Embracing Marketing Mistakes
Welcome to the world's number one podcast on Marketing Mistakes by Prohibition PR. This podcast is specifically for senior marketers determined to grow their brands by learning from real-world screw ups.
Each week, join hosts Chris Norton and Will Ockenden, seasoned PR professionals with over 45 years of combined experience, as they candidly explore the marketing failures most marketers would rather forget. Featuring insightful conversations with industry-leading marketing experts and value-packed solo episodes, the show tries to uncover the valuable lessons from genuine marketing disasters and, crucially, the tips and steps you need to take to avoid them.
Chris and Will bring practical experience from founding the award-winning PR agency Prohibition PR, where they have successfully guided top brands to significant growth through PR strategy, social media, media relations, content marketing, and strategic brand-building.
Tune in to turn f*ck ups into progress, mistakes into lessons, and challenges into real-life competitive advantages. Well, we hope so anyway.
Embracing Marketing Mistakes
She controlled her narrative by revealing her darkest secrets first
Today we speak with Greg Matusky, CEO & Founder, Gregory FCA Public Relations. He talks about being a young PR professional.
We learn how Auntie Anne Beiler, founder of the famous pretzel franchise, brilliantly managed a potential scandal by revealing her own past mistakes before they could be used against her.
• Auntie Anne grew up connected to the Amish community in Pennsylvania
• Her hand-rolled soft pretzel recipe allegedly came through divine inspiration, creating a wholesome origin story
• Secured an appearance on The 700 Club with Pat Robertson to share her story
• Unexpectedly revealed a scandalous past involving an affair with a pastor and church fraud
• Strategically shared her dark past publicly so it couldn't be weaponised against her later
• Demonstrated the PR principle that "if you put bad news out, it can never be used against you"
• The business now has approximately 1,200 franchises globally
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The theme of the show is from fuck-ups to fame. That's the theme of the show and it's people that have made marketing mistakes and things. Now you've sent a couple of examples in here and we're looking forward to hearing about them. I wanted to make sure we got them in the show because they're cracking.
Will Ockenden:Shall we start with Auntie.
Chris Norton:Anne.
Will Ockenden:And for our UK listeners, do you want to explain who Auntie Anne is and what kind of iconic US figure she is?
Greg Matusky:Sure, I live on the East Coast in a state called Pennsylvania and we were settled by the Germans. And in the 1700s there was a religious sect that came to Pennsylvania called the Amish. And the Amish eschew all technology. They live among us with the technologies of the 1700s. They use horses to plow their fields. They have no electricity, no TV, no radio. I spend half my time in central Pennsylvania and I often go to their farmer's markets and I talk to them, I buy my wood for my fireplace for them, and so it's not unusual for us to come in contact with these individuals. So years ago, as a young man, I get a call. There's a new business in Lancaster, pennsylvania Lancaster, pennsylvania is the epicenter of the Amish sect and a business has found a recipe for a hand-rolled soft pretzel and they need PR because they're franchising.
Greg Matusky:So I get on my horse and I go out and I meet with the marketing director, which is tired, and uh, uh, I was joking about my horse, but I go and just had a great vision of you just getting on your house, yeah right, right, he, he's from the regular world and he sits me down and goes.
Greg Matusky:now you, you're going to meet Anne Anne Byler, who owns the business, and Anne's story is simple. She's very religious, she's a former Amish person. She left, she didn't join the sect right, very connected to the community, and she's an evangelistic Christian, evangelist right, which is the path often for those who leave Amish. And she's going to meet with her If she likes you, you're on board. So we go to the meeting, we talk a little bit and this is a whole different world, because the Amish never want to come forward. They're not evangelistic, they don't want you to join them, they don't have any kind of propaganda, they're just a quiet people, confident in what they believe, and they don't really care about the rest of the world. And so she's explaining you know, I really don't want this, I don't want to be. You know, they believe that the nail that sticks up the highest is knocked down the hardest. So you know, I'm a PR guy and I'm supposed to promote her and I go. Well, ann will be sensitive to that and she's like great, great. So then she goes all right, we have to go to lunch, so I figure we're going to go to a restaurant somewhere.
Greg Matusky:We get in our cars and she takes us down this country lane on a farm where her mother, who is amish and still lives on the farm, has been making us what they call supper is their lunch all day long. And there's all these amish. I mean it was some of the heaviest food I ever I could not consume. All those are carrots and butter and there was beef and there was poultry, right. So I come on board and she calls me in and says I got. I have a favor to ask before we get started. I go sure what goes.
Greg Matusky:I would like to appear on the 700 Club. The 700 Club was run by a guy named Pat Robertson, who was a big time Christian evangelist who ran for president of the United States, right, and this show was over the top. But it was her dream and she was going to come out with her story. Her story is that she was working in a booth one day and she got a flower delivery and it was the wrong flower and magically, spiritually, this was the perfect ingredient. It made the perfect pretzel and there were lines out the door and people wanting to franchise her business and she was touched by God at this moment.
Greg Matusky:That's her story right, and that's the purpose of the 700 club.
Chris Norton:It's another story as well.
Greg Matusky:Well, that's great and it's a wholesome story, isn't it? So I go yeah, I think I can do that. I mean, everything seems to align. That's what they cover. Pat robertson's running for president, the one I have no doubt he'd like to get into your checking account. So I think I can make this happen. So, sure enough, we secure, we secure an appearance on Pat Robertson and I go down and she she has her whole crew come down in a black van, because the Amish well, those who've left the Amish don't even show chrome on their cars sometimes. We go down, I'm in the audience, and beforehand she goes. Now, greg, I have to tell you I'm going to give testimony today and I go testimony. We didn't talk about that in media training, but I figure that's her telling her story. I go well, you have a great story. She goes no, I'm going to give testimony. I have no idea what this means, right? So I'm sitting in the audience and I'm all excited. It's a big score for me, I'm a young guy and I'm all full of myself. And so they come back to the show and Pat Robinson does a preview before the commercials and he goes next up.
Greg Matusky:A miraculous story of a woman who was given a recipe that has launched an empire, and how she walked away from the devil. I'm like the devil, what's the devil? There was no devil. I'm looking around like what's the devil. So they come back and they start the story and she tells I've been very fortunate. God gave me this recipe for hand-rolled soft pretzels. I have a hundred franchises now. And he goes that's a miraculous story. And now tell us about how you walked away from the temptation of the devil. And I'm like the temptation of the devil has no place in this story, right?
Greg Matusky:So Anne goes on to tell the story of how she had moved to Texas and become involved with a church and that church had a pastor who she had an affair with when she was married and he defrauded the entire parish of everything they had. And I'm sitting there like this was my shot and it's totally destroyed, like why, why? You didn't know why. So she comes up after the fact and she goes how'd it go, why? So she comes up after the fact and she goes how'd it go? I go, ann, I thought you did good, but the whole back story of the frauding parishioners and sleeping with the pastor, we didn't what. She looks at me and she goes Greg, I'm going to tell you something.
Greg Matusky:Five years from now, a publication like Forbes will come to call on me. So now a publication like Forbes will come to call on me and this is public record, and they will think they have something salacious and I will say, oh, that's an old story. I've already told that story. You should watch the Pat Robinson episode. So I learned that she took the air out of the balloon and protected herself Right when I was. Just I couldn't even put it together at that point. So is that a fuck up? Uh, it was on my part, because I I didn't know what she was doing and I didn't understand the value right of of putting bad news out sometimes, and I think that's the the takeaway that if you put bad news out, it can never be used against you in the future. And that's what I learned from Annie Ann's hand-rolled soft pretzels.
Chris Norton:She sort of schooled you in how to do PR there. She sort of took the worst thing possible and shared it first, so nobody can ever come back like you're saying and get her again.
Will Ockenden:Brilliant move.
Greg Matusky:And it's a hugely. I mean, I was looking up the company. There's something like 1,200 franchises now, isn't there globally? It's a very good lesson to learn as a young person the value of deflating the balloon and putting out the bad news so that it can't be used against you in the future.
Chris Norton:There's real value in that. One thing that interests me about that story is they don't use electricity, so what's she cooking? How does the store work? That do it the restaurants.
Greg Matusky:Well, she had never joined the faith, which is much better than leaving the faith Right. If you leave the faith, if you go through it at age 16, become Amish and then you leave right, you can be isolated from the community. If you never join right, you can stay connected. And she had stayed connected. She had been a driver for the Amish when they went to farmer's markets and eventually had her own stall and that's where she boothed and that's where she got this miraculous recipe that took over the world.
Will Ockenden:I'm just picturing you sitting there hearing this story coming out, sweating in your suit, thinking what is happening here?
