Arie Elbelman R. (00:00)
Hi Tzachy, how are you?
Tzakhi (00:02)
Great, thanks so much for coming. We're at the Meet Capital Startup Podcast with Arie Elbelman, the CEO of Leon Marketing, where you help brands and companies, companies basically identify their own soul and cover their soul. And that's the more official term for that is to, is their brand identity. So we'll be talking about that a bit. I know you teach at LCI Barcelona. Do you want this?
Arie Elbelman R. (00:26)
Yes.
Tzakhi (00:31)
Tell us a little more about your background.
Arie Elbelman R. (00:34)
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you very much for having me, it's a pleasure to be here with you and to be here with your listeners as well. So hello to everyone. I'm Ariel Elbelman. I was first of all, I'm a father of two wonderful children. And I married to a wonderful woman who is the mother of my children. I was born in Chile. I lived in Israel for over 10 years and I've been living in Barcelona for the last four, four and a half.
to five years. I've been working in marketing and communications for over 15 years now, more or less. And after working in many different high tech companies in Israel, in EdTech companies in Israel, I decided to open my own agency and company, the own marketing, to actually help purpose driven projects to achieve their goals, to understand the importance of...
brand identity, to understand how meaningful it is to build consistent brand personality in order to achieve all of their goals. Raising capital, connecting with their communities, getting to build some strong brand awareness and so on.
Tzakhi (01:52)
Yeah, I think I can also let our listeners and viewers know that the reason I'm excited about what you do is because I've experienced it, meaning you've mentored me a few times and it was brilliant. It really gave me a lot of understanding and insights and a lot of tools that I've implemented for Meet Capital. And I thought that your work is super valuable for early stage startups because they're really a
the process of, I discussed in a previous episode, product market fit. So they're finding out their journey very often, but the journey for product market fit is one way to look at it. Another part of the journey is finding their identity, is the soul of the company. And that's kind of the Prisma that you have. And I'd love to talk about that a bit.
So maybe can you kick us off with a bit of explanation? What is brand identity and how is it different from branding?
Arie Elbelman R. (02:52)
Okay, so let me start with the basics. Okay, so there's something we need to understand and very often we forget about this, that there's always people, even when we're working in a B2B strategy, those who are behind the second B are also people who are making decisions in one way or another. And since for my entire life, I've loved...
helping people, understanding people, creating meaningful messages and strategies. The world of brand identity, when you were asking me to compare it to branding, the world of brand identity and effective messaging actually connects and serve as some sort of intersection between marketing, leadership, some sort of psychology, even innovation, and even some elements of playfulness.
Tzakhi (03:44)
Okay.
Arie Elbelman R. (03:45)
All of that in order to give companies and early stage startups better results. And I just love doing that, serving as this bridge that connects these different disciplines in order to build one core personality. One core personality that later on will be useful to have consistency, sustained growth, to tell the truth from your company.
to build real human emotion -based connections. And actually, we also forget about this part as well. Emotion -based connections are the essential factor in which people make decisions. So they are going to make the decision actually to invest in our project or to buy our product or service if they feel something or not. So when we build a strong brand that respects...
its own identity and also connects with the expectations of our audiences we're playing with emotions and those emotions are going to drive us to better results.
Tzakhi (04:58)
So would it be fair to say that your understanding of brand identity is the process of giving your company its persona. It's turning it into kind of like a figure with emotions, with personality, and then using that to, in every interaction, in every place where you present your company and your mission and your products.
Arie Elbelman R. (05:26)
Yes, it is a way to say it. Yes, I agree with you. That's a great diagnosis. We cannot confuse the persona of our company with the personas we talk to, because they're two different things. Yeah. But yeah, it's actually to give your brand, your company a clear personality, a clear way of talking, a clear tone of voice in order to have that.
consistency, that sustained growth, that thing that makes your brand recognizable, that creates a strong brand awareness that no matter where people see you or interact with you, they will feel that they are talking to the same person, brand, company, organization, and so on. Yeah.
Tzakhi (06:15)
Is this something that you think a company as it builds itself discovers as it goes along or is this part of like a strategic planning of building a company from scratch? Like when you're thinking of what you're going to do, do you also need to spend time of kind of identifying this kind of brand identity component?
Arie Elbelman R. (06:37)
That's a great question, Zahia, and I think people and companies need to, at some point, even if it's an early stage, it's better, need to stop and contemplate. Sometimes when we start building projects, we start some sort of marathon and we don't stop and our eyes are at the end line, but we forget how important it is to stop and think.
