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Matthew Burns:
And welcome back to Crumbs for Giants, where we talk about marketing and all sorts of things. No, so I am not an entertainer, but I want to sing something.

Mick Torbay:
Oh gosh.

Matthew Burns:
Don’t ask me why, but I really –

Mick Torbay:
I apologize in advance for what you’re about to hear.

Matthew Burns:
I felt the need to do this. Follow the leader, leader, leader, follow the leader. You wanted to talk about an experience recently with one of your clients that you were like, “If we’re going to do Crumbs for Giants, I want to do this thing.” And you wanted to talk about follow the leader and what that means. So let’s talk about follow the leader.

Mick Torbay:
Well, it comes from when you do something new or innovative, I will generally warn my client about a reality that takes place. When someone breaks away from the status quo, in most categories in almost every community, pretty much everybody’s saying the same things. This car dealer says the same as that car dealer. You get a better deal if you come to my car store, whatever. There’s nothing really standing out.

When we do something really different, I will warn my clients. I will say, listen, when we do this, there are going to be a bunch of people that will copy you. They’re going to simply try to do what you’re doing. And that doesn’t matter what medium; it’s not just like if you do radio, we’re going to do radio. It’s like if you do this kind of thing, they’re going to try and do this kind of thing.

And I tell them in advance, it’s really important to have this conversation with your client in advance because then when it happens, they believe you. But it’s not just a matter of they’re going to copy you; it’s how are you going to respond to that?

Matthew Burns:
Yes.

Mick Torbay:
And the way you’re going to respond to it is you’re going to change nothing.

Matthew Burns:
I already know the answer to this one.

Mick Torbay:
Because it is going to be — the client’s instinct, the business owner’s instinct is going to be, if you do this weird thing and then they follow you, they’re going to say, well then let’s deviate. And it’s like, no, they’re following you because it’s good. You’re now the leader. Act like a freaking leader and keep going. Now, if you listen to the previous episode with me, you’ll get an insight into why they won’t follow you for long because they’ll follow you for a while and then they won’t get any immediate dopamine hit of a response.

Matthew Burns:
A win.

Mick Torbay:
And they’ll back out eventually. They won’t completely follow you forever. But it will be your instinct when they start doing what you’re doing to say, well then we have to do something different. No, keep going. Plow forward because although they’re doing what you’re doing, they don’t know why they’re doing it.

And this is the important part. When we made this campaign, when we invented this idea, we had a certain philosophy, we had a certain strategy, and there were 10 things that we did, and your competitor is going to notice two of them, and they’re going to copy those two. They’re not going to do the other 10 because they didn’t notice the other 10.

And they think that by copying two of them, now they’re just as good as you. No, they’re not because they’re only doing two out of 10. And also, they don’t know why you did it. And the example that I give is I’ve got a client in Orange County, and it’s a husband and wife who own a plumbing company. And the husband had always been sort of the main guy, his picture on the website and things like that. And of course he’s a plumber, right? I mean, it’s a plumbing company, he’s a plumber, and that’s why he was always the guy.

And when I met them at the uncovery, I thought the wife’s way more interesting, and she’s super smart, and he runs the sort of production, and he manages the plumbers and that sort of thing, but his wife, Brenda, runs the office, and the office is really how the whole thing, it’s the nerve center, it’s the brain of the whole operation.

Matthew Burns:
Absolutely. Yeah.

Mick Torbay:
So I put her on TV, and I don’t even mention the husband at all. And it just says Brenda Barker, owner, Barker and Sons Plumbing. And one of the many reasons why I did that is that, frankly, a woman who owns a plumbing company is more interesting than a dude who owns a plumbing company.

Matthew Burns: Absolutely.

Mick Torbay:
And so about a year after we ran this campaign, one of their competitors put a woman front and center in all their ads, and she said, “They’re doing the woman thing. We need to change it.” And I said, “No, we’re not going to change it.” No. Nobody says no to their clients.

Matthew Burns:
Nobody says no to their clients…

Mick Torbay:
No, we’re not going to change it. Remember we talked about this. They think that this whole campaign is to put a woman on TV. That ain’t it. My idea was to put Brenda on TV. Now Brenda happens to be a woman, but in fact she’s got a magnetic personality. She’s brilliant on camera. She’s a really warm, sort of a mother-type figure. She doesn’t give off a business owner; she gives off mom. And so we have this interaction with her and her team, and she’s very motherly with them, and it’s that. And her competitors and the copycats, they think it’s just a person with lady parts running a plumbing company. It’s like, great, great. Think it’s as simple as that. I’ve already got you beat.

Matthew Burns:
Exactly.

Mick Torbay:
But the way to succeed when people copy you, and if you do something great, understand they’re going to copy you. What you have to do is change nothing. Keep going, double down. And even if everybody’s trying to copy you, keep going, change nothing. They will drop off because it won’t work for them because they’re not doing it for the right reasons.

