I never expected the term “branding” or “brand” to be part of my lexicon, but here we are in 2025 where it seems that “branding yourself” and “what is your brand” are common concepts to discuss. Trying to figure out which version of me will “land” or resonate with not just my “audience”, but anyone.

Iconic brands are something that seem to last forever in our minds. What are some of the iconic brands? Apple. Coca-Cola. IBM. Lego. McDonalds. Doesn’t mean that we even like or use these products. But we for sure recognize those brands.

Another one of those iconic brands is Harley-Davidson. You might not ride a motorcycle, but you know what Harley-Davidson is and what it represents.

But it is not as if Harley-Davidson has been one brand throughout its existence. It has gone through some different iterations of what it is, and how it is seen. But within all of those changes has been a constant of what it was trying to represent.

To explore the brand known as Harley Davidson, we welcome Ken Schmidt to the ExD Studio. Ken originally wanted to be in advertising, but ended up in public and investor relations. His journey in the profession saw him end up as director of communications for Harley-Davidson, where he was involved in the company’s turnaround.

Part of that turnaround involved changing the perception of Harley-Davidson, while also keeping the perception of Harley-Davidson. Harley has been around since 1903. It was doing exclusive production for the military in World War II. When some of those soldiers returned, they wanted to still ride motorcycles. And some of those soldiers had a bit of a hard time re-integrating into polite society. Thus we get groups known as outlaw motorcycle clubs, and movies that imprinted that connection in people’s minds.

Now Harley-Davidson is the motorcycle of a very diverse customer base. You can’t characterize the “Harley rider” other than a person who like comfort, aesthetics, reliability, and yes even noise as part of their riding experience.

We cover a lot of ground in this chat, including voice of the customer, inclusive design, branding and identity, the psychology of choice, and the challenges of changing how you are seen while trying to keep who you are. We also talk about his book “Make some noise: The unconventional road to dominance.”

I will also add that this conversation was before Harley-Davidson publicly announced it would rollback “DEI initiatives,” including partnering with pride festivals and connections with diversity-related groups.

In terms of how it relates to my conversation with Ken, this last paragraph from Harley is definitely relevant:

"We believe having both a broad employee and customer base is good for business and that ultimately everybody should experience the joy of riding a Harley-Davidson. We remain committed to listening to all members of our community as we continue on our journey together as the most desirable motorcycle brand in the world."

Ken Schmidt: https://kenspeaks.com/

Ken Schmidt LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ken-schmidt-5b08115/

"Make Some Noise" book Link

The New Year is a great time to reflect on our past, and to think about what we want to accomplish in the upcoming year. After all, it is the season of the Annual Performance Review!

Whether in our personal or professional lives, it can be hard to identify what is important in terms of our evaluations. How do we know if we are making progress toward our goals?

The same can be true for companies. What are the metrics that indicate our success? What are the expectations we are trying to meet? How do we stack up against others? What are the benchmarks that we think matter, versus the ones that actually matter?

To explore this question and more around customer experience, we welcome Michelle Spaul. Michelle is a customer experience management consultant with her company Delta Swan. Michelle has a wealth of experience in CX, with the simple goal of trying to make things better for customers. As many of you listening will know, behind that simple goal lies a complexity that can challenge most organizations. Therefore, it is a good thing that Michelle has a background in manufacturing systems engineering. We talk about how that education prepared her for working as an experience engineer.

She describes how her work on the price of oil informs her systems approach to CX. We discuss the importance of a shareholder mindset that creates value for not just customers, but all who are impacted by the business.

We explore how her first job with Phillips around preventing customer returns turned into listening to what customers said, and how that is the foundation of any CX work.

Finally, we talk about how there are a lot of different areas of feedback that we can find if we only look. And that if you get defensive about the feedback, you are missing an opportunity to grow.

Michelle Spaul LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelle-spaul-customerexperience/

Customer Experience Management Consultant - https://customerexperienceconsultant.co.uk/

"The Price of Oil" - https://www.amazon.com/VFUU-Price-Oil-Michelle-Spaul-ebook/dp/B01D7CTTEK

One of the ways that I describe experience design, and more specifically for the purposes of this episode customer experience, is by asking people to imagine the worst customer experience that they have had. And unfortunately for all of us, there are a lot of them.

It is probably easy to remember the bad experiences. But what about our best experiences. The times that we felt cared for, appreciated, thought of, where someone did something that made us feel valued.

The job of the experience design and CX profession is, in part, to make the positive experiences common and make the negative experiences exceedingly rare.

There is a lesson in Buddhism "that life is inherently full of suffering and that it's impossible to live without it.” But even though life is full of suffering, that doesn’t mean that our customer experiences have to be.

To talk us through these points, we welcome Valerie Peck to the Experience by Design studios. For those in customer experience, Valerie Peck is a well known thought leader. And for sure Valerie has some thoughts about the state of CX and whether companies really care about customers despite their vocal assurances.

We talk about creating experiences versus pushing products, and how being solely about profit can lead to cutting experiential corners. We discuss whether companies really want to have a relationship with their customers, or just perhaps a passing acquaintance. When companies give customers surveys, do they really want to know what customers think? Or is a survey the best way of doing nothing?

Valerie has thoughts on CX consulting and the challenge of working with clients that don’t get it, and frankly don’t want to. We explore companies like Southwest and Boeing who “got it”, only to lose it in the pursuit of profit at the expense of experience rather than because of it.

Finally, Valerie describes applied customer intelligence, the upcoming CX reckoning, why companies should be more like minor league baseball, and how she helps companies stop abusing their customers so that they come back

Valerie Peck LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/valerie-peck-4b143/