Why are we here? What do we want to give to the world? What makes our brand meaningful and unique? What is our uniqueness concept? Where are our unique selling points? What makes us different to everyone else? Why am I unique? And what makes me different than you? What are our life values?
life visions, what is our mission and so on. But it's not based on only like the mission of my company is and the vision of my company is, it's deeper than that. It appears before that. So I would say that it's the second thing you said. Companies and early stage startups need to stop and think. But they need to keep in mind that this is very flexible.
This is not a rule written on stone that cannot change. Actually, it might change. Actually, most likely it will change. So this is a process that companies need to keep on doing once in a while to stop, think, go through a discovery process of what do they want to say? How do they want to be seen like? Which kind of image they want to show the world? And then...
build strategies around that that will guarantee what we said before. Consistency, sustained growth, truth, real human emotion -based connections and better results of course.
Tzakhi (08:39)
Okay, I think what would be helpful would be to kind of try to bring this down to practical terms. So I'm gonna put myself on the line here and maybe like we can talk a bit about Meet Capital as an example of what are like just the first questions to ask or the first steps to take to kind of define brand identity or to think of brand identity.
Arie Elbelman R. (09:08)
That's a great question. We need to comprehend, Zahir, that in order to do that, some concepts that we need to share with your listeners. Brand identity is our core personality, our essence. It is what makes us unique. So the first question will be that, what makes you unique? In which areas are you great at? In which areas you excel at? What are the seven things you do better than anyone else?
and you need to write them down. Always have some piece of paper and a pen, always useful, and write things down. What makes you unique? And then the second question will be with which kind of people you are talking to. Because this process, it even helps us to clarify our current potential and ideal audiences, target markets, you name it.
It sets the tone of voice for how to communicate, what to communicate and whom to communicate it. So when we ask ourselves first, what do we do very well? Then how do we want to be seen? Okay. And third of all, and this is a very fun exercise to do that people can do it at home now.
If our brand was to be a human being and we did this exercise before with you and me together if my brand was to be a human being a real person Who would that person be and we cannot confuse that who with the what's our ideal customer? We're talking about our brand
And ideally, it doesn't have to be the pure description of myself in case I'm a solopreneur or I'm, you know, creating a startup on my own. What is the personality of my brand? If my brand was a human being, what is that human being like? Is it a man? Is it a woman?
is he or she married? How old is that person? Where does that person lives? That person eats the pizza with or without pineapple, you know? And many questions like that. Why? Because that sets some sort of tone of voice. Someone who is married with three kids speaks in a different way than someone who isn't married and has no kids and two cats.
It's not better or worse, it's just different. And that tone of voice will define the way in which we connect with our different stakeholders, with our different audiences. It will make our tone of voice recognizable to all of them.
Tzakhi (12:00)
You know, I'm thinking that a lot of this happens without awareness, meaning you, without defining those things, you have this kind of persona, especially in a business like mine where I'm basically a solopreneur with a small team around me and my personality is thrown onto almost everything that's written or created in Meet Capital. And maybe that's done without
consciously thinking of it. So how to be conscious about it and what do you think would be also the value of being conscious about it?
Arie Elbelman R. (12:39)
That's a great question. And since when we start building startups, especially in an early stage, people don't have the time to stop and think, but I think it's extremely relevant. I'm going to use some like some sort of biblical example here. I'm sorry about that. But Moses could only see God when he stopped and saw the burning bush.
Tzakhi (12:59)
Why sorry? I love the Bible.
Arie Elbelman R. (13:08)
As you know, there are hundreds of burning bushes in the Israeli desert, in that area of the world. Hundreds of burning bushes, all the time, that they don't consume. But Moses could only connect with his essence when he saw that stopped and think. When we stop and contemplate our own project, the truth appears. So I would strongly recommend for...
people who are building projects or actually even people who are, you know, build projects a long time ago and now they're struggling with how to communicate, to stop and think, take the time to just breathe in and understand why your project is important and what makes you unique. When we understand that, we will be able to build better strategies, connect with better investors.
build meaningful strategies and actually cross bridges that will connect us with the right people. It's not only about money. It's about the money coming from meaningful, relevant people who actually believes that our project is relevant. How would they know if our project is relevant if we don't know how to communicate its relevancy?
So I think it's extremely important to just stop, take one, two weeks to think about that, to do a couple of exercises and to understand what are we talking about? Who are we? What are our values, our personality, our tone of voice in order after that to build strategies, to know how to look at data.
to know how to look at which elements of the data are we using in order to have a better tactics, to build better communication flows, to build effective messaging, to reach actually the audiences we want to reach in an effective, fast way.
Tzakhi (15:17)
Can you give us an example maybe of a process that you did with the company and how that changed their success?
