If it’s time to stop giving away your most valuable resource – your thinking – Episode 520 of the Marketing Mentor Podcast is for you.
I’m talking to Kristina Unker, owner of MA'AM, a brand strategy firm focused on the hospitality sector.
We talked about – you guessed it – strategy.
What is it? How do you do it? How Kristina learned it.
And, whether AI can do it.
Don’t assume strategy is some complicated thing you will never be able to do. You’re probably already doing it.
So listen here (and below)...
And if you like what you hear, we’d love it if you write a review, subscribe here and sign up for Quick Tips from Marketing Mentor.
Read the complete transcript here
ilise benun
Hi there. This is ilise benun, your marketing mentor, and this is the podcast for you if, and only if, you are ready to leave the feast or famine syndrome behind. And I mean, for good.
If it's time to stop giving away your most valuable resource -- that is your thinking -- and finally get paid for it, this episode is for you. I am talking to Kristina Unker. She's the owner of MA'AM, a brand strategy firm focused on the hospitality sector, and we talked about, you guessed it, strategy. What is it? How do you do it? How she learned it, and whether AI can do it. Don't assume this is some complicated thing you will never be able to do. You're probably already doing it for your clients, so listen and learn.
Hello, Kristina, welcome to the podcast.
Kristina Unker
Hello. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
ilise benun
Me too. Please introduce yourself.
Kristina Unker
I am Kristina Carmella Unker, and I am the founder and creative strategist at MA'AM. And we're a branding agency for hospitality clients like food and beverage, hotels and experiences.
ilise benun
Excellent. And we're talking today as part of a series on strategy, because strategy is something people seem to be talking more and more about, and also I'm finding more and more people are kind of confused about what it is. So why don't you give us your definition so we can demystify this strategy thing.
Kristina Unker
I would love to and I'm a big fan of this topic, because I agree with you that it's a big word that means many things to many people. So to play along with the rules, I'll give you my definition. So I think there are many ways to approach it. I think the simplest way is to say, strategy is a collection of choices made to inform your position in the market. So it could be a brand idea that drives every decision, or it could be more of your positioning in the market, which is composed of various elements, I think, in its essence, strategy as a collection of choices that inform your position in the market.
ilise benun
And so when you do strategy for a client, give a little overview of what that looks like, not of your whole process, obviously, but just to help us understand more, what are those choices?
Kristina Unker
My firm is a branding agency, and our core competency from a brand strategy perspective is we focus on brand positioning. So as I alluded to earlier, it's how do you position yourself uniquely in the market? And there's usually two different pathways that we will go down as far as strategy. So one is if we're engaging in a more formal way, or one of the deliverables for the project is brand strategy. And then another is one that's not part of the deliverables, even though it's not core, I guess, deliverable in the scope of work when we're approaching design. So say, for example, someone's like, I've got my repositioning and all that solidified. I just want you to do the visual identity. We're still going to use a strategic approach to how we develop the design. So I'll break those two apart. But traditionally,
ilise benun
let me just interrupt you, if you don't mind for a second, because I know that one of the problems a lot of designers and design firm owners tell me is that they end up giving the strategy away when it's really one of the most valuable elements of the process. So just keep that in mind as you're talking and maybe even speak to that idea. Okay?
