Beard Marketing - A Unique Marketing Story, Mistranslations & Life in Japan | Marketing Misfits #04

Beard Marketing - A Unique Marketing Story, Mistranslations & Life in Japan | Marketing Misfits #04 Kevin King: You know, in the US, there's what, 60 million Spanish speakers at home. And so a lot of people don't realize that the United States is the second largest Spanish speaking country in the world after Mexico. And so if you market to those people and to their culture, even if they grew up here, but that heritage is still there and you appeal to them, there's massive, massive opportunity there that a lot of marketers just market to what they know and not what is totally out there. Unknown Speaker: You're watching The Marketing Misfits with Norm Farrar and Kevin King. Kevin King: So Norm, they call you the beard guy. What's up with this beard guy? Is this just some sort of marketing prank or why did you actually grow this beard? I've seen pictures of you without a beard. And then all of a sudden you have this beard. Is this a marketing thing? Are you trying to be a misfit or something? Norm Farrar: Yes, and I think I am a misfit. It was all 100% personal branding. You know, we've gone to hundreds of events and I'd reach out and I'd ask questions to the speakers. Half the time, you know, do you remember me? No, absolutely not, you know, because I blended in. I thought, how could I be different? How could I be the Ray Orbison, you know, with the sunglasses? I thought maybe growing a beard and guess what? It worked. When I go to an event, people recognize me and then it's much easier, much easier, Kevin, to break into a conversation and start chatting. That's the whole purpose. It's personal branding. Kevin King: So yeah, I just do it the other way. I'm just the big fat guy at the conference. You know, I'm like, oh, that's the big dude over there that we didn't have a t-shirt large enough. We only went up to XL. We didn't have a 2XL t-shirt. Norm Farrar: A halter top. Kevin King: So that's my branding right there. That's the big guy that's first in the buffet line. People are like, better get there before he does because there ain't going to be nothing left. It works. It works and people remember me. So everybody's got to have their little shtick. That's what Misfits do, right? Norm Farrar: Exactly. And, you know, I just wanted to add on about the shirt size. If you see a guy with a long gray beard and another guy, both of them with halter tops on, well, you know it's us. Mexican sizes. You know what, Kevin? That happened. Tim Jordan and I, we went down to Mexico and they only had, they were supposed to be extra large shirts and I couldn't even get it over my head. It was literally a halter top. Kevin King: The same thing happened to me. I was just in Japan. And there's these cool little shirts on Okinawa. They're kind of like a Hawaiian shirt, but they're not really a Hawaiian shirt, but they're known for this area. They're pretty cool. They're like a couple hundred bucks a piece, these nice shirts. And Tim went and bought one, and he came back. He's like, dude, they had your size? He's like, barely. It goes up to size five large or something. I'm like, well, what is a five large? He's like, I think that's like an extra large. Or maybe it's a 2X. So I go into the store and I'm like, you got my size? They look at me like, oh, oh, oh, sorry, only jump on these size. I'm like, well, let me try one. So I end up going in and the little dressing room and I get the biggest size and I try it. I can barely get the damn thing to button and it's buttoned down. So I can barely get the thing to button. I'm like, all right, I'm going to use this for motivation. I'm going to buy the shirt, even though I'm not going to wear it right now. But if I lose 10 pounds, I can wear this shirt. So I'm like, all right, that's going to be motivation. So I bought the shirt. And then I'm looking at the bill and I'm knowing how much it costs. But the good thing is, you know, I'm in Japan. So they actually, in Japan, they took longer to wrap the shirt than it did for me to try it on and everything. Because in Japan, everything's about presentation. You know, they don't... Have you been to Japan? Norm Farrar: No, I've never been. Kevin King: So in Japan, you don't just give your credit card across. There's a little tray. So if you're giving money or your credit card or your change, it's not like, here's my credit card. Actually, they put a tray down in front of you. You put the credit card in the tray, they take the tray. It's a courtesy thing. And then they swipe your credit card, take your money, your change, put it back in the tray. And then they present it to you with two hands. And then they bow to you and you take your change. But on gifts, if you buy anything in a store, like a souvenir shop or any kind of store, the packaging is like next. They have to wrap it. So this shirt, first they take the shirt and fold it really nice, you know, a nice little square. Then they take a piece of white mesh, like a protective mesh, and put the whole shirt in this protective mesh. And then they put it in like a nice little box that's got some Japanese writing and kind of pretty box and then they wrap it and put a bow on top and then they give it to you. This is all included. It's not like I'm paying $5.95 extra for gift wrapping. And then they give it to you and then they put it in a nice bag and they put it very carefully in the bag. And then they come around the side. They don't just give it to you over the counter and like, here you go, thank you, or let you pack it yourself. They