Private equity firms have refined financial engineering and operational playbooks, but branding remains one of the most misunderstood and underutilized levers in value creation. In this week’s episode, Bill sits down with Marc Rust, CEO and Founder of Consequently Creative, to unpack how messaging, internal alignment, and brand clarity directly impact growth, retention, and exit value.

Marc is a creative strategist and narrative troublemaker who helps organizations find their true voice and use it boldly. Working with private equity firms and portfolio companies, he brings strategic clarity and a distinct perspective that transforms brand confusion into messaging that resonates. Together, they explore why “acquisition turbulence” can derail performance, how internal alignment fuels external growth, and why companies that fail to clearly communicate their value struggle to scale.

Thank you for joining the Missing Half podcast, where we're discovering what's missing in private equity and branding. Today I'm joined by a very special guest, Marc Rust, who's a branding professional delivering incredible solutions in the private equity market. Marc, thank you for joining us today.

Thanks for having me. I'm super excited to be here.

So Marc, private equity has evolved operationally, but marketing still feels a little bit misunderstood and maybe underutilized. Could you talk about your experience and the problems you're solving every day for private equity firms?

Sure, yeah. You know, I feel like the, the model of, of private equity, like what we know about private equity has drastically changed for a lot of, you know, outside reasons. But, you know, gone are the days where private equity is about buying this company, trimming the fat, and then selling it. Right. Now it's more about, business building and growth and understanding the transformation behind business.

And, what better company to help you than a marketing firm that specializes in that? Because there's all these little levers that you can pull and push, and just so you can fine tune your brand to your audience and also fine tune it for your business objectives and growth. Ultimately, at the end of the whole transaction and at the end of the period of owning a portfolio company, you can use the power of branding and good messaging and clarity to increase the valuation of that portfolio company.

Marc, when you think about the moment that most, port co-CEOs or, managing partners approach you where they realize they have a branding problem, what does that look like.

When they realize that sometimes it's a little bit late, so there's a little bit of catching that needs to happen because unfortunately, acquisitions are done under the cloak of secrecy. Right. So when you announced that there's an acquisition, it often comes as a big, big surprise. And that surprise has an effect on the culture of a company. It has effect on retention and, obviously impacts growth.

So, you know, there's a little period of catch up where they're like, well, wait a minute, what we're doing isn't working, or we've got a big problem with the culture of the company. If we do not address this, we're going to have bigger problems, right? So that's when we can come in and and look at it and say, hey, wait a minute.

You don't have the right alignment internally. And we're going to show you that internal alignment is everything when it comes to business growth.

So Marc, when you look at that equation, do you feel that more of the opportunities you're seeing to increase performance are generated by internal, optimization through branding? Or is it as equal or greater that they're looking for better communication to their target markets? Is that the greater driver or is it simultaneous?

Well, I think it's a little bit of both. I mean, traditionally a marketing guy is going to say, no, it's all about the audience and it is about the audience, right? But when you've done an acquisition and you're part of a company that all of a sudden has a new owner, and often that new owner is going to do some big movements like replace the CEO, for example, or, you know, change the the sales team.

You know, you really need to work on both sides. You need to have that internal alignment so you can have an external message. That's absolutely clear.

That I couldn't agree more. And I think, sometimes when we are approached or deal with private equity, their sense is they come to us in a moment of growth, stagnation, and they're looking for answers. And usually not not always. But there are often cases where the issue is not legion. The issue is brand messaging. The issue is that there is not a clear, concise message of who we are, what we do, who we do it for, how we do it.

Our culture, how we're going to solve your problems. And if we don't have that dialed in, there's no Legion program in the world that is going to create sustainable, compounded year over year growth. That's going to, you know, drive to ultimately the exit value and the hold period contraction that they're looking for, from marketing. So I couldn't agree more.

Yeah, absolutely.

What are you seeing in private private equity that that made it an obvious target for you in your career because you've, you've had a fantastic career and a lot of experience, but recently, through your, agency over the past, half decade, you've really dialed in on private equity. What really led you to that moment and seeing that opportunity?

Well, Gosh, a few things. I mean, including just having finding the clients in that space, to tell you the truth. But, you know, it's also because I have I have a pretty good background in finance. You know, I started out in finance. And then I segue into marketing. I mean, I always had a love for marketing and branding, for sure.

So, so there's a lot to say, and I think that financial types, I'm sorry to say this are awful. Explaining things. Right. So as long as finance is complicated, then there's a reason for marketing to help it be explained correctly. And then, you know, just realizing that we can bring a lot of value to a group where messaging is typically inconsistent and they typically don't understand that there's value in this world beyond the numbers, beyond the data.

There's there's a value in in pivoting a little bit and saying, hey, wait a minute. This is about relationships. All business is about relationships. It's about me relating to you. You know what what what kind of value am I bringing you? So you engage with me right? That's totally different. And I'm not saying that it's easy to get to get these financial types to all of a sudden stop what they're doing and listen.

