Interview With Jeff Fromm, Expert in Brand Purpose

Laryssa Wirstiuk 0:00
Hi, I’m your host Laryssa Wirstiuk. Through this podcast, I aim to empower and inspire jewelry entrepreneurs and innovators so they can thrive by doing what they love. I’m passionate about digital marketing for jewelry brands and I’m excited to share my passion with you.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 0:16
This is Episode 145. And today I’ll be sharing my interview with Jeff Fromm. I first met Jeff after I saw him speak at this year’s JCK Las Vegas show on the topic of the Purpose Advantage, which also happens to be the title of his latest book. Jeff has built a reputation for himself as the millennial and Gen Z marketing guy, and he’s traveled the world sharing his insights and research on how these two generations impact the direction of the marketplace, and how brands can reach them. Through a partnership with the Boston Consulting Group, he led the first public study of millennials in 2010. He’s the president of Futurecast, a forward thinking trends consult consultancy, and a partner at Barkley, a creative idea company. He’s also a regular contributor to Forbes.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 1:10
I was particularly interested in the insights Jeff shares in his 2019 book The Purpose Advantage, which explains how brands can be more purpose driven, and why that matters in today’s marketplace. In this episode, we’ll talk about the meaning of purpose and about how jewelry brands can leverage purpose to stand out in a crowd.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 1:33
But before we get to the interview, I want to share some marketing-related news and insights from the past week that caught my attention. According to an article from JCK, the Louisiana based jewelry manufacturer Stuller recently shared what they think will be the most popular items for the holiday season. Can you guess what they’re going to be? The company’s Senior Director of fine jewelry Emily Graffagnino identified the four must have categories. So first, she said your party diamond studs are really expected to sell well this holiday season and there’s a heavy interest in colored gems as well. Consumers aren’t wearing just one matching pair they’re seeing six to seven earrings in one ear. To definitely personalized jewelry and personalization in general: zodiac themed pieces, charms, handwritten engravings, birthstones, dog tags, initials, dates, symbols of beliefs, anything that represents the individual is expected to sell for the holidays. Three: lab grown. Younger generations are favoring lab grown diamonds and because they are manmade people can afford larger pieces that really make a statement. An interest in high carat diamond hearts, studs, tennis necklaces and bracelets, stackable chokers, all super popular for the holidays, and finally chains. So Stuller has been providing stores with several prominent chain looks including the herringbone and Figaro styles, and there’s a lot of interest among consumers and buying great basics and wearing a lot more of them at one time.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 3:19
According to another article from Yahoo, Alighieri, one of London’s most talked about jewelry brands today took a fresh approach to showcasing their spring 2022 collection called Inferno Unlocked. And I think it’s a super innovative way to be introducing new products to customers as opposed to a traditional presentation format. Founder Rosh Mahtani released one piece at a time on the label’s Instagram feed giving herself and her customers more room to revel in the stories attached to each product, really letting them sink in for the customer. They’re taking time to really amplify the rich stories, allowing the label to stand out and highlight its point of difference. Instead of hosting a big press event during Fashion Week or following the traditional calendar. Mahtani is also planning to host more customer centric events in October to mark the opening of her new London showroom, which houses the entire Alighieri team under one roof and will be open to customers. Their customers can shop they can even meet the team hang out or read some poems by Dante Alighieri, for whom that label is named. Mahtani is saying she really wants to go back to the roots of her customers, because that’s what makes their business so strong. She believes that slowing down is the pace that’s synonymous with allowing the story to be more powerful. I love that because we live in a digital world where everything needs to feel fast and immediate. So this approach to slowing down and really reveling in the story is super refreshing.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 5:05
And finally, I can’t possibly ignore the great Facebook and Instagram outage of Monday, October 4th. The New York Times has a really great article kind of explaining what happened giving an overview of the situation. So the outage lasted about seven hours and impacted not only Facebook, but also Instagram Messenger and WhatsApp, four apps that jewelry brands absolutely use to communicate with their customers and share their brand stories. The other issue is that some business owners even use Facebook and Instagram as a sign in to access other services like business tools, social analytics, and more. So it didn’t only affect their postings and interactions, but their ability to do other things for their business. According to this new york times article, quote, The culprit was changes to Facebook’s on underlying internet infrastructure that coordinates the traffic between its data centers. I don’t really know what that means. It seems really complicated, but huge mistake and fumble on Facebook’s part. I conducted a casual little survey on Instagram The day after the outage to see how it impacted jewelry brands that I interact with on Instagram. In the majority of responses were mostly ones of relief. Most people who run brands were honestly semi relieved that they can take a break from social media for the majority of a work day, and not necessarily feel FOMO or fear of missing out in the process. It also prompted brands to think about why email marketing and why having ownership over your first party data is so important. If you have any crazy stories about the outage and how it affected your brand, I want to hear them. Shoot me an email Laryssa laryssa@joyjoya.com.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 7:00
If you want to get the links to the articles I share in this segment of the podcast, you can sign up for my email newsletter by visiting joyjoya.com/signup, and you’ll get a digest with the links whenever a new episode drops. Okay, let’s jump right into my interview with Jeff.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 7:18
Hey, Jeff, welcome to the podcast. I’m really excited to have you as a guest today.

