Mark: 0:00

If you can figure out storytelling, yes, like you will win. It doesn't really matter what sphere industry you're in. Yes, we're talking a lot of organic right now, but this also applies to ads. Just tell a story that's obviously relevant to you and your audience. You can create moments in your office that are funny, that are entertaining, that can resonate with people, right? Like and the secret is you just can't take yourself too seriously.

Trevor: 0:25

It doesn't have to sell something in the end. It doesn't have to be resolved in the end. It's it's literally a moment. It's a story that can be somewhat relatable. Yo, what's going on, everybody? Welcome to the Unstoppable Marketer Podcast. With me, as always, is Mark Goldhart. Mark, how are you doing? Great. Wonderful.

Mark: 0:45

Wonderful. Yeah, it is a new year. Yeah.

Trevor: 0:51

We're just back from break. You'll hear this, and that'll be old news.

Mark: 0:55

Will be old news, but man. I think everyone needed it. It was long though, because Christmas was on a Thursday.

Trevor: 1:00

Dude, it was so long. Way.

Mark: 1:03

It felt like three weeks.

Trevor: 1:04

Yeah, it was.

Mark: 1:07

And I homeschooled and it felt long.

Trevor: 1:09

Yeah. Yeah, my wife and I were just talking this morning. Like we felt like that was an eternity.

Mark: 1:14

Long break. But I did see uh Avatar. Nice.

Trevor: 1:18

Was it good?

Mark: 1:20

Yeah.

Trevor: 1:21

Is that the third or is that the second? Is that the third thing?

Mark: 1:24

It's the third, but what blows my mind about Avatar is like how just irrelevant it is. They do a billion dollars each and then nobody talks about them again. Name one cultural impactful thing from Avatar. No one talks about it, no one cares about it. It's like going it's going to a theme park. It's like you go, it's a roller coaster, is what it is. Like you go, it's vis it's a visual, thematic, theatric experience, but the storytelling is not very good. Okay.

Trevor: 2:00

I mean they talked about it a ton, I think, but not about the story necessarily.

Mark: 2:03

No, it's just the first special effects. It was incredible. Because it was like nothing. It's just a real 3D movie. Yeah. Like I remember watching it for the first time and thinking, wow, like 3D is actually a technology that can be utilized. Yeah. But the storytelling is just meh. Like you know exactly what's gonna happen. There's no doesn't resonate that much, I guess. Like it's fine. I think it's okay. It's not terrible, but it's entertaining. But it's very entertaining. Yeah. It's a theatric experience, and then it makes a billion dollars and then just gets wiped off. But I think those are good, like they're good the map.

Trevor: 2:41

I think sometimes shows are meant to be just that. They're not meant to be deep shows with any meeting behind them that has discussion, and it's just purely meant for the case.

Mark: 2:52

I think Avatar tries to have some meaning. Yeah, it tries.

Trevor: 2:56

It just I can't even remember the second one. I know I saw it.

Mark: 2:59

I can't that's what I mean. Is like I saw the second one in theater, I can't remember anything about it. I remember the first one very well. We go to see the third one and we all remember like what happened in the second movie. Like, I don't interesting. Like, we felt like we almost watched the second movie again with the third movie.

Trevor: 3:13

You just didn't know. It could have been the second movie.

Mark: 3:15

It could have been almost the same movie. That's funny. But it was great. But we're gonna talk about it. Storytelling is uh gonna be a theme today.

Trevor: 3:24

Yeah, so listen, what what's on the agenda for the podcast today? Um, we're trying to do a little bit better with letting you guys know up front what you're getting yourselves into. So we're gonna do a quick forecast. Like we'll do what's happening in e-com right now. We're gonna do a quick uh client win highlight, and then we're gonna talk uh topics which is really gonna be uh very front-loaded around storytelling, which Mark was just was just talking about. So there's some some examples of some really cool things that are happening in the storytelling space. I know it's nothing we haven't talked about before, but maybe kind of a different perspective. Um, so e-com forecast. Um one thing I want to take a highlight from last episode. I think we talked a lot about how, like, hey, take advantage, CPMs are gonna be down right now. I have some numbers. So from Christmas to now, CPMs are down 37%. So decreasing um significantly. And then uh year to date from this time this year compared to this time last year, they're down five to six percent. So not as much, but like CPMs are in a really, really good, healthy spot right now. So take advantage of uh what can come uh from cheaper advertising as a lot of people pulled back since the holidays. So I don't want to dive too much deeper into that because we already talked about that last time.

