Don and Rob dive into the behind-the-scenes journey of turning a cold call into a full-fledged project. They explore the excitement and challenges of fast-paced branding, sharing insights on how initial ideas evolve into reality. From unexpected opportunities to creative collaborations, discover the art of making things happen in the world of business.
Episode Transcript
Don (00:00)
we renamed and rebranded and relaunched a ⁓ medical company in 90 days, right for the trade show. ⁓ It absolutely can be done, you know, legal clearance on the name, full identity development, full brand development, you know, culminating with trade show booth.
cookies with the logo on it. mean, you know, balloons, the whole, the whole nine, you know, the whole package, ⁓ not necessarily recommended. And I don’t know that I would say, Hey, yeah, bring me your 90 day branding projects every, every other day, you know, ⁓ but for the right clients and for those that get it, you know, it can be done and it can be done very
Rob (00:27)
Yeah. Yeah.
Don (00:56)
we’re back Rob episode 144.
Rob (00:58)
144 and I am not going to tap my fingers on the table today.
Don (01:02)
Yes, there was a little bit of drumming. A little ⁓ Neil Peart, if we will, on our… Peart, right? That is how you say it, right? It isn’t Pert. Peart, okay. ⁓ RIP.
Rob (01:04)
We had to do some sound and we had to do some sound.
No, that’s not
it. I’m thinking about the funny skit where they’re being backstage and they’re like, Neil Peart and he’s like, it’s Neil Peart and they’re like, no, we’re pretty sure it’s Neil Peart.
Don (01:25)
Yeah. Yeah.
Wait, what was that? that was that from SNL? No, what was that from? Okay.
Rob (01:33)
It was Paul Rudd and Brandon,
not Brandon, was it Brandon Frazier? It’s Paul Rudd’s skit. I think it was like a Funny or Die skit. I don’t think it was an SNL skit, but if you haven’t, it’s so good.
Don (01:40)
Okay.
Okay, got it. Got it. Yeah, because I don’t think
for those that don’t know we’re talking about rush. ⁓ I don’t think rush has ever been on SNL. Right? I mean, would rush have made it to SNL? I don’t feel like they would. Yeah. I mean, the internet will correct me because that’s what the internet does. You know? Okay. All right. I love it. I love it. ⁓ Well, while you’re looking it up.
Rob (01:54)
Not that I recall.
I’m looking up right now. We’re gonna confirm it real time. No, The Rock
Band Rush was never a musical guest on Saturday Night Live.
Don (02:07)
Well,
I don’t even have to kill time because you just found it out that quickly. So.
Rob (02:11)
They says here, according to the internets, the band members generally prefer not to appear on late night television shows.
Don (02:17)
Yeah, yeah, I’m not surprised by that in the least, you know, so.
Rob (02:21)
wait, wait, however, they were, ⁓ sorry, sorry, they were referenced twice in SNL sketches. All right, we spent enough time on that.
Don (02:27)
Okay.
Yeah. All right. So we interrupt our interruption to bring you this special edition podcast, right? ⁓ What are we about to talk about today,
Rob (02:37)
Yeah, we thought we would mix it up a little bit and ⁓ Shake the proverbial Etch A Sketch as it were and create a series. This is going to be a series of podcasts That’s right. What type of series could these? Whack a news come up with well, we thought it might be we got a really interesting call and I’ve done you can talk more about it since you call but We got a really interesting new business call last week ⁓ Dare I say a week ago just about
Don (02:47)
OK.
Rob (03:04)
maybe we can have. Anyway, ⁓ Exciting New Prospect sounded a little difficult to believe and hard to believe, but could be cool. mean, raise some flags, but we talked with them. Anyway, it’s sort of come to fruition now as a real project. And it’s going to be a really cool, I think, fast and furious project for us. ⁓
here in Atlanta, a local client, and we thought it would be interesting to bring you, the viewer and or listener, along for the ride, the full ride. Meaning, we’re gonna set up the project today, tell you what it’s all about, and then over the course of the next few weeks, we are going to show you guys the creative development, talk about the process, and then hopefully, assuming there’s no train wrecks involved, end up with a completed project and…
a nice new brand that’ll be out in the world in Atlanta relatively soon.
Don (03:58)
Yeah, absolutely. think
it’s also interesting as we sort of transition from radio only to broadcast, right? I mean, being on YouTube and actually recording video podcasts, right? It’s a little interesting in that we can share our work a little bit easier, share the development process, right? So for those that still listen on Spotify or Apple podcasts or whatever like that, you’re gonna have to make the leap to the YouTubes, you know? Because there will be visual aids ⁓ in the forthcoming future. ⁓
Rob (04:22)
That’s right, show and tell.
Don (04:26)
So yeah, so I’m just gonna rip the bandaid and go right in if that’s cool, Rob. ⁓ Years ago, Atlanta was, ⁓ we’re talking about sports and entertainment is what happens, what the new client opportunity is, right? And Atlanta has always had a USTA date for tennis on the calendar, right? We’ve always had the Atlanta open, right? And it’s been years and years and years. And as of last year, Atlanta lost
Rob (04:28)
Good.
