Watch above or read below.

Stephen Semple:
Hey Matthew, we’re going to do something different today.

Matthew Burns:
Okay? What are we doing?

Stephen Semple:
There’s a client you’ve been working with who came to you with a kind of an interesting problem. This is a plumbing company in Ottawa, Canada, that is having massive success with your advertising campaign. But there are a couple of things that I wanted to talk about. So first of all, the company name is Out of this World Plumbing.

They came to you with that as the name. And look, I get it. It would be so easy to do an advertising campaign for our service, which is out of this world, talking about ourselves in a boring, dull, and predictable manner that the world would entirely ignore.

Matthew Burns:
Correct.

Stephen Semple:
That’s what would’ve happened.

Matthew Burns:
Correct.

Stephen Semple:
But you took this idea of Out of This World plumbing and went down a really bizarre rabbit hole. Play one of the ads.

Announcer:
Out of this world, plumbing’s never-ending mission to explore gross forgotten pipes, to root out and eliminate the evil Craps-o-long empire. To boldly help the planet go where no one has gone before.

Cat:
Meow.

Announcer:
Yes, Samantha. I did know Lord Lidsup before he turned to the clogged side. He was my friend.

Computer Voice:
His real name was–

Announcer:
Don’t say it out loud, computer. By the Great Flush, I still miss him. He forsook our sacred sanitary oath to the pipes of planetary perfection and beyond.

Computer Voice:
Now, Lord Lidsup serves at the pleasure of the Craps-o-long Empire.

Announcer:
But not alone.

Computer Voice:
My how

Announcer:
The incessant Madam Drip is ever at his side.

Computer Voice:
Madam Drip is no match for the Orbit Maintenance Club.

Announcer:
Only at OutOfThisWorldPlumbing.com

Computer Voice:
Planetary plumbing perfection.

Cat:
Meow.

Stephen Semple:
Frankly, it has nothing to do with plumbing, but has to do with out of this world.

Matthew Burns:
It’s poop. It’s poop jokes in space.

Stephen Semple:
It’s poop. Right. Well, and you leaned into a couple of tropes. You did the I am Groot thing with the cat.

Matthew Burns:
Correct. She gets identified later on as Chief Communication Cat, Samantha. So she’s the communication cat that never speaks in English.

Stephen Semple:
Right. I am Groot.

Matthew Burns:
I am Groot.

Stephen Semple:
Right. Look, it’s a trope that’s out there. You’re leaning into it. It’s great. It’s weird, it’s wonderful. It’s all those other things. There are going to be people who don’t get it. There are going to be people who absolutely love it. And then you’ve also got retro on it, you’ve given it the Star Trek feel.

There’s lots of stuff, and you’ve made it… We all want to differentiate ourselves. Right? Is that differentiated? Oh hell yeah, it’s differentiated.

Matthew Burns:
Absolutely.

Stephen Semple:
So there’s one other thing I want to talk about here that is really important. These ideas work, and they work unbelievably well, but you’ve got to really own it. So, tell me a little bit about the history here so we can get an idea of how these clients, how you got them to really lean into it.

Matthew Burns:
So the owners of this company are Dave and Wendy Smythe, and they are, they’d leaned into the whole idea of space, obviously, before we got there. They have been doing things. This company is now, I want to say they’re 22. Oh really?

Stephen Semple:
So they were doing some space things ahead of time. Okay. What were they doing, though?

Matthew Burns:
You know what? I didn’t have this prepared, but I’ll find something else–

Stephen Semple:
You don’t need to–

Matthew Burns:
It’s hard to explain, but they went into this whole idea of coming back from the future, and a digital talking head, and listen, it was interesting. It was different than what others had, but it wasn’t consistent, and they abandoned it eventually. And so they stopped doing the thing that was kind of weird and interesting and crazy.

Dave is more than willing to poke fun at himself and get big and have fun. The first couple of ads were a little drier because it’s hard to get into this whole Captain Kirk feel of things. I mean, they’ve been in business for 20-some odd years, and they’ve gotten themselves slowly but surely up to about $2 million in revenue. And in the last two years, we’ve added $500,000 of revenue to their pot by them leaning in. And it didn’t happen right away.

It was really slow because at $2 million, the marketing budget was low. And the reason why we went to a really weird and punchy place was that we needed people to not just say, Hey, listen, you should use them as a plumbing company. You should just listen to these people. You should see what they’re doing. This is strange. This isn’t normal.