Mark: 4:43

But no, and if if it is uh if you think that your demographics are going to be on there, it might be a good time to test things like App Levin.

SPEAKER_02: 4:54

Yeah. Yeah.

Mark: 4:55

It might give you a better idea of what App Levin's all about outside of holiday shopping behaviors.

Trevor: 5:02

Yeah, for sure. Um, big thing we want to talk about forecasting is the there's a there's a seasonality um product launch time that we're getting ourselves into. So if you're a clothing brand, if you're a swimwear brand, if you're uh, you know, a sweat comp sweatpants company, now is a really, really good time to one, either launch new products as you're getting into a season change. That's what we kind of call them. I feel like you you address this a lot. Like seasonality changes is happening right now. Um, we have seen, I use the sweatpant one almost as an inverse to be like, hey, now's maybe a good time to liquidate. You know, you can do end of winter, you know, end of season sale, even though winter still has a couple more months left in it. Um, people aren't really like once January hits, like no one's really looking to buy sweaters like and sweatshirts. We did all that in like August or not August, like September, October, November. So um, but if you have some of these seasonal products, a lot of times, for example, springwear isn't launched until February, March. But we saw a couple clients last year. Um, one particular uh example is we saw a client last year launch swim. Normally they launch swim end of February. They launched swim end of January and absolutely crushed it. So I think that um and and the beauty of them doing that is it expanded their season to sell swim by an extra 30 days, which was huge, huge for them because it's their biggest selling, most profitable product that they sell, right? And normally, for example, swimwear, you're selling that from like February, March to May, maybe a little time in June. But once again, like I talked about with sweats.

Mark: 6:58

But peak is April, May.

Trevor: 7:00

Yeah. May, April, May, March, April, May are like the three peak months, right? And um, which sounds crazy, right? Because June, it's like I'm still swimming in June, I'm still swimming in July, I'm still swimming in August, a lot of people are still swimming in September, but once again, like our brains aren't thinking about buying swimwear during those times we're actually using it. It's the same reason why, like bikini month of like, you know, people trying to get fit, it ends like May. Like people stop working out in May and are like, oh, I didn't get my body the way it is, but whatever. It just is what it is. Like, it's just how it happens. We see it happen with fitness apps that we've advertised for.

SPEAKER_02: 7:41

Yeah.

Trevor: 7:42

Like it's it just is what it is. Like once it's like January to May, crushes, and then like after that, no one cares anymore. So season change. So take advantage of season change if you have the ability to potentially launch earlier than you were thinking. It's not a bad idea, especially if you can potentially order some more inventory. You might give yourself an extra month worth of sales to two months if you're launching in March. Anything you would add to that?

SPEAKER_02: 8:08

No.

Trevor: 8:10

Okay, you want to take our I wouldn't.

SPEAKER_02: 8:12

That's spot on with the products.

Trevor: 8:14

Flawlessly, thank you. Um client wins. You want to talk client win?

Mark: 8:21

Yeah, let's talk client wins. Now, to be completely honest, we think it's a win. It's quite a win, yeah. It has helped us in the past. Like we've done we do this in the past, you win. But we're doing this to a much deeper, more granular level this year. Which is we're we're forecasting out the entire year for each of our clients. So going back and running some seasonal regression models to show you what your best months are and then what's your best days of the week are within each one of those months. So that you can essentially have a roadmap for the entire year, but especially right now with quarter one to say, hey, what what is the room that you think you could possibly scale in quarter one and maintain profit levels? Yep. And quarter two and quarter three. But obviously, it shows you the whole year, but we're we're going deeper into quarter one. And the insights have been really fascinating. So we highly recommend if you are capable of doing this, pulling your data, running these models, trying to figure out what your daily profit levels are from last year, year over year, and then how you can beat those. And you might not beat those just every single day, year over year, matching day of the week, but what you could do is you could say, hey, according to this model, it says that Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or whatever days are the best days of the week for you. Then you can figure out is that due to scaling? Is that due to spend, or is that due to emails or SMS sends? Is that due to what is that due to? Right. And then you can double down on that. So maybe your profits don't go up on certain days, but on your good days, they double. Sure. So each week you can essentially go 50% more in variable or total profits instead of just guessing. So try to take the guesswater out of your scale or your your strategy. Maybe your strategy isn't scaling, it's just profitability, period.

