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The Unstoppable Marketer®
Trevor Crump and Mark Goldhardt bring you quick marketing and entrepreneurial tips, tricks, and trends for DTC business owners, entrepreneurs, and marketers. These are lessons they've learned through the years of being right in the thick of scaling dozens of businesses. Whether you have an established business looking to grow, just starting your business journey, or trying to become a digital marketer, this marketing podcast will not let you down.
The Unstoppable Marketer®
EP. 102 Your Growth Guide To Creating Collaborations & Building Partnerships
Unlock the secrets of brand growth with powerful collaborations and partnerships. Ever wondered how a small collaboration could lead to a tenfold increase in sales? We've got the story for you! Join us as we explore the strategic importance of these partnerships, sharing insights from a recent consulting call where a company faced unexpected challenges, and how innovative strategies can help navigate them.
Discover how targeting specific audiences can yield unexpected opportunities and why serving a dedicated niche might just be more impactful than chasing mass appeal. Through our stories and listener feedback, we illustrate how meaningful engagement with the right audience can lead to genuine business growth.
Round out this episode with a look at evolving strategies in both politics and business, from the media approaches of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris to innovative brand collaborations. We highlight successful partnerships, such as Fawn Design's influencer collaborations and KITH's buzz worthy campaigns, showcasing how they capture new audiences and enhance visibility. Hear an inspiring success story of a small brand collaboration that resulted in remarkable sales growth, and learn why you should never hesitate to explore these powerful strategies for your own brand’s success.
Please connect with Trevor on social media. You can find him anywhere @thetrevorcrump
Yeah, these partnerships and collaborations aren't necessarily meant to okay. If I'm a million dollar brand, I did this one collaboration with this influencer, with this brand, and therefore I became a two million dollar brand.
Speaker 2:It can and does happen, but it's not going to be the thing that keeps you there For sure. Yep, exactly, so it might get you to the next step. So the best brands know like, hey, we're going to launch these things in this sequential order.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they always have one cooking. It's not done out of desperation, totally. That's the key. Right there is, there's always something cooking. Yo, what's going on everybody? Welcome to the Unstoppable Marketer podcast with me, as always, my co-host, mark Goldhart. Mark Howard Goldhart, how are you?
Speaker 2:Doing great, thank you.
Speaker 1:How are you Sorry to drop your middle name? It's a good middle name as long as it's not the social number. Well, let's get started. You don't want to share your social security number? Yeah, it's been a minute. Has it been a minute? Yeah, we missed another week, unfortunately.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, we did. Yeah, it's busy times. Yeah, this is the busiest time of the year for us. Yeah, it is yeah, we did a free consulting call yesterday. Yeah, that was great. Which was great. Yeah, Kind of showed some probably a situation that a lot of people find themselves in.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Where this particular company is needing to hit a certain benchmark within a certain time frame and the question basically was it's not going as expected. It's not going as expected, yep, but the question was what do I do?
Speaker 1:Well, more specifically is if this was you, what would you do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, so that was fun. Maybe we could talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 1:I actually think that part of when we go into marketing stems from that conversation. One of the main ideas so, we'll come back to it. Good, we'll come back to it, but a couple things I want to just briefly mention. This is something that we haven't talked about, but I heard about it this morning. I have not done a ton of research into it, but I think it's a hilarious story.
Speaker 2:What, lana Del Rey? No, and the Gator.
Speaker 1:Guide, the Gator Guide. That is a good one. No, I'm saying Crumble Cookie.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:So Crumble Cookie announces that they're opening up a pop-up location in Sydney, australia, and people go bananas for it. They started in here in Utah, I believe, first location ever in Logan, if I don't recall.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're out of Logan Logan.
Speaker 1:Utah. They've been kind of like they were the bee's knees, if I may say, eight or nine years ago when they first kicked off Like it was the coolest thing. They're on a high. People start doing very similar things to what they're doing. So they're on a high, competitors start coming in which they do, and then it's not that they go downhill by any means, but you kind of hear word on the street that Crumble Cookie franchises aren't doing as good and that's when the whole Cookie Wars thing started. Was it two years ago, I believe?
Speaker 2:Well, the trademarks or the copyright, I don't know what it was Now this is something that I do not know.
Speaker 1:There's speculation to this, but one of the things that I heard was like crumble. The crumble cookie founding team said hey, like this isn't just impacting our business, it's impacting all of our franchisees, franchisees is that how I say that in the plural form and they franchises franchises.
Speaker 1:Yeah french fries yeah french friesies, and so what they did is like let's put like we have more money than these people, let's put some legal action to protect our franchises and, and there's a few things that these people are violating, like potentially violating let's see if we can.
Speaker 1:Competitors, yeah, competitors let's see if we can put them out of business. Essentially, um, that's one take. I've read on it now. There's probably a thousand other things. I don't know enough so I'm not going to it. Anyways, that cookie wars is over after like two years ago, I believe.
Speaker 1:And then what crumble did really, really awesome starting last year, was they like they? Uh, they started getting with content creators, so, for example, like runners and fitness people, to say, hey, go, how many? You need to eat X amount of calories in order to run a marathon? Could you fit, like crumble cookies into that diet? And then like burn it off or something like that. And they've started this. They started this like ASMR kind of taste test a whole box of cookies, and so there's these. Like runners, I follow this one guy I can't remember what his name is Better runs or something like that. We'll have to show, but he'll like. He'll like eat an entire box of cookies and then asmr and then like run it all off. Now, not all of them are asmr, but a lot of them. Just, it's just like there's something about the videos that you're watching, like you watch these people eat the whole thing and it's disgusting, but you're like you feel the need to watch it I hate, I don't know, I don't know how to describe it because it's gross.
Speaker 2:They got cookie all over oh, I know, I know people, I know it works, but you're watching, yeah, and it's really helped crumble take off um a lot of people. We've run those ads even though I hate them, because they work well.
