Secrets of a Systematic Brand Builder

with Fabian Seelbach of goop & Curology

Welcome to the Secrets of… Series — in which I’ve carefully designed a series of thought-provoking questions to tease the most interesting and insightful information out of the best brand builders in the world.

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This week, I sat down with Fabian Seelbach — the current President at goop.com and former CMO of Curology.

Fabian has spent the past fifteen years growing and scaling brands, building teams from 1 to 100+ people. An HBS grad, he grew up in Berlin, Germany, and has lived and worked in Australia, Canada, Indonesia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

And I’m thrilled to bring you his insights on everything from designing quality into your workflows and systems to instilling a growth mindset in your team.

1. How would you explain what you do to someone who has no idea?

I ask people what they would like. I figure out what I can make that resembles what most of them like. Then I create that product or service, and I tell a lot of people about it.

People are very communicative; they want to tell you what they want. And if you ask the question, most people will just tell you the answer.

Sometimes, you can verbalize your needs very easily. Other times, it’s more tricky because the needs are in our subconscious and more felt than said.

That's where things like real ­life testing come into play. The results allow you to infer some of the things that we likely wouldn’t discuss consciously.

2. One of my favorite quotes about branding is this one from Wally Olins:

Fundamentally, branding is a manifestation of the human condition. It is about belonging; belonging to a tribe, to a religion, to a family. Branding demonstrates that sense of belonging. It has this function for both people who are part of the same group and also for the people who don’t belong.

What brands have made you feel like you personally belong in your lifetime? These could be brands you belong with right now—or in the past (say, when you were a teenager).

The first brand obsession I had was with Sony. This was back in the Walkman & Discman era.

Sony had a very different place in the brand hierarchy then. It was leading at the forefront of several innovations.

I honestly don't remember why I had that obsession, but I vividly remember it. My relatives still tell me about it to this day.

As a teenager in high school, I also wore a lot of Polo Ralph Lauren — because that's what you wore.

Fashion defined that sense of belonging and not belonging in terms of who you aspired to be.

As I’ve become older and studied the art and science of marketing and branding, it's almost as if I've seen too much behind the curtain. Today, I see brands for what they are.

But when I was younger, I didn't think about the conscious effort of branding.

Branding might be grounded in the reality of the company — but often, that’s not the case.

Especially as a company gets older and a brand gets older, branding is a conscious effort versus something that is in true alignment with what the company, the employees, and the product stand for.

That alignment happens very early when you have passionate founders and a small company. But the more people you add and the more time goes by, that alignment often tends to get lost. And if you're hiring an agency to create your brand, it's by definition a conscious effort.

Is there anything you feel like brands can do better to keep that initial alignment as they grow?

I believe you have to look at it systemically.

Who do you hire, and how do you hire the people who are deeply resonant and aligned with the original brand?

You also have to choose your focus and say, "We will cater to this group, however big that group is, and stick to the original vision.”

If you have picked a big group, then that works. But if you have picked a very niche audience, then that is difficult to maintain over the long term.

When you have clear lines, a brand can be really strong. But the broader you get, the more difficult it becomes — because the brand stretches and wants to accommodate more people, which makes it feel less defined.

3. What event or interaction in your life has most shaped who you are today as a marketer?

Definitely my international moves. I grew up in Berlin in Germany, went to college in the UK and Canada, and interned in the UK, Indonesia, Australia, and New Zealand. Ultimately, I settled down in the US for my professional life.

Seeing the different cultures and understanding that the same underlying human needs and behaviors are global has shaped me as a marketer.

Even within a country such as the US, I’m always asking, "What's the shared common human need that we're all striving for?"

As marketers, we're solving for these shared needs. As humans, we're all remarkably similar in the end. A teenager in Indonesia versus a teenager in the US or UK — they're looking for a lot of the same things in their lives.

4. What is the marketing-related book you would gift to someone who isn’t in marketing? And what is the non-marketing-related book that’s had the most impact on you as a marketer?

My Marketing-Related Book:
A company history of a marketing­-led giants, like a Heinz or a P&G.

Those companies have long histories; they're often over 100 years old. But in the end, they succeeded because they led the marketing revolution over the last 100­+ years.

There's a lot to be taken away from marketing history — and it's a lot more interesting to read than a marketing 101 book.

These histories ultimately speak to how those companies and their marketing tactics have evolved and how they've shaped the world that we live in today.

P&G essentially invented the telenovela and shaped entire genres. And Unilever was responsible for some of the first efforts around global marketing.

