Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hey.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: All right. Welcome to John Gumas to our Victory podcast. Appreciate you taking the time. I was going to take this in all kinds of directions, but then I got distracted by all the baseballs behind you. So we got to talk about that before we jump in here.
[00:00:29] Speaker A: It's a collection. Luckily, I'm very, I'm very blessed that my, my business and personal career take me through sports. So I just have, I've had wonderful access to people and, and along the way, I get a signed baseball or someone gives me one, or it's a thank you. So every single one of them has a story. And every single one of them, I can tell you, every single one behind me is either a current hall of Famer or, or soon to be hall of Famer. So I'm very proud of that.
[00:00:54] Speaker B: That's a, that's a good tagline because a lot of your business is all about story based marketing.
[00:01:00] Speaker A: That's. That's so true. Yeah, it's, it's, it's all about story based. It's all about it. And I think it's funny doing this. I've had my company for 40 years, and when most, most people think of branding and marketing, they think of, okay, where should I run my ads? You know, should we go on Facebook or Instagram or, or should I run radio ads or billboards or, you know, whatever it is, you know, that, that, that, that's, to me, furthest from the truth. The first thing you have to do when you're a writer, Travis, you get it. The first thing is you have to tell a story. You have to tell a story.
[00:01:30] Speaker B: So let's talk a little bit about the story of your journey, because you got started your company, you started your company in 1984. So you were essentially coming online when, when at least the North American market was making the transition from primarily magazine and newspaper advertising into this new medium called cable TV to.
[00:01:48] Speaker A: So.
[00:01:48] Speaker B: And then, and then you went from cable TV into this new medium called the Internet.
[00:01:53] Speaker A: And then.
[00:01:53] Speaker B: And then the Internet went into this weird thing called social media. So you have been across some fantastically amazing, like, trends in the marketing space. Can we talk a little bit about what that was like of being at the forefront of kind of each of these new technologies? And ultimately, what are the foundational elements that have remained the same through all of that?
[00:02:14] Speaker A: Sure. Well, you forgot desktop publishing, and you forgot three or four or five major recessions. You know, other than that, pretty smooth.
[00:02:22] Speaker B: Couple of wars in the Middle East.
[00:02:23] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah, those two on your.
[00:02:25] Speaker B: Explosion yeah, there's just a few things.
[00:02:27] Speaker A: You know, it's, I tell you that the, the key, right, I mean, surviving and, and thriving over, you know, many years, let alone 40 years, is, is having an understanding, right? It's the, the only thing I think every entrepreneur needs to understand, the only right, is change. So change is happening now. There's a change happening right now in everyone's industry called AI. And, and it is going to happen bigger and faster than any change ever we've, we've ever occurred. And if we're having this conversation six months from now, it's going to be a very, it's going to be very.
[00:03:02] Speaker B: Different because they won't be having this conversation. My avatar will be here interviewing you.
[00:03:08] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. That's probably what's going to happen, you know, so, so businesses just need to understand how to adapt. And no matter how large you get, you need to always looking forward. You can't, you can't just assume things are going to be the same as they are. Even when you're successful, there's a tendency to kind of just, just sit back on your laurels and say, okay, things are going good. No, it's going to change. Next year will be different than the year before. So how do you as a company morph? How does your product continue to be sought after you, how does it stand out from its, your competitors? How does it resonate to consumers? How do you get people to engage in your, in your marketing efforts? How do you get them to come into your stores? How do you get them, you know, how do become a thought leader? All these things that you have to do, right? And you have to, you have to always be recreating yourself, but never forget who you are. Never forget the core essence of your brand, but always the way you message, the way that is always going to morph and adjust to the marketplace. It has to.
[00:04:08] Speaker B: So it's interesting talking about thought leadership as being a core part of this. How did you engineer thought leadership in the 80s versus the 90s versus, you know, the aughts to now? Because you had some pretty spectacularly different tools available in each of those decades.
