Welcome to The brndBrief Podcast – where we have candid conversations with industry leaders about business trends, the impact of technology and the secret sauce behind successful brands.
This podcast is powered by brndMethod Media Group.
The Three-Year Rule Behind Building Trust Before the Deal Closes
Most B2B sales cycles push for speed, but Rachel Montague closes deals that sometimes won't happen for three years. As CMO of the oldest Black-owned food service company in the U.S., she runs marketing strategies that couldn't be more different: throwing survey parties for college students while building multi-year relationships with university presidents. This episode reveals why her longest sales cycles produce her best clients, and how treating marketing like medicine changed everything.
Key Takeaways:
Rachel started marketing with zero experience by unlocking competitor files, redesigning proposals like magazines, and teaching herself from Harvard's curriculum after her father said she had "nothing to offer."
She solves the angry-respondent problem by throwing parties where students take surveys for prizes, then uses AI to analyze patterns in the feedback and posts "you asked, we listened" signs for every change implemented.
Her B2B strategy requires starting relationship-building two to three years before a contract expires, positioning as a friend rather than a vendor so clients already know her reputation when RFPs come out.
She studies con artists and scammers to understand psychological patterns in persuasion, goes undercover at her own locations and competitors' businesses, and pays students to be "spies" who report problems directly to her cell phone.
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https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-brndbrief-podcast/id1724388941 (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-brndbrief-podcast/id1724388941)
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Guest Information
Gourmetservicesinc.com (http://Gourmetservicesinc.com)
30 Jul 2026
The Real Cost of Disconnected Marketing Systems (and What to Track Instead)
Marketing leaders say they want visibility into what happens after a lead reaches sales, but most never actually look. Latasia Cox, founder and CMO of Framework Marketing Consulting, breaks down where that fear comes from and why the fix isn't more effort, it's better systems. This episode gets into the real reasons marketing keeps getting treated as expendable, and what to do about it.
Key Takeaways
📌 Marketing leaders often avoid pushing for full visibility into sales handoffs because looking too closely can expose how little organizational support their team actually received.
📌 Latasia names five distinct types of marketing ROI beyond simple attribution, including transformational and efficiency ROI, both of which leadership rarely thinks to measure.
📌 When different platforms report conflicting website or campaign numbers, the answer isn't choosing which one to trust, it's tracking the pattern across all of them.
📌 Trade show spending deserves the same scrutiny as any other line item, starting with clear goals before deciding which shows make the cut.
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🎙️SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST ON APPLE PODCAST
If you enjoyed the episode, don't forget to subscribe, and leave a review. Thanks!
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-brndbrief-podcast/id1724388941 (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-brndbrief-podcast/id1724388941)
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Guest Information
https://www.frameyourmarketing.com/ (https://www.frameyourmarketing.com/)
https://www.linkedin.com/company/framework-marketing-consulting/ (https://www.linkedin.com/company/framework-marketing-consulting/)
23 Jul 2026
How to Build Fan-Led Marketing Without a Big Budget
In this episode of The brndBrief Podcast, guest Kevin Kinghorn, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Portland Trail Blazers, discusses how small-market sports teams navigate budget constraints while building identity-driven fandom. He tackles the the shift from broad awareness campaigns to targeted, values-based marketing that puts the brand in the hands of fans through their "pass the mic" strategy.
The conversation explores why website traffic and other vanity metrics stopped being useful indicators of fan engagement, and how retail data revealed surprising gaps between actual buyers and aspirational brand positioning.
Key points include:
📌 Small-market sports teams face constant budget constraints because costs concentrate in athletic operations rather than scalable infrastructure, requiring focused decisions about where to spend marketing resources based on specific fan segments rather than broad awareness campaigns.
📌 Fan-led marketing works better than traditional influencer partnerships when you prioritize "people of influence" who have authentic audiences in specific communities, then let them tell the story rather than paying them to promote the brand.
📌 Website traffic and passive social metrics can be misleading vanity numbers that don't connect to business impact or accurate audience targeting, making it necessary to combine syndicated research data with first-party behavioral data to measure what actually drives purchase and fandom.
📌 Regional sports networks shifting to direct-to-consumer models creates opportunities to gather detailed viewing data by device and user, enabling sports organizations to tie watch behavior to other fan activities without relying on traditional measurement companies like Nielsen or Comscore.
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🎙️SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST ON APPLE PODCAST
If you enjoyed the episode, don't forget to subscribe, and leave a review. Thanks!
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-brndbrief-podcast/id1724388941 (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-brndbrief-podcast/id1724388941)
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Guest Information
https://www.nba.com/blazers/ (https://www.nba.com/blazers/)
https://www.instagram.com/trailblazers (https://www.instagram.com/trailblazers)
https://www.tiktok.com/@trailblazers?lang=en (https://www.tiktok.com/@trailblazers?lang=en)
https://www.youtube.com/user/portlandtrailblazers (https://www.youtube.com/user/portlandtrailblazers)
https://x.com/trailblazers (https://x.com/trailblazers)
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