Advertising Doesn’t Affect Me “I am immune to it”

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Ryan: Welcome back! On today’s episode of Advertising in America, we’re going to delve into the cryptic world of mind control. Are elite advertisers meddling in the dark arts of MKUltra experiments, or is advertising just a colossal scam?

Let’s find out. Mick over to you.

Mick: My friend Steven McQuaid told me about some ad he saw and how it wasn’t a good ad. So I asked him, how did he become an expert in advertising?

He said, well, I’ve been watching commercials and listening to them my whole life. Well, based on that theory, I’ve been watching videos of Eddie Van Halen my whole life. I guess that makes me a guitar virtuoso. The difference between watching a musician play and watching a TV commercial is that you know one of them is trying to influence you.

Eddie’s just playing guitar. Ford wants me to buy a pickup truck. The difference in our knowledge of that difference is everything. I know so little about the electric guitar, I don’t even know which end to blow it to, but when it comes to the advertising thing, we know what they’re trying to do, when it works and when it doesn’t.

If I watch that Ford commercial 87 times and don’t buy the pickup truck, how can you call that a success? We’re exposed to five times more advertising messages over the last ten years, but we don’t buy five times as much stuff. That’s proof that even though we’ve always been good at ignoring advertising, we’re actually getting better at it.

Think of the number of ads we’re exposed to every day, and consider how many cause us to change our minds, switch brands, or try something that we didn’t want to try. It’s effectively zero. A rounding error. It isn’t just you that isn’t affected by advertising, it’s all of us.

Claims that advertising doesn’t affect me are probably a bit overstated. We all think we’re far too smart to fall for advertising. And obviously, if we were all too smart for it, then there would be no advertising industry at all. We’d be a fool to conclude that, everyone is wasting their money on something that’s inherently worthless.

But, be careful when you’re telling a consumer that you know them better than they know themselves. They will always push back, and they’ll be right. They have the data. If I didn’t buy that pickup truck, then the ad didn’t affect me. That’s just how it is.

Ryan: You blow on the tailpipe. Chris, what say you?

Chris: When I hear this old chestnut, I always say, really?

What brand of Nikes are you wearing? Are you driving a Dodge Ram, the most advertised truck in America? Or the Ford 150, the second most advertised truck in America? Where did you make those choices after doing your own research? The simple truth is, the world’s leading advertisers are generally creating the world’s biggest brands.

Your pitch is, well the advertising seems to be working on hundreds of millions of people, but not my buddy Dave. Really? Of course it does, or millions of companies wouldn’t spend billions of dollars in advertising. Corporations are cutting costs wherever they can. You think their high-powered marketing departments are all missing out on what Dave figures out turns out advertising doesn’t work? What are the odds? Everyone wants to believe it might work on the masses, but not me. They are not the general public. We all like to think we’re unique, and that’s fine, but put all of us unique people together and we behave like the general public and you ain’t the exception.

What is more likely the case, is that you often see ads that aren’t particularly aimed at you, and when you don’t respond, you think that’s proof that advertising doesn’t change minds.

Every time an ad doesn’t work on you, you think you’re bulletproof. Well, if you don’t like cruises, then sure, a cruise ad won’t work. If you’re a lifelong Bud drinker, then no, a Miller Lite ad may not make you change brands against your will. But you can be damn sure that the things that are aimed at you work just fine on you.

And one day, when you get bored with Budweiser, you might very well try Miller Lite.

Ryan: Chris Torbay, everyone. Less filling, but still tastes great. This whole thing is starting to feel like a Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.
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Ryan: Mick, you said the other day that no one really wants to admit that advertising works on them.

Mick: Well, yeah, because it makes us sound like we’re all just a bunch of marks, waiting for the television to tell us what to do. And there’s a certain truth to that. On the other hand, we would also be fools to suggest that we’re not influenced by the things that we see and hear every day.

Ryan: Absolutely. We’re not naive and gullible to have been persuaded subconsciously or consciously, but yeah.

Chris: And maybe that’s it, we would feel like marks if we were admitting that it worked on us against our will. I guess that was kind of part of my point there, is no one is saying advertising works on you whether you like it or not.

We’re saying if you are the right person in the right frame of mind, with the right needs, and you don’t have a solution to a problem, the advertising will present a solution that you can then choose using all your faculties. Nobody said you’re a rat in a maze.

Mick: And also, we have to remember that when we’re talking about advertising, there’s a baseline.

