Be The Misfit - Old School Marketing, Building Excitement, and Deportation | Marketing Misfits #05

Be The Misfit - Old School Marketing, Building Excitement, and Deportation | Marketing Misfits #05 Norm Farrar: What I'm saying is watch the trends. Where are they going? They're not ever going to stay stable. And as soon as you see it, you can shake it up and you could, you know, be that misfit. Unknown Speaker: You're watching Marketing Misfits with Norm Farrar, Kevin King. Speaker 2: I've actually been on an important call and just nature calls, but you can't miss the call in the middle of conversations. So I've had to walk in, hit mute on the phone, do my business as quickly as possible and then come back out of there because you don't want to hear someone to hear you flushing or something splashing. Norm Farrar: But I don't know about you. Today's world, it's never used to happen. And I would never do it. I'm an old guy. But when I go into any washroom, but if I go into an airport washroom and there's guys talking on their phone, taking a leak, taking a crap, I'm going. What the hell? Where is today's world? Like, can you not have privacy? Can you not wait that two seconds to take a leak and then pick up the phone? Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. You know, they say the phone is the dirtiest thing, object in the world. Norm Farrar: Right. Speaker 2: It's not a toilet seat, not a public toilet seat. It's not a handrail. It's a phone. So if you ever borrow somebody's phone, Hey, let me borrow your phone real quick to do something or whatever. You forgot yours or whatever. Whatever you touch on there is nasty as hell. I have simple modern trash cans in my house. Those fancy trash cans that when you can say open sesame and it opens the lid for you so you don't have to touch it. But they make a little handle. A phone hand sanitizer for like iPhones and Android phones. You can't have one of those big thick cases on it. As long as it's not like totally dramatically oversized. And I have it right by the door. You might've noticed it when you were here and I just dropped my phone in there and it sucks it down and does that ultraviolet light. Norm Farrar: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've seen that. Speaker 2: It takes like 15 seconds and then it raises it back up and it's like a toaster oven. Norm Farrar: Well, thanks. You're not supporting my family's business. I really appreciate that. Speaker 2: Oh, the wife's business. Yeah, yeah, but phones are just nasty. Even my own phone, you know, clean those things, man. If you're listening to this, clean those things and be careful when you touch somebody else's. Because you don't know, like you just said, if they're in the bathroom and haven't washed their hands or done something. There's all kinds of stuff on there. Norm Farrar: Yeah, back in the old days, you know, with the mints, you put your hand in and grab, like all the mints nowadays are wrapped. Speaker 2: Individually wrapped. Norm Farrar: Individually wrapped, but they said that, I forget how much urine they could pick up on these mints. So just back in the day, people were just sticking their hands in and blah. Speaker 2: I was just in Japan recently, and I bought some boxes. In the US, if you go, you buy some Oreos, for example, and they come in a little package, and you open up the package, and the Oreos are just in there in a tray, like one by one, Girl Scout cookies or whatever. Not Japan. Every single cookie is individual wrapped. So, I buy this little box of these little cookies. I'm like, all right. I'm going to munch on a few of these. I had to work. I was like, pull the thing out, open it, try to tear it just to get one cookie out. And they did the same thing for almonds. I was at the airport. Norm Farrar: What? Speaker 2: I was buying something. I want some milk chocolate covered almonds for the plane. And so I bought a little bag about, you know, yay size, you know, eight inches tall or five inches wide or something. And I was like, all right, I opened it up on the plane. It was like, you know, just to dip your hand in, just put some almonds in your mouth while you're working or whatever. Each one of them individually freaking wrapped. So I'd actually go and like undo each single almond was wrapped. And these weren't like huge, like monster size, like those big balls you put in. These are like normal sized almonds with a little chocolate around individually wrapped. Unknown Speaker: That's crazy. Speaker 2: Yeah. I was like, what the heck? Norm Farrar: That's marketing too, by the way, like not so much the stupid. Sello-wrapped probably almonds, but just think of it. Back in the day, you had to put your hand in these urine-soaked mints. Now, they've changed that where they're individually wrapped with a logo on it. That's normal nowadays. So it was a paradigm shift. Nobody really thought of it, right? You know, just like water bottles, when we were kids, we would just drink out of the same water bottle. Now, you wouldn't do that. You wouldn't even think about doing that. Who would have thought, who would have thought, Kevin, back just not even that long ago, where you'd have individually plastic cello-wrapped knives, forks, straws. Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, sanitize these days. I mean, but did people get sicker back then than they do now? Or is it- No. Norm Farrar: You know what? Speaker 2: So- You know, a different bacteria biome or whatever they call that stuff where you're immune to it. Norm Farrar: Yeah, I think that's probably it. Back then, we were probably a lot more immune than what we are now. Every second of the day, people are cleaning their hands. My wife's a nurse or was a nurse, and she said right back then when this whole thing started that that's probably going to be worse for people because it's cleaning the good and the bad bacteria off of your hands. Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true. There is good bacteria. That's true. That's true. Speaking of that marketing stuff, when talking about this Japanese, I was at a conference. It was about selling into Japan. And one of the things that was pretty- Gary, I'm not sure. Norm Farrar: I'm not sure either. Speaker 2: That's Astro. I have a little robot, Amazon Astro, and he just wandered in here into the room. Then he said, Astro, go home. Norm Farrar: Astro, get me a beer. Speaker 2: Don't say that. She'll go to it. See how she's confused her. It's like looking for beer. There's it on the screen. It says looking for beer on it. Astro, go home. She should go back to her charger. But yeah, I've got this Astro Robot. And this is a marketing thing too that Amazon did. It's basically a toy. It's like $1,600. You got to get on a wait list to get this thing. And then they notify... I think it was on the list for several months. And then I got a notice that said, congratulations, your number has been called. You have exactly 48 hours or something like that to place an order. Put this in your cart and place an order. Otherwise, we're going on to the next person. So it's like a force to buy. So I bought it and it's now. I don't know what the practical use really is right now, but I think they're testing and it's kind of like the first iPod or something. It does some basic work, but it doesn't do everything. But it follows me around the house. It'll spit out treats to my dog. If I'm not home, I can tell it to go check the stove or check the fridge, make sure I closed it, does security patrols. But sometimes like it just did, it'll just come in. I'll be working in the office and it'll just show up. And I hear this, like a little R2D2 sound. And I look down, there's Astro. And I look, it has a little screen on it, like an iPad screen. And it's got these little eyes that will flash. And when the eyes flash, it'll say, yep, just coming to hang out or something. And it's pretty cool. But speaking of Japan, so this conference is interesting to see how the marketing- Is that your stomach? No, that's the freaking robot. Norm Farrar: Sure. Speaker 2: Oh, wow. Basic technology we have today. But yeah, it'll dance with you. It'll follow you around the house. It'll do all kinds of, I had a friend here a couple weeks ago, and she actually had it follow around the house playing her favorite music. So wherever she went, it would follow around and play music. But yeah, but back to Japan, the marketing in Japan is interesting how you got to change the marketing for different marketplaces. You had talked about that before. You know, naming and how names the stuff can get you in trouble. But in Japan, everything is the marketing is super busy. You know, in the United States, we like clean cleanliness and straight lines and not too much clutter. Lots of white space in Japan. That's a no no. In Japan, it's all bright colors and text all over the screen, all over the page. You go, you try to read whether you go take a look at amazon.com.jp or whatever it is. It's all these bright colors and just busy graphics everywhere. And that's how you have to market. And if you don't market that way, uh, they, they just break down this conference is showing you like, this is for this part. This is for this part. You're not going to sell. So that's what I think a lot of people, they just take Western principles of advertising and apply them to other markets when they try to go to the market. It doesn't work. Norm Farrar: Yeah, that's even here in North America. We have Ontario, which is English for the most part, and then you have Quebec, which is French. And if you go into Montreal, the difference in marketing, if you don't know the culture, you're screwed. You're just not going to get the sales. Speaker 2: What's the rule of Canada? Do you have to put everything in English and French to all labels? Norm Farrar: And French. Everything. Speaker 2: So all labels have to be... Norm Farrar: All labels, federal road signs. Yeah. And I think Quebec's going to be, based on what I hear, Hayden lives over there. So Hayden's my son. He lives in Montreal and he was saying that the language laws are getting a lot tighter over in Quebec. Speaker 2: What do you mean the language laws, they're enforcing it, you mean? Norm Farrar: Yeah, even in, there's a place called the English, the Eastern Townships, it's pretty much the English townships, but they've just regulated where you can't say, hey, how are you? You have to say bonjour. Speaker 2: Really? Norm Farrar: Yeah. And they've regulated that. And there's a bunch of different things that are going on when you come into the province, the schooling that you have to go to if you're English. I was like, I went to Montreal, I went to school in Montreal, and I was forced to have, I think it was triple French. And if I was there for more than a year, I would have had to go to a French school. I was 100% English. My dad ended up leaving. He has a business in Quebec. And he left when the language police came in, searched his garbage, found that he was writing memos to his staff in English. Speaker 2: What? Norm Farrar: And he got a fine. Speaker 2: Searched the garbage to see what language he was writing to? Really? Norm Farrar: Yeah. And got fined. I mean, that was his last straw, but see, I kind of understand this though, because back in the day, and I'm not talking about that long ago, but back in the sixties and prior to that, it was all English. Speaker 2: That was before most of the audience was born. That was a while ago. Norm Farrar: All right. In that day and age, it was all English. The French had to put up with the English, whatever that they would say, right? It was all English. And then back in 70s, Parti Quebecois with René Lévesque came in and changed that. Actually, it was actually before that that things started to change. And then French, the French people started to get Uh, their rights back. And now what's happening, we see this in the U S too. The pendulum goes from far left to the far right, far left, far right. Same thing with the English and French rights. So it's, um, I asked in Quebec city, it's very hard to do anything, uh, in English, but in Montreal, you can still do that. And if you try to speak French, um, they'll help you out. Montreal is a pretty friendly city. I like Montreal. Speaker 2: So is it the