Trevor: 10:29

Yeah, yeah. I mean, listen, I know we don't have necessarily a win right now this year for this, but we have wins last year for us doing this. Yes. I know we're going bigger this year doing it with clients. But last year, for example, we had one client who came to us and said, Hey, I don't, we don't have the ability to spend any more money. Right? We spent a million dollars last year. We can't spend more than a million dollars this year.

Mark: 10:53

We want to invest in wholesale.

Trevor: 10:55

Yeah, they were investing, they were investing in bigger channels, right? That's why. Um, and but they had a growth goal of 20%, right? And so most people would look at that and be like, how are you gonna grow 20% without spending more money? Right. And um, so we did this analysis and just found that there were times that we could be spending money more efficiently and times where we could be decreasing that. And we were able to help these guys grow 20, it was like 27%. Um they met their goal. Yep, 27%. The spend they wanted. And the spend was like two grand more, you know, like to to like the you know, on the exact number, you know, and it was just because we said, okay, cool. Well, you know what? We noticed that your, for example, Labor Day sale. Normally you're spending so much money over Black Friday. Labor Day, we could spend triple what you were normally spending because there's a lot of people who buy during that time for this particular product.

Mark: 11:56

And so the competition is less. Yeah, there's a lot more competition in the market.

Trevor: 12:10

Yeah. You know, to make up and we made up for it at different times.

Mark: 12:13

Yeah, and I think in business, people want to always be the masters of their own destiny, but you have to acknowledge that there are certain tides that you can't fight.

Trevor: 12:27

No.

Mark: 12:27

Right. So of course. Sometimes when the tide is leaving, you know, it's going out, like there's not a lot you can do to bring it back in. No. But you can prepare for the next time that those waves come back to capture whatever it is you're trying to get, right?

Trevor: 12:42

It's the same concept of sometimes sometimes somebody creates a product, it doesn't sell, and they're like, oh, just put spend more money and you'll be able to sell. It's like when a product doesn't sell, sometimes it doesn't sell. And there's nothing you can doesn't matter how much money you put into it, you're not gonna be able to sell that profitably because it just doesn't work.

Mark: 12:58

And there's seasons that there's only so many ways to gift wrap shit.

Trevor: 13:02

Yeah, exactly. And you can only give, I mean, so many discounts, right? Like, we've almost given products away for free. Well, for free, obviously, you can. You do gift with purchase and you just give away the crap. But like for 70% off and people still don't buy it when it's not.

Mark: 13:17

Yeah, because product market fit's a thing. Yep, you know, so acknowledge that. And if your product is has bad product market fit, like you'll know. Yeah. And fix it. Yep. But so if you have a good product, sometimes even if you have a great product, we would say this company that we did this for last year, and the reason why we're digging in so much deeper with every client this year is because this company does have a great product. Uh, they have it's a very high AOV product.

SPEAKER_02: 13:44

Yeah.

Mark: 13:44

So it has a little longer consideration windows, but we knew we could make this work, and so when you when you when you roadmap it out, it just it allows you as a business owner or as a marketer to say, hey, these are our opportunities to shine, and here's our opportunities to pull back. Yeah, you know, like let's win the war and instead of winning some battles and losing the war.

Trevor: 14:07

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you might lose more battles, but win some battles big time, which helps you overall win the overall war. Some months you might be break-even, but other months you quadrupled your profitability. Yes.

Mark: 14:24

So um and the same thing applies to days of the week.

Trevor: 14:27

Yeah, yeah.

Mark: 14:28

Right.