Speaker 1:But okay, there's my background to crumble the funny thing.
Speaker 2:The sound of somebody chewing.
Speaker 1:Is disgusting. Let's go back to Sydney, Australia. They opened up a pop-up shop. They opened up a pop-up shop. People are camping out to get these cookies.
Speaker 2:In Australia.
Speaker 1:In Australia, Sydney.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:Camping out, because, I don't know, maybe there's not locations there, I don't know so.
Speaker 2:I don't think there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there might not probably isn't pop up shop. They created TikTok account. They do all this stuff. People are lined up. They're selling cookies for 17 bucks a cookie instead of like the five dollars or whatever they cost here per cookie.
Speaker 2:Is that just like adjusted for international exchange rates?
Speaker 1:I have no idea, are you?
Speaker 2:sure 17 Australian dollars.
Speaker 1:They sell all of them out 17 Australian dollars they sell all of them out. I don't know. And then everyone starts to review them and they're like these are disgusting, they're stale, they tasted like they were made days ago and people are freaking out. Turns out it wasn't a Crumble franchise. It wasn't anybody who worked for Crumble. It was fans of Crumble cookie who flew to america, bought 700 cookies, flew back with them or shipped them back somehow okay and sold the cookies as if they were a crumble pop-up to make money hey, good for them
Speaker 2:and so I wonder how many cookies they sold.
Speaker 1:I think it was 700. They said they sold out, it was 700 total cookies. I think that's what I heard. Now I have not done enough research, but like what did I say? 15 bucks a cookie?
Speaker 2:17.
Speaker 1:Did I say 17? 17 times 700. Maybe that's only $12,000. That's not a lot of money.
Speaker 2:No, it's not a lot of money. No, it's not a lot of money, it's a lot of work.
Speaker 1:So maybe it was more than that. Anyways, I just thought that was a hilarious story, Um, and something that I'm sure crumble cookie will probably go after them for. Um, um, did they use? So they used the crumble name and like logo name and likeness.
Speaker 2:Does that apply? I mean, does that apply in Australia? I have no idea.
Speaker 1:The moral of the story is anyone can sell anything. It's almost like drop shipping, right?
Speaker 2:It's like well, let's just go buy this here and sell it over here. It's just product market fit.
Speaker 1:So I guess maybe the moral of the story is Crumble Cookie Founder should probably open up some franchises in Sydney and you'll have people outside the camping out australia australia go get that bluey collab.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, I'm telling you what's that?
Speaker 1:you got any election?
Speaker 2:you did bluey cookies. Every parent in the united states would go out and buy those 100, that'd be a good collab.
Speaker 1:We're going to talk about collabs. If you're listening, we're going to go over a couple things. We are going to talk about collaborations today. That is going to be the main topic yeah, we are table that um well, really quick in the.
Speaker 2:In the world of pop culture lana, or is it l? Lana Del Rey, that's how you say her name.
Speaker 2:That's how I've heard other people say her name. Oh, I don't know, lana Del Rey Married. A gator guide, just a normal guy, just a dude chilling in the bayou. I just heard about this this morning, so I don't know anything about it. Incredible story actually. Yeah, she's, uh, she's got a pretty I'd call her her fan base. Um, she's got like a cult following. People like the people who love her really, really love her. Right, let's look this up. I full disclosure, do not listen to her.
Speaker 1:She's got 5.3 million followers on TikTok.
Speaker 2:But hey, you know what? Shout out to that dude for shooting a shot and scoring a big-time celebrity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, good job. Yeah, daily Mail picked it up Lana Del Rey marries alligator tour guide. Yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 2:But the business lesson in there is like you cannot go niche enough. No, that guy fit a niche, he was a gator guide. He is serving a pretty small addressable market. But do you know who was in his market? It was uh.
Speaker 1:But do you know who was in his market? It was Lana.
Speaker 2:Del Rey.
Speaker 1:Lana Del Rey, Lana Lena, Lana.
Speaker 2:Del Rey. So good job, good job.
Speaker 1:Focus on what you do In other pop culture-y news. So Gap came out with a commercial. I sent you this commercial right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you did.
Speaker 1:This guy, you, this commercial right? Yeah, you did this guy. But anyways, the reason why I'm bringing this up is because this is trending big time on tiktok and what. What gap did was? They just took that song. I don't know what that song's called. Um, I just want to party with you that song.
Speaker 1:It's a relatively popular song and the beat is very, and so, like every dance move is like house music to that beat, and so what's happening is like TikTok has like taken it and now everybody's recreating that dance, and so it's like blowing Gap's attention up their search, their distribution.
Speaker 1:Sure enough, when you do a Google Trend search, you see Gap increasing Google Trends, and the reason why I wanted to bring this one up is like every piece of content you create is not going to go viral, but the beauty of just practicing creating content, and constantly and consistently creating content is you are going to have moments where, eventually, people will start talking about you, and so when you're not creating content, you're just never putting yourself, you're never giving yourself the opportunity to earn organic distribution, um, or borrowed distribution, which is other people talking about you.
Speaker 2:So just food for thought food for my mind, food for food for thinking Well. On the flip side of that, though, is sometimes you don't need to go viral Ever. Yeah, yeah, you know, know that gator guide was never viral.
Speaker 1:He is now, are you sure he was never viral of course he wasn't.
Speaker 2:He never had a viral moment until he got synced up with her. But there's a lesson in that and this is the lesson.
Speaker 2:20 of your customers probably make up 80 or 90 of your profits yes so sometimes in this content creation game that we talk about, we, because we have, we have people always saying oh, I, you know, I only have x amount of reach or I only have this kind of engagement, or whatever it might be. Yes, you want to grow that, but you also want to make sure you're addressing the market that actually wants to buy Totally. So just because you have a viral moment doesn't mean you're going to sell anything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and just because you only have a few likes, followers, views, doesn't mean that the right. People aren't in that Like this, for example, this podcast.