It isn't easy. And you have to kind of prove the ROI. But once you get there, then you really start to have people who are just amazed with this kind of new world of like, oh my gosh, I didn't know that we were inconsistent. Sure. You know, and the number of brands out there that are just totally it just have a very cryptic message are amazing.

I collect headlines from companies that just don't mean anything. And some of them are companies we all know. You know, I was looking at something this morning. I came across, Here's one new day, new stay. Have. Can you imagine with what that's about? A company.

A hotel, right.

Okay. Yeah, but what does it mean?

I have no idea. I mean, stay was for.

Holiday in New Day. New day is just, like. Kind of like it's not bringing the value. It's not saying holiday Inn is not telling me why I should care. You know. And what does New Day mean? But there's just that. That's just like an example. I mean, maybe that's not the best example, but like, you know, companies that say, oh, excellence in everything we do, the CEO of that company, I'm sure they're like, oh my gosh.

Yeah, that's the best tagline ever. We provide excellence in everything we do, but it's not resonating with your audience. And that's that's the challenge is to go from that internal thinking to that external thinking.

Marc, how many companies have you dealt with that have in their branding exercise? Told you they have poor customer service, right. But they have poor customer service. It's like part of their, you know, unique value proposition. Everybody says they have great customer service. Like I've never talked to a marketing manager, a VP of marketing, a CMO, a CEO, an under a founder who said, you know, we really have poor customer service.

That's our differentiation. Everybody's has their customer service, right? Yeah. I would argue for, the Holiday Inn that they and all their competitors have folks who are staying. Everybody stays. It's. Oh, yeah, it's kind of baked in.

Yeah. Absolutely. But one thing I want to add to that, that what you said about customer service, I would also add that people don't understand what customer service is. You know, there's so many times where, you know, you go to a store or the post office and they give you the, the receipt and they say, oh, by the way, at the bottom of the receipt, there's a little survey.

If you go and use this QR code and you can you can fill out our survey, you know, and the survey will ask you, hey, did you have a good time at our store? Was our sales associate helpful, blah blah blah. That's not customer service, guys. Customer service to me is when things go wrong, how are you treated when you're plane is delayed?

What happens? How how how do they resolve that when the product you bought no longer works and you go to return it? How is that reception? Right. That's what customer service is. When things go bad. Because it's about a relationship. Same thing with, you know, say you're dating somebody and things go wrong one day, right? You get into an argument, your first argument.

How is that argument handled? It's going to tell you how the relationship is going to go. So customer service isn't, you know, treating somewhat buddy with respect, welcoming them into the store, etc.. Because that's your job, by the way. It's beyond that. What happens when when when the story gets tough? How am I treated? Because that has to do with values and that has to do with that internal alignment.

What do you fall back on?

Now I love that. And Maria, I want to go back to something you said a little earlier. You're you have a finance background. I also have a finance background. And much to probably our parents, disappointment. We've now ended up in marketing and I will recover from that and they'll recover. But, I feel like a lot of financial professionals do dismiss marketing.

And I think this is something I we didn't talk about the. I just want to throw this out here and pull on this thread. I believe the responsibility of marketing marketing only earning its keep and earning its spot in consideration and prepay. But expose it like pre due diligence, due diligence and in execution is the responsibility of professionals like you and I.

And by and large, our colleagues and our industry has done a terrible job of expressing and value and proving our value to to private equity professionals, to VC professionals, to investment bankers. I was we just on the phone, by and large, I'm not saying every one of us, but as a whole over the past 10 to 15 years, at the same time I have seen in the past 36 months the cream rising to the top of professionals such as yourself, who have a very clear message, who claim and deliver excellent value, and then have the receipts to prove it where they have case studies and examples and testimonials of firms they have worked with,

where they've delivered value and not alchemy, not magic, but actual, calculated return, calculated lift on Ebit, and calculated lift on exit values. Can you like, provide a counterpoint to that? Agree with that. Disagree with that. Let's go. What what are your thoughts on that?

I that that was one hell of a long question. I love it. But I'm going to answer all of it. I mean, first off, for some reason, business leaders equate creativity with risk. That's the number one problem. Okay. And then I think that a lot of branding people out there are using the wrong vocabulary. Okay. It isn't because your average financial type is going to think that oh, branding company, it's about logos and colors.

That's really nice okay. And I experienced this firsthand when I would go to, networking events and I would introduce myself and say, yeah, hey, I own a branding company. They'd be like, nice to meet you. And then they'd go and talk to somebody else. I think that it's not about logos and colors. It's not about fluffy headlines.

It's about business growth. Business transformation. Understanding how you're going to come up with strategy and strategy shouldn't be a buzzword. Strategy. Let me be clear, is about how do you make the link between your audience needs and your business objectives. And, you know, use the that kind of terminology rather than logos and colors. It just so happens that you may be using some logos and colors to work for it, right?

