Brand of Brothers

What is Advertising?

• REMIXED: the branding agency • Season 4 • Episode 2

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0:00 | 28:25

Welcome back to Brand of Brothers with Doug Berger and Johnny Diggz, where branding, marketing, and business get untangled with clarity, humor, and zero fluff. In this episode, we tackle another commonly misunderstood topic: what advertising actually is, and how it fits into branding and marketing without being confused for either.

🔥 In this episode:
 • The clear hierarchy of branding, marketing, and advertising and why mixing them up causes bad decisions
 • Why branding sets meaning, marketing creates connection, and advertising buys attention
 • Advertising as a tactic, not a strategy, and why it only works when the foundation is solid
 • The megaphone metaphor and what advertising really amplifies
 • Whether businesses can survive without advertising and when word of mouth actually works
 • PPC explained in plain language and why it is often the best starting point
 • Awareness campaigns versus conversion campaigns and how to choose the right one
 • How Google Ads can help or hurt depending on how you use data
 • Why audience location matters more than trendy ad channels
 • What OTT advertising is and how it compares to traditional broadcast ads
 • ROAS explained and why short term thinking breaks ad performance
 • Why cutting marketing spend is usually the first and biggest mistake during downturns
 • How stopping advertising slows your funnel long after the ads stop
 • AI driven advertising, what is overrated, what feels inauthentic, and why audiences can tell
 • Underrated tactics like retargeting and why “annoying” ads often work
 • A minimum viable advertising strategy for small and midsize businesses
 • Where podcasts and content marketing fit and why they are not conversion tools

💡 Whether you are a small business owner feeling pressure to “run ads,” a marketer trying to justify spend, or a founder navigating budget cuts, this episode brings advertising back to reality. You will learn how to think about ads as part of a system, not a silver bullet, and why attention without strategy is just noise.

🎧 Listen now to learn how to:
 • Decide when advertising makes sense and when it does not
 • Choose channels based on audience behavior instead of hype
 • Measure ad performance without panicking over short term results
 • Avoid common traps that waste ad budgets
 • Build advertising that supports long term growth instead of quick hits

Presented by Remixed, the full service branding agency helping companies craft, launch, and grow powerful brands.

🎶 Music by PRO
 📍 Visit us at BrandShowLive.com
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 👍 Like, subscribe, and share to support the show and keep the conversations going

Doug Berger:

Welcome to the latest installment of Brander Brothers. I'm Doug.

Johnny Diggz:

And I'm Johnny. Today we're talking about advertising.

Doug Berger:

All right, let's get to it.

Johnny Diggz:

So today we're talking a little bit about advertising. We've talked about marketing. We have, we've talked about branding. We have. Um, a lot of people lump marketing, branding, and advertising all in one. That's stupid. So is is, you know, is what what's part of what marketing is part of branding is advertising. Break it down, break it down.

Doug Berger:

You know the answer. But you're, you're being very polite by asking me instead of just saying, Hey, let me ask a question and answer. I'm asking, I am

Johnny Diggz:

representing the every man, Doug. Even though I, you are way, way better

Doug Berger:

than that. But, uh, to answer your question, um, branding is the all encompassing component, whereas marketing is a subset of branding. I'm not just saying it because I own a branding agency. We consider ourselves a branding and marketing agency, and then advertising is a subset of marketing. So I kind of look at it like this. So branding is the visual and the verbal. It is the representation of the product, the service, or the company. Marketing is what connects the brand to the audience. It is all of the vehicles that communicate who you are as a company, product or service to your audience, right? It is the line that connects point A, the company to point B, the target audiences. Okay. Advertising is one of the vehicles that drives along that line. And a, a, a, a great metaphor would probably be that a, a advertising is, uh, paying. For a, uh, someone to, to broadcast who you are. It's the, it's the megaphone.

Johnny Diggz:

Okay. So it ampl it's an amplification of your That's a great way of putting it. Yes. Okay. I'm glad that I could amplify your definition. Hey, thanks so much. So if you take, if you take advertising out of this equation. You still have branding and marketing, you can still operate a business without advertising. Like for sure, big businesses do it, right?

