How to Create an Advertising Budget for Growth

Foreign Hi everybody and welcome to another edition of CPG Insiders. I'm your host Mark Young with my co host Justin Gerard back and ready to go. You know, Justin, you know this particular episode, it is early November, it's beginning November, right?

Yep.

And it's that time of the year when we're starting to think about and planning, you know, the next quarter and the next year. And what I want to talk about today is why your advertising budget for this year shouldn't be your budget for next year.

Okay. And it's, I mean it's an important.

Topic and that's a, that's a theme, isn't it? Because we see a lot of clients like oh well, we spent X this year, so we'll spend X next year, same X.

And, and of course we understand where that comes from. There's so much uncertainty going on right now. Right. And it's easier to, to play it safe. And we just did a show about that not too long ago. You're going to hear here shortly, rather than when all these things are coming at you, then kind of take a step back, breathe. And now let's evaluate what's really going on in our goals and how do we get there. Well, let's just play it safe. It worked this year. So your mind starts to say it'll work next year, right? It was fine. We got where we wanted to go. Not the case though.

And here's one of the, one of the issues, I'm going to cover a few issues. The first, let's cover the obvious one, right? The obvious one is media is up 3%.

Yeah. Inflation hits every category, Right.

So if you spent a hundred thousand dollars last year and you spent a hundred thousand this year, you're getting $30,000 or $3,000 less median, right. So you're already with dollar to dollar budget, you've already got 3% less media. Now that's the inflation. Now that doesn't also account for inflation. And media is not linear. So it's not every network, every website, every magazine went up exactly 3%. They go up based on their demand. So media is a very supply and demand industry. Especially when we talk about electronic media. There is only 13 commercial breaks and a half hour of television.

Right.

So I can't sell the 14th one. So if the more people that are trying to buy my 13, 13 spots, the more the price goes up because that's how the media determines who gets the 13 spots.

Yep.

It's not a first come, first serve, it's a well, we've already sold 13 spots. So if you want me to push this advertiser out, you need to give me more money so that I can afford to reduce or, you know, insult this other client right there. There is an exception to that. And the exception of that is the big, big companies.

Yeah.

The PNGs and the GM.

Yeah.

All these people, they buy their media, what's called an upfront, where they do have guaranteed media, but they're guaranteeing the price and they're paying a premium for it. They actually pay a premium for their media because they come in and they say, okay, we want two commercials in every episode of Blue Bloods. Our product fits the Tom Selleck model. We love Blue Bloods. Their demo is perfect for us. We don't want to be on the show after Blue Bloods. We don't want to be on the night after Blue Bloods. We want to be in the middle of Blue Bloods so they get guaranteed positioning and they paid a premium to get it. So that's the first item. Inflation is inflation. The second item I want to talk about is there's an old adage, so I'm going to use a simile here of sorts. There's an old adage of don't dress for the job you have, dress for the job you want. You heard that before.

I've heard that before.

All right, so don't dress for the job you have, dress for the job you want. Well, that applies to media, and it applies to media in as much as don't advertise for the sales you have, advertise for the sales you want a following.

So I'm tracking. I'm tracking.

So if your budget is based on, well, we allot 15% of our media to advertising. We sold a hundred thousand pieces. That's our media budget. But your me. But you also need to look at your media budget and say, well, we sold a hundred thousand pieces this year, but we want to sell 125,000 pieces next year. Then the budget needs to track with what you want, not what you did.

I agree completely. The other caveat to that, too, I think that follows the same thinking, is depending on the maturation of the business and the brand, where your opportunity for growth is may be different, meaning you may have to start seeking a different type of consumer than you have currently had because you have gained enough penetration within a certain consumer type. So now you have to not only change how you advertise, because now, well, this is actually the market opportunity is with this type of consumer, which may be a more expensive consumer. It may be a consumer that you have to actually bring into the category. So now you're not talking about stealing market share from competitors. So talking to consumers that already have a foundation of the category and are used to being in there, you actually have to expand it, which is traditionally going to be a more expensive sale, because now you're having to change multiple types of habits, which is also something you have to consider.