Kristina Unker
I think with what you're saying there, though, I think it's important to know what the client thinks strategy is, because there's so many different levels or depths to strategy. So if you talk to a brand manager at a consumer product goods company, their brand strategy is going to be heavily informed by research like market research and analysis and IRI data and those types of things. When you talk to someone, well, this is my POV, but you talk to someone who's leading a creative or branding firm like myself, there's more desktop and in person research and maybe stakeholder interviews, but a lot of what we're pulling together and coalescing is an out a creative output as a result of a lot of maybe worked on by the client beforehand, and then work that we've done. So when we engage with a client and we're going to deliver brand strategy, the ingredients or the deliverables that would be included there. Step one, we would first want to know what already exists, what research or information about this brand, product or service, does a client already have that they can distill down to us? Now that's going to depend on, is this an established brand, or are we starting from scratch? Are they trying to reposition the brand? Because the way they've been positioned isn't successful? So we would start with kind of a landscape analysis, which would include what's the state of the business, product or service. So like, we're what is like, the foundation that you're currently operating from, where are you trying to go? And then filling in some of the details. Sometimes the client has answers and sometimes they don't. Like, for example, who's your audience. That's a critical element of brand strategy, and sometimes they have a general idea, but they may be not including a whole cohort that could be very beneficial to them or separate them and make them more successful.
ilise benun
I am not surprised when one of my clients tells me that one of their clients doesn't have answers to these questions, but a lot of people who haven't done brand strategy or and want to do it or want to learn about doing it, have a hard time imagining that the client doesn't have all the answers. So what is your experience about that?
Kristina Unker
Because you referenced both types of situations, I would say it really depends on the client some, and it depends on, again, what it what stage of the business are they in? Is this like, the beginning, and they have a new idea, and they're kind of like, you know, a new entrepreneur, and they're like, I have this great idea, and here's what I think it is. But I really need someone. But I really need someone to help me put it together. And then we've worked with established brands that maybe they're a department within a bigger organization, and they know the bigger organizations positioning, but they're trying to find their unique position within the org to communicate, I guess, their value. So they may have some of the answers, but not all of them. So I think the more sophisticated and established the organization is, the more information they're going to have. And I think that also aligns with how much budget they have. The more established and informed and resource heavy they are, the more money they're going to have to spend. Not to say that you can't work with someone that has a decent budget but doesn't have answers, but I think if you're looking at medium sized small businesses, and even more so dealing with entrepreneurs, their idea of what strategy is and the ingredients are going to be a little all over the place, this kind of jumps ahead to another topic. But I think right clients like number one should know the value and the reason behind strategy before they come to you, before they engage you.
Kristina Unker
Yes, I'm not going to say we don't upsell, or say you really need to start with the strategy, because that, I mean at this point. I mean, we've been, I've been in business going on eight years, and at this point I feel pretty firm like, if we're doing a branding exercise and they don't want to do strategy, and if they don't have one established, then it's probably not the right client. Doesn't mean that there isn't someone out there for that client, because there's a ton of ways to do things, but I think it's a critical piece to even getting to the visuals, because if you don't have a reason for being or strong positioning, then how do you know if a color is the right or wrong decision? I mean, maybe color is not the best place to start, because that could be objective or subjective, but starting with the strategy is really what enables you to have a solidified and a strong roadmap as you go forward into making a plethora of decisions for your brand, product or service. If your strategy is sound and strong and everyone's aligned and on board with what that is, then it's going to help steer you along the way, because there's going to be a lot of decisions to make, and without strategy, then you're kind of just shooting from the hip all the time.
ilise benun
Now this may be me putting you on the spot, and you can say no if you want, but we've been talking a lot about strategy. But I wonder, is it possible to give me an actual example of a strategy or the brand positioning that you're talking about, whether it's for you, your own firm or client without naming them, or just so we can get our minds around, like, what is this thing we're actually talking about? Is it 20 pages long? Or is it a sentence?
