Karen Leland (00:00)
I say drunk marketing is any marketing decision made without any strategy or data behind it. It’s like they just go, Okay, let’s just do it, right?

Shelley E. Kohan (00:36)
Hi, everybody. Thanks for joining our weekly podcast. I’m Shelley Kohan, and I’m excited to welcome Karen Tieber-Leland. She is the founder of Sterling Marketing Group, a brand marketing firm. And you actually work with some of the biggest companies out there: LinkedIn, Apple, Google, it’s amazing. You’re also a best-selling author. You have a book called The Brand Mapping Strategy: Design, Build, and Accelerate Your Brand.

And we’re very lucky. Retail Unwrap joins your long list of great outlets where you have spoken, including Harvard, Stanford, and TEDx. So welcome.

Karen Leland (01:15)
Thank you. I’m so happy to be here.

Shelley E. Kohan (01:18)
Today we’re going to talk about something that I think is so important, especially everything that’s going on in retail, and that is brand drift. So some of the things that we’re going to cover today are we going to talk a little bit about how to spot brand drift before it’s a crisis. We’re going to talk about why re-up is better than rebrand. And I love that part.

and then we’re gonna talk about the three-part model that’s really important and how a brand can really help itself if it recognizes where it’s stuck. And lastly, we’re gonna talk about my favorite phrase that you use is drunk marketing. So we’ll save that for the end. So let’s we’ll jump right in here. And so let’s first talk about this idea of brands that drift and how it’s kind of invisible as it’s happening.

Karen Leland (02:12)
Yeah, it’s so funny because I’m working on my next book, which is Reup Your Brand, and one of the chapters is is on the seven ways brands drift. Because what happens is that people think of usually rebranding as this dramatic thing happens, right? Your market all of a sudden changes, or you get a new ownership, or you have a merger, or something’s dramatically changed, changed in the business world. And so you have to rebrand. But the truth is we live in a world where it’s like a lot of mini, like that’s why I call it re-upping your brand, right? It’s a lot of little mini rebrands.

Because what happens is, as I say in the book, brands drift. Sometimes they drift in their message, sometimes they drift in their looks, sometimes they drift in their marketing, sometimes they drift in their audience and who they’re promoting to, sometimes they drift in their what they’re offering. And so you have to pay attention. But what happens is brands don’t usually drift in this big dramatic way. They drift in these little ways. And if you’re not paying attention, then before you know it, all of a sudden your brand is really outdated in one of these ways.

And now you have a crisis. Now you have an emergency. So the reason I call it brand drift is I want brands to understand that it happens in a very slow, it’s almost like a lazy river. It happens in kind of a slow, right? Like lazy way. And all of a sudden you’re like, wait, where am I? What happened? So that’s what I mean by brand drift.

Shelley E. Kohan (03:29)
Yeah. And so when I think of brands that have kind of drifted away, here’s what I think about. I think about Starbucks as an example. You know, it used to

Karen Leland (03:36)
Yes.

Shelley E. Kohan (03:37)
be this warm community coffee house, and now it’s all about convenience, mobile ordering. and a lot of the Starbucks

Karen Leland (03:44)
Correct.

Shelley E. Kohan (03:45)
took took their seats out. So now you can’t even use there’s no bathroom for customers and there’s no seats. There’s no what’s the community

Karen Leland (03:52)
Right.

Shelley E. Kohan (03:52)
in that? But you know, so that’s one that I think that is a pretty big

Karen Leland (03:57)
That’s and that’s a perfect example of a brand that drifted. Now maybe they meant for their brand to go in that direction, right? But maybe it just happened w sort of subconsciously or unconsciously, and they’ve lost that sense of what originally and I agree with you. They used to be like a friendly community place. And I don’t think of Starbucks that way anymore, right? Personally.

