Unlocking How The Friend Zone Is Damaging Your Brand With Doug Zarkin

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Skot Waldron (00:55.65)
Doug, what’s up man? How you doing?

Doug Zarkin (00:58.187)
Good, good, thanks for having me, I appreciate it.

Skot Waldron (01:00.236)
Yeah, it’s going to be fun. just your, I’m just, I don’t know. I love talking brand in any context, anytime, anywhere. It’s like my first love, you know? So I’m we get to talk about that today.

Doug Zarkin (01:15.785)
No, thanks for having me again. Appreciate it.

Skot Waldron (01:18.658)
Where, where did, so where, tell us about your background. I understand. Like, I mean, I said, I want to talk brand, but I mean, with, with you, why is that, you know, why am I so excited about that? Going off your profile, going off of the things you’ve done, where have you come from? Why did you end up where you are?

Doug Zarkin (01:40.533)
Yeah, I mean, my career journey has really been a quest to understand how to build brands to sustain the success over time. You know, starting in my first career, which is the agency world at the end of the train and working my way forward, eventually starting the youth entertainment and lifestyle division of the largest private agency in the world at that time, which was Gray Advertising. And then moving to the client side, really understanding more about the why, not just the what.

And brands are so exciting because brands are really nothing more than a set of emotions, attitudes, feelings, and perceptions. And being in a position to help shape what those are, how those manifest is always challenging, tremendous amount of pressure, but it’s also a privilege because at the end of the day, we are tasked as marketers, as brand leaders with motivating the consumer to take the action we would like them to take when we would like them to take it. And that’s asking a lot. But with it comes an incredible amount of dynamics for sure.

Skot Waldron (02:52.894)
And let’s stick on the brand thing. I think that people have become more educated about this whole word brand, you know, over time. You could say, you know, 10, 20 years ago, 15, whatever. I mean, that’s when I was starting to get into it a lot more. But it was, you know, people thought of brand as like a font or a color palette or a,

logo of some kind and, and, and whatnot, but you, and I have probably tried to debunk that. And I think it’s, it’s become better. Cause when I asked the question now, Hey, what is, what is a brand? think people have a better idea. It’s like a, they’ll say often I’ll hear the words like it is a, a reputation or it’s a feeling or it’s a thing, right? Like

Doug Zarkin (03:46.379)
Mm.

Skot Waldron (03:46.92)
I think are trying to grasp it. Do you sense the same thing or have you seen that transition happen or what do think?

Doug Zarkin (03:52.331)
You know, I think the logos and identities are reflections of what the brand really means. But the brand at its core is, again, that shared system, that shared set of beliefs that an organization has. The products are different than the brand. A product is something that’s sold, it has a price, or it’s a service that has a price. It’s tangible in the sense that there’s a expectation that comes with it, but that expectation is 10x when you level from the product to the brand side. You could have a terrible product from a great brand and the brand can make you whole really by double downing on their belief system. You you trust your dollars in buying a product, but you’re really making a commitment to the brand.

Skot Waldron (04:46.446)
And when you think about that and that idea of the promise, do you feel that you can have a great brand, you can have a great value system, you can have a great perception of what you’re trying to do and deliver and have that alignment and that agreement and whatnot. I mean, if your product ends up sucking, like people…

I mean, they’ll say, Hey, got a great brand, but your product sucks. You know what I mean? I mean, what do you do there?

Doug Zarkin (05:19.147)
Yeah, absolutely. It’s no… I mean, let’s take it into something that’s really easy to comprehend. So your favorite group, your favorite music group, puts out a bad CD, puts out a bad record. For those of you that don’t know what a record is, Google it. That doesn’t mean that you don’t still love the band. It just means that they put out a crappy album. The strength of the brand is really in its longevity relationship. And it’s kind of what I talk about in my book. You the difference between being in the friend zone and brand love is really the passion and trust, the intensity of those items that exist. And a brand can put out a bad product, just like a movie studio can put out a bad sequel, or a music group or an artist can put out a bad song or series of songs. You don’t fall in love less with that.