Jeff Fromm 7:23
Thanks Laryssa super grateful that you’ve included me.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 7:26
Yeah, absolutely. So even though you don’t necessarily specialize in branding and marketing for the jewelry industry specifically, you have so many amazing insights for jewelry specific businesses. And I know that because I saw you speak at JCK. And you’ve contributed at JCK and American Gem Society’s Conclave so you definitely have your foot in the industry. So why do you feel passionate about offering your expertise up to the jewelry industry? And what do you find most interesting about this industry?

Jeff Fromm 8:01
All right, well, again, grateful for the opportunity, Laryssa. My name is Jeff Fromm independent consultant and author, contributor at Forbes. I, I actually began my career working in retail, and still have my finger in retail, I spent a good chunk of my early days working on a brand you may know called Helzberg Diamonds. And I’ve worked on several other specialty retail brands. And so I think part of the opportunity or the intrigue is at the end of the day, many people are thinking about this not just as a purchase of a lifetime product, but an inspirational moment in their lives. And so you know, how can we as brands, inspire consumers who want ideas, right, who want inspiration, who want ideas? And ultimately, I don’t think most consumers are walking like in the grocery store with a spreadsheet saying, here’s the price per ounce of this and here’s their sustainability score, here’s, here’s their score in terms of flavor, let me pick a product and so, you know, when we think about retail, so much of it is also the emotional connection we build as as brands.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 9:21
100%. And jewelry is such an emotional purchase.

Jeff Fromm 9:24
Exactly. So you know, how can we do that? And my, my current focus is really fusing brand purpose and sustainability and innovation. You know, sort of think of that Venn diagram with those three components as a way to reimagine your best possible financial and brand future. And that’s, that’s where I’m focused and that’s the focus of my new book and my consultancy.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 9:52
I love your shirt. For people that are just listening to this episode. Jeff is wearing a yellow shirt that says Purpose on it. His book that we’re going to talk about in just a moment, and you can come on YouTube to see for yourself if you are only listening to this episode. So yes, and he’s holding a copy of his book, The Purpose Advantage. So tell us a little bit about this book, what drove you to write it? And like, what was the process of getting it together?

