Brandy

Motif Brands
  • 5.0 (44)
  • MARKETING
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

*Top 3% Podcast* Candid conversations over cocktails discussing all things brand with Reilly Newman and Scott Saunders, the rebranding experts of the award-winning brand transformation studio Motif Brands. Gain branding insights refined over 40+ years of rebranding and strategy experience. With Brandy's high concentration of branding, marketing, strategy, and behavioral science, you'll experience increased awareness of your business, brand, and audience to grow your business, increase pricing power, and unlock your strengths *Each round of Brandy is concise, ad-free, and on the house. Cheers!

  1. The Hidden $215M Brand Strategy Behind Starbucks, Gift Cards, and Trust

    4H AGO

    The Hidden $215M Brand Strategy Behind Starbucks, Gift Cards, and Trust

    Gift cards seem simple... but they reveal something profound about brand trust, psychology, and power. ⁠⁠⁠>> Get the Award-Winning Book (Brandy): BrandyBook.us In this episode of Brandy, Reilly Newman and Scott Saunders unpack how Starbucks generates over $215 million annually from unredeemed gift card balances, why consumers forget to use gift cards in the first place, and what this tells us about trust, psychology, and brand power. Explore how strong brands convince customers to prepay for future value and how that “stored trust” quietly becomes a competitive advantage. Reilly and Scott translate these insights into practical lessons for founders and small business owners: how branding influences cash flow, why pre-commitment is a signal of brand strength, and what it really takes to build a brand people believe in before they buy. If you’re building a brand and wondering how trust turns into revenue, this episode will change how you think about gift cards, loyalty, and long-term brand strategy. Have a brand marketing question? Reilly & Scott will answer it on the next episode! ⁠⁠⁠>> Ask Here: https://forms.gle/S237AyoG1vj9Wfzj6

    19 min
  2. The Positioning Flywheel: Make Your Brand Strategy Make Sense

    12/30/2025

    The Positioning Flywheel: Make Your Brand Strategy Make Sense

    Most founders think they have a marketing problem. They don’t. They have a positioning problem and it’s quietly slowing every part of their business. Brand News: Guess what brand paid $450 Million for Peanuts... ⁠⁠⁠>> Get the Award-Winning Book (Brandy): BrandyBook.us In this episode of Brandy, Reilly Newman breaks down why positioning is the lifeblood of your business, not a marketing tactic. You’ll learn how perception shapes growth, why framing beats features, and how to identify the hidden gaps preventing customers from “getting it.” Reilly also shares his Positioning Flywheel™, a proprietary framework that shows how brands build momentum through Association, Alignment, Fit, Perceived Affordance, and Kinship. ⁠> > See Positioning Flywheel diagram here⁠ If you’ve ever felt stuck, misunderstood, underpriced, or overlooked, this episode will show you the real reason why… and how to fix it. Perfect for founders, marketers, and anyone responsible for guiding a brand’s direction. Have a brand marketing question? Reilly & Scott will answer it on the next episode! ⁠⁠⁠>> Ask Here: https://forms.gle/S237AyoG1vj9Wfzj6

    39 min
  3. The Psychology Behind Dunkin’s Holiday Storytelling That Made Munchkins Feel Like Christmas

    12/23/2025

    The Psychology Behind Dunkin’s Holiday Storytelling That Made Munchkins Feel Like Christmas

    Holiday marketing usually means louder ads, bigger discounts, and more noise. Dunkin’ took a different approach. ⁠⁠⁠>> Get the Award-Winning Book (Brandy): BrandyBook.us In this episode of Brandy, Reilly Newman and Scott Saunders break down the ingenious holiday campaign from Dunkin' that transformed Munchkins from a product into a festive character. They used nostalgia, personification, and storytelling to embed the brand into the emotional fabric of the season. Rather than selling donuts, Dunkin’ sold feeling: warmth, familiarity, joy, and togetherness. By leveraging psychological principles like nostalgia bias, anthropomorphism, and seasonal identity cues, the brand created a holiday narrative that felt timeless instead of transactional. • How nostalgia increases emotional trust and brand affinity • Why personifying products creates stronger memory encoding • How holiday storytelling outperforms promotional messaging • The psychology behind turning products into cultural characters • How to align brand assets with seasonal emotion (without feeling salesy) This episode is a masterclass in modern brand storytelling and seasonal strategy and proof that the strongest holiday campaigns don’t push products, they build traditions. Have a brand marketing question? Reilly & Scott will answer it on the next episode! ⁠⁠⁠>> Ask Here: https://forms.gle/S237AyoG1vj9Wfzj6