Shelley E. Kohan (04:17)
I don’t I don’t think a lot of people

think of that that way. And I think it wasn’t real like a mere drift. I think it was a roadway departure. And maybe it was intentional

Karen Leland (04:26)
Yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (04:26)
and that might be different, re you know, rebranding or br making a different brand, going a different way, a direction. I think another good example is the Victorious Secret. We’re kind of watching this in real time right now as it’s happening, right? So that’s a great one.

Karen Leland (04:40)
Yes, for sure. Yes.

Shelley E. Kohan (04:44)
we all know.

kind of the story of that. We don’t have to repeat that here, but they just posted their first quarter fifteen percent jump in revenue, going back to where they were. So they drifted away and now they’re coming back, right? Yeah.

Karen Leland (04:55)
Where they started. Yeah.

And the thing about retail is that retail’s extremely sensitive, as you know, to micro changes in the market, right? Micro changes in the market can really impact retail dramatically. And so, because I I’ve worked a lot with retailers in my career, and what happens is they kind of get a path and they stay on that path and they stay on that path and they stay on that path. And if they don’t pay attention to micro shifts in the market.

then their brand can start to drift in a way where they stop being relevant and people stop. Another really good example of that, they’re they’re sort of recovering a bit now is Gap. Gap was really on market

Shelley E. Kohan (05:34)
Yes, yes.

Karen Leland (05:35)
for a long time and really on trend for a long time. And I’ve I’ve done some work not recently, but in the past years with you know Banana Republic, the, you know, the, the bigger company, the, the parent company. And they stopped paying attention. I think now they’re getting back to it.

But it’s like in retail is super sensitive to micro to micro changes in the market.

Shelley E. Kohan (05:56)
I was very critical on the Old Navy because what I think would happen with Old Navy is Old Navy was such a unique brand and it had this really

Karen Leland (06:05)
So unique.

Shelley E. Kohan (06:07)
loyal customer. And then one day, out of the blue, at least to me, they said, we’re gonna be size inclusive and we’re gonna be all all things to all people. And I said immediately, that’s not gonna work.

Karen Leland (06:17)
To all people. Yeah.

No. No. And it is interesting because retail has a funny line to walk in terms of like re-upping their brands, right? Because on one hand, you don’t want to destroy what made you successful. You want to keep the essence of that. But on the other hand, because of these kind of micro shifts in the market, you sort of it’s like an airplane. You know, that old story about an airplane starts starts in Los Angeles to go to New York. It’s never on course 100% of the time. It’s usually off course.

On course, off course, on course, and that’s how they get there. Retail’s a lot like that, right? You’re not like a hundred percent

Shelley E. Kohan (06:51)
that’s interesting.

Karen Leland (06:52)
on course a hundred percent of the time, but it’s like you make these little adjustments and re-upping your brand here and there that keep you on course. Now, most retail in my experience, having worked with retailers, don’t don’t think like that. They don’t work that way. They think about it as like we’ve got a brand, we’re gonna keep that brand for 10 years, and 10 years every 10 years we’ll stop and take a look. But in this market today, that doesn’t work.

You have to really be doing that tweaking of the brand and re upping in minor ways as you’re going along, in my experience.

Shelley E. Kohan (07:25)
I love your analogy of the airplane because you know I never really thought about that, but you’re right. And retail is should be like that. If they’re not, then that’s problematic. And I know that for I mean, the two greatest, I think, all time examples of, you know, not staying in tune with what’s happening in the market is Kodak and Blockbuster, right? Those are the two that just, you know, failed to see where the consumer was headed. And if you’re on that,

Karen Leland (07:49)
Absolutely.

Shelley E. Kohan (07:50)
if you’re making these little re-ups along the way.

You should be ahead of that. So can you just tell us a little bit about the difference between the reupping versus rebranding?

Karen Leland (08:01)
Absolutely. So rebranding, and you know, I’ve spent most of my career as a brand strategist. So I’ve done a lot of rebrandings with businesses. And the thing is, is that, you know, brands rarely fail. As we talked about, they drift, right? And so what happens is a rebrand is more where you go, we’ve got to start over. Like that last version, either it was a mistake, it didn’t work, or it worked really well, but now it’s done, right?

