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Brent Shiratori is the Founder and CEO of Aidia Marketing, a branding and strategic marketing firm that helps organizations build brands that drive growth. With more than 25 years of experience, he has led brand and marketing initiatives across multiple industries, including hospitality, tourism, and technology. Brent previously served as Vice President of Global Brand at Outrigger Resorts & Hotels, where he oversaw brand strategy and marketing for a global portfolio of properties. A triple major in marketing, accounting, and management information systems, he holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and has received multiple industry awards.
In the competitive world of hospitality, finding a unique voice can be a game-changer. With so many options available, why do some hotels effortlessly capture attention while others blend in? Is it simply the quality of the amenities, or is there something deeper that draws guests in and makes them loyal fans?
For Brent Shiratori, a seasoned expert in marketing and branding, the answer lies in storytelling. He believes that every hotel has a unique narrative, and it’s this story that sets them apart in a crowded market. This story can be as simple as showcasing a special feature of the hotel or a unique historical element tied to the property’s location. By embracing their own distinct story, independent hotels can transform themselves from just another place to stay into a destination guests won’t forget.
In this episode of The Lights On Podcast, Kin Sio is joined by Brent Shiratori, Founder and CEO of Aidia Marketing, to discuss brand differentiation and storytelling for independent hotels. Brent explains how uncovering a property’s unique narrative can strengthen its brand and help smaller hotels compete with larger chains. He also shares practical insights on building memorable guest experiences and developing brand strategies that don’t require massive marketing budgets.
This episode is sponsored by Lights On.
Lights On helps hotels grow revenue more consistently by managing pricing, distribution, and digital marketing together.
We help hotels identify new revenue opportunities, so they don't leave money on the table. We also manage the full revenue and marketing operation, enabling the on-the-ground team to focus on the guest experience.
If your hotel needs stronger revenue growth, visit lightson.co to learn more.
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Kin Sio: Welcome back to the Lights On Podcast. I'm Kin Sio, CEO of Lights On and your host today. On this podcast, we share stories from across hospitality about building and growing hotel businesses.
This episode is sponsored by Lights On. Lights On helps hotels grow revenue more consistently by managing pricing, distribution, and digital marketing together. We help hotels identify new revenue opportunities so they don't leave money on the table. We also run the full revenue and marketing operation so the team on the ground can stay focused on the guest experience. If your hotel needs more revenue growth, visit lightson.co to learn more.
Before introducing today's guest, I want to give a big thank you, a big shout out to Derrick Castro from Overlap Interactive who connected me with the guest today. Go check out their website at www.overlapinteractive.com. They do amazing work in branding, design, and web development.
Right, my guest today, Brent Shiratori, Founder and CEO of Aidia Marketing in Honolulu. Brent has worked on both sides of the table. Agency side when he was managing brands like Disney, HP, and Visa when he was in California. And on the client side as the VP of Global Brand at Outrigger Hospitality Group, where he spent the past 10 years running creative, paid media, digital, loyalty, and brand activation across Outrigger's global portfolio. He was named one of HSMAI's Top 25 Extraordinary Minds in Hospitality and American Advertising Federation's Hawaii Ad Man of the Year. Now he helps independent businesses build brands that drive revenue through Aidia's fractional CMO model. And we're going to talk a lot about what that looks like. Brent, welcome to the show.
Brent Shiratori: Hello, Kin. Really great to be here.
Kin Sio: All right. I'm so excited about all the brilliant ideas you have on building brands, especially for hospitality. Let's actually get started with how you started your career, because you started your marketing career selling cell phones at Wireless Paradise. What did that first job teach you about building a brand?
Brent Shiratori: Quite honestly, it's one of the best ways to get started in marketing because you're doing sales basically. So I was doing both outside sales as well as being one of the store managers at that small little cell phone store. But because you're face to face with the customers, you're really learning a lot about how to sell, how to position the product well.
I was in college, working full time pretty much from when I was 19 years old. So I was working at that store throughout college full time while I was getting my degrees in marketing, accounting, and management information systems. Doing that gave me that real-world experience. And I was lucky because it also gave me the opportunity to try out things. I designed my own print ads for the Star-Advertiser. I worked with KGMB on doing a TV spot and we produced it with their team. We actually made it more like a music video because we had someone on staff that was a DJ. But working at a store, working with customers right there, it really gives you a good sense of what actually gets people to buy.
