What Does It Take for Brands to Deteriorate? Tips on Using Your Name to Build Your Brand, and Scott’s Bucket List

Scott discusses brand strategy, specifically why some brands have strong reputations while others don’t. He then advises a listener who shares a name with an adult film star and is struggling with those SEO implications. He wraps up with his thoughts on bucket lists and advice to a listener turning 40 years old. Music: https://www.davidcuttermusic.com / @dcuttermusic Subscribe to No Mercy / No Malice Buy "The Algebra of Wealth," out now. Follow the podcast across socials @profgpod: Instagram Threads X Reddit Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Scott Galloway?

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• 0:48Speaker 01

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• 1:19Speaker 02

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• 1:48Scott Galloway?

  Welcome to the Prof G Pod's Office Hours. This is the part of the show where we answer your questions about business, tech, entrepreneurship, and whatever else is on your mind. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to [email protected]. Again, that's [email protected]. I have not seen these questions. So, numero uno.

• 2:08Scott Galloway?

  Hi, Prop G. This is Ben from Chicago. I work in consulting for a well-respected firm and want to get your perspective on brand deterioration, specifically how long and what needs to occur. Thanks for the great work and advice every week. So who ranks poorly in terms of brand reputation? According to the 2024 Axios Harris Poll 100 Reputation Rankings, Meta ranks number 97 in overall reputation with a very poor score of 59.6. That's just three spots above the Trump Organization and two spots above X and one spot above Spirit Airlines. So what do these companies all have in common? Brand is synonymous with differentiation. I got five different brands of Frosted Flakes.

• 2:51Scott Galloway?

  Which one is different from the other and why am I going to pay kind of unearned margin, if you will, or differentiation equals margin? In addition, a brand is sort of trust and that is you have to trust it's going to deliver against its promise and the end user wants to feel like they can trust the brand. And the thing that all of these companies have in common is that people don't trust Spirit Airlines to kind of not to deliver. People, I think, are worried when they get on Spirit Airlines that they're just going to have a shitty experience. The Trump Organization, I think, has developed a reputation for its vendors and people not being able to trust the organization. X has been in the news

• 3:32Scott Galloway?

  for destroying a lot of shareholder value, the lack of safety standards and just overall vitriol. So it kind of comes down to trust, how you handle crises, whether you're seen as treating your customers well, whether you're seen as being honest, all that kind of good stuff. Who's doing it well? Right now, it's Nvidia, followed by 3M and Fidelity. That's interesting. I wouldn't have guessed Fidelity. So Nvidia, nothing, nothing helps a brand like Success and I guess people trust Nvidia because of its success and... I'm beating expectations always, and I think Jensen is seen as a fairly good person and the firm feels future forward. So I think a lot of that just

• 4:15Scott Galloway?

  comes down to success. 3M is seen as somewhat of a paternal company that's good to its employees and constant history of innovation, very, very sort of American, if you will. I think people feel good. It's, I think their headquarters is in Minnesota and people just like those, those Minnesotans. Fidelity, I don't know why. I guess fidelity handles money and people feel pretty good or that they're good fiduciaries. Look, brands are hard to kill. They're just becoming what I'd call less relevant. What do I mean by that? The algorithm for printing cash was to come up with a mediocre car, shoe, salty snack, sugary drink, and wrap it in amazing brand codes using this incredibly cheap and efficient brand building infrastructure called

• 4:59Scott Galloway?

  broadcast television where 60% of America was watching one of three channels every night. Then broadcast media became very splintered, very expensive, and people started cutting out the middleman and going to content that didn't, where they wouldn't be pelted by commercials telling them they had restless legs and their social graph and their new weapons of mass diligence, including Google, their social graph, TripAdvisor said, you don't need to always defer to the mass diligence or the shorthand of a brand as often. Now, having said that, it's very rare that an individual purchases anything they haven't heard of before. Think about your inclination to return an email from someone you've never heard of before and someone you have heard of, right? It's exponentially greater likelihood you'll respond to the, to the latter. And the same is true of brands. So just a

