Episode 171: Why the Old Way of Marketing Is Dead (and What to Do Instead) w/ Veronica Romney
The old way of marketing is dead—here’s what works now. In this episode, Veronica Romney reveals how Identity Marketing can help you build a loyal, purpose-driven tribe of buyers in a post-COVID world. Learn why transactional tactics no longer resonate and how to connect with your audience on a deeper level. If you're ready to create meaningful connections that drive business growth, don’t miss this episode!
Harness the Power of Identity Marketing to Transform Your Brand Messagin
Why traditional authority-based marketing no longer works post-pandemic
How changing customer identities impact marketing strategies
The difference between brand identity and identity marketing and why it matters
The four-step framework of Identity Marketing: to define, validate, deepen, and personify your marketable identity
How to use non-negotiables to clarify your brand’s values and connect authentically
Build stronger connections and lasting loyalty with these identity marketing tips: adapt to your customers’ changing identities, test your messaging without wasting resources, and use non-negotiables to show what you stand for. Shift your marketing to focus on who your audience is, and watch your brand resonate like never before—because connecting with people always beats just selling to them.
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Resources Mentioned:
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Connect with Gloria Chou on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/gloriaychou
Join Gloria Chou's PR Community https://www.facebook.com/groups/428633254951941
Follow Veronica Romney on: Website for Identity Marketing: https://identitymarketingbook.com/
Website for Veronica Romney: https://www.veronicaromney.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vromney/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vromney/
Twitter: https://x.com/vromney
YouTube (The Rainmaker Podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@vromney
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Transcript
00:00:00 Gloria: What's up, Small Business Heroes? Welcome back to Small Business PR, where we make marketing and PR super simple for the everyday small business underdog. I'm so excited today because I have my personal friend, Veronica Romney here. I was just singing her praises. We are at a very important juncture in marketing, and she has written a book that is going to change the game for all of us. Now, if you've ever thought, this is not working, my messaging is not working, what is happening? Nothing's working. This episode is for you.
00:00:28 Gloria: Veronica is so many things, but she is an author of her new book, Identity Marketing. She is a host of a spectacular podcast, the Rainmaker Podcast. She is a master marketer, a speaker, all the things, and I'm so excited to have her on. So welcome to the show.
00:00:42 Veronica: Okay. First of all, we're like friends, and so it's weird for you to like intro me all professionally because like she's my girl. And we just like keep it real. But you've always been such a champion for me even before our relationship deepened. So I just have to say thank you so much.
00:00:58 Gloria: When I think about you, I think of two things. I think brilliant and fierce.
00:01:03 Veronica: Well, you actually give me a ton of permission. You're like, get madder, get angry. I'm like, okay, I thought I was. I'll do it harder, then you like, you're always, you love my spiciness. You love when the full Latina comes out.
00:01:15 Gloria: Yes, we gotta have a proper meal where I'm gonna be like, give me all of your hot sauces. Such a sauce girl. So Identity Marketing, we're gonna get into what it is. But you said something that was like, when I came to your event in DC, you're like, there is a reason why the stuff that used to work is not working. There's a reason why people are shutting down their businesses, pivoting. And I want to ask you, why can we not do the same type of messaging that used to work pre-COVID? Why now? Why do we have to change fundamentally the way we think about marketing?
00:01:47 Veronica: Well, it's interesting. So we have the whole chapter about this in the book because I feel like there's a lot of books or online content around rebranding, rebranding, rebranding, but it's always from the perspective of the company who's in the rebrand. So we're usually talking about like, you're rebranding your company, you're doing something different, you're changing up your offer suite, you're positioning yourself a little bit differently. And it's so seller focused. And I'm like, wait, whoa, whoa, everybody slow down. The person who has rebranded themselves that no one is talking about is your buyer.
00:02:25 Veronica: So I get on stage and I say this question because it's true, what happens when your ideal customer avatar doesn't know how ideal they are anymore? And sometimes that happens because of personal strife, trauma, conflict, things like my sister having breast cancer. How I identified and how I prioritize my health radically changed when her identity changed to a cancer fighter, right? Now she's a cancer survivor.
00:02:54 Veronica: So again, I'm watching her metamorphosis and her identity change in her communities and how she sees herself in the world, radically different. So sometimes you are forced into an alternate version of yourself because of circumstances that is called life. But whether that is true or not for you or me independently, what we have collectively gone through is a global pandemic, a stifling political atmosphere, an AI takeover.
