Breaking brand (color)

Branding is touted as one of the most important aspects of business, and even individuals. Thinking of branding is a great exercise because it incorporates a necessary historical and cultural lens to the design process.

Deroy Peraza published a post on Medium titled The Women Running for President Are Breaking the Rules of Branding, and it is a wonderfully told story. He delves into history to show that few candidates historically broke brand with the traditional red, white, and blue for political campaigning in the United States. However, today, presidential hopefuls Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Tulsi Gabbard are setting themselves apart from the pack through their campaigns' choices of color. and playing their brand colors to the narrative of a multicultural society.

The Women Running for President Are Breaking the Rules of Branding by Deroy Peraza

And on this Lunar New Year, I noticed something else that has gradually been breaking brand: the traditional hóngbāo (红包), or red envelope. In Chinese culture, it is customary for elders to distribute red envelopes containing money to children and young adults as a sign of good luck for the coming year. Typically, its red, or vermillion, color has been an ancient symbol of good fortune and joy, hence its name. However, in recent years, designers have begun to break tradition.

Mostly of all of them used to look like this.

This is now being sold as a "vintage" red packet. Source

But now we're seeing envelopes like this.

Courtesy of my friend

As the global Chinese diaspora continues to adapt to their new cultures, it's always interesting to see how and to what extent they appropriate modern trends into their ancient traditions.

Hook, line, and sinker

Jeff nails it with this video.

Good comedy is made when someone takes a joke and runs with it through the hills and beyond. Jeff introduces to us the "SF Diet," or the Stomach Flu Diet, that "allows you to eat virtually anything you want without worrying that it is going to go to your waistline and make you fat...because you will not likely be able to keep down any of the food that you ingest."

His hook, "40% FASTER THAN KETO," is eye-catching. But only because it's Jeff Cavaliere, MSPT, CSCS, and highly respected all-star personal trainer. Not only is this out of character, the Pratfall effect means that we respond to a competent figure of authority's obvious clickbait or potential blunder favorably.

Then he proceeds with six-minutes of semi-professionally produced satire without missing a beat. What impresses me is that he manages to seamlessly use real before-and-after images from the actual program that he's selling throughout the video.

ATHLEAN-X™ is an intriguing case study in personal branding because of the unique way Jeff packages his content. He provides free, quality, though disparate, physical training content through his YouTube channel. From a business development perspective, this subscription-based video marketing is highly effective because each instance is a crucial prospective customer touchpoint. That's the equivalent of someone shopping through your store X number of times, which each subsequent visit increasing the likelihood to purchase a product.

Then, his regimented training program and products are merely an upsell from the free training he provides on YouTube. With an audience of 6.8M subscribers and average video publication rate of 9 videos per month, we can assume that he averages 1M pairs of eyes per video, or 9M pairs of eyes per month. If we presume ATHLEAN-X™ has an average product price of $97, it only takes about 860 program sales, or 0.0095%, of those monthly pairs of eyes for him to net an annual salary of $1M.

Psychology dictates that people will go for the "LIFETIME ACCESS" $97.00 product because it is "only" $20 more expensive than the "120 DAY ACCESS" product.

It is wise strategically that Jeff runs his own fitness enterprise because it gives customers the option of a one-stop shop. He integrates the sale of complementary fitness products and supplements with his program. He can pull this off because not only is he a legitimate fitness authority, but through YouTube videos like the SF Diet, Jeff humanizes himself. The bottom line is, Cavaliere sells because he is a walking, flawed (see Pratfall effect), living, breathing, testimony of his own product, to which the fitness industry, fortunately, can lend itself.

Hook, line, and sinker, well done, ATHLEAN-X™.