in love with the marketing side of business because of the creativity. And because I just thought that was so much fun. And then I think the branding part of it came in when I started working at Disney because it was a very well-known, well-established global entertainment brand when I joined it.

And a lot of what we would have to do in marketing is to consider what the brand was and what the fans’ expectations were. So we always needed to figure how to meet expectations, but even more than that exceed them. And so I was just fascinated by the idea and the power that a brand held for people.

Yeah. Mm-hmm, especially the happiest place on earth.

The happiest place on earth. Yeah. That is definitely marketing for the parks. And depending on the day you decided if it was or not.

So how did you end up working with Disney, especially on their film side?

 

Hilary Hartling

The story really starts with, I was unhappy in the first job I had out of college. I worked as an assistant media planner at an ad agency in Seattle, but I was working with companies like Silicon Graphics and Boeing, and I was putting insertion orders for print ads in magazines like Aviation Week and Space Technology.

And I didn’t care about any of it. I wasn’t interested in any of it. None of it lit me up. One day, I made a list and I said, okay, what do I love? Because you can market, you can brand, you can advertise anything. And movies always came up at the top of my list. So what I did is I decided to go to grad school at Emerson College in Boston had huge ties back to Hollywood.

And I got an internship at Dreamworks, the summer before I graduated. It’s when Dreamworks was five years old and it was the summer of ‘99. Which is crazy to think now was before the 2000s even. And, everyone from Dreamworks was kind of like the people who left Disney and they started their own studio.

So everyone knew the Disney people. And the thing they always said is like, “whatever you do just don’t work at Disney”, but everyone knew each other. So I ended up meeting a ton of people at Disney, making friends at Disney and my resume got passed around and I ended up there, but my goal had been the whole time in going to grad school is, I just wanna work at a major motion picture company in their marketing department in Los Angeles.

That was my goal. I kept that vision front and center and I made it happen. I hadn’t cared whether it would’ve been Disney, Dreamworks, Sony, Fox, or Paramount. I didn’t care. But once I was at Disney, I’m like, oh, wow, this is sort of like the cream of the crop. This is where you have not only the bigger umbrella brand, you have individual brands with every single film release, but you’re thinking about like – Nobody else says, “I’m gonna go see that new Universal picture this weekend” or “I’m gonna go see that new Warner Brothers flick”, but they say Disney and they say Pixar, and they say, Marvel.

And we were working with global brands. And so the branding piece of it really attracted me. And I was really good at doing it too. So that’s how I ended up at Disney. And ironically, the one industry book I read when I was in grad school was “Work in Progress” by Michael Eisner, who was the CEO of Disney at the time and he talked about synergy and I ended up becoming the Head of Synergy for the studio. So it was just very synchronous, I guess.

Yeah. What‘s amazing is how great they do with their branding because I remember when Disney+ took the Star Wars franchise. And, you know, I love me some Star Wars. I was like “I’m always gonna think Lucas Films”, but with The Mandalorian, The Book of Bubba Fett, that is the one streaming service where I’m like, okay, that’s on Disney+. I watch a lot of streaming services and I’m like, is that on Hulu or Netflix? But with Disney+ it’s such a clear brand and they’ve done such a great job of even marketing within the different series to keep it going. So let’s talk about Disney’s successful brand strategy. You’ve talked about this M.A.G.I.C. Formula. What exactly is that?

Yeah. So what I call the M.A.G.I.C. Formula is really my own take on just some of the things that I have seen over the 15 years that I work there that I think Disney does best to sort of not only take care of their brand but to expand their brand. So this is literally from my own experience. I think it’s all things that entrepreneurs can apply at any level of business as well. So M.A.G.I.C stands for five things. It’s “Make it Memorable”. That’s how you stand out. It’s how you become unique. It’s how you make fans. You have to make it memorable. The second one is “Audience First”. So always putting your audience first and knowing just like finger on the pulse. Knowing what they want, what they need, what they crave and almost being able to then extrapolate what they don’t know they want, what they don’t know they need & giving it to them. The third one is “Great Storytelling”. This is the entertainment business. This is Disney. This is Marvel. This is Pixar. And I just feel so grateful I got to work with some of the greatest storytellers in the world, working at Disney and I think great storytelling can be applied to any kind of business or brand.

