The One About Branding - I Love Marketing With Joe Polish And Dean Jackson - Episode #101

I'm dean jackson, he's joe polish, and this is the I love marketing podcast. Hey everybody, it's Dean Jackson and Joe Polish. Well, what do you have to say for yourself, Joe? Look at us. 101 episodes of the Isle of Marketing podcast.

Now. There we go. We're almost at the name of my original marketing course that I released back in 1994, which is 105 money making marketing strategies. So we're only four podcast episodes away to equal the the same number of my original marketing course almost 20 years ago.

Wow, look at us.

Yep, pretty. Pretty fancy. So have we gotten smarter or dumber?

I think a little bit of both probably.

Yeah. Has life gotten more complex or less complex, more simple or less simple? I don't know.

You know what's amazing? Because sometimes we're certainly more connected now. Certainly more. There's more opportunities for screen sucking than were available 20 years ago.

Yeah, I didn't know if you meant connected by connected interconnected via the computer or connected in terms of relationships.

Yeah, I think more interconnected through the computer.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, you could. Well, I mean, you have less relationships than me because I think most people tend to like me more than they like you.

That could be true.

No, I'm kidding. All right, so let's get into it. All right, so we're going to do an episode today on branding and I just got done with a 25k group and I had some smart dudes in dudettes at this one. We had Michael Fishman, who's one of the top list guys in the world. We had. He had, you know, Dean Graziosi, of course, talking about his. We played his current infomercial, which has had the highest numbers of any show he's ever done. And then we watched the entire infomercial and then he broke down how he set it up and how he sells and how he delivers to his clients and that sort of thing. We had Steven Kotler, who is Peter Diamandis, co author on the book Abundance, give the the latest presentation with scientific research on how to achieve a flow state. The book Flow, originally written by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, is how you pronounce his name, I believe.

Mihaly.

And that was great. We had Brian Kurtz show up, who's a 25k member, one of the top marketing gurus in the world. We had our friends Stan and Natalie Dubin, who own the largest privately held contract cleaning company in the world. And I'm helping them with their big seminar in April of 2014, where I'll be emceeing the whole thing. And we have 6,500 employees and do over 265 million a year in revenue. And a bunch of people, people like Tim Schmidt and Christy Frank from the Apprentice. Just a whole slew. We had 32amazing, awesome people and we talked about branding. I actually read this article that I had recently wrote with our good secret friend who we don't really talk about. It was originally a response to someone who emailed me, real smart guy, who had actually emailed me and said, joe, who do you recommend that I speak to that is good at branding? Then I replied back to him with the most honest response that I could and ended up turning this response into an article. And then I decided to post it on Facebook and I actually shared it with a couple people who are going to run it in their blogs. So I think this whole thing's going to get some traction. But what I wanted to do is you have a real good perspective on this. We both have our perspective on it. We're both direct response guys. I want to read the article and then have a discussion about it and then maybe share some of the. The things that people had said on Facebook because it actually stirred up a whole bunch of emotional responses and so. You ready?

Yeah, I'm ready.

Okay. So the title was Branding Equal Bullshit with a question mark. So basically, I need to point out something about the title because the way people responded to it was I was saying branding equals bullshit as if I was making a declarative statement. But in reality, I left it open to see how people would respond, and they still responded like, oh, you know, trying to defend branding and giving their. But, you know, that's not necessarily what I was saying, but I'll go ahead and read it. So branding equals bullshit. The title of this article is sure to rustle some jimmies. Well, truth often rustles jimmies. I recently got an email from an individual asking me the following. Joe, who do you recommend I speak to that is good at branding? I wanted to make sure to give this individual an answer that wasn't sugarcoated. The reality is, I could have answered his email with two words. No one. Let me explain. The pursuit of building a brand versus making a sale with proper positioning has caused more companies to go bankrupt than I could ever imagine. Look, I'm a direct response guy, not a brand guy. You can't deposit name recognition in the bank. You can only deposit money. The reality is, I don't know of anyone who is good at branding without other elements in place and key there without other elements in place and I think brand building done right that is profitably is a function of direct response. Branding as a primary goal is a total waste of time and will throw a lot of money down the drain. It will cause someone to take actions that won't result in smart strategic marketing and sales. Branding is simply the worst way to fish. If the goal of fishing is to catch fish. I once heard David Ogilvy on an audio say that a brand is the personality of your product or service. You can't just give someone a personality that they have to pay for it or develop it. I'd rather just give people best practices, techniques and strategies that help them sell stuff. Go to page two. Okay. One of the main reasons that 25k www.25kgroup.com and I love marketing.com will help you, or anyone else for that matter, is that it will help you realize what paths to go down and what paths not to. Why does someone want to brand something or build a brand anyway? People need to focus more on the substance of what they sell and less on the IM image. You need to focus more on the substance of what you sell and less on the image. Forget about brand building. Get a direct response, sign my name. And then I added this. P.S. dean, which is. If you want to learn something really useful about branding, then watch my video interview with my good friend Jeff Madoff. This is a great interview that covers the topic of branding. Jeff does most of the commercials for Victoria's Secret. So if nothing else, the first two minutes of the video is pretty exciting. And you can see some of Jeff's work and some attractive Victoria's Secret models. And then I put a link. Yeah, yeah, well, because there are all these.