Jeff Fromm 10:19
Sure. Well, I think, at the end of the day, many of us want to do better, and perfect is the enemy of progress. And so doing better means how can brands make it easier, less expensive, and more convenient to live our values. And when the frictional cost of time and money decreases, then consumers feel better about themselves, when they align to brands whose values align to their own. And so that was sort of the the genesis of a lot of it. Some of it was born through the research I’ve done on consumer trends and innovation. And then some of it was creating a workshop opportunity, which is in the book, and which I do live. And and that’s how do we sort of think about reimagining our future, which is part of brand strategy, right? And, and so that was, that was a big piece of it. It turns out, over the last couple years, this topic has become increasingly important. And this is the second edition of the book. So it’s The Purpose Advantage 2.0. So it’s, it’s the new look. And the one thing I would say, you know, sustainability and innovation have been big. In the research we’ve done, and I lead it, the first major study of millennials is consumers before Pew with the Boston Consulting Group, more than a decade ago. So sustainability and purpose are important, they’ve become more important by a lot during COVID. And so, you know, if you can engineer that brand, or brand experience or product, and, and the gap is small, then the, when the price gap is small, it becomes so easy for people to act on their values.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 12:16
Absolutely. And one thing I love about your book, I went through it, I read it, I loved it, I particularly love what you said the workshop aspect of it, there’s an actual kind of “how to” element, so people can not only read it and get the theories and the ideas, but they can do the exercises in the book to explore their own purpose, which I think is so helpful.

Jeff Fromm 12:38
Yeah, I mean, the mistake I made in the first few books I wrote was I just, I told stories. And in this book, we tell stories, but then we give you the tools to be able to start to implement the stories in your own work life. And so that was kind of fun. Hopefully, it’s an easy enough self-guided journey. But I also love doing these workshops with with company leaders. So you know, it’s meant to serve two masters, it works for me, and then hopefully, you know, you found it relatively easy to follow, especially after you read a few of the stories.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 13:21
Absolutely. So for people who haven’t read the book, and this is new to them to find, purpose, and give some examples of that maybe a story that you can share to kind of illustrate what that means specifically.

Jeff Fromm 13:35
Sure. So, you know, purpose and sustainability are, in my view, verbs. Now, when you go to Google, you won’t find that, you’ll find that they’re nouns. But as I think about it, I think about it through the lens of the actions that brands take with their employees, with their communities, with their consumers, their customers, to demonstrate how that brand impacts people’s lives. And I think that’s probably super relevant for many of the people who are listening because more and more brands are thinking about how they use their brand as a verb. And so the starting point is sort of moving toward the notion that not just what you do, but why you do it is illustrated not just through a strategy, but through brand action. And that also is the key to not be seen as a purpose washing brand, which is one of the you know, things you have to watch out for, which is when a brand talks about what they do when they don’t act on what they do.

Jeff Fromm 14:57
So who are some of the brands that get it get it right? I mean, there are a lot of brands that, that do it that some of our big mature iconic brands like Unilever, you know, brands that you would think of, you know, whether that’s Ben and Jerry’s, which I would argue has made a few missteps recently, but has a long history of taking actions as a brand and in favor of social justice to, you know, maybe brands that are lesser known that, that are bootstrapping it. And, and one thing I would add is, you don’t need to be a purpose only kind of brand like Ben and Jerry’s to have success, right? You can also be a brand that might not be seen that way, and still have a lot of success. And like, on the opposite end of the spectrum, maybe Chik-fil-A, whose brand is about customer service, they have very strong values. And they’re seen as purposeful by their employees and their consumers. So it’s not like there’s a one size fits all approach.

Jeff Fromm 16:05
And in today’s age, environmental justice, economic justice, social and racial justice, these are all roads in in the book, we use the UN sustainable development goals as the common language, because those are generally seen as covering the range of macro issues that we face as a society. Now one question that I get asked frequently, and it’s sort of adjacent to this is, why is all this discussion around purpose and sustainability focused on brands. And and, and I think in today’s age, consumers and your employees expect you as brands to take a point of view, consumers don’t trust government, and they don’t generally trust organized religion. And the rate of distrust is increasing dramatically for large institutions over the last handful of years. And you can see it in the research data, not just the research, my team’s done in the past, but but many other companies have put research out. And so how in the world can you sell this life changing product that might cost a lot of money in the form of jewelry and not build trust, you have to build trust. And so I think, I think part of the opportunity, and the tension point is for brands to lean into that and to get comfortable being uncomfortable, and pick their swim lane and topics carefully. And then focus on how they act on their purpose.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 17:40
It makes so much sense. Do you think it’s possible for smaller brands to do this as well, because I mean, obviously, the examples you mentioned there bigger, more established brands.

