Brandon Welch: 0:06
welcome to the maven marketing podcast. Today is maven monday. I’m your host, brandon welch, and I’m joined by Caleb, Why do the chiefs lose, Agee?

Caleb Agee: 0:14
oh uh, offensive line can’t handle, can’t handle it. Or I should say maybe the defensive line for the Eagles was formidable.

Brandon Welch: 0:25
Did you see their average height and weight? Yeah, like 6’4 and 200, or no, 300-something pounds. Yeah, it’s like.

Caleb Agee: 0:33
That was the game. There you go. That was it. Right there, that was it. There were other things, but that was the biggest one for sure.

Brandon Welch: 0:39
If you don’t know, the Maven Marketing Podcast is filmed in Chiefs country, and we are proud.

Caleb Agee: 0:45
Yeah, a lot of heads. Constituents of Chief’s Country Held low in this area today.

Brandon Welch: 0:51
Ain’t no good vibes going up here this morning. And hey, for the first time ever we are actually recording on a Monday morning. Because Almost live. We should have gone live. We should have gone live, Do it live.

Caleb Agee: 0:59
We’re not good enough for that.

Brandon Welch: 1:07
We couldn’t do this topic without last night’s ads and we are going to explore how to make your ads possibly your local ads or your regional ads, or maybe your national ads more like Super Bowl ads. We all know there’s a gazillion dollars spent on the talent and the time to put in Super Bowl and those seem like the pinnacle of advertising, and in some ways they are, and there’s obviously they are, yeah, um, and there’s obviously big hollywood production and there’s, you know, no limit to the resources offered there.

Brandon Welch: 1:30
But, believe it or not, you could do 80 to 90 percent of what’s what’s making those super ball ads super ball ads, just with some better writing and some better strategy behind them. So we’re going to break down three principles for you today. It’s going to be a short episode, but our hope is that you take this forward into your ads, maybe your websites, maybe your Facebook and social media, and we just we want to make you better.

Caleb Agee: 1:56
Plus, it’s going to be a little fun, because we enjoy watching good ads.

Brandon Welch: 2:01
Yeah, this is like yeah, this is like I don’t know the Olympics for advertising.

Caleb Agee: 2:04
Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 2:04
That’s Well. Well, it’s like the Super Bowl For advertising.

Caleb Agee: 2:06
We Wait a second. By the way, if you’re with NFL, we are not selling anything today. We are not selling anything, so therefore we are not In violation of your Super Bowl trademark ads, so we can say that Because we’re not selling anything, yep.

Brandon Welch: 2:20
We’ll see if we still get a letter. Hey, I don’t think I reminded everybody. This is the place where we answer your real-life marketing questions so you can grow your business, limit advertising and achieve the big dream. And that’s why we do this and that is why we’re not selling anything. This is part of the mission for us. Yes, we have an ad agency, but we put hours and hours and thousands of thousands of dollars every week into these podcasts, just so we can make the world of entrepreneurs better, and that is our gift, that is our mission, that is our calling in this space. And so, without further ado, let’s go through the three principles.

Caleb Agee: 2:56
Number one Number one is avoid all that is predictable.

Brandon Welch: 3:02
That is probably the number one thing that makes a ad. Look, quote, unquote, local or quote unquote national. The big brands somehow know hey, our brand and our product probably at this second is not interesting. People are not thinking about X, y, z. Not even, you know, even the food brands do it, are good at this, but they’re definitely not thinking about insurance, they’re definitely not thinking about, uh, buying a new car. So they have to do something that is not predictable in order to buy your attention.

Caleb Agee: 3:35
Yes, yes, that’s exactly right, and I think what you instantly notice maybe the production value is a thing on a local ad, you can tell when the local spots start playing. I don’t know if you knew that, but there are mostly national ad slots, but then there’s like little pockets of local ads where you get the local programming and as soon as those show up you’re like oh, okay, there’s like the guy sitting in his office in front of like the standard desk with the.

Caleb Agee: 4:01
You’re like, oh, that attorney is going to start talking to me again About attorney stuff. About attorney stuff.

Brandon Welch: 4:06
But I will say I actually saw a couple that were really well done in lighting and good production quality. The thing that gives it away to me is that they immediately start talking about their stupid product. And they may be the best in the world, the people that are in those ads and we had some advertisers on yesterday. They are the best at what they do locally. But the ones that go straight in and be like hi, I’m Tommy with Tommy’s Roofing, and when you call Tommy’s Roofing you get the best quality and best service and it’s like it’s not even raining outside. There’s exactly zero people who want to know about Tommy and Tommy’s Roofing.