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Kin Sio: And obviously you're doing that while working on a triple major at school. So you love getting busy. So I imagine at that point in time, because you were just starting your career, you're a college kid working on this job -- it's not like you had authority managing a big ad budget, right? You kind of mentioned all the creative stuff that you did. How did working with a tight budget at that stage shape how you think about marketing spend today?
Brent Shiratori: One of my past CMOs, one of the things he always instilled in us is you got to treat every single dollar like it was your own when you're in the marketing department. It's not just free money. Just because you have a budget, imagine if you were the owner of the company -- every single dollar counts because that's money out of your pocket, literally. But by having that mentality, you also understand the flip side of, hey, if I can invest a dollar and get $5 or $10, then it's worth it. So you can't be scared to spend money on everything because there can be incremental gains from that. So that's the whole thing -- treat your marketing budget as if it was your own money.
Kin Sio: Can't agree more, especially when we all run small businesses. We know that every dollar matters. That makes sense. So, time fast forward. You finish school, and at some point you left Hawaii and were building your professional career in California, managing lots of big brands -- Disney, HP, Visa, all that. Then you came back to Hawaii. And obviously eventually going into the whole hospitality space. So what made you come back?
Brent Shiratori: Quite honestly, it was for family. Both my -- so my wife is also in advertising, so that's kind of how we met. I had worked at a bunch of ad agencies in Hawaii. She had worked at the other ones. So between the two of us, we basically worked at every major ad agency in Hawaii.
And after a few years, we were like, we want to do something different. We want to get more experience because being in Hawaii, there's only so many brands that you can work on. There's only so many different types of industries, and the budgets are what they are. So we really wanted to go out to the mainland to get more experience. That's why we moved up to San Francisco.
I worked on Disney, HP, and Visa, and then my wife actually worked on the Sprint account when Goodby Silverstein & Partners first got it. Billion-dollar account. So she had a lot of great experience there too. But we're both only children. So at some point we were like, hey, our parents are older at this point. We really should return home, just in case something happens. And it was really the right decision overall. It gave us a lot of great opportunity to bring the things that we learned on the mainland to Hawaii and really share that much broader type of experience.
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Kin Sio: I see. So coming back to Hawaii and eventually getting into hospitality -- was that out of necessity? You mentioned there aren't that many big companies on the island, so opportunities are limited. Did that come out of necessity or did you over time find something special about working in the hospitality industry?
Brent Shiratori: Yeah, definitely. But what's funny is that right before I started at Outrigger, I was a partner at a small advertising agency, Matsumoto & Clapperton. But one of my former creative directors, my friend Tammy Wee, she actually called me up and basically said, hey, Brent, we're doing some really great work at Outrigger. Would you be interested in coming?
So I heard her out, looked at what Outrigger was doing. At the time, Sean Dee, the current Chief Commercial Officer, had just gotten there about a year before that. And basically he really transformed Outrigger. It was a family-owned business, owned by the Kelley family for almost 70 years. They were kind of stuck in their ways. But they hired Sean Dee, who has a ton of experience at Hard Rock Cafe -- he was a CMO there, and a concert promoter -- and he really brought a different elevation to the company. And I just really wanted to be a part of it.
So I actually left that agency and joined Outrigger as just a freelancer. I decided to basically start over and be like, OK, I'm going to come in, try to do this. I had hospitality experience before that. I'd worked on Prince Resorts Hawaii, the Visit Japan campaign, did some stuff with the Kauai Visitors Bureau. So I had some hospitality experience, but not as deep as this. And coming into Outrigger at the time where we were really trying to rebrand from a small, mid-tier type of hotel chain into the global company that it's become -- that was really huge for me. I really wanted to be a part of that opportunity.
Kin Sio: And you definitely lived through the different eras of Outrigger, right? For the audience who doesn't know, as Brent mentioned, it was a locally owned brand for decades. And then more recently, the past decade or so, getting acquired by a more professional private equity firm, KSL. So through that journey, as you rose up in your role at Outrigger, lots of transformation happened. I'm curious -- as you became the VP of Global Brand at Outrigger, if you think about brand as a system, how did that brand system transform over time? And what was that like when you took over the role?
Brent Shiratori: Part of it is really establishing really strong standards. Like I was saying, when I first started and when Sean Dee had first come on board at Outrigger, I'd worked on the rebrand at that point, but that was 12 years ago. During the pandemic, we actually realized that we needed to refresh the brand. The original branding agency that we worked with was Duncan Channon out of San Francisco. We had worked with them 12, 13 years ago for that first rebrand. And we brought them back to refresh everything and really elevate the look and feel.
