Speaker 1: 0:01

Yo, what's going on everybody? Welcome to the Unstoppable Marketer podcast With me, as always, my lovely co-host, Mark Goldhart. Mark Goldhart, how are you? I'm great. Happy birthday. Oh, thank you, I didn't say it's his birthday today, guys.

Speaker 2: 0:14

Happy birthday, thanks, yeah, happy birthday. I didn't bring cupcakes. I know the big 35.

Speaker 1: 0:19

We got him a drink. I'm in my late 30s now. Yeah, you are in your late 30s, mid 30s, mid 30s yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2: 0:26

Yeah, mid. Well, I'm 36 and I still think.

Speaker 1: 0:28

That is mid. I'm still mid. I think Is late 37. I think once you get past 37.

Speaker 3: 0:32

You got to start a kit in late 30s, do you?

Speaker 1: 0:40

You think so? I think I just is 35 was the is like was the hardest. I think mid is just cope 30.

Speaker 2: 0:46

You're just coping to hold on to it, I think, mid is where you really start planning your midlife crisis.

Speaker 3: 0:49

Yes, like ah 35. There you go. What car am I going to waste money on?

Speaker 2: 0:53

Cause. Technically, that is your midlife right. Like 35 to 40.

Speaker 1: 1:10

Like, yeah, 75, 80, yeah, um 35. The age 35 was like the year that my um like, if I didn't get enough sleep, I like really felt it. It like working out and exercising did not my. The same hours I put into working out and exercising did not equal the same hours. Yeah, like two years previous, just like everything got harder.

Speaker 3: 1:26

Let me be a cautionary tale to you. If you don't keep working out, it's not about getting fit anymore, it's about maintaining, and it's hard.

Speaker 1: 1:33

Yeah and yeah, like I said, maintain, like I was just to maintain. I would notice that, like you know, I was working out at a time to maintain my current fitness level. Yet I was getting bigger and I was like what the freak? I'm not changing anything. My diet wasn't changing In fact, my diet was probably better Really but my fitness routine stayed roughly the same and, all of a sudden, things started happening to my body. I wasn't used to. I am lucky so far.

Speaker 3: 1:57

Starting about noon today, your metabolism will start slowing. Yeah, about noon today, that's when the timer goes off.

Speaker 1: 2:02

I will Midday mid-35, midlife, I'll watch.

Speaker 2: 2:06

I was fine too at 34. I'll watch it and see what happens.

Speaker 3: 2:09

He's going to be like hey, trevor, I got to go take a nap.

Speaker 1: 2:12

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 2:13

I'll tell you what Midday naps I love naps. If I could market a product, any product in the world, naps, naps would Just take a midday nap in your car 15 minutes change your life.

Speaker 2: 2:24

Teslas need to come out with an update where you have ambient noise, white noise machine, like it's a nap, a little waterfall in the dash.

Speaker 1: 2:31

Yeah, a little waterfall, that would be really nice. Pull up, yeah, that'd be great, I can dig that.

Speaker 2: 2:37

But yes, thank you. Thank you, Very excited for my late 30s to begin. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 2:43

We recorded a podcast on my birthday and now we're recording one on yours.

Speaker 3: 2:47

Happy birthday. I hope you like getting fat. Yeah, exactly, that's what's.

Speaker 1: 2:51

Welcome. We'll find out. We'll find out. Give it three to six months, we'll see.

Speaker 2: 2:55

I've been pretty much the same way since high school. We'll see, so this will be the year we find out.

Speaker 1: 3:00

Yeah, here we go. Well, let's introduce our guest. He's just chimed in. He's been talking. Everyone's like who is?

Speaker 2: 3:05

this guy.

Speaker 1: 3:06

Could it be except for they will see in the title who it is, and so it actually will be, that's true.

Speaker 2: 3:10

It's not very much of a surprise anymore.

Speaker 1: 3:12

Well, let's welcome Damian Dayton, who is the Chief Creative Officer yes, chief Creative Officer at Creatably, cco at Creatably Welcome. Also co-founder in some other e-commerce businesses, like Pillow Cube.

Speaker 3: 3:28

Stair.

Speaker 1: 3:28

Slide.

Speaker 3: 3:30

Stair Slide Boulder Play Cold Case Ice Cream. Yeah, welcome, Well, thank you. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2: 3:37

Yeah, we're excited to have you.

Speaker 3: 3:39

I've been just wanting to be on this podcast. Everyone wants it. Yeah, I mean, there's a line outside the door we give everybody free lollipops. You know, we you made me pay for this they get free ones $2.50.

Speaker 2: 3:55

I'll Venmo request you.

Speaker 1: 3:56

I'll Venmo request you. We've been wanting to have you on. I know you and I have connected. We've gone to lunch. We've worked a little bit together, but and I'm a huge fan of Bestie.

Speaker 3: 4:07

Thank you, thank you it makes our job so much better. It makes us better at our job.

Speaker 1: 4:12

You know what I tell people all the time. What's funny is like most people will use a Bestie or any other post-purchase survey provider. That's like I need attribution, and attribution is awesome, it is for sure.

Speaker 3: 4:22

But they're missing the boat if they're just looking at attribution.

Speaker 1: 4:25

Yeah, but I love it personally, like I use it for the brands we work with. 80% of the stuff that I'm looking at on a consistent basis is to help drive creative decisions.

Speaker 3: 4:38

Nothing in the attribution cycle tells you what your customers are thinking, Tells you the why right.

Speaker 1: 4:45

Yeah, you can ask a simple question why did you want this?

Speaker 3: 4:49

Nothing can tell you that and that, like well, they touched this last. Knowing what they touched last does not tell you. How do they make decision? How were they thinking? What were? What was the problem they were facing? And so many people come to us like well, we've been running this back pain message and 60% of our consumers respond with this helped their back pain. Like well, but that's what you told them. So that data is going to be skewed. It's always going to be skewed towards what your marketing message has been.

Speaker 1: 5:17

Right.

Speaker 3: 5:17

And yeah, not what it could be or should be, yeah, so take a commercial to everybody and then survey them and say why were you interested? Yeah, what made you buy this product? What made you curious about this project? Is a product is a different question, but still valid Totally, because sometimes the big thing that it does isn't the thing that gets you started on that journey.