Caleb Agee: 4:44
Yes, raining outside.

Brandon Welch: 4:45
Yeah, there’s exactly zero people who want to know about tommy and tommy’s roofing. Yes, now tommy jumps in and he’s doing something wild and funny and wacky. You’ve got my attention and, more importantly, the only reason, in my my opinion, to spend more on super bowl ads is because of the social capital that you can ignite in the room, because those are audiences that are that are trying to talk about ads, and that’s a very rare thing right.

Caleb Agee: 5:06
Yeah, half the people in the room are also excited about the commercial break Right.

Brandon Welch: 5:13
That’s right, and so it’s active.

Caleb Agee: 5:15
Never, ever in TV time. Is that ever true?

Brandon Welch: 5:17
They’re begging to be entertained, yes, and so entertain them. Or else you’ve spent like three to four times the CPM to reach you know, yes, it’s a big audience, but dollar for dollar. Don’t spend that extra money unless you’re going to give them a reason to talk about you and have that bounce off the walls and and draw some sort of an emotional response. So so one hack for for making your stuff unpredictable is just to wait before you reveal the product, like bring them into a storyline. A lot of the ads you saw did stuff that was unpredictable. Maybe the product was visible, but it just Like where are we?

Caleb Agee: 5:54
What are we doing?

Brandon Welch: 5:55
I don’t even know what’s going on, it’s just craziness and no pun intended for the ad that we’re going to show you, but your goal is to drop somebody off in the random spot in the universe and then use creativity to bring it back to your product. That’s right. Tom Robbins said all things in the universe are connected. It’s just a matter of using our imagination to reconnect them or to find the paths, and that’s what you want to do.

Brandon Welch: 6:20
Don’t allow yourself to start talking about your product subject matter. Do anything else but that? Okay, yeah, and our friends from this organization are going to show us how to do that. All right UFO detectives. Whoa.

Caleb Agee: 6:57
Ow, come on man, dorito, dorito. Yeah, amazing.

Brandon Welch: 7:05
They never told me why I should buy that product. They weren’t talking about the cheesy layers or any of the features of the corn chip or anything like that. And the lesson there is sometimes just be memorable without trying to put your. You know your features. Certainly, certainly when the stakes are high for entertainment, that’s a rule, but I would argue, do that all the time.

Caleb Agee: 7:29
Yeah, If you weren’t, if you’re on audio only. By the way, the ad was a Doritos commercial, in case you didn’t hear it at the end. But they literally the, the. There’s like a spotlight that comes in. It starts to try to like a tractor beam, that’s grabbing the Doritos bag and the guy’s fighting and it’s throwing him all over the room. Um, and then he finally lets go and it shoots straight through the UFO that’s pulling it in and blows it up. And so they also kind of make the uh, the product, the hero or the it’s. You kind of expect them just to pull it in would have been the predictable thing to do, yes, and then the aliens eating it? No, it blows up the thing. Why not just throw an explosion in there?

Brandon Welch: 8:06
Yes, Explosions and special effects. If you can do them, if you can pull them off, by all means, that’s a great way. But maybe you’re sitting here going. Well, I don’t have that kind of production budget. I don’t have a tractor beam or anything like that. Dude, just wait before you reveal the product. Yeah, hexclad did a great job of that and you know they used aliens, but they didn’t. They could have done a number of things. It’s like 30 seconds in before they reveal. It’s a Hexclad frying pan.

Caleb Agee: 8:35
Stella, stella Artwog did that with the beer, the other, dave.

Brandon Welch: 8:40
The other, david, and it’s like there’s a storyline going on and it’s like at the very end they were like oh, you like you drink Stella.

Brandon Welch: 8:46
Yeah, you drink Stella too. It’s like, yeah, I have good taste, right, I have good taste GoDaddy does this whole thing about?

Brandon Welch: 8:57
we’re not. We don’t know what you’re doing to build a website, right? So have restraint. You can do a skit before you can. Just that’s one way of disrupting predictability. The other ways could be just your pacing and your meter and your cuts in your ads, like, don’t ever let them know. Oh I’m in an ad. David Ogilvie said make your ads too valuable to throw away or too valuable to ignore. And entertainment is valuable, right?