signs then like in Toronto or Vancouver or English first and then French and it's the opposite of Montreal and then it's. Norm Farrar: Federal signs. Speaker 2: It's, it's different. Okay. Federal signs. Okay. Norm Farrar: And sometimes, you know, the, the big corporations try to do the right thing. Well, it used to be a hundred percent, you know, when you go on those bloody, you know, you're on wait, press one for this, press two for that. Well. Just to change it up, now you've got French in there first, it could be first, some of the bigger corporations, and then you've got English. If you're in Quebec, that's fine, but it's just kind of strange just, all right, what are you saying? I don't understand French. Okay. And you can feel it for the French people, but Canada's mostly English. That's my thoughts. Speaker 2: Yeah, I wonder if they'll ever do something like that in the US. Norm Farrar: You're heading that way, buddy. You're heading that way. Your country is going to be bilingual as well. Well, it is, but Spanish and English. Speaker 2: We're multilingual. We're a melting pot, but Spanish is number 60 million or whatever the number is that speak Spanish at home here and growing. And there's pockets, you know, Miami is called the capitals of South America because you have all the Venezuelans and Cubans and Colombians and all the people from South America and you walk into a grocery store and Almost anywhere, certain neighborhoods, this may not be true, and the first language they speak to you is Spanish. Even if you're a white gringo looking guy, it's Spanish. Quieres una bolsa? Do you want a bag? It's not, do you want a bag? And when you look at them like, you cock your head like a dog. And then they speak to you in English, if they speak English. But yeah, there's areas of pockets of the U.S. that are, I remember there was a while back where it was a big deal. They were trying to raise, not have the American flag on some schools. This was a few years ago. And there was a controversy that they wanted to have the Mexican flag. We want to show our heritage. We're from Mexico. We're going to raise the Mexican flag here, not the American flag. And the government had to come down and say, no, you're not. You're in America now. You're going to raise the American flag. If you want to put the Mexican flag up, no problem. But it has to be, I think, I can't remember the word. Norm Farrar: A certain amount below the American flag. Speaker 2: Below and has to be either to the left or the right. There's a rule. I can't remember what it is. It has to be on the left hand side or maybe it has to be on the right. I can't remember the exact rule. But yeah, you can do that. But no, you're going to put the flag up. And I remember when I was a kid, Yeah, actually, when we showed up at school and the bell rang, we stood up and did the Pledge of Allegiance. We stood up in the classroom and put our hand over our heart and then said the Pledge of Allegiance, which is a little writing, pledging your allegiance. This came out of the Soviet era when we had the Cold War and stuff, but now that's banned in a lot of schools. You can't say that because the word God is in the Pledge of Allegiance. Norm Farrar: It needs to have the Lord's Prayer. And this is a public school, right? So we do have the Lord's Prayer and Sing O Canada. Yeah. Speaker 2: You know, weirdest thing I ever did is I was in a movie theater in India and I love Bollywood movies. So I was like, I'm in India. I want to go see a Bollywood movie in an actual Indian movie theater. So I go into this big movie theater. I'm sitting there waiting, you know, munching on my popcorn, drinking my little drink or whatever they had. Maybe one even popcorn or something. And instead of a bunch of teasers and trailers and stuff before, a bunch of ads, everybody stood up at one point and up comes the flag of India on the screen, just waving on the screen. And they all started singing what I think of the Indian National Anthem. And like we would do a Pledge of Allegiance or we do the Star-Spangled Banner or something in a football game. And they started singing that and then everybody sat down and the movie started. I was like, okay. Well, I guess in India, they got cricket, but they don't have a whole lot of other sports that they're big in. So maybe this is their way of showing the movies in Bollywood as their national solidarity. But you know, like for us here in the States, you go to, especially college football, pros do it too, to some extent, but college, especially when I go to a game at Texas A&M, this is a stadium that holds, I think 106,000 people. It's one of the largest stadiums in the world. It's full. Norm Farrar: It's a lot of Texans. Speaker 2: On a Saturday afternoon for a college game. 50,000 of those are students. We have a huge student population at Texas A&M. Wow. The rest are alumni that are coming in, paying big money, but the game always starts with The State of Texas Anthem, which is just, nobody knows the word, so it's just bouncing ball on the screen, on the big jumbotron, so you can sing along if you want. And then next is the National Anthem, and they raise the flag on the flagpole and pull the strings and it goes all the way up. And right at the end, if they time it right, usually military planes fly over. So this is a big open air stadium. So you have three, you know, stealth planes fly over, three helicopters or three some sort of military thing and they'll buzz the field. Right. And they try to time it just right at the moment the song ends, if they get it right. Sometimes they show up a couple seconds early. Norm Farrar: I wonder how the hell they do that. Yeah. Speaker 2: I've seen. Yeah. I don't know how they time it, but they time it somehow. And then it shakes the stadium and everybody's like, oh, it pumps everybody up because you've got these badass jets flying overhead. And then usually they go land. They usually fly in from some Air Force base that's like three hours away or something. Sometimes from Florida to Texas, these things fly in. And then they go land at the local airport and then the pilots come onto the field maybe in the