Arie Elbelman R. (15:25)
Yeah, absolutely. A couple of years ago, when we started building this methodology that is now way better than before, when we started building this methodology, we worked with a teacher. This teacher built an online platform to create, to actually apply formative assessment. He didn't believe in standardized tests.
that evaluate kids at the beginning of the semester and at the end of the semester and there's nothing in the middle so you cannot actually see how the process goes. So this teacher who is by the way an amazing person, an amazing human being created this platform. This platform was not selling, he wasn't succeeding to sell his product to anyone.
until we did this exercise together. We stopped, we think, we understood the personality of his brand, the relevancy of his brand. We discovered in this process his ideal target market, his potential audiences, his publics of interest and so on. After...
doing this couple of exercises with him and clarifying the message, it's like you said it before, it's like unveiling the soul of the brand. Somehow you take off some sort of sheet and you see everything. It's mind blowing because you discover yourself through exercises that allow you to open your mind, the essence of your brand. And after doing that, we could...
build a better communication strategy. We could build actually effective messages. And a couple of weeks after that, he sold his product to an entire network of schools and colleges that have presence all over the world.
Tzakhi (17:26)
What was the change that he made?
Arie Elbelman R. (17:28)
he started understanding his brand from a different perspective and therefore he started communicating the thing they did and the thing they do in a different way, in a way that respects in one hand their core personality and on the other hand the expectations of the audiences. And we created a bridge that goes from here to here. A bridge that goes from...
respecting its core identity of the brand personality and connecting that with the expectation of his audiences. So when we do that, when we do that exercise, magic happens. When we actually understand that we can build a connection between who we truly are and what they are truly expecting from the world, not from us, from life.
and we create a connection between these two points, we actually have better results, we sell more, we get better investors, we raise more capital. That happens.
Tzakhi (18:38)
Okay, thank you so much. I want now to, if we can just take a few minutes, just give us maybe five suggestions, tips that you have for startup founders on how to build a brand identity and use it to succeed, to grow, to raise capital, et cetera.
Arie Elbelman R. (18:58)
Absolutely, it will be my absolute pleasure. First of all, I will say that they always have to keep in mind that on the other side of the screen, there's a person.
There's a human being that feels something or doesn't feel anything. So we need to find that emotional fiber in order to connect with that person. We're not talking to computers, even if we're building bots, we're not talking to bots, we're talking to people. So on the other side of the screen, there's a human being. Let's always keep that in mind. That's one. The second piece of advice I would like to give is that we need to build...
a story that is the intersection between your brand personality, your core personality and the expectations about life your audiences and stakeholders have. When we do that, you will raise meaningful capital and connect with the right people.
The third piece of advice I would like to give is very simple, but again, sometimes we forget about that. It's just to be honest, to tell the truth, but to tell the truth in a very nice way.
The fourth decision I would like to give is that decisions are always made somehow on the emotional level. We need to build a brand that connects with the right people and with their emotions. Even in a B2B strategy we cannot forget that there is someone there in the second B making decisions. So if we...
succeed to connect in somehow in something that is meaningful for them, something that is important for them, something that touches even in a little way that emotional fiber, we will get better results. And the fifth piece of advice I would like to give that also people like me that are in this world of brand identity, psychology, strategy, marketing, communications, it's always use data to measure.
When we enter a world like this one, we forget about numbers, statistics, data, and we cannot do that. We always need to measure results. We always need to see how things are going, if we're doing the right thing, and that's connected with what I said before. This is a flexible process, a process that might suffer some changes, a process that needs to be re - we need to rethink about it.
along the way, throughout the way, but always use data to measure results.
Tzakhi (21:43)
All right, Aliya, thank you. I think startups can find what you said and use it to kind of define the way they present themselves and the way they tell their story, both to their clients, to other employees, recruits, and of course, when they raise capital. Who should reach out to you and where should they find you?
Arie Elbelman R. (22:05)
I'm open for everyone who wants to talk to me, who wants to reach out. I love to help people, projects, early stage startups, startups that are in a different stage of, you know, process or progress. I'm here for you. Let's see, let's have a virtual coffee or if you're around the city of Barcelona, let's have a physical coffee and let's talk about how uncomplicated, easy and...
Smooth is a process of unveiling the soul of your brand and therefore communicating better and achieving your results faster. I'm here for you.
Tzakhi (22:43)
Okay, great. I'll share links to your LinkedIn, I guess where people can find you. If you're listening, come to Meet That Capital. If you haven't done it yet, subscribe to our newsletter. We every week, we give a summary of our conversations on the podcasts and other stuff comes on that newsletter as well. And of course, subscribe to wherever you're listening to either the YouTube channel or Spotify or Apple podcasts. Thank you. Thank you, Ali.
Arie Elbelman R. (22:47)
Please.
Thank you Tzachi for having me and have a great day.