Speaker 1: 5:37

And another question that you can also do is like what almost stopped you, like, from actually taking action on this? Why did you wait so long?

Speaker 2: 5:44

Yeah, for sure, and really quick, I think, just so the audience knows why Damien's an expert in thinking about why a consumer is motivated and thinks a certain way, and how to influence them.

Speaker 1: 5:58

Yes.

Speaker 2: 5:58

Let's talk a little bit about Creatably.

Speaker 1: 6:00

Yes.

Speaker 2: 6:01

And what Creatably is known for. So, damien, do you want to give us your little pitch on what Creatably is, what you guys are known for?

Speaker 3: 6:08

Push the elevator button head on up. Creatably the word is kind of creative plus profitably. You know a lot of creative. There's a lot of great creative out there, but we really try to marry. I feel like our secret sauce is marrying creative with great data and performance metrics. We're known for making long, funny commercials that's how most people know us but we're more proud of long commercials or big, crazy commercials that drive big crazy results.

Speaker 1: 6:38

Just to let the audience know what's the video. If you had to say this is what we're known for, Well, we're probably known more for PillowCube.

Speaker 3: 6:45

Okay, Because early days in our company we were helping a lot of e-com brands grow. We helped in the early days with Owlet, with Gab, with Kizik, some local brands that we helped early on, and we were helping a lot of people make money. We said why don't we help us make a lot of money?

Speaker 1: 7:01

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 7:02

And Jay, who's really the founder of Pillow Cube just an absolute genius had a great idea for a product. We made a simple Kickstarter video with our employees and five years later, over a billion views that ad is still running at the top of their funnel and still driving a majority of their revenue. So that one I'm particularly proud of. Our team gets stoked about creative results and performance results.

Speaker 1: 7:28

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 7:29

Like we had a piece we did for Cold Case last year that lived on the front page of Reddit for a week.

Speaker 2: 7:36

We were stoked about that. People love it and.

Speaker 3: 7:37

I love the results, but another piece we did for the same brand is driving more revenue, sure, and we're like as stoked about that, but you might. We did for the same brand is driving more revenue, sure, and we're like as stoked about that, but you might not recognize that, yeah, yeah, for sure, yeah.

Speaker 1: 7:49

And just to let everyone know what pillow cube is. Pillow cube is like, it's just what it sounds like. They invented a pillow that is a cube A cube.

Speaker 3: 7:56

Yeah, well, I mean, if you think about our bodies, we've got a notch right there and pillows are shaped like ovals and you've got a big noggin and you sleep on your head. You don't even have to have a big noggin. Know what Every pillow is trying to be? Everything for everybody. Yeah, and we just said let's just embrace the side sleeper. And we thought side sleepers were a minority. It turns out 70% of Americans sleep on their side Nice.

Speaker 1: 8:18

And so now, after a billion views, 70%, 70%, I, 70%, 70%. I mean it actually doesn't totally shock me.

Speaker 2: 8:23

I don't know what I'd identify as I've never slept on my side. I do both, I think. Yeah, most people are stomach or back.

Speaker 3: 8:29

I try to start on my back. We identify you as a switch sleeper or a combo sleeper.

Speaker 2: 8:33

You know I like that I respect that, but our further like clinical studies, and forth fast enough to get those points, it's got to be within 30 seconds, and I do Sometimes.

Speaker 1: 8:45

I wake up on my stomach too.

Speaker 3: 8:52

But, a lot of people are combo sleepers because they can't get comfortable on their side. Your arm falls asleep, your shoulder pain, and so that's where it made a difference. I was actually skeptical because it was a little bit weird, but we had a message, we told it to everybody and then I started sleeping on it, and then I was a combo sleeper and then I slept through the night Like you. You, you put a few of those nights in a row like that, like, oh, there's, there's something here. This isn't just a gimmick.

Speaker 3: 9:17

You know, yeah for sure, um, you switch your body, usually switch switches because there's something about that position that's getting uncomfortable, totally. So, if you can find a good position, you, if you've ever had that experience where you go to bed and wake up in the morning, those days become less and less as you get older, um, and uh, if you, well, mine are becoming more and more right now, yeah, so you don't have shout out to eight, sleep.

Speaker 2: 9:41

Oh yeah, I got the eight sleep.

Speaker 1: 9:43

I said I was going to give you guys an update and it legit is.

Speaker 2: 9:45

It's legit. Well, now you need a pillow cube. I guess I do. Well, I'm not a side sleeper though.

Speaker 3: 9:50

But, maybe pillow cube now has that. We have a pillow we affectionately call the pancake. That's in prototyping for back and front sleepers.

Speaker 2: 9:56

I sleep like I'm in a coffin. That's what I need.

Speaker 3: 10:00

And hang from your ankles?

Speaker 2: 10:02

Yes, I'm leaving that out.

Speaker 1: 10:04

Well, I've heard that my wife is really into health and wellness and she has told me that I want to say it's on my right side, but maybe there's a drainage point for your lymph nodes and so it's actually really good to sleep. It's right or left, I can't remember which side.

Speaker 3: 10:24

Our bodies aren't symmetrical, so if you have acid reflux you want to sleep on. The fundus of your stomach is up here. Yeah, you want that to be slightly elevated. So you want to sleep on your right side. Your heart is on your left side. You want to sleep on your right side. Help circulation. Yeah, most people in America.

Speaker 2: 10:37

That makes sense, because when my wife is pregnant she needs a pillow cube, because when she's pregnant she sleeps exclusively on her right side.

Speaker 1: 10:45

But then she'll she wakes up with shoulder pain. You can't sleep on your back when you're pregnant.

Speaker 2: 10:49

Well, yeah, but what I'm saying even like before she starts, before the belly gets big she starts rotating to her right side, but she'll always wake up with shoulder pains. We have a Theragun and we're like after Theragunner, we have a lot of pregnant women that love the pillow cube.