third quarter during a commercial break and they introduce them. They walk out on the field, all right, today's flyover team was so-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so. And usually one or two of those people are graduates of the school. So it's like an honor for them to actually be invited back and actually do the flyover to fly over their alma mater. So it's pretty cool. But that's marketing. That right there is just getting the crowd pumped. At a football game too, we have, Peck Stadium has a big, we've never really done well getting a national championship since 1939, but we still, we dumped millions and millions of dollars into the program. And just to get the crowd pumped in the marketing, we have a military tradition at Texas A&M. So we have about 2000 cadets that are like, it used to be a military training school exclusively. And in the 60s, it opened up to everybody. So we still have that tradition. So we have these cadets dressed in the uniforms with the drums, like a military corps drummers, and they come drumming out and they play this beat. And it's like, do, do, do, do, do. It's like a march. You know, it's just a little mud and right behind them is a football team like coming in and then, then some high energy music comes on and then everybody starts getting jacked up and the smoke machine starts throwing smoke and then the team runs onto the field. And sometimes right before that starts, they show a video up on the screen of like two minutes or so of all the most vicious, most Badass hits from other games like where some linebacker just took out a freaking running back and de-planted him and threw him onto the ground. You know, some badass legal hits, but they just show a series of those back to back to get people jacked and pumped. And it gets everybody excited. It gets everybody into the game. You're ready. You're fired up. You get chills going down your spine. And that's something that's good marketing. It's not really probably considered marketing, but that's something that you can do actually in your marketing online and your marketing that nobody really does. At a conference, you know, you've gone some sometimes you go to conferences. We just we just did it depending on when this is coming out. We just did it. Did it in Hawaii when you came into the conference the first day. We got you, Jack, and we got you into the mood. It's not just welcome, everybody. Let me see your badge. You're good. Come on in. Find a seat. Come on in. Find a seat. We actually get you jacked. I remember amazing.com used to do a little bit of this. At the beginning of their conferences, they would have a band or somebody come in and do a performance. That type of thing, whether it's an in-person event or whether it's you're selling something online or on your website, if you can build that in, that makes sense. It's got to make sense. It can't just be there for being there's sake. If you can segue that into your branding, into your story, it can actually do wonders. You could even A landing page could be a 15 minute autoplay video that just gets people super excited about your product. And then it goes, then it automatically redirects onto the next page. The problem is not everybody has to have the sound up. So there's, there's some issues there, but there's cool ways to actually think outside of the box and be a little bit misfit in the way you you're marketing that can, that can do a lot of cool stuff. Norm Farrar: So yeah, part of marketing as well of what you're saying is where it's. Introduced, because sometimes it could be the reverse. And I'll just give you a quick example. So I used to be in the addiction side of things and we've had videos online. And I know at first we really didn't think about it, but all of a sudden people, you know, we had, we received a few calls where people called in and said, can you not put the video on autoplay? Because they were in their cubicles and all of a sudden, boom, they were talking about, you know, addiction. So we, that's something that we learned and that could work against you. And here's another thing, like I want to talk about trends. So trends on an airline or in a sporting event used to be suit and tie. And if you notice the trends and as they start to move forward, you can really profit from it because I'll give you a great example. In Canada, in the NHL, so we're all into hockey, we're born and brought up with hockey. You never, ever used to wear the colors of the team, ever. You would dress up, okay? Really? Speaker 2: You'd have your coat and tie? Norm Farrar: Back in the day, just like on an airplane, you'd dress up. And then that slowly changed where you could be more casual. And then as the NHL started to take off with what the NFL was doing and the NBA was doing, now they've got the merch happening. Now you go into a game and it's all that team's color, right? So I guess with Texas A&M, it would be all the colors of the school. I know with Toronto Maple Leafs, it's a sea of blue. And there's a lot of people that made a lot of money off of that and they got in at the right time. Back in, I'm not, like back in 95, I remember you could pick up licensing for next to nothing. And if you were, if you started to ride the trend. And now, you know, it's a completely different game. So what I'm saying is watch the trends. Where are they going? They're not ever going to stay stable. And as soon as you see it, you can shake it up and you could, you know, be that misfit. Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, like an A&M game, you know, we do, it's maroon and white are the colors. So you have almost everybody there is in maroon and white. And then, or you look at like a Texas OU game in college football, it's done in Dallas, they play in a neutral site. Dallas is about halfway between Austin. In Northern Oklahoma, where the University of Oklahoma is, it's two states, two rivalries, old rivalry. They do it in the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, where the stadium is half white and half red. So white for the Texas team and red for the Oklahoma team. And it's a clear division. And so it's really kind of strange to see it from the air, but it's pretty cool. And then we did something at Texas A&M. When 9-11 happened in 2001, we had a game and some students got together really quick and they organized something as a charity thing. So you would buy a shirt, a colored shirt, and this colored shirt was either red, white, or blue. And when you bought the shirt, they would ask you, where are you sitting? And then they would assign you the shirt color. They'd say, what's your seats? What's your section you're in? And they'd say, OK, you're in section 302, third row, seat 7. All right, you need a blue shirt. And they give you a blue shirt in your size. And you'd pay some money for it. And all the money went to help the firefighters and first responders and everything. And then at the game day, the entire stadium looked like the American flag, the Red, White, and Blue. And they had it organized in such a way so everybody took their seats and looked at it from the air. It looked like the stripes of the flag with the white and red and the stars and the blue and white. It was really, really cool. And to this day, they still use that image. And that's power. Not only did it help first responders and was a good thing to do when the country was Coming together and getting unified for the first time, maybe the only time in a long time. It also is good marketing because it's still to this day is used in promotional materials to get new students. I'm like, look, we care. We, you know, we support the country. We're active. We're on top of things. You know, it's actually, it turns into a marketing thing as well. Norm Farrar: That's a good point. Working with charities or organizations that are helping out, that's marketing too. But you don't want to look like you're abusing it. For example, we've got a soap product and we've teamed up with this one organization that lines up with our beliefs. And we believe that every human being has the right to clean water. And with that, we've lined up with a company, a charity that we've been helping out, and we give 5% of our profits to them. With that, that could either look really good, Or really bad. And I've seen this where it can look really bad. So where people are looking like it's, I hate to say blood money, but it's like same thing. It's using the charity for their marketing and you can do it, but you have to do it subtly. Like even for us, if you want to donate an additional five bucks or 10 bucks or whatever it is, you can do so, but you're not seeing our brand on it. You can click over. Same thing with the card, you know, we don't show the logo on it. We're promoting the charity. And I see like Tom's, that's another great example of, of this, but there are companies out there. I've talked about it on our, like my podcast where they abuse it and they come off looking horrible because you know that they're just doing this. And by the way, People don't know that you're giving that 5%. Speaker 2: How do they actually know? Norm Farrar: Because there's actually apps that track that. Speaker 2: Are there some apps that track that? Norm Farrar: Yeah. Speaker 2: Because sometimes they say that and they're like, well, wow, how do I know they're really doing it? Norm Farrar: No, it actually takes it off the top. So on the purchase, 5% goes to- Oh, yeah. Speaker 2: If you have an app tied in. Okay. Norm Farrar: It's tied into it. Speaker 2: So there's an app that's tied into the shopping cart. Yeah. That'll do. Okay. Norm Farrar: Yeah. And I'll give a great shout out. A shout out to Shopping Gives. That's the app. Shopping Gives? Shopping Gives. Yeah. And they not only provide the ability to do this, but you can have multiple charities and you can have multiple uses. So you could say, oh, if you want to donate more, you can write on your site, 5, 25, 50, you know, or... Speaker 2: Oh, that's cool. Norm Farrar: Yeah. So it looks like you're doing it for the right reasons and not just... Just pushing it out there to not, it doesn't just look like another marketing channel. It looks like it's aligned with your beliefs. And a lot of people right now, they're looking for companies that have a social conscious. Yeah, conscious. Speaker 2: Yeah, we did that during COVID when we did the Germshark, we talked about in different podcasts that we actually donated for every three bottles sold, we donated a bottle. And we actually donated those to, we had Convoy of Hope, I think it was, which are like, they fill up extra, they have a warehouse, I think it was in Missouri. I think that's right. And when there's extra capacity on an 18-wheeler, they got some room for another pallet or two, we could donate our excess stock or something that's about to expire pretty soon. We can send it on Amazon. We donate to them. They'd make a range just to pick it up. And then we also did stuff with a charity in Seattle where we donated and went in, delivered a whole bunch of bottles. We did something here in Austin. So that charity aspect can really help you in the marketing. And if you're legitimate, like Norm said, and genuine about it, But when I was younger, I wasn't genuine about it. When I was 20, when I graduated from Texas A&M, I didn't want to go work a corporate job. So I moved from Texas, from College Station to Austin. College Station is a little college town, 100,000 people. It's grown now a little bit bigger, but hour and a half away drive from Austin. So I came to Austin because I had some old buddies, high school friends that were still in school. I crashed on their couch for like a year. And during that time, I was like, we got to make a living. So I was doing a little student coupon book. I was driving back to College Station to do those teaching courses I've talked about for the students. And then one of the other things we did is we sold t-shirts during the fall during the football season. So when the Texas Longhorns, which meaning school to me, like our arch rival, I'm sitting out there on a game day actually selling t-shirts. So we would, right around that time, the MC Hammer song, You Can't Touch This became super popular. And so we took the you and then put can't on one line. And