00:03:24 Veronica: We as a human being, as a race, have been forced to confront who we are, what we stand for, what we believe in, and certainly how we self-identify, more so in the last collective four years, I think, in the last 15 years of marketing, and it's not slowing down. And so why we have these like beautiful 20-page write-ups of our ideal customer persona, and you could just like light it on fire.
00:03:52 Veronica: Like I recently had Seth Godin on my podcast and I introduced him like he should be introduced. You're a 22-time bestselling author. You're a speaker. You're this. You're all these titles the world has given to you, but how do you identify? And he goes, I'm a teacher. I'm like, well, that's really beautiful. But from a marketing standpoint, I can't target that in Facebook advertising. But that's whose truest identity is I am a teacher, not a speaker, not an author, not an accomplished this, not a this. Like, and I think that's really important. People identify differently than how we advertise to them. And that's the gap that pitch lapping your way into a purchase won't solve anymore.
00:04:34 Gloria: Ooh, that is so good. I want someone, I want, if you're multitasking, here's what Veronica thinks, you know? I think that the era of like authority, like I did this and I'm going to 10X, I mean, you know how I feel about all that.
00:04:46 Veronica: Yes, I do.
00:04:47 Gloria: It's no longer working. And so a lot of people are like, why is authority alone not working and what do we do instead? And that gets to really the crux of the book because you said something so brilliant. You said, it's not about buy this, it's about be this. So can you please tell us what does that mean?
00:05:03 Veronica: Yeah. So Identity Marketing is, defined is connecting your brand so deeply with your consumer's self-concept, how they identify to the point of loyalty that they will actually be buried in your brand. Which is why I give the story of people being buried in Harley Davidson caskets in their riding leathers or the story of Billy who literally taxidermied himself on top of his bike and built a custom plexiglass coffin so that he could literally ride into heaven and the world could watch him do it. It's unbelievable. So he clearly wasn't buried in the ground as a Harley Davidson buyer, one, two, five, six, seven, eight, whatever. He was buried as a hog.
00:05:48 Veronica: That identity was so core to how he showed up in the world, how he wanted to be remembered, how his friends showed up in their riding leathers to see, to wish him well into his next life. And so that's what I mean is like, I think most of our marketing is so outcomes based buy this to have this. And I just feel like we are, and certainly the next generation, like if you watch how Gen Z even uses Pinterest, they're not using Pinterest to do home remodeling projects like we do, like my generation does.
00:06:23 Veronica: They're using Pinterest literally to figure out who they are. Their boards are radically different. They're not project-based, they're identity-based. They're inspiration or mood-based. It's like vision board on vision board on vision board. And so like we as a society, we're smarter. We're more discerning and we are more profound in how we show up in the world. And so our identities and the brands that align with how we identify are the ones that will literally win the race next.
00:06:52 Veronica: Because if you think that you can just harass somebody to pay attention to you and then pressure them into buying from you in a particular moment, by a particular time, that bullshit stops. It's going to stop.
00:07:06 Gloria: And it has. And I think that's why so many people have either shut down their business or realized like something is happening. And so let's get into, I know you have a four-part framework. You give so many brilliant examples. I got a little sneak peek, y'all, so you'll have to buy the book. But the examples Veronica gives in this book, oh my God, so good. So think, walk us through how do we bridge that gap? Because I myself as well have experienced this shift in the last six months. And I've leaned really heavily into what you talk about in the book. So how can other people start to bridge the gap? If they're like, nothing's working, V, how do we get us to work again?
00:07:40 Veronica: Well, nothing's more frustrating to me than learning something or hearing something from someone that's super inspiring, but then I do nothing with it. I don't want this to be a hallucination, like a mirage. I wanted to, if I was going to take the time and energy to write a book, I wanted it to be a how-to for the underdog, for the solopreneur. It wasn't just going to be for Barbie and Taylor and Harley and these big companies that have budgets and fame and history.
00:08:12 Veronica: I really wanted who I see myself to be and who you obviously, who your podcast is literally speaking to. I have your tote, I have two of your totes and I take them everywhere and people love your totes by the way. It's such a great swag. But yeah, I really wanted this book to be so easily accessible and applicable for anyone in any position, even if you are just starting.
00:08:39 Veronica: With that, with that mission and that purpose, I wanted to weave in as many stories and examples as possible. And we do. We give you only four pieces, four steps of a framework so that you can find the identity that is marketable, that you can then validate that, prove that without wasting time and money, that you can then deepen it. And when you say naming a community, it's not gimmicky because that's the last thing I'm going to have anybody do is do a gimmick marketing thing.