Don (04:54)
⁓ that date, right, for various reasons. So, the US, not the US Open, that’s in New York. The Atlanta Open historically had always been in the summer, right? Most recently it was over at Atlantic Station, right? ⁓ And, you know, there’s some operational challenges there, right, in terms of setting up the temporary venue. think during the summer it’s obviously very hot in Atlanta during the summer. You know, ⁓ that said, it always drew some really good stars. It was always a really fun night out, you know. ⁓
Rob (05:23)
There’s more of an
exhibition, right, than a tournament. Is that safe to say? Or was it… I never went…
Don (05:27)
I mean, there is there
is you know, there is a trophy and you there is a men’s championship and a women’s championship, but it is not it’s not a major, you know, it’s not Wimbledon and things like that, right. But there are incentives for players to come, you know. ⁓ And you know, there were big title sponsors and things like that. I mean, it’s it’s, you know, yeah, yeah. I mean, you’re a big golfer. I mean, there are there are golf tournaments every weekend, you know, not every weekend is a major or is or if it’s not a major is like a
Rob (05:31)
Yeah. Okay.
Yeah, great.
Marky players and yeah, come here.
Correct.
Don (05:57)
renowned course. Do you know what I mean? Like, oh, we’re playing Pebble Beach or something like that. Right. So, you know, it was kind of one of those fixtures. But Atlanta, hey, man, it’s a top we’re a top 10 market. We’ve got a lot of good things going for us. And we have a very vibrant tennis community. Right. So super bummer that Atlanta lost the Atlanta Open, however, entered this call. Right. So got the call. Hey, we’re bringing tennis back. Woohoo. Exciting.
All right, that’s awesome. We’re bringing the open back. We are gonna change the format. We’re gonna do this, we’re gonna do that. I don’t need to go into all that stuff right now. ⁓ However, ⁓ we’re bringing it back and we’re bringing it back this year, right? And in the interest of dating ourselves, you know, it’s the end of August, you know, and ⁓ tennis is coming back in December, baby, December, right? Not December of next year, but we’re talking just a few months from now, right?
Rob (06:37)
What? What?
Yeah. Yeah.
Matter of, we’re talking
a matter of months.
Don (06:54)
Yeah, so full full peek behind the curtain on this one is like, Hey, is this? Is this real? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think I’ve talked on the podcast, you know, we, you know, we branded, we renamed and rebranded and relaunched a ⁓ medical company in 90 days, right for the trade show. ⁓ It absolutely can be done, you know, legal clearance on the name, full identity development, full brand development, you know, culminating with trade show booth.
Rob (06:59)
real? that even possible? How?
Don (07:24)
cookies with the logo on it. mean, you know, balloons, the whole, the whole nine, you know, the whole package, ⁓ not necessarily recommended. And I don’t know that I would say, Hey, yeah, bring me your 90 day branding projects every, every other day, you know, ⁓ but for the right clients and for those that get it, you know, it can be done and it can be done very successfully, right?
Rob (07:36)
Yeah. Yeah.
Well,
think, but I think there’s a big distinction there. ⁓ The distinction there is ⁓ for us, it’s a speedy timeline, but absolutely doable. In this instance, this is an entire event that they are not, I would say not very far down the road on. And that was more the hesitation, I think, than anything else was like, can, we can do it. But I think we, and certainly I was more like, can they do that? Like, is that infrastructureally and operationally? this, how can this happen? ⁓ So many questions.
Don (07:54)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, there’s a lot of
questions. There’s a lot of questions about things that quite frankly we don’t do because we don’t run sporting events. ⁓ We do our little piece of the pie, right? So ⁓ yeah, so jumped on the phone with PR firms with Alta and USTA and all those things like that to sort of chat through. There are four bonafide stars signed, locked deals. The arena is… ⁓
Rob (08:17)
Yeah. Right.
Don (08:39)
You know, rented, procured, you know, I mean, it’s it’s happening, you know? Yeah, it’s happening. It’s Hey, we need a name for this thing. I think we want to call it this. You know, we need a logo. We need branding. We need a website. We need merch. We need, know, you know, we need to the action for ticket sale. We need social. We need this and that, all of the things, right? All of the things, right? So it very quickly went from is this real to ⁓
Rob (08:43)
It’s happening. It’s happening.
Right.
This is real.
Don (09:08)
Yeah, to here’s a proposal to here it is signed to hey, we’re having a kickoff call and we’re going, you know. Yeah, please.
Rob (09:16)
Yeah, and let me interject real quick just to
that, you know, this was one of those, I think if the call had, you know, come out of the blue from someone we didn’t know, would have been massive flash.
But in the interest of sharing new business development, this was a great referral piece of business that came to us from a great PR partner that we worked with in the past and brought us in. they were a little bit like, yeah, we think it’s a legit operation. we think it’s… So we did pass that test a little bit. That sort of validated somewhat, okay, let’s get on the phone and actually find out if this is real.