During the pandemic, we purchased the Maldives property, three properties in Thailand, the Kauai property, Maui, and Kona. Huge amounts of growth during that time. So it was essential that we continue to evolve the brand and really continue to elevate it. That was a lot to do with Jeff Wagoner, the CEO of Outrigger, and his direction. He wanted to make sure that people are not seeing it as the old type of Outrigger, where people might remember it as very budget-friendly, nice people, but not the greatest-looking rooms, not the greatest types of amenities.
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What Outrigger has done is really just transformed itself. It now has a very premium type of experience and really provides that exceptional hospitality that's hard to find in our industry sometimes because of the cost restraints that we have.
Kin Sio: So we're going to dive deeper into the nuances of those things. But right now I'd love to understand, when we talk about any sort of major branding effort -- because branding could be a big blanket of many things -- when you started that branding effort, which of those pieces had the biggest gap between where it was and where it needed to be?
Brent Shiratori: One of the things is we established some brand pillars. Every single property should have these as part of the brand pillars. One is being in an iconic beach location. Every single one of our Outrigger properties is in a beach location. It may not be 100% beachfront -- a couple of our properties in Waikiki are steps away from the beach, but not beachfront -- but pretty much we're all in beach destinations. The way I always describe it is if we're looking at a new destination like Japan, we're not going to look at Tokyo. We're going to look at Okinawa. If it's Korea, we're not going to be looking at a property in Seoul. We'll look at something in Jeju Island. So it's always going to be a beach destination. That was a key pillar.
Second key pillar is we wanted to have a really fun type of experience. Music is kind of the key to that. Every single one of our properties has live local music. Sometimes it's a Hawaiian musician playing. Some places could be more like a DJ at our Thailand properties or our Mauritius properties. Or it could be a jazz band at our Maldives property. There's all these different types of live music experiences. And the reason why is because our group believes that every vacation deserves a soundtrack. It's something that you remember, it makes it iconic. So that was number two.
Third pillar is having a really cool beach bar. Duke's Waikiki is kind of that iconic beach bar that we've tried to model all of our properties after. So we have a lot of cool bars in Fiji, Thailand, Mauritius, and the Maldives, trying to really create that Duke's Waikiki model where both locals as well as visitors are coming to enjoy the music and have that barefoot beach bar experience.
Fourth is Outrigger's ZONE initiative, which is ocean conservation. Outrigger has a really great conservation initiative called Outrigger's ZONE. It's all about beach and ocean conservation. We do a number of things like beach cleanups and supporting the Ala Wai Canal cleanup, the Genki Ala Wai Project where it's cleaning up the canal, which does feed into the ocean. We have that all around the world, including coral planting in Mauritius, Fiji, and the Maldives.
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And finally, which I think is the key thing behind what makes Outrigger unique and makes each of the properties unique, is what we call signature experiences. We had a really complicated grid of all the activities we asked all the properties to do -- it was like 16 different things. Everyone had to have a vow renewal, manager reception, arrival gift, a farewell gift, all these different types of things. And we realized that in actuality, not every single property could do everything well. They could definitely do a few things super well, and it wasn't the same thing. Some properties could do the manager reception amazingly well. Others could do the vow renewal amazingly well. But no one could do everything well. So we simplified it into: what are the three signature experiences that we want people to remember our property for? Every single property has three unique signature experiences, and that's really the foundation for Outrigger -- those five key pillars.
The other thing that Outrigger does that I think is really unique is what we call our sense of place process, where we really go into the history of what actually took place at the site of that property. And we create the positioning, we create the experiences, we create everything based off of that sense of place practice. Outrigger is an amazing company to work for and be a part of, and definitely an amazing place to stay, because it's not cookie cutter. Every single property is a little bit unique, founded on the same brand pillars but each executed in a different way.
Kin Sio: And it's the blessing of the boutique or independent experience, right? When you're not associated with a global brand. Even some of the items that you mentioned, if you think about much smaller properties, they can really execute certain things in a budget-friendly manner. For example, we actually interviewed Hillary Foulfought, who owns a portfolio of Montana properties. One of the things they did was having a signature scent and playlist that are so unique to that particular property. These are the things that a small property doesn't necessarily need big budget or marketing spend for, but they create something that is unforgettable. The same principles can be implemented at a much smaller level at each property too.
