Brand while you build, w/Warby Parker’s Neil Blumenthal & Dave Gilboa
Masters of Scale
WaitWhat
4.6 • 4.4K Ratings
🗓️ 8 November 2022
⏱️ 51 minutes
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Summary
Some aspects of your brand will be defined by what customers tell you; others, by what you tell them. In their stories of how they scaled Warby Parker from scrappy e-commerce site to comprehensive eyewear and eye care juggernaut, co-founder and co-CEOs Neil Blumenthal and Dave Gilboa give a master class in how to articulate crystal-clear brand values while also building and iterating based on fast customer feedback. Their lesson? Branding isn’t static. It’s a conversation.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, it's Bob Safian. You've been hearing me as the host of rapid response in this feed for a few years now, |
| 0:07.8 | with short newsy interviews alongside the deeper dives of Masters of Scale. Well, I'm excited to share that rapid response is expanding into its own feed. |
| 0:17.0 | We'll be putting out shows twice a week, focusing on the urgent issues that business leaders are dealing with in real time. |
| 0:24.8 | So search for rapid response in your podcast player and subscribe to make sure you get all our episodes. |
| 0:31.2 | I'll see you on the other side. |
| 0:34.2 | It kind of looks like a penguin, |
| 0:36.6 | almost looks like it's wearing a tuxedo |
| 0:38.5 | from the waist up. |
| 0:47.0 | But then it has this bright pop of blue feet that is really unexpected. And the fact that it lives in the Galapagos Islands means it's kind of worldly. |
| 0:56.6 | It has this kind of quizzical and quirky look to it. That's Dave Gilboa, co-founder and co-co CEO of Warry Parker, and he's describing a distinguished looking marine bird with a somewhat less distinguished name. |
| 1:22.0 | The Blue-footed booby is kind of the unofficial mascot at Orby Parker. |
| 1:28.0 | And the Orby Blue is directly, you know, inspired by these blue feet. That second voice belongs to Neil |
| 1:35.9 | Blumenthal, Dave's co-founder and co- CEO. It was Neil that introduced the blue-footed |
| 1:41.3 | booby to the conversation as he and his co-founders |
| 1:44.4 | first mapped out their plans for selling prescription glasses online. |
| 1:48.9 | We started the business with our other two co-founders, Jeff Rader and Andy Hunt. |
| 1:55.0 | We were in business school and we were trying to articulate the qualities and values and characteristics of the brand that we wanted to build and we spent hours |
| 2:04.6 | upon hours in our apartments with me and Neil Jeff and Andy talking about what we were |
| 2:09.6 | and what we weren't. In these epic brainstorming sessions, the four co-founders obsessed |
| 2:15.4 | internally over the words and images that could represent Warry Parker to the |
| 2:19.6 | world. That's what Neil remembered. The strange bird he'd once seen on a trip to the Galapagos Islands. |
| 2:27.0 | I distinctly remember Neil bringing in an image of a blue-footed booby. |
... |
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