Speaker 3: 11:03

For that reason it's I mean it's. They talk about a gap in the market. Ours is a literal gap in the market that we found and it just it really took off. We went, so pillow cube went. We did a Kickstarter and pre-sales did about 300,000 before we delivered our first pillow just off of a good ad.

Speaker 1: 11:20

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 11:20

And then the next year was 3 million and the next year was 30 million, and so that trajectory was like, oh, we didn't realize it was going to. It was kind of this fun experiment and it really took off that.

Speaker 2: 11:31

I love this story because of the nicheness of it.

Speaker 1: 11:33

I do too.

Speaker 2: 11:34

Because everyone thinks by focusing on one little thing, there's no growth opportunity. It's like, well, we want to be everything to everyone, but what you guys did is you actually focused on something that you thought was a really small niche, and then it ends up being oh, 70% of people sleep on their sides.

Speaker 1: 11:50

Well and big enough to maybe fund you going for more than just those people Exactly.

Speaker 3: 11:54

Yes. So the early days of Pillow Cube we were going to have cause we a lot of people like, well, what do you have back sleepers? You know we were going to have a link on the website Like are you a back sleeper? And you click on it. It was just a guy with a metal finger. It's like everybody else is taking care of you. You go elsewhere and and our top, our second most performing commercial in our first six months was this pillow is probably not for you. Here's the thing that I think about selling to the niches and like, if you want to get this, tell everybody the message and tell everybody that it's not for everybody. You don't just target those niches because you still find out. We're finding all these niches that like our product. Yeah, but letting them know this isn't for everybody, but that kind of makes you want to try it, sure, well, it also makes you well, it might be for me, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 12:38

How did they know it might be for me? Yeah.

Speaker 3: 12:49

I'm a unique and special. They don't know me. Yeah, they can't, but I think it also is like you're very clear on your strategy. This is what we're trying to do. You can't get great at anything unless you're like really focused on we're trying to do this, we're really trying to solve this problem, um, and then you become great and then other people use it for different things sure you know sure.

Speaker 3: 13:01

So now we have positioning pills, we make, make mattresses. We do custom mattresses too for side sleepers. They're fantastic I've had. We got rid of a $5,000 mattress and went with her pillow cube mattress and my wife. I say that she's one of my biggest skeptics. I think you the true love for me.

Speaker 2: 13:18

It's healthy yeah, it's healthy if the wife of somebody who loves you for who you are and will not put up with your crap.

Speaker 3: 13:23

And every time we, every client, comes in, they have crazy products and she's like what are you bringing into the house? Yeah, but not in that voice. Yeah, and the very few things that she'd love. And she absolutely she's like no, we can't sleep on any other.

Speaker 1: 13:37

Nice. So? So tell me this let's switch gears a little bit. Um, go get a pillow cube, though, now that we've promoted pillow cube, right, yeah, but what? What made you guys? So, mark and I've been in the mark and I've been in the e-com space for the last eight years or so, and we've been media buying for even long, you know, 10 to 12 years, right? Um, what's? There's this.

Speaker 1: 14:00

There's this really interesting phenomenon that's happened probably over the last three or four years, which is back in the day. I'm going to use an example. I remember we were working on the brand side of things and I remember we were having our spring sale and we had projected to make X amount of revenue. We knew, based off of historical data, that we were going to be able to make X amount if we spent X amount. Off of historical data, that we were going to be able to make X amount if we spent X amount. And I remember Mark coming to me and being like we are like projected to do 50% less than what we projected to do and we're spending more money. And it was like well, what do we do? He's like oh, I'll just make some audience changes and I'll do X, y Z da, da, da, da da. And sure enough, he got it to 90% of what we should have done right. So he made up a ton of ground from where we had lost, all based off of just lookalike audiences, audience testing.

Speaker 2: 14:51

It was gaming the system. Yeah, it was gaming the system, but now as meta.

Speaker 1: 14:55

But that's a tactic. That's not a long-term strategy, for sure, and that stuff doesn't even really work that much anymore.

Speaker 2: 15:05

Yes, it's an in-game tactic that you still need to know, but it's not going to. Your brand will not be successful if you're relying on it.

Speaker 1: 15:08

No, no, no. So my question for you is you guys started so long ago. How did you guys identify that creative? Because most people thought more like that, strategically, like, oh, as long as I know how to do these things, I'll be able to game the system every month, day, year, whatever, to make sure that I'm hitting the right numbers at the right ROAS, et cetera, et cetera, what, what was it that made?

Speaker 2: 15:29

you guys.

Speaker 1: 15:29

And then 2020 hit, yeah, yeah. And then iOS hits and all that stuff. Right, what made you guys identify like, no, no, creative is going to be the thing that's not only going to help us sell, but it's going to help build brands.

Speaker 3: 15:41

Yeah, I mean first of all is walk it was. I think all of us as marketers need data, but we don't talk about our guts nearly enough. Like you see something as an ad buyer or as a creative, you're like, oh, they're onto something you know. Or you see a piece of data in the, and people always talk about data informed, but it's how it informs and how what your instinct tells you about it. We were seeing big brands take off. I would say the secret is this ABT always be testing. You know, glen Gary, glen Ross, they'll always be selling. Testing has got to be a significant portion of your funnel. But it's really important what you're testing and it's really important that you're not just learning this works and this doesn't. But you're asking yourself why did this work and why didn't this?

Speaker 1: 16:22

work.

Speaker 3: 16:23

And that always informs creative decisions, I think. And so for me, I came into this not from a performance background but a film background, so I had bought commercials before. For me there was this like epiphany. When I first bought my first Facebook ads, I was promoting independent films and I was like I've been buying TV ads, I bought time on Facebook and this ad cost me a penny of you and this one cost me seven cents of you. Why? Because this is a good ad and this is entertaining. They're both selling the same thing, but this is entertaining. And that was kind of the start of the journey. Everybody pays the same amount for a Super Bowl ad, but you can create your own Super Bowl moments if you're creative as good. And then we started asking but can our creative also sort our demographic? So another example we often use is Owlet. Such a great company, such a great mission.

Speaker 1: 17:17

But they Really quickly tell everybody what Owlet is.