Speaker 2:Because we see people, and I just want to point this out, though. We've been in hundreds of Shopify accounts, we've seen a lot of different businesses, and we have watched businesses have viral moments and not seen anything from it totally really like maybe a small uptick, not much.
Speaker 1:We just had one of our clients hit a viral moment and they said they didn't see a single sale from it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like millions of views. Nothing came from it we've seen millions of views and a lot of sales too, yep, but ultimately it just depends on your product market fit. And we've seen other people that you would, be like if you saw their instagram profile, think, oh, they're not doing that great as a business. But then if you actually opened up their store, you'd say, oh my gosh these people are crushing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I was going to even bring up this podcast as an example. Like, we don't get millions of downloads and or even tens of thousands of downloads on our podcast every single month, you know. But we get a good amount. But mark and I've talked back and forth like, hey, do we need to generalize this a little bit more and and make it more for the masses so that we get more downloads, or do you keep it more meat and potato the way we've had it, so that we're actually serving the type of person we want to serve? You know?
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And there's nothing better than getting a text message from somebody Like the other day I got a text message from somebody who owns a big brand and he's like hey, your Black Friday episode. You know, like I was actually really shocked. I thought the Black Friday episode we created, I don't know, probably four or five episodes ago, was one of the best podcasts we've ever recorded. In my opinion, from like a meat and potatoes action items, like I thought that that podcast was going to pop off and go bananas. And over the last maybe 10 episodes we've recorded, it's probably one of our least downloaded episode and I was shocked by it. But I've gotten more dms text messages, linkedin messages, youtube comments, whatever about that single episode than than I have in the last, like three, two, not three two years of recording, so it's like so what do you want the podcast to be is?
Speaker 2:it uh, do you want to try to have these viral moments? And sure, yeah, yeah, like a viral moment isn't bad, it's not going to hurt you, unless it's, I guess, for you telling the wrong reason. Yeah, it could be bad I mean, I mean I'm not even convinced, can we tell a story about a viral moment? That's kind of embarrassing about some people.
Speaker 1:I don't know who is it?
Speaker 2:Well, recently there was a influencer who was on some podcasts and her clip got cut and torn apart because she said when you get married, person oh, the person you marry becomes your immediate, immediate family and people just have torn her apart like well, yeah, no, duh like that's what. So people tore her apart, and then you could say I don't know what the context of it was.
Speaker 1:It could have been. People are just clipping that like three or four seconds. Yeah, no, well, I mean, look, it's just a gaffe, it's just everyone does it like we do it like we say stupid things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so this isn't to make fun of her. It's just to say a lot of people made fun of her and they got viral making fun of her, but I'll guarantee you that it did not affect her business at all. Yeah I should, we should ask her I guarantee, I guarantee you, it has not.
Speaker 1:I wonder if it impacted it for a better yeah, it could have impacted it because I think you're probably right, there's nothing that probably happened nothing negative happened to her business, like it was just a gaffe on a podcast.
Speaker 2:It's no big deal. I'm sure she laughed it off. Yeah, um, but it's just funny like people think so much about like, oh, what if you get made fun of, or, and that goes viral, but you'll often find that it doesn't matter. Yeah, especially today in age, like people just turn the page every day. Yeah, like you're old news in 24 hours yeah, very true.
Speaker 1:well, speaking of distribution, should we jump into it? It? This could be a good little segue, unless you had something else you wanted to bring up. I know we're hot on election cycle, so there could be things to chat about there. Do you have anything election-wise you want to talk about?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the only election point that I think we missed in our last conversation, which I think is just something important for your common business who is in the advertising game is. I started thinking about Donald Trump's strategy of going new media, like new age, where Kamala's going traditional, and I started thinking about are they both doing that because those are the demographics that they're trying to sway?
Speaker 1:And there's a good argument that the answer to that is yes, right, because generally younger, younger, new age people vote Democratic left, yeah, and boomers tend to vote more conservative, and so that very well could be.
Speaker 2:So is he, in this new age, like podcasting world, because that's where a lot of these that's where he needs to sway votes. That's where he needs to get some votes to sway over to him. Yeah, I don't know, but I'm thinking. The more I thought about it, I was thinking.
Speaker 1:I feel like we did talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 2:We did a little bit, but we didn't articulate that. Yeah. So the lesson there and I think, as people study the election and and messaging and how to sway voters, uh, the same thing for brands, right, like you have target demographics that you're trying to sway over to you and you have to meet them where they are yeah, a good example right so, like older demographics aren't listening to Lex Friedman.
Speaker 1:Sure, or Logan Paul or Theo Vaughn.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like that is very much a millennial Gen Z thing, yep, so just think about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and on the flip side, you know, most college students aren't watching CNN.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, that's the other part that I don't think we went in deep on. But nobody watches traditional news anymore. I mean, just go look at the numbers. I'm not just saying that, the numbers are down big time.
Speaker 1:They're not just down, they're down massively.
Speaker 2:From four years ago, five years ago, yeah, especially from like 10 years ago. Oh yeah, so people are consuming their news on both right and left. By the way, media yeah, that's not just so people are consuming the news on x and tiktok tiktok and through these new age means so podcast. I don't know well it's interesting and I think this, this election, will kind of shape political advertising and marketing for the next 12 years. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for what? Yeah, I agree Um to. To pin this like, or to turn this conversation to, what brands some brands are doing. Like one of those brands uh, we had a conversation with folks over at Ann Collar on the podcast last year probably a year and a half ago and he brought up some very interesting things. So they sell pretty much just like white dress shirts.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Benjamin.