come around the side of the cashier thing, come out to greet you in front and give it to present it to you with two hands and bow again. And say some stuff, you know, arigato and stuff in Japanese and some other stuff, have a good day or whatever. And that's the presentation method. So I went through that with a shirt that doesn't fit. Norm Farrar: Well, I want to, and he's paid 150 bucks for it, but I want to see you adopt that into your events. Anybody who buys a ticket to any of your events, I want you to personally come out, hand wrap the ticket and present it to them. In fact, I hope you adopt, I'm going to hold you to it, okay? I'm going to be your accountability partner for that. You know, something else, you were just talking about different sizes in Japan, right? They're not the same as North American sizes for the most part. Kevin King: Japan is one of the most homogeneous countries in the world. I think it's 90, what's the number? It's like 98.9% Japanese people. So that's one of the interesting things at this event. They're talking about most people mess up when they go start marketing in Japan. Amazon Japan is like the third biggest market. It's US, Germany, Japan, UK, I think, or maybe UK and Japan or vice versa, but they're both right in there. But most people just try to take their products from the US and sell them in Japan. It doesn't work 90% of the time. But the thing about Japan, the thing about selling in the U.S. is everything is a niche. You know, it's like niche down. You know, if you're going to sell a dog product, you got to niche down. But in Japan, because everybody is the same, there are no niches. In the U.S., you got, you know, beauty products for black people, beauty products for Latin people, beauty products for for great blonde haired people, beauty products for brunettes and and redheads and all these variations. In Japan, it's like no one. One variation. So the market is much bigger. So if you can get in and sell, it's massive 120 million people. And it's a massive market. And you don't have to niche down. But finding that one thing that everybody likes, you find it, it's a winner. And you're going to town. And so that's a big difference over there, as well that a lot of people don't understand when it comes to Japanese society, because they're all Very, very similar. They live very similar. Their houses are small. They don't have yards or some people in the UK call them gardens. Or if they do, it's just this little strip. So in their houses are small. So selling little small compact things is very, very important. If you get that right, it's a huge market. Norm Farrar: So I sell some beauty products and I thought, and this is going to be soap. So first of all, I know they love soap. Japanese love Hawaii, anything Hawaiian. So I took a couple of Hawaiian soaps and I started selling them over there and I made a mistake. And you got to be careful. I don't know their writing, right? And I got their soap spelled out. In Japanese, right? And it was the name soap. And all of a sudden I got a ton of traffic, like tons, tons of traffic. And I'm going, what the hell? I'm getting way more traffic with that coming from Japan than anywhere else. Well, I found out why. Soap, the way that I spelt it means brothel. There is a lot of guys coming over to the website. Now, I don't know if they bought anything, but that was the reason. And one other thing. You started talking about those shirt sizes and something that we could talk about here, especially for marketing, is you really do have to know your audience because even here, if I'm marketing to people in Quebec, I live in Toronto, I have to do it much different. It's a whole different Group, culture, and same thing with Japan. So that was a perfect example of marketing gone wrong. If you're marketing in Japan, if those, if you're taking North American sizes and shipping them over there, well, you're going to get a lot of returns. Kevin King: Yeah. Another thing that's interesting, you're talking about the English, you know, you translating it to Japanese. Maybe you don't need to. A lot of times, in a lot of these Asian countries, especially in Africa, it's the same way. Stuff with English words actually has higher perceived value. And even if they don't know what it means, there's a shirt, I was in a shop in Okinawa, walking to the shop, and the shop, one of the signs is like a neon sign that says no sex allowed. Norm Farrar: You went in though, right? Kevin King: Yeah, of course I went in. It says no sex allowed. It's like by a dressing room. And I'm looking around the store, there's a little boutique store, and everything said Mother Effer. It was mother with Hucker, but change the H to F. Norm Farrar: Okay, I get it. Kevin King: And that's the name of the shirt. It was written on every shirt, like in a circle. And there's like 20 people in there. And I was like, buying these shirts, and this is what they wear. It says, I'm an MF-er, or something like that. And I'm like, what the heck? And so I took a picture, like, this is funny. I posted in a little WhatsApp chat group we had for this group that was over there. And some guy that's from Japan is like, oh, yeah, that's a huge streetwear brand in Tokyo. Super popular right now. For streetwear, I'm like, oh, okay. So sometimes, you know, it goes the, that kind of thing is not a mistake. It's actually a big deal. It can be big, big bucks. So yeah, it's knowing your market and knowing what you can do is something that you got to know. And it's just like in the US, you know, the US has 300 and what 30 million people or something