If you’re not remarkable and you have a small budget, well then you’re not heard, you’re not seen, you’re not shared. And we really want to just have their name and their branding shared without them having to be on every radio station or be on every television station or be everywhere, all over the internet. We couldn’t get them there that quickly. And so Leah Bumphrey is the writer on this. We presented the first couple of ads, and they were like, Okay, that’s weird. We trust you.

We hired you for a reason, and we’ll do it. And that’s why it didn’t work right away. That’s why I was saying it didn’t take off right away. The belief system wasn’t there. It wasn’t being backed up all the way through the entire brand, which is now slowly but surely. Everybody through the whole brand, everybody through the whole company, every touchpoint is now starting to have these little moments of the space saga that is out of this world plumbing what we’ve created. So much so that he now wears a uniform when he goes out in public.

Stephen Semple:
So when you started with them, they did do the space thing, they moved away from it, they didn’t have success with it. And probably part of the reason why they didn’t have success with it is that they were doing it a little bit. They weren’t really owning it or leaning into it.

When we say owning it and leaning into it, here’s the thing that’s really interesting. If you want to do really inexpensive advertising to an audience that would immediately connect with you, where would you go? You would go to Comic-Con. So you guys took out a booth at Comic-Con?

Matthew Burns:
No, no, no. See, that’s what got you excited, because what we were going to do at the Ottawa Home Show–

Stephen Semple:
Oh, you went to the home show. Right? But you went to the home show–

Matthew Burns:
They were doing the exact same thing this time. And it’s easier for me to convince a client to go to a home show where their people might have a plumbing problem than to go to a Comic-Con. But now they see what they’ve done. They’re like, yeah, okay, let’s talk about Comic-Con next year. That’s the difference.

Stephen Semple:
Right. Because here’s the weird thing, especially with plumbing. Here’s the weird thing. Plumbers will always come to us; going, well, we have to target our customers. It’s like, shut up. Right? Your customer is somebody who’s got a plumbing problem. They have a home or an apartment, or a condo, and they have a plumbing problem. Okay, great. It can’t be somebody, a renter, it’s somebody who owns a property with a plumbing problem.

That’s it. That’s your customer, which includes, guess what, people walking through Comic Cons. Absolutely. Which includes, guess what, people walking through a home show, right? It’s this ridiculous. It’s the general population. So anyway, so you did the home show, but when you went to the home show, what I love was your strategy in the home show was… Explain your strategy at the home show.

Matthew Burns:
We decided that everybody was going to be bombarded by people saying, Hey, we sell this. Hey, we’ve got this service. Hey, we can take care of you. Hey, look at this new thing that’s being delayed. Look at this. And we were like, there’s nobody at a home show ever that has a plumbing emergency. It doesn’t exist.

Stephen Semple:
If they had a plumbing emergency, they wouldn’t be at the show. They’d be home dealing with it.

Matthew Burns:
Correct. So for us to go, hey, you should buy our services. That’s the dumbest move on the planet. What we said instead was, well, wait a second. We’ve got this really cool space saga. We’ve set ourselves up with this intergalactic feel. We’ve leaned into this retro feel of the original series of Star Trek. Why don’t we set up the deck, the bridge of the Starship Perfect Plumbing?

We built a couple of characters I’ll put up on screen. We built a couple of, there’s viewscreens in the background where we put the characters of the Craps-o-long Empire in the background and a couple of extra mockups of people, part of the Starship Perfect Plumbing, and that organization. And they built a replica of the original series captain’s chair, and we created a selfie station. That’s it. Nothing else. We didn’t have Out of This World Plumbing anywhere.

We had a QR code, little small little QR code. If they ever asked what we did and they wanted more data, they could get it. But it was over on the sides, and it said our tagline, which is Planetary Plumbing Perfection. And we were recognized by the tagline, because we are on the radio, and we are getting enough people to see us. And we had two people walk in saying, Oh my God, I hate your radio ads. They’re terrible.

Stephen Semple:
Of course, sure.

Matthew Burns:
And then sat down in the chair, they got this badge, which is their logo, their icon, that it’s, I mean, this is heavy. You can’t feel it. But it pins onto their chest, and they sat down in the chair, took a picture, and said, Okay, you guys, you are awesome. You know what? I may not like your ads. I’m still going to use your service. Right?

Stephen Semple:
They went. I like these guys.

Matthew Burns:
I like these guys. They’re interesting. They’re fun. They didn’t try to sell me anything. They just wanted to brighten my day.