Doug Berger:

There are companies that. Operate solely on word of mouth. Now, some people might call it word of mouth advertising, but to be real, right? Well, if you're building

Johnny Diggz:

like reviews and stuff, that would be one. Yeah.

Doug Berger:

But, but it's not really, you know, if you're not really paying for it per se, is it really advertising? Um, to a limited extent? The short answer is yes, it can still be qualified as advertising, but generally speaking, there, there isn't any sort of, uh, amplification that's occurring. It's referrals where someone's like, Hey. There's this restaurant that has absolutely amazing soup, and you happen to love soup.

Johnny Diggz:

I do.

Doug Berger:

And so you go to this restaurant. And now you too are a patron

Johnny Diggz:

jambalaya.

Doug Berger:

Now we have to have a conversation about whether that is soup or stew

Johnny Diggz:

soup's, not a meal. Sorry, I I devolved into Seinfeld quotes. Um, so there's, uh, you, what I'm hearing you describe is that there's sort of, there, there are roles for the branding and marketing and, but advertising kind of fill a tactical gap. Is it, is it a tactic under marketing?

Doug Berger:

I, I, that's a really good question. I, I would say generally speaking to, to broad brush this thing. Sure. Uh, that, that, yes, it is, it is a tactical approach. Um, because your strategy is baked into the marketing side. And so how do you broadcast all of your, your messaging. And y you are promoting it and that's your advertising.

Johnny Diggz:

Agree or disagree with this statement? Agree. Hundred percent. Discussion. Hundred percent. Branding builds meaning? Sure. Marketing drives demand,

Doug Berger:

eh? Sure. I can buy that.

Johnny Diggz:

Advertising buys attention

Doug Berger:

100%.

Johnny Diggz:

Okay.

Doug Berger:

So I stick with my initial response,

Johnny Diggz:

the megaphone.

Doug Berger:

Uh, yeah, there you go. The, the, the amplification is, is a, a great way of putting it.

Johnny Diggz:

Um, now if you're a small business, you're looking at, for some reason something has made you feel like you need to do some advertising. What, how, where do you start as a, if IP pc, I just came to say like P-P-C-P-P-C, pay per click. Pay per click. So explain what that means.

Doug Berger:

The the greatest bang for your buck. That also, well, okay. Let's rewind. What's the point of the, because I'm just saying, when

Johnny Diggz:

we were talking about, when we were talking about branding, um, you mentioned like Google search Console. Right. It is like the number one tool for a small business to, to use to help their online presence. Right?

Doug Berger:

That that's one feature. Yeah, sure. Okay. Yeah,

Johnny Diggz:

so, but you're basically saying, and for advertising that is. Uh, Google ad words. I

Doug Berger:

mean, did we get sponsored by Google? No,

Johnny Diggz:

no. I mean, I, I say Google ad words, but, but yes. That they're, they, they're just one of the biggest Right. That, that do that. And they're probably the most cost effective of all of them, depending on, I guess it depends on what, where you're, yeah, it depends on

Doug Berger:

your strategy, right? So there are, are several different ways of, of approaching this, but, um, the long and short of it is Google Ads definitely makes it. Easy for you to target your audiences. Um, but they also make it really easy for them to extract funds from your bank account because they will want you to optimize the way that you're putting out your content that you're advertising. They're going to. Try to manipulate you into spending more money than you need to be spending. Instead, what you need to be doing is optimizing your ads based on data, not projection. Right. So what they'll often do is go, oh, you know, if you spend triple the amount that you're currently spending per day, that you'll get five times the, uh, amount of reactions or responses. Um, and, and of course they're using their own data to create these projections, but it's not necessarily a, an honest projection. So, um, but when it comes to bang for the buck. If the goal is a conversion campaign, then

Johnny Diggz:

conversion as in like, so a sale or, right, or what a form you, a form completion for. You define your, your, uh, as, as you like to say, your KPIs, your, your key performance indicators, your data, right? This is what, what you're tracking and that's form fills. Purchases, uh, anything that's relevant. Yeah, yeah,

Doug Berger:

yeah. I mean, it, it, it subscriptions what qualifies as a conversion for one company, like likes and subscribes. Yes, definitely. Like, and subscribe, please. Uh, so when it comes to. Advertising when it comes to, uh, campaigns, you basically have, and of course it people will, will argue that they're more than these two funnels, but they're generally either an awareness campaign or a conversion campaign. And so for this, uh, for an awareness campaign. Google Ads isn't the best way to go about it, right? You wanna be able to attract more eyeballs and words generally, amongst other words, are not going to attract eyeballs to generate the, the attention that you might be looking for. So there are other ways of doing that. In fact, I've seen. These billboards that work like, uh, the same, same way as pay per click, except they're able to project what the gross rating points are, which basically kind of tells you what percentage of the population, uh, is seeing your ad on a billboard. And so you can do a digital billboard. On the side of the road, much the same way that you can do a, a digital display ad using Google display ads, or even using something like AdRoll or, or just putting them on meta. But, but the, the long and short of it, what is the most cost effective way that you're likely to see a positive ROI time and again, I see this being PPC, pay per click.

Johnny Diggz:

When you're crafting, uh, an ad campaign or a specific ad, um, what are your non-negotiables? What do you, what do you have, what do you have to see? Like if, if. What's

Doug Berger:

the point? It, so the complication here is that, and I'm speaking from the fact that you have to boil it down to a least common denominator. And your ads sometimes are so small that they are narrower than the width of your smartphone and shorter than maybe you know, the size of your thumb, right? And so. That means, it's weird to

Johnny Diggz:

think of it in those terms, but Yeah.

Doug Berger:

Well, but I mean, all you need to do is be able to tap on a banner, and so how much content can you fit there? And I would argue that the most important component to include is a branded call to action.

Johnny Diggz:

What does that help, help me understand that. Just do it. Just do it. Just do it. Well that, that's a branded call to action. Yeah. Yeah. Their,

Doug Berger:

their tagline is the call to action. It's

Johnny Diggz:

kind of brilliant.

Doug Berger:

It's beyond brilliant. There's a reason why it persists.

Johnny Diggz:

Um, so you were just talking about, I heard you mention billboards and stuff like that. How do you decide. What I mean. And you mentioned pay-per-click being like obvious, like the, the low hanging fruit here. How do you decide, um, if you're going to go outside of that billboards, digital signage, uh, you know, uh, radio ads, influencer market, like, there's so many different, there are, yeah. So many different channels.

Doug Berger:

So first off, the, the. You need to begin by determining where your audience is, right? Is your audience on Facebook? Is your audience driving their kid to soccer? Um, is your audience, um, watching, uh, TV on, uh, on Roku, right? These are, are. Psychographics that you need to put together. Of course, you need to know what the demographics are. Um, I, is there a, a gender balance, uh, or is it skewing one direction or the other? Uh, it, what, what's the age range? What's the household income? Right. These are our critical components to identify, because your audience is going to. Easily fit into a couple of categories. So you wanna cast a narrow net. You want to be able to catch the fish that you're wanting, not be, not hoping for just one big fish. Your audience is probably comprised of numerous medium or small size fish depending on, on, uh, where they might exist. So. Then there's, once you've identified where they are, then you know where to broadcast to. So if these are people that tend to watch, uh, streaming on demand, uh, then it's going to make sense to do OTT and probably YouTube. Um, and if they are on social media, then you're going to wanna leverage platforms like, uh, TikTok for Business and Meta for Business.

Johnny Diggz:

Um, you said OTT

Doug Berger:

over the top. Um, so it there, when you're watching, for example, uh, this might be a really terrible example, but let's say that you're watching, uh, something on Hulu. Um, oh. Is,

Johnny Diggz:

could we be watching the K-pop demon hunters?

Doug Berger:

If, if that's on Hulu? I haven't seen it. No. Wait, no, that's, my daughter has Netflix. Yeah. And apparently she's obsessed. So yeah, Netflix.

Johnny Diggz:

Netflix has got like, uh, okay. So that was a terrible idea. Living the, the, the, the. Fear of the Walking Dead or something like that.

Doug Berger:

So it, this is going to be more of your, your streaming content that is either, um, it, it's going to be more like a, a television show. Mm. Okay. Um, although sometimes there are interstitial advertisements that'll happen,

Johnny Diggz:

like Jimmy Fallon's game show.

Doug Berger:

I, I, if I were familiar, I would 100% agree. Just imagine

Johnny Diggz:

Jimmy Fallon hosting a game show.

Doug Berger:

It totally sounds like something that, um, people would watch. So, uh, that was diplomatic, right? Sure. So, uh, so basically they have their own programming. So Jimmy Fallon is gonna be on Peacock, right? So Peacock has their own programming that people buy direct from them, but then there are these merchants. That are third party brokers that are also selling this inventory. They're reselling that, that same inventory, and so they get to go over the top. It's a, a, a better example might be for someone who's familiar with broadcast tv, where you see these high quality. Uh, commercials and then all of a sudden there's a local commercial. Right, right. That's obviously produced local. Yeah. That would be the broadcast equivalent, like a local

Johnny Diggz:

car dealer or something. Yeah, that

Doug Berger:

would be the broadcast equivalent to OTTI.

Johnny Diggz:

Gotcha. Um, rodents of unusual size. Uh, no return on ad spend. Sorry, I always get those two confused. I, I understand. Um, um, so. Uh, return. ROAS. Yes. Um, that, that, what is that?

Doug Berger:

I mean, it, it, it's basically, I I think it's pretty self-explanatory. Yeah. It's your ROI, so,

Johnny Diggz:

but how do you, I guess as a, as a business owner, I need to justify that I spent, you know,$5,000 last month on paper clicks. And you have to tie that back to revenue somehow. Right.

Doug Berger:

You know, it, it, it, it's a complicated. Question because it's highly nuanced. So first and foremost, um, the, in the United States, anything you do in marketing from my perspective is a hundred percent ROI. This is not

Johnny Diggz:

tax advice.

Doug Berger:

It's not tax advice, but it, for, for marketing spends are, are

Johnny Diggz:

generally tax deductible to one, okay? Right.

Doug Berger:

So it's dollar for dollar, excuse me. And so. When it comes to, uh, when it comes to re return on ad spend, you obviously want this to be incredibly profitable, right? You wanna make sure that your margins are, are positive. It gets, the reason why I was saying it's complicated is because in the service-based industries, you might find yourself spending. Thousands of dollars before you get that one customer that has a value, a lifetime value of 60,000. Right? But you spent 5,000 to get there over the course of a month or two, and you don't see any return. So you have to look at it from a wider perspective. So. Assuming that you're gonna spend$5,000 this month or$10,000 this month and get$10,000 back this month, that is the sign of a terrible investor. Right. Don't take advice from that, per financial advice from that person, um, because you're gambling. Right? Right. And, and marketing is not a gamble. It's a risk. There's a big difference. Um, because generally speaking, when you go to the casino, you lose whereas. This is a business expense. It's a calculated expense that's based on strategy. It's based on data. We know it works. It's just not instantaneous, right? You have to prime the pump before you get the water flowing.

Johnny Diggz:

We, uh, we did a whole podcast on marketing. Funnels and, uh, when we've known, learned firsthand what happens when, if you play with your marketing funnel and for, for example, you stop advertising, it can slow that, it can slow that funnel up and that can have. Negative effects for, for months or quarters afterwards. Absolutely. Um, and um, and I think it's, it's one of those things from, you know, from, uh, my experience in startups when belts get tightened. The marketing budget is the easiest thing to pull down first.'cause you don't have to fire anyone. You typically, you're, yeah. The only person you gotta fire is your agency or, you know, that's the

Doug Berger:

first mistake companies make. Yeah.

Johnny Diggz:

So how, how do you, how do you the, you gotta kind of go against your gut. And even advertise more, like, you know, spend more. We're seeing that and some companies are actually upping their spends.

Doug Berger:

It it, well, right now it's a really weird economic time, um, because there are positive indicators and there are negative indicators, right? Like we see in the United States, we see unemployment going up, meaning that there are more unemployed people. However you look at the markets. And the markets are also going up, so, right. What, what are the economic indicators that you look at and then you look at, uh, your consumer price index and those, is that still getting released? So the, the year over year numbers right, um, we're, we're able to look at and, and there's improvement, however you look around and the price of eggs. The last time I bought a dozen eggs, it was almost 10 bucks. Right. So, you know it, when, when you're looking at the, the, the numbers, I totally lost track of where I was going with all of this. At, at the end of the day, it, if it, and I, I believe it was you who shared with me that taking your money out of marketing is like. Taking the battery out of your watch time is gonna keep on ticking. Right, right. You're not gonna be able to stop time just by making it so your watch stops working.

Johnny Diggz:

That's great. Um, that's whoever told you that's brilliant. Um, it was you. Oh no. Um, so, uh, I wanted to talk about, um, some fabulously. Uh, disastrous campaigns. I don't remember any of'em. Isn't that amazing? That's how disastrous they were. No. Well, just, just recently both. Uh oh yeah. Both McDonald's. Yep. And Budweiser. Now, this is the second time Budweiser released an all ai, uh, campaign. Uh, for their, their Christmas promotion, McDonald's just did one as well. Oops. Um, and they started like, they bragged about how many generations it took to get the right prompts and, and like that, I I it like, it just seems AI slop, man. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's what we

Doug Berger:

ended up with it. AI is only as good as the person using it. Right. It's just like a hammer. Yeah. You know, you can build a beautiful home with a, with a hammer, but you know what you can also do, you can also destroy stuff with it. Yeah.

Johnny Diggz:

And, and so when, and then, and the homey gonna build, you still have to have the right vision and the right. And, and, and the other thing that I'm, we're seeing too, and, and you know, I feel like we, we talk a lot about AI on this podcast because it, it's, it's just so overwhelming in almost every, uh, industry, but in, in creative industries Yeah. And in the tech world and in small business, it's just, um, it, it's, it's, it's on the forefront of, of lots of people's conversations and how, and that's

Doug Berger:

because of really good marketing. No, no, seriously, because it has us talking about Claude and Gemini and Open AI chat, GPT, Dolly Mid Journey. Mm-hmm. Right. It has us talking about these things and it's because it is, it's becoming mainstream. It's part of the mainstream consciousness. Um, and people are becoming more and more aware of it because it, it is, it is infiltrating our content and. The quantity of people on this planet that consume content is ginormous, right? The number, uh, we have billions of users on META'S platforms and, uh, and, and you know, we're, we're talking about a huge percentage of the global population consumes content, and that content is increasingly AI generated

Johnny Diggz:

and you're seeing, um, a lot of AI. Generated emails that are personalized to you. Um, you see, uh, you know, AI generated ads where it's like, that isn't even a complete sentence, right? Um, or, you know, it's, it's getting better.

Doug Berger:

Sure. It, it, and I think that there will come a time where it's less and less discernible or there's a style that we become immune to. Um, but, but I think

Johnny Diggz:

there's definitely a distinct style visually with like, especially with AI graphics currently. Currently there's like, you can just tell.

Doug Berger:

Yeah, you can. And, and will it get better? I don't know. I, I mean, as a, as a creator myself, I, I, I'm both rooting for it and against it because I don't want to see people move away from the creative industry, um, because there are tools out there that people are exploiting in a, an unsavory fashion.

Johnny Diggz:

What do you think is the most overrated form of advertising right now?

