Miriam Stone's guest appearances

Miriam Stone

Making Ways: The Art of Music

How Brands Are Built

Dava Guthmiller

Jerry Seinfeld

Jesse Genet

Alexis Joseph

Brian Collins

Jeremy Miller

Steve Smith

Sadie Dupuis

Faye Orlove

Alina Wheeler

Jason Sturgill

Sunny Bonnell

Eli Altman

Anthony Shore

Armin Vit

OwlTail

This week's guest is Miriam Stone, an independent strategist who works with agencies around the Bay Area, including lifestyle branding agency Noise 13, where she's Strategy Director. In addition to her brand consulting work, Miriam's helped create and develop brands from inside the organization, as a Co-Founder of Swing Left, a national political movement, and previously as VP of Business Development for VisionSpring. Miriam and I first met at Interbrand San Francisco in 2012. Since then, we've become good friends and frequent collaborators. She's one of the smartest, most thoughtful strategists I know. When she told me she'd been working on documenting her process for getting from facts and observations to useful findings and insights, I jumped at the opportunity to have her walk through it on the podcast. This is exactly the "practical and tactical" information for which I created How Brands Are Built. It's an in-the-weeds conversation, but if you're working in branding and looking to get more systematic in your approach to insight generation, you'll want to tune in. Miriam walked through four steps to insight generation. Her perspective is that, while some parts of brand strategy may require "that little, extra, innate spark or talent," other parts, like those below, can be approached systematically. Step 1: Collecting  Try not to make any judgements until the research is done. Miriam: "Just listen. Read, and listen. ... Just be a sponge." Use the "Three C's" to collect information about the Company, the Category (including competitors), and Customers. At a minimum, do a few fact-gathering sessions with the client team and supplement with desktop research. One exercise recommendation: Have the client list every competitor, then prioritize the top three. Break into groups and list out points of differentiation between the client's brand and competitors' brands-not just product benefits, but brand strengths and weaknesses.  Step 2: Grouping  Put everything up on the wall with sticky notes-one fact per note. Group similar or related facts and findings, without trying to draw out insights yet. Miriam: "I think that takes the pressure off of you as a strategist. It takes the pressure off of the data." At this point, you might have 10 or 20 different groupings, which is way too many to present to a client as "insights."  Step 3: Synthesizing  Take a step back and ask yourself what themes you see-what the groupings are telling you on a deeper level. Look for points of tension between the themes, ideas that are strongly supported, or anything that doesn't make sense. Ultimately, you should be able to get down to five or six big insights.  Step 4: Storytelling  Don't think in PowerPoint. (Credit to Caren Williams) Write an outline-what's the key observation or insight on each slide, and what facts or quotes will you use to back each one up. You should feel like your outline is 70-80% complete before you move to slides (assuming that's how you'll present). The outline allows you to see any holes in the story.  Miriam's a big proponent of using sticky notes throughout these steps, an approach she learned from Caren Williams, with whom we both worked at Interbrand. Caren is now an independent brand strategist working in the Bay Area. Despite having tried other methods, Miriam finds that sticky notes work best for a number of reasons:  They "force you to distill as you're doing your research." "Because you can only write so much, you have to abstract a little bit as you're writing." "You can move them around really easily." They force you to switch medium (from screen to physical paper). You stand up and move around while using them. "I think it does something good for the brain." When working with other people, you can look at the wall together and discuss what you're finding.  We also talked about competitive audits, getting from insights to a brand platform, what "ingredients" should be included in a brand platform, and what makes a good brand essence. To learn more about Miriam, visit her website Brand Plume, or Noise 13. You can also find some blog posts she's written on How Brands Are Built.