Jeff Fromm 17:50
I think it’s probably easier for smaller brands to do this, because they don’t have to turn as big as ship. If you’re Unilever, Procter and Gamble, got a lot of eyes on you. And you gotta you got to turn a big ship. Unilever owns 400 brands, they have factories that pollute the planet all over the US, you know, us in the world, right? And so they got to, they got to stop doing those things that they’ve always done and start new things. So if you’re a smaller brand, you also have the opportunity to lean into your local community. And you could work beyond just the, you know, the frameworks that you see in the book and get hyperlocal your best possible opportunities to sort of, I think, think of a Venn diagram of, you know, what’s going to drive your economic or profit engine, that’s also going to add good to society.

Jeff Fromm 18:49
And, and I can think of other examples of brands that you probably haven’t heard of, like, for example, you know, MOD Pizza, does the world need another pizza chain? You know, I like pizza. So I’d say yes, but a lot of people would say no, and if I asked you to name pizza restaurants, you probably come up with a lot of brands like Papa John’s, or Pizza Hut or dominos, or others that have much higher brand awareness. So how is it that the fastest growing pizza chain is the one with probably infinitely lower brand awareness and advertising spending? It’s a purpose and sustainability strategy. And, and at the core, it’s a focus on their frontline employees. They hire, train, and celebrate people who might have a checkered past. And they screen out people and they give them the tools to succeed. They don’t have proprietary mozzarella pizza. They don’t have their own milking cows that have been hand washed for decades in order to make sure that they get the perfect No, no they buy from the same suppliers everyone else does. But their employees deliver a better guest experience. They stay at the company longer. It gives them a couple 100 basis point advantage over competitors. And it gives them word of mouth and word of mouth that their guests have a better experience. And they do that, because they give people second chances who might otherwise not have gotten the job. Now they hold them accountable. They don’t give them third and fourth chances. They give them second chances. Yeah, so. And there’s a model that’s about frontline service. And again, when you think about the jewelry business, is frontline service, an important component of many smaller brands strategy? I would hope so. I would hope it is, right. So I think the challenge for smaller brands is you might not have access to the same consultants. But the book democratizes that because everybody’s got 10 bucks for a buck.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 20:51
Absolutely, yeah. And I recommend our listeners also, it’s like 99 cents on Kindle. I mean, how can you Hey, you can’t afford not to get that and learn about why purpose matters for your brand. So let’s say that like, small jewelry brands listening to this, they read the book, they do the exercises, they kind of tap into the their purpose, do you have recommendations for ways to like communicate that purpose? Are there certain platforms that are good for that? Or modes of communication? Like how do you get that out there?

Jeff Fromm 21:22
Yeah, I mean, I think it starts with if you can connect in your purpose to your origin story. And then I think, in best in class examples, starts with employees, communicate your employees, make sure they’re able to communicate to customers, put it in your digital and physical customer journey, in ways maybe where it’s not over the top. But it’s found maybe the way like, you might find an Easter egg if you were a kid, like it’s not hidden away from everything, but it’s not like smacking you in the face either. And, and if you start inside and work outside, and you think about that digital and physical journey, then you’re going to communicate in ways that are appropriate, what you have to be cautious of, is not trying to communicate through Mass Communications too early in your cycle, you want to make sure that you’re acting on it and doing it well before you sort of go to full on you know, mod mod never communicated their second chance program through advertising until they were well down the road. And still many people who’ve been to mod never knew that they did the second chance thing, that’s okay. That’s okay. It’s, it’s still gave them a couple 100 basis point advantage in terms of lower turnover and higher guest satisfaction.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 22:41
So it just reminds me of like dating or something instead of like listening to someone tell you beautiful things about themselves, like waiting instead to see how they behave in certain situations.

