What you’ll hear in this episode:

• Prentice Howe’s career in the advertising industry, from copywriting school to owner of the firm Door No. 3
• Why branding is integral to a company’s success
• How to establish and refine your brand, including the 5 “Challenger Brand” personality traits

Prentice Howe is not just interested in brands that push boundaries – he wants to work with brands that change industries. Howe has always been interested in underdog stories, and was drawn to advertising from a young age. “I’ve always enjoyed storytelling through the lens of a brand,” he explains, and has been in the advertising industry ever since graduating from copywriting school. After working at various agencies and earning promotions as Creative Director and other executive titles along the way, Howe is now an Owner and Principal of Door No. 3. Door No. 3 is an Austin-based consultative marketing firm that “overlays story with science to help challenger brands build audiences and grow market share.” Some of their clients have included Birds Barbershop, Rudy’s BBQ, Discover, and The Dallas Stars.

While it’s not the largest firm in the industry, Howe planted his roots at Door No. 3 because he is able to work directly with clients, and can work with brands that have to “outthink rather than outspend” to compete in their markets. Howe strives to be the best part of his client’s day, enjoying every step of the creative process from conception and development to production and the finished product. With years of intimate experience with brands across diverse industries, Howe decided to consolidate and formalize his knowledge in his book The Empowered Challenger Playbook, a resource for brands to learn how to topple giants in their industry through brand positioning and articulation (also check out The Empowered Challenger Podcast!).

Helpful at all stages of a company’s growth, The Empowered Challenger Playbook reveals the most important aspects of the branding process, the common mistakes that rising brands make during the branding process, and teaches a brand to understand who they are, and “why” they are. It also outlines the five brand personalities and how every company can pull some aspects from each to tell a compelling story and capture their audience’s attention and trust.

A fascinating episode full of valuable insight into one of the most important aspects of building a company, Howe’s advice about branding is useful for an entrepreneur at any level. Listen to the full episode to hear more about the five brand personalities, some of Howe’s favorite campaigns, and the five most important things to remember about your brand’s relationship to the customer.

Masters and Founders is a founding_media podcast created in collaboration with foundingAUSTIN.

Host: Dan Dillard
Ryan Francis

Guest: Prentice Howe

Transcript

this is a founding media podcast if welcome to another episode of masters and founders this week we’re sharing my conversation with printers house owner and chief creative officer of door number three this is all about the culture of change and challenging the status quo he does it so well with this current company that focuses on branding and creative he has done the same for some of America’s most iconic brands including minute maid the UPS store and highs are bush and JBL bridges work has been recognized nationally and internationally in procedures shows such as cans Leon London international advertising awards the Webby awards and communication arts let’s hear more from printers on how he got his start and what drives his love of challenges today has a very special guest we’ve got produce how with the warden number three Hey I don’t give them great thanks for having me thanks for being here so I’m really excited and stoked about this because you know I met a couple weeks ago that’s right and just kind of went over it brainstormed what you’ve been doing for the last three years have been reading gosh I’ve been doing this since I graduated from SMU in my little copywriters booked it was laminated and I thought it was you know just perfect so laminated you know like it was done as bait and learn a lot after that but that that that was when I go to school so ninety six I’ve been doing this a long time well yeah we’re gonna get the double education here because not only are you a founder but you hold other founders and companies brands that’s right and so I am super stoked about this good one right hunters right out of the gates of SMU are you passionate about about advertising branding or was this something that you kind of evolved into no I was a a really from a copywriter standpoints that’s where I started you know what to portfolio school became a copywriter and then you you go to different agencies if you hang around long enough they start to give you the answer title seven you know you become associate creative director creative director executive creative director but it’s all I’ve done my whole career it’s it’s something I love and I just I love storytelling through the lens of a brand and it’s it’s pretty powerful there was a question of if we get into branding even the founder how how does that start well it’s it’s the it’s actually pretty unique story are I I was going to want to have my own agency I work to do number three for seven years as executive creative director and look to purchasing it didn’t work out at the time