Yeah

 

The fourth one is two-fold, it’s “Innovation and Imagination”. There are ways that Disney does that very, very well, but there are ways that you can do that for your own business. And then the fifth one is what Disney is very well known for and it’s “Creating Synergy”. So I just talked about synergy before and it’s really, how do you make the whole work greater than just the pieces and parts? It’s how you create win-win, mutually beneficial things that help raise the whole brand as opposed to just trying to work on your own in a silo. And it’s something that you can do in your own way in your business, depending on what stage you’re at.

What would be an example of somebody or a company that’s used what you’ve termed this M.A.G.I.C. Formula in a great way?

 

I’m gonna use Geico as an example. If you think of Geico, why do they have a gecko in all their commercials as their lead spokesperson? Well, number one, I’m sure what happened to start was people were mispronouncing Geico and calling it “gecko”. So instead of correcting people, they embraced and said, let’s just make a gecko our person. That’s just the face of our brand. And then it allowed them to create stories with this fun, cute, engaging gecko that people remember and it’s for car insurance. A seemingly boring topic becomes entertaining to attract the audience they want. So next time they think about, oh my gosh, I need renter’s insurance. I need car insurance, they’re probably gonna remember the freaking gecko.

Oh, haven’t even thought about that.

 

Yeah. And so that is a way to make it memorable. That is a way to add great storytelling. It is a way to create something from your imagination and innovate a topic, a brand, a subject that might not have that kind of interest. And so they’re doing something to speak to their audience in a fun, entertaining way. This is why I worked in movies for so long. It’s like when you can entertain an audience, inspire an audience, evoke an emotional response from an audience. They remember, they like it, they talk about it, they spread it. And so I think that’s probably a great example of someone who does it well.

 

Yeah, that is a really great example. One of the things, when you were first talking about the M.A.G.I.C. Formula a few months ago, it was in terms of entrepreneurs and as you’re branding your business to get very clear on your ideal client and what you’re going to be doing and how you’re going to market. But also for people that are in-house that are heads of department.

So I think about ethics and compliance as they’re trying to brand their program and get their messaging out. I think that the M.A.G.I.C. Formula is great for that because as you said, you want it to be entertaining and memorable and people aren’t gonna remember all these laws and “Okay, I have to do this exact thing.” You just want them to know, “let me come back to you. There’s something that I shouldn’t be doing” and kind of the big things, but getting into it, you wanna make it entertaining enough to where people continue to come to you to ask questions and for more information.

So whether you’re in a career and you’re positioning yourself within an organization, or if you’re starting a business and you’re like “Okay, let’s take a step back, let’s do a quarterly review. Let’s say how could we take our brand one step further and make it not only memorable but unforgettable for our audience. Let’s brainstorm some ideas and let’s try them out.”

Or if you’re thinking audience first. You might say “Are there new ways that we haven’t thought of to stay in touch with or listen to our audience better? Let’s list all the ways we might try right now. And let’s try those new ways. How can we truly listen to our audience and understand where they are, what they need, what they love best about what we’re offering, and how we can double down on all the stuff that they love and just take away all the stuff that doesn’t matter.”

Yeah. Kind of sift through it. Oh, I love that.

 

Yeah.

 

So as you’re taking all this information in, what’s a key tip to keep your message on brand as you’re growing and expanding your business?

 

When you’re expanding, I think it’s important to really evaluate what the purpose of the expansion is. So if you understand, I’m adding this new product or this new offer or this new revenue stream because it solves a specific need your audience has evolved into now needing or is now challenged with then you’re probably on the right track. The key to really keeping your messaging on track and on brand is that when you expand, you have to stay in touch with your audience’s needs. You can’t just say “Well, I wanna go here.” You have to make sure your audience really wants to go there with you. I’m a big believer that when you’re expanding a brand to understand, is this a brand deposit or is this a brand withdrawal?

A brand deposit is gonna reinforce what you are known for and what you do best for your audience. It’s gonna reinforce your mission. Your messaging is still on track because it puts them first. If it’s a brand withdrawal, it could potentially devalue your brand because you’re not keeping your finger on the pulse of what your audience needs. And you have to consider is this expansion ‘on brand’. I mean, that’s really the question you have to ask. “Does it support my purpose? Does it support my vision? Is it aligned with my values? Is it on mission?” Or am I evolving the brand so much it’s a completely different thing now? Those are the questions you have to ask yourself because brands will evolve. They never stay static. I have so many Disney examples of how they evolved and expanded their brand even while I was there. And some of the hard decisions that we had to look at and make were really interesting.

Can you give me an example of one?

Yeah. Yeah. One of ’em was, if you think about the Disney brand, what’s one of the first things you think of, you probably think family entertainment, right? It’s okay for the whole family. You turn on Disney+ you could sit your kids in front of that, you’d be fine with anything they watch on there. Right? Yeah. So one of the first questions we came up with was, as we were expanding the brand, we came across our first PG 13-rated Disney branded film. There was never a Disney film above PG. Because PG-13 means, “Hey, warning kids under 13 might not be appropriate.” So that was a big deal. It was Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl and we ended up moving forward. We decided PG-13 was okay for the Disney brand because we were trying to expand the Disney brand into a wider, more general audience.

There were still parts of it that were still okay for kids. I mean, it’s based on the theme park, right? For goodness sake, but there are some scary parts. There are some parts that you wouldn’t want on there. And one of my jobs was to promote these movies for kids on the Disney Channel. And so we ended up having to put warnings in front of our marketing material, just letting parents know that.

That’s just one of those decisions you say, is this gonna be a brand deposit where it’s gonna truly help us expand our brand and still be known for what we’re known for? Or is it a brand withdrawal where we decide, Nope, we can’t do it? We have to take out all these scenes to make it PG-rated.

They decided that PG-13 is fine. And they went forward. Hugely successful. There was another example where we decided no, it was a brand withdrawal. And that’s when we had a slew of sports films in the early 2000s. And because they were so successful (Miracle and Remember the Titans and TheRookie) and all these, like literally every sport, we ended up doing a movie for, but they were all like true inspirational sports stories based on these real people, these real amazing stories, these underdogs coming up and winning it all kind of thing.

And at one point we did so much marketing with ESPN who was an internal synergy partner. They’re part of the Walt Disney Company. We asked ourselves, would it be smart to also brand them as an ESPN film? And of course, ESPN wanted it, it would help expand their brand, but we ultimately decided no at the studio, because when you brand something ESPN, it’s automatically a sports movie.

Yeah.

And our biggest audience for inspirational, true sports stories was older females.

Really?

 

Because, yeah, because of the inspiration, because of the heart, because it’s not really a baseball movie, it’s about never giving up on your dreams. It’s about second chances. It’s about coming from behind. And women love that. so we thought it actually puts it too much in a box to be the biggest success we need it to be for a revenue driver at the studio. So we ultimately decided not to do that, but that would have been an example of we decided on a brand withdrawal for that one and so we can’t do it. We can’t move forward. It could devalue that film brand.

Oh, those are great examples. So with Pirates of theCaribbean, when you said, okay, we’re gonna go ahead and do this. Did you receive any backlash for going ahead and going forward with expanding to PG-13?

Yeah. I mean, I’m sure there was backlash. I don’t remember the specifics, but Disney movies always have backlash by the way. We would get notes from the Lama organization about the mistreatment of animals for the animated Emperor’s New Groove which had llamas in it. Like, what? So essentially, when you have a brand that big, there’s always a backlash, but there wasn’t a backlash big enough where we wouldn’t do it, where it was bad PR where it was something that didn’t make sense. We had warnings, like I said, in front of the kids-focused commercials and let parents know. So they were aware. It only ran at certain times, you know? So it wasn’t anything that would’ve made us rethink it.

Yeah. That’s a great example. So today when I was looking at the news, I saw Cracker Barrel was getting a lot of backlash for adding in the Impossible breakfast meat, which basically is vegan.

 

Oh

 

Vegan sausage, I guess.

 

They were getting backlash for adding that?

 

Yes, because it’s “un-American” and I was just like, out of all the issues I have with Cracker Barrel, having a vegan substitute isn’t an issue. But it was one of those expanding their offerings and their brand. Yeah. And another one was the Honey Pot with the natural feminine hygiene product. And I look at this a lot of times when you have really small businesses that are making products at home, and then they ship them and you know, there’s a shelf life. And then when you want to grow as most companies do, you want to be where the money resides. Then, you have to change your formula if you’re going to sell it in big stores, like Target.

You need to mass produce it.

Exactly. Yeah. And so they ran into supply chain issues, as well as needing to add a preservative to extend the shelf life when it’s in Target. They had this very clear ideal client.

Yeah. And it was a loyal customer base. Some in that customer base were like, wait a minute. What’s this new ingredient that we hadn’t known about? And it’s a preservative and you market this as natural, and there was this huge backlash, this was back in May of 2022. And it was one of those where if she had gotten out in front of it and said, we’re going to add in this preservative to extend the shelf life and maybe have more, make it more accessible to more people. But also maybe have an alternative where you’re shipping the non-preservative. It made me think of Grace and Frankie with Frankie’s organic yam lube where she got into it with Brianna to mass produce it for Say Grace. And she put Palm oil in it. And that’s the first time I ever even heard about preservatives like that.

Is it gonna devalue the brand? Like if you’re literally known for all natural all the time and that’s what your audience loves most about your product. I would probably rethink how could we expand in a way that was more aligned with who we are. And I don’t know the answer to that, but that’s the question I would’ve asked.

Or as you said, just from a PR and marketing and branding saying “Wow, we are all natural and all of our customers really support us in that. We wanna add one preservative. So we have the opportunity to be longer on shelves in a nationwide chain so that this is accessible to more women because that’s another one of our core values is serving as many women as possible.”

Something they could have gotten down in front of that like you said, but yeah, it’s hard when, if there’s ever anything that you feel like you’re hiding, it’s always gonna come out.

Right. You can’t keep anything a secret.

No people will find out. With social media these days, it’s just like, it can just tumbleweed. Right? So, yep.

So many internet detectives and you say something, then they’ll go back 10 years on Twitter and be like, screenshot it, “this you?”, and you’re like, it was. What are some of the key lessons that you learned during your time at Disney that helped you evolve into this successful businesswoman that runs this, agency for branding strategy for modern entrepreneurs?

That’s a great question. I would say one would be, setting a bar for excellence and it’s oftentimes a personal bar. I would say leaning into what you do best. So really embracing your key strengths and what are people coming to you for all the time? And really leaning there. Focusing on growing synergistic relationships, because that really can help boost your brand and boost your business. And then ultimately what I did every single day is it’s not just about selling it’s about getting creative. So instead of a straight commercial, a TV ad, how do you treat marketing as entertainment itself? That’s something I learned. So if you think about marketing your business, let’s go back to the gecko, right? It’s like, okay. They made that entertainment. Not just a regular boring TV commercial about “if you ever need car insurance, please call Geico.” It’s not what they do.

I’m sure I learned a ton about leadership as well. Things I did well. Things I did awful. How to prioritize self-care, which I didn’t do. Self-care and boundaries is something that I didn’t do well when I was at Disney. And I’ve learned to do better as an entrepreneur because you don’t wanna keep repeating the same mistakes. So, yeah. There’s oh, there’s so much I learned from Disney, honestly.

You talked about growing these synergistic relationships. Can you give an example of that?

Yeah. So as an entrepreneur, you would wanna look for peers in your industry potentially who are not competitive, but complementary to say, like, how can we grow a partnership together, a relationship together to help each other? So where are those mutual win-wins where everybody raises up? Because you are getting in front of their audience. They’re getting in front of your audience. It’s things like that. It’s really identifying the people and, or other businesses and brands who could create synergy with you, where it makes sense to partner together on certain things to boost each other equally.

That’s a really great example. How do we use these lessons as well as the M.A.G.I.C. Formula to effectively brand ourselves? So that we’re more visible, both as entrepreneurs, but also just maybe as employees in the workplace?

Yeah. I love that question. I mean, honestly, one of the lessons that I talked about was leaning into what you do best, right? If you know what you are uniquely known for, that becomes the thing that carves out your niche that helps you create sort of your UVP, your unique value proposition that sets you apart and has you stand out. I think anytime you can brand something or niche something to say like, “Hey, oh yeah, I do marketing for Disney, but actually I do marketing in a synergistic way, working with all the partners of the company to…”. That’s a niched version of what I do. It’s a specialty. It’s how do you specialize if you’re in an organization and then if you’re your own business, your own brand it’s, this is the unique part of how you position yourself to stand out among a sea of competition and why you’re different and who that difference is meant for cuz that’s for a niche audience as well.

How do we effectively use branding to tell an authentic story that effectively connects with our intended audience and our ideal client?

Branding, in general, to me is delivering this intentional experience to make your audience feel something and then have them choose you as their top choice. Branding helps you really identify that feeling you want your audience to have, and there’s no better way than evoking emotion than storytelling. And I think storytelling is a broad term, right? You really need to know your audience so well so that you can choose the best, most authentic story so that it does resonate. It can’t sound like everybody else’s, it can’t be made up. it’s either a story about you or it’s a story about your ideal client. Yeah. Right. It’s something that’s gonna resonate and tap into their needs and wants. So authentic storytelling is one of the best parts of branding because that is the thing that makes you memorable.

Yeah. We were talking before the podcast started about how I just watched the Victoria’s Secret: Angel and Demons documentary. Yes. And I didn’t realize that Victoria’s Secret had been a mail order business owned by a couple, and then Les Wexner the chairman and CEO of L Brands had purchased it. But they also created this story about Victoria being an English maiden with a British father who was in the aristocracy & a French mother. And it was this whole thing and it worked for them up until a point in 2000. Then they had to move it into let’s be super sexy.

And having these supermodels that had bodies that most of us didn’t have, of course, but looking at the ups and downs from that was really interesting just on their storytelling journey. And you think about even the brands that have these cult-like followings. Like Tesla, Apple, and another documentary that I watched last week. I love TV, apparently.

I actually do too. So I’m surprised that I haven’t watched all these quite yet, but it’s just because I have a little human running around here. And you know, we’re not watching everything with her in the room yet.

I watched the WeWork documentary. Also, on Hulu, there is a movie WeCrashwith Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway playing the two characters. But what was interesting about WeWork is I only knew about WeWork when I lived in London and I was looking for office space. So it wasn’t the cult-like thing it was in the U.S. But listening to it, it’s almost like Geico in a way where the business model itself is pretty boring. I mean, you’re leasing property and then subdividing it. But their whole brand story was about this communal space where you’re connecting with others.

And it’s the benefits versus the features.

 

Yes. And it just became this whole cult, but they were having weekends away, it was like Fyre festival done right. All these different things, but then it became mandatory and it was just interesting to see how they went from a $47 billion company to nothing. And just really losing so much value. But looking at the brand story and then as they grew and moved in different ways, it was getting away from those core values. Even what they stood for.

Yeah. You have to stay true to what you wanna be known for and what you stand for in your values. I mean, even look at Blockbuster.

Oh yeah.

