Rosenblum Jeff - Friction : Passion Brands in the Age of Disruption

PASSION BRANDS IN THE AGE OF DISRUPTION

Jeff Rosenblum with Jordan Berg

Friction: Passion Brands in the Age of Disruption

Text 2017 Jeff Rosenblum and Jordan Berg

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner in any media, or transmitted by any means whatsoever, electronic or mechanical (including photocopy, film or video recording, Internet posting, or any other information storage and retrieval system), without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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Designed by Jeff Wagener, Kevin Barnard, Shari Eaton and Aaron Wolk.
Cover design by Jeff Wagener, Charles Cording and Kevin Barnard.

First edition, 2017

ISBN 978-1-57687-883-5

About this Book

This book explains how to create a passion brand. A brand that breaks its addiction to traditional advertising. A brand that cuts through the hype of the latest media technology. A brand that focuses on behaviors over messaging. A brand that empowers its customers and dominates the competition.

About the Authors

Jeff Rosenblum and Jordan Berg are agency founders, documentary filmmakers and industry disruptors.

As the Founding Partners of Questus, they have worked with some of the worlds most influential brands, including American Express, Bloomberg, Capital One, Discovery Channel, Disney, Driscolls, General Mills, Ford, ESPN, Suzuki Motorcycles, The NFL, Universal Orlando and Verizon.

They created The Naked Brand, a documentary about the advertising revolution, and have won some of the marketing industrys most prestigious awards.

This book is dedicated to my beautiful family. I wish I could have written you a book of poetry.

Acknowledgments

I had an incredible team that worked with me on every step of the project. I am eternally grateful for their hard work and dedication. I was truly the least valuable player on the team.

The Strategy Team

First and foremost, thank you to the entire Questus team and our clients for inspiring and educating me. I wish I could adequately express how impressed I am with you every day. Thank you to my business partner, Jordan Berg, for supporting and investing in this crazy endeavor. I love you, man.

The Design Team

Thank you to Jeff Wagener for leading the overall design and development of the book. Thank you to Aaron Wolk, Chelsea Moriarty, Debbie Dumont and Charles Cording for strategic design guidance during the critical early stages of book design. You established a great direction and taught me a lot. Thank you to Shari Eaton and Kevin Barnard for designing and developing the internal pages. In particular, thank you to Kevin for the great work on the final tedious steps of the journey.

The Research Team

Thank you to Chris Schulz, Leeann Heeralall, Nicholas Manluccia, Scott Fiaschetti, Brianne Bitcon-Tupa, Tyler Rosenblum, Kayla Rosenblum and Danielle Marchione for gathering more research than I could possibly handle. Im embarrassed by the amount of incredible data and case studies you uncovered that I couldnt figure out how to fit in this story.

The Content Team

Thank you to Joe Shepter for help turning a bunch of rambling ideas into a cohesive story. I appreciate that you didnt laugh out loud at some of the early drafts. Thank you to Lori Paximadi, Chris Kelly, Jena Marchione and Sarah Figueroa for edits and advice.

The Emotional Support Team

Thank you to Mom, Dad and Mike for teaching me how to read, write and use business for a lot more than making money. Thank you to Joe and Janet for sharing your incredible daughter with me. Most importantly, thank you to my incredible wife and kids for supporting me during the early mornings and late nights when I should have been playing with you.

Table of Contents

one

two

three

four

five

six

seven

eight

nine

Next Steps

What is Friction?

Friction is anything that gets in the way of what people want to accomplish in life.

Introduction

Fighting Friction Creates Passion Brands

This is the most exciting time in the history of brand building. Every industry around the globe has been completely disrupted by technology. Established brands are losing market share to upstarts that become part of our cultural fabric. Billions of dollars are being made and lost overnight.

Emerging from this revolutionary environment are passion brands. Passion brands dominate the competition. They dont simply have customers. They have an army of evangelists who proselytize in bars, restaurants, around the dinner table and, most importantly, on their social channels.

Because these evangelists carry a brands message better than any traditional advertising technique, passion brands absolutely dominate the competition from a bottom-line financial standpoint.

In a world where consumers are bombarded with marketing messages every moment they are awake, brands need a new way to stand out, get considered, build loyalty and win these coveted evangelists.

The solution is to fight friction. Friction is anything that gets in the way of what people want to accomplish in life. Its the big things that prevent us from being who we want to be. Its the little things that prevent us from doing what we want to do. Fighting friction is about improving peoples lives in authentic, meaningful ways.

Chapter One

Revolution

Great brands are built,

not bought.

1.1

Welcome to the Revolution

Brands That Fight Friction Empower. Not Just Interrupt.

Around the time when other kids were in college building their business networks, Yvon Chouinard was hanging out with a crew of friends that referred to themselves as dirtbags. They meant it as the highest of compliments. Dirtbags didnt care about capitalism. They didnt care about material things. They didnt care about anything except enjoying the great outdoors.

Yvon was part of the 1964 first ascent of the North America wall of El Capitan in Yosemite, using no fixed ropes. Over the next few years he spent countless months rock climbing. When he needed a break from rock climbing, he and his dirtbag friends went to the beach and surfed. Thats it. Thats all they cared about.

They cared so little about the finer things in life that they lived off cans of cat food, which they mixed with oatmeal for extra sustenance. They werent even regular cans of cat food. They were the dented cans that they bought for pennies.

Even when youre eating cat food, you still need pocket money. So in 1957, Yvon bought an anvil. When he took a break from surfing, he pounded on metal until he invented new kinds of pitons that enabled climbers to tackle routes they could never scale before. Yvon originally sold them out of his car, but soon grew his company to a huge success. He no longer needed to live off of cat food.

Then one day in 1970, he was rock climbing in Yosemite and saw something that he had never seen before. There was a hole in the rock. A scar. At first, he couldnt figure out what caused the hole. But it tormented him.

Finally, Yvon realized what was damaging the thing that he loved the most in the whole world. It was the pitons he created. His invention was scarring the rock.

For a dirtbag, Yvon had become relatively rich from those pitons. He had more than enough money to climb and surf to his hearts content. But the thing that was helping fulfill his dreams was also hurting what he adored the mostthe rocks he loved to climb.