Trevor: 14:29

Yeah, for sure. So not a huge win yet, but we saw massive wins doing that. Um, highly, highly recommend. Uh, if you're ever curious about this, um like we have some information that we can obviously like Mark and I are not great with like creating downloadables or infographics or shareables, but we have some data that we can share with you guys if you're ever interested. Feel free to DM us on the podcast or DM me at Trevor Crump and whatever, and we can send you some fun stuff as listeners. So um, all right, podcast topic today, uh storytelling. So Mark Mark sent me this tweet. Uh it was it was over the break that you sent it to me, um, but it's still wired wildly relevant. All right.

Mark: 15:17

And it's it's a tweet from Well, we think this is a theme for 2026.

Trevor: 15:22

Listen, it's been a theme for a while, but like I think people are starting to recognize it now and do something about it. So it's been a theme for a couple years.

Mark: 15:30

Well, it's been a thing, yeah, uh it's been a thing for five years, but what makes this topic different in 2026 is that you have to differentiate from AI slob.

Trevor: 15:44

Yes.

Mark: 15:45

Yeah, I think that's a good it's getting easier than ever to push content and stuff and things out.

Trevor: 15:54

Yeah.

Mark: 15:55

But without this key ingredient, you're never gonna escape the crowd.

Trevor: 16:01

Yeah. So I'm I'm I'm not gonna read the whole tweet because it's kind of long, and it's from uh at n underscore sportelli, Natalie Sportelli. Um, but she says this the hot new job at tech companies is leading storytelling. The term doubled on LinkedIn job posts, LinkedIn job posts in the US since last year. The WSJ writes compliance technology firm Vanta this month began hiring for a head of storytelling, offering a salary up to$274,000. And then there's uh couple other examples of other companies doing that. And then she says, as a former reporter and a career-long content brand leader, I have some thoughts. Uh, these examples point to a shift in internal marketing orgs that reflect a shrinking earned media landscape and an endless growing number of distribution channels to share your own narrative, i.e., going direct. So that's kind of what Mark's saying, right? Like there's so much competition that brands that used to be able to get organic reach, brands uh who have been solely reliant on paid reach are needing to now um step up and figure out how to get attention. And so one of the things that's that is becoming massively, massively popular are brands uh and creators who are creating actual almost like a cast. Like the brand is becoming a cast. Does that make sense? Where let let's say for example, I I a good example would be let me just click over here. So there's a there's a company called uh a coffee shop in Brooklyn called the Brooklyn Coffee Shop. Now, what most coffee shops what are most coffee shops gonna create content around?

SPEAKER_02: 17:58

Coffee.

Trevor: 18:00

Recipes, you know, taking pictures of like the the milk flour, what what are the what do you call those? The latte, like where they do the cream kind of designs, like you know what I'm talking about, right?

Mark: 18:14

I don't know if there's a name for it. Latte art. Latte art. See?

Trevor: 18:20

You know, it's latte art, it's espresso shots, it's you know, equipment, it's maybe how they source their beans, you know. I I don't know, right? Those are probably the typical things. But what these guys did was they they created like a um they created a cast that is your stereotypical like liberal coffee house, you know, where they're all very, you know, um self-reliant. They don't use energy, but but it but it's like almost to the max, right? Like that they're they're doing it in a very um like conservational. Yeah, conservationalist, but like in a very parody way.

SPEAKER_00: 19:08

I'm gonna stay. What's up, brother? I just came from a yoga class so healing. But you would know that my Indian queen. What can I get you? In adaptive genetic, ashwaganda, mushroom, mineral filtered mud water. We all right.