[00:04:23] Speaker A: Yeah, well, thanks for setting me up with that question because here's there's two things we have to look at. You said tools, right? Tools are one thing, the message is another thing, right? The tools. Think of the tools, whether it's cable TV or just AI based email marketing or whatever it is, those are simply. Think about it. Those are simply the delivery vehicles, right? They're the delivery Vehicles. At the end of the day, it's still a person speaking to another person, trying to convince that person to do something and take that one step further. Now look at ourselves as consumers, right? The moment that somebody says to you, all right, Travis, here, I want you to buy this, it's great. You're going to love it. The moment we feel we're being sold to is the moment we kind of step back and go, I don't know if I trust you. I don't know if I believe you. You're trying to sell me something. It's always been even more so now than it was in the past. But, you know, I've always felt this, and it was always there, but significantly greater now is this concept of, of not selling. So how do you sell without selling? That's where the. That's where. That's where thought leadership comes in. Thought leadership is not new. It just has a fancy name. It was always this idea of credibility, believability in promoting product. Especially the more, the more expensive the product is, the more sophisticated the product is, the more that. That goes into play. If you're selling a piece of gum, it doesn't matter as much. But. Right. If you're, if you're selling financial services or you're selling anything that that is, has any sort of intellectual property or. It's critical. It's critical that, that you become a thought leader and people believe you and what you're saying is accurate and true and unique to. To your competitors.
[00:06:09] Speaker B: So what are some of the best sort of case studies you've seen in your career with the companies worked with of somebody who wasn't a thought leader, that was able to have a smart strategy and a good story to essentially become the thought leader in their space?
[00:06:21] Speaker A: Well, I would preface that by saying, first of all, you cannot guess. Right? Any organization, no matter how big, how small, cannot guess or assume at what their message needs to be? All right, so the most common mistake I've seen over 40 years is companies coming to us and say, here's what I need to say is exactly what I want to say. It's exactly what, what I want my customers to hear. And we would, we would ask politely, usually politely, you know, so where are you? Are you sure of that? Are you positive of that?
[00:06:52] Speaker B: Are you talking about marketing or Hollywood?
[00:06:54] Speaker A: Well, Hollywood, I don't know. You're the expert there. But, but marketing, I can tell you that, you know, many companies find themselves at a disadvantage because they move forward with marketing programs assuming their messaging is Right. Assuming where our first step, so there's, in my, in the way we approach is there's five steps to marketing. The first, first step, and I'll go with these very quickly, first step is what we call discovery. That's learning the truth about why people would buy your product and being able to articulate that. So step two is taking that data and we could talk about how we get that data in a second data and turning it into words. Message. This would be an elevator pitch. Your biggest form of message, like 30 seconds, 45ish words, all the way down to your smallest form of message, which is, which is a tagline, 2, 3, 4, 5 words. That, that is basically your messaging package. So that's the second step. You develop that, but you develop it based on the data that you, that you created and you uncovered. So when you create that message, you're not guessing. It's based on fact, it's not based on assumption. Then with that message in place, now you go into the advertising which is developing the, you know, the campaigns. How do you deliver? Right. Is it, is it cable tv? Is it digital marketing? Is it, you know, ctv? Whatever it is, it's, it's the right way to deliver it. And then it's, it's, it's monitoring as you go. So that, that's the modern day marketing structure in a, in a very, very small package. Right. There's a million details that go into each. What I want to emphasize here is understanding what you have to say to someone to get them to take notice of you and to take interest in you and to either purchase a product or perform the action you want them to perform. And you need to do that in a way that's unique to every competitor you have. And by the way, you need to do that in about seven seconds or less when it comes to a website.
Other than that it's pretty, yeah. Other than that, it's pretty darn easy. But you know, it's, you know, we talk about writing and again, you know, you're, you're an expert at that. But marketing writing is so different. Yeah, it's so very different. And it's about saying the most you can in the least amount of time.
[00:09:06] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:09:07] Speaker A: And most of the time it's not about selling something, it's about starting a conversation.
Because the selling happens after someone meets you. Your company gets to know more about your product line, et cetera, et cetera. That's when the selling starts.
You know, it's, it's, it's changed over the Years. So I know that was the original question. So how has it changed? It was 40 years ago when I first started. It was a little more in your face. Right. There weren't a lot of media options. All right? There weren't a lot.
Now fast forward. We are so smart as consumers. We can find out anything we want about any product. We could even find out, in the most part, you know, what it costs a company to make something, all right? So we know what a price needs to be or should be. And so that's what's changed. So marketers need to be much more transparent, much more honest, much more believable, much more credible, you know, more straightforward in how they message themselves. And otherwise we as consumers see right through it.
