Inside the Studio: Matchstic
A Change of Brand
This episode concludes the 'Inside the Studio' series with a deep dive into Matchstic, a prominent brand consultancy. The hosts and guests d
Key takeaways
- Matchstic avoids industry specialization to apply diverse lessons from various sectors like B2/B, tech, and non-profit to all clients.
- The 'Goldilocks effect' describes the ideal client as being decisive but not domineering, and collaborative rather than committee-driven.
Main topics
- Brand consultancy operations
- Client relationship management
Notable quotes
Clear is kind. Honesty is kindness.
Conclusion
The episode provides a masterclass in the strategic, human-centric app
Transcript preview
Speaker 3 (0:00) Clear is kind. Honesty is kindness. Directness is kindness. Not wrapping up, underselling, or trying to cover up the heart of the story is kindness. You know, to be able to be direct and straightforward and get to your point, whether it's in an internal presentation or an external expression of the brand, is so, so critical. Speaker 2 (0:26) Welcome to A Change of Brand, a show featuring behind-the-scenes stories of rebrand, glory, drama, or disaster. I'm your host, Blake Howard. Speaker 2 (0:42) We just wrapped up season six and are now running a special bonus miniseries going behind the scenes of select studios in the branding industry. Today, we wrap up that miniseries with one that's extra special to me because it's about Matchstick. And as you may know, Matchstick is the producing partner for the show and the brand consultancy that I helped start 22 years ago, which made this interview a little tough to navigate. Usually with interviews like this, I'm a bit of an outsider and I get to ask, you know. obvious no-duh questions or outsider questions, but now I'm in it. It's almost like interviewing yourself. It's like cutting your own hair or breathing your own exhaust, just a little too close to it. But hey, I did my best to stay objective and curious. You'll get to hear from two people that I deeply admire and know pretty well. We've worked in the trenches together on countless projects, and this conversation felt more like a team meeting that we just happened to record. However, I think it'll give you some good insights into our world. Before we get started, let me do some quick intros. You will hear from Britt Blankenship, a Matchstick veteran of 11 years and one of our creative directors. She's led branding work with UPS, Publix, Human Rights First, Atlanta Humane Society, and many more. Also, you'll hear from Cameron Liebrecht, our messaging director. He is our verbal guru, you could say, and leads a team of writers. He has recently created brand voice and verbal identities for CBS, Yale. Tiger Woods Foundation, and many, many more. They are two core leaders at Matchstick that are brilliant, and it was a joy to record a conversation together. We get into what makes an ideal client, the mantras we find ourselves repeating and saying over and over, and how AI is or is not impacting our work. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did. Speaker 1 (2:30) Hi, everyone. I'm Britt Blankenship, one of the creative directors at Matchstick, and my background is in design. So how I got into branding, I was majoring in magazine journalism, and though I loved all of the interviews and the stories, I wanted to do more of the graphic design part of it. So I added a new major, and then while I was in school, I learned what branding was and knew immediately. That that storytelling, that design, that conceptualizing, putting it all together, it's what I wanted to do. Speaker 3 (3:01) Cam Wiebrecht, messaging director at Matchstick. Geez, how did I get here? I kind of fell into it. I was an international business history double major. Had an internship in the international business world. Hated it. And found myself senior year looking for something else, anything else. So I actually showed up to the school career center, saw a presentation from the good folks at Landor. for their work on the 606, which is the old L tracks in Chicago that have been converted into a running trail that connects the neighborhood. And that for me was sort of a breakthrough moment of branding is a thing, something I think I might be able to do. And man, is it cool. So from there, that's kind of took off. Yeah, so after that wrong internship, I took another internship with an advertising and brand agency VSA partners in Chicago. Loved it. Lucky enough to get a full-time offer. Spent five, six years there doing all kinds of advertising, brand, marketing work, and found myself loving brand. And I knew that my next stop, I wanted to go somewhere a little bit more focused on brand, a little bit smaller, not two, three hundred, not a thousand people, but more like 30, 40, 50. And Matchstick was the sweet spot for that. So saw the brand work, really admired it, knew it was something I wanted to be a part of, and been here ever since. Cool. Britt, what about you? Speaker 1 (4:18) So I was working at a full service agency and we were doing some campaigns and we had to kind of rethink the same campaign each year. And I said, well, I would be handed the brand guidelines, the identity guidelines or the standards manual and pour over it. And I remember asking my mentor there, who makes those? I really want to do that. And he's like, I knew it. You need to go into branding. You probably don't want to be full service. I took my first gig, kind of full-time gig at another branding agency in Atlanta. And credit to you, Blake, and your relationships in the city. They knew of you and had a great relationship with you. And so when my time there was ending, they helped tell me about Matchstick and the opportunity that was open there. And I've been here for, I want to say almost 12 years now. So it's been a minute. At Speaker 2 (5:12) some point you lose track. I have lost Speaker 1 (5:14) track, yes. Speaker 2 (5:15) And fun fact about Britt, her interview at Matchstick was on a very infamous day in our city. It's referred to as snowpocalypse. So as she was interviewing, it was starting to snow outside. And it was like, okay, we should probably wrap this interview up and you should probably go home because it's a little risky. And little did we know that like a few hours later, the whole city would just be like ice locked for a week. So yeah, fun, fun memory. I've