Gair Maxwell is a global authority for helping organizations create iconic brands that attract legions of customers and top talent – without having to resort to using any “pushy” marketing tactics. The trickle-down impact on any company, community or career can be enormous. Some organizations have achieved 15-20X financial growth while becoming a much desired “Category of One”.
Gair’s riveting keynote presentations are packed with real-life stories and benefit from his many decades of in-the-trenches business experience. Scores of event planners rave about his innate gift for simplifying complex ideas into easily digestible bites that any audience can implement right away.
Gair delivers electrifying interactive keynotes and workshops inspiring everyday people to punch above their weight class and build the kind of brand with top talent and customers seeking them out. He has presented his business strategies on stages, touring in 33 US states, 10 Canadian provinces, the UK, Europe, Mexico and Latin America.
Gair has worked with some of the world’s most dynamic organizations, including Apple Specialist Marketing Group, Caterpillar, NAPA and Virginia Tech. Gair has shared conference stages with some of the biggest business icons such as Richard Branson and Gene Simmons, delivering 80-90 presentations every year with global representation from speaker bureaus in Canada and Mexico.
You are considered a global authority on the iconic creation of “Larger than Life” brands. Share your background.
Once upon a time back in 2002, a recovering broadcast journalist (that would be me) met a soft-spoken small business owner named Jim with 5 employees, selling an interchangeable product in a highly competitive category. Without any inkling of what was about to unfold, Jim and I embarked on a journey to create a brand identity uniquely his own. Four years later we learned how the power of a single story can drive an entire business and brand strategy. We started with 30-second radio spots that never talked about price, product or promotion. Instead, we told tales of “Canada’s Huggable Car Dealer” and before long, complete strangers were coming up to Jim asking for a hug. The brand really took off when Jim and his wife Dawna adorned the dealership with hundreds of teddy bears, mascots, merry-go-rounds and dozens of other little things that bring the “huggable” story to life. In other words, if Walt Disney himself was to envision a used car lot, it’s located for real in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Over time, Jim and Dawna’s business has grown to become top performing dealership in all 4 Atlantic Canadian provinces with 38 employees and north of $50 million dollars in revenue. They also happen to be the #1 Kawasaki dealership in all of Canada after entering the power sports market in 2018. As you can imagine, this small dealership has proven to be an incredible real-life laboratory to study the power of a single story to dramatically alter buyer behaviour in your favor – no matter what category you compete in.
What is the strength of any brand?
Brand strength can be boiled down to two words. Differentiation + Relevance Whether it’s drug stores or power drills, they all tend to be the same. Go through any city or town and you see how the contractors, consultants, landscapers and lawyers all blend in as opposed to stand apart.
If a brand like NIKE, Ferrari or Patagonia was to get into the hotel business for example, those lodgings would be clearly differentiated from all the other cookie-cutter hotels in town. It would be something you could feel the moment you walk in. Since we all compete in the Attention Economy, creating an undeniably original brand is essential for any business that wants to get noticed and rise above the noise. When you marry a highly distinctive and differentiated brand identity with the strategic use of relevant social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and others, it allows you to pull away from everyone else in your space. If this strategy has been working for Jim Gilbert for 16 years, it can work for anyone.
How are you helping brands to be undisputed and unrivaled “Category of One?”
It all begins with the leader. The person at the top of any company or organization who demonstrates four qualities. Curiosity. Courage. Vision. Initiative. A leader like B.J. Werzyn at West Shore Home who is on a mission to become America’s Most Admired Home Improvement Company. After meeting Werzyn and his leadership team in 2018, it was clear they were hungry to discover something much bigger than marketing as it’s been taught and applied for decades. At the most basic level, you can’t create any legend without a story and in the case of West Shore Home, they have created one of the great Destination Employer brands anywhere in the world. They’ve grown from 130 employees and $40 million in revenues to a company of 1700+ and north of $500 million in three short years simply because the leader recognizes the explosive power of storytelling. After working in a wide variety of categories, B2B, B2C, non-profit and everything in between, we can boil the ocean on this one, it’s about helping leadership teams discover, tell and more importantly, live their own story. Building a larger-than-life legendary brand never happens because of the features, advantages and benefits of a product or service. People don’t live up by the thousands to see one Da Vinci painting at the Louvre, book tee times a year in advance at the Old Course in St. Andrews or be the first on their block to get the latest Apple product because of a USP. Top-notch customer service and operational excellence are certainly necessary, but those are not the factors that turn customers into raving fans and brand ambassadors or make trades people want to join the team at West Shore Home.
The discipline of long-term brand building demands an exceptional level of visionary leadership, like a Steve Jobs, Jim Gilbert or B.J. Werzyn who can see beyond the functional aspects of any product or service and instead create a brand that speaks almost at a soul level for a willing audience craving something more meaningful than just another transaction or a paycheck.
Gair Maxwell is a brand historian like no other. He digs deep, goes under the hood, finds out what makes brands tick and shares insights any business can use to create their own legendary brand.