And the baseline of advertising in pretty much any category, in any market, is a group of people who own businesses saying, here’s who we are and here’s what we sell. Which is, of course, answering two questions that nobody’s asking, who are you and what do you sell?

So if that’s the baseline is just, we have a product that we are prepared to sell for you and we’d like you to do so that’s not very compelling and anybody could say, well, that doesn’t work.

Chris: There’s no particular reason for me to listen to that.

Mick: Exactly. But if you can create an ad that answers the question that the consumer is really asking, which is why is buying from you good for me?

If you can legitimately answer that question in a way that makes sense to the consumer, people are gonna buy the thing you’re selling.

Chris: Yeah, and I’m therefore not an idiot for doing that. I’m not a sheep. I’m doing it because you said something that was interesting, and I thought through it and said, yes, that’s actually interesting to me. And then I made a conscious decision. Well, now, I’m not a sheep. I’m a smart person because I listened to actual information, or it made me want to Google you and then I went to your website and I found out more, and it’s like, yeah, these guys totally feel like the brand for me.

Mick: Well, sometimes you’ve got a category where you have to buy it. Like, insurance, for example, you have to buy this stuff. It’s not an option. You can’t just say, well, I’m not going to turn my car. So, therefore, the insurance company has a different question to answer.

Chris: Yeah. Why you?

Mick: Why you?

Ryan: Right. Well, Roy always taught us that, look, identity is why people buy.

Identity is, we’re always trying to tell the world who we are, what we are, what we stand for, what we believe in. What our rank, what our class, what our status is within ourselves. Within our individuals that we love and care for, and within the tribes that we care about, our community, our companies, our family. And really what it boils down to is every purchase, regardless of what it is, is us with an internal deep underlying need that says, hey, I need to status up. This is the best choice for me because it improves my rank in the company that I choose to work for. The brands that I choose to put on my body. The woman that I choose to spend my life with. All of these things are just telling the world where you stand amongst the…

Chris: Yeah, I want to be seen as the guy who wears Nikes. I want to be seen as the guy who carries an iPhone. I want to be seen as the guy who drives this vehicle.

Ryan: But not so overt as that, right? We’re not doing that out of our egotistical arrogance most of the time, sometimes we are. But there is an aspiration to elevate ourselves up in our own hearts, in our own feelings. At the end of the day, what we’re trying to figure out is how do we influence these people to say, I want to stand with that person, that brand, that guy, that woman for what they’re selling, right?

That entity, right? Which is our company, our brands, right? I like those colors, I like those shapes, I like the feminine feel of this, the masculine feel of this, the sharp cutting edge of this aesthetic or feel, the softness of this, all of this comes down to representations of ourselves.

Chris: And this goes back to something that Mick said in the previous episode which is, it’s not the medium, it’s the message, right? It’s not that advertising works because advertising works. Advertising works because you’ve said something that is relevant to that person. And it’s not figuring out that you should advertise or where you should advertise. It’s what should your message be.

And that’s the part that’s effective. It’s not that if you put something on TV, then mindlessly, people will buy it or come to your store or order your products. The effort goes into what is it that we are going to say to the kind of person that we’re targeting, that is relevant to them, that is motivating to them, that is aspirational to them, as you said. And that’s the part that works, the strategy and messaging, not advertising. Not the fact that it is a TV ad or a radio ad or a billboard.

Mick: I think the best example of the truth that people buy based on emotion and based on identity, I think beer is the best example of that. Because the fluids are absolutely interchangeable. I challenge anybody to pick their own favorite brand of beer if I covered them up. But the Bud drinker, when offered a Heineken, will look at you like you’re a lunatic.

The Heineken drinker, when offered a Pabst Blue Ribbon, he wouldn’t wash his feet in that. The Stella drinker has a certain attitude that is inconsistent with the Miller Lite drinker. It’s the same stuff, but people will get angry. They will have emotional responses if they’re told they have to.

Chris: You have to drink this other brand.

Mick: Yeah, why would I drink that? That’s what you get in bowling alleys. It’s freaking beer, they’ll give you a nice warm buzz, shut up and drink it. That’s not what people actually do, it’s provable.

Ryan: The nice thing about Pabst Blue Ribbon is that somebody already has washed their feet in it before you got it.

Mick: Probably, but you won’t notice and that’s the important thing.

Chris: I think it was the same problem though, right?

Ryan: That’s why people buy Apple products versus Samsung, and that’s why we have competitors who literally have the exact same products, but one gets to sell it for more than the other, based off of these alignments that we’re looking at. And that’s how profoundly important it is to marketing as a whole. If we’re glossing over all of it, by asking questions too early too soon, still questions to ask. But what channels should I be on, what should I put on this ad that I’m doing on Google?

We need to step back and really look at, what is the big picture here. What are we trying to do? Are we trying to be the premium product in town? Or in the country? Or in the world? Are we trying to be the low-priced provider? Are we looking to take over the world? Or are we looking to dominate our backyard? All of these things have a dramatic effect on what the message should be. And from the message, what channels should we be on…

Chris: Those examples that you give, there is no other way for people to find out about your brand other than advertising. If I am honestly looking for the cheapest water heater that I could possibly get. My water heater just died, I have no money, and I want the cheapest possible solution to get hot water back into my house. I can only look to advertising and hopefully, as you say, find the provider who says we are a low-cost plumber.

As soon as I see an ad that answers that question, I have that piece of information. If I am at the other end of the spectrum and I’m trying to upgrade everything in my house, and I want the best dishwasher and the best this, and I want a shower with eight heads, then what I’m looking for is, show me the plumber who’s going to give me the imported Italian faucets with the extra here, and then multiple controls, and it looks like a spaceship in front of my shower stall.

The only way I can do this, I can look to advertisers, which brand is telling me these things about themselves. You cannot find that information any other way. Unless you visit the website of every plumber in town, right? Those pieces of information are not available except in the way that they market themselves.

And then you know, I know what I’m going to get at the Dollar Store. Because I know what the Dollar Store stands for. I know what I’m going to get from Nordstrom’s because I know what Nordstrom stands for. And all those things come from the way those two companies advertise themselves.

Ryan: The alternative is simple, go to Google, look at how many stars they have, and look at what the star rating is. Basically, most people on this planet are looking at a star rating of something over 4.5, and a company that has an incredible amount of stars is probably going to be expensive. And the ones that have enough stars are going to probably be the most affordable, and I’m going to try them first.

In the majority of cases, and then the ones that have not enough stars, like they’re under a hundred, they’re the small guy in the chances of getting the kind of quality of service I’m looking for. Equal to that is I’m making assumptions as the average consumer that the big company is going to have a better warranty.

So, I’ll go back to your example about the hot water tank and say, yes, I want the cheapest hot water tank. Everything in a grudge purchase, like car insurance, or a hot water tank, would be transactional in nature, until you give them some other reason for it to be more than transactional, right?

There is a relational component. And when we think about the cheapest costs, we really start to think about the three costs of any human being. The money, the energy, and the time. So, they’re looking for convenience before, during, and after the sale. That’s a big deal. Because if we’re able to articulate that before they get to Google, we have an incrementally, distinctly, exponentially higher chance of them considering us or the alternatives given that, basically, everyone else is pretty much equal.

Chris: Because they already know a little something about us. They know where we stand on those three things that you talked about. And again, the advertising hasn’t forced you to make that decision, it’s not mind control. But it has primed you for, you know what? I should look into these guys.

It’s interesting, the number of people who say, I did my own research. No one does their own research double-blind and totally dispassionately. They don’t Google it, look at the top ten listings, which is already, of course, a sort of some kind, and equally go to the top ten things, and then choose the right one. You don’t look at the top ten brands of sneakers and then decide which one you’re going to go to. I read about that air suspension thing and I think that Nikes are really the ones for me. No, when you are ready, you may have a short list of one or two, and that came from the marketing that they have done over the years.

You may still make an intellectual decision, you may still do some research and go, you know what, now that I think about it, I like what I read about this when I did a modicum research. But no one goes in cold, and the degree to which you don’t go in cold is the advertising working.

Mick: That actually matters more if you are a premium provider, if you’re not a low-cost provider. If you’re a low cost provider, your message is very simple. I’m a low-cost provider, and I can prove it. That’s the only thing.

Ryan: You’ve met them at transactional.

Mick: You meet them there, and all you have to do is prove that you will charge the least amount of money for this product or service, and then a certain consumer will purchase from you.

If you are the high-cost provider, if you are a premium product, then you absolutely have to consider what purchasing this brand says about me. When I bought my first BMW, I absolutely said to myself, “Huh, I will no longer be driving a Volkswagen. I am now going to be driving a BMW. What does that say about me?”