like that, and growing. We're one of the few countries that's actually adding population because of immigration, legal and non legal versus Japan and Japan, a lot of Europe, China, they're all reverse reversing right now they're actually going down. Knowing these groups, these whatever you say, you know, in the US, there's what 60 million Spanish speakers at home. And so a lot of people don't realize that the United States is the second largest Spanish speaking country in the world after Mexico. And so if you market to those people and to their culture, even if they grew up here, but that heritage is still there, and you appeal to them, There's massive, massive opportunity there that a lot of marketers just market to what they know and not what is totally out there. Have you seen a bunch of that? Norm Farrar: Yeah, no, absolutely. And every time we try to go into a market, we have to explore it. And by the way, I know a lot of people right now are ChatGPT experts. Everybody's an expert, right? Not really. Kevin King: That's why ChatGPT has gotten worse is because the people prompting it suck for the most part. That is a false reality. My chat GPT maybe has actually gone downhill, but if you know how to prompt correctly, then chat GPT or any of the other tools that you know, Claude or whichever may be your favorite, are super powerful. It's all in the prompting. Norm Farrar: You know, one of the things that we should talk about just briefly, because you just brought that up, is anybody listening, if they want to get some really great information, Kevin and I put on a webinar a little while back, and it's on our YouTube channel. And it's got like 18 speakers there. Kevin King: And I'm telling you, we had 20 or something, didn't we? Norm Farrar: Well, yeah, 19 plus, we had the contest. Kevin King: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Norm Farrar: Yeah, the secret, the secret hack contest. Kevin King: Yeah, that was cool. That was cool. Norm Farrar: Yeah, so it's there if you want to hear about this. But where I was going with this chat GPT, it's so simple to translate. And yeah, you don't know what you're translating. So don't just go in there and think it's 100%. It might be 98. I'll give you an example. Kevin King: You need a native speaker to check it out. Norm Farrar: Yeah, absolutely. So we did some Christmas cards. We printed some Christmas cards for a trucking company in the States. They wanted it in English, Spanish and French. So they said they could handle the Spanish. We handled the French up here and we sent out these tons of Christmas cards. All of a sudden, the owner comes back screaming at us, because I don't know the translation, but it went, Merry Christmas, happy new ass. That's what the translation was. And they blamed us. Kevin King: You know, that's actually a thing in Colombia. You know, my ex-wife was Colombian. And the time between Christmas and New Year's was a major transformation time to actually, actually do body work. So all the beauty salons are doing all the Botox and all those kind of stuff were super popular at the time. And in Colombia, I don't know if this is Venezuela too, because those two countries are kind of similar, but in Colombia specifically, New Year's is almost, even though it's a Christian country, it's almost a bigger deal than Christmas, even though Christmas is important. But New Year's is a bigger, like, expand the family kind of thing, you know, versus Christmas is more immediate family, I guess. But Shio, you would have to buy, everything had to be new on Christmas. I'm sorry, on New Year's Eve, you can't wear, your underwear had to be new, your shoes had to be new, your dress had to be new. everything and your ass. So that might have actually worked, you know, in Columbia where you actually say, Hey, here's your Christmas card. Good luck on getting a new ass, uh, for the new year. Norm Farrar: We could try it. Kevin King: It actually might be a big seller. Norm Farrar: We'll go to some plastic surgeons and, uh, print them up some cards. Kevin King: There you go. There you go. Norm Farrar: But anyway, do not translate strictly from GPT. That's my point. Kevin King: We did that too at my wedding. When I got married, we did invitations and we did these fancy, I didn't know you, I just met you I think right before I got married. Norm Farrar: Yeah, I think it was a big what's up. Kevin King: I think I met you in like May of 2017, I got married in September. And so I didn't know you well enough to invite you. I didn't know how cool you were at that point. So I invited Manny and Mark and a few other people. But we did a wedding in Columbia and we did, you know me, it's all marketing. So we made, our wedding invitations cost me $85 a piece. And we did, how many did we do? We did a hundred and some odd of them. And I shipped them into Columbia, shipped them to the U.S., to my family. And each one was a box. I should actually show you sometime this box. It's a box about, I don't know, a foot and a half, two foot long. And it had, we made a custom emblem for us, a B and a K for me and her. And this custom like monogram and it's wrapped all in black and gold. And you open it up and there's a candle in there, there's a shot glass, there's one of those wax things to seal it, you know, with a stamp inside it to seal it. And you open this thing up, but we had to do some of them in English and some of them in Spanish, because English for my people and Spanish for her people. So the ones in Spanish, I originally did it in Google Translate, there's no AI back, I know, chat, you can see back