Why Your Brand is Failing - Avoid These Branding Mistakes... | Kevin King & Norm Farrar | MMP #030

Why Your Brand is Failing - Avoid These Branding Mistakes... | Kevin King & Norm Farrar | MMP #030 Kevin King: I think a lot of people don't understand. They think of marketing as just selling things. They just think of it as like, I want, it's transactional instead of emotional. And so I think when it comes to marketing, you've got to get into the emotional side of things and not just the transactional side of things. Unknown Speaker: You're watching Marketing Misfits with Norm Farrar and Kevin King. Kevin King: Senor, or should I say Monsieur Farrar. Norm Farrar: That, you know, your Italian is doing awesome. Kevin King: I can't say it in French. I should be able to say a few words in French now because, uh, you know, I was talking to the elevator in Montreal. Every time you get out of the elevator, uh, when we were recently in Montreal, you're like, you said you had got a little choco because you're like, Kevin, what the hell? You'd leave the elevator and go to your room and I'd continue up and the thing would say a bunch of stuff in French and I'd just be like, yes, that's right. Merci. Merci. Merci. How are you? And you're like, what the hell are you saying? Welcome to the elevator. Norm Farrar: Hey, just wait. One day it'll be, what floor are you going on, sir? Kevin King: Yeah, that was interesting in Montreal though. We were just recently in Montreal together doing some work and having some meetings and of course smoking some cigars until closing down the bar as usual. Norm Farrar: Four in the morning. Kevin King: Three, four in the morning and then going and grabbing a And what was that one night we smoked until three and then we went and grabbed fresh bagels. Unknown Speaker: Like this is from a wood oven. Kevin King: Yeah, yeah, it's this wood oven bagels. And your son Hayden was like, yeah, there's this place is 24 hours and second some neighborhood. You go in there and there's you can barely walk into the place because there's stacks and stacks of bagels on carts, ready to roll out to trucks or something to go to all the We're all local places for breakfast, but going there and you get a fresh bagel for like a dollar. It was really cool. Norm Farrar: Yeah. And they were good too. And they were warm. So even better, but that just goes to show you, I mean, this place has been around for years. I forget when they opened up and they're open up 24 hours. When we were in there, I think by the time we got there, it was about 3.30 in the morning and there were people constantly coming and going. Kevin King: Yeah, there's a bunch of people in there. There's a line behind us and then when we were waiting for the Uber, there's a bunch more people coming in. Yeah, so this was like a destination place. Unknown Speaker: It was cool. Kevin King: It's one of those Those historical kind of like, you know, you've got something when people are going to drive out of the way, because this wasn't like in a shopping mall. It wasn't like in a prime location somewhere on a corner where everybody's just getting out of the clubs and passing by. This was like down a residential street almost and kind of just stuck there. You had to make a destination. I mean, it wasn't far away, but you had to actually make it a purposeful destination to go there. Norm Farrar: Yeah, and we did that with pizza and we did that with everything else, even hot dogs. Frigging guy on a skateboard. Kevin King: I know. We order some Uber Eats and it takes like two hours. We're looking at the Uber Eats app and it's like the vehicle's barely moving. And we're like, damn, this guy must be on a skateboard or on a bicycle or something. It turns out he's in a car. I don't know what he was doing. He kept making wrong turns. Like you see it on the Uber app, you know, it's like it showed the direction of the little line from where he's at to our place. And then all of a sudden he'd be going off down some other side street and then turn it back around. It was good. It was good. Norm Farrar: Yeah. So Montreal in general. We talk about marketing and being able to do this on a regular basis. So I've flown down to Austin, you've flown up here to, and I didn't say down there, up here to Toronto, Montreal, like wherever we can, we try to meet and spend a few hours or days talking about building a business. So you have to do it and it took us, I remember when we were up here, it took us at least a day just for the branding. We really thought it out and everybody we've showed the branding to our new company is just, wow, this is fantastic. I mean, we nailed it. We nailed how each Of our logos there they're very similar to one another but they're just different enough that you can see what we're doing in each one of the logos. Kevin King: What are you talking about for those of you who are like, what the heck is Norm talking about? He's talking about Dragonfish Communications. So Dragonfish Communications is a new company that Norm and I We'll be formally announcing in January. I think it's January 22nd. Norm Farrar: You heard it here first. Kevin King: That's right. You heard it here first because you're a Misfits listener. We'll be announcing it on our webinar. I can't remember the exact date. It's the 22nd or 25th or something like that. You'll hear us be pushing it soon. But we're announcing it and it's got six different silos in it. So it's a pretty complicated, complex We've been working on this for over a year and got really serious towards the end of July. It's just much more effective, we find. You know, you hear all this back to office stuff and everybody working remote and people complaining about going back to office, but there's something about working together. So I see why Elon is going to make government workers come back to the office and if they don't want to, they can take the high road and get out. Or why Apple's doing it, because there is something about that human connection, that human being together, because Norm and I can have meetings. On Zoom, you know, but it's just not the same as sitting there, flesh and blood. I smell the aura of Norm's beard oil, you know, drifting through the air. You know, it's just not the same as sharing a Coke Zero with somebody. Norm Farrar: Oreo flavored, by the way. Kevin King: Oreo flavored. Let's try Oreo. Oreo flavored Coke Zero. Unknown Speaker: Never heard of it before. Kevin King: It's crazy. It's a Canadian thing. But those Canucks, man. But so sitting in person, so we found that it's more effective because there's no distractions. There's no, it's just different. So I've been to Norm's house. He's come to my house. I went to, we went to Montreal. We met at different places and we just have these like six to eight hour marathon brainstorming sessions and we use a plot device. We record these, so it makes really complex notes, AI device that actually records everything we say. It's really, really cool. And then we brainstorm. And so one of the things that we were working on, like Norm said, was the branding. And that was actually more than a day. I think it was two days. We spent a lot of time. Collectively, 30, 40 hours between the two of us, and then we've come back to it a few times and made some modifications, but just on the branding side and nailing the message of, you'll see when we announce this, there's six divisions. Each has a one-word name. And then what does that name mean? And then how do they tie together? And what's the look and the feel? And that's important. Norm Farrar: Now, a quick word from our sponsor, LaVanta. Hey, Kevin, tell us a little bit about it. Kevin King: That's right, Amazon sellers. Do you want to skyrocket your sales and boost your organic rankings? Meet Levanta, Norm and I's secret weapon for driving high-quality 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, Wirecutter, and BuzzFeed, just to name a few, as well as top affiliates, influencers, bloggers, and media buyers, all in Levanta's marketplace, which is home to over 5,000 different creators that you get to choose from. Norm Farrar: So are you ready to elevate your business? Visit get.levanta.io slash misfits. That's get.levanta.io slash misfits and book a call and you'll get up to 20% off Levanta's gold plan today. That's get.levanta.io slash misfits. Yeah, a lot of people, especially if they're e-com sellers, a lot of smaller e-com sellers just getting in the game, they think that they can go to just a graphic artist and, okay, I'm going to pay 50 bucks or I'll put up a reverse bid in one of the apps and all of a sudden it comes back. You know what? You'll get some good Logo design but if you really want corporate identity if you really want that brand a pop. You need some thought behind it. There's a reason why good branding companies, and I'm not talking crazy expensive, you know, fortune 500, the ones that deal with fortune 500 companies, but a good quality branding company will charge anywhere from five to 25,000 to bring out this. And we did it. And just by Doing that, I mean, you see the complexities of just for the logo. That's it. Just for the logo and how the brand and the brand story works with each logo. So they all got to talk. They all got to represent something. And when we launch it, People will understand what we're talking about. But the other thing about doing this, maybe a lot of people don't sit down and think about their marketing. I try to do that at least once a week. Sitting here, kind of go, all right, what are we doing? How can we do this better? But once you're sitting there, we literally have three to four hour Zoom calls. We never achieve what we do when we're sitting together. And plus, it can be a lot of fun. So, you know, even during our sessions, that's one thing, but going out and having a meal together, meeting like we did in Montreal, my son was able to join another, we met another one, another person that we wanted to partner with, going out for cigars, you know, experiencing the city. You can't do that over Zoom. Kevin King: No, it's a good mix. It gives you a good focus. But like you said on the branding, though, I mean, a lot of people just think of brand as a logo and a name, and those are important. But it goes way beyond that. A brand is a feel. And when it comes to marketing, I think a lot of people get this backwards. I think one of the things that, you know, I've been doing a presentation. I've done it a couple times now. It's gone over really well. I just recently did it in November at the Southern Seller Fest, which is an Amazon conference. It was held in Singapore. And I had people come up afterwards that have seen me present several times and Kevin, I just have to say that was the best presentation I've ever seen you present. That was my favorite presentation. Now I'm going to be giving a version of that presentation on a webinar December 12th online. But one of the things that I talk about in there is we talk, it's about the psychology of marketing. And I think a lot of people don't understand, they think of marketing as just selling things. They just think of it as transactional instead of emotional. And so I think when it comes to marketing, you've got to get into the emotional side of things and not just the transactional side of things. And that's why when it comes to branding, brandings are emotions. Apple creates a feeling in someone. Why are some people Apple people and some people are Android people? Or why are some people PC and some people Apple? Some women want a $7,000 Louis Vuitton purse or why they want an Hermes bag to be honored, to actually be selected, actually given the right to buy one, not just because you have the money, but you have to actually be selected and chosen to actually buy one. Why does that happen? It's because those brands have built, one, their quality. So it doesn't matter how good your marketing is or how good your branding is. If the product is shit, It's not going to work. It might work briefly and it might work short term, but it's not going to work long term. But if you've got a quality product behind it, then it's your job to actually create Create emotion in your branding and create identity. And that's what I think where a lot of people, they mess up. And just like the name of the company, I mean, Dragonfish Communications. Someone asked me, why the word dragonfish? I mean, what's that mean? Norm, you say it best. What's a dragonfish? Norm Farrar: Well, and there are two different types of dragonfish. One lives deep in the ocean, but the one I'm talking about starts out as a koi fish, starts out at the bottom of the river. And it has to struggle and it gets through and it goes up the river, up the river, up the river to a waterfall. Once it gets to the waterfall, it has the power to get to the top of that waterfall, it becomes a dragon. And that just shows you your strength and resilience, being able to overcome all these obstacles, everything against you, and yet you still are successful. And at the end of it, because of this, you get that much more strength and that power. So that's why we call it Dragonfish. Kevin King: You know what, we should actually make an animation like that and put that on the website. That's actually going to be kind of cool, like a little cool animation. Norm Farrar: How about you? Here's the animation. Kevin King swimming up the river, you know, just as a little tadpole with your face. And as you go, you start to grow and grow. And then it's Kevin's face as a dragon at the end. Kevin King: Breathing, a life-breathing dragon. Unknown Speaker: That could be cool. Kevin King: That could be cool. Marketing, example, it's not just a cool sounding name or something we just picked out of the dictionary. It has meaning to it and has conjecture into what we'll do and as you'll see. I think an interesting concept, this was first on, I think it was George Mack on My First Million Podcast actually came on. George is a British guy. If you don't follow him, I recommend you follow him. He has a good newsletter. I don't know the exact URL, but you can Google it. It's called the Ad Professor or the Professor of Ads. I think it's Ad Professor or Professor of Ads, but Google George Mack Ad Professor. You'll probably find it. And every week he sends out like five or six really good ads he's come across. These could be video ads, it could be a social media ad, it could be a billboard or something. And he analyzes them and it's really good. But he came on the first Million Podcast, my first Million Podcast, and he talked about an interesting concept that I think, you know, we come from the Amazon world and what most people or 99.9% of people teach is go find a product based on these tools like Helium 10. Uh, that has an opportunity and then go source the product and fulfill that opportunity, uh, and fulfill that demand. Or it may not be the demand, or it may be that someone's not properly filling the demand. You can step in and help fill that demand or fill, fulfill it better. And he's like, no, that's the total wrong approach that may work in the short term. But the approach you want to do is actually the opposite of that. You actually want to create your advertising before you choose your product. And it's an interesting concept. Actually, his words are advert because that's the British way of saying it. Create the advert before you choose the product. So you find the pain point, you find the problem that somebody has and then create the advertising around that. And then put the product in its place and find the product that actually solves that pain point. I think it's an interesting way of doing it and it's more long term. And then if you're trying to get out of this like Amazon fishbowl, just being an Amazon seller and create a true brand, I think that's something that you've got to do. And I think that's something that a lot of people don't do. Because people, if you're like, what is the pain point? My product doesn't have a pain point. Or my idea of something to sell doesn't have a pain point. That's a problem. You need to find something where there's a pain point and then reverse that. What would the ad be that would make me get my attention? Not necessarily sell the product right away, but would get my attention. And then your product comes in and solves that pain point. And that's where I think there's some massive opportunity and that's where true branding comes in. It forces you to think in a totally different way. Norm Farrar: So if you're a smaller seller and you can't find a pain point, you got a problem. You've got to really think that through. But one of the easiest things you can do if you want to find a pain point, Go to your competitors and look at their negative reviews and see what people are complaining about. Now spin that and you can just by doing that, you understand the pain points. How can you build out a campaign based on that pain point? I'm going to give you an example. Just before the podcast started, I remember a couple of campaigns. Back when I was in school that people were talking about, and the one, this was crazy. Just think about it. There's no Russian products in the marketplace at the time. You're introducing something, a vodka, which nobody's heard about, and it's called Smirnoff. So when Smirnoff first came in, now, you know, there's tons of vodka, but this is brand new. You know, people weren't drinking vodka. They had to get people to understand or try vodka. The ad agency came up with a great campaign. And the pain point was back in the day, and I think Mad Men covered this, that people would go out, they drink for lunch, but they might have meetings or they didn't want to show people that they were drinking. So there was a problem. That was the pain point. Well, the agency came up with Smirnoff, the drink that leaves you breathless and because it doesn't have an odor and all of a sudden that one campaign. And I think it was back in the 50s or 60s, blew up and now you see where that's at. And the other one that is really interesting, and I remember I'm studying this back in the day, was the Marlboro Man. Everybody thinks that, you know, the Marlboro Man has been around forever and it hasn't. Cigarettes, back earlier on, never had a filter. Those filters, you know, it was very feminine and they were having a hard time selling those to men because the men, like you think about it, it was the old backwoods, the cowboy, you know, riding the horse with that unfiltered, they're actually called stogies. It's not a cigar, but the backwoods, you know, unfiltered cigarette. And what did they do? Instead of having the Stogie or the Backwoods, they created the Marlboro Man and made it acceptable for men to smoke filtered cigarettes. It's so cool. Kevin King: Another one's like Listerine. You know, Listerine, the mouthwash. I mean, you're talking about vodka that doesn't give you a bad breath, but a lot of people that have bad breath. I've sat next to a guy on an airplane. I had really bad breath one time. They needed to give me some Listerine, but Listerine has been around for a hundred years, maybe a little bit more, but I think it was invented by a guy named Albert Lasker and Albert was having trouble selling it and getting people to buy it. So one of the things that he did As our buddy Steve Simons had actually said at the Market Masters Think Tank, if you don't have a name for something, just make it up. And that's what he did. So he made up the name Halitosis. Halitosis now is in the dictionary, meaning bad breath, basically. I don't know what the exact definition is in Webster's, but something along the lines of bad breath. That word was completely made up by him. And he started putting that in the marketing saying, do you have halitosis? And people are like, oh, that sounds scary. That sounds like some sort of disease. I don't want to have that. And he's like, well, this medical sounding name is going to scare people into buying my Listerine to clean their mouth and not have bad breath. And as a result of that, that problem, and he created a name for the problem, it drove millions and millions of dollars in sales. I mean, you also have another and you can do this also when you have pain points in imagery. I mean, I don't know if you, we travel a lot. I was just adding up on the airplane yesterday when I was coming back from my last trip, how many trips I took in 2024. I think it's 47 flights, 48 flights, something like that. That's what I came up with. That's not necessarily trips, but you know, one way each way. So that's 20 something odd trips on airplanes. And there's a lot more in cars, but on airplanes, something like that. And I was sitting there thinking like in the airport, you know, you go in sometimes in the airport and you got your baby. And the baby's got a nature calls and the baby you need to change the diaper. Well, in the old days, when there was really no place to go do that, you just have to go kind of make do. So, a company came out with these boards. You've probably seen them, Norm, in the airports that they fold up. Norm Farrar: I use them. Kevin King: Oh, did you use them? They fold up against the wall? Yeah, I figured you. Who changes your adult diapers? Norm Farrar: That's why I use them. That's it. I just crawl up there. Kevin King: You just get somebody that comes through? Norm Farrar: Yeah. Kevin King: The next guy. I hold out a 20. You just turn around. Hey, you're the winner. Come over here. Norm Farrar: Come on over. Kevin King: Come on down. You're the next man up. No, but so they invented these boards that, you know, it gets the wall and you just kind of fold it down. It makes this nice little raised platform where you can put your baby and change the diaper and it makes it a nice, clean, comfortable situation. Well, they were marketing those to airport managers, people that, you know, airport facility managers or whatever. And they were showing a picture of this thing against the wall, really nice pretty picture. I've been against the wall. And the next picture would be a happy family with a mom and dad smiling, holding the baby, just this really comforting, you know, typical, like feel good type of picture. And they just weren't selling these things. They sold like $800,000 worth of them or something in a year. And like, this just people should be buying this more. This is such a good product. We're getting rave reviews. But these airport people weren't buying it. So what do they do is they change the advertising because in advertising, And there's a two-second rule. If you can get someone's attention in two seconds, not stop the scroll. People always say, well, on TikTok shop or YouTube or whatever, people are scrolling, you want to have something there, you know, shaking your hands or some sort of jolt or a bolt of lightning come just so they, whoa, what's that? And they stop. I'm not talking about that kind of two second thing. I'm talking about in two seconds, you see the ad or you see the video and you know within two seconds, that's for me. And now a word from one of our sponsors, one of Norm and I's favorite tools, Stack Influence. Norm Farrar: 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. Stack Influence pushes high-volume external traffic sales to Amazon listings using micro-influencers. And guess what? You only have to pay with your products. They've helped up-and-coming brands like Magic Spoon compete with Cheerios for top category positioning, while also helping Fortune 500 brands like Unilever launch their new products. Right now is the best time to get started with Stack Influence to crush it during this holiday season. Kevin King: That's right, Norm. Sign up today at stackinfluence.com or click the link in the video below and mention Misfits, that's right, Misfits, M-I-S-F-I-T-S to get 10% off your first campaign. Head over to stackinfluence.com right now. If you can accomplish that, then you've mastered your marketing. And so what these guys did is they're like, what can we do that's a two seconds message and two seconds, boom, you know exactly that you have to buy this product. So what they did is they took the baby, they threw it on a dirty, they found the dirtiest toilet that they could find in an airport. It's Dirty Stall. Toilet paper on the ground, someone pissed and missed the toilet, just all kinds of stuff. And the only space to change the baby's diapers was on the ground. So you see a woman bent over with her baby on the ground in this nasty, dirty stall. And then I forget the exact tagline. There's a tagline on there. They did that. It started running that ads to all the airport directors saying basically, don't let this be your customers in your airport. Sold 800 million dollars or some crazy number like it went way maybe not quite a yeah, I think over time 800 million dollars Over time of these things, that's really good marketing where you tie into that emotional appeal and you don't have to have a five-part email series or 10 different ads or a 30-second commercial that gives you do it that quickly. And if you can get to that point on your products or on your problem solution that people have a problem and then you're the solution, that's where you have marketing goal. Norm Farrar: Yeah 100% agree if you can if again it's that plane point right if you could bring it out that you know who wants. Who wants to change your baby on a dirty airport floor when you can have this? I love talking about this stuff. This is stuff from 20, 30, 40 years ago that I learned, but it was really cool back then. It's still cool now, just leveraging the germs on the floor. Well, when I was growing up, way, way back in the day, dinosaurs, but germs, it, yes, it was an issue, but nothing like today, nothing at all. And like one of our family businesses involved with PPE. And we, we know that washing your hands or scrubbing your hands too often, It doesn't do that yet. You could be causing yourself an injustice. You could actually be breaking down your immunity system and you can get sicker because you're doing it too often. And it's interesting because we talked about that in our family, but my wife, I at the time was a registered nurse, and she was talking about that, seeing people do this. But that was an evolution, because even back further in the 60s and the 70s, we weren't really concerned that much about germs. There might have been a few people, but nobody was. And then there was this product called Vysal. And what did they do? They made you afraid, a fear of germs. And they came out with a term called germ free and a saying about that 99.9%, you know, it'll kill 99% of germs. And all of a sudden people are, Oh, you know, we got to get Lysol. We got to get Lysol, uh, you know, kill these germs. And it was just something they needed. Like Lysol was a no name household cleaner. Do you know what they did before this? Kevin King: No. Norm Farrar: They were a feminine hygiene product. Now they turn that around and they just do household cleaning. Kevin King: Yeah, I mean, that's a perfect example of using something that, you know, the ingredient, I don't know what the exact ingredient is in Lysol, but that same ingredients in probably 50 other cleaners. But they picked out the one thing that tells the message succinctly kills 99.9% of germs. And put and use that and that became, I don't know if they trademarked that or not, they probably did. And use that. That's that's solving a problem. People are afraid of germs. You see, the problem is people sell products and you don't want to sell products. You want to solve problems. So you got to get you got to change your mentality, whether that's products or services. You know, this just doesn't go for someone selling a garlic press on Amazon. This goes for someone selling a cooking. You know, if you're a chef and you're selling cooking services, You don't want to say, I'm the best chef. I have a lot of, so many people get caught on the benefits, I mean the features and not the benefits. I'm the best chef. I got an extensive menu. I can cook whatever you want. I'll come to your house and I do all that. Those are all great. Those are all great. Uh, features of what you do, but what is the benefit? So you want to emphasize the benefit is stop spending three hours a night and in your kitchen, um, cooking and cleaning, uh, spend those three hours instead, uh, with, with your loved ones, uh, you know, doing whatever. I don't know something to that effect. You want to, that's the problem is someone's like, I have no time to spend with my family. Well, that's my services. I make, I make time for you. I'm just brainstorming here out loud. I haven't thought this through, but the chef comes up with some sort of line that says something around time. I'm a time creator. A time creator, a love maker, or something like that, savor the difference. I don't know, some sort of line like that that says it all. And you can create an image around that. And you got to get creative. And the beauty now of this is in the past, you would have to pound the wood and get into I meet with some other people, have a huge brainstorming session. Now you can put this kind of stuff in the chat GPT and it can spit out ideas left and right. And I know there's some GPTs. I give one out in my presentation that you type in this kind of stuff and here's, it gives you 20 brainstormed ideas back in seconds. And that's, that's the beauty of some of these new tools and where we're at in society now is You don't have to spend the $5,000 to $25,000, like you said, for a branding package or what you would have to spend on this kind of package for that. You can use these tools to help you get them narrowed down and get ideas really fast and bounce off and take it down all kinds of rabbit holes. Norm Farrar: Yeah. That imagery, De Beers, we talked about this in Montreal for a bit, but a diamond is forever. That was one of their first logos. What's the imagery behind that? Diamonds are a symbol of love, right? That's it. Diamonds love to go together. Kevin King: Back in the late 1800s, diamonds were just another metal. And they were not a symbol of love. But De Beers, like you said, which is a big mining company in South Africa, was like, we need to sell more diamonds. And so they started a campaign for diamond, for like, this needs to be, I forget the exact wording, but it basically became, you need to buy a gift. This is an engagement and a wedding gift. First, it was a wedding, a wedding ring. You should, you should show that diamonds are forever by sticking this diamond on, on her, her finger when you get married. And they're like, this works so well, what else can we do? Oh, When you get engaged, you should do the same thing again. Norm Farrar: Diamonds are a girl's best friend. Kevin King: Diamonds are a girl's best friend. And so they, that's how actually diamonds are actually not worth what you pay for them. That's one of the lessons that I learned. And my divorce is diamonds are one of the biggest ripoffs in the world. You know, they say they're rare. They say they're this. They say that. And they may be. But what I found is that, you know, engagement ring I paid $14,000 for. And I thought I was getting a deal because I negotiated and did this and that. It's actually really only worth about $1,000. The markup in diamonds and diamond jewelry is ridiculous. Norm Farrar: I used to spend a lot of money- Well, that $1,000 is what you got for it, right? Kevin King: When- Yeah, that $1,000 is what I- Well, the value when I thought I had over $100,000 worth of jewelry that I bought for my ex-wife. And we used to joke about, well, that's our rainy day fund. We have no money, at least we have this jewelry that we can sell. And because they lead you to believe that diamonds actually hold their value. And they don't at all. They absolutely don't. Maybe if it's got a sentimental value because you passed it down from your great-grandmother, okay, it holds the value in your mind or in the family's mind. Or if it's a Super Bowl ring that Joe Namath wore or Peyton Manning wore, it has a perceived value because of them. But a typical piece of jewelry is worthless. You're better off buying fake jewelry. We do fake diamonds and lab-grown diamonds. If a girl wants a big diamond and wants a big piece of jewelry, just buy the fake stuff because nobody can tell the difference, not a single person, unless they get it under a microscope and nobody's going to take in your hand. I don't know the last time someone took Connie's hand, Norm, and put it under a microscope. Let me see your diamond. Norm Farrar: They do that quite often. Kevin King: They're just checking on you. That's your reference check. Nobody does that. Don't waste your money. Do not waste your money. When we got divorced, I tried to sell the stuff. You can take it to pawn shops. You know you're not going to get much there. You could list it on eBay. I probably could have gotten more money if I would have listed it on eBay and just waited it out until the right person came along. Norm Farrar: What about an auction? Kevin King: And so what I did is I actually went to the biggest jewelry auction place in the world that actually supplies all the dealers. And that's where all my research, they said, this is where you can get the best value. There's a company called The Real Real, which takes only name brand stuff. So anything that was Louis Vuitton or Versace or Valentina, I sent to them because that increased, I got value because of the brand associated with it. So someone was willing to pay more for this ring that's worth $100 just because it had a V on it for Versace, they'd pay $400 for it. So I got what I could there. Still nothing close to what I paid. But then the rest of it is just a no-name diamond or whatever from the local Diamonds Direct jewelry store somewhere. Those I put up onto this auction where it goes on this worldwide auction. This guy was all excited when I sent pictures and everything and they just don't go for any money. But that just goes to show you marketing. It's marketing. The diamond has a perceived value. It is a quality product when you get a diamond, you know, depending on the four C's. There's four C's to a diamond and depending So there is its quality. It has a perceived value. It has an emotional connection. It does everything right. But at the end of the day, it's just a rock. You're paying crazy price. I did this with The RealReal. I sold a bunch of stuff. Then I went to this auction place and sold what I could. At the end of the day, I might have got $5,000, $6,000, $7,000 for all of this. For $100,000. For over $100,000 worth of stuff. Then I had some oddball stuff. It's just random. It wasn't name brand. It wasn't something that could go to this auction place. I took that into a local jeweler here in Austin where I've done a bunch of She had done stuff for us in the past like fix your watch and fix a bracelet when it broke and that kind of stuff. I took it in to her because I knew she bought stuff and she's the owner of the company and I said, what can you give me? So she's weighing it, putting it on a scale. This one's silver, this one's this, this one's that. All right, I'll give you $900 for this bag of just random stuff. I'm like, all right, that's worth, I'm never going to use this stuff again. I'll never use this stuff again. Give me the 900 bucks. I said, what are you going to turn around and sell this for? She said, I'll double my money. So I'll get $1,800 on the market for it. I'm like, so this stuff really has, it's insanely marked up. She said, oh yeah. And she started to explain to me like the whole way, the whole system works and how the diamond stores and the, and the mall work and like the whole thing. I'm like, holy freaking cow, I'm in the wrong business. But, but the point of this whole long story is to show you it's marketing and what Norm brought up with the beers, it's marketing. People will perceive the value to what you, Market, how you market to them. Presidential elections, there's just a, I just, this same podcast, one of my favorite, you can't tell, one of my favorite podcasts is My First Million. Just a couple of weeks ago, I was listening to an episode, I was on the plane, I think. And they had some marketing guy that does political campaign marketing come on. And he was talking about the 2016 election primarily, because the 2020 had just finished. Or it was about to finish. I can't remember when they recorded it. Maybe it hadn't quite finished. But so they were talking about the 2016 election. And I'm like, look, it's all marketing. Everything is freaking marketing. Yeah, they're getting bitter. But it's all marketing and creating emotional connection. Look at how many people despise Trump. And they're like, I'm moving out of the country because of this. I'm moving to Canada. I just saw an article today, literally today, it says Canada is bracing for the influx of Americans that are leaving the United States because of Trump. You look at Ellen DeGeneres who said, I'm going to some little cottage in England and I'm never coming back to stepping foot in the United States again. That's an emotional connection, but a lot of that is because of marketing and Trump, like him or hate him, he's got some personality flaws. He's got some issues, but he does a good job on some of the things and some of that he does on purpose. I've been saying this since 2015 when he first came on the scene politically. Some of his craziness is negotiating and it's marketing and he's doing it on purpose, some of it. I mean, some of it, he may be able to have a few loose marbles here and there. And the same thing goes for the other side, what they're doing. And so it's basically, it becomes who can out-market the other person, not necessarily who has the biggest budget. You look at Harris, I think she raised a lot more money than Trump, especially when she took over from Biden, money was pouring in. And that team didn't do it well. But this podcast episode, the guy talks about that. He talks about the marketing. At the end of the campaigns, a lot of these marketing people are relieved because they're like, man, I don't have to do all this crazy stuff anymore. That was hard out-marketing the other people. It's marketing. A lot of people don't realize that. They think it's personal or even political. It's marketing. Hey, Kevin King and Norm Farrar here. If you've been enjoying this episode of Marketing Misfits, thanks for listening this far. Continue listening. We've 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? Norm Farrar: Well, this is an old guy alert. Should I subscribe to my own podcast? Kevin King: Yeah, but what if you forget to show up one time and it's just me on here? You're not gonna know what I say. Norm Farrar: I'll buy you a beard and you can sit in my chair too and we'll just, you can go back and forth with one another. Unknown Speaker: Yikes! Norm Farrar: 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. Kevin King: Make sure you don't miss a single episode because you don't want to be like Norm. Norm Farrar: I guess this episode, in case you haven't heard, it's about marketing. We're down to about the last minute or so, Kev. There's one thing, by the way, that I learned today. The thing that stands out, like it could be a billboard in Times Square, is that you're a bit of a prick. You know why? Because why the hell would you go to a pawn shop when you could have just said, hey, Norm, I got all this Louis Vuitton, blah, blah, blah. What would Connie have done if I came home and said, here's this ring for you? I bought it. It looks like it's $100,000 ring. And Kevin gave it to me for 500 bucks. Well, maybe six. Kevin King: I didn't want to wish any ill will on you. Some people put like little stones around the house to have good buys and have good mojo. So I didn't want to wish any ill will on Connie because, you know, who knows what's in those, those, those jewelry could have been a haunted. Norm Farrar: I did that at your house and I put my toenail clippings all around. Kevin King: That's what that was. I thought the dog was shedding its hair. No, no, no, no. Norm Farrar: It was my toenail clippings. Kevin King: Oh, that was you. Oh my gosh. Unknown Speaker: All the good juju or whatever you call it. Kevin King: Oh man. Norm Farrar: All right, we're at the end of this show. Kevin, why don't you wrap her up? Kevin King: Yeah, so I hope you got something from this. This is a little bit shorter than we normally do, but sometimes we just like to talk about things. I could talk about this stuff all day long. I love talking about marketing, so does Norm. And hopefully you do, too, because you listened to this whole episode to this point. So that means you like to listen to marketing, too. If that's the case, you need to make sure you hit that subscribe button, either whether you're watching this on YouTube or whether you're listening to this on Apple or Spotify or one of the other big podcast platforms out there. Make sure you hit that subscribe button. Also, share this with a friend. If you like this episode, just forward to them. Hey, you got to check this out. That's always great. And you can leave us a review, too, if you want to go And put something in the comments that said, ah, Norm, I would really like to see one of your toenails too. Please send me one. You can write that or you can just say. Norm Farrar: They're on the real reel, by the way. Kevin King: Oh, they're on the real reel. Because they have little V's on the end of them. Norm Farrar: Exactly. Kevin King: Versace V's. Norm Farrar: Yeah. Kevin King: You know, so they're actually worth something because of branding and marketing. But no, or you can go to marketingmisfits.com. Man, it's not .com, it's .co, right? Norm Farrar: Yeah, exactly, .co. Kevin King: MarketingMisfits.co, check out me and Norman Times Square, and I tell you what, The first person that can actually check out that picture, whether you find it on social media or you find it on marketingmisfits.co, screenshot it, send us a message to in at Was it in at marketingmisfits.co? In at marketingmisfits.co and tell us the name of the cigars. What's the brand of cigars that Norm and I are holding and we'll send you a free gift. The first person that actually does that and emails in at marketingmisfits.co, not dot com, dot co. And so here's a screenshot of the picture of Kevin and Norm on Times Square with The Marketing Misfits billboard behind us. And you correctly tell us the name of the cigar that we're both holding in our hand. You'll win a prize. Norm Farrar: That sounds fair. Kevin King: Perfect. And until then, if you're like, ah, that's too much work, I don't care. I just want to listen to you guys. Check us out again next Tuesday. We'll be back with another episode then. Norm Farrar: Yeah. And if you're a misfit or you know, a misfit, make sure you reach out. We'd always like knowing these misfits that are out there. Kevin King: That's all we got for you this week. Norm Farrar: All right, everybody. See you later.