"This Isn't Us." My CEO Rejected My Copy for Months.

FREE: the tools and templates to become an indispensable marketer:indispensablemarketer.com/free/For months Chad wrote copy and Jacob sent it back with three words: "This isn't us." That was the entire feedback. Chad thought it was a taste problem. It wasn't.What was actually happening was that Jacob had stopped knowing what he believed in. He describes feeling like a drug dealer running a marketing agency, clients lining up for their next hit of performance, and what a brand consultant pulled out of him that changed how Disruptive positions itself. Then the two of them get into the fix: the five differentiators every business has to define, operational, philosophical, talent, outcome, and access, with Disruptive's own as the worked example. They also sort out the questions people actually ask, like how a differentiator differs from a core value, whether all five have to be unique, and who owns defining them versus marketing them. This is the Vision pillar of VSET.--------------------------------------------CHAPTERS0:00 "This isn't us." The only feedback Chad could get for months0:38 "The worst part of my job is when I meet with you"1:14 Why Jacob felt like a drug dealer running a marketing agency2:00 The consultant conversation that changed what Disruptive stands for4:48 The traps businesses fall into when naming their differentiators5:28 Why "we care more" isn't a differentiator without evidence5:51 The five differentiators, with Disruptive's own as the example12:12 Values vs differentiators: what's the actual difference?13:15 Do you need all five, and do they have to be truly unique?16:05 If the feedback is vague, it's probably not youTen chapters on a sixteen-minute conversation, which is more than I'd normally run, but the back third is a genuine Q&A and each question is its own search intent. Worth the density here.--------------------------------------------WHO'S TALKINGJacob Baadsgaard is the founder and CEO of Disruptive Advertising and the author of The Indispensable Marketer. He's sat in every seat at the table: data analyst, marketing director at a publicly traded company, and now the CEO on the other side of it asking marketing for a number.Chad de Lisle has been in marketing for nearly twenty years, half of that at Disruptive working directly with Jacob. He's the one who kept getting the copy sent back.--------------------------------------------ABOUT THE SHOWThe Indispensable Marketer is Disruptive Advertising's podcast. We're a performance marketing agency, and our mission is to connect great marketers with the brands they believe in. The goal of this show is simpler than that: we want marketing leaders to win. Not just hit the number, but earn the trust and the seat that comes with it.For anyone who has no reason to trust us yet, some things you can check:We've done over $150 million in revenue and managed over $3 billion in ad spend for thousands of businesses.When we studied more than 2,000 of those accounts, we found that on average 76% of ad budget had no attributable revenue impact. Not low impact. No impact. That's the problem we exist to solve. We reject 96% of applicants, because the wrong person in the wrong seat costs everyone.We publish around 8 videos a month. We want these to be the episodes you forward to your CEO or drop in your team's channel, because you're both better on the other side of it.--------------------------------------------FREE RESOURCES: ⁠indispensablemarketer.com/free/⁠⁠Disruptive Advertising: disruptiveadvertising.comThe Indispensable Marketer (book): https://www.indispensablemarketer.com/book/Connect with Jacob on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakebaadsgaard/Connect with Chad on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chad-de-lisle/NEXT EPISODE: the client who slammed his fist on Jacob's desk over a $40,000invoice, and the three numbers that turn marketers into partners.

Transcript

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Why does everyone in the company think they're better at marketing than you are? Especially the CEO. Ah, I don't know if I really like that copy or that headline or this image or those colors or whatever. Everyone seems to have an opinion, but no one really seems to have the solution or why they don't like it. And what we're going to be working through is how do we solve that systematically so that we can get them off your back and let you do the great work that you are here to do. I'm Jacob Basgard, the founder and CEO of Disruptive Advertising. To date, we've done over 150 million as a business. We've managed over 3 billion in ad spend for our customers. And at this point in my career, I have worked with thousands of marketers and CEOs, have seen the gaps and what it takes for them to get on the same page with what their differentiators actually are as a business and how to effectively communicate those in their marketing copy. The way that we practically solve this as marketers is once we've understood who we are built to serve and the outcomes that our products or services are meant to provide them, with that level of clarity, we then come back and simply ask the question: if a competitor was cheaper, why would they choose us over them? Until you answer that, you will not be able to do great marketing. You will be doing commoditized marketing. You will be competing on price, and you will be on a race to the bottom, wondering why marketing always feels stressful and like you can never quite get where you want to go. And you're you might be thinking, well, what the hell, Jacob? I already know what our differentiators are. I am going to challenge you that you probably haven't defined them in a way that is nailing it if you're still getting a lot of pushback from your CEO or other people in the company that want to have opinions. And so what I've put together over the last 13 years is a concrete and proven way to establish your differentiators and do it in a way that every time you write copy, every time you launch a new campaign, it is clear and obvious which differentiator you're actually referencing to make the point and to connect with the audience. The first one is the process differentiator. How do we deliver this service or product in a way that is different from everyone else? At Disruptive, we do that through our VSEP framework, which is part of what you're listening to right now, that we help every business clarify their vision, the strategy, the execution, and team that they need to get phenomenal marketing results. It's unique, proprietary, and differentiated with us. In addition to getting everyone off your back, including the CEO, about how you're doing your marketing and how you're positioning and writing copy, this also just creates stability in your role. Most marketers turn over so quickly, and for the ones that truly nail the differentiators and speak to them confidently and clearly and regularly test them are the ones that have staying power and become indispensable to the organization. So to empower you on your journey of being indispensable, let's break down what I've seen play out thousands of times now on how to land on differentiators that actually mean something and that help you do great marketing. The first differentiator that has to be defined, otherwise, it's going to be challenging to do great marketing, is understanding the operational differentiator. How is it that we as a business provide the product or service to our customer in a way that is truly differentiated to the point where we can even trademark it? The Amazon way, the Southwest way, we call it the disruptive way, is we've developed 13 years of how we service our customers and the information and input that we need to get the right outputs and results that are going on, that until the operational differentiator is defined, it will be challenging to market that effectively because that's what gives your confidence, the trust that you keep doing this for customers just like them and they keep getting that same outcome. The next one that needs to be clear is the cultural differentiator. What about your people and culture is different than what's going on in the marketplace? Do your people give a damn? Do they care about what they're doing? Um, what is your screening mechanism that determines who even gets to work there in the first place? For us at Disruptive, for every hundred applicants that want to work here, we let less than 4% through that screening mechanism to make sure that we're working with the best of the best. And when people understand, oh, you you actually do all that work, so I don't have to, and identifying the cream of the crop and marketers, that really is a valuable differentiator and something that people get from us. And so from a cultural standpoint, what is the business bringing to the market that is differentiated? A philosophical differentiator will actually likely be tied to the core values of the business. What is the thing when you would actually say no to revenue, no to growth if it wasn't aligned with who the business is and where you're going? For us, we only work with people and brands that we believe in. If we don't see how we can get you results and that we believe in who you are and what you're actually trying to build, we just decline to work with them. And we actually turn away over 80% of the businesses that reach out to us for support because that's against our differentiators, our values as a business. And that means something because when someone works with us, they know that our hearts of our people are actually in it and that they want to work with them, not just because they're getting a paycheck. The fourth one is the outcome differentiator. What is the result, the outcome, the transformation that you're promising to your customers? And how do you get them there better and faster than the competition? Because at disruptive, we only work within specific industries where we know how to win. That's where we're able to tell our customers we're only working with you because we already have a defined playbook of how to get results for you. And that's why we can guarantee those in the first 90 days working together. Otherwise, we actually won't work with you. And that is an outcome differentiator that you've got to be able to articulate. Here's how we get you to that desired outcome faster and/or better than the competition. And then the fifth one is access or exclusivity. What is something they truly get from you that they might not get anywhere else in the marketplace? For us, we have our university, we have our different events, we have our different uh partnerships with big platforms like Google and Meta and all of these other ones that individual advertisers cannot access on their own, as well as the events and resources that we provide as an agency, they truly can't get those things on their own. So let's talk about what having each of these five differentiators documented does for you. First, it creates alignment with you and the CEO about what makes this company different. And the combination of those five things should make you unique and should make you different. Well, practically, you can now upload that into your AI project for all copy and content that you're producing, and it makes sure that it keeps it aligned. If you're getting feedback from the CEO or other people in the company about, I don't know how I feel about that, you can point back and say, this is the differentiator that I'm focused on to our target customer and how I'm positioning that and why. Do you have any suggestions on how you do that differently for this differentiator? It actually grounds everything that you're doing rather than abstractly coming to the table and saying, I wonder what would connect with my customer, and then coming up with a million headlines and copy ideas and hooks and all, it's like, look, you're gonna drive yourself crazy doing that and you're gonna spin in circles, and you won't be able to defend why you're doing what you're doing, which is why you'll keep getting feedback that they can't defend either. Rather than bringing it back to all of our copy and content for internal and external marketing comes back to these differentiators. And that's what empowers you to be an indispensable marketer, to use AI effectively, to stay aligned with your CEO. And I want to clarify: it is not your job to determine what the differentiators are. It is your job to figure out how to best market those differentiators. And so, once again, an indispensable marketer, if you can't answer those five types of differentiators for the business, that's a conversation that needs to be had with the CEO and anyone else that's involved to say, we've got to land these because without them, I can't do great marketing for this company. And if we don't know how we do it differently, so that when the competition is cheaper, people choose us, we have a fundamental business issue that I can't solve with another marketing hack. And so clarifying the differentiators for who you're built to serve really sets you up to be an indispensable marketer and gets you into the fun part of marketing and how do I best land this differentiator rather than what should I talk about and starting from scratch. Now, we've done this thousands of times. That's why we have extra videos, resources, and the assessment that you can take below to understand where you're at with your differentiators and get some help, getting those to a great spot so that you can do better marketing. So check those out, and I'm excited to see your journey continue to unfold of being indispensable.