then. And gave it to her and she's like, oh, no, no, no, no. You can't you can't say this. You can't say that. And it was it was pretty bad. And one of the translations, I think, instead of saying, have a great day. What was it? I'm trying to remember what it was. I can't remember specifically, but something like instead of have a great day, it was I hope you have a great a new baby. Or something like that, the way it translates. I was like, whoa, there's something along those lines. That's not exactly it, but something along those lines where it's totally messed up. And she's like, no, give this to me. You're not doing any of this. I'm going to rewrite all this in proper Spanish. So, yeah, you got to be careful when you're doing these names. You know, the same thing, you have names. How many big corporations have gone into other countries and the name, you know, Toyota or something means something. Norm Farrar: You know how close you are to Hawaii, right? Your big event. Kevin King: Yeah. Norm Farrar: In Hawaii. Where we met in Hawaii. Kevin King: No, Cancun. Norm Farrar: What's that? Oh, sorry. That was Cancun then the next year. Kevin King: We bonded in Hawaii. We met in Cancun. Then you were just the beard guy. You're just the marketing dude, the guy with the beard. So how could I forget you? Unknown Speaker: So I saw you in Hawaii. Kevin King: I was like, hey, there's the dude with the beard. Norm Farrar: Yeah, that's it. Kevin King: I remember you. Norm Farrar: Gave me a big what's up. Kevin King: I don't think I even said what's up. I just like, yeah. Norm Farrar: That's exactly what you did, by the way. Kevin King: You raise your head a little bit back and your nose in the air. Hey, what's up? Like you do when you're passing someone at the urinals in the men's room. Hey, what's up? Norm Farrar: Yeah. Kevin King: Just wash your hands or not. Unknown Speaker: But this example. Kevin King: Someone leaves a urinal and they don't wash their hands. Do you ever see that? You're like in the airport. Some guy just walks straight on out. I'm like, dude, wash your hands. It makes me not want to shake anybody's hands. You know, conferences too. I see it happen sometimes at conferences. Go freaking, at least if you don't want, if there's no water or soap, find a freaking disinfectant, you know, one of these hand sanitizer things or something and do something. But man. Norm Farrar: I, this is no kidding. We went, there's a place in the, I live in a small farm town. So there was this restaurant we went to and the kids were really small at the time. Connie was up there, that's my wife and went down to the can. All of a sudden there's a guy doing his business. He comes out, he works in the restaurant and he wasn't pissing. Kevin King: Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. Norm Farrar: I reported him. I couldn't stand it. I mean, was it like a Jerry Seinfeld show, right? I mean, he did a show on that, but he was in the kitchen. Kevin King: Well, you know, in India, they won't. I think it's the left hand. They will not shake your left hand because that's the hand you wipe your ass with. So if you reach out to shake someone or touch them on their left hand, they will pull back. Because they know that you've been wiping something and you didn't probably wash anything. So they will not touch your left hand in India. So if you're ever in India, don't try to shake someone's left hand or give them something with your left hand. It's going to be a bad, bad thing. Norm Farrar: Yeah, I was going to say, it's going to leave a bad taste in your mouth, but you don't want to leave a bad taste in your mouth is the Marketing Misfits podcast. Kevin King: This is what we do sometimes and we tie it into marketing. Sometimes we go into very specific stuff and actionable tactics. Other times it's just talking like we just did. Other times we bring on amazing guests, but we always got to open it up with a little bit of fun. And just talking about life and marketing and actionable stuff that you can apply in your business world, whether you're selling e-commerce or maybe you're retail or maybe you're a restaurant owner or something else. If it's marketing, hospitality, psychology, taking care of people, solving people's problems, that's what we're all about. So check out The Marketing Misfits podcast. You can find it anywhere on your favorite streaming platform, Apple, Spotify, wherever it may be. If you can't find it there, try to find us on YouTube, Marketing Misfits, or you can go to marketingmisfits.co.co and find us there. Norm Farrar: You did say .co, right? Not .com. Kevin King: Oh, shoot. Yeah. Norm Farrar: .co. Kevin King: .co, not .com. Marketingmisfits.co. I hope you join us. If you like this little thing that we just did, check us out every week, brand new episode. Norm Farrar: Don't forget to subscribe. Kevin King: That's right. Hit that subscribe button because that's how we know you like us. Norm Farrar: I hope they like this. Kevin King: I hope they like it. Well, if they don't like it, what do we do? Do we just stop doing it? Do we, like, have tears in our eyes the next time we're at an event going, where are the outcasts? Norm Farrar: Maybe we'll just be out there smoking cigars by ourselves. Kevin King: There you go. Then who cares? All is good. Norm Farrar: That's not too bad. Kevin King: All is good in the world. We'll be out there smoking cigars and everybody will be pointing at us. That's the dudes right there. Norm Farrar: All right, everybody. And we will see you on the podcast. Kevin King: MarketingMisfits.co. Norm Farrar: Like what he said.