Speaker 1:Yep, Ben Perkins Perkins, and what he found was there are very segmented audiences that buy his stuff and one of them became, and some of those audiences so like, some of them would be like Mormon missionaries, like would buy their stuff, you know.
Speaker 2:Jewish rabbis. Yeah, airline pilots, yep.
Speaker 1:But that's the airline pilot I want to take out.
Speaker 2:It wasn't rabbis, it was Orthodox.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, orthodox Jews Yep, yep but, yes, there's rabbis in there, but but uh, um, the pilot one was interesting because to him he said this is a whole new brand, like let's create a whole new brand based off this audience. And now they're creating content and and going to places where pilots are consuming media and where they're hanging out and that's where they're doing their marketing. They've turned it into a seven-figure business and so this just goes into this like, hey, when you want to enter into the new market, you've got to meet those people where they're at, and that's, for example, what Trump is doing with the new age. If this is what it is right, if your hypothesis is correct, hey, I need the younger demographic to be voting for me. Where are the younger demographic?
Speaker 2:we'll hear the top five podcasts and influencers who are 40 and under, you know so the jake pauls, the logan pauls, the nelk boysughn Yep. Which is even, I think, younger than me, because I'm 35 and I've never watched a Logan Paul video.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, he's definitely more Gen Z, for sure.
Speaker 2:Like a younger millennial Gen Z.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and yeah, yeah, so I like it.
Speaker 2:So but anyways. But a way to tap into those audiences, where people are, can also be partnerships and collaborations.
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Speaker 1:We love Bestie and we use it for every single brand we work with. Go check them out today at bestieai, yeah. So going back to this conversation where we had this, which is essentially what Trump did with going on podcasts.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, he's accessing their networks yes, yeah.
Speaker 1:So when we talked to this gentleman who won the giveaway, the consulting giveaway, we broke down the three types of media that you can gain distribution from and so, really quickly, the. It's super easy, right? You've got the paid format, which is just like a buying ads, you know, traditional ads. It could be anything, right, anything paid. You've got the earned stuff, which is like your organic social media, your emails, you know, your, your followers, that kind of stuff, um. And then you've got kind of this like borrowed network and, and borrowed and earned oftentimes can overlap, but I'm going to separate them just for the sake of conversation. And this borrowed one would be other people talking about you, what your customers are saying about you, what, uh, influencers or UGC creators are doing, um, or what partnerships and collaborations you can create. And so what Mark is saying with Trump's collaboration, for example, with Theo Vaughn it's like he's accessing Theo Vaughn's network. Yes, trump's network is also doing that, but the reason why he's going on that podcast is because it's going to benefit him, and Theo Vaughn wants him on his podcast because he's also got a massive amount of followers. So today we want to just talk about collaborations and collaborating.
Speaker 1:Oftentimes we have this conversation with brands all the time to say, hey, how can you get distribution? We had a podcast, I think, a while ago, where we talked about the four different ways that you can get more revenue. One was traffic, so distribution. Two was increasing your conversion rate. Three was increasing your AOV and four was increasing your returning customer rate. Those are the four ways to gain more revenue, and so when we take that number one, distribution, there are several different ways that you can get more distribution. Collaborating is one of these things that, uh, a lot of people miss because well, let's break down traffic really quick and traffic.
Speaker 2:You have organic traffic. So this is in the seo days. This is people finding your blogs or, you know, people who already know about you who are coming to your website from your social media.
Speaker 2:But now, you have subcategories of organic, which would be social, so you have earned social visitors or engagers and that's traffic that will turn into sales eventually or immediately. And then you have organic, so you have the organic side and then you have the paid side Yep and in paid it used to be just paid search and paid Google stuff or display advertising, but now it's all paid social.
Speaker 2:So you have the paid social side, which is the most tried and true and formulaic way to increase traffic. It just is and it's always going to be.
Speaker 1:And it's predictable.
Speaker 2:It's always going to be one of the best ways to increase it. Yes, it's not as easy as it used to be, but it will be the best way to do it. So, like that's, those are your two ways, and so your third way is in the past it used to be referrals, so like referral networks on Google would have been hey, I'm working with like a blog and they're linking to me. It's like blogs are linking to me. I'm working with these, like old influencers.
Speaker 2:These bloggers that turned into social media people, which, so now you have referrals coming from social that might not be coming from your page, but others.
Speaker 1:And that's like Mark's referring to, like the referrals, like that's the category in Google Analytics.
Speaker 2:In Analytics.
Speaker 1:Yep, it categorized. So anytime somebody goes from one domain to your domain, that's deemed as referral traffic.
Speaker 2:So from social, social referrals are now like Linktree or whatever Yep or like to know it. I meant yeah, like to know it, or whatever. And then you have partnerships, which is a part of this referral network. But partnerships are bigger and better because it crosses all of those thresholds. So when you do a partnership, well, it's going to increase your ads, it's going to increase your organic because you're going to tap into other networks, but also your network will become more engaged as well. Yep, okay.
Speaker 2:And then you're also just going to get the referral traffic from that other brand too yeah so it really is a great way to be a multiplying force for every category of your traffic totally and some of those to tap into a little bit more of those benefits like there's's.
Speaker 1:like there's four different and there's probably more, but in my head there's about four different reasons you do these partnerships right. One is going it's I mean all of them hopefully will increase sales. Right, that's, that's your goal with a lot of these partnerships. Okay, but there's these sub goals that are going to help you get to those sales. One is just like there will just be immediate, there can and will be immediate direct sales from stuff like this. And we're going to share some examples of like hey, this was a collaboration, a partnership that immediately rose revenue for both brands, or this specific brand, so you have immediate revenue Recognition. So being able to team up with somebody that may not sell a whole ton of product for you, but being associated with that brand company, whatever lifts your presence from a social proof perspective, to say, hey, wow, I didn't realize Bestie was working with Nike. They must be bigger than I thought they were, or that's impressive to me. I want to look into that more.