Speaker 3: 17:19

Owlet makes a smart sock for your babies. You put it on, you don't have to binge. Watch your baby at night. It tells you it's a pulse oximeter. They have a sensor on your nightstand and as long as it's glowing green, your baby's great. If there's no signal, it changes color. If the signal so like if there's a problem with the device.

Speaker 1: 17:34

But if there's a health problem, you have to pull stops or slows.

Speaker 3: 17:40

And and you're like is the baby okay?

Speaker 1: 17:41

Yeah, you're trying to watch the baby's chest, see if it's going up or down. I don't know.

Speaker 2: 17:45

Every first time a parent knows the feeling of walking into your baby's room and going huh, yeah, oh yeah, Are they? Breathing. You got an outlet right. I would say it's a great purchase For baby number one for sure. Well, and I'm not saying, done it for sure For baby number one. Yeah, I wish we would have for sure. Because you're just not used to it. It's just scary. Like you have this little baby. Well, do you feel like, if you're not, looking, you can't tell.

Speaker 3: 18:11

But then what happens is my wife would just like I'm up for 30 minutes every hour or two, totally Staring trying to cute, I'm just going to watch for a few more minutes, nobody's sleeping, and then, when the baby's awake and you want to be that great parent, you're not.

Speaker 3: 18:26

And so one of the tactics we said is like hey, instead of targeting, they knew that women were purchasing in the third trimester, but we feel most households have a CEO and a CTO and it's not the same person. Like we need to talk to both of them, because by the third trimester the baby money spent like you bought the ridiculous crib and you bought the. We need to be talking to them, as they're talking about getting pregnant. And so the cheapest ad unit in America is still show it to everybody in America untargeted. The platforms aren't paying you for, and if it's a skippable ad, I'm not paying for it if they don't watch 15 seconds in.

Speaker 3: 19:03

So our we quickly came to the strategy. We do need to hook people, but we also need to sort people. We want to tell jokes that if they're not interested in this product they're not interested in this video, and we want to kick them off. Before 15 seconds Everybody's talking about hooking, but sorting is almost just as important. You want to hook everybody. We say we want the hook to be closely related to the itch and the scratch, and the itch isn't necessarily the pain that it solves, but that most present emotion that you kind of discover in an interview.

Speaker 1: 19:32

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 19:33

That most present emotion that makes you think oh, I need that.

Speaker 1: 19:35

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 19:36

And once you know that itch exists, you're not comfortable until you scratch it with that product.

Speaker 1: 19:40

For sure. Yeah, yeah, this episode is brought to you today by Bestie. If you are an e-commerce store on Shopify, stop and listen up. Are you surveying your customers? Do you know how they get to your website? Do you know what marketing channel introduced them to you? Do you know what motivated them to buy? Do you know what your MPS score is, if people actually like and love your products?

Speaker 1: 20:01

If you don't know the answers to some of those questions, or any other questions you might have for your customers, you need to start using post-purchase surveys. Bestie is the only post-purchase survey provider that utilizes AI to not only help you craft your questions, but also takes the insights that your customers give you and creates actionable insights and steps for you to make as a business to help grow and scale your company. Today, bestie just lowered their prices so you can be serving your customers for as low as $39 a month. And not only that they have a 14-day free trial in the App Store. So go check them out right now. Test the 14-day free trial. If you happen to pay the $39 a month, you are not going to lose out on much and you are only going to be able to gather more data around your customers to help grow and scale your businesses. We love Bestie and we use it for every single brand we work with. Go check them out today at bestieai.

Speaker 2: 21:00

I just want to stop just a little bit and talk about this itch and scratch, because a good and maybe ugly example of this itch moment is, if you start talking to people about bugs and spiders and creepy crawly things, people will naturally start feeling a little movement on their skin right, like, oh, like it's something on me now, right it's kind of like in marketing.

Speaker 1: 21:26

How do you?

Speaker 2: 21:26

how do you create that moment emotionally for someone where it's easy to do that with bugs right Like these, these?

Speaker 3: 21:33

fears. I have a bug example that's will prove you differently. So here's a great example. Get ready, it's a great prescription service. I we had salesmen coming to us doing bugs, but they wouldn't get the nooks and crannies I wanted to. And they deliver a custom spray for your own neighborhood and we did a video with them. But what we learned is we had all these digital bugs, People that hate bugs, hate seeing bugs, and so we had to think about well, how do we get them to think about bugs without seeing bugs? Because when we had some digital bugs crawling on, people get audience drop off. And who are the people that are dropping off? People that hate bugs?

Speaker 2: 22:13

people that actually want to get rid of the bugs.

Speaker 3: 22:15

So it's sometimes it's even talking about the itch instead of them. So it's asking that additional question oh, but what? What makes you feel that? Why do you want to get rid of bugs?

Speaker 2: 22:24

You know well, now we're talking about what we call heaven and hell, right, like, which is fear or hope? Yeah, so like you still have to create an itch if you're, if you want to have this aspirational message which is like what you just said. Hey, if we know that data proved that people are dropping off because we were showing too much of the, the itch, what we thought is the itch.

Speaker 3: 22:43

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 22:43

But this isn't selling. So now, how do we flip it so we're not making them disgusted and they're leaving and showing them hey, what's the aspirational? But how do we still create that moment where they're like I need it? So how did you do that? Now you're going aspirational, not fear-based.

Speaker 3: 22:58

Yeah. So we don't pitch clients ever. You sign on for our process because we're going to. I can't pitch you until I really get under the skin of your brain and really know. So before we brainstorm, we do something I call a pain storm and we talk about well, what is the specific pain? Why do you hate bugs? What is that moment that everybody identifies with?

Speaker 3: 23:19

We work with a cooling sheets company Sheets and Giggles fantastic sheets made out of tensile cooling fabric really great. So why, if you just say we make cooling sheets, you have to cerebrally connect the problem. Like well, when are the moments that you realize that my sheets aren't cooling? It's not that you're hot, it's usually that you're sweaty. So that's a layer deeper and people identified it's that moment when you kick your leg out of the sheets. Yeah, that's when you're like I'm too hot and sweaty and uncomfortable in my own sheets. So we created a monster that lives under your bed. When you kick your leg out, he grabs them. Because everybody identifies with that other feeling. We still were able to talk about it but like, how do you go? And we find the secret is in specificity and in generality. That it's specific enough, like it's not, I'm sweaty in bed. It's something that a lot of people resonate Like I've kicked my leg out of bed before, but it's general enough that most people have had an experience like that and they think about it.

Speaker 3: 24:16

So, with the bug example I think one was. You're in bed about to go to sleep and you hear that sound like oh no, there's a bug in our bedroom Right and it's either going to wake us up or I'm going to get mosquito bites in the morning and there's something in here which is very much a horror moment. And so we did a whole horror film based off of the bugs.

Speaker 2: 24:38

And you don't know where they are. They're in the house, they're everywhere.

Speaker 3: 24:41

But you don't actually see them everywhere. But you don't actually see them. You do end up seeing them, but it's not in the first 15 seconds. It's not the itch, it's not.

Speaker 2: 24:48

It's not the itch you do end up seeing them, the itch is the feeling of the unknown and the anticipation.

Speaker 3: 24:53

I think for them it is, you know, and so we're still testing that. But that's the other benefit of what we do. We do three to four minute videos, so if I shoot not a 30 second concept, we have four minutes of content. I have a lot of pieces I can retest for my opening, which is why for us, it's really important. We have a close relationship with ad buyers like you, so they're not saying, ah, this isn't working. We ask well, how is it not working? Like we look at a second-by-second retention curve.

Speaker 3: 25:22

So, we're seeing how viewers are watching it. We look at CPMs CPC curve so we're seeing how viewers are watching it. We look at CPM CPCs so you can see like, well, cpms are really high but they're not clicking. What does that tell us about the creative? Okay, it's still entertaining, but we're not driving. We need better calls to action, we need drive a sooner driver or so. And when I started out in this genre, I was working on films, people that didn't have budget for an ad buyer and a creative, so I was doing both, and that's when we realized, like you have to have a handshake between those two things yeah where they're communicating and that it's not the tension between the two it that tension keeps the tents up.

Speaker 3: 25:56

Sure, they're saying this isn't working because and you're both looking at the data and trying to solve 100. So yeah, that's I love. I think that's the thing that a lot of brands could take a look at like but what is the itch? I know you solve this problem, but why did people want to solve that problem?

Speaker 2: 26:13

Can you, can you give our audience an inside look of a at a pain storm? A pain storm, yeah, because there's. There's different kinds of brands, right? Not every brand is in a moment where they can come to a Creatably right, yeah.

Speaker 2: 26:28

This is an exercise that 100% everybody can do Right, so not everyone can say, hey, I have enough money now or investment to make a Creatably video. You have a lot of brands that are trying to get to the point where they can, but they're still creative, that they need to be making in-house or with friends or with UGC content creators. So what is a pain storm? How can they start putting themselves in this frame of mind?

Speaker 3: 26:50

to actually help. I mean it's behind the curtain of the. Wizard of Oz. Now we have a lot of games.

Speaker 1: 26:56

Hey, you know what? Say what you want to say. We will cut this into an ad and then you'll be able to give a little bit of the ad away.

Speaker 3: 27:02

No, I'm happy to give this out to everybody. I think it could be a great ad for you, because I think if people understood their pain better the pain and the itch and it's like understanding the difference between the pain and the itch. Pain is the bigger problem, so it's easier to hit that point. Itch is a smaller problem, but it stays with you until you scratch it. So a pain storm usually starts out like this let's start listing the problems that your products solve. Right, let's list all of them.

Speaker 3: 27:29

Then let's go around, let's spend some time and think about which one sit with this list and which one is bothering you right now. Which one are you thinking about when you're not thinking about it? Now let's go one step deeper. Let's look at specific, either ridiculous examples, specific examples. Or pretend like you're writing a infomercial and it's like do you hate carrying popcorn to the couch? And the guy's like an idiot but like how can we illustrate it?

Speaker 3: 27:56

Let's think of the specific instances and dig deeper and you'll notice in the room, if you're doing it with a bunch of people, the moment when you get that I call it a lightning strike moment it's like yeah, I've totally had that, that's totally me, and so some of it involves that gut insight, but having in that room a performance marketer and a creative and a product person and the founder and or inventor of the product, seeing when those different mindsets strike on the common things. So we usually have a board of I don't know 50 of those, but then at each step we're also kind of refining, so we might write a list of 25 pains and then focus on five of them, sure, and then five, 15 to 20 instances that are like, oh yeah, that's. That's when I really feel this.

Speaker 2: 28:45

Totally, and and sorry I know I'm I'm hogging up a lot of talk time and I want you to go after me.

Speaker 2: 28:48

But the reason why I wanted to dive into that just a little bit for these, these listeners, is when, when you're a small company, even big companies, there's just this common pitfall where you think your problem and your solution is obvious and you think, oh, like it's obvious what we do, or it's obvious what our product solves. And we have found that oftentimes it's not obvious Like we. We know companies that made it a little more ambiguous of what their product was, even called, the title of their product, and people are reaching out and saying, hey, can I use this product for this? It's like, yeah, that's exactly what that product is Totally.

Speaker 2: 29:28

But you had customers confused enough where they were messaging you, questioning, and so what you just did, it sounds almost like a silly activity to some people, like role playing when you're in sales, like okay, I'll pretend to be a customer and you pretend to be a sales rep. That seems silly. But you have to put yourself in the mindset of the consumer so you can identify those pieces of information and content that you are thinking are obvious but aren't. The specificity is what you talked about.

Speaker 3: 29:56

Well, here let me give you another great example from Pillow Cube. When do you? When's the problem of your pillow? If you're riding like oh, I'm selling a pillow, let's show somebody going to bed, you feel the pain of if your pillow is not good, not at night, but in the morning the next day yeah, yeah, me and my wife.

Speaker 2: 30:15

They're gunning our shoulder, yeah yeah, exactly yeah.