Brent Shiratori: Yeah, definitely.
Kin Sio: That leads more into your personal philosophy on marketing. Getting more focused on Aidia Marketing, where you offer the fractional CMO services and the strategy part of marketing more so than the execution. I want to highlight something from your content -- how you differentiate yourself. You talk a lot about differentiating value, which I think what you just mentioned with the pillar system at Outrigger has a lot to do with. The overlap between what makes you unique and what people actually care about. How does an independent hotel find that easily?
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Brent Shiratori: I think it comes down to a story. Don't go in listing all the details about what you have. Don't start with how many rooms you have as your story. "Here's how many rooms we have. This is the restaurants that we have. This is our amount of convention space" -- that's a commodity. That's what every single hotel does. You do have to do that to some degree, but there's always a way to tell something deeper, something interesting.
Like I said, we do a sense of place process where we try to get the history of it. But is there something unique that you do? A certain type of activity? Or is it maybe a person who's worked there for 50 years? What are some of the stories that they can share about all the things that have happened?
At the end of the day, I always say there are lots of different definitions of a brand. Brand is a promise, some people think brand is a logo or tagline, brand is a value proposition. At the end of the day, I think a brand is a story people tell themselves about why they buy your product. It's a story that they tell themselves. Like the Hermes Birkin bag -- it's $20,000 to a million dollars for a bag. It's just a handbag at the end of the day. So the only value it has is what people feel about it or what they think it means when people see them with it. And that's a story that they have in their head. A lot of people may not even be aware that that's a Birkin bag, but they feel like when they have it or they wear it, it's saying something about them.
So what's the story that you can tell your guests about staying at that property? How can you convince them that that's the best property to stay at? "I had the best vacation because I was here" -- and it can be little things. It doesn't have to be huge amounts of investment. It could be small things like, we're going to be the hotel that's all about kids. So we'll have coloring books in our rooms, or fun beach games, or facts about sea animals. Those aren't expensive things that you have to do. But if you reinforce that story and say, this is who we are, this is how we're unique, this is the value that you're going to get from staying with us as opposed to every other hotel on the strip -- if you can uniquely tell that story consistently, then that's what you're going to win.
That's what people are going to remember. Because at the end of the day, everyone does a lot of the same things. They're going to go to the beach, they're going to go to some restaurants, they're going to do some tours. But if you can help them tell the stories that they're going to tell their friends about how amazing their vacation was, then that's what's going to really win you the loyalty.
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Kin Sio: And honestly, I think most hotel owners are always kind of dreaming about that end state, right? Having that almost finished product of that whole brand exercise. But reality is, most owners -- they didn't grow up to be brand gurus. When we talk about that process, it could be overwhelming for them. "There are so many things I could go after, how should I even get started?" So for someone who's never thought about brand strategy before, can you walk through almost like the discovery process? What are the first few questions that a property owner should think about to start asking the right questions or taking the right action?
Brent Shiratori: One of the simple exercises that I do with a lot of my clients is basically saying: why should people stay with you? Write a list of all the reasons why people should stay with you. And then write a list of all your competitors. Can they say the same thing? So cross out all the things that they can also say. And then find the things where it's like, well, they couldn't really say that confidently. That's what you need to focus on.
Yes, you got to talk about rooms, you got to talk about certain things. That's the price of doing business. But there's gotta be something else. Because if you find that all the reasons you sell your hotel are the exact same thing that other people could say, then you have a problem and you have to create something. And again, it could be a story. Oftentimes it has to be a story, because we have very, very similar products.
Let me give you an example. Our Waikiki Paradise -- so it was the OHANA Waikiki East by Outrigger before that. It was a budget hotel. It was fine, near the beach, nice. But when we renovated it, at the end of the day, beautiful rooms, but it's not like we can add a spa or all these amazing things. There's only so much that we can do.
But during the sense of place process, one of the things that the GM, Kiana Beams, identified was that it was the site of Princess Ka'iulani's summer estate. That's why right next to us is the Sheraton Princess Ka'iulani -- it was named for that.
We went through a whole process, but basically the story that we came up with was: what if a Gen Z Hawaiian princess were alive today? What kind of hotel would she build? Princess Ka'iulani was a sportswoman. She used to canoe paddle, she surfed, she did all these things. She had a very active, youthful lifestyle. So it's great that it's close to the beach, but you'd also want to be in a place that feels really fun.