[00:10:05] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Very sophisticated. It sort of. It reminds me of the quote from Holly again. I keep going back to Hollywood because my first career was there, right? But maybe seven, eight years ago, Steven Spielberg said that the problem with today's movie audience is that they were there. They were trained to not have the attention to put up with people like Spielberg because now Spielberg wants to do his really long, epic, dramatic movies. And he's like, but all of his early movies were all popcorn, super fast, whatever. And he's like, so I trained my audience to not want to put up with people like me. Now that I'm at this point in my career and I feel like direct response marketers have kind of done that. They've, they've trained people not to put up with the direct response stuff anymore. You can't, you know, I, I cut my teeth on, you know, 60 minute video sales letters and 10,000 word sales pages. And some industries they'll still work, but I have clients where we'll pitch that stuff to them now or they'll put that up there and you can just see the entire team go, no, I don't want to read that. Can you give it to me in the minute long TikTok?
[00:11:03] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. You know, it's, it's, there's a study I've been following for, oh, maybe 20 years since, since websites first started. Maybe at 20ish years somewhere in there. And the study was, and it was, it was by one of the, it was, give me a, I forget who does the study, but it was an industry organization and the study was how long would the average consumer go to a website? How long would you wait on a website before you got the information you needed? Right? So you go to a website and you're, you're either it takes time to download or you can't find the information.
How long would you wait before you leave? When, when the study first, when I first read it, maybe 15ish years ago it was about 20. Today it's at less than 7 seconds. So what does that say? You know, to your point? Exactly. We as consumers, all of us consumers, we just don't have the patience because everything happens so quickly. As marketers, you need to understand that, you need to understand, you know, that, that folks don't have patience. It's, you know, and it's your job to capture their attention. And if you capture their attention, then they'll give you a little more of their time. But, but thinking in, you know, like the long form direct response that you're talking about that you cut your teeth in, those days are gone, right? Those days are gone because consumers have changed. So yeah, that, that to me that's a massive shift right there.
[00:12:20] Speaker B: So what have been some of your favorite stories of. So I want to mention here you've got two books, one's called Market. Right. But you also are the sort of the pioneer and the, the inventor of Challenger brand marketing. And I love the fact that Challenger brand marketing is all about sort of the David versus Goliath. And so I, since you've kind of lived in that world and I know a lot, a big part of that is, you know, how do you, how do you go up against the gorilla in your industry? Part of that is a really strong story, of course. So do you have one or two stories of people that you've worked with that have been the David's that have taken on Goliaths and have succeeded really well doing that?
[00:12:55] Speaker A: There is a company that was launching a, an online product designed to help consumers find the best type of travel insurance. So imagine you're going on a trip and you just, you're going to some exotic place and you need to cover the trip. Where do I go and who's charging me? Is it the right type of insurance? Is it, you know, are they going to cover me for what I.
So they had created this incredible algorithm and system that allowed you them, you just plugged in certain information and it searched every possibility and it came back. It was kind of an early AI based product, incredible technology.
So the owners came to us and they were in business for about a year and it wasn't working. And so we started talking and saying, well, why do people buy this product? They said, because the technology is so great, the technology allows them to do this. And they were so, so convinced. So they were the ultimate challenger brand because they were against. Think of every big insurance company that in the world. Every big brand, they were up against them, and every single big brand was trying to kill them, you know, because they knew that technology was good, but the consumers weren't catching on. So we. They're the ultimate challenge of brand. So we took them through our process and we talked about earlier. Our process starts with, with. With discovery. So we did a. We talked to their customers and we asked our customers very unique questions. And the questions that you would not expect to be asked. These questions were all designed to really extract from these customers people who use them and love them. Why did you use them, essentially? What was it about the service and ultimately, what are the words that got you to use them? Well, fast forward. We did all this research and what, you know, probably not surprising to you, but what came out of this, the technology didn't matter at all. It did not matter at all. What mattered was peace of mind. I'm going to go on this incredible trip to the Galactic Ghost and I'm spending my life savings and I just want to make sure that when I'm there, I have peace of mind knowing that anything goes wrong, it's covered and I'm covered by the right company. So that was kind of a major messaging shift for them. So when that shift happened and then we started the market from there, it just turned the company around. Completely turned around. They didn't change what they were doing. They didn't change any technology. They didn't change anything other than the message.
Right. It's what you say to people and how you say it. And they were the only ones that, that could say that. And they were saying it in such a unique way, it just, it really penetrated. So even though these big competitors are spending hundreds of times more than they were, they still managed to. At one point, I think they were the number one searched insurance company.