So what Justin's talking about here is expanding your universe. So your universe, your current universe, is the circle of people. Think of all the people in a big circle who currently buy your product or a similar product to you. So here's a circle of people who buy canned chili. Now your, your choice is, and let's say the canned chili market is a 100 million dollar market. So if there's a hundred million dollars worth of existing people that buy Chile and you sell a million, you have 1% market share. If you want to have 2% market share, you have to take 1% market share from the other chili brands. Or you could increase the universe. Increase the universe is. Let's talk to people who have not been buying chili. Maybe we can, maybe we can figure out how to bring canned soup buyers over to the chili section. So now you're making the universe bigger, which means instead of trying to compete with the other chili makers. I don't know why I use chili as my example here. I don't think it was my best moment, but it's fine. You know, I'm already on chili, so I can't give it up now.

It's chili season, come on.

Yeah, it is. And I enjoy a good chili.

So.

So instead of trying to steal business from the other brands, I'm going to introduce new people to the joys of canned chili. So it can sometimes be a little costlier to go after them. Not always.

Not always.

Because sometimes there might be so much brand loyalty in certain brands of chili that it might be easier to go find new people. But it does require you to advertise in, in different ways in different places. Now here's the, here's the big part of this podcast. I'm going to really get to the big part of it now. The big part of it is what's called backfilling. So first off, we know that according to Nielsen, who has conducted massive studies, and Nielsen is a really unique person or unique company to do this because Nielsen measures all the television advertising and they measure all the in store sales.

Yeah.

So what makes them so unique? Is they coincidentally happen to own both data sets.

Yeah.

So they are uniquely qualified to do this study more than anyone else is qualified to do it because they have Nielsen television ratings, they have Nielsen scan data. So what Nielsen discovered was that the average brand and this was done across 68 different brand categories. So this was done all the way from laundry detergent down to the chili over to the topical analgesics to the hairspray over 68 different categories. Nielsen found that a 15% ad budget is the necessary ad budget to run in place.

Now when you say 15%. 15% of what?

15% of wholesale income. Okay, so you sold $1 million of product to Walmart, Walmart paid you 1 million. Nielsen says you need to spend 150,000 of that million to, to run in place. Now this isn't cast in concrete and let me tell you why. Let's say you're a brand new brand, okay? Well if you're a brand new product, you don't have a run in place, right? So you're not backfilling anything. Everything you do is, is a first time buyer. Or let's say you're such a massive brand, your dawn for dishes or tide, you're such a massive brand that expanding the universe and finding new customers is almost becoming impossible. Right. Because who doesn't know what a Coke is?

Right?

Right. It's very difficult for Coca Cola to find a lot of new consumers.

Right? And no, no, absolutely. I mean spec, at least from awareness, perspective, everybody knows they exist.

Right? So when we look at a Coca Cola, Coca Cola is not looking for new consumers. Coca Cola is looking to retain consumers because they know that they have bleed and their bleed comes from people who, who think I need to avoid sugar, people who decided they like Pepsi, people who wanted to go to a store brand, people who decided I'm going to switch over to a Gatorade or I'm going to flip over to a energy drink or I'm going to flip over to a flavored water or whatever the case is. That's where Coke has bleed. So Coca Cola, they need to keep reminding you of your relationship with Coca Cola, your memories of Coca Cola, the great things that happened in your past with a Coca Cola and the nostalgia of a hundred plus year old brand that you have known from the day you could have a memory. So that's where Coca Cola lives now, emerging brands? No, we're looking for new customers. We're trying to get people to know who we are. We're trying to build brands. It's Very different. But we need this 15% to run in place. And then we know that we have the issue of what's called excess points of market. Excess share avoids if the entire world of advertising in your brand, in your category, let's say all companies combined in your category spend $10 million and you spent 1 million, that means you have 10 points share voice. You have 10% of the share voice. So that means of all the people that are hearing about canned Chile today, 10% of those messages are yours. Now let's say you want to pick up another market share. So you have 1% market share. And you go, I want to have 2% market share. Well, then we know for every half to one point of market share that you want to gain, you need 10 more points of market share of share voice.