Caleb Agee: 9:28
The thing you do not want to do is give it away in the first two seconds.

Brandon Welch: 9:34
For the love of all of it, don’t be standing in front of your truck saying, hi, I’m blank with blankety, blank, yes, that will kill your ad.

Caleb Agee: 9:42
Everybody stopped listening or making a generic statement that applies to nobody. Yeah, that’s your cue to take a bathroom break when was the last time you thought about your whatever. It’s like I guess you kind of made me think about it just now, but I also just stopped listening to you at the same time, so I know what’s coming.

Brandon Welch: 9:59
I know you’re about to tell me about your company, right, yeah?

Caleb Agee: 10:04
Land me in left field. Think about the aliens. A technique for writing that we use around here is called random entry, and it’s where you take literally a sentence that somebody else wrote, and it will. You’re forced to pick a product before you see that sentence, and the sentence is supposed to be completely random.

Brandon Welch: 10:22
Yep Out of a random book go off the bookshelf, just find a random sentence on the page.

Caleb Agee: 10:26
Yeah, it’ll be like don’t eat the yellow snow and you have to connect don’t eat the yellow snow to selling an attorney.

Brandon Welch: 10:32
Yeah, yeah, we do that all the time.

Caleb Agee: 10:34
And that will force you to start thinking about things and connecting, dropping people in left field and bringing them back to what you’re really selling. Yes, and that will make an interesting ad. Not every time is that a perfect ad, but it’s a good idea.

Brandon Welch: 10:45
Avoid predictability. Okay, number two. This one’s so easy. Yeah, just shut up and do it. Yeah, puppies and kids. Works every time, every time. It works every time.

Caleb Agee: 10:55
There was actually a local ad in our market that did a pretty good job with this with a kid. I thought it was a little bit long but, it was. They definitely they had a little kid as the other contractor, basically, and it was like little boy, girl toddler with little toys and they’re like banging on the wall and stuff. I didn’t see that. And it was. I think it had the right idea and it’s using this principle.

Caleb Agee: 11:22
And they definitely did not hit it on the nose, just in the same way that you, hey, come call us to fix your For XYZ contractor. Yeah, they definitely started with. That Cute kid is a great way to pull it off.

Brandon Welch: 11:37
Thousands of people in that second talking about that kid and that company and it bonds your, your long-term recall factor. That emotional experience of just one child or cute animal bonds your brand, uh, in a way that can’t be done with information. It is right, we feel different when we see young faces, right? Uh, instacart probably did the best job with animals and this is brilliant on so many ways. This actually uses the last principle we don’t know what the reveal is.

Caleb Agee: 12:09
We don’t know what. You don’t know what the product is, until the last two seconds.

Brandon Welch: 12:13
Yes, yeah and it was entertaining had you on the edge of your seat. Here it is Release the hounds. Puppy monkey, baby, you got the puppies. Wiener dogs my personal favorite.

Caleb Agee: 12:37
Jolly green giant. Jolly green giant, energizer bunny, mr Clean, kool-aid man, cheetos, guy Chester.

Brandon Welch: 12:49
Energizer Bunny, I’m on a porch and we finally reveal that it’s Instapart right.

Caleb Agee: 13:08
Thanks, babe, get the oatmeal.

Brandon Welch: 13:15
Oh, there’s the Quaker oatmeal guy. Yeah, so, yeah, so they definitely use the first principle. We didn so. Yeah, so they they definitely use the the first principle. We didn’t know what was going on, but they also. They had a lot of animals in there, right. I.

Caleb Agee: 13:30
I call that cheating in a great way it’s because they just spent. I don’t know if, I don’t know if they ran the. We just showed a 60. I’m not sure if that was a 60 last night, but if it was, it was probably close to $16 to $20 million to run that one time. But they spent, let’s say, $20 million to capitalize on a billion dollars worth of advertising. Yes, because all of those characters, all of those animals, all those things just recalled, it’s more than a billion.

Caleb Agee: 13:58
It’s got to be, it’s more. Yeah, we’re talking about 30 years worth of marketing legacy.

