Personal branding

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Unpopular opinion alert:

Countless people are posting emotional stories and opinions on social media.

Some observers claim it is these stories’ over-reliance on em-dashes that give them away as being AI-generated – but I disagree.

What gives them away is that these stories tend to be told in a series of one-sentence statements.

What gives them away is their use of anaphora, being the repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of several successive sentences, clauses or lines, for emphasis or rhythm.

What gives them away is that these stories tend to be very long, and use “It’s not X, it’s Y” lines, like the one coming up.

This isn’t a complaint. It’s a call to action.

Artificial posts often use lists with three bullets, so I am about to use four – to argue that artifice is not necessarily revealed by the fact that such posts talk about:

an immensely serious subject
an epiphany-inspiring experience
a deeply-held political view
or even someone’s death

What gives them away is that they all purport to express a heartfelt emotion.

One that, we can all tell, did not come from their heart – and so we will not give them ours.

—
I, not AI, wrote this.

Andris Pone, BA, MBA
President
Coin Branding Inc.
andris@coinbranding.com
1 416 560 0928
www.coinbranding.com

Personal branding

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Recently I spoke with someone who struck me as one of the smartest, most competent people I had encountered in a long time.

It was on a Zoom call. I was speaking with the client of a client. I was struck by how decisive and composed she was. She had a formidable yet approachable executive presence.

This impression formed in my mind very quickly – in a matter of less than 60 seconds. At the end of our discussion, which lasted about 15 minutes, I could not resist bringing it up – the fact that what made her communication skills so impressive was that she never, not once, said any of the following:

“like”
“uh”
“um”
“kind of”
“sort of”
“you know”

She smiled, because she knew exactly what I was referring to, because she had already done the work of eliminating these fillers from her speech.

In contrast, I have listened to podcasts in which someone uses fillers more than 100 times in 30 minutes of speaking. Sometimes several times in a single sentence. For many people, this frequency is quite typical of their regular, conversational speech. It can be distracting for the listener, and, especially in a business context, does not reflect well on the speaker’s preparation or knowledge, even though they might be brilliant.

(You know who almost never uses these fillers? Boomers and older. Any theories on why?)

I am totally projecting here, because I use these fillers a lot more than I would like. I am working on it. They really start to fly out of my mouth when I am caught up in the moment and not thinking. But because I am not thinking, how would I really know how often I am blurting them out?

And there is the connection. The people who don’t use fillers – what is going on in their brains in those moments that are not filler-filled? They are taking very short, often imperceptible pauses, and thinking. They are literally being thoughtful.

And that is how being filler-free literally makes you smarter.

—
I, not AI, wrote this.

Andris Pone, BA, MBA
President
Coin Branding Inc.
andris@coinbranding.com
1 416 560 0928
www.coinbranding.com

Advisor branding

Fifteen years ago, when I started helping advisors differentiate their brands, one of them warned me. “You’re going to hit a brick wall, he said. “Because we all do the same thing.”

At the time, I did not know whether he was right or wrong. Turns out, it was the latter.

I have learned that advisors do not do the same thing. It’s true that they do similar things, but they all think differently of what, how and why they do them, and therefore deliver them in a unique way.

The problem is that the great majority of advisors are doing a lacklustre job of communicating their differences. They rely on the same shortlist of language seen in this bingo card. Therefore they:

• do not stand out to the degree possible
• do not give potential new clients the strongest possible reasons to do business with them instead of someone else.
• do not give their audiences the strongest possible reasons to refer them

That said, there is a small minority of champions whose brands really stand out. Coincidentally, many of them have worked with me. Here are just two of them.

Timothy Simpson of BMO
Many advisors talk about excellence. But Tim and team – Team Simpson – have gone the many additional steps of embedding it in every aspect of their business. They have fêted their advisor clients with an annual awards gala, The Evening of Excellence, for 15 consecutive years. They have an ongoing campaign, Portraits in Excellence, in which they shine a spotlight on the excellence of others. They had their brand promise – Let’s make Excellence happen! – before they hired me, and upon interviewing their clients, I realized that it perfectly described their business and should not be touched.

Elke Rubach of Rubach Wealth
I interviewed Elke’s clients to find out what they thought of her, and did not prompt them in any way. Unaided, they were overwhelming in their view that she provides holistic wealth management, something many advisors say, but do not back up. No advisor I have worked with, before or since, has been cited on this dimension with such enthusiasm. And so the brand descriptor we developed for her and her team – Holistic Family Advisors – is spot-on.

Want to play a different game, and get more referrals?
In my online course, Attract for Advisors, I personally show you, step by step, how to define your one-of-a-kind brand in a Brand Foundation and communicate it to the world — so you can solve the Four Advisor Problems and attract more of the referrals, clients, employees, strategic partners and other opportunities you seek.

