Guarantees

Welcome everybody to this edition of CPG Insiders. I'm your host, Mark Young. My co host, Justin Gerard. Here we go.

Twice in a row. So proud. Oh my gosh. Getting foot clamped.

Well, Justin, we're going to, we're going to talk about a little bit something about the agency today.

Yeah.

We don't normally do that, but what we're going to talk about is a dilemma that has become apparent to us in the world of advertising.

Yes. Well, it's interesting, you know, in this, this particular topic and I would even go as far as tactic we use all the time with our clients, yet no one in our industry on our side of the fence.

Right.

Does it.

And what we're talking about, folks, is guarantees. Now, we know that one of the best ways to sell a CPG product is to give people a money back guarantee.

Absolutely.

Then we've built several successful products on the whole back of an empty tube, an empty jar, whatever the case, money back guarantee. But in the world of advertising, no ad industry, no ad agency is willing to give a guarantee on their work.

No, not at all.

So is it because we don't have confidence?

Right. I mean, is it a risk thing? Is it, It's a confidence. Is it, you know, I mean, we have these conversations all the time with our clients. Right.

So we're telling the client, if you make a great product and you really believe that people are going to love this product.

Right.

Then put a money back guarantee on it. It'll reduce people's fear and risk of buying the product. And how big is your risk if you make a great product?

Absolutely. And again, I mean, I can't say this enough. Over the years and all of the products that we've worked with here, the, the amount of actual returns that our clients actually have to fulfill on this guarantee is so minimal if it's a great product.

Yeah, absolutely.

And well, we try to work with those. So, you know, when we're talking about, again, the risk of guaranteeing your work, what's, what's the risk?

Well, remember most ad agencies. Most ad agencies, when you talk to a client, they talk about top of mind awareness. Intent to purchase. Yes. Name recognition.

Yep.

Unaided awareness.

Yes.

Aided awareness.

Huge.

And they never talk about sales.

That is true.

Because you cannot put awareness in a bank.

Well, that's what we tell all of our clients.

Well, think about this. If awareness was the key to success, then Kmart would be doing wonderfully.

Yeah.

So would Sears.

They'd be doing great thinking. Sears.

Who hasn't heard of Kmart and Sears, but nobody's shopping there. So awareness is not bankable. It is not the key. Now, that does not mean that awareness does not have value.

Absolutely.

Awareness, because zero awareness is obviously a problem.

Right.

But awareness by itself doesn't sell it unaided. Awareness aided awareness. Intent to buy. Intent to buy is very good. But I need you to buy.

Right.

This is why I think ad agencies avoid this, because. And the reason I think they avoid it, Justin, is because look at the metrics that agencies use to justify their existence.

Okay?

These are the metrics. Awareness, unaided awareness, intent to buy. That's how agencies demonstrate their ability to perform.

That's true. Okay. I could see that.

We demonstrate our ability to perform by. How much stuff did you sell last week?

Right. So we have a more tangible outcome to tire guarantee to. Is that. Is that what. You're correct. Okay.

And that's why folks probably figure out what we're leading up to. That's why our agency, Jekyll and Hyde Advertising, we've decided to put a money back guarantee on advertising.

Yeah.

And we are the only people in the country that we've been able to.

Find that's doing it that I know of.

So let me explain to you how it works. Simply this, folks. If. If a company comes to us and they currently have an ad agency, what we're saying is dollar for dollar. So if your budget with ad agency was X, you give us the exact same budget, the exact same quarter.

Right.

So let's say we're comparing second quarter to last year, second quarter with the same dollars, we will outperform that agency, which means your iri, your pos, your numbers will be bigger than they were with the previous agency or we will give you all of our fees back.

Yes. And what's interesting is, in a way, first off, when we think about just from a media standpoint, we're starting from behind.

Correct.

Media prices only go up. Prices are only going to inflate. So therefore we're working with less dollars.

Already, especially going into an election year.

Exactly. So we're already starting from behind, but we're still saying no. We know we can do better work than what you had previously. And I think that's a combination of everything we talk about here. I think it's the combination of our focus on the right type of results. I think it comes down to our ability to. Not just from a creative standpoint. If you guys have been listening to our last show that we did and we talk about our creative and our approach to it, is just so dynamic and it is so results focused. And the way we approach the media. I have not heard and I don't know how many calls you've had recently, Mark, where I can think of at least four or five in the last two weeks where we talked to clients and they said, you know what? No one has brought this idea to me.

You know what shocks me is how many clients calls have you been on where the client or prospective client says that no agency's ever asked them for their weekly sales number? Yes. Yes.

It's unbelievable to me.

It's unbelievable because when you're a client here, we always ask you to send us the POS numbers every week.

Absolutely.

Agencies aren't asking for that. So if you don't collect the data, you're obviously not measuring success against money.

No, no, no. You're not worried about how much return you're actually getting? Because that's always a big question. We get. Great. So let's say here's the plan. What kind of return on this investment am I going to get? Well, if your agency isn't looking for the sales numbers to try to maximize said return, how can they even begin to try to answer that question?

So the reason for a guarantee. And I'm going to talk about guarantees in general, so I'm going to talk about not just a guarantee for us, but guarantee for the clients. It's simply this. When we look at the psychology of consumers, our job. And now I'm talking about your business, our job is to tell your story and convince people that you have a product that will make their life better. However, the conscious part of our brain acts as a spam filter and wants to protect us. So it's the skeptic, the spam filter is the skeptic that says, oh, it's just another ad. It probably doesn't work like that. Lots of other products say that.