Speaker 2:okay, um, you've got the um we are not working with nike, but maybe we will one day but we will one day yeah yeah, uh, then you've got the content side of things.
Speaker 1:Like you're just going to be able to get other content that then you can use for your ads.
Speaker 2:Yeah you're going to get content that you can create ads with, but then also with a good partnership, you'll also have, you know, partnership ads that tap into them, so their distribution.
Speaker 1:That's the fourth thing.
Speaker 2:You can even share audiences.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly. So, like the other thing that goes, that that creating content kind of goes into your brand thing. Sometimes we've worked with brands where they'll do a collaboration and we're going to share a couple of these where they'll do a collaboration. That doesn't necessarily sell a lot of that product but it gets people so interested. Once again, bestie times, nike, whatever. Oh, I'm interested in that. I'm not going to actually buy the Bestie Nike gear, but Bestie has all these other things here. I want to go buy these things.
Speaker 1:So, it, just it gets them, it hooks them to the site, brings them in and drives revenue, but maybe it wasn't direct revenue from that partnership.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, good examples of that are sometimes you'll see brands do Disney collabs. Yep, that let's just say. The brand isn't necessarily like a kid item, it's usually more of like an adult type item. Yes, there's adults that like Disney stuff, but the amount of adults that will buy a purely Disney thing for everyday use is much smaller than a child Sure Like, or a parent buying it for a kid For sure. So you'll see a lot of times those types of businesses they'll do a Disney collab.
Speaker 1:It doesn't sell a crazy Some of that Disney merch.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it doesn't sell a lot. It doesn't really boost their sales in that category, but those ads perform really well because people see Disney, that's a recognizable name, they'll click on it and then they'll go to your site.
Speaker 1:Yep, yeah for sure. So let's let's let's talk about some from a direct revenue perspective, like some, some that we've experienced, um, that we've seen, or maybe we've talked to other people who've told us about it. There was one. So Mark and I were on the when we were on the brand side, we were working with this company called Fond Design, which was a women's diaper bag company, and they did. They had released a duffel bag that was kind of like a weekender style bag and started to find out that a lot of moms because this was a very motherhood company uh, the bag was built for weekend getaways, but mom started using it for their hospital bag yeah like it's.
Speaker 2:That's not what it was built for, but it became that right yeah, and jenny, the founder, did a good job of doing these collaborations really early on, like she was doing these partnership collabs, I mean way back in like 2016 oh, within within a year or two of her just getting started right, and this was one and originally it was with kara four or five years later.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, they did this one with kara loren, who's a big influencer, um, and she at the time, the relevancy here was she was pregnant. So she was pregnant. So she got with kara and said hey, you're an influencer, you want to make money, I want to make money. What if? What if you take our silhouette, so this bag, but you design it in a color way that you'd like? And what if we create the ultimate hospital like bundle? And they took a product that was $200 and, with a bundle, made it like $300. And the partnership there was hey, we get to tap into her distribution from a selling perspective, but we also there's gotta be something we got to provide her value. So we created a contract with her that was hey, we're going to give you X amount of profits from this deal. You know, and I've seen those anywhere, anywhere as low as 5% and I've seen them as high as 30% Um, where, hey, like you know, if, if we made $30,000 total, or or let's call it $100,000 and you know 50,000 of that was profits.
Speaker 2:Then we've also seen people do revenue or profit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, then let's take, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's take 10 percent of that and give it over to these guys. So, um, that's one way we've seen these direct sales. We also saw one with a, a really cool brand, standard issues. They did one where they collaborated with the Philadelphia Eagles yeah they actually did a few Philadelphia brands.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they have roots in Philadelphia they're.
Speaker 1:They're an LA based brand, but one of their founders, his roots, are based out of LA. He's a big skater, out or not, la a Philly, and they got a collaboration and shout out to Jimmy, yeah they got a collaboration and shout out to jimmy yeah, they got a collaboration with the philadelphia eagles and if I remember um, I'm blanking on the the famous uh, harper bryce, harper, from the phillies, philadelphia phillies, the baseball team. He was spotted wearing all their gear, like wearing their collaboration at an eagles game oh, yeah, yeah and it blew.
Speaker 1:It just blew up and it was an awesome direct revenue stream. It was. It was a capsule, so it wasn't something that they kept on their website for ever, but they launched it. Kind of mid-football season made a good amount of money um feet clothing. Feet clothing's done a lot of those.
Speaker 2:Done a lot of those and I think what we've seen in the collaboration partnership space whatever you want to call this, it's very rarely an evergreen item that's going to be a main product for you. It's going to be something that goes up and down, and the brands that I've seen do this so well know that. So they know that it's like, hey, we're going to do these limited capsule drops. It pushes a lot of traffic, it gets more distribution, it gives you retargeting audiences, it increases your email list.
Speaker 1:It gives you new customers. Then become returning customers.
Speaker 2:You have the standard issue example, Like you had a lot of Philadelphia sports fans buying this stuff. That aren't necessarily. They weren't standard issue people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, weren't necessarily on their radar.
Speaker 2:But now they are. So you captured this whole new audience of people that were coming just for one particular thing, and now you get to multiply that and and increase that share of wallets. So the best, in my opinion, don't expect this to be. Oh, we're going to launch a Disney and make hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Speaker 1:We're going to pay.
Speaker 2:Disney, whatever it is. Their minimum is for like, for the minimum order quantity. Let's say we get the Disney licensing agreement, we're going to launch, launch Disney. If you're a kid's brand, maybe that could be one of your biggest selling for for a long time. But oftentimes you'll just see like ebbs and flows, right, especially like with kids brands, even because, like kids brands and shows go through ebbs and flows. Like Bluey's, the biggest brand you know show, yeah. So if you got a Bluey collab as a kid's brand, it's probably going to crush it. But for how long? Yeah, maybe Bluey's riding a two-year high, maybe it's going to be six years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and sometimes it's not even that Like you're saying. I like the point you're bringing which is these partnerships and collaborations aren't necessarily meant to.
