In this week’s episode of the SIMPLE brand podcast, I talk with Evelyn Starr.

Evelyn is an author, brand expert, and marketing consultant with over 25 years of marketing strategy and research experience. She’s worked with a number of well-known brands including Hasbro, Gillette, and Dunkin. She specializes in working with “brands in adolescence,” brands that have stalled after their initial success. 

And Evelyn’s the author of Teenage Wastebrand: How Your Brand Can Stop Struggling and Start Scaling.

Evelyn and I discuss her lessons from Teenage Wastebrand including the symptoms that adolescent brands display when they hit that awkward phase and start stalling. Fortunately, we also discuss the steps you can take to help your brand navigate through adolescence and come out stronger.

Here’s what we discuss:

• Brands should not be a “set it and forget it” approach. They should evolve.
• Brands are formed in customers’ minds based on their experience
• How you can ensure your customers define your brand the way you’d like
• What causes a brand to stall into “brand adolescence” 
• The different symptoms of brand adolescence
• How brands get into identity crisis
• The right way to define your brand purpose and brand attributes
• How to help your employees understand minimum requirements versus differentiators
• Recognizing when your brand is self-centered and how to solve that
• The brand your employees receive internally will be the brand they deliver to your customers
• Your brand values act as a filter for your employees’ decisions and actions

RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE:

• Evelyn's site
• Evelyn's book - Teenage Wastebrand: How Your Brand Can Stop Struggling and Start Scaling
• Evelyn on LinkedIn