Essential Branding Strategies with Jim Huebner

<p><strong>Lisa Ryan:&nbsp;</strong>Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturer's Network podcast. I'm excited to introduce our guest today, Jim Huebner. Jim is the founder and CEO of Huebner Integrated Marketing, a 33-year-old firm dedicated to helping companies become more relevant to their customers and more profitable. From the world's leading recreational and emergency vehicle manufacturers to specialty baked goods and high-end power equipment makers, the firm has guided dozens of companies to more meaningful positioning, messaging, and relevancy since 1989.</p><p>He recently published his first book, The Irrelevant Old Brand, about why businesses fail and how to avoid becoming irrelevant. So Jim, welcome to the show.</p><p><strong>Jim Huebner:&nbsp;</strong>Thanks. It's an honor to be here.</p><p><strong>Lisa Ryan:&nbsp;</strong>So, share with us a little bit about your background. I know you have an extensive manufacturing background, but how did you get to do what, doing what you're doing?</p><p><strong>Jim Huebner:&nbsp;</strong>Yeah, that's a good question. I always wanted to have my own business. I discovered in college that marketing was going to be it. I had some marketing positions before I started my agency in 1989. And about six years into it, we worked with many local clients, banks, doctor's offices, and insurance companies.</p><p>But they're all local, and we had a large manufacturer in our town. So I got an opportunity to do some work for them. One of their divisions was an RV recreation vehicle division. So it was fun doing marketing for a company that, in a vertical market, was selling products all over the country, even around the world, as opposed to just doing some local things.</p><p>So that was fun for us and more challenging and exciting. And we ended up in the late nineties just focusing on manufacturers in vertical markets selling their products worldwide. And that's all we've done since then. And yeah, that's how we landed in manufacturing.</p><p>Almost all of our clients are m