Brandon Welch: 14:03
yeah, legacy characters, legacy brand figures and and all endearing ones, right, yeah. Who doesn’t like the kool-aid man? Yeah, or chester the cheeto, right, or cheetah, right, yeah, uh, I. I actually personally love the the um quaker guy. That was just like childhood memory thing, so yeah, um, okay, so they use puppies and kids, but they also employed something bigger tying in all, personally loved the Quaker guy.

Brandon Welch: 14:19
That was just like childhood memory thing. Yeah, okay, so they used puppies and kids, but they also employed something bigger, tying in all other elements. Maybe locally you can tie in something that’s bigger than you, maybe you can put the mayor in your ads. I can think of an ad that we have running that we took this longstanding television personality that’s no longer on television in the, you know, in the local news, but we got him to be in an ad. So you’re kind of sometimes that’s in the endorsement category and that can be expensive. I can also think of one of the most impactful ads we’ve done to this day was the eight years ago and I still hear about it. We literally got letters written in from the community to this client talking about how beautiful and wonderful this ad was, and it was 26 seconds of a granddaughter and a grandma baking a pie together with music, and that’s all it was. Yep, and we actually filmed it in my grandma’s kitchen, which was even cooler for me. Yeah that’s cool.

Brandon Welch: 15:21
But it looked like a grandma’s kitchen, which was even cooler for me. Yeah, that’s cool, but it looked like a grandma’s kitchen. It was just baking pies. And then the end reveal was an estate planning company and it said you’re going to leave it all to them someday. Make sure they get every penny.

Caleb Agee: 15:30
Simple.

Brandon Welch: 15:31
Right, yep, so cheat. And really you don’t have to be all that sophisticated in your writing when you put a puppy or a kid in it. I can also think of Jenny. That’s another ad that we still, six, seven, eight years later, get comments about. There’s this kid that came in to her, this little retail store. We did a, put a kid in it, and now there’s a dog in it. So, all right, cheat with that. Hey, three, tie your brand to something bigger. Yeah, so you can use like. Fact of the matter is, you probably aren’t all that interesting If you’re an everyday brick and mortar business. The nature of what you do is just not all that interesting. Yeah, we talk about the tomorrow customer is just not all that interesting. Yeah, when we talk about the tomorrow customer we talk about there’s years and years and years before that go by before the majority of people buy your product, and this is everything from automobiles down to you know, let’s talk about our estate planning to roofers, to doctors to like.

Brandon Welch: 16:38
Sometimes these are once or twice in a lifetime purchases, right Doctors? To like sometimes these are once or twice in a lifetime purchases right, and so let’s attach what you’re doing to something that people do think about more often. I love what Dove did with this the Keep Her Confident. This would be my personal favorite ad that I saw last night.

Caleb Agee: 16:59
I had a buddy who was at my house. He does videography as well. Yeah, that I saw last night. I had a buddy who was at my house. He makes he’s, does videography as well, and he was like this was brilliant, but he’s like that was probably the cheapest ad to produce of any. That ran last night. Yes, which is crazy. Yes, because it’s three, three shots, maybe. I’m sure they did, did a few more takes but it’s one running shot with a, with a graphic yeah, brilliant, let’s watch it.

Brandon Welch: 17:32
See the little girl running down the sidewalk. We could go shoot this ad right now. I can think of the neighborhood to go shoot. That’s one shot, that whole ad was one shot of probably a four-year-old running down the sidewalk. One graphic comes in, one simple piece of text. Our most junior video person here could pull this ad off. It says at three, these legs are unstoppable, but at 14, she’ll think they’re unbearable. And then it says one in two girls quit sports because of their body type.

Brandon Welch: 18:25
Yeah, people criticizing their body type? Yeah, and let’s have a different conversation with our girls. Yep, wow, right, yeah, so it’s a bar of soap, guys. Like what are we?

Caleb Agee: 18:37
doing here.

Brandon Welch: 18:38
It’s a $6 product at a grocery store.

Caleb Agee: 18:41
I don’t even know if Dove didn’t. They did not spend a lot of time talking about themselves at all.

Brandon Welch: 18:50
I’m not even sure their name was on the logo. The very very end is the name. Is Dove, the word on there. There’s their little insignia, and it’s Keep Her Confident. Actually, you know what it never even says Dove. They never even the the. There’s their little insignia, yeah, and, and it’s keep her confident. Actually, you know what it never even says. They never even put the word dove in there.

Caleb Agee: 19:05
How about? What a freaking pro. How about humility and just knowing that your brand will carry, and yeah?