And it’s stupid because we shouldn’t be talking about engines, and cup holders, and fuel efficiency, and steering, and all that stuff. But in fact, a major consideration is, that this is going to change how I am perceived by others. Where does that shit come from? That comes from marketing. That’s the only place it comes from.

Chris: I used to work on a bunch of major car brands and the most recent was Porsche. And there was an interesting story that we always told people and it’s partly on this point, but I’m actually going to make a separate point with it, which is, when most people go to buy a vehicle, they go shopping and they have a short list of between two and three, the average is like 2.7 vehicles.

So, you’re gonna go and buy a mid-sized SUV or something like that. You go look at the CR-V, you go look at the Ford Runner, whatever the Toyota equivalent is, you probably go look at the Mitsubishi equivalent, and you’ve got this shortlist. When people buy Porsches, the short list of cars they want to look at is 1.2.

They kinda already know they want to buy a Porsche. They may look at an Audi if they’re particularly rich, they may look at a Ferrari, but they basically already know what they want to look at. The fact that a car buyer, ignores for a moment the fact that Porsche marketing has made them fall in love with Porsche since they were a 15 year old boy, and that’s why their list is only 1.2.

Even on the other side of that equation, the average SUV buyer has already got a list of 2.7 cars. How did they get down to 2.7? There are 20 different things, they have already cut certain ones off their list, and there are a couple of dealerships that they know they are going to want to go to. They know they’re going to want to go to a Honda, or Toyota, and then what are the third and fourth? That’s the marketing.

The marketing has already shortened their list. They already found a few, and if it’s not Honda and Toyota, then it’s Mitsubishi and Kia or something like that, it could be a different short list. But no one goes car shopping with a short list and 15 cars.

Ryan: I’m going to be so bold as to say, it’s not just the marketing, but it is the brand-forward advertising that we’re talking about here. Because nobody is getting the impression of a Porsche at that Porsche of Toronto. They’re getting their brand impression well before that.

As you said, Porsche is playing an extraordinary long game here. And most of the small businesses in this universe aren’t in the long game. They’ve just started, and they’ve been around a long time, Heck, we’ve dealt with clients 38 years in business and nobody knew that they existed. And they thought they had top of market, and they were running $4.5 million. And if that were true, that 38-year-old company would be a top of market at $4.5 million. But today, after two years of advertising with them they’re at $16 million and they’re on their way to $25 million in market share.

And that shows you the disproportionate power of story, of branding, of embed. I talk about this with my clients all the time. You guys have heard this a thousand times. It’s really about the three different areas of the brain. We’ve got the short-term memory, that’s like the RAM in your computer, it has a 7-second shelf life, and it’s going to forget basically the thing that doesn’t matter in the first 7 seconds or so. And then there’s the stuff where we hit them with a little bit more repetition, maybe a little salience, something interesting, something less predictable. And it goes back into that working memory that lasts about 7 days. That 7 days gets erased by sleep, like defragging an old PC. It’s cleaning up the files and getting rid of the old stuff that doesn’t really matter a whole lot.

A lot of our clients, they’re selling services. They don’t want to be remembered, right? The client doesn’t want to remember their insurance options or like that new guy that they’re not trying, particularly if they have a guy, right? They want to know, what I’m going to be doing for supper tomorrow night or breakfast in the morning. And as we keep pushing forward and pushing forward with more and more frequency, more and more salient message, that Porsche that people fall in love with when they’re 12, that’s starting to build up in the back of the brain, the chemical part of the brain.

Now, I see every form of advertising, certainly brand-forward advertising, from truck wraps and logos, certainly, but billboards, radio, TV, all of these impressions cumulatively are stacking up like bricks. Now, if you have a whole bunch of bricks without any emotion what you have is enough bricks for a pretty solid brick shithouse.

What you don’t have is mortar, and mortar is the absolute glue to this. Now, a Stanford study many years ago was researching PTSD, and some other really dramatic emotional experiences, and they found that the chemical release that came from that, from the emotion, was the thing that created the stickiness, the adhesion, the mortar.

Now, with mortar and bricks, we can build a McMansion, right? So we’re going from a brick shit house, a wobbly old house of cards to a McMansion that’s glued together with monstrous power of the mortar. And now we have this really stable foundation to live the life in the long-term memory for when we are eventually going to buy this Porsche, and I’ve got to say, I’ve always thought you were insufferable, you didn’t need to buy that BMW.