00:09:08 Veronica: And then the fourth step is that where we dress it, where the personification of this identity really takes life. So that if your identity, your marketable identity walked into the room symbolically, you would just know. You would know by how they carry themselves, the music they listen to, the space that they invite you to be, to sit with them and the friend group that they're participating with. We wanted this to be something you could literally touch, feel, sense, even if you are not in the business of tangible goods.
00:09:40 Veronica: And so that's the four-part framework that anybody at any size can literally leverage. And we immerse ourselves in some really fun stories in that journey of learning. One of my favorite stories is the story of a $15 an hour intern who had no budget, who was literally trying to break into the non-alcoholic beverage industry which is worth billions and billions, in a larger industry worth trillions, and they are not funded.
00:10:08 Veronica: They don't have investment money. And literally within 60 days, she goes uber viral with this mission to punch above her weight, to stick it to the man. And in that process had 500,000, 600,000 followers, got the attention of Gary Vee. And again, she's a young 20-something year old intern who's getting $15 an hour. So don't tell me that you can't do something either.
00:10:38 Gloria: Oh, so good. What resonated with me when you said that was it's not about benefits, features, or kind of even what you're doing. It's about the mission. And so you talk about this, obviously, in the book, but what are some things that we can do now to get start to get away from that kind of surface level BS and really connect with people in the heart?
00:10:59 Veronica: Yeah. And I want to give credit to this paradigm shift that even I had because I've been a marketer now for, I don't want to age myself because young and beautiful. But I've been doing this for almost 20 effing years. Wow, right? And I think if I reflect on how I was taught marketing, how I've executed marketing, it's very outcomes-based marketing messaging. Really dangle the carrot of what they could have if they buy from you, hit them with the stick from behind so they don't become complacent and they don't purchase.
00:11:35 Veronica: It's a lot of that type of carrot stick pain, pleasure outcome space marketing dressage. I was rereading because I've read this book a couple of times, but I was rereading the book Atomic Habits from James Clear, which is this book, especially right now on the cusp of the new year. It's like everybody's reading New Habits and working out again and prioritizing all of our things.
00:11:59 Veronica: In chapter two, literally from the jump of the book, he makes this argument that the habits that stick are not outcomes-based habits, but identity-based habits. So you don't work out January 1st because you're trying to get fit. If that's the effort trying to obtain this thing, which is very outcome-based, those won't last. Those don't stick and stand the test of time.
00:12:28 Veronica: But if you go work out on January 1st, because you identify as I am a fit person, because I identify as a fit human being, I'm going to eat well, I'm going to move my body, I'm going to basically do things or buy things that affirm and reaffirm who I see myself to be, which is why I will then work out not just January 1st, but June 1st and July 1st and August 1st. And so when I was rereading that chapter personally, I was like, oh my gosh. We've been doing marketing bass-ackwards this whole time.
00:13:02 Veronica: Because we keep having people buy from us to obtain certain outcomes, but not speaking to the core of who they are. And then if we can show them by buying us, it only reaffirms who they are and who they seek to become, that wins the messaging game. 100%.
00:13:18 Gloria: 100%. You give some incredible examples, but I'll give you kind of an example for my own business.
00:13:24 Veronica: Tell Me.
00:13:24 Gloria: Before when I first started, of course, I was brainwashed and I was doing the thing that the five marketing bros told me to do, scarcity, urgency, timers, pain. And then obviously that stopped working. And I realized like, I need to play by my own playbook. What is it? Why am I doing this? And I am for the underdog. So everything about me is about challenging the status quo. And when I lead into that, and actually by the way, when I lean into that was also when my team kind of disintegrated, like I had a CMO, she left, I took back all of my writing.
00:13:54 Gloria: That's when people started working with me again without even, I never even had a launch last year. And so that just proves how powerful identity marketing is. And whoever's listening, I don't care if you make earrings or candles, there is an identity. I think a lot of times people think, well, I'm not an entrepreneur and I make a cell phone case. What do you have to say for people who make a fidget spinner? Why is it so important that they also tap into this?
00:14:18 Veronica: Okay. There's this and I use the Nike example, but it's so much more than Nike. So there is a section of the book called Part Two, The Undeniable Power of Identity Marketing. We give through so many different things that it can do. And one of the things that it does is it makes tangibles, intangibles, ridiculously lucrative, profitable. And so one of the stories that we share, if you've ever seen the movie Air, which is the story of how Nike got Michael Jordan to pick them to produce his basketball shoe over Converse and Adidas and the bigger. I mean, they were known for basketball shoes, not Nike. Nike was a running company still.