Stephen Semple:
So it speaks to this thing. This is what I want people to dial in on this, okay. You own a business. If more people knew about you and more people loved you, would more people buy from you, no matter what it is you’re selling? And here’s what we know. The answer to that is obvious.

Of course, everybody, look, I’ve spoken so many places, and I’ve asked that… No one has said to me, Oh no, if more people knew about me and more people loved me, fewer people would buy from me. No one has ever said that. I’m sure at some point somebody will.

Matthew Burns:
Correct.

Stephen Semple:
No one has ever said that. So what have you done? You’ve made people know about you because it stands out and it’s different. And just because it’s fun, they love you guys. No one is like, well, you know what? And especially in a category where somebody can look at it and go, all plumbers are the same. You know what they are, they’re all the same. One might be a little bit more expensive, one might be a little bit cheaper, but you know what, the variation is not that much.

Matthew Burns:
Correct.

Stephen Semple:
So how are you going to pick somebody? I love these guys.

Matthew Burns:
I love these guys. They’re interesting to me.

Stephen Semple:
They’re cool, they’re fun. I want to have ’em in my home. But what you’ve done, success comes from, and this is the theme of this: success comes from leaning into it, not doing it a little bit. People hesitate leaning; they think it’s hokey. No, no, no. When you only do it a little bit, it’s hokey. When you lean into it and own it, it’s fun. That’s the difference.

Matthew Burns:
Correct. The thing that blew people away. This is the weird thing that, I mean, I’ve worked with you for a while, and I was a client before I was a partner, and you guys gave me some really good advice when I was first learning some more things about marketing, and creating a sense of tribe is really important. And I knew that, and I thought this was going to be the right thing. And we created these little badges, and we gave them away.

It was as if you sat down or you stood next to Captain Dave and took it, and again, there have been pictures floating around, so you know what we’re talking about. You got one, you became an honorary member of the Starship Perfect Plumbing. Everybody was like, Wow, wow. Their faces just broke their brains. You could see them just melt inside, going like, Why? And then going and laughing and then sending people over to come get pictures.

Stephen Semple:
It is the law of reciprocity. Yeah. You’ve given something away. People want to give something back to you, which is bringing somebody else over, doing the posting, doing all those other things. It’s a deeply ingrained thing, and it only happens from a place of truth. Why don’t you just wrap this up with one thought? It’s really too bad they don’t like you that much because they put you in the red suit. Yeah.

Matthew Burns:
That was the deal. Now we typically don’t work trade shows for our clients very often. They really wanted to help, and they said, Well, we’ll give you a red shirt that way. There’s an excuse for you not coming back next year.

Stephen Semple:
He’s not with us any longer. That red shirt is no longer here.

Matthew Burns:
It was a lot of fun. And after they did that, they had a couple of their plumbers come out and work the show. They dressed up in blue shirts and put on their badges, and they were shocked at the response, and they didn’t… Because they had a hard time owning the idea of being as crazy as the owners.

And now they’re going, but wait a second. We got a better response when we leaned into it. And so it was proof to them. I’m so excited that in 2026, we are going to kick it into high gear. These guys are going all in.

Stephen Semple:
I got a prediction for you, and I’m going to say the reason why, and I’m going to tie in why there’s a really important lesson to this. Okay. I believe you will really own 2026. 2026 will be way more successful, and you won’t be able to measure it back because your success is going to be beyond the messaging and beyond the amount you’ve expanded the media. It’s going to be beyond all these things.

The success is going to come from the little things that happen from this buy-in, and the buy-in happened because of the plumbers attending this trade show. And guess what? It’s completely not measurable. If you actually tried to isolate and measure it, no data analyst would go back to, Oh, it’s because these plumbers went to the trade show. I’m going to tell you that’s the moment that will kick this campaign into the next gear.

Matthew Burns:
Absolutely. I agree with you. Yeah. The measurement is impossible, and it gets really magical. Well, listen, thanks for highlighting one of my customers. That’s fun. We don’t do that.

Stephen Semple:
Well, look, but this is a really special campaign, and I also wanted to honor your customers in leaning into it and owning it. It’s awesome. And they’re going to kick ass this year.

Matthew Burns:
Yeah, no, I agree. And if you guys want to hear about more of our clients, let us know. We’d love will share another client story. We have clients we can talk about. So if you guys like that, like this new style, then let us know. If not, tell us, just go back to talking about ads that have already existed. Then we’ll do that too. Thanks, buddy. I appreciate you.

Stephen Semple:
Alright, thanks, Matthew.

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