Jeff Fromm 22:55
I think that’s a fair analogy. And we’re talking about jewelry. So like, of course, it’s the conversation of love, like you’re more interesting partner, if you sort of don’t just come out and like let me give you a PowerPoint presentation of why I’d be a great partner for you. That’s so I think that’s a fair analogy.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 23:15
Yeah, absolutely. So so far, we’ve been talking about your book, The Purpose Advantage, but we cannot ignore the fact that you are a millennial marketing expert, which is like, oh, he’s inside my head. I’m a millennial, like, what does he know about me that I don’t even know about myself? makes me a little nervous, maybe. But how did you become? How did you become an expert in this generation? Like what piques your interest about them?

Jeff Fromm 23:41
So, you know, I’ll give you the two versions of the story. One is I have a couple millennial age children, and I was completely confused and, and befuddled by them. So I decided to start studying it, or the true version, the real version. I was doing a Google search for information as millennials as consumers, and I used Google the way many of us do, I put in lots of different ways to ask the same question. And every time I did it, I got the same ridiculous answers back, which was to say, I got no fact based content in 2010. On millennials as consumers, and the term millennials wasn’t even being used at that point was Generation Y, which is the same thing.

Jeff Fromm 24:20
But so I call a friend of a friend. She was the Global Head of research at the Boston Consulting Group, and I said, Hey, friend, I’m super interested in studying millennials as consumers. I don’t have enough money to do this project myself. Nobody’s published anything on the cough topic. What do you think about us doing that? And then what do you think about you paying for half and there’s this like, long pause. And she’s like, Jeff, the Boston Consulting Group is not in the business of paying for other people’s research. But I’ll call you back in a week which is code in dating, of course. I’ll call you back in a week is code for, oh, this isn’t gonna go so Exactly. Anyway, I waited a week. And she called and she said, Yes, I did a huge happy dance, I was like, whoo, I never really expected to get that callback. She said, nobody’s done it. That’s why you can’t find it on Google. Pew has a study on millennials in religion, and that’s about all that’s out there. And so worked on that partnership in 2010, published research ended up writing a book based on a combination of research and, and brand marketing work. And that was in 2013.

Jeff Fromm 25:41
And then sort of from there, things took off, and I continued doing research. And that’s why I say, you know, sustainability and innovation are so important. It’s, those are macro wins, that we see, right, that are helping some of the most successful brands be more successful. In terms of what we know about millennials. First, I debunked many of the myths. They’re not like all broken, unemployed, and living in their parents basements, among a collection of participation, trophies they never ever earned. That’s crazy talk. There was a recession in 2008, and 2009, there were a subset of millennials, who were coming out of college who couldn’t find a job who had a lot of student debt, that created a lot of created a lot of problems. But you know, millennial women over the age of 30, are probably the fastest growing group of people making, you know, higher discretionary incomes, many have started families later. So when you delay family for formation, and you have income increases, what you see is higher discretionary incomes among more and more women in particular who are in the in the workforce at a higher percent, than they have been over decades. And so, you know, many of the trends we saw around technology and fashion and food and whatnot, sort of started with millennials.

Jeff Fromm 27:07
And let’s face it, if I’m 55 year old guy, I probably get my fashion and technology cues from someone who’s 40 years old, not somebody who’s 70. And likewise, if I’m a woman the same, so millennials were sort of the canary in the coal mine on so many trends. And they’re the advent of technology allowed for word of mouth and word of mouth, to sort of change the conversation, where it was no longer brands talking to you, Laryssa, but rather you having the opportunity to talk back. So all of this happened at the same time, and I was able to codify it in a book. And then people say, like, Oh, that’s really interesting. Now, we know a lot of this stuff was never true to begin with.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 27:50
That’s all super exciting. It seemed like right place right time. And like all of that, coalesced. And you were able to make something meaningful out of it.

Jeff Fromm 27:59
Yeah. And it was it was that research with the Boston Consulting Group that sort of paved the way for me to be able to work with collaborate with interview, consult with brands, retail, consumer, etc, brands looking to, to change, because we had technology change happening at the same time, as we had a population of consumers coming through that recession. So you were one of the consumers who was coming out of school in ’08, ’09, during the Great Recession, when it was hard to find a job.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 28:33
Exactly. But I feel like it was terrible at the time, but I wouldn’t have chosen any other path because it shaped me to the person I am today professionally.