I know, exactly.

And most guys tend to love that. The first two minutes of that interview. And it's basically number 94 on ilovemarketing.com it's our episode 94 that we put up as a bonus section. Episode session. Anyway, the reason that I put that in there is because it's really hard to cover a pretty expansive topic in a short article and something I posted on Facebook. So I wanted to give people an opportunity to watch that interview. And the interview's really good and it really gives like a guy who has spent his, you know, his life dealing with, you know, people in that world, build a brand, tell a story, that sort of thing. And using, you know, video as the medium to do that. But the responses that came back, you know, immediately of course, were great stuff. Joe. And then a guy named Marshall wrote Joe. I couldn't agree more. And coming from a guy like me who loves creating great imagery to market myself, this may seem odd. However, people often miss what I'm actually doing. Let me read it. People often think that my end goal at creating an image, when in fact the image is the last thing I create and it's the last thing I care about. I call it branding because it sounds close to what it is. But all I care about is that the image and the words that accompany the image will lead directly to a response from a person viewing it. And that the response may, if I have to put my sales process in place correctly, lead to a sale or JV partnership or whatever desired goal I have. It could just be as easily called direct response imaging instead of direct response copywriting. Although all of my images come with well crafted copy, as you can see in my profile photo or cover, they were specifically designed to get a desired response at the moment of viewing, not in the future. And then it goes on and on. But let me just say, before I get your feedback on this, is that the beauty of putting this out there is that there's a lot of people that try to defend brand building, that don't understand direct response and see it's not one or the other. A lot of people have this whole, oh, you either do direct response or you do brand building. One of the greatest definitions that I've heard, that I don't even know where I heard it from, but I say it a lot, is that image or institutional advertising is getting your name out there. Direct response is getting your name out there and getting a response back. And you can simultaneously build a brand while using direct response. And a lot of people don't understand that. And part of it is, you know, you can't deposit name recognition in the bank. You can't deposit a logo in the bank. And so a lot of people will look at big, large companies that are successful that do image advertising. You know, like you take purse companies like Louis Vuitton, or you take fashion companies, or you take Coca Cola or Pepsi or Apple or whatever. I mean, and what people fail to realize is that the average small business owner, guys like you and me and 99.9999% of every entrepreneur and business owner out there are not those companies. They are small business owners. And they don't have millions or tens of millions or hundreds of millions or billions or decades to develop a brand. And they think, oh, let's just come out there and it's just nonsense. How much crap is sold under the guise of building a brand, that sort of thing. Anyway, as you know, I work with a lot of big brand companies. Companies. One of the things I wrote, which I'll maybe come back to is currently, at the time we're recording this, I'm the largest fundraiser in the world for Richard Branson's charity Virgin Unite. Virgin is a big brand and I can point to 10 million things that are a complete and utter waste of money that they do and other things that they do that are. And you know, anyway, as it relates to, you know, building a brand. So what are your thoughts?

Well, you know, it's such. It's one of these things that is so often misunderstood. You know, it's always controversial because there's no real answer to it. You know, everybody's got their misconceptions of what a brand is. They've got their own beliefs of what a brand is. But often I think people focus on it too early and they focus on it as the answer. Like, if only I had a well known brand, people would choose me kind of thing, you know.

Right.