All in as little as 5 hours.

Learn more about the course, including by taking my free Masterclass, by clicking here.

P.S. More Brand Champions:

Ocean 6 Wealth Advisory: A New World Of Wealth®

Bull Financial: Be Strong at Every Stage®

The Mah Investment Group: Build more with Mah

Integrated Financial Strategies: Let’s find your future®

Curate Wealth: Family is why®

George Dube: Do wonderful things® and Saving the world from tax, one bowtie at a time®

Andrew Sipes: People not product

Barrington Grey: Relationships are the new wealth

Outfitter Financial: Guiding Anglers and Hunters to Wealth and Beyond®

Flourish Family Wealth: Know Thy Wealth, Know Thyself

—
I, not AI, wrote this.
Andris Pone, BA, MBA
President
Coin Branding Inc.
andris@coinbranding.com
1 416 560 0928
www.coinbranding.com

Brand positioning

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Recently I was struck with this juxtaposition at Rexall: Why pay more than quadruple for a bottle of Evian versus – let’s face it – the very same thing right next to it on the shelf?

Mainly, because Evian is from France. If it was from New Jersey, we would not feel quite the same way, or be willing to part with our money with such abandon.

In branding, this is what we call a Reason to Believe. Because it comes from France, we believe that Evian (and Perrier, of course) is sophisticated. Just as we believe that Nike makes the best basketball shoes because LeBron James and Michael Jordan wear them.

The Evian rationalization, it must be said, is not exactly a fringe activity. A recent report advised that 60 bottles of Evian are consumed every five seconds worldwide. That’s approximately 378 million bottles a year. At $4.29 vs. $0.99 a bottle, that’s people collectively paying an annual premium of $1.25 billion for…nothing.

But is it really nothing? Not at all.

Notice that I did not explain why, exactly, Evian’s French origins are the key to its enormously premium pricing. That’s because you already know. That’s how clear and powerful the brand of France is in our minds.

For the record, in connection with water (and many other things), France means at least:

• Fine food and drink
• Clean natural environment
• Quality
• Luxury
• Distinction
• Exceptional taste (by which I mean discernment)

Every time they buy, every purchaser of Evian gets to not just experience these attributes in their minds, but to actually embody these attributes. To be them. And to them, it is very clearly worth it.

All of which begs the question:  What are your Reasons to Believe?

Spoiler alert: You definitely have some. In all likelihood, however, you are not voicing them in an optimally compelling way.

—

I, not AI, wrote this.

Andris Pone, BA, MBA
President
Coin Branding Inc.
andris@coinbranding.com
1 416 560 0928
www.coinbranding.com

Brand positioning

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Recently I posted on LinkedIn about Dunkin’s impending return to Canada, and how Tim’s was sure to counteract it by double-doubling down on its Canadian identity.

Turns out, Canadians are very passionate about this brand. And angry about it, too.

Hence the post’s 90,000 impressions and counting.

Below, for your convenience, you can read the post in its entirety. However, if you want to see all the comments and add your own (which I would love, and will answer), click here for the post on LinkedIn.

Here is a paste of the post:

Dunkin’ is coming back to Canada. Expect Tim’s to double-double down on its Canadian identity.

If you want to make Canadian-ness a vital part of your positioning, you at the very least must use Canadian spelling in your messaging.

Good Canadians will be able to see the obvious spelling mistake in this celebration of a huge moment in Canadian hockey history. Raising the error to the level of blasphemy is that it occurs at a physical and psychological location at the very core of our identity: centre ice.

Tim Hortons’ brand already skates on thin ice, given that it is owned by Restaurant Brands International, a Canadian company approximately 22% owned by an investment vehicle affiliated with Brazilian-founded 3G Capital, which acknowledged in its 2025 Annual Report that “So long as 3G RBH continues to directly or indirectly own a significant amount of voting power, it will continue to be able to strongly influence or effectively control business decisions of RBI.”

It will be fascinating to see how it all plays out. Mark Satov and his team at SATOV Consultants just released some proprietary research on Dunkin’s impending return, and the outlook may not be as dire as some might imagine amid a Canada-US relationship that is highly charged, to say the least, and therefore which could be negative for American entrants which have proudly traded, as Dunkin’s has, upon their American DNA.

—

I, not AI, wrote this.

Andris Pone, BA, MBA
President
Coin Branding Inc.
andris@coinbranding.com
1 416 560 0928
www.coinbranding.com

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Introducing a new service that increases profitability without adding additional headcount and gives you more time to focus on the business activities you love.
—

The brand foundations I create for advisor clients are intended to be their ultimate decision-making filter. A document that sits above all else – above any marketing or even strategic plan. Your brand foundation is, indeed, your culture on a piece of paper.

