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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. 114 How To Maximize Your Key Moments
In this episode of The Unstoppable Marketer podcast, hosts Mark and Trevor discuss maximizing key moments of seasonality in marketing and the importance of visually demonstrating product features. They analyze Yeti's successful advertising strategy, which showcases product durability through extreme stress tests. They emphasize the need for brands to visually demonstrate their value propositions rather than simply stating them, using Yeti's polar bear and drop test ads as examples.
Please connect with Trevor on social media. You can find him anywhere @thetrevorcrump
Most companies assume people know yeah, well, they know, that's what we do.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like maybe you think they know, but don't stop assuming what you think your customers or potential customers might know, because you are not your customer anymore. Right, like once you're in a brand long enough, you think you're the customer and you're not. Yeah, like you already know everything about the company, but most people don't.
Speaker 2:Yo, what's going on everybody? Welcome to the Unstoppable Marketer Podcast. With me, as always, is Mark Goldhart. Mark, how are you doing, sir? I'm doing well. How are you doing?
Speaker 1:Good, we missed an episode. Yeah, we were out of town, right.
Speaker 2:And we said that we wouldn't do that anymore. And we did it.
Speaker 1:Good things come to those who wait is what they say. Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 2:We were out of town. That's what they say it's true, we were out of town. That's what they say. Then my house got plagued with, like, the head cold flu. Your house got plagued with the stomach flu, so it was kind of hard to like. Oh yeah, the children and I got sick. So, like talking on a podcast would have been just painful for you to communicate with me for an hour.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the flu is. We're having a record flu year this year in the us I believe it.
Speaker 2:It hit late too, like normally it's december.
Speaker 1:I feel like when it hits yeah here in utah at least, it's like right around Christmas yeah, it's been a lot of flu going around, stomach flu we've luckily not hit the stomach flu yeah, we got it.
Speaker 2:Kids throwing up it's always good we luckily just had the head cold, which I'd much rather take over. But I had the head cold like it lasted me for almost six days. I'm still a little congested. You kind of probably heard me sniff a little bit. This is the first day that I'm like I don't have a headache today. Yeah, headaches are the worst, and it's been probably like a five-day headache regime for me.
Speaker 1:But yeah, back at it. Post-super Bowl post Regime for me but yeah, back it, back at it. Post Super Bowl post. I Mean what we're halfway through q1.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's pretty crazy that we're halfway through q1. We're through, like you know. We're in the stage of it's still winter, but everyone's promoting spring. Right Few, if you.
Speaker 1:If you, if you sell swimwear.
Speaker 2:I'm seeing swimwear ads out and about right now.
Speaker 1:People are buying shorts and here's my advice on that if you are targeting women, it's always best to think ahead. Always. If you are targeting men, don't rush. It's always best to think ahead. Always. If you are targeting men, don't rush into the next season. Yeah, because with the men's brands we have, they tend to sell winter-ish, not like straight winter, but you know, like pants and long sleeves and all that stuff like they.
Speaker 2:They keep selling that up until, like, the cold weather stops yeah, it's true like all the way up till may yeah, efficiency will dip a little bit on it, but they still grind, whereas, like, women, are a lot more prepped and they're like we're not buying just sweaters anymore.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they just like tend to stop buying. Yeah. I'm buying unless there's a good deal, like you know, obviously closeouts or whatever.
Speaker 2:End of season sales.
Speaker 1:But that's my tidbit.
Speaker 2:It's a great tidbit.
Speaker 1:If you're marketing for women or to women, they like to plan ahead a little more. Men tend to just be like I need a jacket.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I'll just get one. I agree. Who do you think makes more impulse? Buys, men or women?
Speaker 2:Women.
Speaker 1:You think so? I don't think so. I think women might justify their buys.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's.
Speaker 1:But I don't think they're in. I don't think they impulsively buy in the same way men impulsively buy.
Speaker 2:I think men will buy with a lot less.
Speaker 1:I don't want to say thought, but you know like they're just more like. Oh yeah, I do need that. I'm just going to get it.
Speaker 2:I agree, I agree with that. So let me I agree with that. Let me rephrase that I think that women have the ability to justify and spend significantly more than men do, but men don't have to justify. I think men will just buy something, and sometimes it can be expensive.
Speaker 1:You think they justify more spend.
Speaker 2:No, like they're spending more. I think that men can justify on bigger price point things Like one-off.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Where women are really good at justifying the little things that they're going to buy here and there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'd agree. Yeah, I think like the girl logic, what do they call it? Girl math?
