Finding Silver Linings

Welcome, Everybody, to this COVID 19 edition of CPG Insiders. I'm your host, Mark Young. Sitting six feet away from me, socially distanced, is Justin Gerard. Now, Justin, I think personally I've been saying on our other podcast, I hate the term social distancing. And the reason is because times like this, we should be focused on the word physical distancing. We should not be socially distancing. We should be socially increasing our contact with people. It's a totally wrong term. It should be physical distancing, not social distance.

I could not agree more.

So you know what? Lots of clients and people are asking, they're panicking, what are we going to do during this thing?

Yeah.

So let me first say a few things. One, I want people to remember, this is temporary. All of us who are, who are here and are listening to this will remember the crash of 2008, and we'll remember 91 1. And if you take your memory back to 2008 or 911, think about the event and where you were, especially with 911, you probably remember exactly where you were at the moment and what your thoughts were. And you were frightened. And I need to contact my family and what's going to happen next and is our life going to change and what's the world going to be like? And what happened afterward was the country came back. And when we think of 2008, where the stock market collapsed, the banking community almost went out of business, everything was cut in half, home values were cut in half, and what happened? We came back. Now, the beauty of this is we started this whole program on the strongest economy in the record ever.

In record. Yeah.

So this is not an economic issue. This is a health issue. So the odds on us being able to recover are pretty good. The faster you back to work, the quicker we will recover. We're not going to recover overnight because when they sound the alarm, not everybody's going to run into a football game and want to sit next to 50,000 of their closest friends.

Right. Or movie theaters where they're sitting right next to each other. Right.

So people are still going to be. Be a little skittish. They're still going to be worried for a while. But as Americans, we have short memories and we get back to normal pretty soon. Now, as we, as we are recording this podcast, we know that the unemployment rate is now lifted to 10%, which is huge.

Yeah.

But what we need, first off, what our clients need to remember is that means 90% still has their income.

Yeah.

And those 90% haven't changed their reason to buy your product or service. Especially if your product has a need base to it.

Correct.

So if your product has a deliverable that people need, whether it's toothpaste or hemorrhoid cream or toenail fungus, whatever the case is. Well, guess what, you still have that issue. You still need to buy something. And Walmart's and Walgreens and CVS and Target and every place is still open.

Yep.

Where people can go in and buy these things. What you will probably notice recently, folks in the CPG business is your online and your Amazon business has probably gone up. And you may find that a lot of your retailer accounts, if you drill in, you may find a lot of your retail accounts are starting to deliver and getting orders for the product. But the key here is for most clients, Justin, the advantages are to stay advertising.

Yes.

So I'm going to give people an example. Back in the Great Depression, there was a not so big consumer products goods company that was started by two guys in the late 1800s which again remember Great Depression, wasn't that long yet named Procter and Gamble. Now when Procter and Gamble, when they hit the Great Depression, Procter and Gamble doubled down on advertising. They increased their budgets. They kept pushing into advertising during a time when you had, you know, 20% of the country laid off. What happened was because they stayed on the gas and all their competitors didn't. They captured so much mind share of the consumers market that as the war kicked in and as the economy came out of the Great Depression, no one could ever catch up to them again. They now became the dominant force. When you look at P and G today, they're enormous. But I think people need to understand they were not the P and G you see today pre Great Depression. It was staying on the gas in the Great Depression that made them where no one could catch them again. So that's one of the thoughts. The second thought I want everybody to know is television viewership is on fire right now.

Yeah. So as we're just for some data for you. So this is from Ispot, who's been tracking viewership. So if we're looking at this week, as we're recording this television viewership, or from the previous week, I should say, is up 13 billion impressions from last year.

I know, it's insane, isn't it?

Okay. Yeah. It is massive. It is massive.

Now meanwhile, while this viewership is on fire, other than the news channels.

Mm.

We're getting calls from the networks offering us fire sales.

Absolutely. Yeah.

So if you, if you wanted to actually increase your budget and get some massive share market right now, Share voice this is the time to do it. So just so everybody knows we're fully functional, we're completely in business. That's why we're getting calls. And what is happening is the cruise lines, the vacation lines, the car companies, the airlines, all the movie premieres, the theaters, all that money is pulled out of the market.

Yep.

So because that money's all out, that's a lot of advertising dollars that these networks don't have and they need to fill that time up.

Well, like you said, it's a lot of inventory. There's a lot of air that they're like, we need to fill this.