Yes.

So I know this is a little complicated, folks. I'm even getting myself turned around. So that means if my budget is a million and all Advertisers together are 10 million and I decide I want to grab another share of the market, another point of market, I need to go get 10 more points of advertising, which means I need to spend another million dollars. And if you want to be really technically correct, I need to spend another $1.2 million because I just expanded all dollars in the category from 10 to 11. So for me to actually have 20 points of 11 of an 11 million dollar market, I need to spend 2.2 million dollars.

Okay. Yep.

Now let's get on to backfill every brand. And let me correct myself, almost every brand has a replenishment cycle. There are some products that don't. We have clients with products that don't.

Yeah, yeah. They're one time buys.

Right. Electric, you know, expensive electric toothbrushes have a very long replenishment cycle. Throwaway toothbrushes should be 30 days, but they typically go 120, 180. But they still have a replenishment cycle. So if I'm selling, you know, throwaway toothbrushes, then I know that I hopefully I could sell another one in the next three to six months. If I'm selling water pick, I'm probably not going to sell you another one for five to 15 years.

Right.

The technology is going to have to greatly improve or it's going to have to wear out.

Yeah, exactly.

So based on my replenishment cycle, I need to backfill customers. So what is your replenishment cycle? That's my first question. And this is different for everybody.

Exactly. Every category is different.

Right. So we can help you Figure that out. But what's my replenishment cycle? And we have research that will tell us what the replenishment cycle is for the category. Yeah, so let's say that you're. If you're selling hairspray, replenishment cycle is 30 to 60 days. What's the replenishment cycle on pasta and pasta sauce?

So traditionally in that category, replenishment cycle is every two to three weeks. Now you have some heavy users, right. And then you have some light users, but on average, you're doing probably every two to three weeks.

Okay, so that's the replenishment cycle. Now let's set that aside for a minute. And now let's look at the repeat buyer cycle. So when we look at pasta sauce, we know that the replenishment cycle is every two weeks. But what's the average brand loyalty?

Now you're, now you're getting into something.

So the average brand loyalty is what, 20%? Is it even that high?

Yeah, it's about 20. I mean, obviously you have, say, average is around 20%.

Okay, so when I sell a jar of pasta sauce today, for every five jars I sell today, one of those five people will buy it again in two weeks.

Yes. Now this also brings back into. And Mark, I don't know if this is getting too in the weeds, but you could also, when you're talking about this concept of loyalty, get back to Byron Sharp's double jeopardy. Law of double jeopardy. You could bring that into play to get a better understanding of loyalty as well. So I don't know if you want to go there.

Go ahead and jump into it.

So, so Byron Sharp, which. An amazing book on how brands grow, I recommend it to everyone. But he, he, he did a massive amount of research and he discovered that there was this, this element of loyalty and this misconception of loyalty that a lot of brands and marketers have. They feel that, well, I have this great product and look at my loyalty rate. Like, everyone loves this.

Everybody comes back and buys.

Everybody comes back. It's the best thing in the world. Right? And so the math doesn't say that. What the math shows is that the loyalty rate rate is actually a misconception because it comes down to your market size. So what it states is that every brand and in the category loses the same amount of people. Okay, so let's just say easy math, right? That every year in pasta sauce, every brand loses 100 customers. Easy math, right. Everyone's going to lose it. It doesn't matter who you are. If you're Rails or regular, you're going to lose 100 people. The difference is when you look at it from a loyalty or percentage standpoint is your market share is that a hundred people lost. For a brand like rails that does 150 million or more in sales a year hits a lot different than an emerging brand that's selling maybe a million. Those hundred people hit the bottom line differently. So Rails loyalty rate looks higher, but it's not. It's because they have a larger share of the market, which is also a reflection of their share of voice. So the loyalty concept is the amount of people loss is the same for everybody, but the rate is different based on the size of the market penetration you have. So you have to be careful. So what that means is for emerging brands it's going to appear that your loyalty rate could be lower. It's not. You're just smaller. You're literally just a smaller brand. You need to go gain more market share. That's the key.

So appreciate you doing that. So let's jump into my, my conversation about the backfill. For easy math, I'm going to say we sold, we spent $1 million. We sold 100,000 pieces. So we have a $10 item or not a $10 item, but we have a $10 ad spend. That's what we've got.

Yeah.

So we sold, we spent a million, we sold a hundred thousand pieces. So next year, and let's say, let me back this out, we spent a million, we sold a hundred thousand and our sales increased by 60% because we're a fairly new brand. We didn't advertise last year. Our sales are up 50, 60%. Our buyers pumped our mark. Our numbers are heading north. Our buyers very excited at our one year review. What do you guys have coming up next year? And we decide we're going to spend the same million. Okay, now keep in mind the purpose of advertising is to make a one time purchase of a new user. That's the primary function. The secondary function is to build top of mind awareness for the brand. And the third function is to remind the people who already tried us. Oh yes, I like that sauce. I think I'll get it again. Why did I not buy that, Huh? I haven't tried that in a couple months. Let's go do that again. This is why, by the way, folks, this is why McDonald's has TV commercials showing big Macs. It's not that no one's had a Big Mac.

Yeah, unfortunately that's true.

Absolutely. I mean, how many people can you find if you went through this entire office and asked everybody here if they've never had a Big Mac, your odds of finding that is probably pretty thin.

Pretty thin, Absolutely.

So me telling you, hey, we've got a Big Mac. Look at this. It's got, you know, two beef patties and special sauce. You already know it.

Right.

So what I'm having to do is remind you of the last time you had a Big Mac. That's what my advertising is doing. It's reminding you of the great experience you had last time you ate a Big Mac. So this is what your advertising does. So for the newer brands, for the emerging brands, the newer brands, most of your money is spent driving, trial, buying first time users, which will always cost more per user than buying a return. So McDonald's. McDonald's already has memories and a paradigm already in your head. I just need to tease you with the sauce dripping down the side and make you go, oh man, it's been, I haven't had a Big Mac in three months. I'm going to do that tomorrow.

Yep.

Okay. So that's an easy trigger.

Yeah.

If I was introducing you to the concept of a hamburger. More lifting here.

Yep.

This is a bigger lift because I have no experience in my memory to lean back on and say, oh, that was good.

Right. I have no relationship with you in any way, shape or form.

So it's going to take more money, it's going to take more inertia, it's going to take more effort to make that happen. So first off, we have to remember we're overspending on the first time user with the goal of turning them into a lifetime value customer. And as your ad agency, I can't create, by the way, we can't create that lifetime customer. You need to create that lifetime customer by having a wonderful product. So if I go buy your product and my first experience was horrible. Right. All the advertising in the world won't overcome that bad memory?

No, not at all. We can do everything we can to understand the consumer, to establish rapport through our messaging and understanding. But at the end of the day, if the product does not perform for the customer, they're never coming back. It doesn't matter.

So going back to McDonald's and by the way, I'm just making this up, this is not something that I believe happened. I'm sure maybe it happened somewhere. Let's say my first time going to McDonald's, I had a Big Mac and there was a roach in the box.

Right.

All the advertising in the World probably isn't going to bring you back because you now have a memory that McDonald's puts roaches in their burgers. And that was disgusting. And you almost threw up looking at it. And I don't ever want to do that again. Right. So we can't. We can't fix that. So your product needs to deliver on its promise. Your product needs to be a good product. That person needs to have a pleasant experience interacting with you. That's the only way we get them to come back. So now, going back to this backfill, we spent a million dollars. We sold 100,000 items. Sales went up 60%. Now it's 2025. We're going into the next year. We put the same million dollars out there. Let's say that we have a replenishment rate of every three months. And let's say that we have a 20% brand loyalty, which would be really high.

Yeah, that would be.