00:14:56 Veronica: It's a great movie, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck. And there's a scene at the end of the movie where Matt Damon's giving his big monologue to convince Michael Jordan and his family to pick Nike. And there's this moment where he goes, a shoe is just a shoe until someone steps into it. We don't need you to wear these shoes for you. It's like we need you to wear these shoes so it makes us feel like we are possible. We can fly. And so it's just a really great line. I don't know if I delivered it like a Matt Damon would deliver it, but a shoe is just a shoe until someone steps into it.
00:15:32 Veronica: And so whether you're literally selling fidgets or a tumbler or Swag or this or that, at the end of the day, it's not about the thing. It's about how the thing makes me feel about me. And that's true for car companies. That's true for cosmetics. Like when, I don't have this in the book, but just like thinking out loud, like when Rihanna came out with her beauty line and it had all the skin colors. Like that was a big moment in the makeup industry, in the beauty industry.
00:16:05 Veronica: Pinterest today, you can filter pins by skin color or by your hair texture or by your body shape. And not like the shapes like pear and, you know, what is it, pear, apple, a crap. It's literally, they will pick a picture that feels most authentic to their body shape, not just in a label. And so like we're seeing this evolution. We talk about inclusivity, but it's more than that. It's identity inclusive, not just, you know, over the political, the political angle of being inclusive, which is really sad.
00:16:41 Gloria: Yeah. And I mean, inclusive, but also like what you don't, whatever non-negotiables, and you talk about this in your book. I think a lot of people think inclusive is like everyone's welcome, but you're not a McDonald's, you're not for everyone. But you can be inclusive, but also call out what you're not for. So what are some tips or ways that we can get started to start to lean into?
00:17:01 Veronica: Yeah, there's this, I give credit to Alex Cattoni from Copy Posse. Because she's one of the most brilliant marketers. Her stuff is just ladled. I mean, it's just laden with identity all over it. And one of the things you'll see on her website is non-negotiables, which I think is kind of a reframe. I think a lot of us are used to like company values. And that's nice. And I think if you don't have values, let's start with those. But I just think that non-negotiables are just another level in significance, importance, and also in your marketing. Because you are not for everyone, nor should you be for everyone.
00:17:40 Veronica: For me, I'm like, if you're an unethical marketer, don't touch my book. Please don't. Don't buy it. Don't read it. Don't know. It's really important to me that I'm here and I'm writing this book for the good ones, for the ones that don't want to keep doing by this type of marketing because it already feels lack of integrity and it feels pushy and it feels harassment oriented. I wanted to give a solution to people who are desperate for a different alternative to offering what it is that they do in the world that feels right. So I'm not here for unethical marketers. Thank you very much. I'm here for ethical marketers.
00:18:15 Veronica: And the way that you can do that to discern who I'm here for and more importantly, sometimes, who I'm not here for, like who I'm not here for is these non-negotiables. I worked with a woman in one of my identity marketing intensives, which is like a workshop that we do to help you do the four part process.
00:18:31 Gloria: It's great. I've been to one. I highly recommend it.
00:18:34 Veronica: She helps career powered women by re-engaging with their soul and what it is that they do. Because usually when you're climbing the corporate ladder, you lose your soul. And so she had a kind of a fun take on the riff on this non-negotiable. She's like, non-negotiables, yes, but almost like these are the things we unsubscribe to. We unsubscribe to inequality of pay, inequality of gender, inequality of, you know, so like there's really creative ways that you can do to really like put down in concrete fashion what it is that you stand for and what you will not tolerate, which is the next level of unapologetic marketing too.
00:19:13 Gloria: Ooh, unapologetic. That's my word. I love that so much.
00:19:17 Veronica: Unapologetic.
00:19:18 Gloria: Is there anything else we need to know about, we talked about the urgency, why we need to do this. I mean, if the landscape has not told us already. Anything else that people get wrong when they think about, oh, I need to change my marketing. And they think like it's logos or fonts or website. It's so much more than that.
00:19:35 Veronica: Yeah. And I think I'm glad that you actually brought that up because when, sometimes when you hear the word identity in the context of marketing, you think brand identity. And brand identity is not identity marketing. So let's, I think that's a good thing that we're going to discern.
00:19:50 Veronica: Brand identity, by the way, I'm not saying identity marketing trumps brand identity. I'm saying they're two separate things, so let's not confuse them. And I do think identity marketing should come first before brand identity. So if you're listening to this podcast and you've wrestled with your brand identity, it's because you forgot the identity of the person you're trying to connect with by focusing too much on your own identity.