Trevor: 19:21

They're going like to the extreme. And it's these two, it's this, this, this like a Portlandia fill. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it's these two people that work in the coffee shop and they're constantly always reading a book, and people are coming into the coffee shop, and they're essentially like telling them that like their coffee shop is too pretentious for them. So it's just like really entertaining stuff. And they they get famous people. They've grown so much now that they're now they're getting famous people, other creators. So, for example, like uh a creator who's like huge on TikTok. Her name is Delaney Rowe. She's got a million followers on Instagram, she's got a Couple million, I think, on TikTok. She was dating uh BJ Novak. Do you know who BJ Novak is? The office writer. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's his name? Ryan. He's Ryan from the office. Yeah. They were dating at one point. I don't know if they still are. But, anyways, she's like a creator, and what she does is she cre like her content she creates is like sappy, like it'll it'll be like uh that one scene where the mom dies in the opening episode and like her home videos, and she'll like act out those scenes, okay? Like these really cheesy scenes, or like the one girl who survived the zombie apocalypse who's super annoying, and she'll create like a persona of those people anyway. So she's now appearing on these clips, and you're seeing this huge, huge trend. Uh you know, there's uh there's other examples. Uh um you've got like Mark Ruffalo on there too. He might he might be, but that it's it's a big trend, right? Because what's happening is I think people are starting to understand. I can't just take a picture of a coffee cup anymore. I can't just talk about where I'm natural where things are naturally sourced. I need to start to create some sort of story around it. And this is one big way that we're starting to see this happen quite a bit. This podcast is brought to you by BFF Creative. BFF Creative is a software that meets services. Any marketing collateral you need, whether that's ads, emails, print designs, or social media, all you have to do is submit it a request, and one of BFF Creative's qualified designers will create a design for you and it'll be completed in two to three days. BFF Creative allows you to submit as many requests and as many revisions as you can with just one monthly fee. And the best part is that it's month to month. No contracts, no hidden fees, no nothing. And if you use promo code unstoppable30, you'll get 30% off for your first month on us. Just go to bffcreative.co, pick your plan, and sign up today. Another example of this is there's another brand um called the circle. Uh it's spelled with a K, the circle part is so C-I-R-K-E-L. And they do this, but they they don't do the characters where they necessarily create characters, they're more so taking moments that have happened within their company and they're creating a storyline around that. So instead of like the coffee shop, they're creating like actual characters like a sitcom. This one's more creating like a the documentary style, right? You know how you do like true crime, it's different actors that are representing something that that has taken place, right? And that's what that's what they're doing. We'll show some of those clips as well.

SPEAKER_01: 23:04

Chanel shut down a New York subway last night, not a set, a real abandoned MTA station, flickering lights, steel beams, urban grit. Models stepped straight out of the train doors.

Trevor: 23:15

So I don't know. I think so that's that's the topic. What can brands be doing to stand out with content and why is that important?

Mark: 23:23

Going back to Avatar, Avatar made, I think it's on track to make like almost$2 billion.

SPEAKER_02: 23:28

Okay.

Mark: 23:29

I don't know how much it costs, probably three or four hundred million dollars. And I don't think it's good storytelling. It's not a it's not a story that you're like, oh man, I have to. And maybe that's because I'm older now, I'm in my 30s, and so, but I'm not like, oh, I need to make sure my kids watch Avatar.

SPEAKER_02: 23:46

Yeah.

Mark: 23:48

But I do say that about like Star Wars. Sure. Like my kids need to watch Star Wars A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back, the prequels or whatever, and the sequels or whatever. But like it doesn't resonate. And I and I think culturally it doesn't resonate. Like no one ever talks about it. Like everyone sees it, but no one really cares. But it can still make a ton of money. And why is that? It's because the form of storytelling in Avatar is more about just the visual experience. So it's more about how grandiose the experience is, and that's kind of the storytelling is it immerses you into this visual world that's obviously fake, Pandora. Yeah. And it's a whole experience. And so you can you can do that with a brand too, right? Like you can make your brand more of an experiential type product and experience, and it's not really having these storylines to it. Sure. But the reality is most brands are never going to be able to do that, right? Like Avatar invented new technology to have this 3D experience and to do this 3D animation. I mean, it's you're you're probably not that type of product. Yep. So what are these brands doing? And if you go to these stories that resonate or characters that resonate with people, like you think of sitcoms like The Office, or or you think of, you know, the hero's journey movies that resonate with people over time, like again, Star Wars, for example, right? Sure. Or Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings, you know, like there's these stories that that go on. But if you if you think about how you can do it as a brand, you go back to The Office, and they're using, and most of these examples that you're talking about use a technique called uh the open loop technique for storytelling. Okay. And so with the open loop, is you're essentially it's open-ended for one, right? Like you don't really, it's like Seinfeld. Seinfeld didn't really have like a destination it was trying to arrive to. Sure.