then touch this on the second line, we highlighted the T in touch and the U in you. Instead of putting Y-O-U, put a U. Put that in the school colors. And then on the back, put something like the schedule of the team or something like that. We were selling these like candy to a toddler. I mean, they were just going off the hooks. We had some engineers on the team. It was three of us that put in the money to do this. I think we were buying these shirts for like $3 each and selling them for $10 or $15. There was good margins and we would do We do go out on the corner. We've staked out different corners on the campus. And in order to do that, get that permission to do that, we had to go to a charity. And one of my buddies is an engineering school. He said, hey, if you donate X percent to the charity, they'll allow you to be out there on school property and actually sell these. So we got their approval. And I don't think we hardly gave them squat. You know, we give them a little bit of money here. Well, we weren't, we weren't. I mean, I was young. We weren't honest about it. But we'd sit at a table in a corner that got high visibility of people walking back and forth to different dorms or different things and sell the heck out. And then on game day, we would Take in 20, 30 grand and we'd find the big walkways where everybody's got to walk from the parking garage or from the parking and go down to get in the stadium and we'd position ourself and nobody could see us at the beginning. So we'd have our folding tables out there and the people that were right next to us, they could see what we're selling and we'd sell some. So in the first game, I think we sold $3,000 or $4,000 worth maybe. We're like, this is stupid. You get 100,000 people or whatever the number is walking and we're missing most of the audience. So my two buddies that were doing this were saying, they were both engineers, like, why don't we build a catapult? I'm like, what do you mean a catapult? To throw shirts out to the crowd? It's like, no, no, we'll build this contraption that folds down flat. But when you fold it up, it almost folds up into like a football goalpost or something. It has a rail across the top and we can hang these shirts up in the air above everybody. So all this crowd of 100,000 people It's not 100,000 in one area, but 10,000 by this gate and 15,000 coming in through this gate. As they're walking to get to the stadium, they can see these flapping up there in the air and go, that looks cool. And we make my way over there and get one of those shirts. And our sales went from three or 4,000 to 20 to $30,000 on a game day. I remember going back at 23 years old. You know, we be counting the money as this is all cash and stuff and be counting that money and, you know, each of us get 10 grand or whatever it was and profits close to it, eight grand maybe after we pay for the shirts. And we're like, we're living high on the hog, man. When's the next game? We can't wait for the next game. So like, can I get some more home games next year? But we were able to milk that for a while. But when we used the charity component, but we didn't advertise it. So we didn't. We used it to get permission to actually be on school property. But we didn't. There wasn't like a sign sponsored by or 10 percent. And we weren't lying, you know, saying temporary. But we just we didn't give a We spent some of the money on beer instead of donating what we're supposed to donate to the tool. Norm Farrar: You drank your profits. Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. I ended up buying a new TV or big screen TV or something for the house or whatever. But yeah, it was those kinds of things. Like you said, those kind of tie-ins can work really well. And sometimes those charities will promote you back and that can be massive traffic too. Absolutely. Not just you helping them, but sometimes they got a big audience and they'll promote you back and that can be great for all your other brands and all your other product lines. Norm Farrar: Yeah, and you just glazed over one thing, which is another awesome form of marketing for local businesses. And I don't think I've ever told you this. This is one of those stories I don't think I've ever mentioned to you. But when I just got out of college, and this is before I started doing a job, right? But when I just got out, I started to sell coupon books. And I would go and I would get them for whoever paid for the books. It could be a two for one haircut or oil change or something like that. Speaker 2: Well, it's pre-done by somebody else and you just sold them or you actually not sold the store but the coupons in there? Norm Farrar: No, so these were a book, so the company- Like a local advertising company. Yeah, barbershop, salon. So you'd get a book of 10 or 20 and you'd go out and you'd start selling them. There's two jobs that I did like that, door to door or just walk the streets, interrupt somebody. You know how hard that is? It's just a, hey, and you try to stop them in their tracks to give you two seconds on a busy street. That was a crazy job. But the other one, I used to sell starving artists art door to door. So I'd knock, I'd have 10 paintings in a plastic bag. And when they called out, I'd say, you know, oh, I'm representing these starling artists, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They let me in the door. And then I'd have one frame and these 10 paintings. And imagine this, you know, over here. Speaker 2: Look how good it looks. Look, you're holding it up. Look how nice this looks here. Norm Farrar: Yeah. And I did that. Speaker 2: I can swap this one into the frame for you. Norm Farrar: They dropped, so this guy would drop about 10 of us into this neighborhood and we would just go door to bloody door. So, yeah. Speaker 2: Yeah. That's how you cut your teeth. You know, I did, speaking of coupon books, when I was in college, I also did a coupon book. It's called the Student Express. And I actually went out there and hustled. This is my coupon book. And I went out and hustled all the barbershops, the pizza places, the dry cleaners, the whatever students would do. And I would