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:I think, man, math is for stuff like a truck. Yeah, oh, yeah. Like I can justify this yeah or or. But they'll put off perhaps like buying clothes for five years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or like like my like for this is what happens in my household. Like I can think of a really good example. This is like my wife's like. Like my like for this is what happens in my household. Like I can think of a really good example. This is like my wife's like spends like 300 bucks on workout clothes or something like that. And I'm just like, yeah, more coming, you know. Like. As like, as stuff rolls in through the mail, I'm like, oh okay, you bought another thing, you bought another thing. And in my mind I'm just like mentally adding it up, like that's got to be like $300 worth of stuff and I don't really say anything about it because it's like, okay, you know. But then I'm like sitting there thinking, oh, you know what I need to like up my golf game. And so I go and get a golf simulator membership.
Speaker 2:that's 300 a month and I don't bat an eye about it at all yeah, but in my mind I'm like why my wife's buying you know one-off things that get her up to 300, 400 or something like that in a month and I don't even think twice about this membership. In fact, I had it for like a year and a half and the last like six months of it I never used it, so I just spent 300 bucks every month on this thing and finally last month I'd use it maybe once a month. Nice, so it's like a 300. It was like I was.
Speaker 1:It's like I'm playing pebble beach yeah, I asked that because I think how do you influence those decisions? Because you do have gendered biases in buying decisions and sometimes it's not so much gendered, sometimes it's just like where they are in life. Like I think a dad operates differently than a single guy in how they purchase things. You know, I think a mom operates differently than a single girl. Sure, so buying behaviors change, but you do have some visual stuff that you can use to influence. I agree and persuade people.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right, because we were looking up ads. I think a lot of people are worried about meta performance over the last five weeks and, surprise, it sucked. For most people, which tends to be the case Like February, is generally a bad Most people who are very reliant on ads. Should we say yeah?
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, which tends to be the case Like February is generally a bad, most people who are very reliant on ads, should we say?
Speaker 1:Yeah well, yeah, I mean, February usually sucks. January is kind of a lull. February usually kind of feels it Usually post-President's Day. You start seeing things pick up. It has been surprising even in some brands that haven't seen it as slow in February did this year. So I think it was a little exasperated by whatever is going on in the world.
Speaker 2:But DTC is obviously not dead no but you're having a lot of people start to talk about that right like should I?
Speaker 1:Go big into wholesale.
Speaker 2:Yeah, should I jump into wholesale jump into retail, but the thing is is like everything is challenging, like there's challenges.
Speaker 1:Business is hard.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, Like yeah. For example, we had one client of ours who's been so stoked to be getting into Nordstrom. Oh, things will change when we're in Nordstrom. Been in Nordstrom for a couple months now and things haven't really More sales. Well, you get, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like those kind of partnerships, or you know distribution deals, or you know distribution deals are actually ways to fuel your D2C because that's just more social proof. It gives you a recognizable name, a trusted source. Because you know if you get into Nordstrom it's not that you're going to sell a ton in Nordstrom necessarily. At the beginning People still might not know who you are, or whatever. Nordstrom doesn't just let anyone in sure you gotta have a good product and the regular consumer knows that. The regular guy or gal knows oh, they're nordstrom.
Speaker 2:They must be a legit brand yeah, so you could use that to your brand's advantage, which we saw. We've seen success doing that, saying like as seen in or now, and even saying like, hey, you can go shop at that place, but people will still come to your site remember the uh, uh, when we were in the diaper bag space, the, there was a competitor who would use the term that we were always so jealous of where they would say the number one selling diaper bag at nordstrom.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Which was true, and we weren't because we had just gotten in there. Yep, you know.
Speaker 1:But it's yeah like. Those things legitimize you, but they don't necessarily grow your business in the way you think it might.
Speaker 2:Right In dollars and cents from that direct channel. Now, wholesale works great, especially like if you have really good relationships and you know somebody who knows what they're doing and can get you in those things. Wholesale also works really, really good for brands that, like, have a recognizable, like. Uh, I'm trying to think. Maybe you can help me understand or say this the right way. Sometimes a brand just fits in a place. There's sometimes where a brand will like a wholesaler or retailer will say, oh yeah, that that makes sense, let's carry these pants here because we, yeah, but then there's like I, I think about like, uh, we're going to talk about these guys later, but like yeti, for example, I have, I have an Ace Hardware and Yeti coolers and tumblers are everywhere and they sell them like crazy at that place because it just fits Like. It just fits that customer, the man who's buying tools from more of a boutique. It's not your Home Depot, it's not your Lowe's.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not really like an REI. It's not your Home Depot, it's not your Lowe's. Yeah, it's not really like an REI.
Speaker 2:It's not an REI, but it's this ancillary stuff. As you're walking through the checkout line, there's every single type of tumbler and I bought one for like my. Can you know the can cooler one like? The koozie but the opposite version of the koozie, that from Yeti.