Ryan: Guys, this is a really fascinating conversation, and one of the things that I say all the time, that really really resonates with me, I HAVE A GUY.

Mick: I always have a guy, and that means that this provider or whatever it is, this person’s providing matters so much to me that not only do I always go back, but I make other people go back.

Chris: You in fact put your reputation on the line, on behalf of that other guy.

Mick: And if you need tires, you have to get tires from my guy. This is of course the holy grail of what advertising’s trying to accomplish and there’s an inherent contradiction there. Because when you talk about a person like me who is almost the perfect description of a relational consumer, I will always go back to the same restaurant, I’ll always go back to the same tire guy. And I’ll become an advocate for the people who I like, right? I’ve got a guy, I have to buy from my guy.

The inherent contradiction is, how do you get me to change my mind? Because everybody has a provider of everything, and the point of advertising is to get them to switch. What it means is that to get that relational consumer to switch, they won’t switch simply because you tell us that we exist.

You have to give me a strong reason why I have to stop doing what I’m doing now and start doing this other thing. Start switching to another guy. Is that easy? No, it’s really freaking hard. It takes time and it requires a legitimate reason. You have to answer the question, why should I switch from my current guy to you?

Chris: It’s interesting. You say we have a provider. So, two things. First of all, there are some things for which we have a provider, and we are married to it, and we love it, and we’re fixated. And then there are others where we’re more fluid, right? If I go to the grocery store, there’s maybe the bread I’m looking for, but it’s the other bread from the competitor next to it, and they got a different something this week. Maybe I’ll switch to it. I don’t have brand loyalty on some things. And so, if you put another idea, if I see an ad for something, I should give that a try, it’s not like I’m married to my regular brand.

On the things where I do have a preferred brand, there are always external triggers that might lead you to explore. So, beer is an interesting one. And again, I’ve worked on a number of the big brands. And there’s an interesting thing you hear in focus groups, which is you ask somebody, how did they get to be a “such and such” drinker? And the number of times you hear the same story, I used to drink this thing, and I drank it all the time, and then, oh, it just started to make me feel bloated, so I changed brands. You hear it from one brand to another. So there is no beer brand that doesn’t make you bloated versus another. All beer makes you bloated. If you drink too much beer, you’re going to have a bad experience, and then what happens is that kind of puts them off their brand because that was the one that gave them the bad experience at that time.

So, you can be a diehard Bud drinker for ten years, and then something happens, you have a bad experience, you know what? Maybe I gotta stop drinking this stuff. And now the door is open, you are super loyal, and there’s that opportunity. After watching the competitor’s advertising for 10 years, when that trigger comes along, it’s an external trigger, then you go, let me try an MGD. And then you have one and you don’t feel bloated because you don’t have 10, and you go, this is okay, and then you switch.

And equally, there are just as many people who were, the last 10 years have been drinking MGD and then they got bloated, and it’s so funny that people do this back and forth. Like I said in the intro, just because you see an ad, you’re not going to throw away your preferred brand that’s been your preferred brand for a decade. But if anything happens to throw things into chaos, that’s when the cumulative effect of advertising actually does give you a next step.

Ryan: Let’s think about that from a standpoint of service businesses, as an example because a little more challenging to run the beer company. Not only does there have to be something happening externally, like a trigger has to happen. I need to get my insurance renewed, I got into a dispute with my wife and we’re fighting over custody. I need to get a hot water tank because I don’t have hot water. A trigger happens. If it’s Lululemon pants, it’s an internally triggered thing, they just want to feel better about themselves.

The identity part of that whole thing on the externally triggered, particularly grudge purchase side is that I’m going to make the smart purchase decision. I am a good consumer of these transactional things that I want for all intents and purposes to be invisible in my life.

We really start to look at, why does somebody change a brand? In beer, something happened, right? In a hot water tank, something happened. But a whole bunch of your clients already have a guy, right? The devil you know…

Chris: Yeah.

Ryan: That has demonstrated enough empathy and confidence to earn their opportunity again. Until such time as they lose that confidence, right? That comes from empathy and confidence. We then move to the next phase of that mass convenience. And if we don’t have convenience we have exclusivity, and back to identity, in the beer, I might switch from Bud to a Craft beer. Why? It’s a premium price, you’re paying a higher amount.

It says something about you – which is identity.