So that’s like a complete starting over when you do a rebrand. A re-up is more like our brand’s worked, but we’ve outgrown it, right? A re a rebrand is more like an admission that we’re done. We got to really start over. A re-up is more like a promotion, right? It’s like you’re you’re gonna tweak and move some things to stay on track. So and a re-up isn’t cosmetic. It’s not like you go, we just need a new refresh of our logo or a new refresh of our look.

Right? So brands that stall tend to need an adjustment one little thing at a time, not a teardown. A rebrand is often a complete teardown, right? You start all over. But a re up is more like where you’re reframing things, you’re you’re adjusting things here and there, right? And I just want to give one example. Gartner in February 2026 had a prediction that should worry any.

Chief marketing officer who’s listening from a retail organization here. By 2027, the Gartner study found that 40% of CMOs who push for bigger brand budgets are gonna lose influence with the C-suite because they’re not able to demonstrate the return. So when you ask for a full rebrand, that’s often a very big cost and a very big spend. Where a reup is a lot less of a spend because you’re more tweaking things here and there. Does that make sense?

Shelley E. Kohan (09:51)
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And that’s really interesting because I do think in today’s environment in the retail landscape, the proving out of the ROI is more important than it’s ever been, especially with marketing.

Karen Leland (10:05)
Totally. And when you’re asking for doing re-ups rather than a total rebrand, the cost goes way down. Now, sometimes you need a rebrand. I’m not, you know, I’ve done lots of rebrands with clients in my life, but I’ve done more re-ups than I have rebrands. Sometimes you need a big rebrand, but usually what companies need are some re-ups and where they’ve drifted, and that’s the thing they’re not doing.

Shelley E. Kohan (10:30)
And how can so you’re saying say when companies are drifting away, it’s invisible on the inside. So at what point is someone recognizing, wow, something’s off and should we rebrand or should we re-up?

Karen Leland (10:44)
Well, every brand usually usually fails, you know, in one of three places. And this is gets into kind of the next part, which is what I call the in the book I write about is the brand momentum model, which is you have to be findable, you have to be followable, and you have to be unforgettable, right? And usually a brand starts to fail or stall or drift in one of those areas. And pe it’s not that it’s silent and people don’t notice it, it’s that they notice it, but it’s so small.

That they think, this isn’t a big deal. When they actually start to wake up is when it becomes a big deal. They start noticing, our profits weigh down. we’ve lost a bunch of customers. we’ve got a big competitor in our marketplace. we used to be doing this and now we’re doing that. So what happens is it becomes a bigger emergency. It’s like if you have a little lump and you don’t go to the doctor when you have a little lump and then it gets a little bigger and a little bigger, and you’re like, I better go to the doctor for that, right? The trick is start

Shelley E. Kohan (11:39)
Yeah.

Karen Leland (11:40)
noticing the stuff sooner.

Right, rather than later down the down the road.

Shelley E. Kohan (11:46)
I think one of the biggest challenges in today’s industry and going into next year is the findable one is going to be more and more of a challenge. And I say that because

Karen Leland (11:56)
Challenging.

Shelley E. Kohan (11:57)
a lot of consumers are not going to websites or brands, they’re going to generative AI, they’re going to the search models. Even now, Google now has all its AI already embedded in it. So when

Karen Leland (12:11)
Yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (12:11)
you say, Where can I find the best black dress?

for summer that is X, Y, and Z, it it’s gonna find it for them. So how

Karen Leland (12:17)
AI. Yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (12:20)
how can you be findable if customers aren’t even, you know, out

there looking

Karen Leland (12:23)
Well,

I think the issue with being findable is that AI now sits between you and the buyer. So you used to ask the question, where can I get a great black dress for summer? And it would send you to a variety of people. Well, now it’s actually gonna say, Well, the best black dresses for summer are so it answers the question before you choose where you want to go. And that’s a huge sea change, right? In the way that people get found.

There’s a company called Arefs and they studied, I think, three hundred thousand keywords using Google Search Console data. And when Google puts an AI overview at the top of the page, the number one organic result loses fifty percent of its clicks. You know, so it’s

Shelley E. Kohan (13:05)
So what w

what you’re saying is when it it what you’re saying is people aren’t going to that website. Is that what you mean by losing fifty eight percent of

Karen Leland (13:11)
Correct.

Shelley E. Kohan (13:13)
its clicks?

Karen Leland (13:14)
If AI doesn’t recommend you, people don’t go there. So it’s gone from here’s a list and you can click through to these people and see what you like to making recommendations by default. And so if AI doesn’t know who you are, it’s really hard to be found. Really hard to be found.

Shelley E. Kohan (13:33)
And I think what that does is I think that’s putting more pressure on the unforgettable pillar, right? Because if you’re unforgettable,

Karen Leland (13:41)
It’s yes.

Shelley E. Kohan (13:43)
the consumer’s gonna go back to you because of the brand, right?

Karen Leland (13:50)
Well, it puts more pressure on the unforgettable and the followable, but what it really puts pressure on is you have to be findable by making sure that Google and AI know exactly who you are and exactly what you represent and exactly what your brand is and exactly the kind of you know market that you serve and what you offer. If you are confused about that, if you are not clear about that and you haven’t made that clear online.

then the AI doesn’t recognize you as the quote unquote expert. It doesn’t recognize you as wow, the hot black dress that everyone wants for summer. So it’s an ongoing thing that you have to do with content and with how you’re and with how you put it out online. So it’s a very different game than it was even I would say three years ago.

Shelley E. Kohan (14:41)
I totally agree. I think the other thing that’s really important on the findable piece is that the customer reviews all of a sudden, I mean customer reviews have always been important internally, meaning I’m gonna go, I’m gonna read my reviews, I’m gonna I wanna know what my customer says. I know CEOs that the first thing they do in the morning is they don’t look at sales, but they read their customer reviews, like literally. But that also now plays into AI, right?

So AI is reading the customer reviews, right? So now

Karen Leland (15:07)
A hundred percent correct.

Shelley E. Kohan (15:10)
externally those reviews are even more important.

Karen Leland (15:13)
Yeah, imagine if you’ve got all of these fabulous reviews for your black summer dress, staying on our example, right? AI is gonna search that and realize, a lot of people like this as a black summer dress. So it’s it’s this delicate balance between making sure that you’re putting out content that’s very on brand with what you do and what you want to be known for, combined with that organic content of like user reviews, customer reviews.

combined with, you know, PR or whatever marketing you do. And it’s like those three things together are this Venn diagram that, you know, in the middle end up with you being findable. Where it used to be

Shelley E. Kohan (15:54)
Yeah, exactly. Okay, so let’s talk a

Karen Leland (15:56)
you could I just say where it used to be you could just use the SEO words properly and you could get it. It doesn’t work that way anymore.

Shelley E. Kohan (16:03)
No,

SEO’s out. It’s out. I mean

Karen Leland (16:06)
It’s out to a certain degree for sure.

Shelley E. Kohan (16:08)
Yeah. so followable. Let’s talk a minute about followable. Is this fallable like on TikTok and social media? Or are you meaning something different here?

Karen Leland (16:17)
I well I mean once they get there, do they once they stay, do you know, do once they arrive, do they stay? I’m gonna give you a a personal example. So there’s a tiny little boutique that I really like in Marin County. And whenever I come to visit Morale County, for like 20 years I’ve gone to this boutique. It’s expensive, right? It’s an expensive retail boutique. I spend a ton of money there, I bring friends there, and I’ve been there a customer for like 20 years. The owner knows me.