But so so that's one thing. And I think that the ROI of that needs to be proven okay. It has a direct impact on customer acquisition costs, a clear message is more tangible to people. It has an impact on your revenue growth. You can, you know, with with a good brand that looks looks the part, you can increase the price.

You increase the loyalty that you get from your customers. Okay? I mean, we all see it, you know, you you you go to the supermarket and you can buy milk. Well, if you buy the organic milk that comes from a local dairy farm, you're paying 2 or 3 times the price. But you do it for other reasons, right?

You do it because it feels right to you and you identify with that. So the overall organic volume, volume and lead quality that you're getting through branding is better. And those are tangible, tangible things. Then it goes into, you know, the intangible things, the intangible ROI, if I can say that, you know, is like brand awareness, you know, how do you how do you calculate brand awareness?

You know, yeah, you can do surveys and stuff like that. Social media listening, I don't know. You get the employee in alignment within the company. People starting to spearhead your message and, you know, caring more, really having that internal passion so important. And then, you know, finally, you get the, the partner in your investor perception. You're right.

These people that are believe in you. And but one thing I do want to react to in the in your question, you use the word magic. I think that magic is a big part of it. Because. In marketing and branding and, and, you know, using colors and logos stuff, we do create magic. You know, we've all seen those ads where, you know, we see something and you're like, oh my gosh, this is remarkable.

It's amazing. Like, the guys of Budweiser doing the what's up thing okay. That's magic. Because everybody started talking talking about it instantly. It just took the world by surprise and and and it and it helped. It had a direct link between that ad and sales going through the roof. Okay. I mean, that's clear. So there is magic. What is it?

I don't know, it's psychosomatic. We don't. We're human. And what I want to do in my effort is that I also want to make people realize that it's about relationship building. And when you talk about a relationship, all of a sudden you're talking about a courtship. How do you do things? How do things feel right? Why do I pick a brand?

Why? Why do I pick a company? Why do I pick to work at a particular company? Why am I attracted to this company? It's because I'm identifying with it on a deeper level. And that, you know, magic has a lot to do with that. Why do you like it? I can't tell you why. It's just. It's just better.

It feels right. You know? So it's part. It's part science. Part art. You know, when Marc.

Art. We had a point, though, that we can, in a lot of ways prove the science on a consistent basis to de-risk investment by the PE firms. And then we can look for upside potential in the magic. But if the mad if we miss the magic, if the if the magic is in US spectaculars we hope do we don't you know, catch lightning in a bottle.

That we still have the science as a foundation to de-risk the situation and only really look for upside in the magic. Because I like, I can already like see responses or comments I'll get. Marc was talking about magic and that's too creative for us. Right. So we have to kind of I think that's important and I completely agree because you can have the same negative magic.

Whenever Budweiser had the campaign recently that tanked their stock price several billion dollars with the market cap. The, you know, the good and the bad. So magic.

Can be.

Yeah, right. Good or evil. But this the good news, I would say, is the science of those two campaigns was similar in did create effect.

Right. The good effect and the bad. Either way they were very effective in the science and those campaigns were effective. But this one went really well and one I really badly. So no, I agree, I think there is magic to it. And I think, that's the creative side, that's the alchemy of our business that we can kind of push, different, initiatives, branding campaigns, etc. over the top.

When you think about this, what we're doing in the work we're doing in the value is providing. How do you see the adoption by private equity firms, managing partners, operators. Do you see them embracing this changing playbook, or how are we really early in this, or are we kind of like in the middle maturity of them accepting it late?

Where do you feel we are on the curve of, private equity and venture capital, accepting this branding and GTM effort as viable in the conversation?

I think we're in the middle of it. I mean, as long as, like, you know, marketing and understanding the history of brands isn't part of an MBA. I don't think people are going to really embrace it as much as as I would like them to. But it also takes a different mindset to do to to think that way.

Right? So, I mean, it's always tough and and the work I do isn't for everybody, right? I'm sure definitely not looking. My audience is not the guy that's fresh out of of school, has an MBA and thinks he can do everything and or, you know, thinks that, oh, I need a new logo or a new branding.

I'm just going to go on to Fiverr, and I'm going to get that real quickly, or I've got a cousin that can just do it, or I can do it. You know, it's fine. You know that that's where where where branding fails and and you know, the understanding has to be that you have empathy for your audience. You know, and that is a very, very different way of thinking.

You know, and it's the other side of, like, finance and all the reasons why you invest in a company and, and, you know, everything that makes sense on paper versus, you know, a change that makes a company different because different is noticeable and noticeable means that people are going to talk about you or they're going to choose you because you stand out.

You know, those are things that that, need to be acknowledged. But I think that those are things that also need to be test a little bit. You know, where we're branding fails happen is because it wasn't tested or, you know, or, it might be because people were so afraid of branding that they kind of just dip their toe in and didn't do anything about it.