Speaker 1:From Yeti, yeah. Who's he that? From Yeti, from Yeti, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like, and that would just, and that was a $30 purchase of me, just like kind of walking through, like oh you know, oh yeah, this will last me a long time.
Speaker 1:So yeah, dtc is not dead, wholesale isn't either but no, and like we talked about, I think there's some initial fear and anxiety around tariffs and maybe political changes and whatever the international and geopolitical strategies are of the administration. But just like we saw with nvidia's stock, fear usually drives things down really, really fast, but now its stock is trading back to where it was. You know, there was like a little news about oh no, china did something with like a tenth of the gpus. Turns out that was probably just a big lie. Any news like that out of china is just a lie anyways. I mean, I don't know why people ever believe anything that comes out china but yeah, not that the chinese people are lying, the government lies, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's all I'm saying. Yes, they do.
Speaker 1:Ours does too, to be fair. But anyways, their stock crashed. Now it's back to normal. Same thing with buyer behaviors. Right, like people might be holding on to their dollars for whatever reason. Like this is a bad season anyways, it's not buying season. People spent more during Christmas this last christmas than they had in previous, and so that you had a huge new election as well yeah, the election.
Speaker 1:So you know, maybe there's some things that are influencing it, but nonetheless, it's always down, it's going to go back up, it always does. It's just human nature. And as it goes back up, how do you capture as much of that as as possible? Cause sometimes you can't fight against a rising tide, right, like sometimes tides fall and sometimes they rise, and, like you're, you can only do so much as a human out in the ocean, right, but you can maximize your time, right, like when the tide falls, you can go and find some starfish nice right when it rises, you can yeah, we say you can fish.
Speaker 1:We say you got to change your activity a little bit like our big thing, that we say with our clients is chase conversion rates right like at least I say that all the time yeah, chase conversion rates and chase your seasonality, and and chase while you can chase, because I think we've fallen into this trap of this idea of planning too far ahead. I think a lot of companies do too, like. Oh well q3 q4.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about q3 q4, but sometimes, like the best quarter might from, from a profitability standpoint, might be quarter two, totally, and last year quarter three, quarter four because the election, because of everything that was going on, like you had this huge election, tons of attention going to it, and then black friday starts. Yeah, it's like cpms went up three weeks before everyone thought they should have gone up and it was a mess for a lot of companies and so maybe those companies a lot of them, like when you look at the data, it's like you should have just spent way more in june or in April.
Speaker 2:So like yeah, a good example of this. Let's use an example of a. Like a client, we won't really say who they are.
Speaker 1:Harvest while you can harvest.
Speaker 2:There's a men's golf company that we work with and they do a really, really big Memorial Day sale. Memorial Day is usually in May, I believe yes, I don't know, pretty sure it is. At least last year it was right. And going back and looking at their numbers, right, and we looked at their. We look at a few different metrics to deem success.
Speaker 2:Well, obviously you look at overall revenue and overall ROI. Obviously you look at overall, like revenue and overall ROI. But we also look at an AMER metric, which is like new acquisition divided by marketing spend. And then we look at another metric that we call return on contribution margin dollar, which is revenue minus spend minus sorry, revenue minus cost of goods sold and shipping and all that kind of stuff divided by spend. So it's like what is what is your like profit per dollar spent, essentially what that metric is. So for every one dollar you spent, you profited two dollars or five dollars or whatever you know. And when we went and looked at the last few years of data in in uh for their black friday sale because they normally crush over black friday we realized that their efficiency on the return on contribution margin dollar was significantly higher in in bay in may for that sale. Yet we probably spent a third of what we spent. We still spent a lot of money, yeah but it was a third of what we spent.
Speaker 2:So let's say if we spent, you know, in the month of november, if we spent three hundred thousand dollars in the month of may, we probably only spent 120 you know, right, so uh we, we spent a lot, but I mean hindsight's always.
Speaker 1:You know, you're always going to things more clearly and it's easy. It's easy to do this with a golf brand or maybe like a swimwear brand meaning seasonality more the seasonality like the obvious like the obvious seasonality that doesn't fall into this. Like Black Friday trap. It's like, hey, when are people golfing? Spring summer? Yep, fall. So like Black Friday is always gonna fall, pun-intended at the end of the golfing season.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:Yes, you have. You know, there's always the outliers. Well, people still golf in Florida.
Speaker 2:It's like yeah, but it's just not as big as you think.
Speaker 1:Right like yeah, as somebody who's come from the golf industry you used to think that, like, but it's just not as big as you think, right Like, yeah, as somebody who's come from the golf industry, you used to think that, like Arizona, and they're still golfing.
Speaker 2:Arizona and Florida and Texas and California was going to keep you afloat and and and it does. Yeah, but like there's just a buying season, it's the same thing for swim, like well it's still the start of the season.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like you have a start of a season and even though people are golfing through the winter, the amount of I'd say uh rounds played in the winter per month probably drops 80.
