Speaker 1: At Four Pillars Gin, they have a mantra. They're makers,
Speaker 1: not marketers. Ironically, they have some of the best marketing
Speaker 1: in the world, but it's all about function. According to
Speaker 1: co founder and brand director Matt Jones, if being makers
Speaker 1: is such a big part of the Four Pillars appeal,
Speaker 1: customers need to get as close to that making process
Speaker 1: as they can, and that's what esthetics is all about.
Speaker 1: So how do you get an entire company obsessing over
Speaker 1: what things look like? My name is doctor amanthe Immer.
Speaker 1: I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder of behavioral science
Speaker 1: consultancy Inventium, and this is how I work a show
Speaker 1: about how to help you do your best work. On
Speaker 1: today's My Favorite Tip episode, we go back to an
Speaker 1: interview from the past and I pick out my favorite
Speaker 1: tip from the interview. In today's show, I speak with
Speaker 1: Matt Jones about what esthetics means to him and how
Speaker 1: he infuses it into everything about the Four Pillars brand.
Speaker 2: It's a great question and it is going to reveal
Speaker 2: what a hypocrite having said that we're making marketers. I'm
Speaker 2: going to talk about a key piece of marketing, which
Speaker 2: is sort of design and imagery and esthetics and all
Speaker 2: those things. Look, the logic is pretty straightforward, and you're right,
Speaker 2: I do think it is. It is something that people
Speaker 2: consistently undervalue and underinvest in. And I'll tell you why
Speaker 2: in the second but I'll first of all, i'll tell
Speaker 2: you why I think it's important for Four Pillars. The
Speaker 2: logic is pretty straightforward. If we are makers not marketers,
Speaker 2: or or to put it another way, if we are
Speaker 2: makers first and only then are we're marketers. Then the
Speaker 2: thought process was that the best way to get people
Speaker 2: to appreciate what we're making is to get them as
Speaker 2: close as we can to the process of making gin.
Speaker 2: It's sort of the opposite of you know the old
Speaker 2: cliche about if you ever saw a butcher maker sausage,
Speaker 2: you never read a sausage again. Well, we want people
Speaker 2: to see the sausage being made. We want people to
Speaker 2: get up close and personal with the craft of making gin,
Speaker 2: because if they do, they'll realize just had differentiated, just
Speaker 2: have fantastic. The way that Cameron and the team at
Speaker 2: Four Pillars Distillery and Heels will make gin is but
Speaker 2: you can't force everyone, especially as you grow, as you
Speaker 2: grow beyond that hardcore early adopter audience, and you start
Speaker 2: to reach a more mainstream consumer. You know, albeit it's
Speaker 2: a mainstream consumer who can afford to spend eighty ninety
Speaker 2: bucks on a bottle of gin, But nonetheless they're not
Speaker 2: that hardcore early adopter audience. You're growing into a more
Speaker 2: of a mainstream audience. You can't force all of them
Speaker 2: to care as much as you do about the craft,
Speaker 2: about the attention to detail, but what you can do
Speaker 2: is lay down clues, is give them a sense of
Speaker 2: the craft, a sense of the attention to detail, a
Speaker 2: sense of how much you care about everything you do.
Speaker 2: And one of the ways that we can do that
Speaker 2: is with the attention to detail. We apply to other
Speaker 2: areas to design, to print, to photography, imagery, aesthetics, film,
Speaker 2: always making sure that what's coming through is this sense
Speaker 2: of care, this sense of quality, this sense of craft.
Speaker 2: The second way it's really really important. I think that
Speaker 2: this sense of aesthetics is we are in a fundamentally
Speaker 2: sensory business. We're in an irrational business.
Speaker 1: We're in a.
Speaker 2: Business of people feeling good, not just about the flavor
Speaker 2: of the drink they make, the flavor of the gin
Speaker 2: they taste, but the process of making it the sense
Speaker 2: of they're taking care of themselves, they're treating themselves. There's
Speaker 2: a specialness to it. And so if we want to
Speaker 2: sort of evoke those feelings and those emotions and those associations,
Speaker 2: then we can't just let the liquid do the heavy lifting.
Speaker 2: We've got to help it. We've got to help it
Speaker 2: with the qual the packaging, the quality of the imagery,
Speaker 2: the photography. Again, so for all those reasons, both the
Speaker 2: way that we are conveying our craft values, the way
Speaker 2: that we're communicating something really important and inherent four pillars,
Speaker 2: which is that attend to detail, but also the way
Speaker 2: that we're trying to evoke those same emotions, those same
Speaker 2: sensory cues that we want the liquid and the drink
Speaker 2: to For all those reasons, it's really really important to us.