And it's think about, I'm going to give you what the similar analogy to it is right now. It's the same model as the oil price is dropping. So right now you can find gas for A$25. You just can't go anywhere. But if you look at television right now, you can buy, you know, if you're a TV network, your viewership is on fire and you can't go anywhere because all your big advertisers pulled out.

Supply and demand.

So there's some huge opportunity. Now, the opportunity in news is not the same. And let me explain one of the things that as an example, let's use Fox News. Fox News takes the President for two hours a day and then they usually put Cuomo on for about an hour a day and they do all that commercial free.

Right.

So there's 26 commercials in an hour. So that's about 75 commercial units that Fox News loses in a 24 hour window, not counting any other breaking news.

Right.

So that's inventory. So this isn't about Foxes jacking up the price. This is about, imagine if you could, that would be what, 15 12%. So imagine 12% of your inventory vaporized on you every day and you had no way of manufacturing 12% more product.

Right. And again, your viewership is going up.

Oh yeah. Viewerships on fire.

It's on fire.

So at that point. So that's kind of what's happening, you know, on the news side. But the best thing we can do right now is to stay on the gas. Now, I want people to understand 90% of consumers still have a job. They still have the same need for your product. Remember that everybody who makes roughly less than 100 grand is about to get $1,200 from the government. Businesses are getting the payroll protection plan to be able to keep their people on payroll.

Yep.

And Justin, I'll ask you this question. While you've been going through this, while we're all been going through this, how much less money are you spending?

I'm not spending any less money at all.

But you're not going to restaurants, you're not going to the movies and stuff. So from that standpoint, you actually have more disposable income to go buy stuff.

Absolutely. That's what I'm saying. The actual number. So if we take a look at the amount I'm spending isn't changing where I'm spending it has changed.

Right. Because you're not spending it on activities.

Exactly.

And you're not spending it on going out.

No.

So you're spending more money on things and stuff.

Yeah.

Right. Yeah. So it's not as if there's a lot less money, it's how people are spending the money.

Exactly.

So again, if you're, if you have a product that's in a Walmart or Walgreens, a cvs, write it out. You're going to, you're going to benefit from this.

Absolutely. I mean, the biggest thing that I can say, what we're talking about here, this topic alone, is just remembering that. So the biggest thing we want to remember as Mark's talking about, is that consumers are always going to have needs. All that's happening right now is some of our needs are shifting. That is it Our basic foundations for any true. As we talk about health indications, those aren't going away. So like Mark mentioned earlier, if you have a product that is about hemorrhoids or it is something that is health related, those consumers still need those products that has not gone away. In fact, if you think about it, there are some, what you might think of as cosmetic indications that may actually be at the forefront because they have. Consumers have some less distractions. If you're stuck at home, for example, your toenail fungus, that might not necessarily be something that bugs you all the time. When you're at work, you're wearing shoes, but, but right now you're at home, you're just wearing the slippers. You can't go anywhere and all of a sudden you're like, ooh, that doesn't look right.

Right now you're used to going and getting your nails done. You're used to getting your hair cut, going to the salon and having your hair dyed.

Right.

So think about your product lines. Is something in your product line changing the way that people might need to do something more at home?

Right.

Also think about, is there something in your product line that might address COVID19? All of a sudden, you know, let's say people are out washing their hands 15 times a day.

Right.

So all of a sudden, do you make a great hand lotion that people need to use to be able to make their hands feel better?

And times like these, as Mark talked about, it, is the innovators that strive. Because right now, the greatest innovations come from what the greatest challenges. And that is the opportunity that's in front of us. And that's what I want. I know, Mark, and this is really what our show is about right now, is we want to make sure that as a brand, you think about, take a look at your product, take a look at the current situation, and ask yourself, what is the opportunity here? Because there is one.

There are always opportunities. You know, Justin, I told this before. My father. My father grew up in the Great Depression. And he grew up. It was interesting because he grew up first, and he grew up very poor.

Yeah.

And then he had a grandfather who was actually very wealthy, and he left the poor family and moved into the wealthy family, lived with his grandfather. So he had both experiences. And what my father taught me, because what he learned as a kid was that every crisis, every downturn creates opportunities, that it gets rid of weak players, so it gets rid of those competitors that are very weak. And there's a little bit of an economic Darwinism to it.

Yep.

It puts the players who are fearful and don't have courage and don't stay advertising. It puts them behind. So when the market does come back, they're not positioned to take charge. It takes the companies that look long term, and it puts them out in front. So the thing that you want to do right now, you don't want to think about what's going on this week. You still need to think, what am I looking to do with my business in the next five years, in the next 10 years? What is it I want my business to look like? And if my goal is still I want to double sales, triple sales, quadruple sales in the next five years, then you follow that pattern. You don't follow the pattern of the moment.