sell them an ad. I'd say, hey, I got this coupon book out. I'm doing 20,000 copies or whatever the number was. And you want an ad? You want a full page ad or you want a half page ad? These are the prices. And I would sell the book. And this was a, I don't know, 32 pages or something. So it was quite a few people. And I was going I would just show up. At one point, I hired a buddy. I started just showing up, walking the door of Subway and saying, hey, it's the manager here. And I realized pretty quickly, those people a lot of times don't have the decision-making power. So I then hired a buddy of mine to do cold calls and went down the phone book. Back then, there wasn't internet. There's yellow pages. I went down the yellow pages and started calling people and he would give me appointments. And I did this in College Station. I did it in San Marcos, Texas. And I would put together this coupon book and then distribute it. I was doing direct mail, you know, that direct marketing. So I would go to the university. In Texas, there's something called the Sunshine Act, or it was back then. I don't know if it's still around. I'm sure it probably is. And you could request the registration list of all the students. And so I would go to the special office and say, I want to know all the kids that are living in apartments and print those out to me on peel and stick labels. So big old roll of labels. And I want to know all the ones that are living on campus and print those out separately for me. So I was segmenting. And then I would have a different coupon book for each one. And depending on, because they have different, slightly different needs. And I would send this out through the physical mail, bulk mail. Back then it was, I don't know, 13 cents or something for bulk mail. It didn't cost much. And I'd have a printer print these up and then I would get some buddies around and let's put labels on. So we'd sit in our living room floor in my apartment with stacks and stacks of 20,000 coupon books, just peeling off these peel and stick labels and sticking them on, sticking them on, sticking them on. Norm Farrar: Just like we did at the Big Smoke. Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. And just like we did the Big Smoke and we didn't have, I don't think the inkjet machines or it's too expensive or I can't remember the reason why I didn't do that. But I remember sitting out $20,000, taking them to the post office on my little bulk permit, dropping them off. And then like three days later, I'm like calling up a couple of the people three or four days later, because they should have got there in a day or two because it's local. And I call up, hey, any redemptions yet? Nobody's telling me they got redemptions. There's no redemptions coming in. I'm like, what the heck? So I go, maybe the post office screwed up or maybe there's somebody got sick and they didn't get it out. So I go over to the post office and I look outside when I drive up to the back dock To go into this bulk mail office, I look over at the big dumpster and I see all my coupon books sitting on top of the dumpster. I didn't realize it at that time, but some of those addresses were bad. So I didn't put on the address, send this to Norm Farrar or current resident. It just said Norm Farrar. If Norm Farrar had moved and he didn't put in a notice, he moved with his buddy to another apartment or moved off campus, it didn't get forwarded because it's bulk mail too. Back then they didn't have a forwarding option. So it meant just when they're cycling into the trash. So I literally pulled out of the 20,000, probably eight or nine, 10,000 of them out of the trash. And took them back and we relabeled them all. I got new addresses and back then I didn't know how to do this change of address stuff or how to clean the list or you know there wasn't all the technology there is now. But I salvaged it that way because I knew if the advertisers didn't get a response, they're not going to advertise the next semester. So I had to solve, I had to fix this problem. And then I teamed up, you're talking about the promotions, instead of a charity, I teamed up with a local traveling agency. So for spring break, a lot of kids go to Cancun from Texas. They go to Cancun at that time or to the coast of Texas, South Padre Island. So I teamed up with a travel agency that was running radio ads. And we created a radio ad around a local radio station saying, look for your student express coupon book. There's a form in the back that if you fill this out and drop it off at this address or mail it to this address, because there's no internet back then. You can enter a chance to win a free trip to all expenses paid for the whole week for spring break in Cancun. And they ran ads for it for me. So I got promotion out of that. They gave the trip away in exchange for it because they're getting leads basically coming in, you know, that they can, all the non-winners can be sold a trip. And it worked really, really good. You just reminded me that when you said a coupon book, but that was, That was one. I do it now for my newsletter. When you sign up for my Billion Dollar Sellers newsletter, the Amazon space, you get a coupon book. It's a PDF, but I tell everybody to make me a six inch by nine inch page, make it look like a coupon. I string all those together in one PDF and it's a bonus that goes out and they got affiliate links on them. And so I'm making money off of every single one of those and it provides value to someone instantly just for signing up. Uh, so there's, there's a lot you can do when it comes to marketing and coupon books. And, um, you know, we, we cut, it's interesting how we cut our teeth. You know, you cut your teeth by going to someone's house and selling a piece of art. I'm cutting my teeth by digging a dumpster, pulling out all my freaking coupon books to relabel them. Cause I didn't know if you're supposed to put current resident or current resident or bulk mail doesn't get forwarded if they moved. Norm Farrar: This is a, this is crazy, but do that arts, that art door to door thing, right? So I had a guy, a buddy named Nathan Dunbar, his godfather's Elton