I went off to Detroit in work done some pretty amazing brands like minute maid fiats and some some big global brands and the opportunity came up again to come back in purchasing agents in the places come like a homecoming it was really special to come back into the agency as a as an owner and start running the company intend making it it was already special place with making it making it my own so that’s was about just over three years ago pretty cool and when when did you so you said it didn’t work out in the beginning when did you know that it was door number three that you wanted to make yours and what changed what changes did you want to make to make it yours yeah well you know it’s it’s interesting I haven’t worked in advertising for so long I worked in Dallas in Los Angeles Boston Detroit Boston again agencies S. anywhere from ten people to over six hundred people in I always loved working on clients where I could have a good impact and I wasn’t just a a cog in the machine in an I love kind of the underdog story not necessarily working startups that’s not where we focus but working on brands that are not necessarily number one in our category and they have to out think when they cannot spend in that’s exciting that gets me out of bed and they have to do things differently work a little bit faster or a little bit more creatively and so coming back getting the agency and kind of starting anew with the shop I want to have a place that was going to be kind of a challenger brands advocate who we could power challengers to wake up every day and topple giants and it takes having a road map on the right tools and anyone can challenge but it takes takes a pretty special brand to be empowered challenger the one that really taps into the right personalities to do it right and do it successfully so that’s what that’s the that’s kind of the mission I put in place of agency now we are kind of advocate for those types of grants how has life changed for you from the employer companies who actually being in the guy that runs it

yeah it’s a good question totally different you start to realize you were a lot of different hats and you know the things that you used to do a lot of like I was a creative director said I spent most of my time obviously doing that and and now I have a lot less time to do that so you start to hire people that are better than you can do those jobs for you so you can spend time do a lot of things are important to us as a founder and owner of a company which is helping maintain the vision make sure you’re financially sound and making sure the culture’s good making sure the pipeline of talent is good and so all of that then still be able to dive into creative as much as I can is what I love to do so it’s really different thing but what’s fun is hiring really talented people Minton and do their thing because you get people better than yourself and you need to have a really good company those creative juices I imagine are pretty excited about it we we do a lot of creative stuff with this podcast magazine work yeah this this this yeah and down on that one quarter of just doing creative stuff yeah this is one of the funnest parts of the job it is it is fun and we like to think that we hope you know when we go see some of our clients that we get the opportunity the best part of their day I mean they’re excited to kind of talk about ideas and talk about strategy and so we need China may be great for them but it’s it is fun all the way from early stages of coming up with ideas to the cult making stuff but producing you know producing the work order right now I got the microphones out of cameras are on and it’s it’s fun to be in that process of creativity

and and then tackling the next assignment moving on tell us what’s wrong well yeah it’s it’s it’s something that I want to get down on paper as much for us as an agency is anything it’s really solidify our positioning as a shock what we stand for we believe in a kind of how we approach brand development strategic positioning so it’s called IBM power challenger playbook how brands can they have rising brands in Canada still market share and and talk of giants this is the essence of it but he dives into the courts about prepositions so whatever brand position that’s brand articulation it’s kind of like what do you offer that no one else does the customers want and need any chance of that stuff they’re just stop we don’t move forward don’t tell me about your color palette or your logo and that’s really exciting to us we love starting their supreme positions a big part of the book talking about that and then the rest of it in the most of the book is looking at the five personalities openpower challenger brand they need in those are you know I can’t kind of like a David Goliath thing you know he had five stones and if he does China you have five personalities that you can tap into any time looking measure stones you could pick up a bit earlier giants but if you adopt these in your own unique way as a brand you can do some pretty special things so what I do is identify kind of what’s happening in the market place which islanders the ones that are winning what other personalities and identify this fun personalities and in Denver for me it’s the kind of book that hopefully put out there and whether you’re starting a company or whether you’re out of fortune five hundred brand you got people nipping at your heels it’s something that could apply to whatever you’re doing really not I am gonna do a little plug here for our listeners five out of five stars on Amazon