Mm.

The same kind of thing kind of goes to people with the stock market. One of the things that I tell people from a psychologist kind of background is don't watch the stock market every day. If you have money in the stock market and you watch it every day, you will drive yourself insane because you're focused on what's going on this very Minute. And you're not focused on the long term goal of increasing your portfolio.

Yep.

Or if you buy gold or whatever the case is, I mean, you sit there and look at it, you know, 50 times a day, oh, it just went down $2.

I say don't look at it today, just stop.

The market's up today though. Stock market's up. Actually, if you look at it, the stock market is up 13% this week.

This week, yes.

Which is huge. So even in the midst of all this, the stock market is now out of bear territory. So if you think about it, people panic about the stock market crash. The stock market is still right now about 5,000 points above where it was when Trump came into office.

Right.

Even with this massive hit, with this massive hit, the stock market is still up 4 or 5,000 points. And right now the unemployment is at 10%. Once people go back to work, that 10% number is going to drop. And guess what else is going to happen? People are going to run back out and they're going to start buying stuff and they're going to have more money in their pocket because now they have another $1,200. The people that are, and think about this, people that are in unemployment right now, their disposable income is actually about to go up because now you get whatever your state benefit is, which in Michigan is like $380 per, per week and now you get a federal benefit of 600. So even people who made four or five hundred dollars a week and maybe couldn't afford your product, are now getting thousand dollars a week starting this week, actually can afford the product and they have all this extra income and they have no place to go spend it well.

And think of some of the parents who are paying for childcare and all of a sudden if now they don't have to pay for childcare, how much money? I mean, I know that there are many people that I personally know, friends of mine, that their childcare per year was basically another full time job. Yeah.

Look how many people are paying for pet care. Oh yeah, right. So the bottom line is don't panic. This, stay on the gas. Remember that people still have money. Remember they're going to have more money. We are going to be back to work. This is the time to grab market share. If anybody that's listening has any panic or any concern about their advertising, what to do in the future, what can I do to best, you know, manipulate or manage my advertising and my business right now? I want to tell you, I want to encourage you to call.

Yep.

We will talk to you free, whether you're a client or not. We will take the time to talk to you. You can talk to Justin, you talk to myself. You can go to jekyllheidlabs.com and contact us through there. You can call us at 800-500-4210 and one of the two of us or someone else from here will respond to you and give you all the help we can.

Absolutely, like I said, just leave you with the last note. And this is what we tell all of our clients. We've told you many times the path for a consumer to purchase a product, there are two main factors. There's mental availability and there's physical availability. Okay? If your product has mass distribution, if it's in retail, you already have the physical availability part and people are still buying stuff. And right now, and what we've been talking about this entire show is you have the opportunity to gain more of that mental availability, to gain that mind share, to be able to take over the consumer's concept. When they go back to that store shelf, all they remember is your brand because you're the one that was still talking to them right now when everybody else decided to be quiet. You will take over your market that way. And even on the physical availability side, for any of our listeners here who are not a retail brand, if you're a direct consumer brand, that industry is skyrocketed. And right now their concept of physical availability has jumped up because everybody is looking to DTC to get some of their products that they may not want to go to the store for.

I want to talk to the entrepreneurs just for a second. It's entrepreneur to entrepreneur. We think about a moment like this as being a scary time. The reality is as entrepreneurs, we live in a scary time. That's all we know. Because we do as an entrepreneur, we walk a high wire act every day with no net underneath us because we don't have retirement programs, we don't have a paycheck coming in. We're going to either make it happen or we're not. So the reality is, for you folks who are listening to entrepreneurs, times like this are what you're built for. You're made for scary times. Think about when you first decided to start your business. Think about when you mortgaged your house to make the first production. Think about when you started signing on giant lines of credit because you needed to borrow all this money to to ship Walmart the ship Walgreens. We live in scary times. This is nothing to us. So be brave, be who you are, and just keep pushing forward. That's it for us. Amen on CPG Insiders. We'll be back with more additions in the future. If you're looking to greatly increase sales on your CPG product, don't hesitate to contact us at Jekyll and Hyde Advertising and Marketing. By the way, the only advertising agency with a guaranteed result. Just go to Jekyll Hyde agency.com or feel free to give us a call at 800542.