Kristina Unker
That's a great question. And yes, I could give you. I could give you, like I said, there's a lot of examples in the market that are easy to explain, and I have my own that I could share as well, but it could be distilled into a sentence. But typically, when we engage in a brand strategy, that'll come down to, you know, the research we do up front and what the extrapolation of that is, and then who the audience is and clearly defining that developing the positioning usually for us, it's a positioning statement that could have, you know, a headline or a few words that captures it in its shortest form, but the positioning statement will, in its longest form, express what is the unique value proposition, or what's unique About this brand, product or service that sets it apart in the market. And then we would break it out into, okay, that's our positioning. Then what do we do? That's your mission. Like, what do you do? Why do you exist? Sometimes we'll develop a vision statement which is more aspirational and at a higher level. So for Apple, it was like to have one computer on every desk in the world. You know, that would be more of a vision statement, something that you're like striving for in the longer term. And then core values, or you can call them core principles, or there's other ways to identify them. But what are the attributes or values that you hold true in your for your brand, product, service or organization, that are going to guide what you do, and that those in a nutshell, are kind of the deliverables to the brand strategy or brand positioning Foundation. And that could be 10 slides, or it could be five slides, but it's not from a man perspective, it's not a 25 or 90 page document. I mean, you can work with larger firms that will maybe give you an 80 page document that goes into a lot more granularity. I will say that, in my perspective, that's the brand positioning foundation. But then you get into tone of voice, which is the brand personality and how it sounds and behaves, and then the visual identity, which is the logo, color type, photography, and all of that ultimately comes together to be elements of the brand strategy. But for today's purposes, when I say brand strategy, I'm using that interchangeably with the positioning and that whole set of deliverables. So now to answer your question, sample, so for me, I think Nike, I don't know, I'm very I'm a big fan of Nike. I think it's one of the best, strongest brands in the world. And I'm a heavy user of Nike, and I would say their positioning is just do it so, but that's also their tagline that's been in existence, I think, since the beginning. And then how does that articulate itself in every touch point of the brand? I would argue that the idea of just do it, that sentiment gets pulled through in many ways in the brand expression. So the name of the brand is Nike, which is the goddess of victory. So it's amazing, immediately tied to winning, or something that's action oriented. The essence of just do. It is bold. It's daring, it's brave. Like I said, it's an action. It moves forward. So those are all attributes and emotions that define that brand. Now, comparatively, if you look at a brand like trying to think of something that would be the polar opposite of Nike, but maybe, I don't know if the alo is, how you say or Alo, but it's a yoga brand which has a much softer, more Zen, seal to it. So their audiences would be very different. And Nike, to me, based on just do it, someone that's going to wear or identify with Nike. Now this is an assumption. I'm assuming they're more type a more of a go getter, more of a grab the bull by the horns. Risk taker versus someone who where, who's an aloe consumer might value more balance in their life and more calmness and more pastel, that kind of a vibe, whereas Nike, I see bright, bold, neon green, bright red, heavy type, yeah.
ilise benun
And actually, what I'm thinking as you're talking is the question it begs in my mind, is, so does do all of these elements? Does the brand strategy or the brand positioning flow from the market and the consumers or the customers they're trying to reach, or from the entrepreneur and the company and the product, or is it some balance of both?
Kristina Unker
That's an excellent question. I think the answer has to always be the consumer, the end user, because the reason for creating anything is to solve a problem or to add value, to take action in the world, to do something, make it better, make it easier, faster, some sort of value. So, you know, design thinking gets to this idea of empathy and putting the customer, the consumer, at the center of every decision that you make. But I think you really need to understand why. Why does this product exist? Why does it need to be out in the market, and who is it for? And that needs to be at the core. Because now, yes, the entrepreneur, creator, founders vision is going to be heavily influential, but I think ultimately to guarantee success of any brand, you have to know your customer and be speaking directly to that customer. I mean, it could your base could grow and evolve over time, but I think it does. It needs to be a balance, but heavily weighted towards the consumer.
ilise benun
And so then the question that comes to my mind is, how did you learn all of this? Is some Is this something you studied Kristina, or is it something you learned through experience? And even more importantly, I think if someone wanted to offer strategy, how do they learn it?