And I think that, that because you're absolutely right, you know, we're talking to small business owners, people who aren't looking to or can't afford really to spend the kind of money that companies like Coca Cola and Virgin and all these big branded companies can afford to spend. But there's just a couple of things that I always focus on instead is really saying it's far more valuable for you to know your prospects names than for everyone to know your name, you know, and so if you look at like in the real estate world, it's so common, you know, that they want to build mini brands, you know, like local brands where they want to be celebrities, they want to be well known so that everybody knows their name. And they perceive that everybody knowing their name will be the ticket to doing more business. And they spend and spend and spend to get famous and it doesn't equate to doing more business, you know. So one of the examples that I use in big groups like that is saying, you know, giving somebody the choice of standing up on stage, you know, if we're in a room of six or 700 people and saying, you know, imagine that these six or 700 people represent a 600 home subdivision. And, you know, you've got a choice of branding, getting your name out there. I'll let you come up on stage and you can tell people who you are and say what your slogan is and I'll help you get your name out there so that everybody knows who you are. Or you can stay right there in your seat and I'll bring you an envelope with a piece of paper. And on the piece of paper will be the name and the address and the contact information for the 60 people in this room who are going to sell their house in the next 12 months. And what would be more valuable to you?

Yeah, exactly.

And that's the kind of thing I think that it's so much more valuable to focus on finding your prospects than it is to spending money to let everybody know who you are. I would say like that it's, that it's, you know, you have to make the choice of would you rather be rich or would you rather be famous? Because it's a lot less expensive to get rich than it is to get famous. And that's really what people want when they start talking about their brand. They want to be famous, you know.

Yeah. And see, the thing about brand building is brand building is very ego based. It's really about the company, it's about the image, it's about the story, it's about a lot of things. And it's a lot easier to put a picture of your dog or a logo or you and shout it out loud. People just think that somehow that is an important thing to do. You talk about it continuously. If you look at most real estate advertising, most real estate business cards, most real estate websites, I mean, it's the picture of the person, name, rank, serial number, I mean they just, it's a cookie cutter version of everyone trying to build a brand. And you know, the thing with carpet cleaners, you know, because I started out as a carpet cleaner and I, you know, put a lot of emphasis on my logo. I mean, I spent a lot of time designing it and paying a graphic person to put it together. And I had this really cool computer generated carpet underneath the logo, my first one, and a carpet wand and computer dirt. And I was really proud of this thing. And I would put it on my ads and on the side of my van and in my business card and all this stuff before I really learned direct response and invested a lot of time and thought until I realized that nobody gives a shit about any of that stuff. Until I actually say like, well, why should you hire me? What's the difference? And when someone, as much as I haven't eaten at McDonald's in decades, probably at this point, although I grew up on a lot of Fast food and stuff, which is not good and explains why I'm weird and strange probably. But I mean, if someone's going to go to Japan and they're from America and they see McDonald's, the golden arches and stuff, there's a level of certainty that that brand conveys. But that's not, that's not the majority of people that are out there running businesses. I mean, it's so far from reality. And then when people take these college courses and they study these brands and everything, I often wonder like, what the hell does that have to do with anyone that has a startup?

Right?

I mean really. And so the thing going back to getting your name out there and getting a response back, it's not that I'm opposed to someone that wants to have a great representation of who they are or really great graphics or imagery or packaging. I mean certainly Apple as an example. I like really looking at Apple because you take the Steve Jobs keynotes, those were just really well done product launches built around education based marketing, explaining what their products do, creating this real desire and need to have something. Even though the day before a podcast or a podcast, an ipod or an iPhone or, or an iPad were ever released, no one was even thinking that they ever needed this thing because they didn't even know it existed. And the moment Steve Jobs would get out and do a keynote, then all of a sudden, wow. But what Apple did is very creative education based marketing. And along the way they had a brand called Apple. But they couldn't have just put the Apple logo out there and have shitty products or really great products, but not do the other stuff and, and have built a brand. I mean they needed to have a clientele that actually really like their stuff. And see, that's what, where I think people miss the point that I make with, with brand. If you, you know, let me, let me read some of the comments. There's one, there's a lot of them here, but okay, let's see. I just want, and I want you to comment on some of these too. Yeah, yeah, this, this gal named Heather and I'm not going to say their whole names because I don't know, they want me talking about them on a podcast. But I think the bottom line is there are many elements that go into building a successful business or a well rounded person for that matter. Stronger in some areas and some are weaker in some. So we seek out those that are good at what they do to fill the holes and make it whole. And then she went on another post that doesn't mean any one part is more or less important than others. It's just that when people focus on I need help with xyz, it's because they recognize that they've got something missing. And just like some people think Internet marketing is a business model rather than just one piece of business will think branding is the 1 key to success. And while no one piece stands alone, that might be true for them if it's their only weak spot at the time. Now that seems like a good statement and stuff. Although I'm not really quite sure what the takeaway is there in terms of a specific but what I will say there are some things that are more important than others. Like for instance, if you're writing a letter, the most important thing is what, Dean?