It's a good. That's a really good brand.

That's a good number.

Okay, so then we know that organically, our return customers are going to be 20% over 20% times four. Assume that they really buy every. Every three months. So 20% over four is our return rate. So now we go to our, our company, Walmart, Walgreens, whoever we're talking to, and they say, your sales are only up 10%. Now. Why are your sales only up 10%? Because I'm buying the same number of customers I bought last year, and my return business up the number by 10%. So 10% of my business is now returns, which is great.

Right.

But now my retailer is saying, well, you guys aren't a hot product anymore. Because remember, the buyer's not looking for what you did last year. The buyer's looking for, what are you going to do for me today? And what are you going to look for? What are you going to do for me this year? So now all of a sudden, you were the new kid on the block with a 60% growth rate, and it's this year, and you're doing 10% more right than you did last year. But your buyer's now saying, well, you guys, you guys are falling off. You guys aren't hot anymore. Yep. So what does that do? Well, buyers are people. They're human. And some other brand shows up and at Walgreens and says, look, we got a 60 growth rate at CVS. So all of a sudden they can become the shiny object. Because, well, I've got, you know, I got brand X over here. But these Guys are down the 5 or 10% growth right now. And shiny object over at CVS, they're, they're flipping 60%.

Well, I'm glad you brought that up too, because the other thing that we, you have to take in consideration because again, replacement rate is something that is not talked about a lot. It's not understood very well. So that's really important. And I'm glad that you're bringing this topic up. But the other element that you just brought up now, it comes down to the market dynamics and category changes, right? It, the only thing constant in our life is change. So the market is going to change. Consumers are going to change. Right. You're going to have consumers coming in and out of every category because they're changing.

New brands come into the category.

You're going to have new competitors and.

Other brands might up their budget.

You're going to have new innovation, you're going to have new spending. Right. You're going to have new initiatives at the retail shelves that you don't necessarily know about initially. And you may have to get into or combat with or understand. You need to also understand that, and this is something that we've seen is our retailers, that there's two major, you know, one of the major risks we talked about a lot is all of a sudden private label coming out and you didn't realize and now you can go back private label challenges at the store.

Now you just lost 20 of your store, your, your sales from the private label.

Exactly. And then maybe to your point, with this last example, right, you're doing well, you're an emerging brand. You 60%. And so all of a sudden now you, and you did that at cvs and now that got the attention of Walmart. So now Walmart's launching and then you have to understand that Walmart is going to cannibalize some of that CVS business. So now you have to adjust for the distribution changes that are happening in the retail space because CVS will not care that your sales are up at Walmart. No, CVS cares with cvs. Right. So now you have to spend more and combat your own success in that way too, and understand how to do that.

Yeah, it's a really good point. I'm glad you brought that up. When as a rule, Walmart is never the first brand, the first chain to say yes. So typically, if you're in the HBC categories, health, beauty, cosmetic, vitamins, supplements, if you're in that category, you're probably going to get your yeses out of Walgreens and CVS before you do out of Walmart. From a major's perspective, when you add the Walmart, Walmart will grossly outsell what Walgreens and CVS are doing, but they will also chop 10 to 20% out of your Walgreens and your CVS business. Because consumers know that Walmart is always the better value.

Yes. Plus it's a different shopping experience.

Right. They bought you at Walgreens because that's the only place that had it. But now that they discover you're at Walmart, oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get it at Walmart because I know it will be cheaper.

Right? Everybody knows what edo is cheaper. It always is. People know what EDLP is. They know it.

So I'm going to, I'm going to switch my buying habits over to Walmart. Yeah. And then Walgreens and CVS are going to take a 10, 15, 20% hit in volume. Now, the buyer, Walgreens is not going to say, oh, well, you guys are at Walmart. That's why you're down 20%. So I'm cool. He's going to say, you're down 20%. You're, you're going the wrong way now. And there's a new shiny object that CVS has that's up 60%.

Absolutely.

And I'm going to tell you there's another reason I'm doing this episode. And it is self defense. And I will tell you why I'm saying it's self defense. How many. This happens to us. And this happens year after year. A client comes into the agency, it's their first year with us, and they spend that million dollars and sales are up 50, 60, 70, 80, 100%. And we are the geniuses of the advertising world because look what you did for my brand. Gee, sales have doubled. And then year, year two comes along and the client says, well, let's, we'll spend that same million. And then the client calls us up and says, well, you guys are failing. Numbers are only up 10%. Yes. Because you're comparing them to last year where we doubled your numbers.

Right, Exactly.

You're not comparing them to the year before we became your agency. You're comparing them to the first year we were your agency. So then we as an agency end up competing with ourselves because now you're comparing us to us, but you gave us no additional resources to increase, so we lost 3% to inflation. You have a 10% replenishment which we're seeing in the sales and maybe even a 20% replenishment.

Replenishment or replacement.

Replacement.

Yeah.

And I have to go out and buy you new people now. Yeah. And it's. And it's not any cheaper today to buy a new trial than it was yesterday.

No.

And it may even be a little more because you came into the market and. And this happens, by the way. This happens frequently, folks. You come to us and you're in a quiet category. You're in a category where all the brands are stable and nobody is spending any money. Which is amazing. That is. That is like so cool. Because now you're in a category that everybody combined is spending $2 million and nothing. And you come along and you spend a half a million. It's like, holy crap, we got 25 share, you know, 25 point share voice. So we're growing like crazy. We're gaining market share. We're expanding the category, and we only have five major competitors. Guess what? One or more of the major competitors say this new brand is stealing market share. We have to start spending.

Woke up a giant.

Woke up a giant. So now they start spending and now we don't have our market share. And I'm going to give you a real world example of it. The real world example is one of our clients product is called rectacare.

Yep.

And Rector has been with us for a decade or more.

Yep.

And they're in the category of hemorrhoidal pain. They are number two in the nation. But when we first launched them, number one, which probably everybody knows is Preparation H, did almost no advertising because they were the category captain, didn't have to. They had no competitors. The closest thing they had was a store brand or tuck swipes. And other than that, nobody. So think about it. If you're a brand like a Preparation H and you have zero competition and you serve and you serve a specific need or ailment. So this is not a want item. This is a need item.

This is pain.

Right. So I'm never going to get you to buy it recreationally. You're going to buy it when you need it. Well, yeah, there is that. But at any rate, get your mind out of the gutter.

Hey. So I didn't say anything.

So then all of a sudden we came along with recticare, we started advertising and we drove preparation aids to spend millions because preparation age in about 18 months figured out we were eating her lunch and we were taking market share. And. And now Preparation H has been spending for years.

Yep. And they have way more money and.

They have way more Money. We're still number two in the category and things are still going well, but.

Absolutely.

But all of these things change. So the money we spent in year one isn't the money you can spend in year two. Because all of a sudden you, you were competing with no. 1 in year one and now you're competing with whatever in year two.

Right.

Other, other times this happens is when you have an innovation so you come along and you've really innovated a category. An innovated category is our client, WaxRx. Amazing product. Great people. WaxRx came along and they came up with an at home ear wax system that is like used in a doctor's office. And they're the own, they were the only one on the market, right? Yep. And we advertised and we became the number one ear wasp system in the, in the nation and just crushing the sales. But then came Wax blaster and, and Dr. Wax remover and all these knockoffs entered the market because we created a category and the store brands came into the, into the game. And now you go to the shelf and you see a box that says compare to Wax rx. So all of a sudden we made the category, we drive all the traffic to the shelf. And now we have competitors that are siphoning off our business with lower priced, inferior knockoffs. They're not as good. But the consumers there saying, well, look, well, Geez, this is $10 cheaper. It kind of looks like it. So now we have to deal with that. And what are our options? Our options are we either take $10 off our price, which is not a really good idea, or we need to up our game in advertising. Because now we need to. Instead of telling people who we are and what we do, now we're telling people who we are, what we do and defending ourselves as being the best premium original product in the category.

