Behind The Brand

TakeawaysA rough year can be the messy middle that finally gives you clarity about the work you want to do.You can narrow your focus to a few industries without giving up the local community that built your business.Many buyers compare cost more than value, so showing strong case studies in a specific industry helps you stand out.In experience-based industries like tourism and beverage, you are selling the experience before anyone gets to have it.Summary of the EpisodeIn this episode of Behind the Brand, Taylor and Kelly Cane from Moxie Creative pull back the curtain on the next chapter of their agency. After a year of long-term clients retiring, industries shifting, and budgets tightening, they got clearer than ever about where they want to go and the work they want their team doing.They share how the agency has always been full service, how advertising changed from media placement to digital, and why competing locally against smaller players and niche freelancers led them to choose a few focus industries. Guided by a consultant, they are choosing food and beverage and tourism, and they explain why they see both as experience-based marketing.The conversation gets practical about what Moxie already does well: packaging with designers who understand print, creating beverage brands that jump off the shelf, and expanding tourism brands across social media, websites, and business cards even when the logo cannot change. They also get honest about the hard part, which is networking statewide after building a business on local relationships.Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@wearemoxiecreativeFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/wearemoxiecreativeInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/wearemoxiecreative/Behance: https://www.behance.net/moxiecreativeLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wearemoxiecreativeWebsite: www.moxiecreative.com

TakeawaysLongevity comes from change. Leah's dad says it best: "If you're not changing, you're dying." Bernick's has stayed relevant for 110 years by always looking for the next thing.A B2B company can still market to the consumer. Bernick's sells to liquor stores and grocery stores, but most of its marketing builds brand awareness with the people who shop there.Community is the strategy. Showing up at events, donating, sponsoring, and serving on boards builds loyalty that national advertising cannot.Working with family takes boundaries. The closeness is the gift, and the tension that comes with it is real, so protect the dinner table.Summary of the EpisodeIn this episode of Behind the Brand, Taylor and Kelly Cane of Moxie Creative sit down with Leah Bernick Sutherland, director of marketing at Bernick's, a fifth-generation, family-owned beverage and food distributor headquartered in St. Cloud, Minnesota. Bernick's is celebrating 110 years, and Leah has spent 15 of them there, moving through finance, marketing, soft drink sales, and vending before landing back in marketing.Leah walks through the company story. In 1916, her great-great-grandparents bought a small soda bottling shop in downtown St. Cloud and delivered by wagon, or horse and sleigh in winter, within a 30-mile radius. Bernick's bottled its own soda, sold near beer during Prohibition, picked up Dr Pepper, and took on Pepsi in the early 1950s when the local bottler was trying to give it away. She explains how Pepsi distribution actually works, why Bernick's still calls itself a bottler, and how a co-op called WisPak handles production.From there the conversation turns to marketing. Leah leads a team of about 10, including one of the largest print shops among independent Pepsi distributors, producing signage, banners, cooler wraps, and window clings. She shares how the team runs local sweepstakes (including two Mountain Dew golf carts this summer), tailors campaigns to lake life, fishing, and hunting season, and relies on sampling to get new products into shoppers' hands.The hosts also dig into community giving, what it is really like to work with your dad, the values that carry from the family dinner table into the business, and how Bernick's is exploring AI and new brands. Leah closes with rapid fire advice on showing up locally and speaking up early in your career. Find Bernick's at bernicks.com, on Facebook and LinkedIn, on Instagram at Bernick's1916, and on TikTok.Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@wearemoxiecreativeFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/wearemoxiecreativeInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/wearemoxiecreative/Behance: https://www.behance.net/moxiecreativeLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wearemoxiecreativeWebsite: www.moxiecreative.com

TakeawaysNeeding more business is the goal. How you get there is the strategy. A website, an SEO campaign, or a social media push is a tactic, and a tactic only works when it is tied to a clear plan.Before you buy more leads or more traffic, check what you already have. If 100 leads are not moving forward, or visitors are not filling out your form, the problem is conversion, not attraction.Trendy jargon like SEO is often a stand-in for a different need. Most of the time, a business owner asking for SEO is really looking for something else, such as better conversion, stronger trust, or a clearer brand.Marketing spread across several vendors and judged in silos makes it impossible to see what is working. Set metrics, report on them monthly, and let the results guide the next step.Search is changing fast. With AEO and GEO now part of the conversation alongside SEO, even a website that was right ten years ago may need a very different approach today.Summary of the episodeTaylor and Kelly tackle one of the biggest gaps in how small businesses buy marketing: the difference between tactics and strategy. Clients often arrive asking for a specific deliverable, such as a new website, SEO, ads, or more social posts, and sometimes they are exactly right. But there is a big difference between knowing you have a problem and knowing what is actually causing it. That is why Moxie Creative positions itself as a team of marketing consultants rather than order takers, and why the most valuable thing an agency can sometimes say is, "We don't think you should spend money on that."Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@wearemoxiecreativeFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/wearemoxiecreativeInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/wearemoxiecreative/Behance: https://www.behance.net/moxiecreativeLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wearemoxiecreativeWebsite: www.moxiecreative.com