been asking this question in this series around studios and like what they really focus on, because we know that agencies out there, maybe they have full capabilities or they offer a lot of things or their websites will list a lot of services. But we kind of have a belief that you can really only be good at one thing. And so I've been asking different groups, what is it that's your real sweet spot? And even though this is sort of, you know. It's a family conversation that's being recorded for everyone to listen in on since we work closely together. I'm curious, you know, what do you think is Matchstick's real sweet spot? Speaker 3 (6:19) Yeah, it's a little counterintuitive. And this is, I guess, my zag. I like that we have a sweet spot in terms of what we want to do, but no sweet spot in terms of who we do it for. You know, we don't have an industry specialization. When new business opportunities come around, we don't always feed the same industry, the same type of project to folks to show them what we can do. Because we are working in so many spaces, different fields, nonprofit, media, B2B, tech, we're able to take those lessons from the branding process in those areas and apply them sort of outside of the industry in a way that makes that work feel fresh, feel exciting. This, I think, focus on branding, but refusal to commit to one specific industry or style or have a house style at all is something that makes Matchstick really special, at least from my perspective. Speaker 1 (7:11) I totally agree, Cam. I think coming to Matchstick, I felt this immediately. This idea that branding is an opportunity to dig into new worlds that you wouldn't otherwise know about. You get to have a lot of curiosity and learn so much about. other kinds of businesses and industries and team structures and business problems and design problems and storytelling problems. And I found it fascinating to be working on a project in one industry and then switch gears two weeks later and have to do a deep dive in a different industry. And I think the ability to spot trends and problems across industries is a great value that we bring to our clients. Speaker 2 (7:54) Yeah. There was one day where... We were in meetings with a global irrigation company, with a national trampoline franchise, and then also a humanitarian global nonprofit. Like three meetings, three clients, one day. And I think that's a good snapshot of the variety of the type of work that we'll often do. Speaker 3 (8:16) Yeah, I mean, not to circle back too far, but I think that's... One of the things that keeps me in the business and keeps me at match day, because I like to say I know a little bit about everything. It kind of fits with my personality. I'm a little bit of an eavesdropper, sorry, whisper around me. I love to get on Wikipedia and I'm like 10 clicks, 20 clicks deep through links before I know where I found myself or where I'm headed. And that's kind of what branding is like, right? You learn a little bit about all these different businesses, all these different corners of the world, things that make the world go round that you didn't know about. And then you can take those lessons and apply them somewhere else, or you can just file them away in their great party trivia. I Speaker 1 (8:53) think this also creates a challenge, and perhaps all of us here are excited by a challenge, and that is how do we serve clients, even small and large? Like, where are they in their journey as an organization? Are they, you know, in a fundraising round, a Series A round? Are they a global brand? And we serve both. thinking about being a consultancy that can tailor and that cares deeply about quality, but we don't always have the timeline or budget for an enterprise organization at our disposal. So I think the challenge is how do we serve each group as best as we possibly can with their personalities, with their problems, and then ultimately with the package that they can afford and that they need. Speaker 2 (9:38) Yeah, and that's a good transition to talk about clients because, you know, at the end of the day, we are... working on behalf of our clients to help them accomplish certain business goals. We do that through the expertise of brand identity and our ability to consult kind of through that identity process and really help them maximize the value of their brand as an asset. But sometimes for us, we have clients where that really works well and it's like a great fit and they see a huge return. And then there are other times where it's just a little bit more difficult. What would you all say make, what are the qualities that make an ideal client? Speaker 1 (10:16) That's a great question. I love when our clients ask us this. I think trust is a really important factor. If a client has hired us, you know, I'd like to hope that there's a lot of trust in us and that they believe deeply in our expertise. And I find that most of ours do. They understand that we're the experts in branding, but they are the experts in their field and with their particular audience. So putting those two things together with a healthy amount of tension and collaboration can work really well and can create something great. So collaboration, enthusiasm, interest, buying into the process, making the time to really work with us versus just lobbing the problem over the fence to us and hoping that, you know, when they see it, they know it. But getting in there with us, I find that those are the best relationships that we would have. Speaker 2 (11:08) Yeah, there's a little bit of, I heard this recently and I really liked it, the Goldilocks effect. And there's like this balance between really decisive, but not domineering. You know, so it's like they're able to make decisions, but they're also able to trust us at the same time. Sometimes people can be so decisive that they just take the reins and they want to tell everyone what to do and sort of dominate the whole thing. That's not really a great fit for us. But then others cannot be decisive and they want to sort of socialize and get feedback and let large committees. Our team's laughing a lot. Large committees to review it. And and then you're like, OK, guys, you know, we got to we got to make some decisions here. You know, like we're not going to pull 35 people to see if they're OK with the whole brand identity being purple. Like that's not ever going to work right.