Doug Berger:

I would say the most overrated form of advertising right now is ai. Yeah. AI driven advertising. Yeah. Um, just, I mean, it loses

Johnny Diggz:

the authenticity. It loses the, the connection with the audience, the human connection. It, it, and it, and,

Doug Berger:

and, you know, it's just more crap. It's, it's this AI slop,

Johnny Diggz:

lop, yeah. And it was like the word of the year. For somebody, somebody just declared slop of award of the year. Miriam or one of those guys, right? One of those dictionaries. I think I saw

Doug Berger:

that.

Johnny Diggz:

Uh, how about the most underrated? The most underrated besides pay per click, and which isn't underrated really, but

Doug Berger:

the most underrated form of advertising. I, you

Johnny Diggz:

know, what I like a lot is, um, the retargeting, I think retargeting is, is, uh, very valuable and underrated. Um, being, seeing, going to somebody's website. Interacting with the website and then seeing their ads later, even if I didn't buy something, um, brings them back to my mind. And it's kind of annoying, but it works.

Doug Berger:

I think. I'd have to agree. It's pretty underrated and I, I'm definitely a big fan of, uh, of remarketing and retargeting coupled together where you are both marketing back toward people who have come to your website, but also you've examined the data. It, it, and there are are platforms that algorithmically examine the data and then retarget to like audiences. So the people who have come to your website, completed the form and purchased a product or service or scheduled a something. Then finding people that match their, their interests and demographics.

Johnny Diggz:

So, wrapping up. Thanks for letting me cheat off you. Yeah, no, absolutely. The, uh, the, give me some, some minimum, uh, minimum viable strategy for, uh, a small, medium sized business. They want to advertise. What, what are the, what, what are the, the absolute need things that they need to have?

Doug Berger:

I, I think that we've already kind of hit on them. So you need SEM. And that's the, the, that's search engine marketing. That's your pay per click advertising. Right. Um, so Google ads, for example. Sure. Um, then, uh, then there's the, the display ads. The remarketing. Retargeting. Mm-hmm. Um, love that. And then I would say that they, the, the top of funnel marketing, um, whether they pre prefer doing, because it, it's a comfort zone, right? Whether they prefer doing, uh, digital or, or print is something that has to be ascertained. And if, if the budget allows for both, then I would say do both. And so in print it would be direct mail. And in, uh, digital, it would be the top of funnel emails.

Johnny Diggz:

I think that's good. I think, uh, where, where in that do you put, uh, a podcast content marketing strategy? Is that.

Doug Berger:

So that goes in, in, in the content bucket. Yeah. Um, and so that content bucket serves a, a multitude of purposes. It's very passive. Yep. Um, it, it is definitely long

Johnny Diggz:

tail.

Doug Berger:

It it is, but it shouldn't be based on, on the idea of getting conversions. It should be based on the fact that you are staying current. On the trends going on in your industry and then broadcasting that. Um, and, and this helps for, for everything from S-E-O-A-I-O, geo, whatever you wanna call it. Mm-hmm. Um, all the way through to, uh, people coming to your, your social media channels and seeing that you are a viable. Uh,

Johnny Diggz:

your, your actual humans.

Doug Berger:

Yeah. It, it, it, well, yeah. I mean, obviously your personality as a company will come across. Sure. And, and it, and you know, hopefully you're not using some AI driven, uh, social media, uh, platform. Um, but, but there's no question that, that genuine authenticity, that personality comes across one way or the other. Um. And so that content strategy could be employed on, uh, social media as well.

Johnny Diggz:

I think that's a great place to stop. Thanks for joining us, and we'll see you guys next time.

Doug Berger:

Thank you for tuning in to Brand of Brothers. Big thank you to our presenting sponsor, Remixed, the branding agency, along with production assistance from Johnny Diggz, Simon Jacobsohn, and me, Doug Berger. We can't forget music by PRO. Speaking of not forgetting, remember to do that like and subscribe thing and find us at BrandShowLive. com and follow us on the socials at BrandShowLive.