Speaker 2:Well, and then on the flip side in the golf space, like the amount of rounds played in the summer, double. But sales dip generally in the golf space because people are out june playing july, because they they've bought their stuff before. And then they buy end of season deals towards the end or gifting stuff towards the end. Right, we see a lot of gifting yeah, and the same thing happens with swim right, like swim generally, for like brands will crush febru May.
Speaker 1:And then a cliff.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, and then you think, like well, people are like. In fact, you swim the most in June and July.
Speaker 1:But everyone's bought their stuff. Everyone's bought their stuff, yeah.
Speaker 2:And so sales like just crash, yeah, they crash. They plummet generally so. So it's obvious with those.
Speaker 1:But these, these ebbs and flows exist, whatever your business is. Yeah, I mean, and so it's. How do you spend more money, how do you acquire more when you see those ebbs coming in right, and then how do you maybe restrain some of that budget when you see some flows going out? Totally because, like you can only fight against. Like we're saying there's things out of your control, yeah, and we're going to talk about some things that are in your control right now too.
Speaker 2:Going. You know talking about Yeti but the macroeconomic things are out of your control, is what we're saying.
Speaker 1:Well, the macro and then combine that with, sometimes, the algorithm of a meta or a Google, just aren't doing what they should.
Speaker 2:Tick-tock, it shut down.
Speaker 1:Tick-tock might get shut down. So there's things out of your control as a business, especially when you are DTC, and how do you mitigate the damage done? Well, I think a we talk about this all the time, like we do. We're not a big believer in making sure you're like you shouldn't be in every platform all the time, like we don't believe in that, like it's not necessary all the time.
Speaker 1:But in my opinion, the biggest way to mitigate that is take advantage when you can take advantage yeah right, like if you, if you take advantage of q2, if you can, then you're not so dependent on q4. A q4 right, if you beat targets. While you can beat targets, then sometimes if there's a black swan event, it's like okay, we already filled the coffers, like we're okay, it might not be this the year you wanted, yeah, but less dependent on bigger moments. Yeah, it's better to have a bird in hand than two in the bush. So when you can get a bird, just grab it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think we had one client. We went through an exercise.
Speaker 1:If your inventory allows, obviously Sure.
Speaker 2:We went through an exercise with a client who said every year we do, even we do. You say, hey, you know, sometimes we plan too far in advance. We still will do that with our clients. We'll plan a full year in advance, but we'll really like hone in on two quarters. That's really generally how it is. It's like we'll plan for the year but but really focus on the the first six months generally.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you need some flexibility in the plan, like it can't just be we're only spending x amount every single month.
Speaker 2:Well, you have to plan because you know, if you want to hit a good strong q4, you have to have the inventory built. That generally comes from q2, right? So um, but anyways that you know that this exercise is also.
Speaker 1:You need returning customers for a strong q4 too the.
Speaker 2:The question was hey, what would happen to the business if we spent the same amount of money? Like, is there a possible way for us to grow? Now, most brands in general what we've seen over, especially over the last four years like, every year, acquisition costs go up. So generally, if you're spending less money, you're going to make less money or, sorry, if you spend the same amount of money, you're not going to generally do as good as you did the year prior. We've just seen that, right, yeah, because cost per reach has gone up. Cost per impressions are going up. That's just how it is right.
Speaker 2:Reach has significantly dropped for most brands on the organic side. So, like, unless you're making up the difference, it's going to be challenging. Okay, let's just get that out of the way. You don't really make any changes. If you make just this one change that we're talking about, which is maximizing success and mitigating the lower moments. That could either help you make the same that you did last year or even more by saying, okay, if I spend, if my budget's a million dollars in a year, let's sorry, let's just say, for the sake of math, $1.2 million in a year, right, most people look at that and be like okay, I'm going to spend a hundred grand a month. A lot of people just will generally do that.
Speaker 1:Or maybe they'll say they'll say, okay, I'm going to spend $300,000 in November but the rest is I'm going to evenly space that out and some of this does depend on what your consideration time window is.
Speaker 2:For sure, If you start to look at your research, like, look at your data over the last two years, three years, and see when the highest converting moments are for your brand, and you start to say, hey, actually, what if we put 20% of our budget into this month, versus the four that we have scheduled? You're going to be able to maximize your profits significantly more because you're maximizing the moments and mitigating the risky times. Right, that's really what we're kind of saying, like, that's what this message is.
Speaker 1:yep, in a nutshell, yeah, I just don't think anyone takes a full advantage of those moments, no, where you could probably relax a lot more during, uh, yeah, and that's and that's usually a planning issue. Stop looking at things in months and look at things in quarters.