Clay Hebert, Crowdfunding Hacks – San Diego
Thank you for your energy, depth of thought behind your material and the concrete steps to get started on the journey to be a media company, not a __________ company.
Newell Holt, Vistage Chair – West Palm Beach FL
What is your philosophy in life?
It starts with what I learned from my parents. Mom taught us that “there is no such word as CAN’T”. To this day, I despise that word and everything it represents, especially since brand-building is nowhere near as difficult as splitting atoms like Einstein, charging the beaches of Normandy like the Allied armies on D-Day or mastering golf like Bobby Jones or Tiger Woods. As the son of a former pro golfer, I also fervently believe in the concept of the “Authentic Swing”, a term coined by the brilliant author Steven Pressfield and his fascinating novel, The Legend of Bagger Vance. At the core, as Pressfield explains it, the Authentic Swing is a metaphor for our True Self or True Identity. Even if you have never picked up a golf club, we all have our own Authentic Swing. It’s as unique as a Thumbprint, Snowflake or Signature. You can see it in the eyes of non-golfers such as pianists, pilots or plumbers doing what they were born to do. I’ve always believed that you should follow what you were born to do, but only later in life did this amateur historian make the connection between journalistic skills I developed as a reporter and how they align with what I do now. In other words, the Authentic Swing is simply a way of describing how to be the best version of yourself and not a second-rate version of someone else.
Tell us about your book, BIG LITTLE LEGENDS.
Years ago on a visit to Paris, France, I started picturing the Louvre as something other than a museum. I started wondering, “what if this museum is a metaphor for the open market where 35,000+ pieces are clamoring for the attention of the visiting public? With more than 10 million people a year visiting that museum it seemed only logical to ask the ultimate “What If” question, as in what if there are intangible, magnetic forces from the enduring appeal of Legends that can positively influence buyer behavior in anyone’s favor? Could that knowledge tilt the playing field to your advantage with your marketing and brand-building efforts? The book represents more than 4 years of dedicated writing and research that illustrates how any small to medium sized organization can magnetically attracts legions of followers by representing an idea bigger than themselves while earning enormous amounts of public acclaim and prosperity.
Through a dozen chapters, the book pinpoints the precise moment in time when the various legends were created and common principles they share. Beginning with the astonishing true story of Da Vinci’s masterpiece that hangs in Paris, the reader is swept away on a real-life journey that eventually circles back to the Home of Golf at St. Andrews, Scotland all while discovering universal brand-building secrets known to very few.
Share key elements of your book.
Besides the 3 key takeaways from each of the 12 chapters, hundreds of readers have been posting and sending private messages how they love the incredible relatable examples that make success seem attainable. Whether it’s the behind-the- scenes story of Dollar Shave Club or unearthing the connection between Jack Daniels and the original influencer Frank Sinatra, history lovers are swooning over this book. Throughout the book readers discover how any Big Little Legend builds a positive public reputation beyond their local area code that triggers a powerful word-of-mouth avalanche with a brand story that gets told and re-told. Those are the key ingredients that lead to establishing longevity and long-term prosperity like Café du Monde in New Orleans, Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle or Webers on Highway 11 in Ontario. One reader from Saskatchewan described it best when he compared Big Little Legends to those iconic double albums such as The Wall by Pink Floyd, and Tommy by The Who, that had to be listened to front to back to get the full story. Since albums of that magnitude are never listened to just once, our readership is saying much the same thing; it’s a book that holds up to repeated listening or reading many times over.
What is your key to success?
Success is a very personal question because everyone has a different definition of what that means for them. For me, any level of professional success I have experienced can be attributed to the two unsexist words in the business vocabulary. Consistency and Repetition. I’ve written well over 1,000 blogs and done over 500 videos because of those two factors. Consistency and repetition is what gets you recognized as the person who keeps showing up.
“Follow your passion”, “Believe in your dreams” and “Never give up” are motivational fluff. From where I sit, the secret to long-term success is just keep showing up – especially when you don’t feel like it. When everybody else drops out during the tough times, consistency and repetition allows you to keep showing up. No one can make it to the top on talent alone, but consistency gets you noticed as being reliable and trustworthy. Repetition is the sturdy Ford motor of learning. Repetition is the finely tuned Ferrari engine of mastery. Those two factors, more than anything, are crucial if you want to stand apart from the crowd.
Plus it helps to wake up and re-enter the gratitude zone each and every morning and feel deep appreciation for your family and loved ones. No one achieves success entirely on their own, which is why you’ve always got to appreciate those around you who help make the dream happen. Dad set a great example with his work ethic, but none of this would have been possible without Dana and the support she has provided every step of the way. Our media partner, Josh Parlee of Defiant Astronaut has also been instrumental in ramping up our on-line video content and all three of us believe we’re still just getting started with Big Little Legends and all possibilities that are flowing from this little black book with the magical cover. Like this interview with you! Thanks so much for allowing me to share with your readers how one well-told story can literally tilt the playing field in your favor and turn your world upside down for the better.
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