Don (09:36)
Yeah. Yep.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, not full blown cold call, but but they got the full blown cold call. I’ll be honest. Yeah, yeah. And they were like, hey, we don’t know if we’re going to do this or we don’t know what the you I you just don’t know what you don’t know yet. Right. So hey, will you take the leap with us and sort of, you know, figure this out? Right. ⁓ So, so yeah, so we’re under full development. I don’t think to Rob’s point about hey, having a series and things like that, we don’t have anything to show yet. Right. Because we’re literally working on it as we speak. ⁓ But I think it’ll be fun to sort of share.
potentially what the round one creative development is, ⁓ and ⁓ sort of where it goes. mean, sort of take the journey with us. And it’s a crash and burner. I mean that lovingly, but ⁓ there’s no time to dawdle on this one. And I think that our process is going to be altered. Like for those that are curious about sort of the behind the scenes, a lot of times you’ll focus on the mark, you’ll focus on the logo. ⁓ We’ve talked about it in the past.
We like to do a lot of development of marks in a one color environment first, right? Before we start to overlay color and ⁓ layout and things like that on top of it, right? Because you’re always going to need a one color logo, right? It always needs to look good ⁓ in a simplified format, right? And color definitely exponentially complicates things. ⁓ But there’s no time for that, Rob. I mean, it’s, it’s no.
Rob (11:10)
We’re here the third time. The third time.
Well, we always say one of our catchphrases is deadlines compel focus, right? So I think that will be put to the test here.
Don (11:19)
Yeah,
yeah, this is definitely moving at the speed of business to keep all the puns going. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So I think we’re
Rob (11:22)
Yeah, and it’s all hands on deck. We’re gonna just keep them going. ⁓ We’re throwing everything we
got at it and yeah, should be acceptable.
Don (11:31)
Yeah, we’re gonna
do full, kind of brand, well, I mean, by full, mean, enough to pass mustard here, like, identity brand development, develop the entire world, the entire thematic, right? ⁓ And then go, okay, hey, here’s option one, here’s option two, here’s, mean, however many options we can jam out, And. ⁓
that’ll give, it might fast track in this instance, a lot of decision-making abilities, right? Cause it’ll be like, hey, here’s the logo, here it is in color, here it is in scene, here it is with photos of the tennis stars, here it is with the brand universe, all the different things, right? I think it’s really going to help push the ball forward really quickly, right? ⁓ And yeah, it’s gonna be exciting. I’m excited. I mean, it’s fun. This is the fun stuff. Yeah. ⁓
Rob (12:19)
I’m excited, this will be a fun one, this will be a real fun one.
Don (12:22)
Yeah, some in some instances, of course, I’m putting this on the internet, it’s kind of fun to have a, you know, a rapid timeline, because you really do need to make decisions, you know.
Rob (12:31)
And it
absolutely, and we’ve said this before, but ⁓ we lean into efficiency. So for us, we actually like this kind of thing and we’re good and quick and we’re set up for it. again, we don’t like to do this all the time this fast, but we’re very efficient that way. So we’re able to have the resources and take it out of the timeframe.
Don (12:43)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah,
Yeah, so we’ll be
doing our first round presentation before we record our next podcast, right? So I think maybe the next podcast, we can sort of run through what that presentation looked like, and then maybe provide some insight and things like that and sort of see where it goes. You know, it could be interesting. else? What else should we share? Okay.
Rob (13:12)
think that’s it. mean, we don’t know
a lot more than that. We don’t know a lot more than that, right?
Don (13:17)
Yeah,
no, this is an interesting, fun little time capsule. think in a strange way, I’m very excited about doing this little podcast series more for us than for anybody else. You know what I mean? To sort of create a little time capsule of, yeah, remember when we worked on that? You know, that type of thing. So it could be super fun. ⁓ The event is in December. ⁓ We’ll probably start ⁓ hawking ticket sales too. Yeah, yeah, need this baby to be successful, right? So that we can do it again next year.
Rob (13:39)
Yeah. Yeah. Right. ⁓
Don (13:46)
Right. Um, we won’t even know how much time we’re going to, mean, next it would be like, Oh my God, we have all the time in the world. What in the world? So, um, yeah, it’s going to be fun. It’s going to be fast and furious. And, uh, I guess tune in for one 43 and maybe we’ll do that as the round one creative presentation and sort of share, um, the thinking behind it and then go from there. So, all right until then, where can everybody, yeah, we’ve got work to do, but where can everybody find us to give us more, uh, fly by night projects, right?
Rob (13:50)
Yep.
Yeah, well, so I tell.
Until then, we’ve got work to do. Oh, they know where to find us. Yeah,
they can find us on YouTube. Although if you’re watching this on YouTube, you’re already there. How about that? Of course, at MachtheIncy.com and on the socials, we’re pretty easy to find. So we’re going to get to work on some tennis thoughts, ideas, logos, designs, all the good things. I know, I get it.
Don (14:19)
Yeah, yeah, there you go.
Yeah, there you are drumming. There you are, Mr. Peart.
That’s all right. That’s all right. ⁓ All right. Yeah. All right. Until next time, everybody. Yeah, thanks.
Rob (14:34)
We’ll edit it out.
See you next week.
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