Jeff Fromm 28:45
Right? So that’s awesome. And that’s a great view to take. Obviously, at that moment in time, it’s hard.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 28:54
So I’m sure listeners want to know if their target customer is millennial, or even Gen Z, what are some things in 2021 and beyond that they can be doing, obviously, having purpose, anything else that you would recommend to like reach these generations?

Jeff Fromm 29:12
Well, again, I tend to think about starting with integrating your strategy into the business model. It’s not about writing a check to charity or something of that nature. Not that that’s a bad thing, but rather, when you add good to society, it hopefully also helps you generate more customers and more word of mouth and things like that. I also think it can reduce submerged risks for larger companies. And then finally, I tried to take a view that if you start with your employees, then that’s probably the best way to go about that.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 29:50
Do you have any insights I’m thinking about the fact that the busy holiday season is coming into the ways these two demographics are shopping for holidays this year, are you In the future.

Jeff Fromm 30:02
I mean, I think more and more consumers start with a digital journey. I don’t think that means that they’re not going to go into retail stores. I don’t believe that at all. But, you know, having that journey converge instead of diverged will help so much, I can’t tell you how frustrating it is. When I deal with retail brands, and the digital journey and their physical journey diverged, the information I get is inconsistent, or the pricing is inconsistent, or there are gaps in the journey. And one way a small brand can do that. It’s just pretend you’re the consumer, and go through your digital journey, and go through your physical journey. The journey begins before people show up at your retail store. And many people, if they’re like me, and it might only be a subset of a minority of your total shoppers, but they’re looking for inspiration. They’re looking for ideas, they’re not just looking for a product, how are you using questions, to identify what segment you’re serving, and what you’re trying to get accomplished, like a few good questions that are asked, can help any trusted salesperson be more effective. And I say the term trusted salesperson, because what you don’t want to be as a salesperson like, because when I use that word, like it goes down the wrong road. And so brands have to really think about this. And it’s not easy, it’s not easy, because it means reimagining their training, it means reimagining a lot of different things.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 31:35
I’m curious to hear also your thoughts about authenticity. And some of the smaller brands I work with, even like solopreneurs, they equate authenticity with like, revealing the full behind the scenes of their personal life or like who they are. And I try to explain that, as a brand, you can have a persona and authenticity doesn’t have to mean that what are your thoughts about it? What does authenticity mean for a brand? And how can brands be more authentic?

Jeff Fromm 32:04
Well, authenticity, I think, means living and acting on your brand values. It starts with having some clarity around what those are. And then it moves to communicating those to your internal audiences. And then ultimately, probably reporting on those values. How are you doing? Perfect is the enemy of progress. Nobody is perfect. How are you progressing? And then and then ultimately, in today’s age, being prepared to take a stand on an issue, which historically It was not part of brand responsibility. But more and more brands do and will need to do that in the future. And it’s crazy, but but that’s just the world we live in where trust among big institutions and organize government and religion. And I don’t care what your politics are. There’s trust in general is like Wayne, you know, I don’t care what your religion is either. It’s just, there’s there’s a waning trust factor. Which is a great opportunity if you’re in the jewelry business. Because when you build trust, I’m confident you close a higher percentage of the consumers who are seeking you out.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 33:26
So true, really good point. So Jeff, this has been really fun. Thank you for coming on the podcast. Do you have any final thoughts you’d like to share with our listeners or anything you want to say about the future of what’s ahead for you?

Jeff Fromm 33:40
First of all, I’m grateful for the opportunity Laryssa. In terms of the future, I’m hoping to continue to be consulting and speaking on how to fuse your your innovation, your brand purpose and your sustainability strategy to generate more good in your communities and more profit to your shareholders in the same fell swoop. So I think that’s, that’s the near term. For me.

Laryssa Wirstiuk 34:08
It was such a pleasure to be able to talk to Jeff and hear more about the purpose advantage and how it can benefit jewelry brands. Be sure to grab your own copy of the book and his other books about millennial marketing on Amazon and learn about him via his website, JeffFromm.com. I look forward to sharing more interviews with you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai