Stop Being a Boring Brand...

A good differentiator is a mic drop moment. You're doing that leaprog game and then all of a sudden you do something and your competitors are like, "We don't know what to do next." When Domino's Pizza turned the industry on its head when they started to deliver 30 minutes or free, that was a mic drop moment. And then I think it's enterprise. You just walk up to your car and you take off. You don't have to stand in a line for 2 hours. A lot of times something becomes cool and like every brand thinks they got to do it. We're eco-friendly or we're woke. Is that a mistake? Why do they think brands feel that they need to do that? Cuz that's not a different that's a me too. We have a common mindset of wanting to always appeal to more people when it's actually a game of reduction. Great differentiation is reducing your audience. What about satire or humor with a brand? The statement that you want to achieve is get someone somewhere in the world look at your brand and say, "Oh my god, somebody finally gets me." You're watching Marketing Misfits with Norm Ferrar and Kevin K. Senor Ferrar. How you doing, man? Good. Good. I I like that uh French accent. Senior No, that's Seenor. That's that that's Spanish. That's not French. Not the way you say it. If I was doing French, it's what was it? Mour mour. I don't know. You speak French. You grew up in Canada. I don't know. All I know is we we we know champagne. I know champagne. And I know uh c uh you know a few words. Caviar or whatever. Is that French? Is that French? I don't I don't know. But that's very good. Kevin, I when I get a box and it it says FR on the side and then I was like, "Nope, I'm skipping that one." Where's the EN? I I when I get a box, it's FU. is FU. That's sort of the instruction side that you read is the FU pages. That's good. Oh, man. So, you know, uh, one of the things that you and I always harp on a lot is differentiation. We, you know, we always give you've given the the example of the knife company you work with a few times on a couple podcast. Probably everybody hasn't heard that, so might not hurt to repeat it again at some point, but I gave mine with my bully sticks. Uh, and and differentiation is something that I think is huge. And you know, I just went to last night the internet marketing party here in Austin, which has been going on the second Tuesday of every Thursday for 17 years. And without missing a day, and during co they did it virtually. But at this party, it's it's a mix of people. There's probably 150 people there from the Austin uh internet marketing community. Everything from Facebook people to affiliate people to uh you name it. And the speaker last night kind of ties in to what our guest today is going to be I think uh we're going some of the rabbit holes we'll go down. He was like look everybody says go for the blue ocean. You know there's this book that came out I forget the name. It's blue ocean something uh you know it's a number one seller like go where everybody's not niche down. And he was like, "No, that's actually wrong." Um because and his his positioning statement was like, "Look, everybody always says they have a traffic problem. They're like, "How do I get eyeballs to my product? How do I get people to come into my product?" Oh, you just got everybody's like, "You got to niche down. You got to niche down. Niche down." He's like, "No, that just all that does is cut your market size. If you can make that work, this is his basically his words. If you can make that work, good on you. Very few people do. And the ones that do might become a billionaire. Congratulations. But if you actually want something a bigger uh market opportunity, a bigger TAM, a bigger opportunity, go into a Red Sea where it's super super competitive. And I'll I'll send you the AI the plot notes on this uh so you can check it out. But he's like go where it's super competitive and and then be be the blue offer, not the blue. It's not. So he his deal is red ocean blue offer, which is also basically saying differentiation. and he he gave some psychological ways to do this and some some marketing ways to do this. And I think that fits in nicely with our our guest today, uh Jesse uh Braki, who is one of the top experts out there when it comes to differentiation. So, I think this is going to be a lot of fun. Yeah, I do too. Uh let's see, what was I going to say about your red and blue example? Um red red sea blue offer. Exactly. Exactly. something along those lines just to differentiate yourself. But you know what, Kev, you nailed it on the head with I'm wearing blue. I got a blue offer for you, Nor. Kev, look at the instructions. It says, "F you." Okay. So, but no, talking about what you just said. It's 100%. You know, and that that goes and we could talk about this later on about uh something Tim Jordan and I did with a uh tortilla press, a simple tortilla press. You know, everybody was doing it. But um let's get into that a little bit later on. So, let's bring on Jesse first and get into it. There's the man. Hello. How are you, Jesse? I hear that you fit right into the uh misfits part of the podcast. Absolutely. Absolutely. Maybe we'll talk a little bit about marketing, but uh mostly talk about being a misfit my entire life. So, do you read the FU instruction panel, too, or do you go to the EEN one? It's a new certification, you know, it's it's sweeping the nation. Uh hey, Jesse, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background? It's pretty pretty damn interesting. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I've been I've been running, for lack of a better term, uh a generalist agency for about 25 years. And when COVID hit, I think uh like a lot of people, I did some soularching for trying to figure out what I really wanted to be when I grew up. And just kind of going through my history, I wanted to uh you know, figure out the projects that not only made me feel most fulfilled, but where did I make my clients the most money? where did I have the biggest impact? And it was the the projects where I truly got to differentiate. I started saying, you know, I wanted to take boring as boring as possible products or services and inject them with so much personality uh that they can stand on their own. And one of my coaches says, "No one's going to selfidentify as boring. You can't say boring projects." So, uh I came up with the term decommoditized, right? So, if you're on the verge of becoming a commodity, which I am as a marketer and a generalist uh web agency, uh how do you become decommoditized and kind of make yourself futureproof? And uh kind of got the bug and I know I I know I like doing it, but now I had to figure out the science behind it. I felt like they were, like you said, blue ocean solutions. Everyone tells you about how great it is to be a blue ocean solution, but they don't tell you how the hell to do it. And it's really, really difficult. And then once you figure out your blue, you know, your blue offer, how do you succinctly tell it to the rest of the world? Um, so I think a majority of books out there leave out those important steps. You know, they tell you about the the promised land, but they don't tell you how to get there, you know. Uh, I just want to go back to this uh tortilla press because it's exactly like you guys are talking about right now. It's commoditized. I mean, it's a tortilla press. So, we were on a call and we just wanted to show a few people how to go and do some product research. We saw this metal tortilla press that was selling like 1999. And on the call, we decided to go over and check out, it was just Alibaba search. And we saw that there were some wooden tortilla presses. And so, we thought, oh, nobody's selling these on Amazon at that time. Now, it's everywhere. But, uh, we thought, okay, this is pretty cool, but how do you differentiate? Nobody was getting it from South America or Mexico. So, we went to Guatemala and we said, "Okay, what about if we made it here?" Now, it's a genuine, it's made like it's a genuine tortilla press. It was the first on Amazon differentiating ourselves from everybody else. And now everybody and his mother's doing it. But that's, you know, blue ocean or red ocean, blue ocean. And I I thought that was so unique and it happened. Red Sea Blue offer. Oh, I'm sorry. I, you know, I'm just getting this, Kevin. This is firsthand knowledge to me. This Red Sea Blue, is it trademarked, by the way? I don't know. I don't know if he did or not. It might be. Probably is. Yeah. Decom, audacious. Is I bet I bet red sea blue offer. Club is not uh Oh, just a sec. is now. Can you give us some examples of uh you know what I actually what I was talking about Kevin was talking about and you were talking about at the beginning. Sure. Sure. I mean we I as I was going through my journey and figuring out how brands throughout history have successfully done this I put together kind of a a a guide. I codified how to do it in my book, Marketing for Super Villains, available now on Amazon. Um, and I call it the universe of differentiation. And it's basically a universe of 12 planets. And each planet is a different way that either a brand, a big brand or a small brand throughout history successfully differentiated themselves. And brands, other brands can either use pieces of different planets or an entire planet altogether. Uh, but it's basically, you know, for lack of a not to not to pun, but your north star and kind of guiding you along your path of figuring out your true differentiator. So, there's at least a dozen uh examples in the book. And, you know, when people hear differentiated, they think like, oh, I got to be weird or I got to be different. I got to dress, you know, craziest in the room. But, you know, we include stuff everything from Rolex down to G.I. in the universe of differentiation. So it's literally spans the map from prestigious brands down to uh down to toys. Um so yep, that's my my my method that I walk my clients through and and finding their true differentiator. Can you give us one of your favorite examples of how someone differentiated? How someone maybe turned around their business or solved a problem that was they or beat out the competition or something? Maybe one of the examples that's in the book. Sure. Sure. Can you kind of walk us through that story? uh uh uh and paint that picture for everybody. Absolutely. So, Norm uh using your example of the tortilla press, right? So, one of the planets is called heritage, right? So, if you have a rich heritage that kind of transcends your industry, you should lean on that to differentiate yourself the same way you did with your tortilla press. But sometimes you don't have that luxury. So, what do you do? In some cases, may not be the most honest thing, you allude to heritage. So, I'm sure you guys, you probably look the same age as me, remember the Ginsu knife? Ginsu. Yeah, Ginsu knives. They knew that Japanese cutlery had a cache of really fine and quality craftsmanship, but they were made in Minnesota. So, they said, "Hey, let's call it Ginsu. We won't say they're from Japan, but we'll kind of give that little hint of heritage." And that heritage differentiator translated to billions and billions of dollars. They eventually got bought out by uh uh what's uh I don't remember the guy's name, but yes, big payday at the end. Some Japanese company. Yeah, Japanese company. So, we need some real Japanese characters in here now. So, so when it So, what are a few of the others? uh planet or maybe just can you just rattle off the planets uh real quick just to I mean we won't go into every single one of them but rattle rattle them off just uh so people can hear that. So I have a a handy download that you can download for free at the uh at the website uh yeah so the 12 differentiating planets where do you where can they download that? uh decommoditize.com decommoditize.com okay uh differentiate via definitives and feel free to either stop me or make notes for the end uh approachable distinction. Number three is exclusivity and scarcity. Four is personify followed by lifestyle, heritage, repositioning the category, process, niching down, timing, cause alignment, and byproduct. Hey, Norm, you'll love this man. I talked to a seller the other day doing 50k a month, but when I asked them what their actual profit was, they just kind of stared at me. Are you serious? That's kind of like driving blindfolded. Exactly, man. I told them you got to check out Sellerboard. This cool profit tool that's built just for Amazon sellers. It tracks everything like fees, PPC, refunds, promos, even changing cogs during using FIFO. Aha. But does it do FBM shipping costs, too? Sure does. That way you can keep your quarter 4 chaos totally under control and know your numbers because not only does it do that, but it makes your PPC bids, it forecasts inventory, it sends review requests, and even helps you get reimbursements from Amazon. Now, that's like having a CFO in your back pocket. You know what? It's just $15 a month, but you got to go to sellerboard.commisfits. sellerboard.commisfits. And if you do that, they'll even throw in a free two-month trial. So, you want me to say, "Go to sellerboard.com, misfits, and get your number straight before your accountant loses it?" Exactly. All right. So, is this something that people do you see in your experience and in your research that brands do from the get-go or a lot of times are most of these implemented once a market becomes mature or saturated and they're like this just a race to the bottom in price right now? Uh, we got to do something or we we got to exit this market or or close our business or whatever. What are you seeing? Is it this mostly occurs? Yeah, I think it's a mixture of both, but I find it stronger with challenger brands, right? So, very rarely does a challenger brand enter the market and say, "Hey, we want to be, you know, just as good as the name brand." A challenger brand usually has that mentality of we want to be big, but we want to change the way the industry is perceived or the way the way things are are done. So I think challenger brands uh are more apt to this thinking and enter the market already differentiated because their mission statement it's kind of it's kind of in their DNA to shape things up and and make the industry or the perception of the industry completely different. Is a differentiation done in the packaging? Is it done in the positioning statements or the avatars? Is it done in the in the the the tone of voice? Is it done? And where I mean I'm you're gonna say all of those, of course, but but but where's the what moves the needle the fastest I think when it comes to differentiation? Where what's an easy win? I is packaging like the easiest win or just upgrade your packaging and change it to be like an Apple box or something to have perceived value or is it is it something else? And what's the most difficult long-term thing to actually change and hardest when it comes to differentiation? Yeah, we kind of we kind of go through the uh you know the oneup leaprog uh mentality. You know, you redesign your logo and your closest competitor redesigns the logo and you get a fancy package and you come your competitor does the packaging. We got a lower price and they lower the price and it's just kind of this this race to the bottom. I like to think of like a good differentiator is a mic drop moment. like you're doing that leaprog game and then all of a sudden you do something and your competitors are like oh we don't know what to do next right so I like to say you know your true differentiator is it's got to be ingrained in your DNA right so one of the one of the uh planets is cause alignment and everybody does a cause alignment now like oh we're going to donate here we're going to donate a portion of proceeds there it doesn't make you different however if you take a company like Tom Shoes shoes where every pair you buy, they buy a pair for someone in need. And that is their that is their differentiator. That is their mission statement. That makes them completely different from, let's say, Reebok, who's going to donate $10 million next year to, you know, people that are in need. It's completely different. Even though it's the same, it makes their brand, it's entwined in their brand. It's entwined in their in their corporate culture. And that in turn makes them different. Yeah. We've talked about this before on the podcast, but just a couple of other examples when Domino's Pizza turned the industry on its head when they started to deliver 30 minutes or free or and I mean I think that was a mic drop moment and then I think it's enterprise that you just walk up to your car and you take off. You don't have to stand in a line for two hours. And those are a couple of brands that just killed it because of that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one of my one of my favorite stories aside from Ginsu, um, we have process as one of the differentiators, right? So, you look at the alcohol space, incredibly competitive. There's 17,000 new alcohol beverage SKUs every year, finding shelf space. So, you think, uh, cool label, cool bottle, cool spokesperson, and it just keeps going and going. What this company in New York did, Sweet Amber Distilling, is they wanted to partner with a a cool band, Metallica, and both Metallica and the distillery didn't want to just throw a a band on a label and and try to compete. So, they actually created a process where Metallica created what's called the black noise as opposed to white noise, right? So, it's this low sonic level uh music that barges the wooden barrels in the distilling process for years and years. And the thought process is the vibrations get the wood get the wood grain into the uh into the mixture. But it's called Blackened Whiskey after one of Metallica's most popular song, Blackened. And right there, I I I'd be willing to bet one of you two would retell that story somewhere next time you're at a bar, next time you see a Metallica shirt. It's just something that all your competitors are going to be left scratching their head like that's pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. Whis blast Metallica heavy metal the casks. But it's pretty cool story and you know maybe it does make my uh my whiskey taste better. It gets more of the uh the vibrations of the wood and the music into the into the you know the spirit. So So what about like I mean Norman and I talked about this on a podcast in the past but someone like Liquid Death what they did what's your take on that? Uh so it's kind of our our tent pole as to you know what we measure other brands by. So uh liquid death is in the uh is in the book and it's a perfect thought experiment for anyone that's thinking about differentiation right so it's you know uh prices are too low already blah blah blah blah you think about water is free you know in most of the developed world you get you can turn on the faucet and get water for free but we spend billions of dollars on water you could fill up a bucket before you go to work and carry it around with you. Are you really buying water or are you buying its byproduct, which is another planet in the universe? Are you buying refrigeration because it's cold and your bottle of water in the car is hot? Are you buying convenience because you don't want to carry around a bucket all day? You'll pay 99 cents to get it in in a, you know, nice little convenient bottle. Or is it, you know, kind of throwing up a middle finger to all the, you know, uh, Mike, the owner of Liquid Death, calls every other water package a yoga accessory and you'reing down an extra dollar for, you know, your your somebody gets me adherence to a lifestyle brand. So, lifestyle brand is another uh planet in the universe of differentiation. So, I um I know Liquid Death. I couldn't believe it when I thought I saw I thought it was a beer. Kevin tells me it's water. I said, you know, bull. There's no way that they're selling this for that much. And um in a tall boy can. Yeah. In a tall boy can. But I've never seen the case study. And I wonder maybe you know this. Did they How did they say, "Okay, look guys, we're going to sit down. We're going to bottle this water. We're going to pay or people are going to buy it for a crazy amount. Uh and we'll just start doing this." Did they have like did they put a ton of market research into it? How did they end up with liquid death? Great story. So, they did a little 3D rendering of the can. They made a six-pack. I think the number was they spent 600 bucks to do a Facebook uh ad uh promoted ad. And on that $600 3D rendering, they got bombarded with requests from distributors, from consumers. I want this. I want this. I want this. And then they were faced with the with the problem of, oh crap, no one no one cans water because the carbonation is what makes the can stiff. Doing water in a can makes it, you know, soft and floppy. So they had to go to all the way to Austria, the only the only people that knew how to bottle a can water. And it's a really really great story kind of every step of the way. But 3D rendering, a crazy idea, and 600 bucks in Facebook marketing is now a $50 million uh industry. I think it's it's a billion dollar valuation. I just recently saw Oh, yeah. Yeah. I think they do. That's not their sales, but I think that's their valuation is is well over a billion dollars now. Yeah. I think they only do 50 million a year, but the value of the brand is that exponential. Yeah. Only 50. Only 50. So, so what I think a lot of brands make a mistake uh and this probably comes to your your 12 planets too. Um when you you start talking to them, they they think it's about them and all their marketing is about them. Uh I I hate this when I hear a radio ad and they're do a DJ's doing a read, a live read or something for a local I don't know uh car repair place and it's all it's all about it's all about the car replace care repair care place and they're saying I and we we've been in business this long and we we take care of our customers and we do this and that and I'm like get that damn we and I stuff out of there. It's all about the customer. And you just kind of said it like on on liquid death and Metallica the examples you gave everything there is flipped and it's it's about the customer and it's not about the brand. Uh can you talk a little bit to to what you see in that? Yeah it's funny what you mentioned radio. One of my one of my consultants he says everyone in the world listens to W I W I FM. What's in it for what's in it for me? Right. And that's all they care about. And I think nowadays and it's just getting you know that there's every step of the way between the internet and all the ads we see now the advent of AI and all the content consumption that we have to do people's attention spans and the value they get out of your content is getting less and less and less and less. So if you're not talking about what's in it for me, you lost me. you lo you have you had me for a second and you lost me in that in that split second uh that you weren't thinking of my needs. Um so yeah, I mean it's it's a tough thing to wrap your head around as a business because most business owners, brand owners, they have tremendous pride in what they're building and they want to tell everybody about, you know, how great it is. Um but you definitely have to flip that mentality. In Amazon, I always see that there's three pricing tiers. U you know, first level, second level, and third level. Third level being the highest price, lots of perceived value. The bottom is just product cannibal cannibalization. Now, if you're in either that level or the second level and you want to be different, okay, you've got tons of other competitors out there. It might be a supplement, it might be a bully stick, it might be whatever it is, you're trying to do something. Where do you start? How do you do your research? Maybe you're not a marketer. Like for Kevin and myself, I think we we can look at something and say, "Oh, maybe if you did this, you know, maybe it's wrong." But where would somebody else uh start? Yeah. So, Kevin, I heard I would have loved, if you don't mind, when you send Norm the AI notes from the speaker, I'd love to uh hear about the anti-nitching down. Yeah, I'll be happy to send that to you. Yeah, no problem. But uh yeah, I mean I think the biggest mistake and I'm guilty of this as well. I think we all are is we have a common mindset of wanting to always appeal to more people, appeal to a wider audience when it's actually a game of reduction, right? So great differentiation is reducing your audience. And I think the greatest achievement, the gold standard in branding Wait, wait, wait. I'm going to interrupt you real quick. Is it is it reducing your audience or having them self- select? Because that's basically in his talk last night, the way he does the hook, what he showed. He showed I wish I had my phone with me with the pictures. I took pictures of his uh it's in the other room, but he he he actually said, "No, you don't want to reduce the audience. You actually want to have them self- select out, which in in effect, I think is the same thing you're saying is have them self." But he's like, "No, go where the big audience is." And then and with in your hook and he showed brilliant examples of how to actually appeal uh to the to who you want and to at the same time almost in the same sentence tell the get rid of the people you don't want. Uh but go ahead. I'm sorry. Sure. Sure. Yes. I think the gold standard of of achieving a differentiated brand is achieving a lifestyle brand. So we'll bring it back to to liquid death and the the statement that you want to achieve is get someone somewhere in the world to say look at your brand and say somebody finally gets me right so if you're all things to all people you know like no one looks at Coca-Cola and goes oh they get me Coca-Cola gets me like you need to you need to have a little bit of friction you need to sacrifice very publicly sacrifice some of that audience so that the true people that really align with you build that stronger of a bond, right? You want to build a war cry. War cry rallies like-minded individual where people that don't align with you kind of go and kind of shuffle off to the back. So, I don't know if if we're talking about kind of the same thing of self- selection or reduction. Um, you know, in my book, I liken it to there's something writers call the Bloffield ploy, and it's basically in tribute to uh Blofeld, one of the greatest Bond villains. And we've all seen it before, right? So, some underling misperforms, and the villain holds up the gun and points it at his head, he closes his eyes, and you hear a bang, and then he opens his eyes, and he actually killed off an underling. you know, that's even less of less value. Letting the main guy know he means business. That's kind of building a lifestyle brand. Letting your core people know, hey, we get you. We mean business. And those other people that are on the fringe almost alienate them on purpose, much like liquid death. Screw them. This is us. This is built by us for us. And that's how you get tremendous allegiance. And building a specific community. So, it might be, you know, anything, but it might be something very specific, uh, TRX, you know, TRX workouts, and all of a sudden, you've got this great big community that just loves TRX workouts and are loyal to TRX. Anytime they uh promote anything, well, this community is probably going to buy. Now, a quick word from our sponsor, Lavanta. Hey Kevin, tell us a little bit about it. That's right, Amazon sellers. Do you want to skyrocket your sales and boost your organic rankings? Meet Lavanta, Norman and I's secret weapon for driving highquality external traffic straight to our Amazon storefronts using affiliate marketing. That's right. It's achieved through direct partnerships with leading media outlets like CNN, Wire Cutter, and Buzzfeed, just to name a few, as well as top affiliates, influencers, bloggers, and media buyers. all in Lvanta's marketplace, which is home to over 5,000 different creators that you get to choose from. So, are you ready to elevate your business? Visit get.lav.io/misfits. That's get.lav van na.io/misfits and book a call and you'll get up to 20% off Lavanta's gold plan today. That's get.lav. lavant.io/misfits. Yep. Yeah. I mean, I think as a brand, building a lifestyle brand, you have to stand for things that other people stand for and be completely public about things that you do not align them do not align with. Um, and toss them to the side. Back on your coke coke example, what you said when you mentioned Coke earlier. I think that that identifification is one of the reasons for the last couple summers they've done cans with names on them. Yeah. They come out with cans and you know you're in the store and like you're shuffling through all the cans. Where's the one that says Norm? Oh, that's not a common name. There's no Norm. Sorry, Norm. But there's a Kevin here. I'm the by the Kevin. I'm by the Kevin can. And I think that's one of the reasons they they've repeated that uh promotion a couple times is for that exact reason. Like this is this is for me. And yeah, you notice how that's changed where they have all these generic sayings on the cans now as well. So if it's you don't have the name, you have this generic phrase on the can. No, I haven't seen that. I mean you were you just weren't you just drinking a Coke norm? You got a name on your bottle? Yeah. Well, on the Coke Zoo on the little plastic bottles, they don't put anything. It's on the It's on the ones that are in like the retail. It's the Yeah, the retail oriented the single single cell sell ones. Together is better. Oh, yeah. I seen Okay. Yeah, I seen that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Huh. So, when someone comes to you uh to get help uh for your agency that uh does anything or whatever you whatever you said earlier, What what are they what are they looking for? Are they looking for like, hey, help us out with some differentiation? And what process do you take them through? Like, do you have a series of questions or a series of exercises? Uh uh how does that work? Yeah. So, I have kind of two branches to my business. Um the generalist agency where you know it's been around for 25 years. It's it's a it's a running machine. What I like to categorize people in, and maybe you guys have experienced this, is the client comes to us and say, "Oh, we want to look like those guys. Can you like look at their website and make us look as big or as sleek or as whatever, you know, cookie cut like a big guy? You're underresourced, underutilized, but for their own their own kind of business model that works for them." the consulting side, the decommoditized, the marketing for super villains is when people are like, "Hey, I used to have a lot of pride in what I did." And now all people care about is price. You know, they used to call me that. I was like the superhero. They would call me. I was the only one that could solve their problems. I used to go to bed, you know, feeling, you know, really prideful. And now people just ask, you know, why does it cost this instead of that? And the other person, I lost all pride in my company. I want to build that pride up. I want to I don't want to race to the bottom. I want to differentiate. I want to charge a premium. And I want people to realize the difference between me and everybody else. And that's kind of where I come in as a uh a differentiator and kind of help brands achieve that premium spot in their marketing, reclaim their leadership position. You It's kind of like boiling a frog in water. You know, you turn the temperature and all of a sudden, we've seen this in the Amazon world with agencies. Ah, there was initially five. Now all of a sudden there's 3,600. And if you go out with the initial price that you normally would have charged, you'll never get any business. You've got to always dumb it down and give it's exactly like you said. I mean, we are rushing to the bottom to make anything right now. I I'm kind of curious. So, with all of your marketing experience, um, what's one or two like lessons that you've learned the hard way? And, you know, it might even haunt you to this day. Yeah, I mean, I I I was doing what I do in my consulting firm for free without knowing it, right? So, uh, a a a business voipe phone company would come to me and say, "Oh, we want to grow. put us on social media. And I'd be like, "No one's going to follow a a VO phone company. Why why should I put you on social media? What makes you special? What's your differentiator?" Only if only to stack the deck in my favor cuz I wanted to be successful. You know, my success means their success. And I know just doing what they want, 6 months, they're going to yell at me even though I told them it was a bad idea and they're going to leave and I get a bad Google review. So, I would intentionally walk people through this differentiation process before they spent any money. Um, and it's not an easy or comfortable process. You're going to make hard decisions. You're going to make sacrifices. And a lot of them kind of got fed up and just went and hired some other SEO other social media company that put them on social media. Nobody followed them and they fired them in six months. So really kind of figuring out the the unique offering that I bring to the marketplace, finding or identifying finding people that selfidentify with that commoditization pain and then kind of just matching them up and and getting us off and and working with the same goal in mind. So can is there a limit to differentiation though? I mean, just, you know, just recently, this last spring and summer, uh there's been big uh brewhaha, especially in the e-commerce world, about Trump's tariffs on China. And one of the the things that Trump was saying is like, "Yeah, we're going to bring uh manufacturing back to America and made in America." And and there's always been a a subgroup of people that don't want to buy from other countries. They want to support America. They only buy made in America. So there's a company that actually ran a test and they said, "Well, well, let's see. If we brought our product back to America where the infrastructure is not the same as China, the systems aren't the same. We can make it here. Of course, we can make it here. Uh but the product is going to cost $512 uh if we make it here. And if we keep make it in China, it's going to be uh $69 uh is what we can sell it for." They put out I don't know if it was a I think it was a Facebook they did a Facebook test where people not just like asking the question which would you buy but it's like they actually sent them to a dummy website where you actually entered your credit card and and then they just didn't charge it you know but they wanted like they wanted the true intent not just what people cuz sometimes what people say and what people do are two different things. So and in this test they had like 532 orders or something like that if I recall. Guess how many of them bought the uh Chinese versus the USA. Who's 95%. Zero bought the made in USA. Everybody bought the made in China. Every single person. So, is there a limit? And I don't know what their ad said. You know, maybe they didn't emphasize the made in USA and emphasize I don't know. They could have maybe some positioning stuff. I'm not sure. That could have maybe affected that slightly and maybe tilted it where they got the 95% like you said. Uh but is there a limit to differentiation uh of what you can do? Sure. I mean every everything uh should be done you know in moderation but using your made in the USA example um you know there's there's you could just say hey we're just switching manufacturing facilities and you're going to pay 500% more but you're going to get to sleep at night knowing knowing it's made in the USA. Uh, I read a book once where someone someone had that exact problem. And then they also explained that, hey, you're gonna you're gonna pay a premium for made in the USA, but if it breaks, we'll have parts to you in 24 hours. If you buy the Chinese version, if it breaks, you're going to wait 6 weeks for parts. Are you willing to pay an extra 500 bucks up front to have that convenience? Is that downtime really worth it? So, I think differentiation, I don't think we're we're really talking about a limit here. I think it's if you're going to differentiate yourself, why is that important to me? Right? Every every general contractor says, "Oh, yeah, we're licensed and insured. We're licensed and insured." All right. Do you ever go deeper than that? Like if if something breaks, something goes through my window. Is that covered? I'm just going to hire a guy off Craigslist. Am I going to take the risk? So, I think if you're explaining your differentiation, hey, I'm charging more because you're getting this. And what I've seen in my 20 years of experience is you hire less qualified people, this breaks, that breaks, this happens, you run the risk of that, yada yada yada. I think having that differentiator sometimes requires a little bit of explanation as to again, how does this benefit? What's in it for me? Well, it's made in the USA. And if downtime's a downtime's a concern for you and downtime cost you money, you're going to get parts in 24 hours as opposed to six weeks. All right. Your story structure really plays a part in this. Yep. Yep. In some cases, you know, if you're trying to charge an extra 500% uh versus a Chinese product, you know, maybe the sentiment isn't enough. You know, if you're selling to, you know, those hardcore red states that are like die hard and they live and buy, you might be able to get away with it. But if you're going for people that are, you know, looking at their bottom line, you got to tell them why you're going to pay 500%. What's the benefit? What's in it for me? Oh, you get parts faster. There's less downtime. Blah blah blah blah blah. All right. 500 extra. I don't care. I'll pay that. I I can give you an example that I just want to talk about for a second. It goes back to these agencies. So, it doesn't have to be Amazon agencies. It could be any agencies. All of a sudden, they go from a handful up to 3,600. uh you know 3,600 agencies. Now I'm wondering I know what you're saying about differentiating. I understand that completely. But is it worth trying to do something when you're in that product cannibalization where everything is so lowball that maybe it's worth just leaving it and trying to find something else? I mean that's that's that's a big question. Um yeah, a lot of uh you know, a lot of uh factors that would factor into me deciding to jump to another to another industry. Um but pulling pulling an example again from the book, another differentiation planet is called uh uh re repositioning the category. This is one of my another one of my favorite stories. So in the in the 60s uh I believe it was Hasbro. They bought the rights to a comic strip. Comic strip was about US Marines and you know the fighting forces and they paid a bunch of money for this comic strip and then they were going to make them into toys. And they realized that at that time making little figures, little humanoid figures, there was no other name for it than a doll. And you know, men coming home from World War II didn't want their sons playing with dolls, right? Kevin does. So, uh, yeah, they were faced with a conundrum and they, uh, decided that they were going to quote unquote reposition the category and they came up with the term action figure, which is with us today. But if you think about it, they were producing the exact same product as they were for females. They just repositioned it as an action figure. Same product, same package, out the door, the rest is history. Yeah. I think I I I think SEO s social media, it it all falls into what I was talking about. And so now you have to try to break free. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's what Listerine did, too. Um I don't know if you know the story of Listerine but back uh about 100 years ago people had bad breath and a guy invented something to help you with your bad breath and nobody was buying it. Uh so what he ended up doing is he invented the word halattosis and that word did not exist. It wasn't in the English dictionary and he invented the word hattosis and he started running ads saying do you have hattos do you or someone you know have halattosis and people are like what the hell is hattosis? Uh, and he explained in the ad somehow, you know, that this is bad breath and people are like, "That's what I have. I have halattosis. I got to get rid of this." And it it shotpulled his sales and launched that brand through the roof. Um, so our buddy, this a mutual buddy of me and Norms is Steve Simson, and he says that he's always of the he's of the school of uh uh MSU. He says, "You should always go to MSU University and marketing." And he when he first said this, everybody's like, "Where's MSU? Michigan State or what's what's MSU? It's make uh s you know the s the s word that uh you know the bad s word up um it's and and that's what a lot of people do. You just make something up. Um and it it it actually creates sales. Yep. Yep. It's like pep uh Alka-Seltzer, right? They came up with plop plop fizz fizz. People were like, "Oh, I guess that's the dosage. Two two tablets. They doubled their sales overnight. Not the dosage. I've been doing this for all these years. Norm, you didn't tell me fizz fizz. That's a different drug, I think. So, wow. You know what, Kev? We're doing this a lot today. Our guest must be really interesting because we never talk over each other. I know. or at least the the editor fixes that was one at a time. All right. So, difference between attention and obsession. How can brands differentiate between that or fix it? Yeah. So, I think uncovering that that meaningful differentiator. Everyone everyone kind of roots for an underdog. Everyone kind of sees themselves as an underdog. So, I use I use the the hardcore example Is your brand strong enough? We'll do we'll do level one. Is your brand strong enough that people would wear your gear without you asking them? Right? Would someone go out and buy a t-shirt with your with your brand on it? Take that to level two. Are your are your fans obsessed? Would they would anyone in the world get a tattoo of your brand? Do they feel that strongly that obsessed with your stance in the market u and get a a tattoo of their of your brand on their body? Are you looking to quickly boost new Amazon product launches or scale up existing listings to reach first page positioning? The influencer platform Stack Influence can help. That's right. Stack Influence pushes high volume external traffic sales straight to Amazon listings using micro influencers that you only have to pay with your products. They've helped upandcoming brands like Magic Spoon compete with Cheerios for top category positioning while also helping Fortune 500 brands like Unilver launch their new products. Right now is one of the best times to get started with Stack Influence. You can sign up at stackinfluence.com or click the link in this video down in the description notes below and mention misfits, that's misfi, to get 10% off your first campaign. stackinfluence.com. You know, my buddy uh Daniel Damasa, Kevin, I was just telling you about him the other day. Um, he has thousands of people with his tattoo on his body die epic. It's crazy. Like thousands, if not tens of thousands. So, they did exactly that. They have a loyal fan base. I don't know. I wouldn't put uh uh Lunch with Norm, you know, I can't see anybody jumping out of planes with Lunch with Norm on their leg or something. Well, I just Anybody that's got tattoos is not for me. I mean, those weirdos that put anything on their body, right, Norm? Uh, oh yeah, right. Uh, for those who don't know, Norm has a tattoo or two or three or four or five or six or maybe more. So, what what about people that jump on bandwagons? So, you're talking about the differentiation. A lot of times something becomes cool and like every brand thinks they got to do it. So, everybody's got to be differentiated. we're we're eco-friendly or we're we're woke or we're whatever. Is that a mistake? Should they Why do they brands feel that they need to do that? Because that's not a different that's a me too. Yeah. Um what what's your thoughts around that? Yeah, I think it's I think it's the natural order of things, right? So unless you uncover that real mic drop moment, right? You get that Metallica blacken moment. I think it's every industry, right? In the 80s, you didn't care which airline you flew. It was it was a price war, right? Then some genius came up with frequent flyer miles and that differentiated the agency or loyalty program. Uh the a the airline the loyalty program totally differentiated. Then everybody else did it and now I don't everybody has frequent flying miles and I'm back to trying to decide on price. So, I think it's kind of an es and flow. Until you can really truly differentiate yourself and you do it right, nobody can copy. Yeah. It's American Airlines that started the uh frequent flyer program. They're the first ones to do it. Like you said, everybody copied and American Airlines is still differentiating now. They're the only ones that with a a Barclay's credit or City Bank or Barclay's credit card under the American Airlines brand where you actually don't have to fly to get them to earn status. So, you know, all all credit cards almost now have some sort of benefit where you can get miles or whatever. But, so that's not the differentiator. the differentiators use their card instead of having to fly 200,000 miles with your butt in the seat to actually get the top tier status to get upgrades and you know all the different benefits. Um now you can do it off of credit card spend. And so that's how they've differentiated and nobody else has copied them to this that I know of uh to this point. So that that's how they're trying to stay one step ahead with that. And now airlines, a lot of people don't realize this, but airlines make most of their money by selling frequent flyer points, not by flying people on planes. The the frequent flyer program, if you go study that, it it's it's amazing because they sell these as, you know, for uh half a cent or less each in bulk to hotels and to all these different industries, uh, you know, car rental places and, uh, whatever to actually give out as rewards. Um, and then they have their own internal, you know, you get a point for every dollar you spend because they know that those are going to be worth like a penny a piece and they know that you're going to carry interest and they're going to get all that money back. Um, but it's an it's a fascinating business to take a look at. Uh, especially when it comes to some different differentiating stuff. Um, yeah, I mean that that kind of goes back to Norm's uh that Norm's question. you you either jump to a completely different industry or you kind of quasi repositioning, right? Are you focused on turning a dollar on fuel on getting people from one place to another in your airline or do you flip it a little bit and now you're in the frequent fly or reseller rewards kind of uh industry? So, yeah, I think it's I think it's just the natural order of things until you can try truly find that mic drop moment. there's just going to be a constant leaprog. We offer frequent flyers, we offer frequent flyers, we offer bonus points, we offer bonus points, and just kind of keep going from there. What about packaging as a packaging as a differentiator? You we said that I mentioned we talked about a little bit earlier, but isn't that probably one of the lowest lying fruits? Norm has a great story about what he did with some knives and uh to differentiate and to actually justify a much higher price. I don't know if you want to repeat that story, Norm, for those that haven't heard it for him. Um, but it's a really cool story uh about differentiation and I'd love to hear your take on on it, Jess. Jess. Sure. Okay. So, client came to us and they had a Damascus knife. They were selling it for $49. They got uh cost of goods landed. Uh it was $16. So, they're making a healthy profit. When I took a look at it, I said, "Why are you packaging it like this? It looks like garbage. It looks like something in Dollar General." I said, "Let me let me take this. Let me repackage it for you." So, I went and I took the Damascus knife. I put a one of the rivets had the logo on it. I acid etch it. Acid etched the knife. I put it into a hard rigid uh case with a magnetic clasp. When they opened it up, there was a message. There was some paper that we wanted it to unveil the product. So, we had this uh Evva foam that the knife was inserted it into. And then we took the whole package, this outside package, and put it into another package. So, it was kind of like the iPhone. So, you take it out, then you'd see the second layer. Well, we took that and we brought it up $10 at a time, but it ended up at $99 up to $124. And right now as we speak, I think it's at $135. I checked last uh last week. So, same traffic, which was crazy. And then we did one thing even crazier was we went to the manufacturer. We said, "Hey, do you have anything similar?" They said, "Yeah, you can have this Damascus knife, but we'll hammer it and we can put a wood handle on the end." So, we took that, we we just put opposite colors. This is the elite product now. package it complete opposite colors, black and gold. Uh, slapped it in, put it up for $224. It was $16. And so we sold less of those. The sweet point, the sweet uh for us it was $124 was the sweet point, but there it is. And that total package uh was $3 and some odd sense. An additional cost, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think packaging is is an interesting conversation, right? So, I think it can fall under the the guise of of marketing. However, you know, if you take the comparison, you walk into a liquor store, everyone's trying to jump on cool bottle, cool box, cool whatever. So, changing your packaging in that particular industry, not really a differentiator. However, if you jump over just a tiny bit to the non-alcoholic industry and you think of fruit juice in a pouch, what's the brand you think of for kids? Tang. No, not no. It's the Tropicana. Uh the Capria little the little metallic pouch they put in the lunch boxes. I know exactly what you're talking about. Um they put it Mom's put in the lunch box with the apple and the bologn sandwich. Um Capri Sun. Capri Sun. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So, somehow someway they completely took ownership of that special packaging in that industry and they may have a few knockoffs that try and bite away at their at their market share. But whether they were first movers or they were just able to dominate um in that particular field, they are truly differentiated. It's the only way you can get Capri Sun and it's the only drink in a pouch. Um, and somehow someway they've used packaging to truly differentiate and build a brand around. So you have alcohol, which is liquid in a liquid in a package, and you have non-alcohol liquid in a package. It works great here, but not in the alcohol space. So I think it's a it's an interesting an interesting conversation to have. I don't know what the magic the magic ingredient is. Maybe it's again being that first mover and really owning the industry and then packaging for that industry. Um, but yes, I think it I think it falls under marketing more than differentiation. I want to add to that knife story because there was one more I I should have added this, not just the packaging, but the way that we got people to come over, register for a lifetime warranty, but then they got two cookbooks, but where the hook came in, uh, which was a lot different than any other knife company, was we were giving out a a weekly meal plan. So, we got these chefs from all around the world to provide us with recipes, which was pretty cool. But the weekly meal plan kept us in front of the anybody who bought the knife. And then we uh created more knives. Like there's 11 in the brand now. So, that was our loyal uh community. Soon as we wanted to do a new launch, we would just launch out to them. So, that's that's something I I should have mentioned. Yep. Super smart. So, the other the other area, and I'm not sure if you would consider this a differentiator, but what about satire or humor with a brand, you know, and and it might not be on the brand. Like, I've heard this from brands like, "Hey, that's not our brand. We can't publish that." But satire and humor, I mean, we see it all the time. Yeah. It's probably the number one differentiator. It's uh I call it approachable distinction, right? So, it's a great way if you have a product, a service where people are typically intimidated, right? So, marketing SEO is is probably one of the one of the best examples. People are shopping, but they don't know what they want and they're probably scared to ask questions because they don't want to feel stupid. So bringing that humor, bringing that approachability, whether it's through a spokesperson that's more approachable, um, really helps break down those walls and bring people into your your brand funnel. It's not for every brand because some brands want those walls come up, you know, to to stay up. You want you don't want to run a Maserati dealership and encourage every guy off the street to walk in and kick tires and say, "Hey, how much for this Maserati?" Oh, how much? Right. You some brands want that, you know, approachability to be at a low level where other brands want to welcome everyone in. You know, we know we know it's difficult shopping for a car. That's why we made Carvana or whatever, right? you know, making that making that brand as approachable as possible, whether it's through humor, whatever you got, satire, parody, uh, goofy spokesperson like a Ryan Reynolds, you know, I don't know anything about gin. I don't know what how to, you know, how long it should be aged or what, you know, what it should be flavored with, but Ryan Reynolds is pretty funny. I'll ask for aviation gin next time I go out. It makes it easy to Yeah, that's what I want. as opposed to the hundred other gins. I know enough I couldn't tell them apart if you asked me. If I had to ask someone else, I'd probably feel stupid. Hey, Kevin King and Norm Ferrar here. If you've been enjoying this episode of Marketing Misfits, thanks for listening this far. Continue listening. We got some more valuable stuff coming up. Be sure to hit that subscribe button if you're listening to this on your favorite podcast player or if you're watching this on YouTube or Spotify. Make sure you subscribe to our channel because you don't want to miss a single episode of the Marketing Misfits. Have you subscribed yet, Norm? Well, this is an old guy alert. Should I subscribe to my own podcast? Yeah, but what if you forget to show up one time? It's just me on here. You're not going to know what I say. I'll I'll buy you a beard and you can sit in my chair, too. We'll just You can go back and forth with one another. Yikes. But that being said, don't forget to subscribe, share it. Oh, and if you really like this content, somewhere up there there's a banner. Click on it and you'll go to another episode of the Marketing Misfits. Make sure you don't miss a single episode because you don't want to be like Norm. Humor takes your guard down too. Uh it's good psychological uh uh ploy as well. And you're seeing the differentiation like in the supplement space which is super competitive. I know at least on Amazon you have brands like Mary Ruth and some of these others that it's evolved from okay there's little pills to there's powders to then gummies became a hot thing. take your vitamins and supplements via gummies. And then everybody and their dog was doing that. And now they're the the leaders are starting to evolve into uh strips that you put under your tongue and you just and and you know it just dissolves that way. You don't got to chew anything or whatever. And uh another one u I'm drawing a complete blank on the name right now. They're DTOC supplement company. But what they do is instead of taking pills, they say we all of our supplements are delivered via a patch. You know those little patches you put on your arm or whatever. But instead of putting one of those big ugly white patches like you know some of the diabetic stuff and all that has you're actually putting on they're actually like almost transparent and they have different ones that are are different designs like one of one of them one of the supplements I forget which one is let's say they're chromium supplement is all butterflies and so actually instead of putting a a a little round sticker on your shoulder that's you know releasing the stuff into your skin it's a butterfly so it almost looks like a temporary tattoo and then they have another one that's an you know dogs or whatever. Then another uh one of the supplements is some other uh thing and it it's it's it's a hit right now and especially among women and children you know trying to get the children take it. Hey, put the little put the little German Shepherd on. Oh yeah. Okay. Uh it's brilliant marketing. That's a that's a differentiating way uh as well. Yep. 100%. They just put out a uh testosterone one and it was um Mike Tyson's tattoo for your face. Have you seen that one, Kev? No, I haven't. It's It What is it? Said it was testosterone. And I thought, you know, it was Oh, a towel on a sticker. Okay, you got it. Okay, if I have to explain. I I got it now. I got it. I was like, you can't be serious. Oh, hey. We're hitting the top of the hour and we could have gone on for another hour, but uh Jesse, uh we always ask a question at the end of the podcast. If our misfit knows a misfit, that's that's that's pretty much who I hang out with exclusively. So, I got a ton of misfits for you. Uh I'll make an introduction to Mr. Paul Sterret, who has a podcast called Bad Marketing Sucks. And for some reason, I think you guys will get along. Oh, perfect. Perfect. And if if I want if people want to get your book, um you said it's on Amazon. What's the name of it again? Um Amazon. It's called Marketing for Super Villains. And uh later this uh this summer, we'll have volume two coming out. So, this is all about why I think you should become a marketing super villain. And volume two is the actual how to become a marketing super villain. Fantastic. and we'll make sure that that gets into the show notes as well, the link to the book. All right, Jesse, thanks a lot for coming on the uh the show today. We had a lot of fun and learned quite a bit. Thanks for having me, boys. All right, I'm going to remove you. Okay, it's the button. It's the There you go. Hey, don't start don't start with me with buttons. I'll talk about last night you Oh, you couldn't find the bloody button. You kept knocking yourself out of the Zoom meeting. All right, I just had to get that off my chest. Now, differentiation is is so important and I think so many people just try to be a me too instead of actually standing out from the crowd. And um in a AI world where AI is creating images and pulling from all the same data and the same uh stuff, I think it's going to become more and more important to get creative and to have those connections, those humanto human connections. And I think this is something that a lot of marketers should be really uh paying attention to and trying to integrate into what they're doing right now. You know, we've we've talked about this for years, but perceived value, you know, that's a differentiator. And if you're an Amazon seller and you're trying you're finding it hard right now, spend a few dollars um and have higher perceived value. get a professional to come up with some, you know, good packaging or something like anything that we talked about today. But you'll find out uh that you could double your profits, triple your profits, and uh stand out from everybody else. I agree. And if you want to stand out from everybody else, you've got to be listening to the Marketing Misfits podcast, cuz that's how you stay on the cutting edge of what's happening in the world of marketing and thinking outside the box. And how do they do that, Norm? They go to some marketingmisfits.co, right? Marketingmisfits.co. Did I get that right? After a year. Yep. Yep. After uh 65ish episodes. A marketingmisfits.co. Or uh you can go over to our YouTube channel, which is just MarketingMisfits Podcast. A little long, but Marketing Misfits Podcast. And we have a new channel that's taken off. It's for our clips. So, just like this episode, we're going to be taking out some nuggets, putting it on uh this other channel called Marketing Misfits Clips. They're all 3 minutes and less. And these are just the nuggets from the uh that we extract from each episode. So, check that out. Plus, we're on pretty much any podcast platform that you want to listen to. And coming soon is the Marketing Misfits weekly newsletter. So, make sure you keep an eye out for that. That's definitely something you're going to want to subscribe to. Uh, but hey, Norm, we'll be back here again next Tuesday with another awesome episode. So, uh, hopefully we'll see everybody that's listening today back again next week. We better. We better. All right, everybody. We'll see you later. Guido after them. Take care, everybody. [Music]