And we've seen this with, you know, redesigns of, you know, logo redesigns. Sometimes, you know, people have a logo redesign and you're like, wait a minute, that's not a redesign. You know, like, I don't know. A few years back, Airbnb changed their logo and they barely changed the font. Give me a break. You know, or the, the Cracker Barrel fiasco that happened.

I.

I mean, that was a Cracker Barrel. The logo change must have been approved by a board of sorts. Right? Sure. But if you're going to do a redesign or you're going to do a change of your logo, then do it. Don't do this half ass thing where you're just like, well, you know, let's kind of do it. Kind of do it doesn't work, right?

Sure. So, so, you know, it's just like, I don't know you, you you people are afraid of of of risk, you know, and I don't think that good branding means risk. I think good branding means changing, switching gears and understanding audience needs. There's a there's a story that comes to mind. I was reading this book by Rory Sutherland, and he said that he had a, a coffee shop in his neighborhood, and it was a coffee shop that was in new, a new coffee shop.

And we're not a business. And, you know, he a few months later, a new, a new, owner came in to the same spot and they set up a coffee shop, and it went out of business again. And then a few months went by and somebody was back in there going, doing construction, and he was thinking, oh my gosh, I hope it's not a coffee shop because it's not going to work.

That's crazy right? Everything would tell you, do not put a coffee shop there. The new owners start putting a coffee shop in there, but this time they put benches out front. And they put, you know, parasols and stuff like that in tables. And there was a line around the block for this coffee shop and the first day. And then they started consistently getting customers.

And it was successful. And his question is do benches make coffee taste better? The answer is yes sir and should make coffee taste better. And you have to understand that. And some people will be like, oh come on, that's ridiculous. It is it ridiculous? That's what we got to do. It's it's a very different way of thinking about business.

Marc, I think that's so spot on. And I think when we look at the biz space, there are benches that I was completely wrong about. For instance, when we went into Covid, I thought the trade show was dead. Trade and trade shows were dying. Trade shows were on the way out. People didn't want to go. Then we would go into Covid and none occur and we come out of Covid.

I was like, okay, we have zoom, we aren't traveling as much. It's all going to be zoom. It's all going to be Microsoft Teams. Google meets all that. The I would say that parallel to your analogy, trade shows and business travel are the benches of that coffee shop because they are booming. People are traveling. They do not want is much zoom.

They want human contact. They want visits. They want in office. They want offsite. I want so I completely see what you're talking about. And we're talking about a very narrow example. But there are benches that companies are missing in their brands that are not going to be developed by, AI, that are not going to be spun up with vibe coding, that are not going to be able to be understood without voice of customer research, without ab testing, and without really understanding the core of a company's brand and then determining how to express that based on science with good magic.

Right. That can really. Yeah. Change the trajectory.

I think another thing that you're getting, getting at is that it's about finding the answer to the question that you never thought about asking.

Sure.

You know, and you only get that if you have a strong relationship with your audience. You know, I mean, I have some examples of of companies where we thought the answer was one thing, and it was something totally, totally different. And one, if you want me to share one, please. Years ago, we, we were doing marketing and branding for a senior living, company.

And this is a company that had gobs of senior living centers throughout the United States for, you know, everything from assisted living to memory care, etc. all of their marketing from the beginning was focused on their primary customer, which they thought was the resident.

Okay. Makes it makes sense.

Totally makes it right. Some of the marketing spoke about the comfort of the place and spoke about the. It showed photos of the rooms. It showed the menus of what you could eat while you were there, what breakfast looked like, etc., etc.. Through our research with this company, we found out that that is not their primary audience. Their primary audience was the adult daughter.

In 95% of the cases, the adult daughter is the person who is the caregiver for their aging parent. Okay, sure. And that person is doing a lot of things. She might have children of her own. She's also taking care of her parents, etc., etc. her journey through moving her parents into a senior living center is going from primary caregiver back to becoming a daughter, right.

And to see her parents focus on becoming grandparents, etc.. When you when we discovered that it changed everything. It changed the messaging throughout the whole website. Sure. Okay. It's more. And instead of being about, hey, what you're going to eat in our community, it's more about how is your parent going to live? How are you going to pay for this?

What are their options? Etc. etc.. And it's actually quite empowering when you know what the answer is, you're able to communicate more clearly and change everything and and start having a message that is so strong that if your competitors don't follow that message, then they're missing out on Marc.

I think that's so true. And when we I get a lot of requests and conversations about, well, how are you going to test these things? And it's so very important to test messaging. But whenever in your example there, if we're testing messaging around the resident. We could test till the cows come home and we will be testing the wrong thing.

Yes. If we if we know that it's the adult daughter, most likely the eldest adult daughter, who is the caregiver and the executor, and all things for their parents, which is very traditional in this country, that if we understand that that's the target market, the ICP, then if we're testing around that person messaging, what are their care about problems, jobs to be done, all those things we are going to find, we are going to be able to develop and execute tests that will hopefully reduce risk in our messaging and our delivery to the market.