Kristina Unker
I love your question. So for me, I would say I started learning from my college days. So I was a broadcast journalism major, and I think there's a lot of parallels between branding and journalism, as in at the core, they're both about telling stories or storytelling, but my more formal experience as far as, how do you develop a brand strategy, or how do you develop one that is successful? Came from my time at Starwood, my career, I started in marketing, event marketing, and then promotional marketing, integrated marketing, and then ultimately in branding at Starwood Hotels and Resorts. And there was a formula there that they would utilize. We would flex, depending on the brand and depending on the team that was developing the brand. But that was where I really got the core of my experience and really understood what it meant to develop positioning and how to to differentiate a brand. And then hospitality is a very interesting space, not that any product isn't at this point, there's so much choice in the world now that branding, I think, I would argue, is more important than ever, because there's so much choice, not really as much differentiation that comes that's where the positioning and the storytelling has to work very hard. But in hospitality, especially now, there's very large organizations. At Starwood, we had 11 brands, and some of them overlapped to some degree, right the audiences we had multiple luxury brands, so it was a very good education in getting hyper differentiated and really getting a clear understanding of who your customer or your guest is going to be. So there and then, once I left Starwood Hotels and Resorts, that's when I started mam and I brought on a lot of the writers and strategists that we worked with there to work with our clients. And then I would say, over the past eight years, I've grown and refined the way I approach it based on trial and error and experience. And I don't think there's a one size fits all. I think there's definite ingredients that need to be part of a strategy. But I think depending on the client, the budget level, and I guess the product or service that you're branding, there could be different approaches to how you ultimately get to the same destination.
ilise benun
You referenced MA'AM, which is your firm. What would you say the brand strategy is there?
Kristina Unker
It took me a very long time. Well, this evolved multiple times over the course of MA'AM, right? So we grew and evolved and got more focused and normal, right? Yes, yes. We started very broad, and it was like, we'll do it for anyone. We'll do any kind of design or strategy, or anything you could ever need under the stars. And I resisted specialization, and finally succumb to it. So we build brands that defy convention with sophistication.
ilise benun
Say it again, just so we can absorb it.
Kristina Unker
MA'AM builds brands that defy convention with sophistication. Okay, so I would say that's our positioning and how we differentiate ourselves, as far as our approach, but also the visual articulation of the brands that we have worked on, and to me, to find convention was important and inherent in that is, you know, we don't just follow the trend, and we just don't do something because it's comfortable. We really want to push and dig deeper to find, you know, what the right move is, whether it's popular or not popular, or if it's going to be an easy sell into the client or not. And then, after a lot of looking at our portfolio and talking to collaborators and clients, I think there is a level of sophistication to our design. There's firms that have really quirky and funky work, and there's firms that have more corporate work, but I felt like it was an important distinction to make this idea of sophistication, and that that doesn't necessarily mean one thing, but it means a level of consideration and refinement that we take to the work.
ilise benun
And just reflecting back what you said before, in answer to my other question, I would think that defying convention and sophistication also have to resonate with the people or the companies or the brands who are hiring you. They want to be that.
Kristina Unker
Yes, yes, and so we do tend to work. We have luxury brands, and we do work a lot like I said. We focus primarily on the hospitality space. There's a firm that I love that I think they're brilliant, Gander. Their work is very whimsical and quirky, and I would say they defy a convention as well, but it's visually articulated in a very specific way that I think if a client was looking for that style, they wouldn't come to MA'AM and vice versa. And I think that's important, and it took time for us to refine our point of view, I guess, from a strategy and design perspective. And I think if you look at our portfolio of work, you wouldn't feel like it's the same esthetic per se, but you would feel a consistent level of refinement and decision making across the work.
ilise benun
And I'm curious, was there something that happened, or a moment you remember when you finally succumbed, as you said, to specialization?
