The Vignette Effect
The Vignette Effect™ is hosted by Raquel Furman, brand strategist, marketing expert, and founder of Vignette Brand Studio. With 25 years of experience in branding and marketing, including a background as a brand photographer, Raquel brings a trained visual eye to brand building, helping clients see their brands in a completely different way. In photography and writing, a vignette directs your attention to what's worth seeing, the details that make the story. That's the whole idea behind this show. Most brand problems aren't complicated. They're just things you've never been shown to look for, or never had the clarity to name. Th...
10
Transactional Marketing vs. Brand Experience: What Makes People Want to Buy
<p>Your marketing can give people every detail they need and still leave them without much of a reason to want what you’re selling.</p><p>Transactional marketing focuses on the information and mechanics of buying: what the product or service is, what it includes, what it costs, when it’s available, and whether there’s a discount or deadline. Those details matter. They help people evaluate and confirm a purchase.</p><p>But brand experience has a different job. It creates the feeling that comes first: “I want that,” “That’s the one,” or “This is exactly what I’ve been looking...
Brand and Marketing Tools Are Everywhere (Expertise Isn’t)
<p>Marketing has become incredibly accessible. You can learn how to make a reel, build an email funnel, redesign your website, create graphics, run ads, and do almost any other individual marketing task online.</p> <p>But access to the tools doesn’t automatically teach you the logic underneath them.</p> <p>That’s where marketing starts to feel like a giant guessing game. You can be doing a lot of things and still not know whether they’re the things your business actually needs. You may have a website, an email list, an audience, a content strategy, and even outsid...
Visibility, Thought Leadership, and Finding Your Zone of Genius with Katie Radel
<p>If you know you need to “put yourself out there” more but immediately picture LinkedIn humble brags, performative personal branding, or constantly talking about yourself, this conversation is for you.</p> <p>Raquel is joined by Katie Radel, founder and CEO of Ripple Consulting Group, to talk about what visibility can look like when it’s built around real expertise, useful ideas, and stories that actually sound like you.</p> <p>Katie works with executives, founders, and organizations to raise their profiles and become more visible to the audiences who matter. A big part of that work is helping accomp...
Clarity Is a Discipline: A Founder's Guide to Positioning, with Krista Patterson
<p>In this episode, Krista Patterson, CEO and co-founder of Positioning Collective, joins me, Raquel, to talk about why clarity is the foundation every founder skips, and what it costs them when they do.</p> <p>Krista has spent over 20 years helping founders, leaders, and executives clarify what makes them different and turn it into growth. She built Positioning Collective in 2020 after years of watching companies chase logos and taglines before they'd done the harder work of defining their position.</p> <p>In this conversation, we cover:</p> Why Krista says clarity is less an exercise and more a discipline...
Start Your Holiday Marketing Now (This Works Year-Round Too)
<p>Holiday marketing prep starts in summer, not November. Learn why sales are a lagging indicator and what to fix before your business gets busy.</p> <p>If you're thinking about holiday marketing prep, Black Friday promotions, or just wondering why your marketing doesn't seem to be working, this episode is your sign to start now instead of waiting until things feel urgent.</p> <p>Your sales today aren't a reflection of what you're doing today. They're the result of the marketing and branding you've been building for weeks, months, even a year. Raquel calls this "sales are a lagging...
Your Dashboard Deserves As Much Attention As Your Mood Board
<p>What if your most valuable marketing strategy isn't another messaging framework or copywriting exercise?</p> <p>In this episode of The Vignette Effect, I'm sharing why your business data deserves just as much attention as your branding and creative direction.</p> <p>Too many founders invest in beautiful websites, professional photography, visual branding, social media, and advertising without taking the time to uncover what their business is already telling them. Your analytics aren't just reports. They're a window into how real people think, what captures their attention, what creates hesitation, and what inspires them to take action.</p> <p>...
You Don't Need Every Marketing Channel. You Do Need Marketing
<p>Should you have an email list? Is social media still worth it? Do you really need a blog for SEO? What about Instagram ads?</p> <p>These are some of the most common marketing questions I hear from founders, and the answer is probably different than you think.</p> <p>In this episode of The Vignette Effect, I explain why no single marketing channel is required, but marketing your business absolutely is. Rather than asking whether you "have to" use Instagram, email marketing, blogging, or paid ads, the better question is how those channels work together to help people...
Build a Business That Fits You: Human Design, Visibility, and Founder Alignment with Marissa Liesenfelt
<p>Building a successful business doesn't have to mean building it the same way everyone else does.</p> <p>In this episode of The Vignette Effect, I'm joined by intuitive business mentor and former BossBabe COO Marissa Liesenfelt for a conversation about human design, business strategy, authenticity, and creating a business that actually fits the way you're wired to work.</p> <p>After helping lead multiple eight-figure companies, Marissa realized that the business model she knew how to build wasn't the one she wanted to run. That realization led her deep into human design and eventually into helping founders understand...
Why I Finally Started Showing Up on Camera (And What I've Learned So Far)
<p>Showing up on camera isn't just a content strategy. For many founders, it's a mindset shift.</p> <p>In this episode of The Vignette Effect, I'm taking you behind the scenes of my own visibility experiment after committing to posting face-to-camera videos every day for 75 days as part of The Close Up Experience with Mike Ganino.</p> <p>People have been asking what inspired the shift, whether I'm participating in the Yap Challenge, and what it's actually been like to suddenly become much more visible online. So I'm sharing the real story.</p> <p>We explore why I chose...
Why Self-Awareness Makes You a Better Leader (with Cara Nance)
<p>What if, instead of spending time trying to improve our weaknesses, the bigger opportunity is understanding and developing our strengths?</p> <p>This week, I'm joined by Cara Nance, founder of Tutum Leadership Coaching and a Gallup Certified CliftonStrengths Coach. We talk about how self-awareness shapes better leadership, why strengths-based coaching helps teams communicate more effectively, and how founders can use these insights to build businesses that align more closely with who they are.</p> <p>We also discuss why assessments like CliftonStrengths should be used for development rather than diagnosis, how understanding your natural tendencies can reduce burnout...