However, if we're testing everything, so the key is who are we talking to and what is the real brand and how does that need to be crafted. Said that we're narrowing the test. I mean, I guess you could test everything and spend gobs of money, but both you and I know we are not going to get those type of budgets to just you have to kind of pick a path and develop a hypothesis and start testing it.

So no, I think that's a great example. And I really like that. And I think that gives a great illustration that our viewers will be able to understand and consume quickly in this podcast, to kind of recognize what could be missing in their approach to branding and their, deal, whether it's a roll up, whether they're, you know, a strategic that's buying something they're, they're building on.

When you look at these, the new rules of value creation that are being written today for private equity, the conversations I'm hearing more of are there's basically three parts to value creation. One is certainly solid financial engineering. And that's a playbook that has been in place for a long, long time and is largely defined. The next two that I'm hearing more and more chatter about is go to market and operations.

Do you see that as kind of the new three legged stool for private equity, value creation, those that are getting deals done, creating value, executing in the hold period. They have those three, legs to the stool in their deals.

Yeah. No. Absolutely, absolutely. And having the right marketing partner to help you with that GTM and operational efficiency, almost, is extremely important because, you know, oftentimes the the solution is right under your nose, but you're just not seeing it because you don't think that way. And it's this isn't bad. It's good to have a partner come in and say, hey, wait a minute, have you considered this?

Or let us show you a different story here because, you know, it's easy to be conventional. Sure. Being remarkable is tough, but being remarkable has its perks. You stand out, you know, etc., etc.. So this isn't something that you can afford to ignore. And we're in the business of progress, okay? We're trying to make things better. We're trying to find the a better platform to step on so we can go a little bit higher.

Right. And I think that that's what remarkable messaging and strategy and branding can bring that lift up.

I love that I think that's so appropriate when we think about brand lift is a term that we're aware of that is not really part of the lexicon of what we're of the private equity and venture capital space. But there's certainly brand lift that can occur and directly impact a deal. Marc, you've coined a term I did some lurking on your socials and that type of thing.

You've coined the term acquisition turbulence. Could you talk about that and why you're passionate about that term and why you feel that is relevant to this, this space?

Sure. Well, I mean, it kind of goes, unfortunately, with some of the nature of of how private equity operates. You know, we talked about it in the beginning, how, you know, an acquisition is done under the cloak of secrecy. So it comes as a surprise, right?

Sure.

And with that comes turbulence. And we we coined the term acquisition turbulence because I like to compare it to turbulence on a plane, you know, and, some people are okay with turbulence, by the way, but others are not so okay with it. And they might be reading a book, watching a a movie or whatever. And if there's a little bit of turbulence, they just pray to, dear God that that's this plane is not going to go down.

Okay. They experience it in a very personal, different way. Okay. Now when with an acquisition you can have similar turbulence, believe it or not, sure where you're like, oh my gosh, what does this mean for me? What's going to happen? I have a revamped my resume in years. What should I do right. Or somebody might rub them the wrong way.

Hey, this new boss. I'm not sure about him. I don't know what to do. Okay? All of these things happen when you're not communicating clearly, when you're not letting people know, hey, here's the roadmap. Here's why we acquired you. Here's why you are an amazing company. Here's all the reasons to celebrate you guys and say, Holy shit, we are so happy that we are part of this new company.

We're going to do amazing things together. And here's what it is that is so often not discussed internally. It's kind of roaming around and oftentimes your top talent jumps ship. So I've seen.

Oh sure, now you're a real big trouble right?

Yeah. And you're no longer even attracting the right people you want to attract because you haven't expressed that internal alignment. You haven't expressed your business objectives. You haven't told them why this is happening.

So, Marc, I've seen this a number of times where a company has missed a whole target. Let's say they're in year 3 or 4 and things are not going well. Like they aren't going well and they're they're treading water. They're not losing money. But like we're not seeing the growth. They've stalled the number of acquisitions. You know, the fund is saying, okay, let's get our house in order before we do another acquisition, before we stack more on this.

And if a company hits that bump in the road and they have a strong brand, I've seen them boomerang back more quickly than if they're just out there and they have no foundation. Like everybody is confused. And not only is everybody who's currently on this ship is one of the things you talked about, you start turning over talent, whether that's talent at at all layers of the organization.

Yeah. And then you have all of a sudden in year 3 or 4, almost a brand new company that is four years old, five years old, and then certainly whatever they acquired was much older and had history and longevity. And, you know, a story that was a brand that was prevalent in the market. And then you have all these new employees and they really have no idea what's going on because there's no center of gravity, there is no cannon on which to bounce.

Like bounce ideas. Is this consistent with who we are? Well, we don't really know who we are, so we're struggling. Do you see that as one of the dangers of not addressing the brand for internal and internal turbulence reduction, flying around those clouds and finding a better, flight plan that we don't have to fly through that?