That it gets delivered and opened.

Yeah, well first off the list, that's the most important thing. The second is the headline. When it comes to the creative, it's not the logo, it's not the brand, it's the frickin headline. Every marketer knows that that is a marketer that knows what the hell they're talking about. The problem is there's a lot of people that call themselves market that are dumbasses. A guy named Jerry Levinson, we'll mention his name because he comes to our meetup groups and stuff. He wrote branding is what marketers tell you when they don't know how to get you business. Yeah, I know you didn't get any business, but we are branding you. Thanks Joe. I love being validated. Then a lady named Sharla said, hey Joe, I would have wholeheartedly agreed with you a few years ago. We know how to get a direct response, especially from the stage. I call my husband my 6.5 million dollar man. But our our sucky brand was holding us back and presented people from trusting us easily. How could we look so homemade when we teach people how to sell stuff and make money? Eben was the first person to bring to our attention about three or four years ago. Well, and of course you taught Eben the model that he used to build his whole business. And Eben built his whole business and his whole brand using direct response so he understands brand in the right context. And we've done interviews with Eben that discuss this topic. So then she goes on to say we were too chicken to make the changes at first, but we finally took the risk and hired Chris Collins to design a new brand for us. We just launched a few weeks ago. And here's what happened at the first event. Better conversion at Higher prices with fewer conversions in the back of the room and hardly any cancellation requests. And did I mention more full pays. You can't convince me branding doesn't matter or that branding is bullshit. Yes, learn how to sell stuff first. But for some businesses, good branding is going to sell the product. Good branding is going to sell the product off the shelf and have a person buy from the better branding company or person. I know it's your sht to shock and be in our face and your bad boy deal is a big part of your brand. It's why blue collar guys and dudes who are kind of badass buy from you because you rock and Shirley did that for many years. You're a badass marketer, Joe, and you kick ass at selling. And even though your brand doesn't compete with Rolls Royce or Mercedes, you have built a great brand that sells your stuff to the right audience. Well, I would back up on her thing and say, well, she is doing direct response. She just happened to change something about the presentation around the packaging.

I want to make a distinction that a lot of times people confuse design with branding and having nice design on stuff is a different thing altogether.

Right. Yeah. I mean just like we have nice design on. I love marketing. Absolutely.

It's not the fanciest, it's definitely part of it because it's a great looking logo, it's a nice looking. And when you look at it in the itunes store, it jumps off the page or something about that. But that's just good design. That's not just. That's not branding per se, you know.

Yeah. And I mean currently we have like a WordPress template that we host I love marketing on and we have a really cool sounding jingle and we have a good logo and all that sort of stuff. But if we didn't have great podcasts, you know, we've truly created, for lack of a better word, a global brand around. I love marketing in a very short period of time. But we didn't do it with I love marketing. Okay. That just happens to be what we call it. What we did it with is actually teaching people really useful, strategic, proven 100.

Hours of really killer content.

Yeah, right. Right. Yeah. And so what I would even. Yeah, so let me read another one. Peter says branding equals passion transfer. If you cannot do that, not will help. I'm a small marketer who didn't know how to write in English a few years ago and still make tons of mistakes in both speaking and writing. But I'm passionate and I know how to transfer that and this is what makes people take action. Meaning buy my stuff. We have to remember that hardly anyone buys the product, they buy something else. And the decision is directed by one thing only, emotions. And so, yeah, I mean, you know, I don't know if I would call it passion transfer. I mean, I think that's a good way of looking at it. I love that line that people don't buy from you because they understand what you do. People buy from you because they feel understood. Then there's the other analogy I use with you've heard me talk about toilet paper. If the world's supply of toilet paper ran out tomorrow, you don't need to be a great marketer in order to sell the toilet paper. You don't need to have a great brand, a great logo, a great offer, great anything. You just need to have the stuff. You could put a cardboard, you know, sign out in front of your yard saying, I got a garage full of toilet paper.

Toilet paper.

Yeah, yeah. And you'll sell it. So I mean a lot of this.

If people are ever in. Here's a little tip though. If people are ever in a crisis situation like that, I probably wouldn't put that. I have a whole garage full of it.

Right?

Just say one. Yeah. One toilet paper roll.

Yeah.

My last.

Yeah. So hit us with some smart stuff. Give us your thoughts on all this so far.