Speaker 2:It's a planning issue and it's a data gathering issue. Or in halves, yeah.
Speaker 1:Like you have H1 and H2. Like just know every month's going to be different, like everyone knows this, but like for some reason, we, a lot of companies, have a hard time actually planning for it. Everyone knows every month's different.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Everyone knows Q1's different than Q4.
Speaker 2:But for some reason like the planning tends to be like month to month, treating it all very similar.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you should really have quarterly and years planned. Yeah, rather than a monthly goal of profit, it should be quarterly goals of profit.
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Speaker 2:An action item everyone should do right now if you're not doing this is you should have over the last like, have somebody on your team or yourself go through the last four years worth of sales, um, like, like a promotional months or promotional times.
Speaker 2:So if you had a Memorial day sale that was a three day sale. Go and figure out what those days were, what the promo was like, what the offer was, and then figure out what your revenue and spend and your new revenue is and go look at those year over year for the past two to four years and then that can start to help you do what we're talking about. Right, so you can find the special moments. Then you can start looking at things month to month, quarter by quarter, and then start really saying, oh, my goodness, goodness, I should be spending actually double what I'm, what I'm normally spending in q2 and I probably don't have to spend 40 of my budget in q4 if I do that or q3 yeah and what you might end up and end up actually realizing is, if you do it right, in q2, for example, you could actually still end up spending that same amount of money because you are more profitable.
Speaker 2:You still could end up spending a lot more because you maximize profits here. Make sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you don't have to right. Depends on the strategy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it depends on what your cash flow looks like.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So yeah.
Speaker 1:And the other thing to do is we talk about it all the time, though, is, how do you talk to your specific audience? And Yeti just reported their best year ever.
Speaker 2:In D2C In.
Speaker 1:D2C In D2C, and so we took a moment and just looked at some of their ads and what they're doing. They just reported $1 billion, I believe, in D2C sales.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in just D2C alone yeah in just D2C. And most people probably don't look at Yeti as a D2C brand.
Speaker 1:No, probably not.
Speaker 2:And I say that generally because Yeti's known for their coolers Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and their tumbler.
Speaker 2:I don't know what they're known for more now, but I mean, if you go look at their ads, it's a pretty good mixture between coolers and tumblers right, but tumblers were definitely the ancillary added item, it wasn't the standout.
Speaker 1:I don't know. I didn't look at what the data is of the split.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But they're coolers, but I mean I guess, first and foremost, like what is getting known for, they've really built their brand around durability, durability and long lastinglasting coolness that's what I would say.
Speaker 2:Like their products keep things cooler than anything else, and it was because of how durable. When you said long-lasting coolness, I was like oh, like thinking, like it's a cool, like a hey, that's a sick product, like it is, but yeah, it's all about like rugged durability.
Speaker 1:That's a sick product like it is, but yeah no, like it's. It's all about, like rugged durability and yeah, they were like functionality of keeping things cold, yeah essentially you could.
Speaker 2:You could go camping for four days and your stuff would never be warm. Yeah, like that was their differentiator than the igloo coolers like you could stand on it.
Speaker 1:Right, it was one of the first coolers that you saw out there that was like, oh, like you could just stand on it, you can sit on it, you can throw it well, that's what they would.
Speaker 2:That's what they would do like.
Speaker 1:Their early ads were like this doubles as a fridge and like a table or a seat, or a seat you know, they'd show it off on boats and doing the activities that you know you'd classify as rugged, like hunting and fishing and whatever, exploring.
Speaker 2:So but one thing can I say, because I think you're getting to this point too. But one thing that I've noticed with with Yeti is so a lot of people came in and Yeti didn't have any sort of IP on making their coolers colder than everyone else. Right, they might have maybe certain tech, I don't think so. Making their coolers colder than everyone else, right, they might have, maybe certain tech.
Speaker 1:I don't think so Well, they didn't because other people have come out. I mean, everyone can make one. Yeah, there are knockoffs, they're just one of the first to say hey, instead of buying a $60 cooler that keeps your stuff cold for an hour, buy a $180 cooler that'll keep your stuff cold for.
Speaker 2:Four days.
Speaker 1:Two days, three days, four days.
Speaker 2:Now other people have come out and done that. So what you've seen Yeti do over the past couple of years, as other people have kind of broke into that market, is it's the same thing with like? Was it Hydroflask? Remember when Hydroflask came out and they were the first person who kept a bottle of water colder. Remember when Hydroflask came out and they were the first person who kept a like a bottle of water colder than 30 minutes they were the first tumbler, really, I think yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:So now you're seeing Yeti double down on durability. Like this is the last cooler you'll ever need to buy. That's kind of the like, the direction they're going down. Like this is the last cooler you'll ever need to buy. That's kind of the like, the direction they're going down, cause everyone's already yeah, yeah, yeah and we just watched it Like rugged durability.