Brandon Welch: 19:12
It’s not about you, yeah.

Caleb Agee: 19:14
And because they they were making this is almost a PSA say, right, um, and I’m sure that I know dove believes in this. They’re doing a lot of things to make that true, but they’ve made it bigger than themselves and then they did not bother putting their own name on it and they employed principles one and two as well.

Brandon Welch: 19:30
They did wait till the end uh, unpredictable. And then they did kids and puppies, you know, yeah, um, so that’s one way, that’s my favorite way. Um, we, we have some advertisers that spend a lot of money just promoting a cause and, like, the subtle thing at the end is that they’re maybe wearing their shirt or maybe you see that it’s them in front of their business. But we actually started a whole campaign and got a lot of our advertisers on the cause of hunger just to do that. And I will tell you those ads when we run those campaign and got a lot of our advertisers on the cause of hunger just to do that and I will tell you those ads.

Brandon Welch: 20:04
when we run those, those get a lot more like verbal feedback than some of the others we run right. So you can do that with a bigger cause and I would highly recommend that you do. You could also do it with Harry Met Sally, like the Hellman’s commercial, like they just referenced a.

Caleb Agee: 20:22
Your favorite mayo commercial right? Yeah, I hate mayonnaise.

Brandon Welch: 20:25
I was like dang it. I like that ad, but just I mean, they took something that was not big and they tied it to something that was big right, yes.

Brandon Welch: 20:34
Movies obviously transcend generations. They transcend any amount of like friction. They’re just like things. Uh, we had a. We had a client in here a few months ago and we have a. We recorded a line. He was talking about windows, okay, and he said buzz your windows, wolf right. Yeah, and everybody knows that home alone line, right and like. That will be, I guarantee you, the most popular ad of the whole bunch. Mm-hmm. Like it will be, that will be the one that people talk about.

Caleb Agee: 21:04
Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 21:05
Years from now. Right, so tie it to something bigger. Michelob did a little bit different thing. They tied it to Pickleball, right? Mm-hmm. And Pickleball is like the biggest thing in America for that demographic right now. The product was an afterthought. And then HIMSS, hers and HIMSS, that medicine company thought there was a little bit of oxymoron here, but they talked about being sick and stuck. Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 21:33
And talked about how the big pharma and big food is making America the sickest nation and it’s time to kick obesity and yada yada. But they tied what they’re doing to something bigger than them right yeah bigger problem, yeah, so you can do it with a problem, you can do it with a solution, you can do it with just something that’s fun, like pickleball, but put something bigger than your brand and naturally more magnetic or interesting than you, and uh, yeah, that’ll, you will earn attention.

Caleb Agee: 22:01
That’ll definitely get you. You’ll, you’ll earn that attention. You’ll hold it longer because, um, you know, it’s like brandon said the hard truth is people aren’t thinking about you. They don’t want to get over yourself. Think about you, that’s fine. They want to think about what they want to think about, and so, um, right now, that might be pickable, or that might be probably pickable. It’s probably pickable. Yeah, I think it’s probably the fastest growing sport in America right now.

Brandon Welch: 22:27
So, go and do likewise. Yeah, so there they are. Avoid all that is predictable. Put more puppies and kids in that thing and tie your brand to something bigger than you.

Caleb Agee: 22:37
Yeah, hey, if you saw a commercial last night that we didn’t, uh, talk about on the episode today, I’d love for you to drop that in the comments. We love, we love the dialogue in the comments. It’s really fun. So, grab the link, tag it, drop a comment. We would love to see which ones you thought were the best. Maybe tell us why you are a small business marketer. I’d love to see what you love, and so, um, we’ll, we’ll engage with you down there and then, um, also, if you ever have a question about marketing, you can email us at maven Monday, at Frank and mavencom.

Brandon Welch: 23:12
Uh, we’d love to, potentially, you know answer it right here, right here on an episode. So yeah, hey, you know what, If you’ve got an ad that you’re like make this more like the Super Bowl, we’ll put a script together for you. It’s interesting.

Caleb Agee: 23:26
Yeah, we’ll make it real interesting.

Brandon Welch: 23:27
There’s people that pay thousands of dollars for that Cool. We’ll be back here every Monday answering your real-life marketing questions, because marketers who can’t teach you why are just a fancy lie. Have a great week.