You just don’t love that particular item. And again, it goes to the passion and trust dynamic. The intensity of those dynamics greatly impacts whether you are in the friend zone or whether you are truly in a place of brand love.

Skot Waldron (06:32.268)
Okay. Tell me about this friend zone thing. I mean, your book, your book’s based on this idea of moving out of the friend zone and why that’s such a bad thing for why the friend zone is not a great place for a brand to be in. tell me about that. Cause I want to bring this back to leadership and why leaders and teams need to care about this thing in general, but define that for me.

Doug Zarkin (06:53.129)
Yeah, hopefully we haven’t lost your audience on the tangent that we just went on, but…

Skot Waldron (06:55.342)
No, no, not at all. think it’s a good setup. It’s a good setup.

Doug Zarkin (06:59.563)
Look, brands in today’s marketplace can’t afford to have an average relationship with their customer and relationship being the the metric of passion and trust. The reason is, is because it creates uncertainty. When you see businesses that miss sales forecast by double digits, there’s a real issue there.

Not so much that you weren’t able to get new customers, but what happened to your existing customer base? know, a Harvard study put out a statistic that it is five to 25 times more expensive to get a new customer than it is to retain an existing one. And so the notion of friendship versus love is all about preserving the integrity and power of your existing customer base to come back to upgrade, to revisit, to purchase additional products, because you’ve already created an element of trust and passion. If you don’t take that to the next level, then something that is perceived to be a bigger and better deal may come along. And that’s when you lose your existing customers, and then you’re putting all of your eggs in the new customer basket. And that’s a challenge for sure.

Skot Waldron (08:21.56)
So what’s the friend zone?

Doug Zarkin (08:23.423)
The friend zone is when you have moderate levels of passion and moderate levels of trust. It is the equivalent of if you were thinking about your dating life, you may have encountered somebody in your life that you had feelings for that didn’t have the same degree of feelings back for you. And they put you in the friend zone. Brands that think they have a deeper relationship with their customers often find out when it’s too late that they are friends with their customers, that they’re not lovable, they’re not loved advocates of the brand. And that’s when you start to see brands get really desperate and do aggressive discounting and deals where you get the, it’s been eight months since I’ve seen you kind of thing. And that’s a terrible, terrible place to be because you’re now scrambling to figure out how you’re going to make up that delta.

Skot Waldron (09:21.282)
Hmm. I like this because now you got my brain going. I’m going to go, okay, I’m going to work. I’m going to work this with you. So say we’ve got leadership C-suite and they think that everybody should love working at their company. Everybody should love the thing that we’ve built our mission, vision and values that we at the top have created for everybody that everybody should just be aligned to.

Doug Zarkin (09:47.307)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Skot Waldron (09:49.528)
But everybody else is kind of like, yeah, I go to work. I clock in. I do my job, you know, but they’re not really bought in to the thing. and then you see maybe some disengagement. see some kind of just, they’re doing the minimum to get by or they’re just kind of doing their job. Nothing fantastic. And then the leadership kind of starts.

Doug Zarkin (10:00.841)
Right. Right.

Well that’s…

Skot Waldron (10:18.936)
Getting a little bit desperate maybe, and maybe they’re throwing out extra incentives. Maybe they start throwing out this thing and doing that thing, or maybe they’re starting to get really panicked and the board is coming down on them and the stock price is plummeting and they’re like, we got to do something. They start making threats and then they start dropping hammers and firing people or what? mean, I don’t know. Like I’m trying to bring this back. Like, is that kind of what you would relate to as far as a brand is concerned and what they’re trying to create?

Doug Zarkin (10:48.713)
I think brand love starts internal. You know, there’s a difference between somebody who is vested and somebody who is invested. And I think if you go back to the mantra of what leadership is, a leader’s job is to try to flip the switch on their team members to be invested, not just vested. They look at the business as a reflection of themselves. They care about it personally and deeply.