[00:15:38] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:15:39] Speaker A: Because of just that message. Right. Kind of humanizing the message versus a technology message. So I mean, that to me is an example of just how you need to look at your organization differently. Don't assume, you know, because I've been doing this 40 years. Not once, not once have I ever seen, you know, one of our clients say, okay, here's, here's what my customers want. And actually the data showing that's what they want. What tends to happen is we as human beings, right, we're so caught up in our industry, whatever we do, we know it so well, it's impossible to step outside and look at it objectively like a prospective new customer would. Right. And then you have seven seconds, by the way, to convince them that this is what they want. So not knowing that, that process, not knowing how to do that, not knowing how to execute, that is where most organizations really never hit their peak because they're, they're, they're making assumptions or they're going head to head against these guerrilla competitors that are outspending them. By the way, Pepsi is a, is a, is a challenger brand to Coke. Right. So it doesn't, these are not small companies, but these are companies that, that are being either outspent, you know, monetarily, and that could be, you know, usually marketing dollars. But it can be more retail locations, better brand awareness, you know, smaller sales force, et cetera, you know, just resources in general. But it's understanding that you are a challenger brand so you can, you can position yourself accordingly and play in the markets where you can win.
[00:17:07] Speaker B: Sorry, my cat is over here meowing at me for some reason. I don't know why customer, my podcast manager is here.
[00:17:12] Speaker A: I'm guessing your cat's a fan of challenger brand marketing.
[00:17:16] Speaker B: So let's say someone comes to you, they're running a business, you know, they're doing, I don't know, say a million a year in whatever industry they're at. They've got five or six employees and they really want to, you know, they really want to make a push for the eight figure mark under that assumption, like what is your process of how you're going to work with someone like that to help them, essentially 10x their business over however long that would be.
[00:17:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
The first step would, what we call is discovery process. And the discovery process that we take all companies through consists of gathering data from three main sources. First would be customers, current customers. We want to know why current customers use you, what they love about you, why do they choose you over your competition? What is it about them? Then we're also going to, we're going to, we're going to ask very unique questions of those, of those customers. We're going to take our customer, the company and their key folks through a very similar process. And not only are we going to learn what their, the essence of their brand is, but they're going to be able to see their thoughts as they relate to their customers thoughts. And 100% of the time, Travis, they are off. They're not connected. Not connected. Not, you know, sometimes they're closer than others, but they're never connected. That's the first thing A company has to do is connect. And the third piece of data where we look at is we do an analysis, a deep dive analysis in their, to their competition. Because think about your competition is where you're losing business to. It's, you know, when someone is, is, is looking to hire a company, they're going to look at that company, maybe two or three or four or five competitors. What are those competitors saying? What are they, you know, so, so we need to understand that. So those three points of data, customers, internal we call it, and, and competitors, though, in the middle of those three points of data lies the essence of the organization. So then we take that data and then we craft messaging. Then we also craft a marketing strategy out of that as well. But we're crafting that message, which is the most important thing a company can do based on facts, not based on assumption, not based on any sort of guessing, not based on anything other than facts. Because the facts is what really, to your point, take that company from a million to wherever they want to go. And so it's, it's doing, it's owning that, owning that segment of the market, that niche, because every company has to have a niche that they own and ultimately can defend from anybody. If you own a niche and can defend it from anyone where no one else can enter that niche, you are going to be incredibly successful. And that's where most organizations don't always understand, you know, what they have to do. They try to sell everything to everyone and nobody can do that. So you truly need to understand, you're.
[00:19:52] Speaker B: The first marketer I've ever heard talk about, you know, creating your niche and then defending.
[00:19:57] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, you're talking about challenger brands, right? We're talking about challenger brands. There's one thing in common of every challenger brand I've ever, ever worked with 40 years, they do not have unlimited resources like their larger competitors. Okay, so when you do not have unlimited resources and you have a set amount of resource, what the exercise becomes? How do you maximize what you have versus how do you, what do you do? You know, the, the best option. Well, mostly the best option. You typically can't afford to do that, so don't try to do that. So where can you take the resources you have and how can you create a playing field where you are the, where you could, you could win? Right. And that's usually a niche. That's in fact, it's not usually, it's always a niche. What is it unique about your company? Because remember, challenger brand marketing is about this process of thinking of walking up a staircase, you're starting at the bottom. Your first step is to get to the first step, all right? Once you're at the second step or first step, now you got to get to the second step. Each step you go up, all right? Each step is a slightly different adjustment to what you're doing because you have more resources, right? Because you've become successful at that first step, because you've narrowed the playing field. You've created a niche, you've identified your messaging that's unique. Now you're successful there. So it's a very systematic, controlled way of growing a company based on marketing, based on branding. And, you know, your brand, and we haven't even talked about branding yet, but your brand is. Is, I'd argue, the most important thing a company has, right? Because that's your promise, that's your trust. And, you know, and when it comes to a value of a brand, we value. In my mind, the way you value a brand is what something costs you to make.