Matthew Burns:
Perfect. Okay. So thank you. This is great. And here’s the proof of this. You and I have already talked about the proof of this in a previous episode, private equity, talking about private equity. What would we tell somebody who is not the leader in the market and they want to be the leader? And what their superpower is, is we tell them, don’t do what the leader’s doing because you’re not going to beat the leader. Do something different.

Mick Torbay:
You’re certainly not going to beat them at what they’re good at.

Matthew Burns:
But that’s what I’m trying to say is you’re not going to beat them playing by their playbook. You have to change the rules. And so it’s the exact opposite of what you’re talking about. You’re saying, “Hey, listen, we created the rules. We’re running our playbook. They’re not going to be able to beat us at our playbook because we created the rules.”

So they’re going to always fall down thinking that they understood the playbook, but they’ve never received it. They don’t know what it is. They just got those few bits of marketing thought that probably weren’t even right in the first place. As you said, you weren’t putting a woman on TV; you were putting a charismatic business owner.

Mick Torbay:
I’m putting an actual human on TV.

Matthew Burns:
Right. So that is brilliant. I relate this down to, I try to boil things down to one sentence. For me, this is this: don’t try and be the best in your industry, be the only. Because if you’re trying to be the best in the industry, what’s happening is you’re trying to be better than the people. You’re trying to follow the same path as somebody else. You’re trying to be the best. Well, if you’re trying to be the best, then guess what? You’re not going to catch up. You’re already behind the eight ball. If you try to be the only, which means coming up with your own unique zig for their zag.

Mick Torbay:
I think you’re onto something, and I would phrase it slightly differently, but we’re probably talking about the same thing, which is what I would say is don’t try and beat your competitor at their game, play a different game, a game you’re good at, and then beat them at that game.

Matthew Burns:
Absolutely.

Mick Torbay:
Now you might not completely destroy them, but you will still get more than you would if you tried to do what they do only better than they do it. You got it. So change the rules, play your own game. Don’t be surprised when other people say, “I want to play your game.” Fine, play my game, but I’m really good at this game. So if you want to play me here, you want to play my game by my rules. Understand you’re going to lose that game. This is about winning. But when someone else says, “I want to play your game,” don’t say, “Well then take the ball, and I’m leaving.” No, play them and beat them because this is your game.

Matthew Burns:
Yeah, your game, your ball, your net, your field. Don’t worry about it.

Mick Torbay:
Play your game, and maybe consumers are going to enjoy your game better than the other one. But the only thing we know for sure is that if you play the game everyone else is playing, it is statistically very unlikely that you’re going to magically be better at that than all of them.

Matthew Burns:
Exactly. Listen, imitation is the highest form of a compliment, right? And so take it as this, like, “Oh my gosh, we’re playing the right game. We’re doing the right thing.

Mick Torbay:
People are responding to us. It’s good. Pat yourself on the back and change nothing.

Matthew Burns:
Exactly. It’s no different than people who create parodies of something awesome on TV. I did a conversation with Stephen Semple a long time ago on Sticky Sales Stores. We talked about Apple and their 1984 campaign. And the thing that freaked me out the most when we were doing the research on that is that there was a Lego set of that campaign of a big, big screen and a lady with orange shorts and a big sledgehammer and a whole bunch of automatons. It’s a Lego set for a TV commercial. Wait a second.

Mick Torbay:
That ran once.

Matthew Burns:
That ran once. And they even failed. They tried to do a duplicate of that ad a year later, and it didn’t work. So anyway, long story short, guys, if you’re doing something amazing and somebody tries to copy you, say thank you and keep playing; actually, play harder, double down if you’re doing the right thing.

Mick Torbay:
Change nothing.

Matthew Burns:
Win the game. Awesome. This was pretty short and concise, but I think it speaks volumes. If you have any questions about anything in marketing whatsoever, if Mick, over the last few episodes that he’s been on the show, if you really want to talk to him, you can reach out. We’ll get you in touch and ask questions. He might even yell at you.

Mick Torbay:
If I care about you.

Matthew Burns:
Probably if he likes you, he’s definitely going to yell at you a little bit. Risk offending you a little bit. And understand that we learned all of this kind of stuff from many, many years of experience and a couple dozen trips to the Wizard Academy where we learned a lot of this kind of stuff. And I keep telling about it because we want better marketers and better business owners in the world to go learn how to market differently at our marketing school. And it’s not ours. We don’t get paid for it. This is our home. It’s kind of a mecca for us. So please do that. I’ll leave links to all that kind of stuff in the comments. Mick, you are awesome, and I’m going to reach out again shortly, and we’re going to try and record another one of these.

Mick Torbay:
Awesome. I’ll get my shirt ready.

Matthew Burns:
I’m not explaining what that means. Bye everybody.

Mick Torbay:
It’s all about the shirt.

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