Where's the fine print?

Right. So if you happen to make a great product, don't be afraid to put a guarantee on it and make the guarantee strong. Think about what we just did. We just said we're going to give people all of our fees back if we don't outperform the previous agency. That's a very bold statement. Yes. To be able to say, if you remember, for a product, we invented something called an empty jar guarantee. Yes. Where he told people, use the entire jar of product and if you're not happy, send the empty jar back.

Right.

That made that product.

Yeah.

And their return rate is very low.

Yes.

We do the same with a lot of our clients, put these kind of guarantees on them, right? Because it's a way of you being able to separate yourself from your competition. And it's a way for you to be able to deal with that conscious brain that is saying they're probably not telling the truth. Because a couple of things happen. One, when you tell the person, we're going to give you all your money back, if you don't like it, the skeptic actually says, because get that skeptical part of the brain. That skeptical part of the brain says, well, if they're going to give me all my money back, then they already know I'm not going to ask for it, so why do they think I'm not going to ask for it? Well, maybe they really believe it works, right? Because nobody would want to offer me 100% of my money back if they thought everyone was going to send it back.

Right?

So that's step one. So step one, we overcome the skepticism because, okay, these people are putting their money where their mouth is on an unconscious level. We're reducing people's fear of being humiliated. So none of us want to be embarrassed. None of us want to be humiliated as a very strong emotion. And part of that is we don't want to be taken advantage of. So we feel that if we fall for an ad, this is in our mind. If we fall for this message, and I was wrong. I've been taken advantage of. I've been made to look foolish, and now I feel foolish. I don't want to do that. So the guarantee helps the unconscious mind overcome this humiliation foolishness of saying, well, they're not going to get over on me because if they sell me a bad product, I'm going to send them the package back and I'm going to want a refund. So now I'm a smart consumer. I haven't been taken advantage of. I'm not foolish. The last thing I'll leave you with, folks, is let's say that you make a $15 product. Mm. And let's say that. Let's say 10% of people who buy your product are not happy with it for whatever reason.

Right?

Okay. If 10% of the people who buy your product are not happy with it, only a small percentage of the 10% are actually going to go to the trouble of asking for the money back.

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

So your only risk in making a guarantee like this is if your product is just bad?

Yeah, absolutely.

You make a poor product, you're gonna get a lot of product back now.

I mean, that does increase depending on the price of your product. If you're talking about a hundred $200, $300 product, then you're gonna have more people that are willing to send that back.

Well, sure, because once you get into that considered purchase range, now you're getting into such emotions as buyer remorse.

Yeah, yeah.

So now it's like, I spent $300 on this gadget.

Right.

And you know what, Maybe that wasn't so smart. But they do have money back guarantee, so what the heck, I'm gonna tell them it doesn't work and just get my money back.

Right, right.

So it becomes another issue. But for most consumer packaged goods products, you're 30 bucks or less. For most items being sold at retail, you're going to get a very small amount. I'll give you another thing real quick on this. And we've seen this happen with products where we do free baits.

Oh, yeah.

So we do. Let's say we do a deal with a Rite Aid, we do a freebate, buy this product, send in the label, send in this coupon, and you get your money back on it. It's amazing how many people.

Don't, don't do it.

Don't do the freebie.

Don't do it. Yep.

The freebay motivates them to buy it, and then they never bother to send off to get the money.

I mean, look at the platform. Ibotta. This is, this is how they built their business, is you buy it. Okay, great. Then you have to go through the trouble at whatever user use their app, you buy their products, then you have to take a picture of your receipt in order to actually get the rebate.

Mm.

So many people don't take that last step. And all I have to do is take a picture.

And yet they still use the.

Still use the app to.

To learn about the product.

So brands that are advertising on that platform, they are. They only get charged for the actual coupons that are activated or rebates are activated through the platform. So if somebody bought a product because of that platform but didn't actually take that last step, the brand doesn't get charged. So I mean, again, that is just one platform that's built it on this model because people just don't do it.

Well, folks, there's some information for you on putting guarantees on your own product, but the real motivation for us today, quite frankly, was to tell you about ours.

It was very selfish.

So as we roll into 2020.

Yes.

If you are giving some thought that it's time to have a new ad agency.

Yep.

Maybe this is that little bit of motivation that you need. Maybe this is that little bit of protection that makes you not fear making a bad decision.

Yeah.

And if you want to learn more about how we guarantee our results, and I'm going to tell you quite frankly, just as we've talked about your products, the reason we put this guarantee on it is because we know we're not going to have to give anybody the money back because we know what we're doing. So we're not, it's not really a risk in our eyes, but we do the guarantee to take the risk out of your eyes.

Let's be frank here. How many times in the past have we not outperformed the previous agency?

We always do. So if you ever want to get in touch with us, Jekyll and Hyde, you can find us@jekyllheidlabs.com you can obviously get to us through cpginsiders.com and you can always talk to Justin or myself or any of the other wonderful money back guarantee people that are here at the agency. That's it for CPG insiders this week. We've a nice short episode and we'll be back in a couple of weeks with some new topics. 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 jekyllhideagency.com or feel free to give us a call at 800542. Sam.