    14 min
  4. How Coke Stole Christmas Through Cultural Engineering

    12/16/2025

    How Coke Stole Christmas Through Cultural Engineering

    Santa Claus didn’t always wear red, and what founders can learn from good ol' St. Nick. ⁠⁠⁠>> Get the Award-Winning Book (Brandy): BrandyBook.us So how did Coca-Cola help turn a beloved cultural figure into a billion-dollar brand association without most people noticing? In this special holiday episode of Brandy, Reilly Newman and Scott Saunders of Motif Brands dissect one of the most masterful brand strategies in modern history. Coca-Cola didn’t just sell soda, they embedded themselves into the global cultural fabric by consistently aligning their brand with Santa and Christmas over decades. While Coke didn’t invent Santa or his signature red suit, their disciplined, long-term approach helped standardize his modern image and permanently associate Coca-Cola with the most emotional moment of the year. You’ll learn a blueprint for achieving enduring market positioning, including: • The Power of Association: Why owning a feeling or cultural moment beats simple brand awareness every time • Consistency as Capital: How decades of disciplined repetition compound brand equity into multi-generational assets • Cultural Standardization: How strategic consistency can help shape a unified global icon • The Invisible Brand Move: Why the most powerful strategies don’t feel like marketing at all This episode is a masterclass in patient capital, emotional branding, and cultural positioning and proof that the strongest brands win by showing up consistently and letting culture do the rest. Have a brand marketing question? Reilly & Scott will answer it on the next episode! ⁠⁠⁠>> Ask Here: https://forms.gle/S237AyoG1vj9Wfzj6

    22 min
  5. How Five Below Got on Top: Inside the Strategy of a $5 Store Turned Powerhouse

    12/09/2025

    How Five Below Got on Top: Inside the Strategy of a $5 Store Turned Powerhouse

    Founders can learn from this $5 store and why it is now a top-performing retailer. Brand News: Eggnog is back at Starbucks! ⁠⁠⁠>> Get the Award-Winning Book (Brandy): BrandyBook.us Five Below is one of the most surprising winners of 2025. While many retailers are shrinking, Five Below is scaling and its stock is crushing the market(up 67% YTD). In this episode, brand experts Reilly Newman and Scott Saunders break down how a brand built on $1–$5 products became a retail juggernaut and what founders can learn from its explosive rise. You’ll learn: The origin story behind Five Below’s unique brand DNA How it turned value shopping into an emotional experience Why it thrives during economic uncertainty The psychological engine behind small-ticket luxuries (the modern “Lipstick Effect”) Strategic lessons founders can apply to their own brands in 2026 Whether your business is growing, plateauing, or ready for reinvention, this episode shows how a brand with constraints turned those constraints into category dominance. This is brand strategy in action; clear, bold, and wildly effective. Have a brand marketing question? Reilly & Scott will answer it on the next episode! ⁠⁠⁠>> Ask Here: https://forms.gle/S237AyoG1vj9Wfzj6

    16 min
  6. The Power of Why: How Curiosity Creates Value in Your Brand

    12/02/2025

    The Power of Why: How Curiosity Creates Value in Your Brand

    Founders often obsess over what they sell, but consumers are driven by why it matters. ⁠⁠⁠>> Get the Award-Winning Book (Brandy): BrandyBook.us Every toddler discovers the same magic word. A word that Einstein, The Beatles, and Steve Jobs also relied on:“Why?” In this Brandy episode, Reilly Newman and Scott Saunders explore why the question why is more than a phase kids go through. It’s a fundamental part of human nature, consumer psychology, and brand-building. Founders spend enormous energy perfecting the what and the how, but the real value — and the real decision-making power —lives in the why. Why choose this brand? Why is this product better? Why does this matter to me? Along with behavioral science and classic brand strategy, this conversation uncovers how “Why” creates:• Meaning • Story • Perceived value • Emotional connection • Differentiation in crowded markets • Why every consumer (consciously or not) is driven by “Why?” • How toddlers reveal a universal psychological truth about buying behavior • Why “why” is the fastest way to add perceived value to your brand • What founders get wrong when they focus only on features and benefits • How brands like Apple, Dyson, Tony's Chocolonely, and Space X embed their “Why” into every touchpoint Because the most successful companies don’t just answer what people buy.... they answer why they should care. What You’ll Learn: Have a brand marketing question? Reilly & Scott will answer it on the next episode! ⁠⁠⁠>> Ask Here: https://forms.gle/S237AyoG1vj9Wfzj6