Kristina Unker
Well, it was from my coach, my I've I have many mentors, advisors, and I've had multiple coaches over the years, because I became a solo founder after two years, and you need someone to bounce things off of and guidance. Nobody can do this alone. So Emily Cohen, someone that I've worked with for many years, and she was really pushing me, saying, you have to do this, because it's going to make everything you know, like your business development, more focused and easier to tackle. And there's just too much competition. You have to you have to own a space. And when we started out, it would have been logical to say hospitality branding, because we came from one of the biggest and best hospitality companies in the world. I just I'm an Aquarius, and a true Aquarius, and I'm interested in everything. So I was like, Why limit ourselves? Like, sure we have that expertise, so that's going to open a lot of doors for us, but I wanted to I also think there's a benefit to taking expertise in one category, like hospitality and seeing what that would do in tech. So like, if we bring our hospitality thought process of approach to a tech brand that could render something more interesting than just always working the same space. But to get back to your question, it was through multiple coaching sessions and finally saying, You know what, you're right. And after making that decision and refining our positioning and really sticking to it. She's like, You got to stick to it for at least two years to see any benefits. Another part of that was our service offering, so going from just any kind of design deliverable to just branding, which was what my goal was, to be a branding agency. And she's like, well, if you want to be a branding agency, you have to just do branding. You can't do all these other miscellaneous design things, because then you can't refine that craft. So and I would say it was successful, and we're probably through in our third year of sticking to that, and the percentage of our work that's brand work versus other, slipped like it went from like maybe 30% branding, 70% all other, to 70% branding 30% all other.
ilise benun
And what about the percentages of hospitality versus other?
Kristina Unker
Oh, it's almost, it's almost 100% hospitality. I mean, I would say I brought in the definition of hospitality selfishly, because one of one of our long term clients, amber waves mountain Amagansett, is a well. They started as a farm, but they've grown into a market and many other things. I would consider them hospitality adjacent, because it is an experience. It's a destination. You know, it's not a restaurant or a hotel, but it is experiential in a destination. So, but yeah, I would say now it's almost 100%
ilise benun
interesting. Wow. I know a lot of my listeners also resist the idea of specializing. So hopefully your story might convince one or two to succumb to it.
Kristina Unker
Because that's a matter of fact. I still I'm a typical entrepreneur where I get excited by any potential opportunity, and I'm like, oh, maybe we could do.
ilise benun
I spend a lot of time hammering my clients over the head with the idea of niching, as well, as some people call it. I want to come back to the idea of strategy and the big picture kind of word strategy, and since you started in marketing, I think you said, how do you see the difference between marketing strategy and what we've defined as brand strategy?
Kristina Unker
Yeah, so I think first you need the foundation. You need to know your brand, like what it is, why it exists, and why people should care, before you can get into marketing. It otherwise you don't know who you're trying to talk to. But for me, a marketing strategy includes a set of objectives that are tied to your business goals, and then the tactics you're going to use that are most likely to achieve them. So they're informed by the brand strategy. But it's more tactical or executional. For example, I would say, say, one of your marketing strategy objectives, all these buzzwords, is to align your brand with experts in sports, to grant, Grant, gain credibility with athletes, right? You want to be the go to brand for elite athletes. Then the tactic in your marketing strategy that might fall out of that would be, you know, sign a partnership or a an endorsement with 10 athletes set of high awareness and elite like an elite sports so by aligning your brand with these personalities, it's going to give you more credibility that say, for example, it's Gatorade. The best athletes of the world drink Gatorade, because it replenished them, replenishes them and gives them what they need to perform at the highest level. So that would then achieve the goal to align it, to align the brand with high performance, which then at a higher level would align with more sales and revenue.
ilise benun
Before I ask you the baby step question I want to know, again, we've been defining strategy in many different ways. So keeping that in mind, can AI do strategy?
Kristina Unker
Sure, AI can do anything.
ilise benun
Can it do it?
Kristina Unker
Well, I would say, AI cannot do strategy without a human being
ilise benun
in the loop as they right now, right now.
