Dial-Up to Digital: What Actually Works in Modern Marketing with Gee Ranasinha

Ever wonder why some marketing cuts through the noise while most fades into oblivion? G Ranasina, CEO of Caxino marketing agency and a veteran marketer since the days of AOL CDs, reveals the uncomfortable truth about what's wrong with modern marketing.

"Marketing bros think all you need is to throw data into some AI engine and have it vomit out a thousand clichéd images," Ranasina explains with refreshing candor. "But what's missing is the idea, the concept, the emotional connection." Drawing on decades of experience helping over 400 startups across 20 countries, he articulates why the fundamental principles of marketing remain unchanged despite technological revolution.

The conversation takes a fascinating turn when Ranasina distinguishes between efficiency and effectiveness in marketing. While other business units can optimize for efficiency, marketing requires emotional resonance that can't be quantified in dollars. "We've exorcised creativity from the equation," he laments, explaining why $1.6 trillion in marketing spending with increasingly sophisticated targeting tools has resulted in decreasing effectiveness.

For podcasters and business owners alike, Ranasina offers a compelling perspective on standing out in a crowded marketplace. "You need to have the balls to be different, to be distinctive in your category," he advises, citing brands like Liquid Death that embrace their uniqueness rather than blending into the background. His insights on why we're "feeling creatures that think" rather than "thinking creatures that feel" provide a psychological framework for creating marketing that works.

Whether you're looking to improve your marketing strategy, grow your podcast audience, or simply understand why some messages stick while others don't, this episode delivers actionable wisdom wrapped in entertaining, no-nonsense commentary. Connect with G Ranasina on LinkedIn for more marketing insights delivered with his signature blend of expertise and straight talk.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Communication Connection Community

Transcript

Carl: 0:04

Welcome to Communication Connection Community the podcaster's podcast. This podcast takes a deep dive into modern day communication strategies in the podcasting space. We chat with interesting people who make the podcasting and speaking spaces exciting and vibrant. We also dive into the podcasting community with news updates, latest trends and topics from this ever-evolving space. So strap in, it's going to be one amazing ride. Let's dive into today's episode. Gee Ranasinha has been in marketing since the days of dial-up internets and AOL CDs. Wow, we might have to take a trip down memory lane on that one. Today he's the CEO of Kexino, an award-winning marketing agency, and over the past 16 years Kexino has has helped over 400 startups and small businesses in over 20 countries grow awareness, reputation, trust and sales. And we're going to talk a lot about, obviously, marketing today and how it relates to podcasting, how it relates to your business in general. Gee, welcome to the podcast.

Gee: 1:17

Thank you very much for the invitation, Carl. Very nice to be here. Delighted to be invited.

Carl: 1:23

I am amazed that your experience in marketing goes back to dial-up internet and AOL. You've got mail. A lot has changed since then, I would say.

Gee: 1:38

Yes and no. I mean lots of people would say, oh, my goodness, you know, marketing has changed so much, it's continuing to evolve at such an amazing rate, this, that and the other. But actually I'm not so sure that's. I wouldn't actually say that was actually true, because I think a lot of what marketing is is hasn't changed at all in terms of the way that human beings look and consider and evaluate products or services at an emotional level, within context, hasn't changed for thousands of years Now. Sure, the tools have changed Absolutely. The execution has changed. Sure, the tools certainly have changed.

Gee: 2:32

To be honest, the tools get in the way of marketing. And what do I mean by that? Marketing is about affecting a change in an industry, in a society, in a company, in an individual, so that the end result after marketing is different would have been if marketing wasn't there? Right, it's about affecting change. And if we're talking about marketing from the aspect of sales, which marketing pretty much is, it's about creating an emotion in the minds of your buyer that predetermines a bias towards your product or service over and above your competitors. Right?

Gee: 3:30

All marketing will actually do is to say, is to create mental structures, resonances within the brain, so that when I'm in the moment for buying more washing powder, I'm in the moment for buying more washing powder I may consider your brand of washing powder along with the three, four, five other brands of washing powder that I normally buy. Okay, that's all marketing can actually do, and anybody who tells you otherwise is living in la-la land, because the human mind is far more complex than what I call marketing bros would have you believe. Are you familiar, Carl, with the term Marketing Bro?

Gee: 4:20

I did

Gee: 4:20

invent the term okay

Carl: 4:22

, I'm not familiar with it actually bro.

Gee: 4:26

I did invent the term. Okay, I'm not familiar with it. Actually, if I describe a marketing bro to you, you will certainly know the type of person I mean. I talk about the people who are invariably in their mid to late 20s, crouching in front of Lamborghinis, throwing gang signs.

Carl: 4:41

Okay.

Gee: 4:42

These people who think that all you have to do with marketing is throw some data into some AI engine and have it vomit out a thousand really, really cheesy cliched images with a thousand headlines and a thousand subheads, and you throw that all into an algorithm to vomit out some creative execution and job done. Okay, what I'm talking about is understanding your customer to the point where you create communication that evokes an emotional response.

Carl: 5:23

I was just going to say the emotion piece too. We see that not necessarily in the detergent aisle for clothing, but we see the emotional piece, for example, when we're at the checkout and the chocolate bars and chips are there as opposed to. You know, typically you don't put celery in the checkout line. People probably wouldn't buy it. There's not an emotional response.

Gee: 5:46

That is Well there is an emotional response, but it's not a positive one, is it?

Carl: 5:51

It's not the one from a sales perspective, from a marketing perspective, Absolutely. It's that experience, it's that journey I always think about. When I was a kid growing up, one of my favorite candy bars back then was a chocolate bar called Jersey Milk. I don't know if you've heard of it, but anyways, I loved it, Loved it as a kid growing up. Now I limit them, shall we say, but if I saw that, of course, at the checkout line I would always, always be bugging my parents Can I get a Jersey Milk? Can I get a Jersey Milk? No, it'll spoil your supper. You know the routine. But you said something very interesting too. That marketing is. There's more depth to it than we think there is, but it also hasn't changed in thousands of years. But you did mention that the tools have changed. How have the tools affected, positively or negatively, the journey or the experience in marketing?

Gee: 6:46

Okay In the old days when TV was black and white, when AOL, cds and dial-up internet no, okay. In the old days, marketing with an uppercase M used to be primarily about persuading people, influencing their behavior, in order to deliver a commercial result right and, as a consequence, the best marketers of the day were familiar with concepts like you know human behaviour, human insight, psychology, what we call behavioural science today, which is just a rebranding of psychology. Really, okay. Today, I have the feeling that 99% of the marketing that we see as consumers okay, especially on the online space has been created to be more concerned with efficiency than effectiveness. It's as though marketing is seen by the organisation as like a branch of logistics. What am I talking about? Efficiency and effectiveness, okay, so effectiveness is what we're going for. Effectiveness is how well we do something, how well we're doing to achieving our goals, how successful we are in delivering what we set out to do right. Efficiency, in contrast, is a ratio. Efficiency is about how much input you make to deliver a particular output and, as a consequence, by chasing efficiency metrics, the idea is to meet a particular output for less and less input. So that type of mentality works in other areas of the business. If you're making widgets, okay, if you look at that manufacturing process of the widget, if you can make that widget for a lower cost, right, maybe you can get the raw materials cheaper. Maybe you can create some automation so that there's less people touching the widget to actually manufacture it. Maybe you can get faster machines that crank out more widgets per hour. Whatever it is, that way you're decreasing the per widget cost. So this is good stuff. And every other business unit within the organisation operates around this kind of Newtonian model.

Gee: 9:13

Right For marketing. It doesn't work like that, because in marketing we're not looking at logical, rational progress where the answer is always the same 2 plus 2 always equals 4. In marketing it doesn't work like that. There are a number of ways to achieve the same or maybe an even better result, and also that method to achieve that result can vary depending on the context. It can vary by the person, it can vary by the season, it can vary by the choice of message channel. It can vary by 101 different things.

Gee: 9:57

So, pursuing metrics based around efficiency above all else, what happens is that, by consequence, we exorcise the creativity aspect out of the equation, because we know how much everything else costs, but you can't quantify creativity. You can't say, okay, for this particular marketing campaign, we're going to spend $227 of creativity. What does that mean? Right, we can't do that. So, instead of doing the basics of marketing research, segmentation, positioning, messaging, all that stuff we've come to the conclusion that bad marketing that's more targeted works better than great marketing that's spread wider, right, which is why marketers resort to things like tracking, cookies, remarketing tags, programmatic advertising and all that other stuff, and this is why we have things like GDPR and CCPA and PIPL and CPRA and CDPA and 101 other four-letter acronyms that are going to be around.

Gee: 11:02

Okay, businesses have created a data-driven, repeatable process for their marketing output, for their tangible marketing output, but one that's devoid of creativity, salience or resonance. And then they moan why their marketing sucks. And it sucks because it's not evoking a human emotion. There's no emotion being put into that, and this is what I mean. Marketing is about invoking a human emotion. Now, the tools have changed? Of course they have, but that basic predisposition, that basic goal, hasn't changed in millennia. You look at the state of marketing today right, as an industry, it's about $1.6 trillion. Okay, we've had some kind of automation in marketing for at least a decade. If you look at the way that you can target consumer groups in Facebook, google or whoever you want, right, you can do geolocation, preferences, political persuasion, gender, whatever else. Okay, you've got all of these wonderful tools, yet the effectiveness is going down. So we've got all of this automation, all of these tools, all of this AI stuff, and more and more of marketing is being ignored.

Carl: 12:28

And is it because we're not creating that emotional experience?

Gee: 12:32

Exactly, there's no idea. There's no idea, there's no concept behind the communication. And we need emotion, empathy, humor, entertainment, humor, entertainment in order for it to trigger neural pathways, to be able to be remarked upon. By remarkable I mean remarked upon right, so that in some deep and distant in your gray matter, it comes to the fore when you see that product advertised digitally or on the supermarket shelf or whatever else. And that's the main reason why so much of marketing fails. It's because we're focused all around the tools and not around the concept, the basic communication idea that we're trying to get across to our audience. To be honest, the tools are immaterial, they're secondary. If you haven't got a core, strong idea, no tool is going to work. Let me give you an example. Supposing I spent a thousand bucks on chef's knives, bought a really nice. You know one of these things that roll up that you see, you know, on these chef programs, right, I get one of these things super duper. I could spend a thousand bucks on chef's knives, but it doesn't make me gordon ramsay, does it?

Gee: 14:03

not typically right right I, I can spend 20 grand on a camera, but I'm not going to be Annie Leibovitz. I could buy a Ferrari. I'm not going to be a race car driver. It's not about the tools and then use whatever tool is necessary to best execute that idea according to budget channel media. All the rest of it and this is what people are missing they're skipping over this stage. So you've got bland, insipid, mediocre messaging that nobody remembers mediocre messaging that nobody remembers.

Carl: 14:55

And I think that's one of the challenges that podcasters are facing is and some are beating their heads against the wall or even quitting because they're relying on these tools and they're just spitting out a lot of information, hoping that they're I'll say, hoping hoping that they're the Gordon Ramsay with the thousand or these are probably worth more than a thousand dollars.

Carl: 15:11

But I get your point that expensive knife set not realizing that in order to get there, there needs to be the correct messaging, the correct calls to action in building towards, as we've talked about, the emotional response that does drive the audience. That's why I bring it back to podcasting just in this moment, because we do work a lot with podcasters, but those podcasters are also business owners who are relying or not relying, but they're utilizing a marketing tool, because a podcast is a tool that's really all it is to allow you to put your voice and now your face, because there's video podcasts to put your voice and face out there, your image. But if you're not using it correctly, or you're not using the tool or understanding how the tool works, you won't get the results that you want.

Gee: 16:04

Okay, we can use podcasting as an example. Okay, why do some podcasts work and the vast majority of podcasts fail? Because there's not enough meat in the sandwich. Right, podcasters haven't got a compelling initial position, an idea which they can expound upon in 150 directions, to be able to create a compelling narrative storytelling that gets people to come back. Because it's not about finding your podcast, it's about coming back to your podcast. Right, that's the holy grail.

Gee: 16:47

It's the same thing for anything within marketing. If you're just bland and vanilla, yeah, okay, you may get an eyebrow raised, but you know it's not going to put your kids through college, that's for damn sure. Right, ain't gonna work. Okay, we need to take a stand, we need to be strong enough, brave enough. Let us say let's have the cojones to say this is who we are, this is what we stand for, this is what we're about. And you know, you and I can both name 101 podcast hosts who fit this profile. Love them or hate them. You cannot ignore them and that's the whole point. That's why people keep on coming back.

Gee: 17:36

And it's the same thing for marketing, it's the same thing for messaging, and the problem is too many business owners and marketers for that matter, they jump straight into the tactical execution and they haven't done the basics for marketing to actually understand customer research, positioning, segmentation, targeting, all of this stuff so that they can actually have a clearly defined position, not for them but for their intended audience. Because as people, as human beings, what we do is we pigeonhole, right, it's just how the brain works, so so-and-so does this cause and effect, and it's all very transactional. So, unless there's a clear position that when your name, your podcast's name, your brand's name, is mentioned in the minds of your target audience, they can associate your brand with this type of position from an aspirational standpoint, informational standpoint, educational, whatever it may be, unless you can do that, any communication that you then use on top of that is bound to fall flat, because you're putting the cart before the horse, aren't you?

Carl: 19:01

I think some of the challenges, too, that up-and-coming podcasters face is they're drawing comparison based on somebody else's experience. So they're saying, well, this individual is this successful with the show. Ergo, so should I be. Just because I'm.

Gee: 19:19

You know, I'm doing a show too, so I'll take which is the total wrong way of doing it, because what happens is the audience thinks of them and not you, right? Look at 99% of mobile phone ads on the TV. Okay, we see the mobile phone on a white background and it's spinning around and it's super close up and it's, you know, ultra high definition and it's perfectly lit, and there's some plinky plplonky music going in the background, right, and you know whether it's Samsung or Google or whomever else, you immediately think of Apple, right? They're all trying to do what Apple are doing with their hardware, and it doesn't work because you just think of Apple, you don't think of Samsung, right? So you know you need to forge your own path.

Gee: 20:11

Now, that's scary, don't get me wrong, but the object of a brand is to be distinctive in your category. The object of your brand is to be different. So being different starts from day one. So, by definition, you know you can either be a brand leader or you can be a brand follower. Which one do you want to be? Okay, if you want to be a brand follower, it's easy. Do what the other guys are doing, right, but you'll be drowned out in the general sea of sameness and nobody will remember who you are. So you need to have the balls, if I can use that word, to be different, to be distinctive in your category, so you can take ownership of a particular position, state of mind that your intended audience can embrace, aspire to, acknowledge whatever that may be, and own that space.

Gee: 21:17

And there are plenty of brands who are doing that today. Liquid Death, for example. Okay, they sell frigging water. For goodness sake. If you look at their advertising, it's like they're selling like 200% proof grain alcohol or something right, and they have fun with it. Their delivery vans are in the shape of hearses. They embrace the difference. Now, it's not for everyone. If you're used to your little Evian bottle or your nice teardrop-shaped Perrier bottle, great, but they're not for you and they don't pretend to be for you. They're for a different type of buyer and they're not embarrassed or ashamed of that. And as a brand, you need to be doing the same.

Carl: 22:07

I love where this has taken us. I have one more question, then. I want to give us the opportunity to make sure I, or give you the opportunity to share how people can connect with you. Let me give you the opportunity to gaze into a crystal ball and share in your estimation. What new marketing trends do you see emerging, let's say, over the next five to 10 years? Where is marketing headed emerging, let's say over?

Gee: 22:32

the next five to 10 years. Where is marketing headed? I think because of what people are calling AI, which isn't really AI yet, but let's just use the terminology that people know right. Because of that, what we're going to get is more and more brands looking the same, because everybody's going to be throwing their prompts into a bunch of ai tools and it's going to be vomiting out diarrhea. All right, now there's an image for you, all right, and what we're going to do is we're going to get a sea of sameness. No, already, when you look at marketing today, especially anything online okay, if you see the creative, if you put your hand over the logo, the messaging could be used by 150 different companies Already. We have no distinctiveness, we have no differentiation. That's already the case.

Carl: 23:29

We're seeing it in the real estate space here, actually, with a lot of realtors using AI-generated tools to provide their property descriptions, and you can tell.

Gee: 23:39

Absolutely, because AI tends to use words that real people don't use. Right, when ChatG PT came out what was it? Two Decembers ago? Whatever it was okay, if you do a Google trend search for the word Delve, all of a sudden it shot up, because most people don't use the word Delve very rarely anyway. And ChatGPT, for some well, 3 or 3.5, whatever it was at that time 3 or 3.5, whatever it was at that time had a predilection for using the word Delve.

Gee: 24:14

It smells wrong. You know, you don't know what it is, but there's something a bit iffy here. You know you open the fridge and it's like no, there's something in here that needs to go and needs to go now. We've all been there. Okay, I don't care how many, how often you clean your fridge, which is never as often as you say, okay, ever Right, there's something not quite right, and that's why I think the greatest advances that we're going to see in marketing over the next few years are not going to be technological.

Gee: 24:56

Next few years are not going to be technological. They're going to be psychological, because it's not about how AI works, it's not about how Instagram works. It's how the algorithm works. It's how LinkedIn works. No, the question we need to ask ourselves as marketers is how does a human mind work? How do we game the human mind to tap into those mental structures, to be able to embed our message at a cerebral level so that it can be then remembered at the time of consideration of purpose? And that can only be done from an emotional aspect. It can't be done purely factual, because that's not how our brain works.