Well, here's what I. Because it is so confusing a lot of the time, you know, people look at and consider branding to be. They equate it with design, having good looking design. And I think you should have good looking design and you should have things that look as good as you can. There's no real excuse for it now. It used to be, you know, there used to be a time when it was more difficult to have good things. You know, things look good, desktop publishing wise and all those things. When Even, you know, 15 or 20 years ago it was, you had to really put in a lot of effort to make something look good and it wasn't, it didn't make a difference. Often that was worth the difference of doing it. And that's why when people often confuse Dan Kennedy's, you know, process of good enough is good enough kind of that, you know, you look at the way he would package up info, products would, there wouldn't be any design to them. And you know, there, it doesn't change the value of it. You know, it was all, it's all good information. You got to realize that first and foremost you got to have a really good Product, you know, got to really deliver a great result, whatever that result is for you, whatever the core is of your business, then.

Let me mention also something too. And when you say great result, I mean, there are like cigarette companies that have actually built a brand not delivering a great result, but actually just delivering. I mean, so when you say great result, I also want to make the distinction that great result doesn't. I mean, there's a lot of crappy toxic foods companies that have built a great brand because people happen to like their stuff, even if it's.

Well, that's the thing. But liking that people like their stuff is the result for them.

Right. And I wanted to make that distinction.

So that people feel loved and that exactly is the result that they want. But Twinkies aren't love.

They're. They're an artificial love. But. Right. It feels that way for a period of time.

So it's not a shortcut. It's certainly not a shortcut. It's not a way that having a good brand is not going to cover up the fact that you got a crappy product or crappy service. Right, right. So you gotta. The core has to be that you have a really great service. Now the other thing that branding sort of implies, the way people often talk about it, is that your. It's a shortcut to reaching a lot of people at once. That's the kind of thing. So I often put that into the. What most people who are talking about branding do is think about it as mass marketing in a way. And I kind of equate that with personal promotion, you know, and in the business equivalent of that is getting your name out there, brand promotion or company promotion, institutional advertising, all the things that are you focused and not focused on your prospects, you know? Yeah, yeah. And so, yeah, that's the thing. It's like, you know, getting your name out there and getting your brand out there and getting your image out there and getting your name out there, all that kind of stuff is really focused on you and it's focused on your prospects as a forest, you know, thinking about if we could just get the word out to everybody that we're broadcasting as opposed to really just kind of realizing that the only person that really needs to know who you are is the one who is potentially your prospect, the one who needs or wants what you do now or in the future.

Yeah, right.

Well, you know, I always. Because. Just because of the cost, like I'd. It's so much less expensive to. And we use. I mean, using the Realtors As a, as an example of this is really pretty great because it's a, you know, it's a microcosm kind of thing. You know, it's just like the way normally businesses think, you know, Realtors are in a local market and they're doing it on that scale. They want to get famous in the community. So you see so many times them just advertising their, their name and their slogan and their logo and they put it on their truck or they, you know, wrap their car in these branded vinyl wrappers. You know, you see them all around town, same. And carpet cleaners, I'm sure do the same thing, right? Think that having their truck out there, getting their logo out there, getting their billboards everywhere or whatever is going to equate to more business.

Yeah, that's exactly what they think. And that's why every franchise that is of any substantial size in the cleaning industry, as an example, carpet cleaning, there are one or many of their franchisees that franchisors that have purchased or invested in my marketing stuff. And I have talked to these people for years that are like, we're taught that we need to get our name out there for the name of the franchise and we use your direct response ads versus everything that they give us, advertising wise. And your stuff works far better than ours. I mean, there's a big carpet cleaning franchise called Chem Dry and they were one of the biggest in the world. I don't know where they're kind of at right now because they sold the company a while back to Home Depot and there's been a lot of changes in the company and organization. But years ago they had literally hired a marketing firm and one of the guys that used to work for the marketing firm actually met me at an event. He had no longer worked with them. And he said, you know, and this is what I was told by this individual. He said that they had been hired by Chemdry to knock off my marketing program and that they had sold a knocked off version of my marketing program to between 5 to 6 million dollars worth of a knocked off version of my marketing program for cleaners to their franchisees, which was all direct response stuff. And the funny thing is they would have done far better if they would have just came right to the source and tried to work something out with me versus trying to knock my shit off. But he's like, they're inside instructions were knock it off enough to where it'd be really hard for this guy to sue you, to sue us. And so anyway, the original Chem Dry was actually started by an attorney. So I think he knew how to evade those sort of things. But it was just kind of funny that here you have one of the largest franchises in the professional carpet cleaner industry, basically with the biggest brand, one of the biggest brands, because there's companies like Servpro and Coit and Servicemaster and Stanley Steamer and those sort of things. And all of them have bought, I have their franchisees that have bought my stuff. And Chem Dry was giant even with their brand. But still with direct response, it would beat all of their image ads in brand building ads. So people can argue this stuff till they're blue in the face, but show me the data that you ran this ad, ran this promotion, built this website, set up this image versus because people will defend it, explain it, come up with different definitions of it. Even when you read the responses to my stuff, there's some really smart things that people are saying. But at the end of the day I have to read some of these and say, okay, did that teach you how to do anything? For instance, let's even make a comparison here. You take Virgin. Virgin is known to have a really well known brand. And people love the interview that we have on I Love Marketing with Richard Branson where I'm interviewing him about business and I challenge anyone to listen to watch that interview and actually say, okay, here's a headline or a technique or a phrase on that interview on how to go and sell something. It's a good interview about business. It's interesting to hear Richard's perspective. People love, love that interview. It's been viewed as of right now, I think close to 100,000 times on YouTube. But at the end of the day, how do you transfer that to other people? That some small business owner in Wichita is going to go out tomorrow and do something to sell something. Whereas if they take the nine word email or set up a free recorded message, we can have people making money tomorrow with a direct response technique.