Yeah, absolutely. Oh my gosh. Yes, absolutely. This is something that needs to be addressed and needs to be looked at. And if you don't, you're making a huge, huge mistake and you won't understand what's happening. I think that, you know, and it's always different, by the way. But when we start with an engagement with a portfolio, let's say a new portfolio company was acquired for a private equity firm.

We do a brand audit right off the bat. We try to understand what they stand for today versus what they want to stand for down the road. We help them craft a story, and we do this in the form of a workshop, you know? Sure. We get the, you know, everybody from, you know, senior leaders to to to junior team members who really, really care about this company.

And you start building on not leading with what they do, which they all know what they do, but rather leading with why it matters. And that's very, very different and often is pretty new for companies to, to experience that. Okay. And leading them with that, why it matters is that now you start crafting a story that's a little bit deeper that people can identify with on a deeper level, and you can start attracting people for other reasons, then, hey, this is what the salary is, right?

And I think that this is something that all businesses have to do, not just in the acquisition space. There's a clearly different set of needs between generation X, Millennials and Gen Z. Okay, sure. They are looking for different things, different values. And different ideas that they can relate to. And that has to do with different reasons why you apply for it.

Why why you work at a certain place. Right. So, you know, so that's the first thing, once we do that, we kind of do this brand book, which is kind of like the overall statement. Okay, hey, here's what we stand stand for. Here's our values. Here's, here's how we talk about it ourselves. Here's our elevator pitch.

All that kind of stuff. So you have that alignment. People identify with it, and then you can start developing a narrative that celebrates the company. And from there, you know, there's so many great things that happen.

So, Marc, I had a conversation several weeks ago with a founder who had been purchased by a private equity firm who had stayed around as a limited partner for a second bite of the apple.

Yeah.

And he and I got into a conversation, and I think it was enlightening for both of us because I understood his pain. He said, I don't understand why at this point, we are investing in branding. We are investing in marketing and like reimagining this company. And I clear as day remember he said this. We already know what it is.

Okay? And I said to him, I said, who is we? He said, help the founders of the companies that were rolled up. We already know this stuff, like the back of our hand. We can write it down in five minutes.

And I said.

That may be true, but the new operating partner, the Port Co CEO and their team that they brought in does not know this information as well as you did, who had 30 years of experience and like yeah. So that's why it needs to be codified. And then it needs to be tested because some of your assumptions will be incorrect.

And like based on history or past paradigms that have shifted. Right. Or there's, changes in the market. And sometimes I think so it was interesting for me and enlightening for me to see that from the limited partner perspective, from the investor perspective, because they could see some, you know, fatigue, the expenses that are being put into this.

But that goes back to the earlier conversation we had about we need to do a better job of communicating why is valuable. And each stage of the of the deal. But I think that's, that's, an interesting take in the when you talk about employee retention and attraction and retention, branding is paramount because you are not going to attract young talent without being very clear in your messaging that they are not so desperate for employment as maybe we were when we were coming out of college.

Hey, you got a job. Great. You're getting paid, right? Well, there was less questioning, whereas.

Now everybody has bills to pay, right? But they're desperate for employment for different reasons. Yes, they are desperate for employment, but they want to work with a company that they can identify with. Yes. But you know, going back to that business owner that you were speaking with a few weeks back, nobody wants to change their company. We're not trying to change the identity of what they stand for and why they exist.

No, we're trying to craft a better story that can make sense to their new audiences because, by the way, audiences change all the time. There are new gen, there are babies being born every single day, and new generations are coming up. Okay. You need to address that, right? Yes. The messaging is not for you. It's for your buyer.

Yes. And that needs to be clear. And and and you know that that the older CEO who's like, hey, I know we stand for we've been doing this for 30 years. Our products have not changed. Of course, the whole that makes sense. Sure. But how you express it has definitely changed. And you can either be on board and succeed, or you can counter it and fail.

Yes. So, Marc, we like to get tactical. We like to give some common sense advice as to what might be missing in a, operating partner or or co-CEO. Someone's strategy in how to deal with their brand or if they've had a marketing mix misstep, what would you recommend would be some very tactical, practical steps they could take today to maybe change course or get ahead.

But to really think about that three legged stool and I'm sure they have the financial engineering dialed, they're working on the operating efficiencies with, their management and cost cutting and, you know, economies of scale when we're thinking about this marketing function. Well, what do you think would be some practical first steps they could take today to start to move forward?

Yeah, I have a lot. I mean, and we covered some of it. You know, like, obviously one huge mistake that they're doing today is leading with what they do rather than why it matters. Right. We just talked about that. And, and then of course messaging that makes sense to you, but not necessarily to your buyer. You know, the things I would want to add to that is, you know, trying to say everything.

You know, nothing sticks in the end because you're just trying to say everything and like, you're you do less than, less than this, than this, you know, making your value not obvious. You know, it's this convoluted thing is it's too much to understand, etc.. And then not having a clear next step, often a call to action.