• 5:43Scott Galloway?

  general level of awareness is really meaningful. And then you infuse it with associations, hopefully as self expressive benefit. Probably the best brand attribute after trust would be scarcity, and that is this notion that it's of limited supply. So now let's talk a little bit about B2B. I think right away, you need to identify what the culture is going to be. And to a certain extent, the culture is your brand. One of my first firm, In business school, I started a chemical profit when I was 26. I used to say, we have a passion for brand, attention to detail and a sense of camaraderie and give people a sense of what those course associations are. But at the top, these firms are delivering across the two points of a brand, and that

• 6:25Scott Galloway?

  is the promise and then the performance has to match the promise. So when we say we're proud of our progress, as Sheryl Sandberg said at Facebook, we found out that she was lying over and over and over. Thanks for the question. Question number two.

• 6:42Speaker 03

  My property, Naomi here from Sydney, Australia. I'm in my late twenties, working in finance, and I just made the big move to New York City this year, taking your advice to get to a big city. Now, here's the thing, in the midst of meeting all these new people, both personally and professionally, I've hit an unexpected and rather awkward problem. My name. I share it with a very popular adult film star who is very, very famous for her book fetish content. And while I doubt that any reasonable person would confuse my accomplishments with her accomplishments, it's wreaking absolute havoc on my personal brand.

• 7:23Speaker 03

  I realize, of course, that I can't win an SEO battle against the adult entertainment industry. But before my name becomes collateral damage in the pursuit of a rebrand, I'd love to get your take. Given how seamlessly you have integrated your name into your personal brand, what would you do in my shoes? And more broadly, how would anyone approach a name change? Whether it's from marriage or divorce or immigrants simplifying non-English names, how should they think about this? Anyway, I'm really looking forward to hearing your thoughts. And thank you, Scott, for all the work that you do.

• 8:01Scott Galloway?

  Got to be honest, wasn't expecting this one. Okay. I had sort of a similar issue when I first developed a bit of a public footprint, if you will. Initially, being the narcissist I am, I'd always Google my name. And what came up first about 10, 12 years ago, a gentleman named Scott Galloway, who played for the West Marine Mariners or the New Wales Mariners of football, a soccer player in Australia. And he was just more famous than me. So he came up and I thought, ah, fuck, there's someone else named Scott Galloway that's more famous than me. But over time, if you're good at what you do, eventually, especially I would imagine an adult film star, that career wanes. I imagine feet age better than most parts of your body, but the thing about being an

• 8:46Scott Galloway?

  athlete, a musician, a model, all the vanity industries, and I would imagine being a porn star, is the reason these industries suck is you get worse at them as you get older. If you're in accounting, in 98% of industries, you get better as you get older. I would imagine this adult film star's brand is going to wane. And if you're good at what you do, and you have a strong social footprint, and you keep at it, and this is what happened to me. Now, if you do a search, you know, Scott Galloway, the Australian football player, comes up way, way down the list because nothing builds your brand like excellence and continuing to do good work. Now, in terms of practically, what you might want to do on your social media handles is maybe even jokingly say your name and then open paren, not the foot fetish woman, or

• 9:31Scott Galloway?

  not, not the adult star. Or always make sure, you know, like add something. I say prof G, so people know I'm a professor. Professor has a really nice, really nice connotation to it. And at the end of the day, I think of myself as a teacher, so it fits well. It's easy to say. If you were to go through the hassle of a name change, which I don't recommend, what you want is something that is easy to spell and that there aren't that many other people with the same name. And those two are in contradiction with each other. Again, though, the key to anything is just having, doing good work constantly. That's, over the long term, what builds brands. Anyways, interesting question. We have one quick break before our final question. Stay with us.

• 10:20Scott Galloway?

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• 11:04Scott Galloway?

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• 11:37Scott Galloway?

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• 12:21Scott Galloway?

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• 12:48Scott Galloway?

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• 13:33Scott Galloway?

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• 13:57Scott Galloway?

  Welcome back. Question number three.