See, that's my purpose is that's the underlying question. I've never heard the branding discussion never gets very far with me. Because my question always to people, as soon as they even start questioning about branding, my question always is, are you interested in being rich or are you interested in being famous? What's your objective? And if you're interested in being famous, that's a different discussion.

Exactly. And I think a lot of people, I said it earlier, is that the reason branding and selling, brand and selling, image advertising will always, the selling in pursuit of it will always trump People learning direct response is because it's the lazy person's way to delude themselves into thinking they're actually doing something important. Meaning that it is really hard to crawl into the heads of your prospect. It's really hard to enter a conversation that's already existing in your prospect's mind. It's really hard to admit that what you think is really cool and really beautiful and really useful, but no one's responding to it. Or it's like, build it and they will come. I mean, give me a break. Build a better mousetrap. I mean, that that whole thing has been beaten to death about how idiotic that is in 99.99% of cases. Then there's always that one person that happens to just hit something, right? And then people actually think, oh, well, see, this is where brand work. No, not really. That's not how it works. The thing is, it will always be easier for ad agencies and big organizations and creatives to sell something looking really good than something working really good or something to be accountable. Because from an advertising agency standpoint, they don't want their advertising and marketing to be accountable because then they have to, you know, they have to base their performance on results. And it's a hell of a lot easier to have somebody, you know, look at something that looks really awesome and amazing versus saying, hey, this may look ugly as hell or it may look really great. But here's a response it got. Because here's the offer that was made, here's how we instilled emotional copy into it. Here's the sense of urgency that was created. Here's how we got people to respond. Here's how we got people to engage. People confuse movements that are very deep and very well thought out in many cases, or they just happen to hit mankind in such a way and they think that, oh, that's brand. That's brand. And so people start convincing themselves they got some movement when and they don't got anything except an idea and some belief that they can be like this other company over there. Whereas direct response people are like, you know what? This ain't based on opinion. We're going to run this ad, we're going to send this email, we're going to set up this offer. And if, you know, I mean, fish will bite or they will not bite. It's as simple as that. But you can use brand as an excuse to convince yourself you're doing something. And it's a lot easier to go, I have a friend who owns a pretty successful gym Business. I mean, they sell fitness equipment and stuff. And this guy puts his dog in all of his ads and he has a web person. And I actually hired this web company years ago and one of my classic don't pay attention to certain things and think that I was paying this company $10,000 a month for eight months. So I put 80 grand into this to do something to one of my websites, basically make it look good, kind of quote, unquote, build the brand. And I just wasn't paying attention of it because there was someone else on my team who's no longer on my team that was in charge of that division of my company. And after looking at the, you know, there were not as good analytics back then as there are today. After going through it, we found that the $80,000 investment did zero to increase sales. Absolutely nothing. And the whole focus of that web company was making it look good.

Here's the thing, I often have a saying, you maybe have heard me say, is it going to make the boat go faster? And that is the equivalent of when you're doing things, the reason that you're doing anything, you got to be crystal clear on it, is that you want to sell more glop, right? That's really. Make more money is probably the number one reason why people want to do anything. So when I look at that, it's like the only thing that's going to make that is to, you know, figuratively make the boat go faster. Is this going to increase the number of leads that we get? Is this going to help us convert more of those leads to sales? And everything else, like all kinds of stuff is maybe about, you know, painting the boat a different color or about getting cooler deck chairs or getting a neater flag on there. But none of that is going to make the boat go faster. The only thing that's going to make the boat go faster is improving the horsepower or getting more gas or, you know, the things that actually move the needle.