We worked with a number of different local artists to create beautiful paintings. And the other thing that that estate was called was a paradise garden, which is why we named it our Waikiki Paradise. We worked with these local artists to reimagine this place as a paradise garden with their artwork. So when you go in there, it's super colorful -- everything from the pillows to the walls to the carpet. So you feel like you're in this paradise garden. And then it has probably the biggest fitness center out of all of our properties in Hawaii -- punching bag, those ropes, high-tech equipment. A huge, cool fitness room right next to the pool, which conveys that active lifestyle. And Hawaiian Aroma Cafe is going to be opening up there pretty soon as well. So it really embodies: what would a Gen Z Hawaiian princess build as a hotel? And that's the story that we gave.
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At the end of the day, it is what it is. But when I tell you that story, then everything clicks. And you're like, "Oh, this is interesting, tell me more. I want to know more about this hotel." Rather than just saying, "Yes, we renovated it, it has beautiful new furnishings." That's boring. But if you can tell a story, then that makes it interesting.
Kin Sio: This is just golden nuggets right there. Especially since we all know that there are many properties out there -- not every property is going to be sitting at the beachfront. You just don't have certain amenities. An older-build hotel, sure, owners will spend money to renovate. But at the end of the day, there are things that you just can't add. So finding ways to tell the story to really make your property unique and making people curious about what that's about -- that's the starting point. Having the interest to explore what your property has to offer. Any property can do that. You're not relying on your location. It's about using your imagination. You start with why you think people should be going to your property, compare that with your competitors, do the process of elimination -- that gets you the starting point of thinking something more unique.
I think sometimes people are scared by just the whole blanket term of branding that feels so big. But it all just comes down to those tiny little things that any hotel owner can start executing and start thinking about today.
This is beautiful. So switching gears a little bit, what is the most expensive brand mistake you see hotels making right now?
Brent Shiratori: I think we go through this every five to ten years -- most of the big hotel brands just do a rebrand, they change a logo, but nothing significantly changes. I think it's a great opportunity to really re-envision what the guest experience is going to be like, because that's the opportunity that they have. If you just do a logo change or a name change, let's at least do something that's actually meaningful and actually changing or elevating the guest experience to something that it wasn't before. Doing a rebrand for no particular reason, or just because the logo is getting old -- I think that's kind of a waste of money. What you really want to do is use it as an opportunity to actually change the guest experience. It's not a marketing exercise. It's actually more of an operations exercise when you do a rebrand.
Kin Sio: Yeah. Especially like, it's a missed opportunity if you don't really capitalize on that moment. It's almost like a perishable thing -- you have that moment to really re-announce or make that rebrand exercise pop. Once you go past that and nothing happened, then you really just spent all this money for nothing.
So something you mentioned a couple of questions ago -- I find it fascinating -- the term commodity. When you say a hotel is being treated as a commodity, what does that actually cost them in dollars? A lot of hotels come in thinking of it as an asset class, a specialized piece of real estate that they get to own. They sometimes can't bridge the ROI of doing any sort of meaningful brand exercise. But from your examples, we know that having the right branding, having the right story -- just like the Birkin bag -- you can really elevate the potential profitability. You can set the room at a premium rate because it has a story associated with it. On the flip side, when the experience is being treated as a commodity, how do you quantify that potential loss, that missed opportunity?
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Brent Shiratori: That's a really hard question. I don't know if there's a real answer necessarily. All I can say is what I've learned working at Outrigger. I think it's just very true of the corporate culture -- we work together. All the different departments work together very, very closely. Operations, revenue, brand and marketing, sales -- we all work together very much in concert.
It's important because if revenue has a goal to increase ADR, they have to find a way to justify that. And they need the help from a brand and marketing standpoint to be able to tell a story, as well as operations to help deliver on it. There are trade-offs for each of the different things. In our perfect world, operations would take away things to decrease costs, revenue would try to maximize ADR as much as possible, and brand would just tell all these stories that may not be actually real. But everything affects one another.
So all I can say is that I think it's critical to break down the silos within a hospitality company. It's absolutely critical. And I think Outrigger has done a really good job of working together. My experience during the pandemic was really what helped to drive that. We were basically down to one hotel that was open, mostly for first responders. But we had such a small tight-knit group that we had to work together very closely. And that has continued now that we're kind of out of it. We're still struggling for Hawaii's arrival market, but because we learned how to work together well, that's really what helps to balance and ensure that everything works together. It's not just ops's job to figure it out, or just revenue, or just distribution, or just branding. Everyone has to work together.
Kin Sio: Makes sense. Teamwork -- everyone's together. It's not just, "Oh, branding goes to marketing," because it has an impact on literally everyone who's part of that game.
So if we're going to scale it down -- obviously bigger corporations have bigger teams, a lot more input and contributions. But for smaller properties where the team size is limited, most of the time it could be just the owner with maybe a small operations team. We've discussed a few things that a smaller property with limited budget could do. But if we want to bring it back to a full picture -- imagine a small property, 30 rooms, one owner, maybe an operations team of five to six people. What would be a minimum viable brand system such a property can implement to see impact and financially move the needles on their top line and bottom line?
Brent Shiratori: I think it comes down to the basics of a brand. So what I normally help my clients with -- and what I teach and all the content that I have -- is basically a five-part framework. A brand is basically: your brand promise, which is what you are saying that you're going to deliver to a customer. Your purpose -- why does the company exist at all? A great question I always ask is: if your company didn't exist, how would the world be different? If it wouldn't be different because someone else would just be offering the exact same thing, then you don't really have a purpose or you don't have a really strong differentiation. So you gotta find what you've done that makes a difference in people's lives.
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Third is your positioning -- who are you in relation to someone else? If you're 30 rooms, that means you're really small. So can you provide more service? With 30 guests, you could probably memorize every single guest name. That would be huge. You could do it at the beginning of the day -- go through all the guests and say, OK, here's who's in house. That could be something. So what's your positioning? If you're small, be small. If you're high end, be high end. If you're huge, then deliver on that.
Fourth is your point of view. What do you see differently about the industry that you're in that's different than what other people would say? That's what provides good content and what makes things interesting. It provides that differentiation.
And then finally, your personality. If your brand were a person, how would you describe yourself? And then that will inform your creative -- all the copy on your website, all those different types of things.
Those five components -- that's what I normally facilitate with my clients. This is what we need to define for your brand. This is all we need to do. You could do it in an hour or two, even for a small hotel with 30 keys. You can run that exercise and really try to define it. And if you have good answers for all five of those things, you will have a strong brand. I guarantee you.
Kin Sio: What's curious from your answer, Brent, is that with everything you mentioned -- everything that somebody can do thinking about branding or marketing strategy -- we don't even start talking about, "Oh, now let's talk about how big of a Google Ads budget we should be running or Facebook ad campaigns." It's really all happening at the strategy level before any execution.
I think there could be a gap in the market right now. You're a big advocate of the concept of a fractional CMO, a Chief Marketing Officer who really provides that strategy. Versus the many marketing agencies out there -- whether you're a hotel or any small business -- the usual experience is coming in and working with a marketing agency that says, "These are all the ad campaigns we're going to run. Tell me how much budget you have. We're going to run great campaigns for you." It's focused on the execution, but not necessarily the thinking about the why.
So this is the reality right now in the marketplace. When should an independent hotel or any small business start thinking about approaching a fractional CMO versus hiring a marketing agency right away?
Brent Shiratori: One of the reasons why I started my company is because I saw a big gap. I saw a lot of companies that could really use marketing expertise within their company, but a really experienced, seasoned CMO is going to be $200,000, $300,000, $400,000 a year plus benefits. One independent hotel cannot possibly afford to have something like that, but they still need that expertise.
So the existing options are: you hire a consultant to come in and facilitate a branding session. Here's the strategy. And then they leave, because that was their job -- they were just there to do the basic strategy, but they're not there for execution. On the other side, there's marketing agencies, advertising agencies, digital agencies, social agencies -- they're just focused on the product. "We are going to develop an advertising campaign for you, design collateral or a website, run your social campaign." They're focused on the output and not the actual strategy.
What companies really need is a way to combine the two. And that's what a fractional CMO does. That's what all fractional types of business models do -- they combine the strategy portion with the execution portion. From my clients, I'm responsible for not just the strategy but figuring out how to execute this. As their fractional CMO, I'm highly concerned with the budget because they have a limited budget. It's not like an agency where I'd say, "You need to spend this much to run this campaign." As a fractional CMO, I'm thinking: how am I going to make money for this company? I do have to spend something, but I'm treating it like it's my money.