so go get yourself a copy it’s also in book people solve your most people here in Austin tex you don’t know how to get our hands on you know thank them for what would you say people get wrong about branding I I think a lot of them think their positions and when I say that I mean I think that they’ve got that they think they have the they moved they moved too far too fast and then move into the logos and colors and look and feel and packaging before they really articulate themselves in a word document and I thought it was sexy or fun you gotta stand naked in front of me here kind of like our little what we have here okay it’s not always fun it’s really painful it’s a it’s a painful process but that’s why a lot of people don’t want to do it we actually work with a lot of companies that are have been market for a long time not start ups they’re trying to scale their trying to maybe acquired in their internally not even in lockstep because they haven’t taken the time to kind of get in the same room and say what we stand for what we about and then because if you can if you do that then you can pull the market with confidence there’s no Hey do you like that you would like to advertise like the video let’s just like a player on personal biases to it just spitball do we like that no it doesn’t work like that it’s your boxed up you run it through the filters of the strategic brief that you’ve all agreed upon it makes the process so much smoother so much easier so I think the biggest mistake that we see are people just move too fast too quick and they have an articulate who they are and why they are which is a big thing yeah the whole sign sign Senate our Y. en route if that’s a big thing it’s not just about what you do but it’s why you do it right now

but that is not put down on paper then you can spend a lot of money and then re having to read redo things really fast spent a lot of money really fast yeah yeah which is the name should be sometimes understandably so to get to market or to scale things you gotta move fast but we would that’s that’s where we are that’s one place we want to kind of slow clients down make sure that’s type of movement yeah of the so much alternative just kind of going back to some of these companies you work with any theater stories routine could be the key do you think will be transformational healthcare has been there’s been a lot of fun once in two years I I I look at we’ve ever seen a working professional sports which has been fun to work with the Texas Rangers in the Dallas Stars and cowboys there’s one campaign that was kind of a lightning rod campaign that I loved it was for the Dallas Stars and at the time I was coming to the cold so we’re trying to differentiate in a super big sports market place against you know juries World Cup football mark Cuban basketball here’s hockey hockey in Texas the ultimate challenge organization so we we have come into the colon and then that was the campaign to kind of invite people to look at look at a different kind of sports experience it’s not going to get up in the city of W. and that one was kind of a lightning rod approach the lightning rod is one five personalities of Jones of empower challenger so thing

lady Gaga right so it’s not it’s just about wearing a dress made of meat is about being fascinating being interesting lover or hater you’ll never forget her right so lightning rod brands kind of our tapping into what’s happening in the media in the market place there being contextually relevant they’re not afraid to get out there and that was what we have to do with the all stars with this campaign it was like headlines like an outdoor outdoor boards all across Dallas was a integrated campaign but that they had the headlines in the outdoor boards kinda big part of it like you know like is entertaining NFL furnaces in only seven games a week only sorry let me just only one game a week is the NFL for Nancy you know things like that and when there was a point shaving scandal that’s what was happening with the NBA now if you remember that but we were off we can take advantage of that the the star shared they’re building with the maths downtown at the time American Airlines arena so we got the outdoor board right there outside of the the stadium and ran a headline that said the only thing RFC is the I guess who have come to the hotel stars in the whole campaign had that tone but was also tapping into things that are happening in real time

and so opportunities like that are a lot of fun we’ve had a lot of them through the years but that’s one that jumped out at me CV mission with five of them that was one of those one of them what about the other but yeah others are examples of yeah that would be great so yes so lightning rod is one of them in in in the the quote that I think it’s kind of fun on that you know John Lennon said being honest may not get too many friends but will always get you the right ones so you know that that’s that’s kind of it on that one heretical as next one heretical brands kind of redefine perspective so they’re able to look over the horizon and bring you today which you didn’t even realize you needed you know anything about some of your favorite brands that do that Steve Jobs a great quote quote as they get closer than ever to your customers so close in fact that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves so you think about brands that you interact with the do that there are radical Amazon of course has been doing that there’s a there’s a great company in town silver car and being generous silver Audi at the airport you know via out you know spare foot here in town is a great example of radical brand so it’s it’s kind of like operationally the radicals but then there are the storytellers the market in a radical way too so that’s another another one to the next one is one my favorites of fostering rejection so the idea that is pushing away your most fishing with the masses in order to attract your most ardent fans