Trevor: 25:52

Like it was just in that they were teaching you.

Mark: 25:53

Yeah, it was just every time they would start a show, right? And it always kind of has a hook, which is an unresolved tension, and then they go about creating more tension and then possibly resolving it in a funny way at the end, right? Right.

SPEAKER_02: 26:09

Yeah.

Mark: 26:10

Maybe not resolving the problem, right, but acknowledging it or things come together or things come together or whatever, right? And that's what a lot of these people are doing with their with their storytelling. And that's something that every brand can do.

SPEAKER_02: 26:23

Yeah.

Mark: 26:23

Because it does not require big budgets, it doesn't require new technologies, it doesn't require new products. Yeah. And then you have to remember that these the storytelling, eventually you want people to act, right? Like you're you're not just you're not selling a book. Maybe you are, but most companies are not selling a book. You're trying to sell a product, but these stories have to be relevant somewhat to your audience, but they don't have to be selling the product.

Trevor: 26:50

Yeah.

Mark: 26:51

So you want to kind of hone in on who is your target demographic. So like let's go to a a newer sitcom that kind of uses that like open loop model, which would be like new girl.

Trevor: 27:04

That's not that new, my friend.

Mark: 27:07

It's pretty new. Compared to Seinfeld. Fair. Way new. I mean, yeah, it's it's it's older net.

Trevor: 27:17

Have you heard of St. Dennis Medical?

Mark: 27:18

No.

Trevor: 27:19

Oh no.

Mark: 27:20

That's a new one. But if you go to a new girl, who were the people that were watching that? What was your target demographic? Why were those stories relevant to whoever they were? I don't know. I'm not saying I don't even know who they are. Sure. I'm assuming at the time it was probably younger millennials that had just moved out of their houses, and maybe it caught some fringe, you know, younger and older audiences, but it's probably mostly 20 to 40 year olds. Yeah. Um but the romance and like the moving out and the you know breakups and all that stuff that's relevant, kind of like friends. Sure. So you go to these open loops, and that's what a lot of these people are doing is they're capturing like it's not really this thing that has this like bow on top and it ends. Yeah. It's not a Lord of the Rings novel. Yeah. It is just a series of things that create tension that are unresolved. Yeah. And that open loop, the reason why it works is because from a human psychology standpoint, people don't like unresolved or unknown mysteries. Yeah. So it's like, what does everyone hate? Oh, hey, do you want to know something? Oh, I can't tell you. Yeah. It makes people want to know that much more.

Trevor: 28:35

Well, and the other thing to add to it is they also they're all there's also polarizing characters oftentimes. Yeah. Which make it make it so you want to keep coming back and watching those people experiencing those moments.

Mark: 28:46

Well, for example, the office, what makes the office great is the tension. Sometimes the tension has nothing to do with the quote story. It's just the characters. Like there's just a tension between Mike. Yep. It's Mike, right? Michael. Michael? Yeah. And because he's so cringe worthy. Like he's so cringy, it makes you feel tension in your gut watching it. Especially the first season, like when you're not even accustomed to it. Yeah. You watch it and everything he does, you're like, oh. Yeah. Like he makes it makes me feel awkward. I'm not even like it's clearly a comedy, and I feel like it's a little bit more.

Trevor: 29:25

Yeah, it does it doesn't there's there's nothing that actually happened, like it's a fake scene, but you're feeling uncomfortable.

Mark: 29:31

Because he is terrible. He's a terrible boss and like in the worst and best kind of ways. But then you have the tension between characters, which is Dwight and Jim. Right? Like Jim and Dwight have a tension going back and forth the whole time. And then, you know, so you you create these like triangles of tension.

SPEAKER_02: 29:49

Yeah.

Mark: 29:49

Um so we're not expecting everyone to leave this and go become master storytellers. But you can create moments in your office that are funny, that are entertaining, that can resonate with people, right? Like and the secret is you just can't take yourself too seriously.