Speaker 1:And and so what they're doing is something so simple, but most brands refuse to do it, and they're actually just showing people how durable or functional the product is.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So everyone just like avoids the obvious for whatever reason. Like if you have something that's easy to clean, like just show how easy it is to clean it. Like if you have a product that you, you know is designed for a specific use case, like most people never even show it in that use case. Yeah, and part of the reason. Like if you have one, for example, like if you have pants that are supposedly no rip or no tear go put it through.
Speaker 2:Why is it?
Speaker 1:not in an ad or video. Being tested and stress test, yeah, like it's. It's crazy to me that no one does this, but yeti does that in creative, fun ways. Right, like they're. They're. Their coolers have always been advertised as bear safe yes but I'm sure they've had these ads in the past. But right now they're running some really cool ads showing that cooler being thrown in with polar bears yeah there's two polar bears, which are the biggest and strongest of all bears.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think they put like a bowling ball in it to make it also super heavy on the inside, so like not only let's see what, these polar bears can do?
Speaker 1:Yeah, because it has to be able to contain it and not break open. Exactly yeah.
Speaker 2:So it's not just like on the outside, but they're putting something that generally wouldn't normally. So it's not just like on the outside, but they're putting something that generally wouldn't normally that type of weight wouldn't normally be in a cooler.
Speaker 1:Yeah and like, is it necessary to have a cooler that strong? No, but, that's what advertising is right. I mean, how many of us are going out to like the Alaska frontier and dealing with bears? Like almost nobody. Dealing with bears like no, like almost nobody right. But everyone sees a video of it being stress tested through a bear and goes, oh yeah, like that's cool, I need that totally. If it can handle a bear, like yeah, it's gonna handle to get falling out of my trunk yeah, yeah, I'm not gonna.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I'm not this because those are investments. Right like you get a cooler at like a grocery store for 30, 40 bucks and you hate it and that's not a bad, like that's a pretty easy impulse buy. Hey, I need something quick for the lake right but you always end up hating those coolers. Yeah, and miserable yeah, but the yeti is I can't remember. We should have looked. It's probably between 180 to 350 bucks, or maybe even more, depending on how big it is yeah, full disclosure.
Speaker 1:I have two yeti coolers and I've had them for over 10 years or, yeah, about 10 years yeah, so they do these durability tests right.
Speaker 2:So you they've. They're literally showing polar bears like trying to get in and wreck this, and we'll you know. Hopefully there's a video showing this ad right of like, really trying to get into it, and then they open it up and all the stuff in there is contained. And then another video they're doing right now is they're going to the top of the Yeti headquarters building and they're dropping their new rollaway cooler and the reason why they're doing that one is because they have wheels.
Speaker 1:And the wheels can break.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like wheels often are the first thing to go on those things.
Speaker 1:If you've ever had like a pulling cooler, yeah, you know.
Speaker 2:And they drop it, and they hit.
Speaker 1:The whole point is to hit every like angle and then they're showing the wheels are still moving after.
Speaker 2:So it's this like 30 foot drop onto asphalt. That just shows great Like you can't beat that you can't.
Speaker 1:Like, you really can't beat true functionality and most companies assume people know. Yeah, well, they know that's what we do. Yeah and like, maybe, like, maybe you think they know, but don't stop assuming what you think your customers or potential customers might know, because you are not your customer anymore. Right, like, once you're in a brand long enough, you think you're the customer and you're not. Yeah, like you already know everything about the company.
Speaker 2:But most people don't the other. The other thing that I think is is a good thing to note is we were gone. Are the days to just say highest quality, cooler, right, like we don't trust brands saying things like that?
Speaker 1:And that trust is going to be eroded even faster with AI.
Speaker 2:Totally and.
Speaker 1:I think UGC has also eroded a little bit of trust.
Speaker 2:That's no data here, this is just me looking at ugc data, good, it's just not as it's not. As it's not effective in the same ways as it used to be. It's still effective as long as it used to be top funnel.
Speaker 1:It used to be everywhere but like I've we've seen a pretty hard diminished return on that top like top funnel stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but everyone can put a pair of pants in a static image and say highest quality pants. It's just really easy to do it and every brand does it.
Speaker 2:But if you can show the pants as going through a situation that shows that they are the highest quality. If you can show a cooler getting dropped from 40 feet up or getting mauled by a polar bear, if you can show you know, if you claim that you have the best tasting drink. Let me talk about valuations, right, like. So Olipop just got valued at $1.85 billion by JP Morgan. They just did like a just raised 50 more million dollars. Oh, wow, you know Olipop can say, hey, we're the best tasting soda you know, under five grams of sugar, like. But Poppy says that too Right. Copy says that too right. So who do you buy Versus you going to a grocery store, for example, and filming people taste, testing your product up against Coke that's a whole different thing. Right, you're showing how good it tastes.