And the next step is too weak for people to know what to do. And that has to do with your messaging. I go to your website, you you explain what you do, what you do. You're not telling me why. You're not giving me back reasons to believe you're not doing anything. That's that's grabbing me by the guts and saying, hey, we are the best.

And you, you cannot leave this web page without engaging with us. That's not clear. Right. And, you know, the messaging is inconsistent, right? And then, you know, I would say, finally, not a a lot of companies are not addressing the reasons, the objections, the objections to their brand, you know, like, is it worth it? Will it work?

Is there risk involved? You know, what's the ROI here? Sure. But all these things I just mentioned, if you don't take care of these today, these are silent things that are dragging your brand down, you know, and it's dragging your brand down while you sleep because you have the wrong messaging. You have the wrong tactic. So it's time to wise up, buddy, and start switching gears and having something that's effective, that's getting you excited, and all the other people working with you excited and is allowing you to really move towards your business goals.

I mean, people have business goals, but then they don't set up the environment to make those goals work. It's amazing, you know? And to us, you know, marketing people were like, you know what? It's small little adjustments you could make.

Yes, Marc, I love that because I think one of the fears that, and I'm realizing this has been missing from my, perception, and maybe the way I'm communicating is when you talk about branding and changing the brand, I think the listener on the other end is hearing wholesale changes, millions of dollars of signage and building treatments. And if you have things on vehicles and, you know, down to the the dumb things like the little pads, like all of it, right?

They're hearing this massive overhaul. Whereas in most cases it is about small changes that will have incredible impact. And let's be honest, if we have a three year hold period, we don't have time to invest in these massive changes and see them play out. We need to do the smallest items that can have the biggest impact and stack those items as opposed to, you know, Jaguar just, redid their some type of repackaging of their brand for the automobile, and I haven't followed it a ton, but I guess it's been an absolute it tanked.

But they did wholesale like it was wholesale change, not a small change to the iconic, cat logo and sleek and powerful. It was wholesale change, and that was probably terribly expensive. And, if they were owned by P, I don't know if they are. That was probably some people probably got fired, but that's because they went wholesale instead of small changes.

When you think about, and we're kind of in the rapid fire section here where we're talking through a couple, like key topics. Sure. When you think about audience analysis, what do you think are what's missing in most people's strategies and audience analysis? Or what are those biggest missteps? Because we need to, like you said here, Marc, just recently, it's not about what gets what a message that resonates with the ownership or leadership group as much as is with the target audiences, which is your internal audience through teens and your potential clients.

So what do you think the biggest missteps are in that process of audience analysis?

Not being clear as to what your objective is and defining a strategy to meet that objective. Well, one thing comes to mind over the summer, we had a, a client that was a, a drone software company, and this was a company that did the software that you use on drones for military and all sorts of all sorts of reasons.

You know, agricultural stuff like that, where it does heat mapping, it can follow things, etc., etc. and, recently gotten acquired, they replaced the CEO. And when we went there, the and ran some workshops, we quickly realized that the there was no and there was very little internal alignment. And some of the, internal participants said, you know what?

We don't want to be viewed as a defense contractor. We don't want to have our software be used to kill people and, and, and go to war. Okay. Which is understandable. And there was a lot of pushback. So what do you do? Because on the other hand, I had sales, their head of sales telling me, hey, Marc, 95% of our sales are is defense.

Okay? So but the people internally and the people, you know, the software, the engineers and all this stuff who really cared about their job and cared about what they were doing, they they were like, yeah, no, it's it's more like, you know, finding a lost child in the woods or surveying a crop for, for, for the agricultural industry.

That's great. But that does not equate to 95% of the sales. So what do we do? We craft a better story. Sure. And we the story that we found out was that actually this software used in military with drones allows for less boots on the ground, less soldiers being out there being killed, more tactics, more strategy, better warfare that uses less human beings.

Okay. It allows for, reconnaissance and, and all, all sorts of great things. And and finally, we also discovered that it allowed for their users to be looking at screens less and actually talking to each other more to find out what the right solution was. So that was a better story. That was almost an anti-war story.

If you want.

Certainly an anti-violence story.

And an anti-violence story. Absolutely. And it helped the company get that alignment that it needed and that the people that were pushing back at the end were like, oh my gosh, I love this company. I love what we're doing, and I love our mission. Why? Because we talked about it and we told it to them and and we crafted something remarkable, something that they could feel proud of.

That's what needs to happen.

When that subtle shift of violence to deterrence and from tragedy and casualty to precision and reduction in human soldier exposure. And then certainly we've all understood and this is due to some of the branding you've done and others that whenever we have these, precise munitions, we're targeting the bad guys. We have less collateral damage, we have less wides, you know, like when we think about World War two and the bombing of London in Berlin.