Bud is convenient because it’s consistent, it’s true. McDonald’s, it’s convenient, it’s consistent, it’s going to give you that same expectation every single time, it’s fast, it’s reliable, it’s the things that you’re looking for in various moments.

Mick: It’s not the best breakfast sandwich in town, but I can get one in 15 seconds.

Ryan: But it gets it done, right? And that’s exactly it. Now they don’t have tea in Salt Lake City, but that’s a whole other story. So, it’s deeply valuable for us to understand that we change within ourselves, sometimes we’re transactional about things, and sometimes we’re relational. But we’re always going to be transactional until you give us a reason to be relational.

Mick: Given no other data, give me the cheap one.

Ryan: Again, we can pull that lever as well. It’s not about only working with the cheap brands in town that’s going to get you the business, absolutely not. The low price, the low cost, in another perspective, is money, energy, and time, right? Before, during, and after that sale. Again, this convenience thing keeps cropping up as a thing. I will wait for that fancy, special-order Porsche to come in.

Chris: I’ll wait until I’m old enough that I can afford it. Very few people who are 25 are buying Porsche.

Ryan: I’m willing to own a plethora of cars before that, until I get to my goals and ambitions and dreams, right? But it’s an identity piece, it’s an element that says, this is who I am. That hot water tank, if I want an astounding amount of convenience for the longest period of time, I’m very willing to spend more money on that hot water tank. If I had a house full of eight kids, you know I’m buying a tankless water heater.

If I’m looking for better insurance, I’m looking for how I’m going to get taken care of when something happens as much as I’m looking at 15% off or more, right? All of these things start to factor into, “what is the strategy?” The strategy will inform the message, the message will inform the channels. It’s the strategy.

Strategy without weight, right? If you’re a company that has no values… Everyone’s going to be up in arms for hearing that and say, “Of course, I have values.”

Mick: We stand for quality, service, selection, price, convenient location, free parking, and professional staff. Here’s what it means, don’t tell me how it sounds.

Ryan: Table stakes just don’t move the meter. There’s this bouncer in our brain, just in front of the left ear named Broca. And Broca is there to toss out the predictable. This Broca bouncer is not letting you into Club Imagination without doing something new, different, and interesting. If it’s predictable, it’s not worth investigating, and you’re gonna get tossed down the alley.

Once you get into Club Imagination, you’ve got to say something. You need an auditory message. You need some sort of visual impact that pairs you up and brings you up. But you’re going to keep dancing and dating and making friends until they need your thing, right?

And in some cases, you’re going to get moved into the VIP room, and that’s where you have the chance to close those deals, right? But you need to have that bonding relationship that never happened if you didn’t get past Broca in the first place.

Ultimately what we’re talking about here is making sure that we absolutely do punch as hard as we possibly can with the message, otherwise we are going to lose. But the time and attention of the public, entertainment is the currency that we use, right? Make them laugh, make them cry, make them angry.

Mick: Make them feel something.

Chris: But again, that’s maybe the wrap-up of it. Just because there’s a lot of mediocre advertising, it doesn’t mean that the medium is wrong. It doesn’t mean that the theory of advertising is wrong. There’s lots of stuff that either not talking to me because I’m not the right target, it’s not talking to me because it’s not the right time, it’s not talking to me because it’s the same old table stakes things, and so they’re undifferentiated from all the competitors. And there’s a lot of that stuff out there. And I chalk that up in my head as advertising that doesn’t work. That doesn’t mean that advertising doesn’t work. That’s like saying there’s no good music out there. No, the stuff that’s in the top 40 is pretty good. There are hundreds of millions of things on Spotify and Bandcamp and whatever that are unlistenable. That doesn’t mean music is bad, it means it’s not talking to you.

Mick: I would go so far as to say that the fact that most advertising is rubbish is a tremendous opportunity for the new advertisers. Because all you have to do is beat that and that bar is not high, it’s ridiculously low. The trouble is you actually have to do something different. You have to say what would you put into your advertising if we removed quality, service, selection, price, convenient location, and free parking, professionalism. If you took all of that out, is there anything left?

If not, you’ve got a problem. If there’s something really specific that you can say, this is a thing about us that you can’t say about any of the other people in our town who do the thing that we do. You just won everyone!

Chris: Yeah, don’t take the advice of the guy who’s saying, quality, service, selection, price, convenience, free parking, and his advertising is not working. Don’t take his advice, he’s the guy who’s doing it wrong.

Mick: Use that to beat him.