And as a result, the effort and the outcome usually is much greater. When there’s a wall, when there’s a buffer, it creates a lack of engagement and a lack of that ability to find that unlock. And, the unlock at the end of the day is what it takes to win in today’s market. And the unlock is not definable in the sense of

There’s not a one size fits all definition of what the unlock is. The formula to determine how to get it is what I call in the book, the brand value equation. And so if you think about it, whether you are making 50,000, 500,000 or 5 million, everybody wants value from the brands and products and services that they purchase. And it’s a very simple formula.

Your numerator is your experience. Okay. And if you think about brands in the luxury space, as an example, they deliver an incredible experience. And the reason why is because the denominator is price. If you’re charging $500 a night for a room, you better be delivering three to four X in experience in order for the person who’s staying in that room to feel really good about that price point. Alternatively, there are brands that are value brands that still deliver incredible experiences. And that’s why people are in love with them. You know, if you’re going into it, I’m going to use one that I think does a really nice job, Walmart. Walmart on the surface, you don’t anticipate that there’s going to be a great level of customer service, that it’s going to be hard to find somebody to help you. But it starts with the greeter when you walk through the door. And then it’s the fact that the salespeople are generally really friendly. And it makes it a more pleasurable shopping experience. Chick-fil-A is another one. You you’re buying $9 worth of chicken nuggets. But the people that work there can body the brand in such an amazing way.

That you walk away not only feeling better about your investment, you feel better about the food and you feel better about your experience in general. And that’s why those brands win.

Skot Waldron (13:52.726)
Is there anybody that you feel like doesn’t? Is there any examples you have of people that don’t do where the value, the value equation is off?

Doug Zarkin (13:57.963)
I will say insurance companies are probably, and I’m not going to name any specific, but I think if I were going to generalize, think try to get a claim approved at your insurance company. Try to get a medication that may not be double down the middle approved. The bureaucracy, the, can’t call somebody but I have to email them and then I have to wait 30 days for a letter to come only to tell me that I’m missing a form. Those kind of things really create in the far lower left of the brand value equation and the matrix of the different relationship zones, what I would call brand hate. Brand hate are businesses that know you need them, but simply don’t dial up.

Passion and trust. I don’t trust my medical insurance company. I don’t particularly like them. I need them. And when I need them is when I find that the brand experience is probably the worst. I don’t think about it when it’s operating in the background, but it’s a need-based interaction. Man, it is really tough. I don’t think there are many health insurance companies in particular.

where people get the warm and fuzzies when they have to go and deal with something.

Skot Waldron (15:32.876)
Yeah. my gosh. I just had this happen yesterday with my mom’s insurance company. My dad had an issue that was going on at the house and we had to call a paramedic. He’s fine right now. Right. But

Doug Zarkin (15:42.559)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Good good. I was about to ask that and glad to hear that.

Skot Waldron (15:51.224)
called a paramedic and she was like, and we have a different County, like we’re on a County line and the hospital that we would generally go to for an ER visit is like five minutes away, but it’s a different County and her insurance company. Will not let her go to that hospital. She has to go 45 minutes away. And the one that they approve. and it, and it was.

Doug Zarkin (16:02.025)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Because it’s the same county. yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s,

Skot Waldron (16:17.664)
Ridiculous, right? She was so livid and we ended up going to the one five minutes away anyway, but it was, it’s just, it’s that kind of thing where you’re like, are you trying to not want, get me to come back? Like it’s crazy.

Doug Zarkin (16:34.441)
Yep, yep, it’s very unfortunate, but that seems to be the prevailing feeling with most people have when it comes to their health insurance.

Skot Waldron (16:42.936)
There was a, interview I heard, can’t remember if it was on the hidden brain podcast or Freakonomics, but they were talking about sludge, the term sludge and how a lot of companies, they’re specific companies. So I’ll make it really easy to sign up, but really difficult to cancel where you sign up for something quickly online. and then all of a sudden you, you go to like, maybe can’t try to cancel that thing.

Doug Zarkin (16:59.786)
Mm-hmm.

Skot Waldron (17:08.182)
And then you’ve got to, you can’t do it online. You have to like call a customer rep agent, and then they ask you a bunch of questions. And then, I mean, it could take you three seconds to sign up. It’ll take you 15 to 30 minutes to actually cancel by the time you get, get done with it. and that experience I think is, is detrimental. I mean, they do it on purpose, right, but it’s definitely not helping that, that feeling of loyalty. mean, if you think about it in a relationship,

Doug Zarkin (17:33.993)
No, not at all.

Skot Waldron (17:38.122)
standpoint, it’s really easy to get in a relationship with me, but once you want to get out, like I make it really difficult. you’re not going have a good, good, good feelings about me later on, you know, 20 years down the road, you’re not going to speak of me favorably. And I ask leaders to think about that all the time. who’s, who’s, who is a person of impact for you and that you still remember from 20 years ago.

Doug Zarkin (17:50.1)
No, definitely not.

Skot Waldron (18:05.44)
That is that person’s brand in your mind. Like that feeling is important. And who’s going to talk about you 20 years later as that person? Are they going to talk about you? And is it favorable the way they’re talking about you or not? Sobering thought for some of them.

Doug Zarkin (18:14.677)
Yep.

You know, when you think about today’s marketplace, we live in a reviews and ratings and reputation culture. you know, one thing that I think has emerged is something against, I think I talk about in the book, this notion of reputation and commerce. The idea that what people say about you may not be the actuality of what’s happening, but it’s the reality of what it is.

You gotta wrestle with it, for sure.

Skot Waldron (18:56.674)
Can, can

I, you know, I go back and forth on some of this stuff, but like people say your brand isn’t what you say it is. It’s what other people say it is. Right. We’ve heard that phrase before. Um, I’ll often say, you know, your brand’s built over the millions of little micro moments, not usually the grandiose ones. Um, that, that, that do it too. Um, I say people, if you don’t define it, somebody else will define it for you.

So, take control, be intentional. don’t know. What do you think about those thoughts, those ideas? What’s your perspective on having control of your brand narrative versus other people controlling it? Can you really control it versus not like, don’t know. What’s your thoughts on that?

Doug Zarkin (19:47.495)
You can play an active role and you should be playing an active role in the way your brand manifests itself in the tangible and intangible experiences that people have with it. It is incredibly difficult because while the, not the most, but among the most powerful tools that a brand has at its disposal are its frontline associates who embody and represent the brand. There’s variability there. They’re not automatons, they’re not robots. There’s a personal infusion. There’s a relationship that happens. And as a result, it infuses a degree of inconsistency. And that may not be a bad thing, but if you’re not putting in the guardrails and guide points of your brand, you are leaving so much up to chance. And to your point, your brand’s reputation will end up defining what your brand is. And if you’re not realizing that and taking a stake in trying to shape that reputation, I’m not talking about deleting bad reviews off your Google My Business page. Like that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about really strong service culture, really strong poor ethos, really strong belief system that you expect your associates and ambassadors to embody. If you don’t have that, you are leaving so much up to chance that you will be out of control of your brand and that’s not a good thing.

Skot Waldron (21:39.938)
I often will think about this idea too of, you know, talk about the frontline, engages frontline workers that really carry the brand. They’re the ones who have those touch points. When I go to Walmart, let’s just take Walmart because you threw them out there. But if I go to Walmart, I’m not judging my brand experience on, you know, the, the CEO’s last quarterly call, like, right? Like I, don’t, I generally, I’m not going to even pay attention to that unless I’m really invested and getting on these calls and what our shareholders, but honestly, my day-to-day interactions are what are going to shape if I go back to Walmart or not. Not, not the CEO and not the board and not the, the, the press release they just did.

Daniel report that just sent out, like it’s, it’s none of that. It’s the day to day interaction with that employee, that employee embodies the brand and they are going to determine whether I come back or not. and I don’t think we as leaders treat them that way for the most part. we may treat them as disposable. We may treat them as like, don’t value them enough.