Yes, exactly. Exactly. And the one thing I want to finish about that company is that the number one lead thing that they focused on what they would do is it was all about, we will improve and build your brand in their pursuit of that.

That's pretty interesting. Eben and I, years ago we were working with a guy in San Francisco who, he was a realtor and he was working with this developer who were selling these lofts and they were spending a fortune on these full page and half page ads in the San Francisco. What's the, is it the Tribune or the Chronicle?

What's the, you know, honestly, I don't know.

Whatever the. I think it's the Tribune, whatever, or the Chronicle, one of the two, whatever the big newspaper is in there. And they were spending a fortune in the real estate section on these things. And the ad was because they were loft shells that they were selling. You know, you know, you buy the loft shell and then you pay to build it out however you want to, however you want to do it. You're just getting the bare space. And so the image. And I can't remember the name of the lofts, but the image that they had was this really like, ad with lots of white space and an overhead view looking at an illustration of a turtle. And you're looking down on the turtle's shell and they had an arrow pointing to the actual turtle that said you. And then they had an arrow pointing to the shell that said you're a new loft shell at whatever the name of the thing was. And then at the very bottom of the ad, they just had the logo for the loft thing and they would run these. And here's Jack was doing all the sales for this, but nothing was ever happening with it because there was no call to action there' on it. So Eben and I, we wrote this little classified ad for him. And just in the real estate section in the classifieds, we just led with Soma. South of Market was where the lofts were. So it said soma, really cool loft. You finish inside details on my voicemail and left the phone number. Right. And. And recorded details on my, on my voicemail. And when people called, it was, hey, this is Jack. If you're calling about the loft, it's describing it a little bit. I'm going to be over there on Sunday afternoon between 1 and 4 o'. Clock. So here's where we are. And stop by. So it's basically just making it seem like one guy selling one loft. And he ended up with almost 30 people coming to this open house from one little classified. That was a fraction of the cost of these ads that this branding company had come up with for the lots and even showed this to the developer. And the developer still kept running the ads because it wasn't actually a developer, it was the developer, her son, who was the project manager. But it was one of his good friends who had the branding company that came up with this whole campaign. And they were so much more concerned about the image than the actual sales, you know.

Right. Well, and the thing is, is that people that are really bought into the brand sort of thing. It's really hard to change mindset. I mean you can't argue with people either. I mean once someone has the this positioned in their mind that this is a really important thing, then it's really hard to on a logical basis get people to have a paradigm shift with this. But the thing is when people put their money on the line and really do a test, then they can have an opinion about something. I don't really care about opinions, I care about about facts. And one of the things I would always say when I did events to cleaners is that your job, if you're going to do door to door sales and you literally one of the hardest things to do would be cold call selling pretty much anything, but just no one knows you, you don't have a relationship with them and you knock on their door and they open up the door and what would you want a salesperson to do? And I would ask the audience, I said if you wanted to have, if you hired a successful salesperson to go and sell carpet cleaning services door to door, what would you expect them to do? You would have them knock on the door, people would open the door and then they would start talking, right? They would explain the benefits, they would talk about how it's going to improve the look, the appearance, the health. They would ask some questions to do some Socratic selling, that sort of stuff. They, they would literally engage with the prospect. They wouldn't just stand there holding up a sign that says we do carpet cleaning in a real pretty suit and a big smile on their face. Just stand there and say hi, we look good. Kind of moving around, shaking the sign. And that's what most brand building is. It's like standing there with a big smile on your face hoping that that's going to engage somebody. That's not how it works. You literally need to make an offer. So then when people say well yeah, but you have to do so much more than brand building. Well, right, and if you're going to do so much more or something other than that, what are you going to do? You're going to go to an audience that for one is identified. You know, just kind of like on our eight profit activators, you know, select a single target market. Let's identify who you're fishing for and then you're going to fish with bait that they want to bite at. And you know, I've never heard anyone logically explain how brand building compared to not doing direct response in any way, shape or form could ever be more useful or Better or more profitable if the objective is to make a sale than doing brand building. Now, I've had a consultation in the past where for six months I was actually on retainer for a particular company, and in six months they managed to get a single postcard in the mail. And this was before the Internet, all right? And they were. Well, no, the Internet existed, but this was before the Internet as we know it. And they were actually building the company up in order to make a big Internet play. This was right before the bubble. And I was sitting in a meeting with some of the head people and I was talking about how the objective here is we're going to get people to respond and I won't mention the company because I don't want to. Just for sake of confidentiality, it's probably best not to mention the company, although I'd love to because it was so fucking idiotic. But anyway, you know, one of the guys said, oh, you know, we're not. We're not interested in making a sale. You know, we just need to, you know, get our name out there because we need to create this impression that, you know, this is a real big deal. And I was like, you're not interested in profits, you know, and he's like, yeah, yeah, that's not what we're trying to do. And I can never wrap my head around that. Although, you know, there's some reasons that people do stuff. I mean, it's, you know, they have investors money, so they're willing to piss away a lot of money because it's not their own. But when a small business owner has their own money on the line and they don't have an endless amount of money to throw down a black hole, be it investors money or whatever, and they're forced to actually have to do. The only thing that I can rationalize in running a small business, which is actually having cash flow and making sales and making profits, is you actually have to sell something. And the beauty of having to sell something or you don't exist is that you're not promiscuous with the stupid shit that you do in order to try to make a sale. And when people have the luxury of tinkering around with things, they tinker around with things. But when you have to eat, you figure out that the only thing that's going to make this business churn is sales. And I got to actually sell something. It sort of creates some clarity that doesn't exist when people have other goals and objectives. And, well, I'll say this too, you can probably point to many companies that use direct response to build and grow themselves. And then once they've made a lot of money, they start actually being persuaded to start using a lot of image advertising, a lot of brand building, and all of a sudden they don't make money anymore, their profits aren't as high and things like that. I mean, I've seen it happen with clients and you know, well, there's a.

