
As our Sr. Brand & Marketing Strategist Meg Brondos is on a mission to help make brands better. Whether she does so by putting her creative background to work, taking a deep dive into a B2B brand’s mission, vision, and values, or stirring up some inspiration for our own creative endeavors, Meg definitely makes our clients and our internal teams better every day.
Watch a brief video interview with Meg or read the transcript below.
Things kick off with a lightning round of 5 questions, 5 answers:
Q: What is your least favorite sound?
A: A dog licking its paws constantly. I can't stand that.
Q: If you had a boat, what would you name it?
A: I don't know. That would be the name: “I don't know.” Oh, yeah, idk. “Random placeholder.” “Lorem ipsum.”
Q: What is one skill that you’d like to master?
A: Golf. Whoever said “It's a good walk spoiled” is absolutely accurate.
Q: Who was your childhood celebrity crush?
A: Taylor Hanson. I wasn't a Spice Girls kid. I wasn't like, “Backstreet Boys!” I was a Hanson kid, which is just so typical.
Q: Hot take: Pumpkin spice. Is it overrated?
A: It's not overrated! There is nothing better. I love all pumpkin. And I'm not ashamed! I'm not ashamed of it. We need these little things, these small scraps of joy in life. You know, just let us have our things to enjoy.
Q: What did Baby Meg want to be when she grew up?
A: Everything. I have a journal, probably from when I was around ten, and there's a list. Well, actually, there're multiple lists in there of all the different professions that I wanted to do — everything from graphic designer to fashion designer to travel photographer.
I really wanted to work for National Geographic. There was a time when I was probably in fifth or sixth grade, where I somehow managed to find a contact email address for them, and I emailed them, like, as a fifth or sixth grader, being like, “What do I have to do to become one of your photographers?”
And they sent me a multi-paragraph response! The basic gist of their advice was that it's not just about a good-looking photo, it's also about what the story is behind it. It was really lovely.
Q: What was actually your first job?
A: I was actually a graphic designer. I was doing magazine layouts. I still use all of the design skills that I accumulated over the early part of my career.
Q: How do you work around agency time crunches while still being creative?
A: The work we do is so tied to our own identities in marketing and creative. And so, I think over time, you learn your own personal non-negotiables. Like, I personally may have three different elements of my work — X, Y, and Z — that are important to me, so I make sure that I get them to a certain level. And if those elements are good to go, then the rest of the work is good to go.
Q: What advice would you have for any young people starting out in the industry?
A: There's something so exciting about being a young person new in any industry because you do come. At least I did. I came with so much enthusiasm and I was hungry to learn anything, and I wanted to try everything, and I wanted to do everything. But you're not yet really great at anything either.
There's that great quote, I think it was by Ira Glass, who had that whole spiel about, you got into the thing in the first place because you had good taste and you enjoyed it, but you're just not good yet at executing. But that will come. You just have to keep at it. And so I think about that one a lot too.
Q: You’re known at CID as the person who helps “make brands better,” what does that mean and how do you do it?
A: With our clients at CID, I help them typically in a couple of ways. The first would be by developing a brand from scratch for a startup. Or, maybe they're developing a new product and they need the product to have its own brand. So developing a brand from scratch, it could be a brand refresh or a rebrand.
And then the other area is typically with an established brand that has no plans to make any changes to the brand itself, but they need help developing a campaign strategy. So, when a brand wants to be better, typically one of the problems that I'll see is that they're inconsistent with how they talk about themselves, or an inconsistency between their visual identity and the words that they use to tell their story.
It could also be an inconsistency internally. Different people think their mission is different things, or they may be completely unclear about what their brand promise is. All of those things sometimes feel trite and unimportant internally, or to leadership, but those things really are your compass.
Everyone needs to be clear and aligned on those things because it's going to impact and trickle out into the rest of your brand and how you present yourself to the world. I think another issue is a lack of authenticity. What I've seen is that authenticity typically comes from really strong brand leadership in the organization, who can mentor and lead the rest of their teams and keep them on brand.
“When a brand wants to be better, typically one of the problems that I'll see is that they're inconsistent with how they talk about themselves, or an inconsistency between their visual identity and the words that they use to tell their story.”
Q: What are some of the ways brands get in their own way?
A: The reality is that marketing now is complicated, and it feels very complicated, and it feels too fast and too frustrating. And sometimes we have too much data or too little data, and we have like, no idea what is going on.
I think sometimes we just get so stuck on the tiny little channels, or the single post that's going out somewhere or whatever it is, or the urgency of “We have to put out this ad!” I think sometimes we just get ourselves wound up or, you know? [We] twist ourselves in knots going around and around on it when you have to kind of have a high-level view.
Humans are not…we're complex, but we're not confusing. We're pretty predictable. And if something is too complicated for us to get a grasp of really quickly, we're not going to buy your product or engage with you as a partner. So everything needs to be simple. And unfortunately, with simplicity comes a lot of time and attention to make it simple and easy to understand.
“Humans...we’re complex, but we’re not confusing. We're pretty predictable. And if something is too complicated for us to get a grasp of really quickly, we're not going to buy your product or engage with you as a partner. So everything needs to be simple.”
Q: What role does objectivity, or having an unbiased partner play in all of this?
A: Having an external consultation or an external team come in is helpful because they do bring that outside view, right? And they can give you perspective and help you prioritize as well.
We can be the voice of reason that says, “This thing that you thought was maybe a really big problem? We're actually not seeing it this way, but your website could use a refresh!” or whatever it is.
Q: What’s something that you’ve done at CID that you’re proud of?
A: I am still proud of the Wes Anderson video that we did. Everyone that I worked with closely, especially on the video team, were so, so amazing. And I obviously couldn't have done it on my own, but I, I'm really proud of myself that I had this kind of silly idea and then pitched it and was like, “Yeah, let's do it!” And then we made this whole video out of it and it won an award. And that was really cool. I would love to do more work like that.
I'm also really proud because this isn't just me. This is everyone that I work with on a day-to-day basis too. But I'm really proud of the movement and the evolution that we've done with our brand work as an agency. I think we're approaching it in a much more comprehensive way. Because there were certain things that we’ve been doing really, really well and we keep going deeper on and that is great, but there was so much more to that universe too that we could offer. I think we've done some good work there in what we can provide our clients and I think they see that too.
Q: What’s something you’re hoping to see us do in the future
A: I am really excited to see where we go with our broader brand work. I think that's exciting to me. So I hope that we continue on that path, because I think what we can provide to clients is, I mean, I'm probably biased, but I think what we can provide to clients and the brand sphere, could be really meaningful and valuable to them in the B2B space.
I think brands take themselves way too seriously. And I get it, because it's business, so it feels like you can't have as big of a personality or be fun, you know, like the B2C brands, but it's just not true.
We are seeing that more, especially with larger companies, that they do have fun. And I think even if you are small, you should always be looking for opportunities where you can develop your sense of self as a brand and not be so stuffy and rigid all the time. Because the reality is, if I'm in the street looking for a vendor, I don't want to read the same business terms over and over again. I want to get a sense of who the people are that I'm going to be working with.
Work with Meg to see how she and CID's Marketing & Strategy team can make your brand better. Contact CID now!