My Non-Marketing-Related Book:
The story of Toyota and the manufacturing principles it introduced in the '80s and '90s.

Toyota changed the game. They took a relatively manual manufacturing process and rethought the workflows especially when it came to human-machine interaction. The improved workflows delivered a significantly higher quality of the end product.

If I think about marketing today, I believe we're at a similar point where most of the marketing workflows are highly creative and very manual as a result, but there are some repeatable elements and structures.

Marketing and branding have both suffered from an overemphasis on the output at the expense of the workflows. It is limiting the quality of what we, as marketers, can deliver reliably. You get truly amazing work, you get truly terrible work, and you get a lot in ­between.

Toyota's success wasn’t based on scoring more home runs, but on reliably improving the quality in the middle category. It was all about hitting more singles and doubles.

My thinking has been shaped by how we can bring Toyota’s approach to marketing. When we deliver our projects reliably with high quality, it makes our lives easier and takes less effort overall. In turn, this gives us more time to think about our homerun work.

Are there any techniques you can speak to that you've done to implement this kind of thinking across any of your companies?

In terms of techniques, I’ve really focused on a growth mindset in the team culture. A big part of the Toyota manufacturing principles is getting a little better every day.

I try to instill that mindset in my team - constantly thinking, "How can I innovate to create more of a better end product with less effort?" Even if it is just a small improvement every day, the effects of compounding drive large improvements.

The other technique is poka-yoke — a Japanese term that means "mistake-proofing." Creating failsafes in workflows can save a lot of headaches.

At Toyota, this was implemented for the metal stamping machines. Previously the metal could be inserted in multiple ways. After applying poka-yoke, the metal could only be inserted in the one correct way. 

I frequently think about how we can apply these principles in the marketing world. 

Often, the steps are simple: Checklists for example. Any marketer who has been responsible for sending emails knows that feeling when you realize an email has just been sent to thousands or millions of people with a mistake.

Mistakes are precious as opportunities to learn. You can uncover the root cause in a blameless fashion and then update the workflows — for example, changing the checklist to ensure future emails have fewer mistakes. 

Consciously taking time to think about the workflow and how to design in failsafes has helped prevent a lot of mistakes.

I know everyone appreciates ideas on how to instill quality control — especially when we’re in a world where every marketer is having to create more content marketing content more rapidly all the time to feed the content beast.

Yes, that's where Toyota was way ahead of its time.

One of the defining elements of their manufacturing principles was not having a quality control department. The quality is designed into the workflows and systems themselves and brought to life by each individual. 

That really is the difference. It is the opposite approach of "Let's have a really big creative meeting, with a review by all the executives to point out all the flaws to improve the quality."

Instead, we’re always saying "How do I change the workflow so that nobody has to check the quality of our output at the end, because everybody along the way ensured we created a work product with the right quality?"

5. You're getting put into the Marketers Hall of Fame. What campaign do you want to be remembered for? And what campaign do you wish would be forgotten?

My Campaign to Be Remembered For:
Emma Chamberlain Curology partnership

Emma Chamberlain had been using Curology for more than a year before we approached her for a collaboration with Curology. She loved our product and had seen amazing results.

I was initially hesitant about the partnership because it was going to be the biggest partnership to date for us. Additionally, Emma Chamberlain was the complete opposite of brand-safe. She swore a lot.

Our influencer team convinced me that it was a risk worth taking. It was a big bet for the marketing team, but it ended up being the most successful partnership we ever did. It defined the playbook for us to take greater risks, which changed our influencer collaborations at Curology throughout the years.

Ultimately this partnership reflected the values Curology holds as a company and as a brand: Being your own individual self, and expressing personal values. We lived those values by enabling our creator partners to express their personalities.

My Campaign to Be Forgotten:
Curology’s First Rebranding

For our first branding campaign, we developed a concept I loved to express that treating acne requires expertise.

It centered on the question “Why would you entrust yourself to out-there DIY routines?” A couple of the visual metaphors we used were a painted toy car, bananas covered in glitter, and more.

Unfortunately, we rushed the execution and didn’t put these metaphors in the right context to be easily understood by the consumer. As a result, our messaging was too abstract and didn’t resonate. 

It’s taught me to always try to find the spot on the Venn diagram where artistic expression, consumer resonance, and business results meet. Of course, branding isn’t a perfect science - plenty of learnings still happen with every campaign. 