I went in the other day because I’m in town and I brought a friend with me and I bought a couple of pairs of jeans and a few shirts and tops and they’re always very on trend, great stuff. My friend brought a very a pair of jeans, you know. And when I got home, I was showing the jeans to another friend and she said, I just bought those same jeans. And she looked at the tag and she said, Wow, these are like $40 more in the boutique. They’re $40 above the manufacturer’s retail price.

And I said, Well, that that shouldn’t be. That’s not right. And then I looked online and everywhere else they were $40 less. So I wrote the owner, who knows me? And I said, Hi, you know, I was in town, I went to the boutique, I bought a friend, I bought some stuff. By the way, the jeans were like $40 more than none. I’m not talking about on sale than they would be anywhere else. They’re they’re above the manufacturer’s retail. Can you please give me a credit given that I shopped there for 20 years and so often?

Now I have not heard back from her. Okay.

Shelley E. Kohan (17:42)
What?

Karen Leland (17:42)
I’ll send us I’ll send a second email as a follow-up and I’ll call. But I can tell you right now, if she doesn’t credit back that $40, am I gonna go there as often? Probably not. And am I when I go there, you bet I’m gonna whip out my phone and I’m gonna

Shelley E. Kohan (18:00)
Yeah.

Karen Leland (18:00)
look and I’m gonna see if I buy these here, am I gonna pay $40 more? So that’s part of what being followable is.

It’s one thing to be discovered. It’s another thing to say, are those brands paying attention to you in a way and treating you in a way where you want to stay there? It’s not enough for them to just follow you. I mean to find you. You have to behave in a way that they want to come back. And that’s just a small

Shelley E. Kohan (18:26)
Think the other

Karen Leland (18:27)
example, but don’t you think that’s an interesting retail example?

Shelley E. Kohan (18:32)
Yeah, it’s a it’s a great example. I’m kind of surprised they haven’t gotten back to you, to be honest. I mean, that that to me is such an easy fix. and what and

Karen Leland (18:36)
I I am too. I’m gonna be calling

them today.

Shelley E. Kohan (18:44)
the other thing about followable, I think, is this whole these consumers want to be involved in like a community. They want to be part of a community. So you have a lot of great brands. Yeti comes to mind. I’m a big Yeti fan, and Yeti has this huge community. They make movies, they make shorts, they have YouTube, they do

Karen Leland (19:02)
Yep, correct.

Shelley E. Kohan (19:03)
all these things and they build this community which makes me want to follow them.

Karen Leland (19:08)
Yes. You know who’s else is amazing at that? Is Quince. Quince is like,

Shelley E. Kohan (19:13)
yes.

Karen Leland (19:14)
you know, who I love. Quince is like, send us your Instagram of wearing this. And they do it all shapes, all sizes, all types of people. Quince does a great job of building that community.

Shelley E. Kohan (19:25)
Yeah, I love Quinns too. That’s another one of my favorite brands because they are followable. I love that.

Karen Leland (19:30)
Yeah, and they’re great and their

prices are great and their merchandise is great. And their style is great. Yeah. Yeah. They’re very good.

Shelley E. Kohan (19:35)
Yeah, for sure. Okay, so

let’s talk about drunk marketing. Tell us about what drunk marketing is. And of course, if you don’t say this example, I will because I remember clear as day when this happened. I was like, my God, what were they thinking? But I didn’t say were they drunk?

Karen Leland (19:54)
Well, here’s what happens. Sometimes I get a call from people often and they’ll go, you know, we spent a hundred thousand dollars on a marketing campaign or on a PR campaign or we did a TikTok campaign or whatever it could be, right? And we didn’t really get what we wanted. And usually after I ask a few questions, what I realize is they were just trying stuff out with any diet without any diagnosis, right? Without any research. They’re just like, TikTok’s hot, we gotta get on there. you know, this is hot, we gotta do this.