Ryan: Guys, to sum it up, I think we can all agree. Most ads don’t work, pretty much the vast majority, right? Pretty much all. Complete waste of money, and if it’s a complete waste of money, don’t spend the money. And that’s because the writing and the distribution are wrong, right?

Advertising that gets true results for the companies that deliver an actual solution that stands them 600 feet above the competition. They’re actually doing a thing that has them get noticed, right? And they’re doing it consistently. Not just different, but distinctive, right? Really doing something that isn’t like everyone else. Like all of us, we are all unique. Like l a snowflake, or butterfly. That’s extra unique.

You have to get all the ingredients right to have the Michelin Star marketing plan, right? You really do. And if you’re in a category where no one is talking, table stakes are going to work, right? Like when you’re speaking in an empty echo chamber, it’s pretty easy. You can pretty much do anything to get attention. But if you’re up against stiff competition and a grand ambition for your company, this work should not be left to amateurs, or salespeople, was that a fair statement?

Mick: The salespeople of the media? Unfortunately, they also work for your competition. It’s not actually in that person’s interest to crunch your competition and put them out of business. I absolutely want to put your customer or your competitor out of business. I absolutely want to do that. I want them to close, I want their children to not go to college. I want everything about their business to fail, and I want them to live underneath a bridge. Your advertising sales record, the TV station does not have that.

Ryan: That’s not within the spectrum.

Mick: He’s not nearly as much of an asshole as I am.

Ryan: What it sounds like to me, though, in reverse of that is that you’re looking for that person who’s going to agonize over every last word, every last dollar, every last impression that the buyer is going to have of your brand in every way. It’s the difference between becoming known, in my opinion, and becoming an actual household name too, distinctly different things. People can know your name when you’re a household name.

Mick: If we assume that 90% of advertising is rubbish, which is probably a fair number, then that means you have to be in the top 10. And you’re not going to get into the top 10 by just saying what everybody else is saying. That’s where agonizing over the message and getting it exactly right and saying, it’s just not standing out quite right. We need to change this. We need to change that. We need to up our game in the production side.

We need to make it look really good. We need to make it sound really good. We need to take, do another take with that actor to get that delivery just exactly right. It’s not by accident, it’s by hard freaking work.

Ryan: And people often wonder why our strategies, our creatives, our media strategies all work so well because they work consistently well every single time. And it’s to that exact moment, at that exact point that you’re making that we’re rejecting what you’re supposed to hear. We’re replacing it with something new and unexpected, something distinctive, not just different.

And then we bomb the living crap out of the designated target area, regardless of what medium we’re using, for what budget we’re using with monstrous repetition that is going to get it pushed back into that long-term memory that we’re trying to take up and build our McMansion in our clients brands.

If you don’t have the right words at the right frequency, your brand only gets so far before it just needs that lift, right? Your trusted brand is only going to get you so far, your logo is only going to get you so far.

Mick: All of those things will get you your fair share. And your fair share is the amount of dollars that are being spent in your category, in your market, divided by the number of providers, and that’s not enough to make yourself successful.

Ryan: And that’s it, right? If you don’t get the basic premise right, you’re going to get to a dimension of returns faster, right? You’re going to get your fair share. We also have to have those same clients spending that money, investing in it, depending on the size of their cities, we can’t do this for free. It’s going to take some elbow grease. It’s going to take some time. It’s going to take some durability in their reasonableness around how long is their purchase cycle. The customer isn’t going to be buying your thing right now- all the time. We have to talk to the ones before they get to Google. So that we can get them feeling good about us, so that when it does come time, we argue.

Mick: When we’re in an argumentative position.

Ryan: Yeah. Really fired here, guys. This is really great. Ultimately…

Chris: Advertising does totally work. Who are we kidding?

Ryan: Advertising does totally work.

Mick: Except the part that is rubbish.

Ryan: The smart stuff is really moving about how gives a shit meter. Let’s move who gives a shit meter, and we have to do this two ways. One, with the words we use, but also, talking to the same people over and over again. Even if it’s a small amount it’s way better than putting your chips on the roulette wheel and hoping for the best.

Until next time, thanks for tuning in.

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Advertising In America

The podcast that turns marketing into magic! Hosted by the brilliant Ryan Chute and the ever-entertaining Michael Torbay & Chris Torbay, this show dives deep into the world of American advertising, revealing the secrets behind the most successful campaigns and exploring the latest trends.

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