Speaker 1: And how do you do that though? In terms of
Speaker 1: having this really high standard with aesthetics? I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it's one thing to have brand guidelines that are followed
Speaker 1: by everyone that works on visual aspects of the brand,
Speaker 1: but like, how do you like uphold this really high
Speaker 1: standard to have everything be you know, so aesthetically like
Speaker 1: pleasing and beautiful.
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, it's nice to hear you say that. Secondly,
Speaker 2: I guess there's different ways into that answer. You know,
Speaker 2: one is how do you do it mechanically? Or you've
Speaker 2: got to work with good people. And that's not just
Speaker 2: about having people in the business with a great eye,
Speaker 2: great understanding of how the brand should show up in
Speaker 2: the world, great attention to detail. But not everyone has
Speaker 2: that in their business, and that's okay. You've got to
Speaker 2: have great partners. We work with phenomenal photographers, stylists. We've
Speaker 2: got an incredible design and content agency, people I've been
Speaker 2: working with for more than a decade now, who we
Speaker 2: trust with our brand's life. But a different way to
Speaker 2: answer that question is you've got to value it. You've
Speaker 2: got to allocate both budget and time and attention to that.
Speaker 2: You've got to not allow good enough to be good enough.
Speaker 2: And I think this goes to it's kind of bigger
Speaker 2: conversation about understanding what are the things that are going
Speaker 2: to move the needle for your business and move the
Speaker 2: needle for your brand, and making sure that having identified
Speaker 2: those things, you invest appropriately in them and you don't
Speaker 2: underinvest in them. Because we are all enormously constrained aren't
Speaker 2: we in terms of not just the budgets we've got,
Speaker 2: but the time we have, the emotional energy we have.
Speaker 2: And it's very easy to allow something to get to
Speaker 2: a point of good enough, that sense of that will do,
Speaker 2: and to go, oh, thank goodness, that's another thing ticked
Speaker 2: off the list, and in some areas that will be
Speaker 2: good enough for your business. But if these are things
Speaker 2: that are going to help to define your business, to
Speaker 2: differentiate your brand, then good enough is not going to
Speaker 2: cut it. And so for us, the decision early on
Speaker 2: was if Cameron, who's one of my co founders, was
Speaker 2: going to make the best gin in the world, and
Speaker 2: stew the third co founder, was going to go and
Speaker 2: tell the best stories in the world and go and
Speaker 2: knock down doors and do all the amazing stuff he
Speaker 2: does building relationships. One of the contributions I could make
Speaker 2: from a brand point of view was to make sure
Speaker 2: that every touch point of that liquid and that story
Speaker 2: was as good as it could be and working as
Speaker 2: hard as it could And that is an exhausting effort.
Speaker 2: That is a decision that you make to not let
Speaker 2: things slide past you that clearly could be better, and
Speaker 2: to surround yourself with people who when you sort of
Speaker 2: run out of a little bit of energy and go, oh,
Speaker 2: I don't know, I think maybe that design's good enough,
Speaker 2: they go, I don't think it is. I think we
Speaker 2: need to push again.
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed this excerpt from my chat with Matt,
Speaker 1: you might want to go back and listen to the
Speaker 1: full episode, which you can find a link to in
Speaker 1: the show notes. If you're looking for more tips to
Speaker 1: improve the way that you work, I write a short
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Speaker 1: that helped me work better, ranging from software and gadgets
Speaker 1: that I'm loving through the interesting research findings. You can
Speaker 1: sign up for that at Howiwork dot co. That's how
Speaker 1: I Work dot co. Thank you for sharing part of
Speaker 1: your day with me by listening to How I Work.
Speaker 1: If you're keen for more tips on how to work better,
Speaker 1: connect with me via LinkedIn or Instagram. I'm very easy
Speaker 1: to find. Just search for Amantha Imba. How I Work
Speaker 1: was recorded on the traditional land of the Warrangery people,
Speaker 1: part of the Koln Nation. I am so grateful for
Speaker 1: being able to work and live on this beautiful land,
Speaker 1: and I want to pay my respects to elders past,
Speaker 1: present and emerging. How I work is produced by inventing
Speaker 1: with production support from Dead Set Studios, and thank you
Speaker 1: to Martin Nimba who did the audio mix and makes
Speaker 1: everything sound better than it would have otherwise