But: if we do not take concrete steps, the brand foundation risks sitting in a drawer and being forgotten. Remember those promises you made – say, about having the best client service in your industry? To achieve that audacious revenue goal a few years from now?

What are you actually doing to make that happen?

To make your brand foundation a reality, it needs to be operationalized. Integrated into every aspect of your business – in a way that increases topline revenue without adding additional headcount, and frees you up to focus more on the stuff you love to do.

That’s precisely what Emile Studham and his team at Cooperation Works do. They take what’s on paper and turn it into how your team actually operates – the same way they do with the Toronto Blue Jays executive team, Hydro One, and various leadership teams throughout BMO.

Their approach is built around high-performance culture, the kind you see in elite sport. Purpose, vision, and values aren’t posters on a wall. They become the filter for every decision, every hire, every quarter.

With that kind of track record, you can see why I am excited to tell you that Emile is now providing these services to Coin clients, and that the time commitment from you will be light.

Learn more in the above video, which is my full 14-minute conversation with Emile, or watch this short one.

Or just reach out to me at andris@coinbranding.com or 416 560 0928.

Andris Pone
President
Coin Branding Inc.

See the full post and video on LinkedIn.

This is a big year for Canada. The Winter Olympics, the FIFA World Cup, and politics are all focusing the world’s attention on us, forcing us to look in the mirror like never before.

All while we are having a full-blown identity crisis.

Will we reach consensus on who we are?

Click above for my LinkedIn post, complete with video, on the subject.

As you will see, I pose the questions: What is Canada? Can you summarize it in one sentence?

PS If you are not already connected with me on LinkedIn, please send me a connection request.

Advisors don’t just want more referrals. They want more HNW referrals.

Podcasts are becoming one of the most effective ways to make that happen.

When an advisor hosts a podcast, introductions become much easier.

Instead of asking a client…
“Do you know anyone I should meet?

…You can say: “Is there someone interesting in your network I should have on the show?”

That simple shift changes everything. High net worth entrepreneurs, professionals, and business owners become podcast guests. Guests share the episode, and their network discovers you.

And that’s just one strategy of many.

At Coin, we help advisors launch and produce professional podcasts, so they get more and better referrals. Money Match, with wealth advisor Ian Ardill, is just one of the shows we are producing. To check it out, click the video at the top of this story.

If you’re curious about how it all works, send me an email at andris@coinbranding.com or call me at 416 560 0928.

Andris Pone
President
Coin Branding Inc.

Naming is one of my specialties. But it is not because naming forms a portion of my livelihood that I must tell you this:

Never have a naming contest.

I have praised the name Toronto Tempo for the city’s new WNBA team. You can see my laudatory statements here.

Only recently, in this video conversation with Brand and PR star Megan Matthews, did I discover that the Tempo had a naming contest.

The Tempo said the name was “informed by both the inputs of those contributions” from the contest “and feedback and insights from a community council.”

Was the name Tempo actually submitted by someone in the contest? Maybe it was not, which makes the process look like a selfish waste of everyone’s time. Maybe it was, in which case the team got lucky.

Naming decisions should not be left to luck.

More in the video above.

I have a great mentor. His name is Ted Matthews.

I first met Ted in the summer of 2006, in his office on Jarvis Street in Toronto. He had founded an integrated marketing communications firm, grown it to a staff of 80, worked with Fortune 500 clients, and then sold it. Then he launched a Brand Coaching firm, Instinct Brand Equity Coaches. I was looking for a copywriting gig, with designs on being a part of Instinct ongoing.

But first I had to make a good impression.

Ted answered the door and invited me to have a seat while he finished something up. Eager to make some kind of chitchat, I noticed on the wall a smartly-framed design award he’d won. He’d been given the silver.

I said something like, “Wow. This is impressive.” To which Ted replied, “When a client disagrees with me, I tell him to go see the guy who won the f****** gold.”

Devastatingly funny, yes. But more to the point, uncompromising. That’s what I thought of Ted, right from the very start. As he proclaims in one of his many maxims, consistency is the number one rule of Branding. True to what he preaches, Ted has never wavered.

Recently I had what was, to me, a massively entertaining conversation with Megan Matthews, Ted’s daughter, who took over his practice. She is an elite Brand and PR strategist who has worked in Toronto, London (UK) and New York, leading PR for Brands including Unilever (where she was global communications lead for Dove), Gap UK, Johnson & Johnson Beauty, adidas for Stella McCartney, Pandora and many more.

Above is a video of our conversation, in which we share our favourite Brand lessons learned from Ted – and which are still a priceless reservoir of wisdom.

I hope you enjoy it even a fraction as much as I did.