Doug Zarkin (22:48.907)
Mm-hmm.

Skot Waldron (23:04.916)
or what we do to, like, what are we showing to help them understand they have that responsibility and understand that we know that they have that responsibility. Like, I think there’s a, there’s a gap there sometimes in it. I could see it.

Doug Zarkin (23:19.775)
Mm-hmm. Agree. Agree.

Skot Waldron (23:22.05)
You talk about this idea of thinking human. Tell me about that.

Doug Zarkin (23:27.979)
Yeah. So let’s stay in the world of relationships for a second.

I’m fortunate in my life I have a best friend. I’ve been best friends with him since we were 15 years old. If you close your eyes and imagine that every person in your life that you called friend treated you as if you were their best friend, imagine what life would be like. Imagine how special you would feel. Imagine the support system that you would have. Now let’s

Get out of the warm and fuzzies and go into the world of business for a second. Imagine if every person who came to your website or visited your store was treated as if they were the only person that day that was going to visit your website or come to your store. How would you treat them? How would you talk to them? How would you provide them service and care?

How would you elevate the post-purchase experience so that it’s not about problem solving, but it’s about strengthening trust? That’s the notion of thinking human. It’s putting the customer at the center of the model, building an ecosystem that really thinks small, but allows you to win big.

Skot Waldron (24:58.776)
This is cool because I sit there and I’m going to tie it back into the culture thing. How often are we as leaders making that employee feel like they are the only employee that I’m interacting with today? Like are they.

Doug Zarkin (25:03.946)
Okay.

Yeah, I mean, not very much. know, not very much. And again, this isn’t about shaming anybody. It’s just about holding yourself up to a mirror and saying, how can I get better every day? And, you know, I try to be a student of leadership. I consider myself a pretty good leader. I can always get better. You know, I end up replaying a lot of my leadership conversations in my head and think about who was I too hard, too soft? Was I clear enough that I inspire enough?

Those are just things that naturally in the course of your own personal growth and development you’re going to focus on. And you should be focusing on.

Skot Waldron (25:54.914)
You should, you should be. why do you think that people are not more intentional with their brand efforts and your experience? You’ve seen companies that have been successful. You’ve seen companies that haven’t been, what gets in the way.

Doug Zarkin (26:12.853)
You know, I think there is this belief that if you trust your customer, they will define your brand. And so, know, the user generated content push is a really good example of let people express their relationship with your brand in the way that they feel best about it.

And I support that. I believe that if you have a strong brand, you should be welcoming those that interact with it to help define it in the marketplace. But that whole thing is predicated on if you have a strong brand. And again, go back to what a brand is. A brand is a set of emotions, attitudes, feelings, and perceptions. It’s a belief system.

And so the stronger you have a belief in your brand and you can articulate it to the outside world, the less vulnerable you are when somebody takes it and writes a review or does a post. Ironically, it’s the fact that people want authentic content. They’re losing sight of the fact that you need to have a strong brand in order to have authentic content. Or else you just really have just opinions which are fine and important, but they’re not defining your brand for you.

Skot Waldron (27:47.298)
Where, where do you think, I talk about the idea of, brands being consistent, authentic as, as part of it too. And then also thinking about differentiation, and how they stand out in the marketplace and how, how did those things apply to this idea of friend zone versus not friend zone? I mean, do they, do they correlate in your, in your mind?

Doug Zarkin (28:15.423)
Differentiation, especially in commoditized categories, is a must. If you’re selling paper towels, you’ve got to be more than just the cheapest roll of paper towel. Unless that’s how you want to be evaluated, unless that’s your value proposition. How do you make that paper towel distinct? You create an experience of using it, you showcase the experience of using it, you showcase the impact that it has on the lives of people who trust it. Because at the end of the day, consumers will make emotional decisions before they make rational choices. And so the emotionality comes with understanding your customer archetype really, really well. And then figuring out what messaging, what marketing, what post-purchase relationship you want to have with them.