Speaker 1:Okay, if I'm a million-dollar brand, I did this one collaboration with this influencer, with this brand, and therefore I became a $2 million brand. That's not what these things are meant to do. They're not meant to have one that then takes you off. Now some, some. Sometimes that can happen. Right, you could, as a kid's clothing brand, launch a Disney collection and it could be the catalyst from taking you from 5 million to 10 million dollars. Like that stuff does happen.
Speaker 2:We've seen it happen, but not all the time right so well, it can and does happen, but it's not going to be the thing that keeps you there for sure. Yep, exactly so it might get you to the next step. But just know that like it has a ticking time bomb too, like it's a sure, this is a wave that you ride that helps you get to the next point. But if you expect that wave to just keep producing over and over again, it's not, it's not going to happen. So the best brands know like, hey, we're going to launch these things in this sequential order. They always have one cooking. It's not done out of desperation.
Speaker 1:Totally. That's the key. Right there is there's always something cooking. There's a brand that I love watching do this. I think he's been a master at it, but we also had him on the podcast. It was Tommy Higgum, lola Blankets. So they've always got a collaboration in cooks, like whether it's with a brand or whether it's with influencers. If you go, look at their Instagram or their website right now, they probably have two or three live collaborations, but at any given time I I guarantee you, if I were to call him right now and ask him hey, how many collaborations are you working on right now?
Speaker 2:maybe they haven't launched, I bet and by working on doesn't mean they're all going to go through either because the he he explained on the podcast that sometimes yeah, sometimes it doesn't whatever reason. It's just not a good fit, but he's, but he's actively working with, I'm sure, five to ten people at a time is talking to people constantly hey, can we create a blanket together?
Speaker 1:hey, can we create something together, um, so that you build kind of this uh, what's the uh compound, uh compound effect? Uh, from on collaboration on top of collaboration on top of collaboration. So I think that's a good good. Let's segue into. There's not all, not all collaborations are going to drive direct revenue. Those are some of the ones that will right when you're doing these product focus, where you're splitting revenue, maybe giving people share revenue costs, share revenue profits but the other person, the other brand that does collaborations really well.
Speaker 2:Are we going to say who they just collabed with?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, you can.
Speaker 2:Because I think it's a good case study for some of you people who are thinking about it is go check out Lola Blankets and they just collabed with the influencer Tezza.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:Right and I think that dropped last week.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and also I follow him personally on his stories. He said that that was something he's been working on for like 18 months, I think, like it was a big number. So some of these collaborations can happen very, very quickly, but most of the time they're going to be three to 12 months, like it's going to take some time to do these things. Three is actually really quick.
Speaker 2:And what's awesome about that collab is again for a brand. We know that getting reach and distribution can be a struggle. They have 75,000 followers, 74,000. Yep, where Tezza has 1.3, I believe, yep. So just think about that huge distribution they got. And maybe not all of those followers of Tezza are going to come purchase right now, but they now know who you are Totally when. Before they probably didn't Yep.
Speaker 1:Yep, um. Other examples of these like little drops uh, are like bigger brands. So if you've ever heard of Kith Kith does this stuff all the time, kith's uh like, uh, you Kith does this stuff all the time, kith's like a, you know they're kind of like a more high-end supreme, just like more elegant streetwear fashion.
Speaker 2:They're just a higher fashion brand.
Speaker 1:Yeah, someone who listens to that is probably like that is not the way you should describe them, but like they did a collaboration with Wilson.
Speaker 2:We are not in the fashion space.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like they did a collaboration with Wilson, you know, like a tennis club. They did a collaboration with Jerry Seinfeld, you know, which seems very just like interesting, but it was all based around New York, like everything was New York. So it was like a New York Mets hat, it was a Bronx sweater, it was everything was New York themed, and it's these things that aren't necessarily going to drive tons and tons of revenue for them, but it just brings this distribution, it brings this talking point. It's content that's worth engaging. Um, I remember when I saw the jerry seinfeld, I had zero desire to buy any of it, but I just was like I have to see what this is all about. Like that I would have never thought that Kith and Jerry Seinfeld would do a collaboration together. Yeah, and it was pretty good, it was awesome.
Speaker 2:In fact, I actually wanted to buy some of this stuff Very New York this stuff was very cool.
Speaker 1:So yeah, you've got these one-off capsules.
Speaker 2:And a quick update that Tezza collection did sell out.
Speaker 1:Did it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's been less than a week sold out, so congratulations to.
Speaker 1:Lola Blankets and Tezza. You got these drops that are going to bring this incremental revenue and I'm guessing that Lola Blankets, in the next one to three months, has another collaboration that's going to drop. That's going to do something very, very similar based on his experience and research. So another brand. That's really good good at collaborations and they do these collaborations less to make money and more so to drive awareness and social impressions.
Speaker 1:And if anyone's paid attention to what liquid death does they do, this mass like it's a masterclass in just the most outrageous wild collaborations. Um, I think one of the most recent ones that I saw was a collaboration between, I think, one of the most famous ones well, I'll say this, I'll start with the most famous one which was a collaboration with travis barker, the drummer from blink 182, that's right and Liquid Death, and it was called the enema of the state and I think they sold like a hundred enema packages where the water was Liquid Death water and it was like this brilliant packaging of people buying a Liquid Death enema and the video is just so funny.