Kristina Unker
I mean, who knows what the future can tell but I mean, I use AI mostly to learn and see how it to learn the tool, because I'm a regular person in society and I'm in the creative field, so I need to understand it. I think it's a really good partner to brainstorm. But I think there's many elements that you have to be careful of. Like, there's no real sure fire way to know where some like perplexity and some of the apps now are getting better at sourcing where they're pulling information from, but it's hard to know, like the unique, uniqueness of the output that you're getting. It's pulling from existing content. So I would say that it could be a good partner to brainstorm and to get things going and to give you ideas, but that you need human involvement, and it can't just do it end to end and be a perfect output.
ilise benun
I was talking to another client this morning who is actually also a brand strategist in the healthcare world, and she was telling me she had given a presentation to a prospect who was ready to hire her, but in the meantime, asked AI for a logo. What do you think of that, Kristina?
Kristina Unker
Well, I also love to play with a logo generator and AI, and I have given it very clear direction, and been very disappointed with the output. I think, you know, everybody has different budgets and resources, and I don't think there's anything wrong with exploring these tools. And I think with time, they are going to get more sophisticated. And like with anything Fiverr when Fiverr first came out, or Upwork some of these other tools where you can commoditize design, I think there's a market for it. That's why these products exist. And I think AI will have things that it's excellent at and things that it's mediocre at. But personally, I think, like with anything, you're going to get a different result. If you're working with a person who's an expert in the field and has years and 1000s and 1000s of hours of development, and you could have a real time conversation, and that human touch the computer again, like I said, it'll get more sophisticated. I just think, yeah, I mean, like, I said, like, with Fiverr. I know people have gotten decent logos with Fiverr, but for the most part, it's a very painful experience. A big part of design and art is human communication, and you can't read someone's mind. There's a there's a art and science to design. So if you're a digitally native person and you love communicating with computer, you may have more patience. But there's most clients I know aren't able to easily articulate what they're envisioning, and it takes iteration. And with the AI, it just you're going to have a lot you need to have a bigger time commitment, a lot more patience to get there, and you may still not even get where you want to go. So I say, Go human.
ilise benun
I love that.
Kristina Unker
But we use AI for creative projects as we develop visuals that are more conceptual, that we that we then brought to life with human beings. So to me, it's a teammate, but ultimately, I think you're going to be hiring people that are experts in directing AI versus just having AI.
ilise benun
Yeah, I agree with that. That's what I see. All right, last question, and then I'll ask you to tell people where they can find you. So if someone is inspired by this conversation about strategy, not necessarily just brand strategy, but any type of strategy that they want to offer to to clients as part of a package of services or an offering of services, what they don't know anything about strategy that just like the idea and agree that, you know, the human beings thinking is probably going to continue to have value in our future, then what's a baby step or two that they could take?
Kristina Unker
I think we're lucky to be in a time where there's a lot of educational resources at our fingertips online. I think there, I would start with taking a basic course futures one, I think Su, T, R, there are a couple of the resources that I can I can pull and get back to you on but I would take a brand strategy, one on one course, online from a reputable resource, someone that's been doing it for a long time. If you're more of a reader, there's tons of excellent books out there. I mean, ultimately you have to put it into practice. But I think to get comfortable with the vernacular and just kind of see someone take you through an example is very helpful to get started.
ilise benun
Excellent. All right, Kristina, where can people find information about you?
Kristina Unker
And MA'AM, well, you can find me on a number of digital platforms in the year 2025, so our website is maamcreative.com, on Instagram at MA'AM creative, or you can find me LinkedIn. My first name is Kristina with a K and Unker is my last name. Or you can email me Kristina@maamcreative.com
ilise benun
beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing what you know, Kristina, thank you for the opportunity. I hope you learned a little bit. I know I did. And the baby step that Kristina suggested was to learn, take a course on strategy any kind, and see if it makes sense to you so simple. And if you want my help finding actual clients using AI, check out my new one on one. Ai client finding coaching calls, or you can just sign up for my quick tips at marketing, Dash mentor.com. Once you're on the site you'll find lots more resources, including my simplest marketing plan and program. So, enjoy, and I'll see you next time.