What? I mean, how many times have we used it as an example? But they should be the Netflix of today. They should be. But they just didn’t move with their customer. They didn’t believe that this would no longer be a thing where people would go on a Friday night to the video store to pick out their video and then have to put it in the rewind machine to rewind it before they returned it. Like, what the heck?

Yeah. Yeah. It’s almost like Amazon and big box stores as well, which I think has had a major impact when you looked at these major brands that if they didn’t get into really the online piece of it then they’ve lost market share.

They’re losing out. Yeah.

And especially during the pandemic, when people weren’t going to the mall.

That’s right.

It just became, you could get your items quicker. You could return. I rarely go to the mall now I order everything pretty much online.

I do too.

Um yeah, it’s just convenience, but to your point of how do you pivot with that? And thinking about also with our branding, how do we ensure that our branding is inclusive and not exclusive?

I love this question actually, but I would say where it starts is identifying ideal clients because in my branding I talk a lot about demographics versus psychographics and I’m not a fan of creating an avatar for your business cause I think that is exclusive. I think an avatar is having you picture what that person is gonna look like. And they’re really focusing on, “Okay. They live in the suburbs. Do they have a family? Do they have kids? How much education do they have? What’s their salary?” It’s all the demographics, which are the outward descriptors of a person.

You can’t just have one singular type of person mm-hmm as your ideal client. That’s why I always focus on psychographics cuz it’s your internal motivations that can go across any, right? This can be from any gender, from any sexual orientation, from any race, you can still have those internal motivations of why they’re excited to achieve this specific goal.

What they’re currently challenged with what their dreams are that they wanna achieve? It’s those things that can connect you to an audience in a more inclusive way.

You see that a lot with fashion. There was this great quote from Robin Givhan. She’s an American fashion editor for the Washington Post and she’s also a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. But in the Abercrombie and Fitch documentary, she said “The fundamental idea is that fashion is selling us belonging, confidence, cool, and sex appeal. In many ways, the very last thing that it’s selling is actual garments.”

It’s interesting. Yeah.

Benjamin O’Keefe was saying about Abercrombie and Fitch is that “People like the brand because exclusion is part of our society.” Abercrombie and Fitch had an exclusionary type of brand. People, especially those that have been marginalized want to get that like that gives them some credibility.

Really looking at how do you take this to that next level and how they would get very pigeonholed in one ideal client, that when Rihanna came along with Savage Fenty and her all-inclusive body type line and even Fenty Beauty with her 40 different shades of foundation. These were very saturated markets, but she took that inclusive approach before anybody was really talking about inclusivity.

So because a standout, yeah.

Yes. This is a multi-billionaire and it was just one of those where you think you don’t realize that you’re being excluded until you start to be included. That’s what I thought. Cuz I was most {inaudible}.

That’s such a good way of positioning. And here’s the thing is like every brand is trying to do the thing to stand out and be successful, but they also have to evolve with the times they have to be relevant with the current conversation.

It’s like the Blockbuster conversation. Right? They stopped being relevant with the times and so they went away. Inclusivity is such an important thing that consumers are savvy, they don’t just like blindly follow brands anymore. Right? They are looking into, “What do you stand for? What are your values? Are you actually holding up and operating in that way? Are you actually sustainable? Are we actually helping save the planet?” Whatever it is they wanna know because those are the brands that they’re gonna choose to follow and spend their money on.

And they don’t wanna spend money in places that don’t align with their values. That is the current consumer of today so if you’re not on board with doing business that way, then you’re gonna be left behind. And the way to do business that way is to really establish and develop a brand strategy.

Think about also people that want to use their voice with social media, as you said, with these core values, but how even the model industry has changed when you have these influencers like a Gigi or Bella Hadid or a Kendall Jenner who did modeling for Victoria Secret and then when #MeToo happened and they weren’t tied to this company where they’re reporting issues of sexual harassment and it’s falling on deaf ears. They have their own independent platform, so it doesn’t affect their livelihood. And to your point, it’s that I always, when I was in-house and even as I train now, I always look at what the values are of those companies.