• 13:59Speaker 04

  Hey there, Prof G. This is Glenn calling from beautiful Brooklyn, New York. I recently turned 39 and decided to create a pre-40 bucket list as a way to challenge and inspire myself heading into middle age. I'm a senior software engineer and musician, have a decent financial plan fully in motion, and I'm unmarried, although I have a lovely partner, and neither of us are interested in having children. My question for you, Scott, is have you ever created bucket lists, either for a specific milestone like age or simply before death? And do you have any advice for someone like me to set myself up for happiness after 40 that isn't just work and play hard? Love the pods and thank you for taking my question.

• 14:34Scott Galloway?

  Jesus, Glenn, I immediately started searching for something more profound. And the reality is, my only bucket list was really just to be like rich and awesome in that order when I was your age. I grew up not with a ton of stress because I don't, I was never in poverty, but my mom, I was raised by a single immigrant mother who lived and died a secretary, and money was a real issue for us. We were never hungry or anything like that, but it was just... I don't know, I just, just from a very early age, I connected the dots in a capitalist economy. So my only goal, quite frankly, was to have economic security. I did have a goal around meeting somebody. I wanted, I always thought I'd be a really good boyfriend, and I was younger. I didn't have a lot of experience with women. I caught up fast

• 15:17Scott Galloway?

  after, I was kind of a late bloomer sexually and romantically, but I was tall, skinny, with bad skin, so I didn't get a lot of opportunity. And then my skin cleared up, I joined crew, I got ripped, started making some money, and all of a sudden, like, I'm like, wow, this whole, this whole mating thing, or at least practicing the mate is a lot of fun. And I really enjoyed that through my twenties. But I never really had a really solid relationship like you have until I was older. This is kind of an existential question that I think you want to talk to some of your friends about. If you have economic security and you're with a family, or you have a good partner, then the question becomes

• 15:57Scott Galloway?

  more of a, all right, time is going to go really fast. And I'm going to be, you're going to be at the end sooner than you think. I'm, I just had a big birthday. I just turned 50, 60. And I was your age, what felt, 40 to 60 just flies by. And the question is, what will you have wanted to accomplish? Will you want a set of experiences that are extraordinary? Will you want to have established domain expertise around something? Will you want to have helped others? Will you want to be the best in the world at something? Will you want to have, at that point, your parents will probably be older towards the end, have a better relationship with them? Do you really want to explore having a very

• 16:40Scott Galloway?

  deep and meaningful relationship with your spouse and your partner? Do you want to give back? I mean, just sort of sit down and say, work backwards. But it sounds to me like you're tracking. I mean, I'm just, I'm trying to squeeze the shit out of this line called life. And for me, getting to a certain level of economic security, I saw is paramount in that. And that's probably a bit of an overstatement. You can still have an exceptional life without having a crazy amount of money, but you do need a certain level of economic security and it feels like it's there. And then the thing I love and has finally kicked in for me, and it didn't until later in life, but something I get tremendous gratification from is planting trees, the shade of which I will never sit under. And that is getting involved in nonprofits and trying to help and provide time, treasure

• 17:23Scott Galloway?

  and talent to affect change and improve the lives of people who I will never meet. That makes me feel very strong. But these are deeply personal issues I'd work through and I try and limit it to two or three things because once you get beyond two or three things, you know, you forget the first one. And also maybe even work with somebody around this stuff. But my brother, this is the mother of all good problems, the fact that you are thinking this way. 99% of the world's population is trying to figure out how to keep the lights on, pay the rent, make sure their kids are safe, have decent healthcare, put food on the table. So just take stock of your blessings as indicated by that this is a quote, unquote, really, really good problem. Glenn, I appreciate the question.

• 18:06Scott Galloway?

  That's all for this episode. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to [email protected]. Again, that's [email protected].

• 18:23Scott Galloway?

  This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez and Caroline Shageran, and Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prop G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice, as read by George Hawn. And please follow our Prop G Markets Pod wherever you get your pods for new episodes every Monday and Thursday.

• 18:44Speaker 05

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• 18:52Speaker 06

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• 19:14Speaker 07

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