How Gary Vee, Forbes & HubSpot Are Leveraging Other Brands To Build Their Own

And How You Can Use The Same Tactic To Crush It in 2018/9

Ragnar
Ragnar
Sep 3, 2018 · 7 min read

In 2018 the sheer volume of competition… content… noise is insurmountable .

Most people and companies are having massive difficulty to stand out and establish their brands, or even to keep growing one.

How do you make it as a new name?

How do you establish a brand, and keep it relevant in 2018?

That’s what exactly what we’ll learn from Gary Vee, Forbes, and HubSpot,

Gary Vee, who’s managed to establish himself as a leader in the noisiest space of all; business/life advice.

Forbes, who’s still going strong in spite of many traditional magazines rolling over in face of the digital revolution.

HubSpot, that carved out a market in the ridiculously competitive CRM space with competitors like multi-billion dollar SalesForce.

3 players in the game that are fighting tooth and nail to expand and keep their brands relevant in the current landscape.

Today I’ll give you a closer look at how they leverage other people and companies’ brands and IP to build their own brands and platforms.

How Is Gary Vee Doing It?

Gary Vaynerchuk is a master of leveraging other people’s brands and platforms to build his own.

Someone who is doing it with disproportionate success.

Not only is he constantly doing guest appearances, keynotes and even on a TV show with other celebs(benefiting from their IP, as well as the TV station, which just happens to be Apple TV, no less), if you look at the people he brings on his shows and plasters on his social media, he routinely features artists and people where he feels there’s an overlap in their natural audiences.

(F.ex. rappers that rap about he grind, and making it, much like much of his YT content.)

Or tying his name closely to a sports team in a major city.

A die-hard jets fan, and definitely not shy about it, he uses his open support to connect further with jets fans.

Or milking the IP of other famous content creators through appearing on their show and repurposing the content later.

Here he is leveraging an appearance on the JRE podcast from years ago, using Joe Rogan to build further rapport with people who are fans of both.

While he posts mountains upon mountains of his own unique content weekly on every single platform, he also sneaks in collabs as well.

In the above example, not only is collaborating with Casey Neistat who has a huge audience himself, he’s also leveraging the IP of the idea that college is no longer worth it.

Gary as a self-labeled “trader of attention” prides himself on his ability to leverage IP, and the way he does it with brands is just one example.

Another interesting thing is that he uses it the other way as well.

He leverages his own personal brand in almost everything he does. (Hint: Vaynermedia, Garyvee Wine Project etc.)

Even for his investments. (Always fairly public/vocal as an investor.)

But that’s a topic for another post…

Next up:

Ever Heard of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 List?

Any familiar faces on there?

Perhaps Canelo, perhaps boxing’s biggest active fight at the moment, the guy tipped to follow up Mayweather’s popularity?

Forbes 30 under 30 is a perfect mix of leveraging other people’s brands and even getting influencer marketing done for free!

If you need any confirmation that it’s working for them, look how many resources they are putting into the 30 under 30 this year.

With 23 different categories, it’s less “30 under 30” and more.. “690 under 30” (probably, I’m not a mathematician.)

Each category has their own editors, leading to whole lot of work… which means that it obviously pays off.

(As we’re no longer in the age where publications have a lot of money to waste on things that don’t work.)

Take a look at some of the results from last year on BuzzSumo:

More than 100,000 shares on articles with the Forbes brand in the title, that they didn’t post, just from looking at the top 10 results.

I’m just going to go ahead and guess that they’re probably not too upset about that.

The kicker is that 30 under 30 is completely built upon the brands and identities of others.

If nobody cared about the people on the list, it would have never become a thing.

And now it has become a phenomenon, a pop culture idea/trope that spans the globe.

Nothing I can do except give props where props are due.

How Is HubSpot Doing It?

In 2018 the sheer volume of competition… content… noise is insurmountable for most people and companies to start out, or even to keep growing.

One brand that succeeded in growing in a completely crowded market, with possibly as much noise as there is in any, is HubSpot.

Ever heard of.. Salesforce?

Those are the types of companies that HubSpot decided to set out against long term.

In 2018, with people reading about marketing on Medium, I doubt that there’s too many of you who haven’t at least heard HubSpot mentioned in passing, (or even read their blog, used their software), so it’s safe to say they’ve managed to do something right.

So in terms of a company building a brand online, they are a good company to keep tabs on.

Which is exactly what I’ve been doing, and I noticed one thing in particular that everybody can instantly implement in their marketing strategy.

You see, all of the Hubspot ads/sponsored posts that popped up in my feed lately, all followed a trend.

They were featuring a company, a celebrity, a movie… an existing brand left, right, and center.

Here they are using Neil Degrasse Tyson, presumably targeting an audience that has interests in both science and marketing.
Here they’re leveraging Cardi B’s brand, probably targeting fans/people who like hip hop among their followers.
Here they’re even borrowing the IP of the movie “you’ve got mail” to do a breakdown of what’s changed on the internet since.

Even the movie “You’ve Got Mail” itself latched onto the brand/meme of email and the internet coming into it’s own.

HubSpot latches onto these brands in a creative way, discerning marketing lessons from pop icons, to scientists, to movies.

How Can You Do The Same?

Unlike a lot of things in branding/marketing, this idea is incredibly straight forward, and fairly easy to start implementing.

And, to makes things even better, this idea is so powerful, in fact, that a lot of magazines/websites have been able to take the Forbes 30 under 30 idea, and just plug it into their own business, with good results.

Like 24/7 sports, who got mentioned by multiple college football team’s official twitter accounts.

Attention from exactly the kind of audience they want to reach.

But you might be thinking:

“These kinds of things probably work really well when you’ve already got an established brand, but what is something I can do now, with no following, to start building my own brand/platform? How can the little guy use this tactic?

Good question.

And there are lots of good examples that answers your question all over the internet, and even right here on medium.

The post below, is a good example.

This guy is not holding back.

Mentions Gary Vee, 2 companies with well established brands, including one in his industry, and even references a book/meme Gary Vee created.

All jokes (and deja vu moment) aside, in the age of Medium, WordPress, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc, there’s not a shortage of free platforms out there to make your shot.

Basically, this is the simplest strategy there is.

Did you learn something from a famous person/company?

Share it.

If you haven’t, study/reach out to them, and then share it.

Pretty simple.

A slightly more successful example than my own article, to give you an idea of what kind of results you can get.

Another alternative, is to go the Forbes route, and simply feature a list of people with successful brands (preferably as your honest picks or based on sensible metrics).

Like so:

https://medium.com/futuresin/top-crypto-writers-on-medium-in-2018-af9db5cefa6

And you can also get a lot more creative with it.

The thing is to just start simple, and experiment when you’ve already got the ball rolling.

This shit works.

No need to over complicate things.

Just create something, and share it.

Call To Action

👏 & follow me if you liked this piece, but more than that, go out there and take some action!

Try this for yourself, go live, and share the end results with me in a response!

This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by +365,103 people.

Subscribe to receive our top stories here.

The Startup

Medium's largest active publication, followed by +527K people. Follow to join our community.

Ragnar

Written by

Ragnar

Storyteller & Digital Marketer — Currently Based in Tokyo

The Startup

Medium's largest active publication, followed by +527K people. Follow to join our community.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade