EP. 126 Trust in Branding: When "Off-Brand" Becomes Your Best Strategy

In this episode of the Unstoppable Marketer podcast, hosts Trevor Crump and Mark Goldhart discuss the concept of brand and its relationship to trust. They explore the effectiveness of "ugly ads" in digital marketing and challenge traditional notions of brand consistency. The hosts emphasize the importance of getting eyeballs on your brand and adapting marketing strategies to overcome consumers' aversion to being sold to.

Transcript

Brand as Trust

Speaker 1 0:00

A brand is the trust you've built. Yeah, it's just trust. Yeah, so does the experience build the trust or does it deteriorate trust?

Speaker 2 0:15

Yo, what's going on everybody? Welcome to the Unstoppable Marketer Podcast. It is Tuesday morning and I've got my wonderful co-host here, mark Goldheart. How are you, mark Goldhart? What up Doing? Good Another day, another podcast, yeah.

Speaker 1 0:33

Yeah, I hope everyone had a happy Mother's Day.

Speaker 2 0:36

Yeah, if you're listening I mean listen if they're listening to that. Mother's Day was long. I mean that was like two, three weeks ago probably, yeah, but for all you mothers out there, you are appreciated yeah we love every one of you and all you fathers out there and soon to be moms well, I mean out there. I hope you treated your, your wives and your moms wonderfully, wonderfully but um, yeah, you had a good weekend.

Speaker 1 1:03

Then I did Great weekend, I went out to the geode beds.

Speaker 2 1:08

Yeah, you were talking about that on the last podcast.

Speaker 1 1:10

That you were going to do that. We went and we found them, yeah.

Speaker 2 1:13

We found the geodes. Found the geodes, got some toads.

Speaker 1 1:18

Horny toads.

Speaker 2 1:18

Didn't get the odes, but you got the toads.

Speaker 1 1:20

We got the odes and the toads. You did get the odes and the toads. Yeah, we got some geodes, nice, and some horny toads Caught, like two or three of them. So that was fun. Horny toads are not toads, just so everyone knows. They are lizards. Oh, really, some people think that they are. They're not toads.

Speaker 1 1:44

They're just called horny toads because they kind of have flatter bellies, they kind of look it, but they're cool, looking Interesting, and they're really easy to catch at night when they get a little slow, a little cooler, a little slow, yeah, they're just a little lethargic.

Speaker 2 1:55

I have a funny story I'm stepping away from horny toads but I'm keying in on the word horny. Okay, I don't know where this is going.

Speaker 1 2:07

I have a good story about the word horny.

Speaker 2 2:11

So we were taking care of our neighbor's dog, oh and while they were out of town for their son's wedding, which is down south in St George.

Speaker 1 2:25

And this story has something to do with horny.

Speaker 2 2:27

Yes, just stay with me, so every day.

Speaker 1 2:30

You've said it's about horny and there's a dog involved, and now I'm not very.

Speaker 2 2:33

Well, I am. I'm about to introduce other elements to this. So the other day, so my kids every day are going in and out of their house. They wake up, they run over, they let the dog out because the dog stays there. The dog's not staying at our house, the dog just stays at the next door neighbor's house.

Speaker 2 2:47

They have a dog you know, so they let him out and then we bring, you know, they'll bring him over to our house, you know, for a few hours. Then we take him back and anyways, they're doing that all day. And then, and then my daughter, my oldest daughter, she comes in and she's 12 and she goes um, I think that dallin and his wife that's the couple that just got married he's like I think that they're back and my wife is like, oh yeah, they did say like the mom did say that they might be coming back a day early to go hop on their flight for their honeymoon. And we were gonna say a day later. And she's like, yeah, like there was just a new car in the parking or in the garage. That wasn't there.

Speaker 2 3:27

And it said honk, if you're horny, it was just so weird. That's what my daughter said. She just said it like so naturally, and I was in, I was in the other room. The car, yeah, the car, you know, like when people get married it says just married and venmo me and yeah, no, I understand.

Speaker 1 3:44

Yeah, okay, it's. I'm still weirded out on the window it's thoroughly weirded out, but okay on the window it says honk if you're horny and my I just.

Speaker 2 3:51

I was in the other room and I hear my daughter talking about the word horny and asking my wife what horny meant and that was that was it. My wife just deflected, we didn't, we didn't discuss oh we just deflected, but I just't discuss. Oh, we just deflected, but I just thought it was funny.

Speaker 1 4:07

Just my daughter just tossing weird. That is funny, but a pretty anticlimactic story. Yeah, After I said it I felt that no, that pun was intended, just so everyone knows.

Speaker 2 4:14

Nice, that was good, yeah, but yeah, there's my anticlimactic horny story for you. Well, anyways, horny story for you, well, anyways, well, anyways.

Speaker 1 4:26

In other news geodes, just so you know. Oh, back to geodes. Yeah, you can sell those suckers for 500 bucks to a thousand bucks each, yeah, so my kids wanna, they wanna make a full business venture out of it, start a little business.

Speaker 1 4:40

Yeah, they wanna go out, they wanna go to the best spots, they wanna find some geodes. That our neighbor has a rock cutter. Oh, yeah, that's it's a good time to do that. You know there's a lot of girls into crystals right now and stuff. So, yeah, tie it to astrology. Yeah, like some crystal-y magic, some like earthiness. Yeah, I like it Some wizardry, we'll see. Yeah, and you guys are in, like the Salt Lake area, which seems to be that, and the kids yearn for the mines, the children yearn for the mines.

Geode Hunting and Horny Toads

Speaker 2 5:15

They want to go dig, find treasures In other news China and US came to some good agreements Over the weekend, sort of. Came to some good agreements over the weekend, sort of. But yeah, 90 days 90 days man 145% tariffs down to 30, which is awesome. Which is more like what it was back in 2018, 2019, right it's?

Speaker 1 5:40

doable.

Speaker 2 5:40

I think it was 20%.

Speaker 1 5:41

From the people we've talked to. That's very good.

Speaker 2 5:46

Well, what's really funny is?

Speaker 1 5:48

Very manageable.

Speaker 2 5:49

If at the beginning you would have said it's 30%, everyone would have been pissed oh my gosh, my costs are going up 30%. But now, when you go from $145 down to $30, I think it was a good marketing tactic, Actually. Now everybody's relieved oh, only 30%. That's the vibe we're getting as we're talking to other people.

Speaker 1 6:17

Yeah, the hardest thing about the Trump administration is you just don't know until you know there's a level of uncertainty that kind of scares people, sure, sure. Certainty, that kind of scares people, sure, sure. Now I mean I'm a fan of certain moves of any administration, um, but in particular this one. Like I think there needs to be a rebalancing with china, like I think we're a little too dependent on china, especially in more and less so with like e-commerce, right, more so it's just like pharmaceuticals and pharmaceuticals and then, like the uh, lithium yeah, lithium, ion stuff, like some rare earth metals stuff metal stuff is is tough but I mean, once we start mining asteroids it won't matter.

Speaker 2 6:56

But that's maybe 50 years away or sooner, depending on how involved elon's in depends on how, like futurist, you want me to go.

Speaker 1 7:04

Yeah, but anyways, so that's good news.

Speaker 2 7:07

That's good news for the next 90 days. That started, was it?

Speaker 1 7:09

on Saturday or Sunday. It was announced Saturday, but look, the deal is, if you don't know this, china was facing like large unemployment numbers and it's mostly affecting the youth and I think they were nervous. Yeah, so good moves. All now like whether you want to say who won or lost. I mean, I know that US import or US tariffs going to China are 10% yeah, they were like one Chinese 30% coming here. So I mean, they're still.

Speaker 2 7:47

It seems like everyone's won.

Speaker 1 7:48

I don't know if you'd call it winning, but maybe better. We'll see how it plays out.

Speaker 2 7:54

So that's great. You know, obviously it's not going to make certain things cheaper, but yeah, inflation's down too, so let's see what happens over the next Stock market's looking good, so let's see what happens over the next markets looking good, so we'll see what happens it could it could be a great buy like if you're an e-commerce business. This is the time where now things start to pick up, consumers are a little happier right, a little less scared. There's a really good chance that well, how long is this when?

Speaker 1 8:19

when does this episode drop?

Speaker 2 8:20

in two weeks yeah, yeah, probably two weeks from now well, which would? Be the.

Speaker 1 8:26

Uh, it's the 13th day as we're talking okay, cool, two weeks from now you're already late. Yeah, because summer is not it? That's true. Yeah, that's very true. You got about a month and a half, two months, so especially.

Speaker 2 8:41

That's a good topic, that, and maybe this, this podcast episode, should transition slightly to that. I still want to talk about what we discussed. Discussed, but that is a really good thing to bring up is especially what Mark is saying is businesses just tend to slow down a little bit in the summer. Now don't come at me, because there's obviously some businesses that do great. Right, we've got a client right now who sells like summer clothes collections that are like very experiential and and they crush it in the summer, you know, but if you are a kids clothing brand that sells primarily to moms, summers are going to be a little more rough for you why?

Speaker 1 9:19

well, listen, it doesn't matter who you are. Summer's generally more rough unless you have a niche that is very seasonal for the summer and even that's going to lean early summer.

Speaker 2 9:33

Yeah, yeah. You just have people who are on vacation. You have people whose kids are in the house. So instead of moms who generally make what?

Speaker 1 9:40

80, 90 percent of the purchasing power in a home, it's well it actually comes back to just let's just back it up, right? If your business relies on social media to sell, your viewership goes down. Yep, in the summer, yeah, people are busier, people are doing things, they're outside. They're not looking at their phones quite as much in the same way, um, so that's that's really all it boils down to. It's just a supply demand equation on the less demand placement side of advertisement. So there's less demand from the consumer standpoint of looking at their phones and scrolling social media.

Speaker 2 10:20

Yeah for sure yeah, my, my content always takes a hit in the summer too, like so it's just so, yeah, that's what it is.

Speaker 1 10:27

It's not what it is. You know, people aren't buying anything. It's just like, how do you reach them?

Speaker 2 10:32

yeah, it's like clockwork once school is back out, like once school's out, so probably a week from now because, my kids get out, you know, not this friday, but the next, you know, and so my content will start to do this. Right now it's doing this.

Speaker 1 10:47

It'll probably start to plateau and do this so unless I'm just so creative yeah, like I mean, look, you can still have success.

Speaker 2 10:55

We're not saying that no one ever has it it's just generally.

Speaker 1 11:00

Cpms go a little down in the summer, because it's true because the demand is less because some people stop advertising as much, like it's just seasonal, like, yeah, it's just a seasonal equation, but nonetheless, if you're, uh, yeah, two weeks from now, hopefully you have tried to take advantage yeah, great time to do some of the summer you know collaborative stuff to do some good sales.

Speaker 2 11:24

right, you're probably you in the midst of Memorial Day sale when this is going off, you know, which is a great opportunity for a lot of people Speaking of content and content doing well, and this is going to be old news, but there's a really good principle behind it and I think it's an important one. So have you seen what's going on with Yellowstone national parks tiktok account? You heard about this at all?

Speaker 2 11:50

no, I mean I'm going to yellowstone in july okay, but but do you follow them on on tiktok? It's mostly tiktok, it's on instagram no, no, I don't so over over the last little bit To be honest I just don't really get on TikTok.

Speaker 1 12:11

A little too much of a digital opioid for me.

Speaker 2 12:15

They have gone completely unhinged.

Speaker 1 12:19

Oh, cool, like something you would never imagine, like a Doritos account or a Taco Bell. Who was it? Was it Doritos, a Taco Bell? Who was it? Was it Doritos or Taco Bell? Nutter, butter, remember.

Speaker 2 12:29

Nutter Butter went like wild. Yeah, this is different. Like these guys are dropping like thirst traps as the hook. So this like, for example, this guy right here, okay, and then it like will go to like a beautiful view and it's always like dirty-ish lyric music, but it's going berserk. So their Google trend if you type in Yellowstone National Park, and Google Trends skyrocketing right now, absolutely skyrocketing. If you look, if you type in Yellowstone National Park, everyone is creating content about how nuts this is.

Speaker 2 13:11

So, anyway, this guy right here, this guy right here, he is an adult content creator. So the reason how I found this out, by the way, is this guy just, it creates only fans content for women. Okay, okay, and he is, uh, so are they stitching it? So they're stitching it. Yep, so they're stitching his stuff which is public you can do that kind of stuff, right and so they're stitching all these like hot content creators and that are like you know, it's not explicit, but somewhat okay. And this guy it's actually a super funny story he posted this video Like I had no idea what was going on. He's like I've been like on a fishing trip for the last two weeks with no cell service and I came back to like my only fans account. It's like skyrocketing, like I've gotten more business because of what's happening, like these guys are posting all my videos and it's all these women are finding out about it, okay, and so he's blowing up and he had no idea and he's like super excited about it.

Speaker 2 14:18

But anyways, yellowstone, the reason why I'm bringing this up is if you look at national parks now listen, I'm not saying this is a good idea. Okay, I'm like, but TikTok hasn't had a national park trending. Since I've been on, I've never seen it. Okay, and the thing about national parks is everybody's doing the same thing. Let's post a beautiful picture of this canyon, this river, this lake, these bison, these bears, and those are cool, but to the naked eye, I wouldn't know if that's glacier national. I wouldn't know if that's. You know, zions, I wouldn't know if that's. No, no, us here in utah, we know the difference, just because we're so close to it all yeah, you're saying all these things and I'm like I, yeah, you can tell the difference.

Speaker 2 15:11

Yeah, but I would. I would imagine most people wouldn't. Yeah, maybe, okay, yeah, I imagine most people if they're looking at something it'd be like oh is that now grace Glacier national.

Speaker 1 15:24

Is on. Test me if I know what national park it is so it's.

US-China Tariff Agreements

Speaker 2 15:27

It's just an interesting way that they've stood out. So that's that's gonna be. The thing I'm super curious about is I'm hoping somebody will do some sort of study to be like like I hopped on airbnb to see if I could like was it hard for me to book a, an airbnb in yellowstone, you know? Just to see if it was like getting booked, because that's what you don't know is like. Is this translating to visits?

Speaker 1 15:46

um, I, don't know the answer. Absolutely not, probably not, but I could almost. I can almost guarantee it's not translating to anything for them. Maybe some merch sales.

Speaker 2 15:59

Maybe, but nonetheless they're getting people watching them and all eyes are on Yellowstone National Park right now. And now what's happening is other national parks are like jumping in on the trend.

Speaker 1 16:15

Yeah, that's funny, interesting.

Speaker 2 16:18

I like it.

Speaker 1 16:18

I mean there might be a little. Maybe they're feeling desperate because I know I mean Bookings might be down. I know like US tourism is down a little bit this year, so maybe bookings for national parks be down. I know like us tourism's down a little bit this year, um, so maybe bookings for national parks are down and they're trying to get more traction. I'd be interested to see if it's actually translating. It's just people who go to national parks are people that go to national parks, you know, sure, and then you have like the one offers yeah, like I'm somebody who goes to national parks, right, and I'm somebody who goes to national parks right, and I'm somebody who goes once every five to eight years.

Speaker 2 16:55

Yeah, now that my son's at a different age, we're gonna start doing it yearly like a guy's a guy's thing.

Speaker 1 17:03

But yeah, we're more of the people who are like every year, we're going, like I've been to all the national parks within the five hour, six hour drive.

Speaker 1 17:15

In my lifetime, sometimes more than once yeah, like we try to make, like we went to redwoods, for example that's a state and national park but like we went to redwoods in california and like we, we like to do that kind of stuff. But that's why I'm curious. Like it's, it goes back to the question of like who your actual audience is. Like are you converting a lot? Like how many people are you converting Views?

Speaker 2 17:37

doesn't always mean conversions. And attention isn't like we're thinking conversions, by the way.

Speaker 1 17:41

Uh, for them as visits or merch sales, I don't know, maybe merch sales.

Speaker 2 17:47

I didn't look to see see if there's a website that's selling merch.

Speaker 1 17:51

But I mean, if the lesson like we don't want to take that story too far, it doesn't need to go, yeah and there's a good chance.

Speaker 2 17:57

By the time you listen to this, it's not even news anymore.

Speaker 1 18:05

I'm like a little bit of an altruist when it comes to you. Can't just like love national parks cause they're freaking incredible.

Speaker 2 18:14

You know what, but maybe it's getting eyes on people who are like I did not know that it was that beautiful. I've heard about this, but I did not know that it looked like that that's true.

Speaker 1 18:20

Yeah, we got to go you know maybe.

Speaker 2 18:23

So when in doubt there's trap, when in doubt, thirst trap. What that's the lesson here?

Speaker 1 18:30

sex over so you're struggling with sales and attention. Get some, uh, only fan creators.

Speaker 2 18:36

Yeah, I guess so stitch an only fan creator, all right. Well, let's, let's jump into topic. Today we we've had this what is brand?

Speaker 1 18:47

Yeah, we've had this.

Speaker 2 18:49

This has been a conversation we've had with clients of ours. Uh, it's, it's been a I mean, it's always a topic with perspective clients. Uh, we had a group of people in the office the other day where we were doing like a little like lunch get together where we just chatted about brands and it was brought up in there. But the question is um, okay, what is the question? Well, the question is yeah.

Speaker 1 19:16

how do we want to pose this? What is on-brand enough?

Speaker 2 19:22

Or maybe the better question is do my ads need to be on-brand?

Speaker 1 19:28

Yeah.

Speaker 2 19:30

Is it on-brand enough brand? If the answer is yes, how much on brand does it need to be? So?

Speaker 1 19:40

let's start the conversation with why is there this idea that there needs to be this super cohesive styling across experiences?

Speaker 2 19:53

I mean, I think that that has always been I can go back to, like my marketing classes when I was back in like 2009, you know, and that was something that was like taught in our brain is that every touch point needed to be cohesive, like that's a very, that's a very and I'm not saying it's outdated necessarily, so don't get me wrong when I'm saying that that's outdated, but that that was a principle taught to me. You know what we're? We're almost 20 years later. Yeah, you know the last 15 years, that was such an ingrained thing.

Speaker 1 20:28

Yeah, I think it is outdated actually.

Speaker 2 20:32

Yeah, I mean, I believe it is personally, but I think that Well you have to remember, it comes from the Google world Right. Explain what you mean by that.

Speaker 1 20:47

Well, you know, google advertising was the first to kick this whole thing off and the search thing was like, hey, you have to match, like the keywords with the landing page and you have to make sure, like the experience is cohesive, like, hey, if they're searching for toothpaste, mint has to be a mint toothpaste page and it has to match up. And then it translated over to more of the display side of matching it, like, oh, this is what your ad looks like.

Speaker 1 21:16

It needs to make sure it matches over here, but I think where things have gotten lost is you just have to make sure that people don't think they're in the wrong place. Sure, so it's more of a semantic game than it is a true styling game.

Speaker 2 21:34

Yeah.

Speaker 1 21:34

I think it's more of a hey I'm expecting to go to. What kind of experience. It doesn't mean everything has to match up perfectly from the ad to the landing page. It's simply I'm clicking on an ad that is telling me about sunglasses sure am I gonna go somewhere that tells me about sunglasses? But I'm I'm going to an article about sunglasses, like that might be strange, not a cohesive.

Summer Marketing Challenges

Speaker 1 22:06

It might work right but it might be like what's it? Why am I on an article? It might take you to a product page and that's what they're expecting. So it's really more of. Are you aligning the, the landing experience, with the expectation right of the user, not so much your expectation as a brand?

Speaker 2 22:31

yeah, I think, I think, I mean, I think that there's a, I think there's maybe a much deeper discussion and we're actually going to have uh like two people, uh, that I am so excited to have on the podcast in the next couple of weeks. Um, so, it's somebody we've had on before. His name's Tommy Higgum. He's the founder at Lola Blankets, but we're having him and his head of branding. Her name is Samantha. They're going to both be on the podcast in the next couple of weeks.

Speaker 2 22:58

And that's all we're going to talk about is brand, because that's what they do is, like they are branding experts. They have gotten Lola Blankets to where it's at simply because of their branding, you know, and the decisions that they've made around it. So so, really quickly, to me, a brand is more of the experience that you're giving the customer, like, I think that's the most simple way to define it. It's the experience, and there are dozens of different ways you can help somebody experience.

Speaker 2 23:29

Yes, dozens of different ways you can help somebody experience yes, from a landing page to the product, to the packaging.

Speaker 1 23:37

So I've brought this up in the past, but I really I will stand and die on this hill. It is like when you distill this whole conversation around brand, all you're really saying is like you, a brand is the trust you've built. Yeah, it's just trust. Yeah, so does the experience build the trust or does it deteriorate trust?

Speaker 2 24:06

this episode of the unstoppable marketer is brought to you by bff creative. Let's be real hiring designers and video editors can get super expensive, and that's why I'm excited about what bff creative has done. They've built a subscription design service that gives you the feel of an in-house creative team, but at a fraction of the cost, which I'm sure we all could use right now from ad creatives to social media posts, video edits to full website designs. Bff gives you unlimited designs and unlimited requests, starting at just $1,000 a month. The best part about this their custom app makes it super easy to submit projects, give feedback, review, work and store all of your creative in one place. As a listener of the podcast, you get 25% off your first two months with code UNSTOPPABLE25. That means unlimited creative for as little as $750 a month. Go check them out right now at bffcreativeco.

Speaker 1 24:56

If you're selling luxury blankets like Lola, like those aren't cheap. No, I mean, what are they? 200, 300 bucks?

Speaker 2 25:06

Probably anywhere from like 175 to350, depending on your size.

Speaker 1 25:10

So that's not an impulse buy right, like their brand, like what they're building trust on, is that it's a luxury experience, yep, so there's going to be things that you're going to be a little bit more hesitant to display on an ad if it's not building trust that it's a luxurious experience.

Speaker 2 25:33

It doesn't have the luxury aspect to it.

Speaker 1 25:35

However, does that mean you can't use cheap produced UGC? No, or does that mean you have to have some kind of like Vogue-esque model in?

Speaker 2 25:52

your In a studio, in a studio With a Tom Ford book on her coffee table.

Speaker 1 25:57

Not exactly. Yeah, should you have some of that in your mix? Yeah, yeah, like Lola's billboards game here in Utah. I don't know how much they do it anywhere else. Right, it's very much more of the high fashion the Tezza collab they did. It's very much like hot models Weird.

Speaker 2 26:18

High fashion is weird. It's adding fashion to blankets.

Speaker 1 26:21

You have a blanket and a guy working on a car.

Speaker 2 26:24

Obviously that doesn't make sense. There's juxtapositions, visual juxtapositions, that don't make sense.

Speaker 1 26:28

There's juxtapositions yeah, it's like juxtapositions visual juxtapositions that don't make sense, but it calls attention.

Speaker 2 26:33

Yeah, highly attention grabbing.

Speaker 1 26:34

It's very high fashion. Yeah, so they're doing this because they're trying to build trust around a luxury item. Yeah, but that doesn't mean you can't have luxury trust around luxury blankets built around a creative that isn't high production.

Speaker 2 26:55

Yeah, or isn't as luxurious as your website? Yes, right, so can I give you a data point?

Speaker 1 27:02

Sure.

Speaker 2 27:03

So, mark and I, we've built and we have another co-founder. We built a tool called Bestie AI, which is a purchase survey software yes, right um, it allows brands to ask questions after somebody purchases.

Speaker 2 27:15

So on the thank you page it's like, hey, how'd you hear about us? Or what motivated you to buy lola blankets? You know, and one of the things that mark and I I remember in our like early stages that we were so set on it was a feature that we had to build and we thought it was going to like sell like hotcakes and it was going to drive so much business for brands was being able to. It was called creative recall. Yeah, we called it creative recall. What it was able to do was pull in the ad that the brand, uh, that the brands were showing, and if you ask the question, hey, how did you hear about us? And somebody said, oh, I saw an instagram ad. You could then ask a follow-up question. That said, do you remember which ad it was? And it would show your ads. And we thought, oh, dude, this is, oh, this is gonna crush it. Like they're gonna be able to send that creative back to their creative team to be like, go get more of this. You know this is gonna crush, yeah, but we'd have this section there. You know it would randomize it, right, but it would also have like.

Speaker 2 28:17

The very last response was I don't remember. Okay, we introduced this to several brands and over. I want to say it was over like 80 percent across all brands said I don't remember. Do you remember the ad that brought you? And oftentimes it was the ad that brought most brands.

Speaker 2 28:35

Have a. I see an ad and I buy, right. There were some of these brands that were it was like 20 to $50 AOVs that are not like weeks long's worth of me seeing ads before I decide to make a purchase. Oftentimes it's a cool and even that day they couldn't remember what ad they saw. So it's a very interesting data. The reason I bring this data point up is because advertising, especially on platforms like Meta or TikTok or whatever Visual advertising platforms, youtube it's really. It really has one goal. Platforms like Meta or TikTok or whatever visual advertising platforms, youtube, it really has one goal and that goal is to get you to the next step. It's not to sell it, it's not to build the brand. The goal of an ad is to get that customer interested in what you're selling enough to take the very next step.

Speaker 1 29:31

Which is to enter into your store.

Speaker 2 29:32

Which is to enter into the funnel which is your store, a landing page, a product page, a homepage, a collection page?

Speaker 1 29:38

a whatever or you know, it could be even more top funnel. It could be just interact with your brand.

Speaker 2 29:42

Sure.

Speaker 1 29:43

In a positive way yeah.

Speaker 2 29:45

Maybe it's sending people to become a follower and to understand what your content looks like, or whatever, but I think that there's a that's an, that's a really important element that people miss. Now, if I take it a step further, it's to get a person to get to the next page at the cheapest cost possible. Yes, now, obviously that doesn't work if it's the wrong people. Oh for sure, you got to make sure it's the right people. But that's where the messaging on the ad is, you know, is really important. That's where the experience when they land is really important.

Speaker 2 30:23

So, if you're, you know, selling meals uh, home delivery meals to moms because they're too busy, right, does the ad convey that? And then, when they land, is it talking about how much time you're going to save that mom? Hey, on average, mom spend eight hours a week. Minute making dinner. This, this meal delivery cuts that in half so you can spend more time with the people that you love the most, or something like that. Right, that's the experience that we start to talk. That's the brand building, right, that's where brand building starts is when you tell me how the solution, how the problem is going, how your product is going to fix my problem, and then, hopefully, the product actually delivers.

Yellowstone National Park's Viral TikTok

Speaker 2 31:12

And then hopefully your pro. If your product delivers, then that goes back to what Mark said, which is branding is all about the trust you build, Right? So if the product delivers it, oh my gosh, I went from. Yeah, I am that mom who spends eight hours a day, you know, eight hours a week cooking dinner and I actually only spent two. Like, if it's any any mom out there would be, like that would be incredible. If you give me six hours back of my day, that would be amazing for her to work out or for her to do something for herself, for her to clean the house or for her to do her job.

Speaker 1 31:42

You know they actually feel the? Yeah, do they feel the benefits?

Speaker 2 31:46

And then what happens is they keep ordering and ordering, ordering, because I can't live without my extra six hours a week. If I had to do that again, or whatever you know and they can justify the price around it and that goes I, I'm using mother, you know, this is as an example. I don't know why that popped in my head. There's, there's several swimsuits. Whatever, it is right yeah, it's just.

Speaker 1 32:05

Does the product match the, the supposed trust that you've been building? Because again it's a leap, like when somebody is voting with their money they're intrinsically trusting that they're going to receive a benefit. Right, right, it's not just a product, yeah, it's. What is this product going to do for me?

Speaker 2 32:27

Yeah, and the benefit isn't always a. You fixed my problem like I had a flat tire and now I don't get flat tires. You know it's not. It's not always like that it could be. I wasn't confident in my style and now I am.

Speaker 1 32:44

Correct? Does it match the mental image that you've created? Yeah, and that's all that. Trust is right. Like when you, when you're talking about trust like everybody has hopes and desires, like as silly as that sounds, like, if you meet somebody, everybody's hoping to meet cool people, right and trustworthy people. So when you meet somebody and the expectation is, hey, this is going to be like just like a good person, yeah, you know, like you're not pessimistic, but then that person like goes behind your back or does something, yeah, it's jarring right.

Speaker 1 33:23

Like it creates it, creates that dissonance. But if somebody does something really cool for you, like oh hey, like just thought about you, like got this for you, or hey, how are you? I haven't talked to you in six months. Yeah, what's new? Yeah, like a kind gesture, like there's a reason why those go so far, because they're they build a lot of trust in, in somebody.

Speaker 2 33:46

Yeah, and the reason why that's what everyone's hoping for in people yeah, yeah, um, and if you can replicate that in your brand, then you're going to win.

Speaker 1 33:55

You're always going to win.

Speaker 2 33:56

Now the next question is how do I get as many people into that funnel as possible? Right, like that would be the next question. So back to ads. I think sometimes the reason why, the reason why this is such an important topic for us, that's what we do for a living right. We run ads for people, we create ads for people, and so we're producing thousands of pieces of content every single month. Okay, so we understand this world and what we have recognized is sometimes the highly polished on brand. Right and I'm I'm using quotations as I say on brand, if you're listening, cause I hear that so often which is that's the for a Lola. An on brand would be a attractive model younger, fit, high fashion.

Speaker 1 34:47

Now I've looked at Lola's ads and I just want to point this out. What Trevor's saying is if you're listening or watching, what he's saying is this is the example of if Lola was so focused on quote brand the visual side of it all they would do is what he's describing. Yes, yes, thank you, exactly so because this is not all that they do, right?

Speaker 2 35:11

No, no, no, they do a lot of this, but we just for whatever reason, because I brought them up, they are the subject, they're the subject sorry, the subject here and so tell me if you're listening to this.

Speaker 2 35:21

Hopefully we're representing things okay here. Um, but yes, they do both. But if, if they were to, you know if everything was on brand and looked like their billboards, for example, or their website, for example? The problem with that nowadays is that is so easily trained to our eyes as people who consume content daily, people who get like what was the last stat about how many ads we were? We get a day um shoot it's like, it's like it's like way too much yeah, I.

Speaker 2 35:55

I want to say it's like a thousand a day. Yeah, we are. You know, I've heard some people say like ten thousand a day and I just don't know if that's humanly possible.

Speaker 2 36:04

Um, but I also have heard that the average person scrolls on social media for like six hours a day, so maybe that is probably true, true so, but anyways, we are so trained to understand what an ad is versus what an ad isn't, and oftentimes the highly branded stuff will look very ad-esque. And the reason why the stuff that is sometimes we call them ugly ads, you know, or things that we don't, that are less polished and on brand, on brand the reason why those do so well from an advertising perspective is because they trick the the mind to thinking it's more organic. Right, this looks like it's native. They call that native advertising where it looks like it's a part of the experience. Yeah, yeah, a good metaphor or analogy.

Speaker 2 36:57

You've been good at off-the-cusp metaphors, so I'm excited for this.

Speaker 1 37:04

What's your reaction when somebody knocks on your door selling you something?

Speaker 2 37:08

I just don't want to answer.

Speaker 1 37:12

Well, let's just say you answer, don't realize.

Speaker 2 37:19

No, how quick do you say? No, uh like as quick as humanly possible. Yeah, hold on. Can I give everybody just a tip for this by?

Speaker 2 37:23

the way, the best tip for solicitors. This should go viral, by the way. When I say this, you think so. You will get rid of somebody immediately if you say these words okay, let's say it's pest control. Okay, that's a pretty common one. Pest control guy comes by. Okay, hey, mark, can I we're out? It's always this we're helping the Smiths across the street with their black widows. You seen some of those, you know. I always just say my best friend owns a pest control company, we use them. Sorry, oh, nice. Or or my brother-in-law owns a window washing company, sorry. You just say, like, it's your friend, it's a brother, and they just leave immediately. They don't try, they don't even try, cause usually if you're like, hey, I don't need it, they're like, well, but we're doing a special and they'll keep going. Now you know.

Speaker 1 38:13

Yeah, my wife is very surprised about how direct and rude I am. I'm not rude, but how direct I am with it.

Speaker 2 38:19

No, my brother-in-law doesn't.

Speaker 1 38:21

Really Thank you though. I always just say no, I did summer sales. I know the spiel, Don't worry about it. And then I just say bye.

Speaker 2 38:29

A little white lie. One of my best friends does own a pest control company, so that one is true that's true, and that's how I knew it. A pest control guy came to my dude. I literally just went to my best friend's company I'm never switching back and he's like, oh, I do the same thing, see ya, sorry, Go on. The metaphor is, but the metaphor is what do you do?

Speaker 1 38:50

okay, here's the next question what do you do when you're watching a game and the commercials come on? You fast forward it if you can, yeah, if you're watching live, what do you do?

Speaker 2 39:03

uh, get up, get a drink do whatever, yeah, yeah, like not pay attention?

What Is Brand and On-Brand Advertising?

Speaker 1 39:08

look at your phone, yeah yeah, so people have a natural aversion to ads. Yes, Um, so you gotta, you have to make, you gotta go. You gotta do two things right. You gotta use what you've got, but you have to either blend it in in a way that is it's non, uh, it doesn't trigger that avoidance of like just get me, just get, get it through, like I'm not trying to be sold to.

Speaker 1 39:35

Yeah, let me go and again, the best door-to-door salesmen. Their approaches are generally going to be a way that bring down the guard. Yeah, right, they are going to make you be like, okay, I'll listen to you, yeah, so, whether that's like jokes or whether that's some kind of intro, that that's direct and honest and makes it so it's like, hey, just, I get it, I'm not wasting your time, here's the deal. So the best order door salesmen understand that, like most people are just like don't, yeah, I don't. I don't want to be sold to right now. I'm home, yeah, so don't sell to me, yeah, how do you sell to somebody who doesn't?

Speaker 2 40:16

want to be sold to. Well, you got a Work around.

Speaker 1 40:22

Natively work around it. Yes, you kind of make. You got to make the experience way more organic, totally, and that's hard, yeah. So ugly ads make it so that you're bringing somebody's guard level down. So an ugly ad, that's what ugly ads can do for you. Yeah, they can bring somebody's guard level down to the point of I'm considering this, I'm looking at this, I'm not realizing it, so I'm not like I'm not recognizing, I'm not trying to be sold to three seconds into an ad.

Speaker 1 40:45

Yeah, yes so or you have to make the the ad clever enough and interesting enough visually that they're willing to sit through through the hook. So ugly ads. They do a really good job of bringing people's guard levels down, of introducing things organically, and we see a lot of success with them. They're not, but again they're ugly yeah, they're not.

Speaker 2 41:06

They're not curated on quote unquote. Curated on brand piece of content no, but guess what?

Speaker 1 41:13

everyone's getting sold to, like. It's like door to door. Everybody is getting sold to all the time. So if you're not thinking about how to get around those barriers of people's minds and when I say barriers right door to door is easy because, like, there's a physical barrier, sure, so it's easy for someone to be like, yeah, bye, yeah.

Speaker 2 41:34

Or I don't even like if somebody knocks and they're wearing a polo collared shirt. I know it's a salesman, yeah, so I'm not even gonna answer. So it's like I have my ring doorbell. I see him, don't care.

Speaker 1 41:43

Yep, but people have those same mental barriers and brands don't think enough. I, I, I believe people aren't thinking enough about hey, how am I approaching this? As if, like, they don't want it? Yeah, a lot of people don't. It's not that they don't want your product, they don't want to be sold to.

Speaker 2 42:04

Yeah, yeah, nobody jumps. Nobody's in the bathroom on their phone hoping to go buy product. No Right, they're mindlessly scrolling and they oftentimes buy products.

Speaker 1 42:12

Yes, or at least get the first touch points to in the future, say, oh, I'm going to go buy this, yeah, yeah. So when you're creating your ads, again, like, don't get so caught up on what you perceive as a brand owner or as a marketer as brand. Yeah, brand is just like, don't confuse brand with a style. Yeah, like I'm not saying styling elements aren't important, sure, and I'm not saying that you shouldn't have any kind of cohesive experience, but ads jobs, like you said. Let's take a step back. What is the point of an ad? Next step is to get people to the next step. How do you get people to the next step? How do you get people to the next step? Well, guess what? When a door-to-door guy who's really good, because and here in utah we know like there's tons of door-to-door sales companies- here, um, including a church that does a lot of door-to-door sales.

Speaker 1 43:06

Sure, but the the door-to-door sell companies. They have techniques like it's all psychological right that you have to go in and the best ones they get rejected. They still get rejected a lot right, like you're still going to have a conversion rate that most people are not going to buy.

Speaker 2 43:20

Yeah.

Speaker 1 43:21

Yeah, but you've got to approach it in a way that just says, hey, how do I get people to the next step? So the door to our salesmen that win aren't the ones that necessarily have like the best middle of their entire spiel. It's the people that have the best intro to get more people to the next step. They're just better at getting people from. Instead of what a 10% door to explanation rate is what we'll call it, they have a 20% door to explanation rate, right, yeah, right. So then then the compound on the way down for sure, for sure.

Speaker 1 44:00

And so that's. That's ads. Like ads is how do you get from open the door to you're letting me explain what it is.

Speaker 2 44:08

Yeah, yeah, Listen, I think one of the as we come to the close here, I think one of the best things I can think of that just keeps popping in my mind there's nothing that is worse for your brand than getting. There's nothing that can be worse for your brand and not getting eyeballs, eyeballs on your brand.

Speaker 1 44:27

Correct.

Speaker 2 44:28

Am I right? Yeah, right, would you rather have? Well, we've seen this 10,000 people click on an ad. That might've been not the most best representation of your ad, but then you can then put them in the brand funnel than a hundred people for the same cost, because those costs per clicks oftentimes can be more expensive. Right, and the answer is I take the 10, 10,000. Personally, as long as it's. You know, they're generally my audience, right?

Speaker 1 45:01

So and guess what, sometimes having a quote, lesser aesthetic, an ad that's on the the downside of aesthetics, sure lead to a higher aesthetic experience, can be delightful. Very good point, right then. I don't think a lot of brands think of it that way.

Speaker 2 45:22

No, it's a surprise element it's like whoa this is takes them to potentially the next step.

Speaker 1 45:28

I want to learn more oh, that's interesting, like hey I'm, and now I'm on like a full on experience or whatever it is Right so oftentimes they think like, oh, just because it doesn't match, yeah, it's bad. It's like, oh, that's not true. Yeah, it's true, if your site is horrible and ugly and your product images suck and everything Right, but all else equal. Like it can be a step, like if you're giving them steps up in the experience, that's only going to be better, sure, yeah, but again how do you get them to the next step?

Speaker 2 46:01

it's it's not a always an aesthetic thing 100, yeah, and and most people just as well, like most, most brands out there don't even really have a brand to. You know, like that's another thing that needs to be understood Like sometimes, when you're so small, you don't have a brand, you don't really have.

Speaker 1 46:21

I mean, like you don't even have trust. Like you have trust with there. There's darling, such a small percentage of people, Like no one even knows who you are.

Speaker 2 46:27

Yeah, there's darling brands here in Utah that are 200 million, which that's so much money like 200 million is so much money and phenomenal great, and they have. They have teams that have executives from the the top companies in the world working for them. And you go to california and you ask somebody, hey, have you heard of this brand? What do they do? Cool, yeah, I'll check them out. You know, it's just like it's funny because the e-com DTC bubble makes you sometimes think.

Speaker 2 47:01

Oh, everyone's got to know who these people are Like if somebody's doing 100 million or more. It's like, oh man, these guys got to be well known.

Speaker 1 47:05

The whole world knows about them yeah, like guys, there are billion dollar brands that no one knows about, brands that no one knows about, but really, until you're at that like $500 to billion dollar, right?

Speaker 2 47:15

Most people know who Skims are. Most people now who know who's Viore is? You're still even Viore.

Speaker 1 47:20

People are going to be like Even Viore. There's a lot of people that don't.

Speaker 2 47:22

Same thing with Olipop and Poppy that just sold for what?

Speaker 1 47:25

And look Skims people know about because it's tied to Kim Kim Cardet.

Speaker 2 47:28

Yeah, for sure, for sure for sure, without kim they could still be a billion dollar company, but you might not know about them. Oh, but I was just scrolling on on skims ads the other day and you see a ton of ugly ads from skims and that's one of the most popular brands in the world right now, at least in the united states. Yeah, it's just. When I say most popular, I mean just people know who it is, so don't I?

Speaker 2 47:49

yeah, I think we can wrap it up, but don't get too caught up in that first touch point. Just remember that your brand.

Speaker 1 47:57

A brand is a trust.

Speaker 2 48:01

It's the experience, it is the trust that they have built. Yeah, I agree Around the experience yeah, yeah, let your guard down a little bit. Get people to your site. Have an exceptional experience on the site that makes somebody want to take the next step, guess?

Speaker 1 48:12

what If the ugly ad or whatever? If the ad doesn't work, it doesn't work. Yeah, you can pause it. Yeah, if it does work. Let it ride. What's the problem? Let it rip, don't fix what's not broke. Yeah, I agree, that's all Amen. Ciao, namaste.

Speaker 2 48:33

Until next time, until next Tuesday. Well, thank you everybody, and we will see you guys next week. Thank you so much for listening to the Unstoppable Marketer podcast. Please go rate and subscribe the podcast, whether it's good or bad. We want to hear from you because we always want to make this podcast better. If you want to get in touch with me or give me any direct feedback, please go follow me and get in touch with me. I am at the Trevor Crump on both Instagram and TikTok. Thank you, and we will see you next week.