Trevor: 30:07

Yeah, and and once again, and also the other like point is like it doesn't have to sell something in the end, it doesn't have to be resolved in the end. It's it's literally a moment. Um, it's a story that can be somewhat relatable, you know? Yeah. And and we're talking a lot about creating almost like and guess what?

Mark: 30:28

Can I just pipe in really quick? If you're a women's, I don't know, let's just call it like a pant company, that story might just be a health journey. Sure.

SPEAKER_02: 30:42

Yeah.

Mark: 30:43

Of someone in the office. Yeah. So it doesn't like I just want to make sure that people hear this because we're not saying you have to go create like a comedy.

Trevor: 30:53

Like a cast.

Mark: 30:54

And a cast. And you know, yes, some people are doing that and it and it's working. Yeah. But we just tell a story that's obviously relevant to you and your audience. And so if you're selling pants for women and maybe you're going through a health journey, that's probably relevant for a lot of women. Like, what are you doing?

Trevor: 31:09

We're gonna want to buy those same pants eventually. Yeah.

Mark: 31:11

Or for example, maybe you're a maybe you're still this women's fake pant company. Um a hot topic for women is like natural health. Like maybe your genes are organic and organic cotton, and maybe your audience is gonna be more interested in. Oh, I wonder about that soap, or I wonder about like, does that scent have phthalates in it? Or you know, these little topics. Like, so you could do stories about just organic and holistic health.

Trevor: 31:43

Yeah.

Mark: 31:44

That's not really about your pants, but you always have your pants on. Sure. And your pants are relevant to the theme. Totally.

Trevor: 31:50

Yeah.

unknown: 31:51

Yeah.

Trevor: 31:52

And I I think that's that's the point I think you're that you're making is like the theme has to be relevant to the audience that you're wanting to attract.

Mark: 31:59

Yes.

Trevor: 32:00

Right. And I think that's super important. But yeah, I like the distinction you made. Yes, you can go out and create a cast that is sitcommy, or you can literally just create stories that are happening with the office. We do this all the time. Like, we're starting to create more content for our agency. And it's all around usually a scenario that we have experienced that we're like, that would actually be kind of funny if we documented that. Or if we added a little bit to that to make it a little bit more tension, we have a little more tension there, or a little more comedy, or whatever.

Mark: 32:29

Like we have a character we're introducing this week. Yeah. So it's like we And maybe it works, we don't know. Yeah. But it'll we think it'll be funny. So we'll see.

Trevor: 32:38

And if it's not, then it's fine, right?

Mark: 32:41

Well, the reality the reality is no one remembers who you are. Yeah. So even if what you do sucks, no one's gonna remember in two days. They're gonna they're on to the next thing.

Trevor: 32:50

Well, also the reality is everything you're doing already sucks. When you think about it from a is it getting attention?

unknown: 32:58

Right.

Mark: 32:58

Right? It mo well, not everyone here, but most most.

Trevor: 33:01

I would say 90% of the people who are listening to this, and maybe even more, yeah, what you're doing, if it's not getting attention organically, it probably sucks. It might mean that you took it doesn't mean that you didn't take time or whatever, but it means that you just need to be doing something different, right? And what's gonna happen is you're gonna do the things different, and those things are going to suck. Yes. But eventually it's going to get better and better and better and better, right? And the big point the big purpose of what we're talking about right now is e-commerce 2026 between live selling right now and TikTok shops and the fact that e-commerce is just different and changing, you're going to have a lot of brands. You had a lot of brands that have been going under for the last since 2022, right? It's going to continue to happen, but there's also going to be so many more brands that are coming into the space. There's going to be so much more AI slot. There's going to be there's just so much content that you have no choice but to start to make a change. And we point back to this storytelling, to this tweet where this woman's like, hey, we're paying$275,000 to find the right person to do this for us. And yes, that might seem like a little bit more of an extreme, like, whoa, that's a crazy amount of money. But if if that person can get views the way uh other people are getting views for brands, it's well worth it. And it's the only way to be able to stand out right now. And the the other beauty is so there are TikTok trends, dances and lip syncs and funny skits that people will do, whatever. Storytelling has been around forever. Like storytelling is not a trend.