Speaker 1:the content it's just so outrageous and so wild. That video, if you go look at youtube, um, I guarantee it's got over a million views on it and obviously and they were, you know, I can't imagine they sold those kits for more than 75. So a company like liquid death that sells something for $75 and, you know, only makes a hundred of them. They're not making a lot of money, but the purpose is to it's. It's just a way to drive awareness. Another one that they did was they did you see the collaboration between uh and you have to we'll have to be like we'll stitch some of these videos as I'm talking, but they did a collaboration with Yeti Cooler. Did you see this one? I did not see that one. The Yeti Cooler is they created a coffin, a Yeti coffin cooler. So it's the size of a coffin, but it's a cooler, and they are only selling one of them and they did it in an auction-based format like eBay.
Speaker 2:That's right. Okay, yeah, I remember the yes, yeah, so it's just like the casket yeah because it's like their.
Speaker 1:I think one of their taglines is murder your thirst, or something like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is. You know, or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so just like everything ties in really, really well. They did one with Bad Birdie recently. I thought, um, bad. They did one with bad birdie recently. I thought that one was hilarious.
Speaker 1:Uh, that one is a is a video of if anyone golfs, bad birdie is a golf company, um, and there are more out there kind of like outrageous company the way liquid death is. But if anyone knows anything about golfing, especially if you're a guy, when you have to pee you oftentimes don't go pee in the bathroom like you just go in the woods because there's a lot of trees and it's really easy to be secretive. But they created a product where it's a putter, I believe, or a golf club that is like a funnel to your pee and a golf towel. So, like, the golf towel covers you up. So the whole video is a joke about how you can pee in front of your friends, but you're covered up because everyone thinks it's just the golf club that's right there and they don't know you're peeing, you know. So it's just these outrageous wild videos that's not meant to make do we know what the sales figures on those are?
Speaker 1:they're probably next to nothing, because those products are 40 and they make a hundred yeah, they're just trying to stay top of mind at this point, that's exactly what they're doing.
Speaker 1:They're not trying to make money from these collaborations. Now, once again, remember how I talked about it in the beginning. It's like, hey, you've got ones that have direct revenue, direct sales, like this Tezza, like this Carol Loren, stuff that's going on, like the Philadelphia Eagles collaboration, but these collaborations aren't meant to drive immediate revenue. Those collaborations are meant to drive distribution, which will eventually drive revenue. Right yeah, indirect revenue.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're going back to bigger initiatives, which are great, as you're entering more of the eight to nine figure space as a company. Yeah, alex MacArthur talks about that. We're going to always repeat that line, which is sales, follow company. Yeah, alex MacArthur talks about that. We're going to always repeat that line, which is sales, follow search. Yeah, and that's what these bigger companies understand. I mean, there's a reason why Nike and Adidas still spend as much money as they do on advertising and essentially what we're talking about. Collabs. Yeah, like they sign athletes for a reason, like that's a collab. They have collaboration shoes and they launch products with these athletes. And that's just an easy example just to wrap your mind around it, which is this isn't anything new, it's just different channels Like this is how companies have made this work since the 60s.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a company like Liquid Death is thinking to themselves. Okay, I mean, they probably spend hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising.
Speaker 2:I shouldn't say hundreds, but I don't know, but I'm sure it's tens of millions of dollars a year on advertising although they did just say they have an in-house content team so I know they save a lot of money there, yeah, but I mean they pay they say their productions are really low.
Speaker 1:Yeah, budget yeah, they might be, I wouldn't be surprised but, nonetheless.
Speaker 1:but the point I'm trying to make is they can say, okay, cool, we can. What if we create this outrageous? We could either put five million dollars into increasing our awareness budget in meta, or we can create this outrageous video with Travis Barker and just do something Completely hilarious and unhinged and see if we can get 10 to 30 million views right on that, and then let's put some money into retargeting. Or they know. They know that those people aren't just going to buy on the dot com, but they're going to go buy. Yeah, their distribution is totally different.
Speaker 2:yeah, their grocery stores, whatever so yeah, and that's that's a good point. So, but this goes back to one of the topics of our black friday podcast, which is like, just know what your baselines are and then project, so like, if you're going to run these initiatives with a collaboration or a partnership with a brand or an influencer or whoever, you just have to realize, hey, this is what we've done in previous drops, so let's try it. Let's test it. What's our baseline of acceptable profits or distribution or whatever you want to deem it?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Hey, how do we reach a hundred thousand extra people? How do we get X amount of sales? Write those down, figure it out and then launch it. Figure out what you actually get and then you'll understand how it's impacting your business, Because they're not always a home run, Like any initiative that we bring up here. You're not going to get it the first time. Well, you might, but if you don't, that doesn't mean it's a failure If you don't learn from it then it's a failure.
Speaker 2:But just understand hey, how do we measure what success actually is? And then you can analyze what went wrong or what went right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, so awesome opportunities. I love that we got to talk to that gentleman yesterday, because I just don't think we talk about I mean, we don't talk about collaborations very often. We're an ad agency, so we're, you know, we talk about getting the right kind of content for ads a lot and how that's a very, not easy but a very predictable channel.
Speaker 2:Well, that's the world we know, and it's again the reason why ads are always going to be like the evergreen pillar of that those three distribution channels is because it's predictable. You can iterate very quickly in an ad Like you can't. Once you launch a collaboration like you can't.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can run ads to that. You can iterate on the ads. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:You can't iterate like once the product's there, the product's there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're not going to, and maybe you can. Depending on how evergreen it is, you might be able to update the product in time. But yeah, you're right Once it's out there.
Speaker 2:It's out there. It's slower, bigger initiatives where ads are fast and quick and you can test and you can get through these. Essentially, it's easier to find success through testing in ads than it would be in a collaboration space. But everybody's trying to lower costs. The best way to lower costs for even for ads, is if you get more organic distribution or referral traffic through collaborations, partnerships.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:Cause. Again, like we said, if you want to focus on something that will amplify your ads and amplify your organic, it's going to be the collaboration space, because that's going to be a crossover of all of them. It gives you content for ads, gives you partnership posts for organic referral traffic translates to revenue, gets you more direct traffic gets you more subscribers gets you more followers.