And it’s like the truth is that something being hot doesn’t mean it’s right for your company. So drunk marketing is this kind of just throwing it at the wall and seeing what sticks as opposed to sober marketing. I mean, it’s so important. There’s actually a whole chapter in the new book on drunk marketing, right? Because without a scheduled diagnosis, leaders default to drunk marketing. They make decisions on impulse. They look at competitors and get envious. They, you know, it’s whoever got excited about something in the room on a Thursday. And so that’s what drunk marketing is.

And so my thing is no, what you should be practicing is sober branding and sober marketing. Tell me your example. I wanna hear your example.

Shelley E. Kohan (20:58)
I’m just gonna say two words and you’re gonna say absolutely cracker barrel.

Karen Leland (21:03)
Yep, there you go. Perfect. Drunk marketing.

Shelley E. Kohan (21:06)
I’m

like I and within days they fixed it. I mean it was like it it just reminds me of, you know, who was in the room when that decision was made to change the logo.

Karen Leland (21:17)
Correct.

Shelley E. Kohan (21:17)
I’m sure all of our listeners know this example, but just in case they don’t, Cracker Barrel decided to change its logo, make it more simple, and they dropped the nostalgic imagery of Uncle Herschel, who was, you know, someone that was, you know, one of the founding people of the company. So but they did it very fast. They tried to be quick. And what’s interesting is I feel like the new logo was kind of geared toward a younger customer. And

Karen Leland (21:44)
Yeah, market.

Shelley E. Kohan (21:44)
It’s not really

who their customer is, right?

Karen Leland (21:47)
No. Well, and that’s why

I say drunk marketing is any marketing decision made without any strategy or data behind it. It’s like they just go, Okay, let’s just do it, right?

Shelley E. Kohan (21:57)
Exactly. So what

Karen Leland (21:59)
Yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (21:59)
can retailers and brands do? So now we’re in this f we’re getting ready to go into holiday, one of our biggest seasons. and then further going into 2027, when we talk about this marketing and we talk about brand drifting, what could you say to retailers and brands what they can be doing to make sure they’re not drifting too far off of their brands?

Karen Leland (22:24)
Well, I mean, the I I tell companies, and again, this is one of the things that I I write in the book, is that the diagnosis is annual, right? You need to do an annual diagnosis to see where you’ve drifted, to see where you might be doing drunk marketing. Like the intervention is whatever the diagnosis calls for, right? And some years you just fix one thing, and other years you need a whole new strategy. So I always tell people

companies that what they need to do is every year they need to sit down and they need to look at all of the various aspects of their marketing, their messaging, their look, their logo, their channels they’re using for promotion, right? The way they’re doing it. And they need to see are we still on track here? Is this still consistent with where the market is, where we are, where we want to be, where our customers are, where things are going. It’s like taking those that look every year. It’s just how you go to the doctor

And you get a checkup every year and you get your blood work done, right? It’s a little bit like that. It’s like you need to take that sort of look at it to see what does it. You know, Gartner calls this the the the you know a doom loop, a brand doom loop. And the suggestion isn’t

Shelley E. Kohan (23:31)
Yes.

Karen Leland (23:32)
to rebrand, it’s to measure your brand health on a regular cadence. You know, it’s to connect those metrics to business outcomes so that you’re building kind of a clear story about where your brand is. So it’s more like it’s a yearly check.

Not a yearly overhaul. And that’s really the argument that I make in my consulting work in this in this upcoming book that I’m writing. That’s really what the argument is. The argument is not a yearly overhaul, it’s a yearly checkup and then adjusting things that need to be adjusted. Just like you go to your doctor and he says, you know, everything’s good, but your cholesterol’s a little high, eat less red meat, right? That’s not an overhaul, that’s an adjustment. And I think brands need to do the same thing.

Shelley E. Kohan (24:13)
I the other thing is sometimes when brands aren’t paying attention or they make these brand drifts into something else, another commodity, another category of business, you know, then then they end up in bankruptcy. And then they have to really kind of come back and do a whole shift. So I’ll give you one example,

Karen Leland (24:29)
Well, right, right.