Mark: 34:58

Well, and it's it's in my opinion, it's a lot deeper than that. I think storytelling is the most powerful skill set anyone can have. It's everyone everyone becomes the stories they tell themselves, right? And that's and everything is based in a story. So every nation is just a shared story that people believe.

SPEAKER_02: 35:25

Yeah.

Mark: 35:26

That's what makes a country a country. Like it's not the boundaries necessarily, it's that a group of people believe the same story. Sure.

unknown: 35:37

Right.

Mark: 35:38

Of religions. Yeah. You go, you go down the list, just strip yourself of your like personal biases, and stories are what shape the world. Like the worst acts in human history are because of a story. Yeah. The best acts that have been committed are because someone believed a good story. Sure. So if you can tell stories, yes, it is it is the foundation of of humanity and and civilization and community. Yeah. Like that's what makes a community is a shared story. Yeah. So yeah, it's it's deep and it's powerful, and not to get like super existential here, but if you can figure out storytelling, yes, like you will win. It doesn't really matter what sphere industry you're in. But if you if you can master storytelling as a company, you'll win. And yes, we're talking a lot of organic right now, but this also applies to ads.

Trevor: 36:43

Oh, of course.

Mark: 36:44

You know, ads are gonna be different. They're not always gonna be what you put on your organic social side, but the more you tell stories, the more you're engaging with your audience, the more you figure out what your audience is interested in, the more you can serve them not only with your products, but also with the type of ads you're serving them. You can yeah, it's huge.

Trevor: 37:05

I think it's a long-term strategy. I think it should be I think it should be every company's outside of product development, it should be their probably number two focus right now in 2026, because it's just the biggest like product will differentiate you and storytelling will differentiate you. So those two things.

Mark: 37:25

And guess what? Even if you don't, like I said, like this still applies to ads. Like you maybe you're not a brand and you're just like, I don't really care about this organic thing. You're just gonna go straight ad growth, which is a valid strategy, by the way. Um you still have to figure out storytelling. Yeah. Yeah. It'll be different. It's not gonna be the same.

Trevor: 37:50

It's not gonna you're not gonna like kind of beat around the bush as much, but yeah, yeah, because one day if you go just ad strategy alone, only like one day something's gonna come bite you.

Mark: 37:59

Like you look at Ridge wallets, for example, like they they're going straight, they go straight for the throat almost every single ad. Like you know what they're selling. Yeah, it's not a mystery, you know. Yeah, but they don't have this big organic storytelling presence, and it's working for them. So like you can you can make it work depending on who you are and stuff, but we we're just big believers, especially in the small stage, you have nothing to lose. Yeah, and small stage, and small stage, by the way, isn't like, oh, I'm doing 500,000. Like you're still small, even if you're doing up to 20 million. Like no one probably knows who you are. Yeah.

Trevor: 38:38

I mean, no one knows who you are when you're at 100 million a lot of times. Yeah. So I mean, I'm sure you just announced Ridge Wallets, and 75% of the people who heard that don't know who Ridge Wallets is. True. And they're probably a$250 million company.

Mark: 38:52

If not more now, who knows? So storytelling 2026.

Trevor: 38:57

That's our huge prediction for 2026. Obviously, there's more that we might share with you guys. I'm sure we will in Tyron, but storytelling, start investing in it, start getting creative, start putting stuff out there. Don't worry about sounding cringy or doing something silly. Because if it's bad, only a hundred people see it.

SPEAKER_02: 39:19

Absolutely. You know, yeah, so true. So, okay.

Trevor: 39:23

Okay. All right, we'll see you guys next week. Happy New Year's. Yeah. Happy New Year. Three weeks later.

Mark: 39:29

Go see Avatar so you can forget about it a week later.

Trevor: 39:33

Thank you for listening to the Unstoppable Marketer Podcast. If there's a brand campaign strategy or marketing tactic that you want us to review, please DM me at the TrevorCrump on Instagram or TikTok or at the Unstoppable Marketer Podcast. And of course, if you got value from this episode or if you like it whatsoever, please make sure you're subscribing, you're liking, you're following, and for sure go leave us a review to let us know that we're doing a good job. We will see you.