TakeawaysHigh-functioning stress often hides behind competence, not incompetence, which is exactly why it goes unaddressed for so long.Not all stress is bad. The goal isn't eliminating it, it's building the flexibility to turn the volume up and down as needed."False truths," the limits we quietly impose on ourselves, drive a lot of pressure that was never coming from anyone else.Knowing your identity, personally and in business, makes every other decision (branding included) easier to make.The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline isn't just for the worst moments. It's a resource for anyone who needs to talk something through.Taylor and Kelly sit down with Nate Van Heuveln, owner of Criterion Counseling in St. Cloud, to talk about the clients most people don't picture when they think about therapy: high-functioning adults who look like they have it all together while quietly running on empty. Nate walks through his path into counseling, from a childhood surrounded by helping professionals to a "scenic route" through paper routes, rock-picking, and industrial-organizational psychology before landing on his own practice in January 2026.The conversation digs into what makes high-functioning stress so easy to miss. Nate's clients are the caregivers, first responders, and business owners everyone else relies on, which makes them the least likely to reach out first. He unpacks the idea of "false truths," the self-imposed standards that show up as a mental yardstick most of us are holding up to ourselves, and offers a simple reframe: you have 100 percent to give on any given day, not 200, and that's allowed to look different day to day.The episode also turns into an unexpected marketing conversation. Nate connects his own approach to building Criterion Counseling back to a concept Taylor and Kelly talk about constantly with clients: knowing who you are before you try to market anything. Before wrapping, Nate shares a visual reminder of the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline and encourages listeners to treat it as a resource for any moment that feels heavy, not just a crisis line of last resort.Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@wearemoxiecreativeFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/wearemoxiecreativeInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/wearemoxiecreative/Behance: https://www.behance.net/moxiecreativeLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wearemoxiecreativeWebsite: www.moxiecreative.com

TakeawaysWords like quality, experience, trusted, and great service are usually true, but when every competitor uses them, they stop meaning much of anything and stop setting you apart.Quality work, expertise, and caring about customers are what customers already expect. To differentiate your business, describe how you deliver, not just that you do.Your differentiator is rarely something to invent. A brand positioning process uncovers it through deeper conversations about how your business actually works.Summary of the episodeTaylor and Kelly open this episode of Behind the Brand with a simple exercise for small business owners: pull up five competitor websites and start reading. Chances are you will see the same words over and over, including quality, trusted, custom solutions, and exceptional service. The hosts explain why so many businesses end up in what they call the sea of sameness. Those words feel safe, and many owners believe fitting in means looking and sounding like the competition. They also make the point that this is not a new AI problem. Businesses have been repeating the same adjectives for as long as marketing has existed.From there, the conversation moves into how to actually find a message that is different. Kelly and Taylor explain that differentiation is not only a design decision. It also lives in the words you use, and brand positioning goes well beyond choosing a formal or friendly tone. They walk through an accountant example to show how describing the how, such as meeting with clients twice a year before tax time, turns a generic claim into a real difference. Kelly also shares an anonymized story about a long-term client who believed service was their edge, and why a positioning statement has to be true before it can be used.The hosts then break down what a brand platform (or brand strategy) includes: a differentiating factor, a positioning statement, messaging and tone, and target audience personas. They clarify that it is a separate service from a visual identity, and that it can be done as a standalone project. Taylor shares a recent example of a solopreneur photographer who discovered that what she really sold was the experience leading up to the final photos, and both hosts agree that the conversations along the way are often the most valuable part of the process.The episode closes with a look at AI and brand voice. Because AI takes the average of everything already published, it tends to repeat the sameness businesses are trying to escape. Taylor and Kelly talk about developing a distinct style, using Moxie's own tongue-in-cheek personality as the example, and admit they are due to put their own brand through a whiteboard session and SWOT analysis three and a half years in.Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@wearemoxiecreativeFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/wearemoxiecreativeInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/wearemoxiecreative/Behance: https://www.behance.net/moxiecreativeLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wearemoxiecreativeWebsite: www.moxiecreative.com