Speaker 1:It's an under tap. I think people look at it and think it's a hard like there's a lot of work to that.
Speaker 2:Um and there is work.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But it's. I don't think it's as daunting as some people think it is, and you can start lower right, like if you're a brand right now.
Speaker 1:That's listening to you.
Speaker 2:You're like guys really quick before we wrap this up. The other reason why we wanted to talk about this and we haven't even talked about it yet is we consult with a company that that has a subscription based business where they have 10 X where they were in one year but but last year they had one month. That was out of control.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And in the data. Originally when we were consulting it was just kind of like oh yeah, like this was a, an influencer that posted about us and that's right, like don't worry.
Speaker 1:It was kind of like one off like, oh, yeah, don't worry, yeah, don't worry about it Like that's just one crazy month, like that never happens. Yeah, that's right, and we didn't put much thought.
Speaker 2:But then, when we did a deeper, you know, strategy session with these people, these owners who are great and they're doing so many great things Like that 10X isn't, you know just us Like they're doing a lot of great things.
Speaker 1:You can't 10X a brand if they don't have an amazing product. Yeah, they're doing awesome things on their side. Yep, they have an unreal product.
Speaker 2:We looked at it and said well, what happened? Oh, we launched this collaboration with this one influencer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like where they created this part of this subscription box that like. And it wasn't even a big influencer, but man, it crushed it and we it was funny because we were talking about them doing those things but they're like oh, we've done this before and we're like that's what, that was a collaboration.
Speaker 2:I just thought it was an influencer randomly posted, yeah. And so that month, though, that they did it like just to put this whole idea into perspective that month that they did it is now what they're doing every month now.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:But they did it back then with just one easy collaboration product. Yeah, that was not a big lift on their part.
Speaker 1:No, no, At least it didn't seem like it was when they talked to us. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But they just like figured that was a one-off, that wasn't replicable. Yep, but it is.
Speaker 1:And now what we're doing is we're talking about. So now it's like okay, how do we plan?
Speaker 2:five of those every year. How do you work with these? To the next step?
Speaker 1:But it was funny and continue to increase your ad. Spend yeah To just you know, because everything just compounds on top of each other.
Speaker 2:They were like wait, that was a collaboration. Oh yeah, that was a collaboration. I was like oh my gosh, we should have dug deeper into that one up, but we thought it was just an influencer posted and they got lucky one month, but nothing's lucky. Like luck doesn't exist, and so it does a little bit, but well, it's just like nonetheless, yeah, like luck is exacerbated through hard work. Yes, right, the harder you work.
Speaker 2:Leveraged, yeah, the more positioned the more shots you shoot, the luckier you are going to get so yeah, nonetheless that's another reason why we wanted to talk about collaborations is we saw this company, you know, we did big strategy session with them what last month? And discovered that little outlier again and dug deeper.
Speaker 1:They oh, that's a collaboration, yeah, like, oh, you guys did let's identify seven more people you can do that with in 2025 that month did 10x what your normal month was in that year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so imagine now what it could do if you were continually putting those into play every other month, or every three months, every quarter, whatever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's exciting for them.
Speaker 1:Well, that's it. That's all I have to say about collaborations.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 1:Do it? They're not crazy. Do it like easy they're not, they're not crazy. Um, a couple like just words of wisdom is like, as you're reaching out to these people, if you're a smaller company, like you got to figure out a way to um benefit the people or brands you're reaching out to. So if you're smaller and you're wanting to work with somebody who's bigger than you, maybe you're giving a bigger rev share than you would normally would right, like, if you normally are going to give 10%, maybe you're giving 25%. So understand that you've got to compromise.
Speaker 2:Also, don't be shy to go 10x followers of what you have.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, because sometimes, especially if somebody likes your product, um, or your mission or your brand, like there are people all the time who work with so much smaller brands just because they love it.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so don't be afraid.
Speaker 2:So if you've got a thousand followers, don't be afraid to reach out to a 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 and just step your, just step your way up.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like you don't have to think, just cause you're a small brand, you can't reach out to a big one like Lola Blankets. They have 75,000 followers and I'm I'm using this as kind of a gauge, because I know a lot of founders do this. They look at the social media profiles and go, oh, like they're huge, they're too big for me. I'm only. I only have 20,000 followers. That's not very big, it's like well, followers aren't what they used to be.
Speaker 2:And so some people are stuck in this 2016 mindset of when followers meant everything but Tezza and Lola Blankets. Tezza has 1.3 million. Lola only has 75,000. You can collab with bigger people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally yeah.
Speaker 2:Fawn Design at the time was like 300,000 just like the Gator Guide 2 million with Kara the Gator Guide the Gator Guide just collabed with someone with 5 million followers for life.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna find out if he actually ever went viral cause she had to have met him somehow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she met him on Gator Guides. Maybe that would be.
Speaker 1:I don't know anything about the story if he actually ever went viral Because she had to have met him somehow. Yeah, she met him on Gator Guides. Maybe that would be. I don't know anything about the story. So that would make the story even cooler is if she literally was just like going on a Gator Guide.
Speaker 2:I don't know anything more than the rumor mill on X, but she just met the dude doing Bayou stuff. I guess she's a.
Speaker 1:I hope that's, true.
Speaker 2:She's a Southern girl. I have no idea. How do you say her name again?
Speaker 1:Lana Del Rey.
Speaker 2:Lana Del Rey, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, cheers to the Gator Guide.
Speaker 2:So, to wrap this whole thing up, shoot your shot with your collabs.
Speaker 1:That's it. The gator guide got lana, yeah, I wonder if he shot his shot or if she shot hers you never know, maybe he had a great product, clearly, yeah all right.
Speaker 1:Thank you everybody for joining in and we will uh, we'll 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.