Speaker 3: 30:17

They're gunning our shoulders Like if you have to recover from your sleep, there's something wrong with how you're sleeping, right, and so that is that pain. When they're like, yeah, if you wake up in the morning feeling worse than when you went to bed, then we should talk. And for us pointing out that notch that stuck in a lot of people's head, they're like yeah, that makes you know, I do, my neck hurts and my shoulder hurts in the morning. And instead of saying, do you have neck pain, some people are like are you waking up feeling worse than you did? Interesting, it's easier to talk about.

Speaker 1: 30:49

I like what you're saying is because you're almost like. You know a lot of people will say, hey, figure out what the solution is and then let's work backwards. You know, a lot of times we don't do that with creative, we don't do that with the problems we're solving, because naturally, everyone's first instinct if we're just using pillow cube, continue that the first instinct is like let's show the technology immediately of the right angle gap. That's, that's experience. I mean, that's what you think is going to be the very first thing. But you're right when you take it from no, let's show what the end problem is at the very beginning, and then you maybe loop into the technology why you've done it this way.

Speaker 1: 31:27

You've hit that, you've identified what that itch is. They're sitting there looking at like, yeah, okay, yeah, I wake up like that, my neck does hurt. Oh, my gosh, my neck, there is a gap. I never thought of it that way. And then all of a sudden they're starting to think and now, next thing, you know, they're watching. Everyone says that no one has enough time to watch a three minute video. But next thing, you know, they're watching a three minute video.

Speaker 3: 31:51

The number one comment on all of our videos and I can show them to you is I can't believe. I just watched a three minute commercial. Yeah, I can't believe. I watched the whole thing. Oh my gosh, I can't believe. I watched this whole thing. People have short attention spans for boring stuff, but we will endlessly doom scroll because we're watching stuff that we find interesting, for sure.

Speaker 1: 32:09

Can I say something about attention spans really quick, Please. I know we've talked about you, know whether you consider him a competitor or not, but I follow a guy, Jacques Spitzer, who owns Raindrop.

Speaker 2: 32:18

Okay, yeah, he does great work yeah.

Speaker 1: 32:21

He says something about that. That's really cool. And you pretty much said the same thing, which is, hey, people don't necessarily have short attention spans, they have short consideration spans. That's really what it is, you know. So people will look and they'll watch, and they'll watch, and it's not that they have a short attention span, it's that if you haven't hit their itch and given them a way to identify the scratch you know to scratch it then they're not going to consider it and they're going to eventually leave. You know, I think that's an interesting point.

Speaker 2: 32:44

Well, yeah, I might frame it a little bit with the filter, yeah right, which is you get someone consider by actually not just hooking people but but sorting.

Speaker 2: 32:54

If you can sort people with your creative, which is what you guys do an awesome job with is that makes someone consider, so you can draw the consideration time out, because now they're getting sorted immediately and they're sorting themselves mentally, so they have to make a consideration decision early on in in the creative, rather than the creative just drawing them out and then they're like I don't know like maybe this is for me, but I don't care enough to to figure this out.

Speaker 3: 33:24

I like to think of them as the judge, in that they're a judge in a true. Your audience is a judge in that true crime story and the lawyers pitching them something crazy, crazy. All I need them to say is I'll allow it, let's see where this is going. Right, I just them something crazy, crazy. All I need them to say is I'll allow it, let's see where this is going right.

Speaker 1: 33:39

I just need them to proceed, proceed, okay, watch yourself, counselor, but let's see where this is going.

Speaker 3: 33:43

They it seems to be a little bit more entertaining than the argument they're having on facebook. Max, our director of creative I like the way he says it's like we just we have to earn every second and you can earn that with the itch or with entertainment or with wow or with. But people like to be educated. Like, half of the great viral things you're watching is somebody telling you about something you didn't know about. Like, don't underestimate that. But it's hard to educate in a 15 or 30-second ad. I have three more minutes. I have to work on that. Education being entertaining. I have to work on a couple of those things, but there are seven and we have seven distinct things that we're doing in a commercial. Getting the itch and sorting are two of those things we're also selling and explaining and calling to action. Demonstrating in and of itself can be a really great hook point.

Speaker 3: 34:35

I think a lot of our commercials are known for being funny. More important to me is that they're fun. There's a difference between you know the type of humor I like. It might be a little oddball and out there, but we try to be democratic. So everybody's welcome to our jokes. Sure, but the demo is really underrated and it's what we often will spend a lot of our time prepping for. How do we show this? I think our generation from the upper forties here for me in the mid twenties, I think we're immune to adjectives. Don't tell me this is a great product. Yeah, show me something.

Speaker 1: 35:14

Sure.

Speaker 3: 35:15

And you know that sometimes is a better hook than you know. We make big crazy stunts and blow things up and but sometimes for stair slide one of our brands simply showing stairs slide, there's slide on it and people are like, oh, I used to slide on the chairs as a kid, like showing that is better than any of our crazy hooks that we've come up with Still one of our top performing ad units for that product and a great Christmas purchase, might I add.

Speaker 1: 35:44

So you're kind of getting into this. But most brands right now, if you were to go look into their ad account, they're running 15 to 30 second videos. 95, 80% of those ads, or 95, 80%, 95% of their ads, maybe even 95 percent of their ads, maybe even 100 percent of their ads fit that way. Why three minute ads like what dot? Let's dive deep into that to help people understand. Because, like most people are saying, like once again, they have short attention spans so I can't do three minutes. I think if you're running 15 second ads at the top of funnel, you're wasting a lot of think.

Speaker 3: 36:14

If you're running 15 second ads at the top of funnel, you're wasting a lot of money and you're getting brand recognition. My favorite example is Liberty Mutual. We all know the brand has to do with the bird for some reason. I know nothing about what makes their insurance different. Yeah, but they're interrupting every single commercial. Yeah, and I know nothing about it. Limu Imu, the Limu Imu, the Limu Imu. Yeah, yeah, and maybe no Liberty Bibberty, but it's just there. And they're spending somewhere between the numbers I read, somewhere between two and 500 million a year on ad buy Makes sense and the industry reports say all the insurance companies are struggling right now but they're not doing any education with it. So if I can entertain and if I can hook you and now you're qualified, now I've earned the right to tell you something about what we do and why it's different.