I mean, there were lots of people who were, like, incidentally, killed that had nothing to do with soldiers and munitions and, strategic military objectives. So certainly we see a better narrative there. Yeah. That's fascinating. So I think this audience analysis is such a key, like key part of the process. I feel like you talked about it earlier.

There are some folks who, and I think we're seeing this a little bit in younger generations that are making mistakes at this. They come out, they vibe code, they put something up from chat, they call fiber in their cousin, spin up a brand and boom, we're done. And that great MVP grade MVP for day one when they have no money and you're like, you know, just an idea.

But as soon as the rubber starts hitting the road and you have a fiduciary responsibility to investors and you actually have to like de-risk your bets, probably not the right prescription. You need to do some audience analysis. You need to get professionals involved, and you need to execute because, you are in a highly risky situation. If you're rolling the fiber and Upwork dice to craft a brand that's going to drive value.

Yeah. No, absolutely. I, I do want to touch on what you were saying about AI and vibe coding and getting a loaded logo out of thin air or whatever. That sounds pretty easy. And, and AI is easy at first, and at first it is easy to get a logo done on Fiverr or whatever, right? But there's no quick fixes in life.

That is not how business works. Everything worthwhile is actually hard. Yes. You know, it's there's no easy way out. There's no get get rich quick scheme. Okay. Those do not exist. So, you know, if you're relying on AI and relying on on quick, easy fixes to things, you're actually creating more commonalities. You know, you're you're you're you're expanding on the most common outcome rather than being remarkable.

And remarkable is good business. Remarkable is is more sales, etc., etc.. So yeah, if you want to do the easy road and think that that's going to put you ahead, it might put you ahead for the next week or so because you look awesome. You have a full business plan and you vide vibe coded a new app or something.

But it looks the same, you know? Sure. I mean, there's some pretty shocking things when it comes to to AI. I have a friend who, who gets grant proposals and she, she, she has to go through them and help decide which grants, which which proposals go forward. She told me that 80% of them are made with ChatGPT.

And and you can start telling when you read the introduction, you read the development of these things. They all kind of sound the same. They use the same vocabulary, they use the same, you know, turn on phrases and you're like, wait a minute, there's nothing original here. One thing that's clear in business ingenuity, originality and initiative. Those are things that will always be noticed.

No, I love that, and I think this might tie into kind of maybe a closing reflection we have on this conversation is the unique value the private equity operators are trying to drive has to be represented by unique messaging, and it has to be represented by a clear brand that differentiates with that originality, that tenacity, that that's, Jessica, I know, Mark, you spend a lot of time in France, so.

Yeah, that that that's a yes spot on. Well, Mark.

I want to give you an opportunity for closing, reflect, reflection. And then also we are going to give you we believe in shameless plugs. We are going to plug your business, your firm and your contact. Thank you. Where people can find you and then obviously all of that, Isaac and Johanna. And meanwhile on the team will put all that in the show notes.

They'll put it everywhere. We link this, everywhere we post this, you will have access, to Marc and his team. So first closing reflection Mark. And then let's go into shameless plug.

Sure. Well, the closing thing, I mean, if you're getting one thing from this, is that clarity is not a luxury in private equity. It's a lever. And you need to pull it and pull that lever early on, okay. And get things moving. Right. Because, you know, your brand is already telling a story. But is that story aligned with what you need it to be aligned with?

Right. It's not fluff. This isn't nice to haves. It's the central operating system for your portfolio company. It keeps you from having 12 different versions of your sales pitch out there, or 12 different, definitions of what you stand for. You need this. Don't screw this up. You know, honestly, I mean, this is time to wise up. Be super clear.

Don't be clever. And using your business jargon and all that stuff, be clear and do it.

Mark, I love that. I think that's, sound advice. I can already see the, reels and the shorts being clipped from that, like closer reflection. That's amazing. That was that was spot on. So that's great. Well, Mark, let's transition here into, a plug about you and your firm where people can contact you. Maybe a quick elevator pitch about your ideal client so people really understand, when they should reach out to you and your team.

Yeah. So, obviously we have, our website, consequently creative.com. You can, you know, reach us there. I am personally on on, you know, just Google my name was Marc with a C. Marc, last name Rust, and then beyond that, we're pretty active on LinkedIn and, Instagram where you can see videos of us talking about stuff and, yeah, we're available, we're here.

And, and we really want to make some remarkable changes.

Marc, thank you so much. This has been just a fantastic conversation about branding and private equity and how we can, make an impact. We can be a lever that can be pulled to de-risk investments and improve EBITDA and exit multiples. So Marc, thank you so much for joining us today.

You're welcome. Thank you so much for having me. Bill. This is really been great. I.

Hope you.

Found it honest and informative.

Yes. It's been my pleasure and certainly helped me, sees some things that are missing in my, perspective and approach, and I always value those learnings.

Thanks.

Thank you for joining the Missing Half podcast, where today we're discovering what's missing in private equity and branding. Like share subscribe. Have a great day.