    25 min
  7. The Cost of Doing Nothing: A Thanksgiving Reflection for Founders

    11/25/2025

    The Cost of Doing Nothing: A Thanksgiving Reflection for Founders

    You won't believe what 42% of Lays Chips consumers think about the product... ⁠⁠⁠>> Get the Award-Winning Book (Brandy): BrandyBook.us Reilly Newman and Scott Saunders offer a meaningful thought to chew on this Thanksgiving: inaction isn’t free. We’re biologically wired to play it safe, to preserve the status quo, and to assume that doing nothing carries no cost. But in business, in branding, and in life, inaction is a decision; one that often carries more risk than the action we’re avoiding. In this reflective episode, the conversation explores: • Why founders instinctively overweight the perceived cost of action • The fallacy that the status quo is “safe” or “neutral” • How inaction quietly drains opportunity, momentum, and relevance • Why Nvidia's success is built on risks 20+ years ago. • Why the greatest rewards (in business and in life) require stepping into the unknown • How this mindset shapes marketing, risk, innovation, and strategic decision-making Drawing from psychology and business strategy, Reilly and Scott challenge founders to rethink the role of fear, risk, and exploration to see both action and inaction as choices that shape the future of their company. A timely reminder that the biggest danger may not be trying something new… but holding onto something old. Have a brand marketing question? Reilly & Scott will answer it on the next episode! ⁠⁠⁠>> Ask Here: https://forms.gle/S237AyoG1vj9Wfzj6

    17 min
  8. Netflix House: Turning IP Into Experiences

    11/18/2025

    Netflix House: Turning IP Into Experiences

    Netflix is turning hit shows into real-world experiences, but is it right? ⁠⁠⁠>> Get the Award-Winning Book (Brandy): BrandyBook.us Netflix just opened Netflix House, a multi-level immersive experience where fans can step into real-world versions of their favorite shows like Squid Games, Stranger Things, and more. It’s bold. It’s ambitious. It’s a big bet on the experience economy. But… Reilly isn’t sold. In this debate-style episode of Brandy, Reilly Newman and Scott Saunders unpack the strategy behind Netflix House and they don’t see it the same way. Scott sees potential. Reilly sees misalignment. Together, they explore what Netflix is trying to achieve, what makes an experience truly meaningful, and why some IP translates beautifully to the real world… while other IP falls flat. They also zoom out to discuss what this shift means for small businesses, especially those who think immersive experiences are only for massive brands with massive budgets. (Spoiler: they aren’t.) Why Netflix is expanding into the experience economy—and whether it’s smart • The difference between immersive and gimmicky brand experiences • The psychology of “living inside a story” and how it shapes customer loyalty • Reilly and Scott’s opposing viewpoints and what founders should take from both Have a brand marketing question? Reilly & Scott will answer it on the next episode! ⁠⁠⁠>> Ask Here: https://forms.gle/S237AyoG1vj9Wfzj6

    25 min
See All (96)

5
out of 5
44 Ratings

About

*Top 3% Podcast* Candid conversations over cocktails discussing all things brand with Reilly Newman and Scott Saunders, the rebranding experts of the award-winning brand transformation studio Motif Brands. Gain branding insights refined over 40+ years of rebranding and strategy experience. With Brandy's high concentration of branding, marketing, strategy, and behavioral science, you'll experience increased awareness of your business, brand, and audience to grow your business, increase pricing power, and unlock your strengths *Each round of Brandy is concise, ad-free, and on the house. Cheers!

Information

  • Creator
    Motif Brands
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    96
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Motif Brands
  • Show Website
    Brandy

You Might Also Like