6. What marketing principle do you think great marketers overlook all the time?

Falling into the trap of over-indexing on ourselves and believing we represent the full diversity of consumer needs. 

When you’re a founder and your company is just starting, you feel the precise consumer need — and reflecting your personal pain points and needs in the brand works extraordinarily well. You’ll find consumers who feel similarly, and that's where the magic happens.

But as you scale the company, you're ultimately appealing to different consumer needs, and you get further away from that original nucleus. That's where it gets tricky for marketers, especially when they're in a younger company that's on this journey for the first time.

Initially, it's totally fine to think of yourself as the customer — because you do represent that group. But as you expand, more diverse views need to be reflected in branding and marketing.

What do you do to make sure that that happens?

I’ve found it most helpful to talk with consumers, capture their insights more formally (both qualitatively and quantitatively), and bring them into the workflows of the company.

When companies make quick gut-fueled decisions, it’s easy to fall back on our natural hypotheses or biases. Everybody needs to be behind a more rigorous decision-making process that reflects the diverse consumer segments.

7. What advice would you give your 26-year-old self—both career-related and not career-related?

Career-Related Advice:
Don't fret the decisions too much. In the end, almost everything is changeable.

You can change careers. You can go into different professions.

It's a journey. You're learning interesting things along the way, and it's important to enjoy that journey.

Non-Career-Related Advice
Recognize the context that you're living in.

What was important pre­pandemic is very different from what might be important during the pandemic or post­pandemic. That's why we're seeing so much change currently in culture and society; it's driven a re­evaluation for a lot of people.

As humans, we often fall into the trap of not doing that evaluation, and it's important that we as individuals take that time, reflect, and very consciously think about what we want to do, and what brings us joy.

8. What’s the most valuable positive feedback you’ve ever been given? And what’s the most valuable negative feedback you’ve ever been given?

Positive Feedback:
You apply your passion to your work.

In those areas where you're truly passionate and bringing your whole self to work, you create much better work because what you're doing is part of your passion.

Negative Feedback:
Focusing too much on achieving a high level of quality and not taking the organizational capacity into account to reach that level of quality. The trade-offs of the resources required vs. other priorities is critical. 

Over the course of my career, I’ve learned to manage this by giving myself and my teams the tools to proactively discuss these trade-offs through prioritization discussions, applying an 80/20 lens with a consumer mindset, and creating short and long-term optimizations.

9. What motivates you to get up and go every day?

The desire to do things a little bit better every day.

At a minimum, I try to do one thing a little bit better than yesterday. If we're making steps every day, we'll ultimately end up at the destination.

Do you have any personal practices for thinking about his every day that you could share?

When I prep for meetings, I ask myself "How can I in this meeting help drive a little improvement that becomes a lasting practice?"

That's kind of the mindset that I take into every one of my meetings.

What do I need to change as the root cause — so that we do something better right from the start? How can I teach somebody a new skill or how to do something that saves them a lot of time?

It's essentially thinking through how to enable the benefits of compound interest in a company.

And that becomes the mentality and the mindset we have on the team. People then start coming into meetings and saying, "Okay, here's what we did. Here's what we achieved. But here are all my ideas for how we’ll do it better next time."

I always tell people that I don't care about the mistakes we made. I don't care about what we got wrong. The only thing I care about is whether we learned from it and how we change our workflow so the mistake doesn’t happen again.

10. Who do you most admire—and what question would you most like to ask them?

I admire the old business dynasties, such as the Rockefellers and the Fords.

I'd love to ask them about their history and their learnings — because these dynasties have seen both ups and downs. 

Ford in its heyday was the dominant company in the industry. And for a while, it completely lost its way — and then came back.

I’d ask them what they would have done differently to prevent the downswing?

Yahoo had a very quick upswing and a very quick downswing. In 100 years, my guess is that the companies we admire today like Microsoft and Netflix might be on an equal downswing.

How do you need to set yourself up today, so that a company of any size doesn't go through that same downswing? What are those tendencies, and what mistakes do we make over time?

11. Last question—what's a secret?

Every company is a shit show.

It doesn't matter how successful or unsuccessful a company is perceived to be, how large or how small.

Marketing and branding gloss over the issues. You have a beautiful outside that portrays a certain level of perfection of the company. But what you have on the inside is the duck paddling really fast underwater — and it just looks effortless above the water.

I believe it is important to understand that this is normal — and that for a company to do well, and for all of us to do well, we just need to be slightly better and look for those small improvements.