so it’s a whole it if anyone can have it I don’t want it and then that’s that’s a pretty smart place to be and I think that when we get frustrated as the agency is when a client says in the brief you know that we’ve got something for everyone well that’s terrible yeah you know that is a terrible place to be the brands that are able to committed to pleasing a select few and really build a cult like following are the ones that they grow and expand into bigger but they don’t they don’t get big bike coming out the gate saying we got something for everyone right so it’s like tough mudder you know that insurance rates they did start out by you know they start out by saying you know this is this is for select few who are crazy enough to Kerry walks through mud in you know and now it’s an international organization because they are the greatest dancers advocates then spread that word of mouth so you start by foster which options that’s that’s a third personality trait the next one’s compulsive servitude what we call it so over delivering to the extent that it becomes the very definition of your brain mmhm so please and thank you or not enough now the the the new bars your bar but what is what is what are you gonna do with your own brand that is so memorable incredibly specific to your product service offerings so I’ll give an example of that I was looking to get some flowers for some family members up in DC you know you kind of get on get on the Google and start looking around all of the usual players F. T. P. one hundred flowers tire that I know how that works I found in stems from their company that’s now spending big time but you know nice U. X. nice design I went through the whole process or the flowers a matter of hours later I got a text from Lisa urban sound said a press you just check off of making someone’s day from your to do list here’s a picture of the flowers that I ordered held up and from the door of my family members so I knew what the flowers were that they were delivered there was the door now I did this ever happen to me I never seen that done before but that’s over delivering to extent that that is the definition of urban stands out to me right so they took the user journey and they said where can we insert something really special that no one else is doing in the space one hundred flowers I don’t even know if they get delivered I just know that I have to pay a huge surcharge at the end when checking out you know like the delivery fee but these guys decided we’re gonna make we’re gonna make something really special in this process that is just kind of not really fun and so wag does that wagon here does that by taking a video of everybody’s dog really and they go get your dog from downtown they take a video they send it to you while you’re at work and they they then send me it has to be fun your dogs having fun and soccer park and that’s that’s going about looking to get into it for you

yeah I think it’s yeah I think it’s just you gotta figure out what it is you need to your brand you can do and it’s not please or thank you that’s that’s great Sam Walton set that in motion years ago but what is it today that you can do this just can stand out and you can think about all your touchpoints in the customer journey so that’s composed the server to the the last one out of five is Austin evolution so if you think about the most powerful brands kind of transcend product categories because their brands not SO their product or service but Sir brand thank you an example shine ola which is out of Detroit you never heard of shine a little but they make beautiful watch it’s really meticulously engineer then then they started making bikes you know like okay watches by the op now they’re making journals and pet products and turntables he had to go with watches turntables pet products journal I mean they’re all over the place but what it is when the brand has a pristine track record every product launch you know they always deliver the expected experience customers will trust in products outside of their brands origin category right so you know we all love yeah did they make tumblers and then make a they make coolers if the mainframe boots if they made sense would you buy it you wouldn’t you would they can extend anything because it’s all about durability being built for awhile so if you think about brands you love they kind of have the luxury of being able to transcend categories and do really special things the counter examples of that is like Jumba juice or blockbuster those brands just don’t just on the wall you know so the that’s that’s kind of the fifth personality of empower challengers and I think what we what we do is we’re creating working great campaigns for clients we run it through all those and find ways that we can apply some of those too the the brands are working with so you I have answered this question in a round about way unless really directly