Speaker 3: 37:06

Great products for us are people that do great at a show but can't seem to advertise. They're like well, when you get in front of a person, what makes them listen? I can do the traditional setup of a 30,. What makes them listen, Sure, yeah, I can do in a. The traditional setup of a 30 second is is, some people say hook line sinker, but I think it's like a joke. It's, it's set up. Joke develops punchline by our product. I can get in we have a lot of joke density in our ads. But I can get in deep discussions. I can spend time resolving concerns Like this is what people don't like about it. So our clients are typically spending 60 to 80% of their ad budget at the top of the funnel. What we call true top of the funnel, untargeted. Everybody in America long form and that has their weaknesses. If they're all in, our strategy is usually that they start having a top-heavy funnel. Yeah, I think 15 seconds is actually great mid-funnel bottom-up funnel Sure yeah.

Speaker 3: 38:01

Reminders like hey, remember that itch it's still itching the social proof.

Speaker 3: 38:07

The UGCs, yeah yeah, and we still use UGC. It's usually in the latter. Third. It serves the social proof function, but if your ads are all UGC, all you're doing is social proof. So you're not building your brand at all and you're driving people to Amazon to look for your competitor. What our clients are identifying more often than not is they call it the UGC death spiral. We found a UGC that works, so we invested in a whole bunch of UGC that worked for three weeks and now we need a new UGC.

Speaker 3: 38:33

Our ads are running for three weeks.

Speaker 1: 38:34

Yeah, and now we need a new UGC.

Speaker 3: 38:35

Yeah, our ads are running for four years. We have ads that are running. We tell clients expect it to work at least a year to 18 months. We are treating the consumers with some respect and saying like we're not forcing you to listen to this. Yeah, either watch it or don't. And if you don't I don't have to pay. Yeah, but if I've entertained you, if I've given you a good show, consider buying my product. Yeah, and it's working. So, where people can show, if you can show an attributable ROAS above one at the top of your funnel, you know you can grow that brand, that's big time.

Speaker 2: 39:05

Yeah, and that's all relative too right. As of a 0.6 top funnel. As long as you can track the down funnel performance and then the positive lift in new customer revenue, you can make a 0.6 work top of funnel. It just depends on what your ratios are top funnel to bottom funnel.

Speaker 3: 39:27

And your LTV versus, yeah, all those things.

Speaker 2: 39:30

Most people will turn it off right. It's like, oh, I'm not getting a 4X return right now. It's like, well, top funnel is a different game than middle of the funnel. You can't think about it the same way, that's an efficiency metric, not a growth metric. Yes.

Speaker 3: 39:42

And I would say that's you asked why do we do long form? We have just not found another type of asset that scales the same way, where I can have what we call double down days, like, oh, we're seeing the traction. I've been at the point where I've seen five plus top of the funnel, like, oh, double our ad spend, next day double our ad spend, and doing that for a week consistently and seeing that metric not go down. I haven't seen any other type of asset do that for us. Sure, like you might get a celebrity post about you and you get a bump for the day, but that just never lasts very long. You and you get a bump for the day, but that just never lasts very long.

Speaker 2: 40:16

Yeah, it dissipates fast.

Speaker 3: 40:16

That's true. As a matter of fact, that was when, with our ice cream, we had a not to be named Kardashian post about the ice cream and love it, and her sisters posted about it as well. We saw a bump not as significant as running our ad consistently, for a month. Sure, and we have control. We're not. That's not like a roll of the dice, yeah.

Speaker 2: 40:38

I'm going to do my best to articulate this thought. But education, right, if you take a step back, the best educators out there are selling. Right, they're selling you on the idea that this information is worthwhile and that makes you want to listen. Right, if you have a professor you remember in college and they made you excited about something, is because you saw the potential of what that information could do for you and how you could use it to better your life for those around you. And so some people, I think, look at education as well, like people don't want to just like listen to a teacher, like talk on an app. Yeah, it's like. Well, that's kind of true. But what do you think the food network is?

Speaker 3: 41:23

yeah, like the food network, or the home network, like all they're doing is educating you and tiktoks are people like oh, here's something you probably didn't know exactly totally like what's that one guy's the stallion guy and I don't know. Jordan, is he trimming cow hooves? I feel like this sounds.

Speaker 2: 41:37

He's the guy that's like what does he do? He's a guy that basically like goes over recipes. Oh, I don't know. He's like I found out the secret.

Speaker 1: 41:45

Well, yeah, and Mom Talk does this a lot.

Speaker 2: 41:47

And he, like I, just found the best hack ever. Yeah, mean like they, they do those things. There was this.

Speaker 3: 42:00

That is education, but people pay attention to it because it serves them, you know, even if they're not going to use it. It's like oh, this is interesting, I want to know about it. Honestly, I think you're right. Like as you're articulating that, I'm thinking I have a high school teacher and he probably informed the way I advertise more than anything else. He taught art. His name was mr bill. Silly guy did a lot of great paintings around here in draper. But Shout out, mr Bill, shout out, mr Bill. Bill Larson, love you man. He's like oh, we're not going to learn anything today. We're going to find out some stuff. We're going to go explore and we're going to find out some stuff. Who doesn't want to go on an adventure? Yeah for sure.

Speaker 3: 42:28

Who doesn't want to find out some stuff.

Speaker 1: 42:32

Magic school bus, or you know, bus education right there, that's right, there's another book that uh corbin church was just talking about.

Speaker 3: 42:39

I think it's called selling is living. It's like everybody sells, whether the doctor. He's selling you the medication that you need, but he needs to convince you why you need that yeah, he's not making money off that medication and why you should follow the instructions yeah, why you should?

Speaker 2: 42:54

he's got to take the antibiotics till the end of the pill. Everyone yeah, or the bottle. Don't cut short.

Speaker 3: 42:59

Yeah, and I think so. Marketing is ultimately is helping you get what you want. This is what you want, and if I'm pushing you something you don't want and I'm tricking you to buy it, I'm not going to have a long term life. Yeah, but that itch is like hey, and that's we kind of select products. We don't say yes to everybody that like oh yeah, I like this, I use this. Like I said, I'm wearing seven of our clients right now. Yeah, you know, everywhere, from my True Classic shirt to my Manly Bands ring, like it. They gave me something I want.

Speaker 1: 43:32

Can we help educate people on why the way you've been trying to get what you want?

Speaker 3: 43:34

isn't getting you what you want. Yeah, you know, because you've been trying. It's unsatisfying in some way.

Speaker 1: 43:37

Well, I know we got, I know we got to end here, but I want to ask just one last question that I think you can give a pretty quick answer what is, what is the biggest mistake as somebody who is owns your own brands, but all are also working with big and large brands Biggest creative mistake that brands are making today that you're noticing?

Speaker 3: 43:54

The biggest mistake they're making is they've accepted something to be true. That's not necessarily true. We think our only customers are this we haven't figured out how do I talk to everybody in America about our product that will at least make them consider it? Yeah, More than personas is one of my pet peeve. They're useful, but if you built your marketing around only talking to them, you've missed so many people that want your product.

Speaker 1: 44:20

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 44:21

So many people that want to, you know, I think. Look at Prime not one of our clients. But they blew up because all the other performance drinks were taking their marketing for granted.

Speaker 1: 44:34

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 44:35

As long as we sponsor athletes, we'll be fine yeah like oh, it's elementary kids yeah you can get them to carry this bottle as a status symbol yeah um and taking that audience like, well, let's push one of the games we play called good persona, bad persona, and the client writes all the things they know about their persona and we try to beat them with personas they hadn't thought about, like we're going to come up with ridiculous personas that you haven't even figured about and sometimes those become great examples that make it into their commercials because it makes you think about their product sure way.

Speaker 2: 45:07

Yeah, the same thing in-house applies to what you're trying to do in the marketing right. You're trying to inspire the consumer to watch and buy right, inspire them to figure out that you have what they want. But in and to do that, you have to have this inquisitive mindset, like who doesn't want to find something out, who doesn't want to go on an adventure. But in-house, like you said, I think the lazy thing isn't that people are lazy, that they're not working hard, it's that you don't have that inquisitive adventure mindset anymore. It's a lack of curiosity. I just want to be curious and learn.

Speaker 1: 45:45

Hence the reason why, when you bring somebody new in, they always bring that in Like well, have you guys thought about this? Have you guys thought about that? And you're like I'm annoyed by you? I did, but no, I haven't, and then I got busy, so thank you yeah, like I've been in meetings all day or I've been.

Speaker 3: 45:59

Yeah, we started talking about a birthday, this, you know. But my best friend always says the moment you stop becoming curious is when you start becoming a grumpy old man. Yeah, as long as you're curious, cause you're grumpy, cause it doesn't fit the worldview you've built and it's like well, why did that happen? Huh, why is this so? I think it's as marketers, we have to be still be like aggressively curious, a little bit dumb so that we don't think we know all the answers, and willing to constantly be learning. If your performance and creative department hate each other, you've got a big problem. That's like such a common thing. They really need to be feeding each other. Like my, my writers like love to need to be feeding each other. Like my, my writers like love to run down to the performance department, like how's this ad performing? They don't celebrate when we get the awards.

Speaker 3: 46:43

They celebrate like dude that just hit a six row as it's killing it.

Speaker 1: 46:48

Yeah yeah, we've been in that situation on the brand side before. We're marketing performance and creative, just we're always butting heads. So I totally get it and is that the solution is just curiosity.

Speaker 2: 46:58

How do you, if you instill curiosity into your company, does that solve most of these problems? Because if you're curious enough, if each department is curious enough to figure things out, then you don't run into these siloed mindsets.

Speaker 1: 47:13

It probably makes people a little more humble, too. Right, because they're less worried about you know they're less. It must be my idea versus. I hope what I did was right, but if not, I'm still curious as to why.

Speaker 3: 47:26

So we kind of use curiosity internally, curiosity and humility almost interchangeably. Yeah, because we're on a quest to make the greatest commercials on the internet, like I want to. We're clear about that. We have confidence that we're on a quest to make the greatest commercials on the internet, like I want to. We're clear about that. We have confidence that we're doing great things, but I always want to be asking questions like don't take that for granted. Sure, the internet is. The internet is changing so much that there's new big changes to audience targeting just yesterday on Facebook. And the big, crazy thing that works today is not going to work tomorrow and you can either wait for everybody to be successful doing it and then try to do it like them, which is what I think most brands are doing. They're saying, well, what's working for other people and instead saying like what's the next iteration of that? What does tomorrow look like?

Speaker 1: 48:08

for that. Yeah for sure, damien dude. This has been awesome. Thank you so much. I know you have a place to be and we went a little bit over, so why don't you tell everybody where they can find Creatably?

Speaker 3: 48:16

Yeah, you can find us all over Facebook and LinkedIn, but Creatablycom, if you want to talk about doing something big and ridiculous, set up an appointment. Let's talk about getting big and ridiculous.

Speaker 1: 48:27

Awesome. And where can people find you? I know you have a little bit of a voice on LinkedIn. I post more on LinkedIn.

Speaker 3: 48:32

Yeah, you're going to see more of my family pictures on Instagram and my ridiculous personal art project there. Yeah, damien Dayton on LinkedIn D-A-M-I-A-N-D-A-Y-T-O-N.

Speaker 2: 48:44

Nice and Damien doesn't know this, but we have helped clients that have a. Creatably ad in their ad account.

Speaker 1: 48:52

that was old and they stopped using it and they stopped using it we repurposed it and it still worked.

Speaker 3: 48:59

Well, you don't know this, but he knows this. We're using Bestie to help our writers out right now, like we're trying to get them on Bestie before our writing process. We're like, hey, here's some things we're discovering and here's new ways of looking at it. Yeah, and reminding them.

Speaker 1: 49:20

Helps back probably a lot of the data that you guys you know, or gut data that you might bring to them. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 49:23

So well.

Speaker 1: 49:23

Thank you for your help there, guys, Amazing Thank you so much and, uh, thank you everybody for listening 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.