This week's guest is <a href="http://www.brandplume.com/about.html" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Miriam Stone</a>, an independent strategist who works with agencies around the Bay Area, including lifestyle branding agency Noise 13, where she's Strategy Director. In addition to her brand consulting work, Miriam's helped create and develop brands from inside the organization, as a Co-Founder of <a href="http://swingleft.org/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Swing Left</a>, a national political movement, and previously as VP of Business Development for <a href="http://visionspring.org/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">VisionSpring</a>. Miriam and I first met at <a href="http://www.interbrand.com/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Interbrand</a> San Francisco in 2012. Since then, we've become good friends and frequent collaborators. She's one of the smartest, most thoughtful strategists I know. When she told me she'd been working on documenting her process for getting from facts and observations to useful findings and insights, I jumped at the opportunity to have her walk through it on the podcast. This is exactly the "practical and tactical" information for which I created How Brands Are Built. It's an in-the-weeds conversation, but if you're working in branding and looking to get more systematic in your approach to insight generation, you'll want to tune in. Miriam walked through four steps to insight generation. Her perspective is that, while some parts of brand strategy may require "that little, extra, innate spark or talent," other parts, like those below, can be approached systematically. Step 1: Collecting <ul> <li>Try not to make any judgements until the research is done. Miriam: "Just listen. Read, and listen. ... Just be a sponge."</li> <li>Use the "Three C's" to collect information about the Company, the Category (including competitors), and Customers.</li> <li>At a minimum, do a few fact-gathering sessions with the client team and supplement with desktop research.</li> <li>One exercise recommendation: Have the client list every competitor, then prioritize the top three. Break into groups and list out points of differentiation between the client's brand and competitors' brands-not just product benefits, but brand strengths and weaknesses.</li> </ul> Step 2: Grouping <ul> <li>Put everything up on the wall with sticky notes-one fact per note.</li> <li>Group similar or related facts and findings, without trying to draw out insights yet. Miriam: "I think that takes the pressure off of you as a strategist. It takes the pressure off of the data."</li> <li>At this point, you might have 10 or 20 different groupings, which is way too many to present to a client as "insights."</li> </ul> Step 3: Synthesizing <ul> <li>Take a step back and ask yourself what themes you see-what the groupings are telling you on a deeper level.</li> <li>Look for points of tension between the themes, ideas that are strongly supported, or anything that doesn't make sense.</li> <li>Ultimately, you should be able to get down to five or six big insights.</li> </ul> Step 4: Storytelling <ul> <li>Don't think in PowerPoint. (Credit to <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/carenwilliams/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Caren Williams</a>)</li> <li>Write an outline-what's the key observation or insight on each slide, and what facts or quotes will you use to back each one up.</li> <li>You should feel like your outline is 70-80% complete before you move to slides (assuming that's how you'll present).</li> <li>The outline allows you to see any holes in the story.</li> </ul> Miriam's a big proponent of using sticky notes throughout these steps, an approach she learned from <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/carenwilliams/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Caren Williams</a>, with whom we both worked at Interbrand. Caren is now an independent brand strategist working in the Bay Area. Despite having tried other methods, Miriam finds that sticky notes work best for a number of reasons: <ul> <li>They "force you to distill as you're doing your research."</li> <li>"Because you can only write so much, you have to abstract a little bit as you're writing."</li> <li>"You can move them around really easily."</li> <li>They force you to switch medium (from screen to physical paper).</li> <li>You stand up and move around while using them. "I think it does something good for the brain."</li> <li>When working with other people, you can look at the wall together and discuss what you're finding.</li> </ul> We also talked about competitive audits, getting from insights to a brand platform, what "ingredients" should be included in a brand platform, and what makes a good brand essence. To learn more about Miriam, visit her website <a href="http://www.brandplume.com/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Brand Plume,</a> or <a href="https://noise13.com/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Noise 13</a>. You can also find some <a href="https://howbrandsarebuilt.com/blog/author/miriamstone/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">blog posts she's written</a> on How Brands Are Built.

Miriam Stone uses the sticky note method

In life, we are often so fixated on moving forward that we overlook past passions worth revisiting. On today’s episode, we chart the amazing journey of Miriam Stone. Miriam is a published memoir author who switched gears after hitting writer’s block and found a career in business and marketing as a brand strategist. After the 2016 election, Miriam harnessed her years of training for political action, cofounding Swing Left, an organization that rallies support for progressive candidates in congressional races. Listen in as Miriam shares how her mother’s passing inspired her first book, why she switched gears and went for a MBA, and what a brand strategist really does. Miriam also delivers great advice for making room in your life for creative exploration and how to overcome those pesky feelings many of us have about not being good enough to do whatever it is that we really want to do. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In life, we are often so fixated on moving forward that we overlook past passions worth revisiting. On today’s episode, we chart the amazing journey of Miriam Stone. Miriam is a published memoir author who switched gears after hitting writer’s block and found a career in business and marketing as a brand strategist. After the 2016 election, Miriam harnessed her years of training for political action, cofounding Swing Left, an organization that rallies support for progressive candidates in congressional races. Listen in as Miriam shares how her mother’s passing inspired her first book, why she switched gears and went for a MBA, and what a brand strategist really does. Miriam also delivers great advice for making room in your life for creative exploration and how to overcome those pesky feelings many of us have about not being good enough to do whatever it is that we really want to do. Hosted on Acast. See <a href="https://acast.com/privacy" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.

How Writer-Turned-Brand Strategist Miriam Stone Helped Start a Political Movement