Speaker 1:You're showing how people actually yeah, versus, yeah, versus. Well, I think we forget that advertising is a visual and auditory medium, so you are forgetting there are two other senses that people do not engage with when they are seeing an ad. So smell and touch and taste. Yeah, so three, sorry, I said two. So smell, touch, taste. They don't get to do any of that with your product, so a lot of people forget that the point of an ad is, yes, like's, there's convincing to do. But you also have to make up for the fact that you're missing three senses. You are missing more than half of the senses that people use to gauge something to make a decision about something I mean these.
Speaker 1:This is just like how we're humans are made, right. I mean I don't just go look up the studies about smells, and and women and men and dating and like I mean these are natural things.
Speaker 2:You went to a restaurant that are subconscious like, yes, are you gonna? Are you gonna? Are you going to look at the thing that's in front of your plate if it looks disgusting? Are you gonna eat it if it smells disgusting?
Speaker 1:are you gonna try to taste it only if you have someone vouching for it?
Speaker 2:yeah, no, if you have somebody whoing for it yeah, no. If you have somebody who said hey, I know, it looks bad.
Speaker 1:But like that's what you get. Yeah, so how do you, how do you make up for those senses and and? And? Because most people say, let's take a baby brand, for example. If you're a baby brand and we know that there's a baby brand that listens to this If you're a baby brand that says that your fabric is soft and gentle and that it's stretchy and breathable, my question for you is have you ever demonstrated that visually, demonstrated that in an ad?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because I think everyone just assumes, just assumes well, like it's stretchy and breathable. But what does that mean? How do you actually say this is how stretchy it is? Totally, and we're not telling you this is going to for sure work, but we're just saying like that's an ad idea that you should be testing tomorrow, because it's something you can do on an iphone in an office.
Speaker 1:You don't have to have even a baby yeah for those kinds of demonstrations, right like yeti coolers and their product demonstration ads. Their stress test ads is what we'll call them. There's not food, like they're not actually showing it in like usable situations like ice in a cooler and how things are cold they're just showing.
Speaker 1:This is the feature that we're showcasing, and then we're taking it to the extremes. Yeah, so if it's stretchy, how stretchy is it? Like? How much can a baby grow into something that they buy from you? Yeah, how long will it last? Like, can you demonstrate that? Maybe get some balloons, maybe fill up the you know? Like, maybe find a funny, clever way To say, hey, how much can this grow with your kid? Right, okay, now you actually have visually demonstrated how stretchy it might be totally, instead of just like yeah, oh well, you know it's stretchy, like. Here's a picture of one baby wearing it totally so.
Speaker 1:That that's my recommendation is, after watching the yeti ads, like it's just really come to our minds and to our attention that man, a lot of people are just simply missing. Yeah, showing the product getting used in an exaggerated way to yeah, a way to visualize a feature exactly a way that's never gonna get used in real life.
Speaker 2:However, it shows exactly what you're gonna get if you're taking it out of your boat and it drops six feet up, right, what is going to happen? It's not going to crack in half. The wheel's not going to fall off, Cause that's that is something right Like I would be nervous about that. We go boating. You know, if I'm taking a big cooler and we've got a Yeti cooler that I've lifted off of that, and and we've got a Yeti cooler that I've lifted off of that, and some of those boats like our boat is, it's like I mean my sister-in-law fell off of it and like almost broke her leg, you know, like it's a big drop and that's like something I think about every time I'm lifting that Yeti cooler down. I'm like I don't want to drop this. This is $300, you know.
Speaker 1:But now I know It'll be fine, I drop it, we're okay. I've dropped mine off of some steep stuff ledges yeah, so visual, visual demonstrations in an exaggerated way. That's kind of the consensus here i've've dropped my NFC pledges because I also mostly use it as like an extra chair around the campfire. Yeah, so like after we take stuff out of it, it's always being used as a chair, yeah.
Speaker 2:Or a stepping stool or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it is my stepping stool. Yeah, it is my cooler we take and it is what I use to like get up to stuff. I'm not a tall guy, so sure an extra 14 inches.
Speaker 2:Yeah, really helps so the lessons here are like okay, maximize.
Speaker 1:Maximize moments, key moments yes, maximize key moments of seasonality and make sure your content is showcasing what your actual propositions are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Don't just say your value. Don't just say what a value proposition is.
Speaker 2:Demonstrate it in and don't just, don't just say cause, cause I'm, I'm looking at how other people might do this. Right, they might go and say let's just take the cooler high, you know a high quality and, and they're just putting it in dirt, you know, or something like that, like well rugged and it's sitting on rocks, like that. That's how I imagine most people are going to do that. Yeah, versus why don't you throw that down a hill and just have it and see what happens?