And it’s part of my training of how many people know what this company stands for. And even with their Code of Conduct, I’m like this tells you what the company expects of you, but also what you can expect from the company. And sometimes we don’t think about that, that they owe us a duty of care as well.

Right. And are you standing behind this and do you hold them accountable or is it performative? That’s where the rubber meets the road for me is this performative action that some companies will do, like when they did the black box or they’ll put out their statement and you don’t really hear anything. And it’s like, well, what progress have you made?

 

Hilary Hartling

Yeah. What are you actually doing?

Exactly. I think that gets into brand love language and how you connect with your audience. It’s how do we embrace our unique skills and the way that we message to really connect with them, but also ensure that we’re being as transparent and authentic as possible. Can you give a high level of what you mean by using your brand love language with your business?

Using your brand love language is literally like how you can best woo your audience. It’s going back to understanding who you’re talking to so well that you’re using the modality and the entertainment style that’s gonna work best for that audience. So it can be everything from words of inspiration, to storytelling, to really leaning into quality expertise or community time because that’s what people crave. But I think in terms of talking about your unique set of skills and how to communicate that to me, it’s branding again.

So if you know what’s unique and sets you apart, brand that. Brand your process. Because I would say if you brand your process and you communicate that to your audience, that instantly and naming something is powerful, number one, it automatically makes it more important and it automatically makes you more memorable and stand out above the competition.

Right? Let’s say there’s a brand photographer and she simply says, ” hire me because I can get you great professional photos to promote your brand.” Okay, great. Versus a brand photographer who says something like “I have a proprietary three-step brand story technique in how I’m gonna help female entrepreneurs tell their authentic story to attract their best audience and it starts with 1) helping you identify your unique brand story. 2) finding the location and poses and wardrobe that will communicate that to your audience. And 3) giving you a specific ‘for you only formula’ to give you the content you need to spread across your desired platforms, where your audience is hanging out.” Like which one are you gonna hire?

Yeah. And can I say, I love how you just come up with these things off the top of your head because you do this all the time and I’m like, I can barely come up with something for myself.

Just how my brain works. Right? But that is, I think one of the best ways to communicate and woo your audience, and that can be a version of quality expertise and storytelling put together. Branding your process, naming it, giving it some power and meaning and value.

So what are three things businesses should do when there is a marketing mistake?

I think there are probably a lot of different kinds of marketing mistakes and different remedies for them. I would say in general, If there was like a mistake in your marketing and you were launching something, product service, whatever it is. And the launch didn’t go as planned, you had to do something different or it just was unsuccessful. The three things that I would do immediately is one there’s a postmortem on the project so that, you know what actually did work and what didn’t work so we know that moving forward. I would also evaluate are you zeroed in on the right target audience. Or is the offer not right for your audience?

Does that make sense? Is it the right audience is the right offer for this audience? Like maybe you have a misstep somewhere where you’re not actually putting out the right thing for the right people. and then the third thing is, if you really do think you have the right people, then I would be doing market research immediately with that target audience, again, to find out more. Because you are, when something is unsuccessful with marketing or there’s a marketing mistake and something doesn’t do what you want it to do. It means you’re not communicating the value properly and you need to check in with the audience to see what do they actually want. What’s actually gonna resonate with them? But there are also PR mistakes too, which would be a completely different kind of scenario.

So that would be just like, oh, it didn’t work. Let’s reevaluate why that is and dig in. And then I would say as kind of a bonus, the next time you go to launch something, you could do a beta launch, right? You could do a beta launch where you say I’m gonna actually discount this because I’m still kind of figuring out and retooling how this is going to be delivered once it’s full price. And “Hey, you can get in now for this discounted price so I can get your feedback.” And then the next time you launch it, you have either improved it based on that feedback or you have testimonials of great results depending on what we’re talking about that you can use in the marketing for the next full-price launch.

 

Yeah. That’s a really good example and suggestion.