Skot Waldron (29:18.454)
And leaders need to be thinking about that. Do you, do you want, what are you selling and understanding what that is? And if you are a commoditized culture, what are you doing to stand out, to add the extra value to help people want to come and stay? what is, once you get them in the door, that’s step one, but how do you keep them there? I mean, when a brand is thinking about, finally we got another customer.

But that retention, like you said, five to 25 times, you know, it can cost to, to replace a customer. and that’s that, that is something important to think about. the churn customer churn is really expensive and then if we can, if we can keep it, that that’s the goal, you know, you’ve got some people that are just die hard.

Doug Zarkin (30:07.711)
Yep, yep, it’s a big deal.

Skot Waldron (30:15.414)
whatever that company does, I don’t care. I’m loyal. I’m going to buy it. and you’ve seen this happen multiple times with companies like Apple, for example, that made stupid product decisions and did stupid things and you’re going, that’s horrible. And then you got, you know, an Android device that’ll come out. That’s even better than the phone. I an iPhone in some cases and people are like, I don’t care. You know, it’s an emotional decision. It’s not a logical one. My wife wanted a specific car that was logically not the car we should get at all. It made no logical sense whatsoever, but we ended up with the emotional one, right? And she still doesn’t, she doesn’t regret it, you know, four years later, it’s she’s great with it. Yeah. I know it’s like, dang it. just, I still talk about it, right? It’s can you tell? you tell? So the book.

Doug Zarkin (30:48.681)
Okay. Right. Right.

Good for her, bad for you, but good for her.

Good for her. Good for her, bad for you.

Skot Waldron (31:12.908)
Your brand, moving your brand out of the friend zone is out. People can get it on Amazon and really dive into this. And who’s the book for? Who’d you write it for? And what do you think they’re gonna take away? What do want them to take away from this?

Doug Zarkin (31:30.953)
Yeah, you know, I wrote it. I wrote it. In part for me, because I love to treat to teach and train and mentor and try to help people. Be their best self. You know, I call it unlocking the marketing superhero inside everybody. It’s the fancy way to express it. at its core, I wrote the book for students coming out of college, graduate school, folks that are early in their career, or entrepreneurs that are really looking to perhaps find some guide points, some milestone markers in their journey for how to evaluate their own efforts. I think the misnomer with marketing is that there’s a right way or a wrong way. And we spend so much time stressing out about that. In reality, there’s just a way.

Every situation, every brand, every consumer archetype has its unique set of challenges. And you’ve got to appreciate that. But there are also some fundamentals, things like the brand value equation, which is, my Pythagorean theorem is a very simple construct to help you frame. Are you delivering value? The notion of that self reflection of where do you believe you lie in the mind of consumer type A, B, C, or D. Are you in brand love? Are you in brand hate? Are you in brand like? Are you in brand, you know, lust? Where in which zone does it exist? It’s just meant to help people. And if there’s one or two nuggets that come out of the book for you that make you feel a little bit more at ease about the journey that you’re on, then I’ve done my job.

Skot Waldron (33:30.776)
That’s awesome. And where do people find you?

Doug Zarkin (33:36.967)
You can find me on my website dougzarkin.com. With a last name like mine, I’m pretty easy to find on LinkedIn. Or you can, of course, find the book on Amazon and paperback or Kindle. So I hope you’ll take an opportunity to check it out.

Skot Waldron (33:50.05)
Yeah, and it’s no weird spelling. It’s like straight up zarkin. So it’s like

Doug Zarkin (33:53.157)
Z is in zebra A R K I N, it’s exactly as it sounds.

Skot Waldron (33:56.61)
That’s it, man. So Doug, awesome. Anytime, man, you want to talk brand I’m here. So, thanks for shedding some light and giving your perspective. Your experience is vast and, think we’ve all been gifted with some of that knowledge. So thanks, man.

Doug Zarkin (33:59.839)
Thank you, buddy.

Trying to do good work and do good things for people at the same time.