Speaker 1:like can it actually? Is it rugged?
Speaker 2:yeah, I mean we had this conversation with. I know we brought up haven tents a couple times now and he's just getting great airtime here, but like he was showing us pictures, he says that he that was the hammock tent company that we had on a few weeks ago. He was showing videos of stress tests. And the way he stress tests is he put his bags of salt. He put salt bags on it. You know he stacks them up and he had got like both of us guessed wrong, like it was way more.
Speaker 1:it was way more than we would have ever thought and I guarantee that video crushes for him. Yeah, but I don't think he's, but he didn't run it as an ad.
Speaker 2:I don't think, and we.
Speaker 1:That's what he said. He hasn't released it yet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that product is not released but we were saying like hey, that should be the ad you run with but when he releases it, I guarantee you. That'll be the best performing ad by far.
Speaker 1:That video will crush it because it's like you can't even believe it's possible. So that's all we wanted to get out today is seasonality, like if you're freaking out about January or early February, you're probably in good company. A lot of people are, but just take a deep breath like yeah buyers aren't going anywhere. Like buyers are coming back and take advantage of when they are coming back, like you can't always convince everyone to buy it whenever, yeah, but you can be planting those seeds, for example.
Speaker 1:Going back to Yeti a cooler is not something that anyone is just like oh, I need to get a Yeti cooler now, yep. But their constant strategy of creating content helps you make that decision. When you do need to go get a cooler, yeah. Right 100%.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I don't need a cooler right now. I don't need anything from Yeti, but do you know what I am going to get before camping season this year from Yeti? Is we need some more tumblers? Yeah, sorry, stanley and everyone else. We're from Yeti. Is we need some more tumblers? Yeah, sorry, stanley and everyone else who, like, we're a Yeti family.
Speaker 2:So the CEO of Stanley's listening is so mad.
Speaker 1:Sorry, guys, unless you want to send me some stuff and prove me wrong. But yeah, we're a Yeti family, so I do need to get some Yetis. They're top of mind Cause they're always showing cool stuff. So I do need to get some Yetis. They're top of mind because they're always showing cool stuff and they have a very loyal audience base because their brand is consistent, right, like they are advertising to a specific core audience and they don't really veer away from it. Yeah, like, if you've noticed, like, have you seen a lot of Yeti commercials or ads with a suburban mom, unless that suburban mom likes to go, like hunting or something?
Speaker 2:Sure yeah.
Speaker 1:No, you don't.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in other words, understand what your moats are. Right, like we've talked about moats before, which is just like what are the things that protect your brand? Is it the knowledge of who protect your brand? Is it the knowledge of who exactly your customer is? That's a mode of yours. Is it the content you create and how you demonstrate it? That's a moat. Right, there are certain things that, uh, doesn't matter. What happens with an algorithm, it doesn't matter what happens seasonality wise, the the like, if you have certain moats around your business that you don't lose sight of, just maximize those.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a lot of people do lose sight of them. They, they're the things that like entered them into the business and then they start to like try to differentiate even more, to go into other realms, and they start to kind of lose sight of those moats that Can hurt their business.
Speaker 1:So and going back to Yeti, they've posted their best D to C year ever and Everyone's entered the tumblr space it's true, and the cooler space the competition has not gotten easier, it's only gotten harder. Oh yeah, but they have stayed true to what their moats are. They, they know who they're targeting, they know why they sell and they, they continue to build on that, and so most people just give up and like, oh, we gotta, we gotta start advertising to like a million different people.
Speaker 2:But it does not appear that yeti has ever taken that approach no, the other thing that you, that we taught, we like this is just just a couple other things that yeti's doing like that, like they've dived deep into some collaborations too right, like they did a big collaboration with their tumblers with the good good golf team. For those of you who know who those guys are, they're just big youtubers that garner a ton of attention.
Speaker 2:Um, so they did a collab with them. They did a collab with I think it might have been last year with Liquid Death. Remember that collab with the coffin.
Speaker 1:They turned a coffin into a Yeti cooler wasn't it like 40 grand sold it?
Speaker 2:yeah, like they had a bidding war on it, you know. So they're going strong not only in making sure that they're advertising to the right people, but also getting in front of new eyes, so sharing other distribution with other people.
Speaker 1:So let's get after it. It'll be a good year, though.
Speaker 2:Maximize winning moments. Use the senses to showcase your product and your solutions and dial in your moats. Tldr, you can fast forward to that.
Speaker 1:TLDR, that second right. There All done.
Speaker 2:All right, sorry, we were gone last week. Everybody, we will. Thanks for tuning in. 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.