00:20:12 Veronica: So brand identity is where I, within 100% control, am choosing to differentiate myself externally with gift wrapping, the logo choice, my font choices, my colors, my color scheme. That's you in control of how you want to be portrayed, how you want to control the narrative around your brand. Identity marketing has nothing to do with you. It has to do with the identity of the consumer who buys from you, how they self-identify, what they call themselves, how they literally want to be remembered for time and all eternity like the case of Harley Davidson riders who get buried in hogs, right? In like their hog gear.
00:20:51 Veronica: So identity is internal, brand identity is external effort. And so they work in conjunction with each other. But I would say if you struggle with brand identity, do the work of identity marketing first before you gauge in a brand rebrand.
00:21:07 Gloria: I agree with this because that's something that I've done and then everything just flows from there, your message and everything else is just gift wrap. I think in this day and age, you can get away, I mean, unless you're like e-commerce or beauty, but like the words I think matter more than just everything.
00:21:23 Veronica: Words matter. But also like, again, like I do believe in a personification of a concept. So like, even if I have the most beautiful non-negotiables, I have a beautiful slogan, I have the best marketable name that makes people feel empowered to become like all of that can be true. But there's just something that can't be replicated when you do the work to then elevate it and personify it, when you dress it.
00:21:48 Veronica: So there is something really powerful about really strong visuals and how visuals make you feel, but they can be extremely gimmicky, like what we learned with Jaguar's rebrand in 2024. It's like, what happened? There's certain examples of epic visual failures that were not rooted in deeper messaging and identity like you're talking about.
00:22:10 Gloria: 100%. And in the book, you walk us through exactly how to give it the tangible. And that's really what we want because, you know, I don't have a physical product, but when I walked through, yeah, and both of us went through that exercise because I got a sneak peek and wow, now I have words I want to put on my website. I know exactly the playlist that I'm going to make and it's amazing. So I highly recommend it. This is a non-negotiable for you to buy this book. It is not a long read. I am someone with a short attention span. It fits really nicely in your purse. How can people find it? How can people read this?
00:22:45 Veronica: I'll even give you a little tip that we did that you didn't see us do yet, because this is new, is we even created like a five question quiz that will tell you which chapters to read and which chapters to skip the first time through.
00:22:56 Gloria: You're always over delivering.
00:22:59 Veronica: So not everybody, some people have their marketing dialed in and they need a different thing. Some people are like, I don't know what to do next. Everything's not working. So like we actually created a customized CliffsNotes version of your reading experience so that you didn't have to go through 35,000 words. I'll give you the words. Here's the chapters. Here's the specific stories. Pay close attention. Go and do. So we are trying to be wildly generous and over-deliver to help people not just read a book, but do something with it.
00:23:28 Veronica: You can preorder, you can order, you can hang out with us, you can join us in the Identity Marketing world on identitymarketingbook.com. That is everything that you could possibly need.
00:23:39 Gloria: Such a good website too. I love what you do with it.
00:23:41 Veronica: Thanks. It's so pretty.
00:23:42 Gloria: Yeah. I preordered mine. I cannot wait to get my hands on mine. I got a sneak peek at the chapters, the four-part framework, and it works. So identitymarketingbook.com
00:23:54 Veronica: Yes, ma'am.
00:23:54 Gloria: And how can people find you?
00:23:55 Veronica: Oh, as far as I know, I'm the only Veronica Romney out there. So just hang out with me anywhere. I'm on all the socials as vromney. And it really is actually me. It's not my team. So if you DM me and there's some line in the book that you love the most, or there's something from this conversation that really like touched you, words of affirmation are my love language so DM me, DM me and tell me what like meant something to you. That would mean a lot to me.
00:24:18 Gloria: Awesome. Thank you so much. This was the conversation we used to have this year. And it's non-negotiable. This is conversation that needed to be had. So thank you for providing a solution for our marketing pivot.
00:24:30 Veronica: All day, every day.
00:24:35 Gloria: Hey, small business hero, did you know that you can get featured for free on outlets like Forbes, the New York Times, Marie Claire, PopSugar, and so many more, even if you're not yet launched or if you don't have any connections? That's right. That's why I invite you to watch my PR Secrets Masterclass, where I reveal the exact methods thousands of bootstrapping small businesses use to hack their own PR and go from unknown to being a credible and sought after industry expert.
00:25:02 Gloria: Now, if you want to land your first press feature, get on a podcast, secure a VIP speaking gig, or just reach out to that very intimidating editor, this class will show you exactly how to do it. Register now at gloriachoupr.com/masterclass. That's gloriachou, C-H-O-U, pr.com/masterclass. So you can get featured in 30 days without spending a penny on ads or agencies. Best of all, this is completely free. So get in there and let's get you featured.