 

Yeah. There’s no shame in beta. That’s how a lot of people can really start and grow a business. Start with a beta just to attract the right people and get that experience under your belt, get some results for some of the clients that you know you wanna help, and then you can go on and do it like the full press.

Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. So what are some of the biggest challenges that you see businesses facing right now? And what tips would you give them to handle that successfully?

I would say one of the biggest challenges is always just breaking through the noise and the clutter and standing out. There’s so much competing for an audience’s attention, that’s even beyond your own industry. So you just have to consider where is their time and attention being spent. So sort of breaking through the noise. I would say one thing. And then the other thing I think is how to create a more personal touch in this sea of online businesses we now have that are a little bit more automated and a little bit more impersonal and I think branding can help with both of those.

So it can be creating that story for your brand to be more memorable in the first case or in the second case, it’s really how do you form personal relationships with your audience. I remember Amy Porterfield, who’s a big online entrepreneur. She’s got a team she makes multimillion dollars a year.

She’s great at what she does. And you might think if you get an answer in the DMs on Instagram, that it’s someone from her team and maybe sometimes it is, but she goes in every once in a while and she does a personal voice note back to you, or she does a video back to you. Oh. And you’re automatically bought in. You’re like she cares enough to take the time out of I’m sure the thousands of DMs she gets to send me back a personal note. That’s amazing. So it’s coming up with those ways to personalize your business, even more, to make your customer feels special.

Oh, I love that. I really do love that. so rapid-fire questions.

Okay.

 

What was your favorite movie project that you worked on at Disney?

 

You know, it’s so hard to pick a baby. I’ve worked on over 250 movies.

 

Oh, wow.

 

The favorite ones are the ones that have a personal meaning attached to them so I would say one of my favorite projects that I worked on was PearlHarbor. It was a Jerry Bruckheimer movie directed by Michael Bay. Because my grandpa was at Pearl Harbor and survived. My dad worked at Hickham Air Force base. I grew up in Hawaii. And so we did the press junket & premiere on top of a working aircraft carrier sitting on Pearl Harbor. And it was just probably the hardest, one of the hardest times I’ve ever worked.

I did so much, we were doing like, um, unique specials on the History Channel. I was like any cable network that made sense. I was like in charge of getting content and shooting content and doing custom intros and outros and hosts and all this stuff. And it was just so much work, but it was so much fun.

And I also got to invite my parents at the last minute to the premier. Um, so it was just this like full circle. Amazing. Kind of moment so that I loved, I also loved just like, so people might not recognize this as a Disney project, cuz we used to have the Touchstone film banner  but like, um, Sweet Home Alabama and Under the TuscanSun.These are movies that I worked on and, and absolutely love just because of the kinds of movies that I like to watch. So those are fun projects to work on too. But I also loved all the true sports stories because I got to meet all the real guys, right? Like the U.S. Olympic hockey team who beat Russia in 1980-whatever.

And we did the movie Miracle. Like I met all the guys, the goal, he made me a jersey, like it was so cool too. See, like what they did and how that’s carried through their life and the meaning it had now when the movie was being released, it was just, yeah, there’s just some cool things you get to do when you, when you work in the movie business well, and there’s such much, uh, you have that personal touch with it since, you know, you did get to meet them and all of that.So that’s nice.

 

Nichole Pitts

And with Pearl Harbor, since you grew up in Hawaii, then I know, I know that was probably nice too.

It was really cool. It was really cool to kind of, uh, be, have my dream job, but also then be back in Hawaii working and doing something with it was really kind of a cool yeah. A cool thing to experience for sure.

If you could be remembered for one thing, what would you want that to be?

Inspiring people to find their purpose and go for it?

If you could go back and give 18-year-old Hilary, a piece of advice on something that you learned along the way to make her life a little easier, what would you give her?

I don’t know if I would believe it if I heard it, but I would probably say something like there’s no rush. You are always supported. You don’t always have to have all the answers and you can just simply trust that everything is unfolding as it’s meant to and you can always create momentum by pursuing whatever lights you up.