That's why it goes back to that original question you asked -- I look at it as, this is my marketing budget. How am I going to best utilize this? Because I have to deal with a lot of things. It's not going to be just this one ad campaign or just this one social thing. How am I going to make this effective for this company as a whole? That's really what a fractional CMO does.
[50:00]
Kin Sio: That's true. I think of fractional CTOs, fractional CFOs -- they are part of the company. They're looking after the company's best interests. And that's why this is becoming more and more of a trend that companies are seeing, because that's what they need. All these other options have existed for a while, but what we need now, especially in this new market and especially in how things have changed with AI -- execution is becoming a commodity. It's very easy to produce stuff. Even strategy is a commodity. You can spit out lots of different strategies in ChatGPT. What isn't easy is to combine the two. Because for whatever reason, AI can't do it. There has to be someone in the middle being able to have the judgment, being able to say, "Out of all the things that we could do, this is what we have to do, and this is how we're going to do it."
Brent Shiratori: Yeah, effectively. And honestly, since you mentioned AI, I work a lot with AI. Especially as a small business owner, it's really important because I don't have a huge team. Utilizing AI for a lot of the things that I do is an essential part of my process now. But at the same time, I look at people who are saying, "I'm using Claude to eliminate eight of my marketing staff" and just constantly pumping out content. I cannot believe that it is good enough stuff. It's fine, but it still probably sounds -- there's something a little bit fake with it, no matter how much tone of voice documents you feed into it. There's something that's not there that still requires a little bit of human intervention, where it's like, "That's not quite right. There's something not quite right about it. I got to rethink it, I got to relook at it."
So you need that human intervention. What AI is going to be great at is eliminating all the mediocre work. There's a lot of work out there that people are doing right now that is completely mediocre and doesn't actually require a human. That's what AI is for. But for the actual insight -- that still needs human judgment.
Kin Sio: It's funny. We just had an internal AI training earlier this week. We were talking about how AI can really bring somebody from zero to the 80th percentile of a domain, but getting from the 80th to the 99th percentile of the industry -- I think that piece still requires human judgment and experience. It creates a situation where the way I think about using AI to enhance our work and give a better quality of life is to allow human beings to creatively spend time going from good to great, and let AI do the work from mediocre to good. Not either/or, but if you chop up the whole experience into a spectrum, AI plays one part of that spectrum, and human beings should focus their time where things really matter.
Brent Shiratori: Yeah. Yeah.
Kin Sio: Well, Brent, last question for you. It's been a great conversation today. I should bring you back. I actually have 20 more questions I want to ask you about, but we have to get to our last question. Are there any champions or mentors in your professional career that you find shaped how you think about things, and what was the best advice they gave you to get to where you are today?
Brent Shiratori: That's a really good question. I read a ton, I listen to a lot of podcasts, I watch a lot of YouTube. The marketing greats, like Seth Godin or Simon Sinek -- they have provided a lot of really great insight.
But on a personal level, and for anyone that's listening to this who knows Sean Dee, I think they'd be a little bit surprised, but I'd have to say that I honestly learned the most from him. If you know Sean, he is a very, very demanding person. But he really pushed me to become who I am now, and really pushed me to learn as much as I possibly can about hospitality and deliver at a much higher level than I ever could have before.
And I think that's important in our industry. There are a ton of things that I've learned from him -- like working with all the different departments, making sure that we're all in concert, and really striving to achieve things. Even though it may seem impossible, there always will be a way. The greatest, most important thing is really trying to find ways to elevate what you do. Be proud of what you work on and really do everything that you can to be the best at what you do.
Kin Sio: We're going to make sure to send this episode to Sean Dee. All right, Brent, thank you so much. We've been talking to Brent Shiratori, the Founder of Aidia Marketing. Brent, where can people learn more about you?
Brent Shiratori: Best place is to go to my website. It's aidiamarketing.com. So it's pronounced "idea." And everyone always asks me, why do you spell it that way? The real answer is that's how you would say "idea" in Japanese, and I'm Japanese. But the other reason I named it that is because I really do believe that at the end of the day, all branding, all marketing -- everything is just an idea. That's what you're trying to put in someone's head. And that's why it's all about Aidia Marketing. So yeah, aidiamarketing.com.
Kin Sio: That's storytelling right there. Well, Brent, we enjoyed our conversation today. Thank you very much.
Brent Shiratori: All right. Thanks a lot, Kin.
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