Any product, any product. Say a pencil. I'm holding a pencil. This pencil cost me a dollar to make. What is somebody willing to pay for this pencil? If it's a commodity, right, Where I don't have a brand and it's a commodity, they might pay, you know, whoever, whatever's the cheapest pencil they'll buy. They'll buy the cheapest pencil. But if I've created a brand with a unique niche and a unique message, the value of that is what someone's willing to pay for that. So think of all the great brands in the world. You know, Apple, I think, is everyone's one of everyone's favorite in terms of what they've done. You know, you're willing to pay whatever for their products, right? Think of, you know, clothing, perfume, even goes down to water, bottled water, for God's sake, right? And there's all. There's. Everyone has a brand. And how you create that brand and how you niche that brand and how you message that brand allows you to build it. And as you build that brand, the value of the brand, what somebody is willing to pay for your products and your services are connected directly to that brand. Because if you don't have a brand or an established brand, then all you're selling on is, is. Is product. And you never, ever want to be in a position if you're a company that you're selling on price. Because that's a dangerous game, right? Because you're just racing to the bottom because there'll always be Someone cheaper.
[00:22:52] Speaker B: Yeah, right.
[00:22:53] Speaker A: And someone can always, you know, change their product to be cheaper. And I'll give you, I'll give you another example of a, of a company there in the. This is, I'm giving you a complete different analogy because it works with every type of industry. This company was in the, in the medical industry, so they made a device that actually helped people breathe better. It was a device would, that would put aerosol medication into somebody's lungs, directly into their lungs. So it was, it was, I mean, very, very useful. Not useful, but critical tool in hospitals. They were an American company, so they had a, a newcomer come into the market. It was a company, it was an Asian company who came in with a product that was less than half the price. Less than half. And all of their customers started buying this, this new product because it was cheaper. And the company saying, oh yeah, it's just as good as that product. This, this, the company, the American company put themselves in that position because they never established a brand, never established a, you know, a real messaging strategy, always sold on kind their laurels, New competitor came in, it almost put them out of business. So, long story short, we went through the whole process, discovery, all that, and created a new message, a new brand that really talked about how critical this product was not only to the, you know, person administrating it, administering it in the hospital, but to the patient. And how this product would keep somebody out of emergency room for a month versus the other product they'd be back in a week. You know, just creating value that value that connected value that we knew that, that, that their customer needed to hear. Because we did the research. We did the research and we knew what they needed to hear in order to pay more for this product. So we did that and changed things around.
And now this company is hitting record sales every year. I mean, record sales every year. And it's always that difficult. I'm not saying it's easy, but it's not always as difficult as you think. A lot of times it's just common sense, but it's knowing how to extract the right information from the right people so you can use that. Because when it comes to research, you can easily go down the wrong path if you don't ask the right questions. People can tell you the wrong information and you use that as fact. So, so companies have to be really, really careful when they're, when they're, when they're gathering this data.
[00:25:18] Speaker B: That's fantastic. So what do you see as the, for, for the 2000s, what do you see as the, the big challenges for, for marketing and what do you see as the big opportunities?
[00:25:26] Speaker A: I think challenges is going to, is going to be at the, at the root of challenges. And I think because we don't know what they are yet, we may never know what they are. You know, they're happening so fast and it's such a challenge to companies to try to keep up. But with that said, the companies just have to stay true to who they are. Stay true to who you are. What is your niche? What makes you different? What do your customers need to hear? Always stay connected to your customers because the end of the day they're the only ones that matter. Stay connected. And then how do you get more people like that? Because your lowest hanging fruit to build a company is to find people just like the customers you have. Because if you did an analysis of your current customers, you will find there is a, there is a commonality somewhere. There's a commonality amongst all your customers somewhere. And your job, our job is to find that. And when we do, then you can easily connect with other like people that will be interested in what you have to offer much, much faster than folks who are outside of that.
[00:26:27] Speaker B: Wow. Well, this has been fantastic for people that want to learn more about your company. Or maybe somebody's listening, going like, oh my God, I need the three pillars of research. Where do they go to find out more about you and your team?
[00:26:38] Speaker A: Yeah, they can go just to gumas.com, that's g u m a s dot com and if they want to email me real easy, jgumasumas.com that's j g u m a s at g u m a s dot com.
[00:26:51] Speaker B: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.
[00:26:53] Speaker A: My pleasure, Travis. Thank you.