Exactly. So like you said, nobody wins the race at the bottom. It doesn't. So you can't, you cannot have the price war. It's not going to work. Nobody wins. So.

So at any rate, folks, I hope that was helpful. That is kind of today's lesson, if we want to call it. It was, it was kind of lessening, I think today. It was, it was a bit academic.

It was. But I mean, like you said, right now we're in November and we'll be releasing that, this, the show soon. So as everybody is looking at planning for next year and budgets, it's, you know, like everything we do, we want to make sure that every listener here understands all of the dynamics of the decisions that you're making. And I'm sure that many of our listeners knew many of these things, but not all of them. And all of them are as important. And so the more you know, the more you understand, the more you truly measure when you're trying to establish your. Your goals and your budgets and your spends. Because we also understand that, as we said, inflation hits everything. It's hitting all your costs. So we understand that costs are going up in many areas and you're trying to fight these battles and you're. And you're trying to work with your retail buy because now all of a sudden they're asking for a little bit more trade spend this year and you're trying to figure out, where is all my money going to go. Completely understand everything that, the challenges that you have. And so we're hoping that this show will help broaden your scope. And at the very least, even if you say, wow, I don't know all the answers to those questions, but at least you're asking the right questions now. And Mark, as we've always said, we are always willing to have a discussion to help you really dig deep and understand and really pull all of this apart so that you can, you can not only just create the budget that you need, know that's what this was about, but really develop the real strategy that you want for the growth that you're looking for. Because it's cpg. It's complex business. We've always said that. Right. There's nothing simple about it.

And back to what I said, don't dress for the job you have, dress for the job you want.

Exactly. And you know what? And that goes into everything. Are you saying. And that's another show. But that goes into the, the budget that you're spending. That goes in from a media perspective into your product, into your customers, into the experience you're creating for your customers. Right. If you're a premium product, make sure that every touch point is premium. Otherwise it's not. Right. So all these things are important.

If you base all your marketing decisions on the past, you're trying to duplicate what you've already done.

Right.

And if you base your marketing decisions based on where you want to be, then. Then you're moving toward a new. A new and bigger future.

Exactly. You're creating it. And that's what you have to do.

Breathe it into existence.

That's it. That's it.

Well, thanks for your help today, Justin. As always, folks, I hope this was helpful for you. And again, it's the reason we do this. The reason we do this show is every episode of this show. I just want to remind people, every episode of this show is based on a repetitive conversation that we've had in the agency. So it is literally. What have we been talking to people about this month?

Yep. It's all our experiences.

Because our, our, our feeling is if four people called to talk to us about an issue, then there's 400 people that are roaming around out there that have that question.

Yes, easily.

So let's just go answer that question. Let's go have this conversation that we've already had four times in the past two weeks. Let's go have it on the podcast so that everybody else gets to hear that same conversation. So that's where these things come from. Absolutely. If there's a topic that you want us to discuss, I want you to feel free to reach out to us. You can find us at cpg insiders.com or jekyllheidelabs.com and reach out to us. And all you gotta do. I'm a podcast listener and I'm wondering, how do you guys determine X or how do you measure X? Or how. How can I do X?

Absolutely. And, and now we've expanded outside and we're doing a lot more on YouTube. So if you're engaging with us on YouTube, leave us a comment there or on LinkedIn and we'll, we'll, we'll answer that as well.

Terrific. That's it for today, folks. If you like today's podcast, please do us favor. Just take a minute and go to wherever you get your podcast and leave us a five star review or a thumbs up at YouTube. And if you're not subscribing to the show, just hit the subscribe button and then you won't miss any episodes. And that helps the show.

Yeah.

And as the show gets bigger and, and we are typically in the top three CPG shows in the world, but as the show gets bigger, it makes us have better guests so we can attract, you know, bigger people in the industry. So it helps everybody.

Absolutely. We can create more value.

That's it for today. We'll see you on the next episode of CPG Insiders. 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 just go to jekyllheidagency.com or feel free to give us a call at 800-542 10.