John. So he's from England. Really, really cool guy. He used to live with Sid and Nancy, Sid and Nancy in the building. And he had his two front teeth knocked out from a hell's angel. Because he was going in and the guy was asking for a cigarette or something and he ignored him. And all of a sudden, the guy, the hell's angel had a hook for a hand and punched him in the face. So he lost his teeth. His dad, you'll probably remember this. You remember those lifestyle dolls? There was one like Gorbachev and there was Reagan. Yeah, that was his dad. So, he's in Canada, we're going door to door, selling this art, guy invites him in and asks him what he's doing and he's answering all these questions, right? Gets taken into custody and deported. Unknown Speaker: Oh, man. Norm Farrar: Yeah. Never saw him ever since that day and he was the most awesome guy out there. Speaker 2: Well, I can just picture you now as a young guy, 10 of you in this van, open these doors, open smoke billows out. Norm Farrar: Yeah, that's it. We're all heavy smokers. Speaker 2: For some little portfolios in a plastic bag. Norm Farrar: They were in a plastic garbage bag. Speaker 2: Now you're trying to not crinkle in the van or something, you know, when you get jumping in and you're going door to door in this neighborhood, you spawn out and like knock on the door. Did they assign you streets? Like, okay, Norm, you hit these streets and we'll meet back up at the place. Norm Farrar: And the only really big mistake we made was they dropped us off in this neighborhood in Richmond Hill. It's north of Toronto. So get out of the car, knock on the door. All of a sudden, this person comes to the door and we're dropped off in the middle of this Jewish neighborhood in Shabbat. So we didn't make any sales that day. But, you know, here's another story. It was Halloween and went out and did this. Speaker 2: On Halloween. Norm Farrar: On Halloween. So I'm knocking, the kids are all around me, but still this lady lets me in. She asked me if I want this lollipop that she was handing out. I said, sure. So in my mouth, right? And I've got it. I'm sucking on this thing. And when I take the paintings out, I got to bed down. All of a sudden, this stream of drool comes down, lands on the painting. Sorry, yeah, she didn't buy that one. Speaker 2: Did you ever have any craziness happen when you knock on the door? I used to deliver pizzas and the one time I went up, I did every kind of marketing trick in the book. If they had their newspaper sitting on the driveway, I would pick it up and bring it with a piece of trying to get an extra tip. A little kid came to the door, I would say, the parents gave him the 20 and say, I'm sorry, I can't take that from you. Can your parents come? Because I knew the kids aren't going to give me a tip. They're going to take the exact change in the coins and all. And so I asked for the parent or I would do, if you're giving change and the price is $13 and 50 cents, you don't give a five and a one and 50 cents, you give six ones. Because the psychology of when someone has six bills in their hand, they're more likely to give you a couple of them versus, okay, just keep the dollar and I'll keep the five. So I did a little thing like that. I became the highest paid delivery driver there. But I remember this one house and a buddy of mine had told me it happened to him. I was like, nah, you're not, this ain't true. You're just making this stuff up. But this one house comes up for delivery. I go to this house and ring the doorbell. Freaking woman comes butt naked to the door, just like butt naked and just like, how are you doing? And I was like, ah. Norm Farrar: You dropped your money. Speaker 2: You don't got to pay. She was really stunning. And I was like, But my buddy had told me she invited him in. I didn't get invited in, so maybe I wasn't as good looking as him or I don't know. Maybe he said something or maybe he's just full of it and just bragging. But yeah, so anything interesting like that happen when you're selling these paintings door to door? Norm Farrar: I never had a naked woman come to the door, but I had a lot of angry people. Speaker 2: That's a big thing. Norm Farrar: Really angry people, like what the hell. And it's not, today you don't get that many, you know, it's usually on the phone or something. But yeah, like guys that were going to rip you, a lot of Karens, lots of Karens. I got one guy, sicked his dog on me, a German Shepherd, I got bit all up. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, stuff like that. And man, I was, uh, back in the day I was, you know, six foot two, six foot three, 225 pounds boxer or, you know, a fighter. And, uh, some of these women, man, they could rip you. You know, you think, oh, you know, I'm a pretty big guy. Yeah, it could be under five foot coming out and just booting your ass across the street. Speaker 2: All the fun of being misfits, Norm. This has been a fun podcast. I hope everybody has enjoyed us just riffing. This wasn't scripted or anything, just Norm and I just talking and trying to tie in a little bit of marketing. Sometimes we have awesome guests on, other times it's just Norm and I telling stories about marketing and life in general. So hopefully you've enjoyed this. Norm Farrar: Where is that subscribe button, Kevin? Speaker 2: It's right down below, I think. Norm Farrar: Somewhere down there or could be up there depending on where we are. Speaker 2: It could be up there. It could be down there. It depends on what platform you're on. You can always go to marketingmisfits.co. I didn't say .com, I said .co and link to us that way or give us feedback or if you got a good guess that you think would be a good misfit we should have on or maybe you're a misfit yourself and would love to come on the podcast, let us know. We enjoy doing this and hopefully it's been a little bit entertaining for you, a little bit fun and a little bit insightful and getting a few ideas for yourself and your business. Norm Farrar: All right, everybody. We will see you later. But remember, Kevin, you did say .co, right? Speaker 2: I did say .co. I did say .co. Norm Farrar: Good. Good.