Gee: 25:39

There's a great quote by a lady by the name of Dr Jill Bolt-Taylor who's a neuroanatomist. It's a quote I use a lot and my people will tell you that I use it too damn often and what she says is most people assume that we are thinking creatures that feel, when actually we are feeling creatures that think. And we need to tap in anybody, no matter what you're selling, who you're selling it to, whether it's B2B, b2c, D2C, whatever else. Okay, all of us, we buy here. We buy from our heart first, and then we post-rationalise with our head. We tell ourselves a story to convince ourselves that that was a good purchase to make, but we buy emotionally. Even the decisions that we think we're taking rationally are actually taken emotionally, unless you're talking about commodity goods, in which case branding becomes very important in various ways, but otherwise, consciously or unconsciously, we buy emotionally and we post-rationalize logically.

Carl: 26:50

Wow, I am so astounded by our conversation today, oh really yeah, you need to get out more clearly. I'll give you that one.

Carl: 27:02

I'll give you that one my friend, a very deep dive into marketing, and you know what? I'm sure that our audience is going to glean a lot out of this, just because of the fact that there are many podcasters out there who need to consider a number of the things that we've touched on today. However, what I want to do is give you the opportunity to share how people can reach out to you or connect with you to find out more about what it is that you do. What's the best way for folks to do?

Gee: 27:25

that I tell you they should all go away and leave me alone in peace. That's what they should do. No, the best way to get hold of me to be honest is on LinkedIn. Now, Carl, you may find this extremely, extremely weird, but did you know there's only one Gee Ranasinha on LinkedIn?

Carl: 27:44

I am morbidly surprised. That's what it sounds like.

Gee: 27:48

So best way to connect with me is to find me on LinkedIn. A few times a week I expound this kind of drivel on my LinkedIn feed with a bunch of videos, and they're small, bite-sized, one-minute long videos with either words of what I would consider wisdom or something that's pissed me off that day, or whatever else. But hopefully people will find it either educational, amusing, entertaining, offensive, whatever. As long as the reaction to it is not indifference, then I'm a happy man. So find me on LinkedIn. Otherwise, obviously, the website is Kexino. com and I'm on far too many social media channels. I'm almost embarrassed to tell you how many. Otherwise, just Google me, you'll find me. It's pretty darn easy.

Carl: 28:41

We'll make sure that we post the links to all of those social channels, especially your LinkedIn and your website as well, in the show notes, so people can check that afterwards. Gee, before I let you go, though, to either post something on your LinkedIn feed or inspire somebody else to do the correct kind of marketing, I'll leave you with the final thought.

Gee: 29:05

I think the final thought has to be is to understand. Lots of people ask me you know, what is the secret in business? How can I be better at business, how can I serve my customers better, how can I differentiate myself from my competitors? And based upon, you know the number of years I've been on this rock that's spinning around the sun. One thing I've seen time and time again is just do what you said you were going to do when you said you were going to do it. Just doing that will put you at least 80% up on the entire list of everybody else, because most people fail at that.

Gee: 29:54

What do I mean by that? I mean, if you tell your customer that you will give them a proposal on Friday at 10am, you make sure you move heaven and earth to deliver that on Friday at 10am, not Friday at 10.30am. On Friday at 10am, not Friday at 10.30am, not Friday at 3pm, certainly not Monday at 9am, but Friday. You just do what you said you were going to do when you said you were going to do it. Right, because I think integrity a precious and fleeting resource within business and fleeting resource within business and, at the end of the day, people buy from people, and if you can just be trustworthy and honest with yourself and how you deal with other people will automatically put you in the top percentile compared to your competitors.

Carl: 30:51

I think that's a great place to leave it. Gee Ranasinha, thank you so much for being my guest today.

Gee: 30:56

It was an absolute pleasure. Thanks to you again for the invitation.

Carl: 31:00

And thank you for joining us today. Special thanks to our producer and production lead, Dom Carillo, our music guru, Nathan Simon, and the person who works the arms all of our arms, actually my trusty assistant, Stephanie Gafoor. If you like what you heard today, leave us a comment and a review, and be sure to share it with your friends. If you don't like what you heard, please share it with your enemies. Oh, and if you have a suggestion of someone who you think would make an amazing guest on the show, let us know about it. Drop us an email, askcarl@ carlspeaks. ca. Don't forget to follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter as well. You'll find all those links in the show notes, and if you're ready to take the plunge and join the over 3 million people who have said yes to podcasting, let's have a conversation. We'll show you the simplest way to get into the podcasting space, because, after all, we're podcast. Solutions made simple. We'll catch you next time.