Shelley E. Kohan (24:32)
a success story, not not retail, but Marvel, I don’t know if you know this, but Marvel actually filed for bankruptcy back in ninety six, right? They they were chased.

Karen Leland (24:41)
I didn’t know that.

Shelley E. Kohan (24:42)
They were chasing like comic books and all of that. But what they said was after they filed for bankruptcy, let’s just focus on our film studio and our core characters. And just last month, Spider-Man brought in over 2.1 billion worldwide.

Karen Leland (24:58)
Yeah, yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (24:59)
And it was like one of the best releases in history. So you can come back, and sometimes when you drift, pulling it back, but hopefully it’s before you’re at the point where.

You file for bankruptcy.

Karen Leland (25:11)
And that’s the

that’s the point. Do you don’t want it to get to that point? You know, you want it to get to the you want it to get caught before then. But that’s a great

Shelley E. Kohan (25:20)
Exactly.

Karen Leland (25:20)
example of of using that brand, but then really doing it in a way that just created a whole new business for them. Yeah, it’s great.

Shelley E. Kohan (25:29)
Yeah. And when we

look at some retailers like Sears filed for bankruptcy, never came back. Sax is what who knows what’s gonna happen with Sax Fifth Avenue. So it’s tough

Karen Leland (25:39)
Yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (25:39)
once you get down that road to come back, especially in retail. Retail’s very competitive.

Karen Leland (25:43)
Retail is hard. You know, and I give you like I think a company that’s managed to do this is Nordstrom. They’ve managed to stay on track with those micro changes so far, anyway, in the market.

Shelley E. Kohan (25:57)
Nordstroms is great. So they were private, then public, then private, then public, now private. I don’t know how many iterations

Karen Leland (26:03)
I know.

Shelley E. Kohan (26:04)
of that. but the even through

Karen Leland (26:05)
‘Cause they they keep tweaking.

Shelley E. Kohan (26:08)
they keep tweaking, but even through all those changes, you know, the Nordstroms family, they’re very clear on their value proposition and their core customer. And the customer is literally at the center of every single decision they make.

Karen Leland (26:22)
Exactly. Yeah. That’s why they’re a good example of it because they don’t like crazy rebrand all the time. They just pay attention to those micro changes in the market and they rebrand they re-up their brand and they adjust as those micro changes happen.

Shelley E. Kohan (26:37)
One last thing I just want to mention. So when I worked for Sax Fifth Avenue, I was at Sax Fifth Avenue, I think about four or five years. we went through let’s see, three CEOs in the time I was there. And each CEO came in with a new brand strategy. And so sometimes the leadership

comes in and rebrands it. So that has a really big impact on the direction, right?

Karen Leland (27:04)
Well, and I think that’s a perfect example of it because that person wants to put their stamp on the brand, but what’s less important is them putting their stamp on the brand than looking and seeing where’s the brand, where’s the market, and is there an adjustment that needs to be made? And let’s make that adjustment, or is there not an adjustment that needs to be made? So companies often end up in this kind of whiplash, and that’s not unusual, of a new CEO and they like they want it to be theirs, but that’s not necessarily what’s needed and wanted.

in the brand itself. And so it takes a really mature CEO to understand that they need to look at where the brand is, not where they want the brand to be, right? But where the brand is and where it wants to go, not what they want their particular flavor of it to be.

Shelley E. Kohan (27:51)
Well, Karen, it’s been a lot of fun having you on the podcast. Thank

Karen Leland (27:54)
You.

Shelley E. Kohan (27:54)
you so much.

Karen Leland (27:55)
My pleasure.

Shelley E. Kohan (27:57)
I’m sure our listeners learned a lot today.

Karen Leland (28:00)
Thank you. It was really a pleasure. I really enjoyed the conversation.

Shelley E. Kohan (28:04)
Thank you, me too.