just well they will listen to masses of founders or you know someone that’s this possibly seven Holland idea that one of the social business and listen to this podcast because the rumor and sell to to that person is the signal to start another unit working struggles but what would you say that person’s up thinking about the business of the of my speech from president yeah no that’s great I think both the park by that just start there just got your highlighter no I I just I just feel like it’s got to go back to a power believes like a of the constancy purpose you know and I just think it’s got to start their whatever that product is they have set down with the founder of happy drinks of the day happy drinks is somewhat of a start up I mean they’re out central markets about a few years but they’re very much in start up mode and here they have this juice pouch for kiddos it’s it’s water it’s infused with some flavored zero calorie no sugar right that’s like a hot that’s a higher calling here you could just use a we got a we got a healthy juice pouch but there’s a higher calling to to reduce childhood did you know diabetes obesity right so I think that nowadays that has to be tied into every every brand to be relevant meaningful and customers want and they demanded so I guess let’s start there you know it’s gotta be it’s although profit but it’s gonna be about purpose clean water right clean water that’s another one at Austin right yeah they’re incredible day I don’t know exactly what they do like with with their money but I think ten percent of proceeds go to to recovering addicts and that that’s why they’re branding is clean so that’s really neat that’s really made them really is and a good story it’s it says it all in the name and I love that about it yeah I have a question for you about that whether or not you were involved in the campaign what was the best you’ve ever seen the best campaign your favorite one that maybe that maybe gets you going to this day still us it’s it’s a great question gosh it’s been a lot of so many through the years

Jeez favorite campaign just anything can anything across the board right so I’m a writer heart that’s where I started it was the economist campaign that was just so simple if you remember but was just red backgrounds with white what type what headlines the things like the trying to up readership and said things like lose the ability to slip out of meetings on notice all you know like you know you’re just gonna get you gonna up her game to another level by reading the economist that one sticks out to me I love that hi my loves some of the early nineties stuff when they were in superb kind of challenge remote without it was brilliant my eighties apple absolutely yeah absolutely it’s great the the if they’ve been amazing how well they’ve done staying relevant throughout the years and and still having great advertising imagine if he was still around but he would be done yeah and fresh yep it would be it’s because he always taken self as a as a marketing and branding expert right that’s what he tagged himself so yeah which is really neat yeah mmhm definitely anything else anything else that person should take away from branding

yeah I think I think the other thing is just just keeping in mind what customers care about most today especially if you were more in that start up motor early stage of the company they want to share your passion right so like I I go when I go to whole foods I know that they will I believe what they believe in they believe what I believe in it’s it’s right there when I walk in I go with my two little girls there’s a basket out front that says you know free fruit for the kiddos take one I mean like immediate value alignment before I even get my car right so I think you being in mind that the customers want to share your passion and have that they also want to convert others there’s some social credibility and be able to convert others that’s a big one and they want to be rewarded not just monetarily but keeping the lines of communication open and you know they like badges they like the game of final listings and the fourth thing is they want to change paradigms themselves so they too are frustrated by the status quo you know I did that the imagine having drinks I saw that I really resonated with me because I have the idea concept many years ago like why why is this all the I got these two little girls all the sugary drinks now he went out and executed beautifully figure out how to really do it but I immediately thought of him that was born out of frustration I picked a fight with that so Schering passing converting others rewarding changing paradigms together I think just keeping our customers in mind and making sure everything you do ladders up to that and you know it’s what you have to do now I love that

when we think about the that is often very personally as well let’s talk let’s think about this thing with the audience yeah and what matters to them right so the so many times of the numbers are so dead set with the idea that they just think that there was a lot of it but you really have to look at it from the all the staff for himself okay what are the values of my audience and then start with that in mind so we just kind of you know what whole foods really sounds mazing alignment with the audience so from the very get go right I think it’s so funny catcher okay yeah I agree so guys if you want to check our apprentice is up to you can visit him at D. M. three Austin dot com that was that’s great thank you very much for coming in yes No data right think I guess other than forgetting my dell stars headlining thinking how soon were good thanks alright guys I think you should such sage advice that your customers are going to want to share values with you or your brand it’s important any start up or new business to keep that in mind thank you princess for sharing your story with us on the show the masters and founders team includes medium Dillard producer Mariah Gossett an audio engineer Jake Wallace thank you everyone if found in media for your support to see this video interview another founding media podcast make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel a link is in the show notes thank you for listening