Lot of things that you know, and there's smart, I guess I think about a couple of examples so that you wouldn't call direct response per se, but I would call it maybe smart branding. There was a campaign that a company is pretty much there. They focus on branding. They focus, but they focus on sort of kind of guerrilla marketing in a lot of ways that they were doing the ads for Snapple and when Snapple Iced Tea, when they launched their mango flavor, they contracted with the Mango Growers association and got to put on 10 million mangoes a sticker that said now available in Snapple. And so it's really, you know, it's kind of branding, getting the Snapple brand out there, but it really is selecting your single target market. Because who would be more interested in mango flavored Snapple than somebody who actually likes real mangoes, you know? Totally. So it's getting right in front of the right people. And that's where when I look at what's more important, I always try and overlay like, okay, if we're going to say this word branding, which profit activator are we looking at that? Are we talking about it as a, Even on a broader scale, we're talking about it as a before unit strategy or a during unit strategy or an after unit strategy. And clearly what most people are focused on is as a before unit strategy. Right, right, right. And so if we're looking at it as a before unit strategy, the things that make the boat go faster are selecting a single target market, figuring out what the conversations that are going on in their head that would compel them to identify themselves, then educating and motivating them so that they want to meet you and making an offer, presenting your mafia offer, figuring out exactly what they want and doing it in a way that's going to compel them to really take action or to try you. And so when you look at those things, where does branding fit in? That I think that it would mostly be. And if I use the definition of branding being it more is probably in alignment philosophically with positioning than just the image thing of making in your making your Business or you, the most obvious choice for whatever their need is, whatever that category is, you know, somebody's going to sell their house that they see you as the only possible option. That would be the real value of branding. But that happens one person at a time. Doesn't happen as a mass type of thing.

Right. Even for what we're doing, our brand is actually happening during and after than before. Because what we do is we just give people really useful, strategic, tactical sort of things that they can go out and use and make money. We show people examples of what to do, how to do it, we interview people explaining what they did and how they did it. We talk about direct response and as a result we end up building a following and building a brand and bonding with people that way versus just going out with the whole objective of trying to look good. You know, it's a whole all show and no go sort of thing.

Right.

Let me read a couple more things before we get. Because I want to. Because it does. I think I want to share some things on this post I made because I think we can even do a follow up to this because this is one of those topics that people can comment on ilovemarketing.com and say they think I'm full of shit or they really like what I'm saying. Whatever. The best thing is my article was a direct response article and it got all these people to respond, even the ones that said branding is not important. So I think in and of itself that was kind of amusing. But this Ernie says, I agree with what you say, particularly when it comes to personal branding. Like you say that it is bullshit for people who have been sold to BS by so called branding experts, the quote applies. Now let me also mention again that I will say that when the name of the article is branding equals bullshit with a question mark and people still were treating it like it was a declarative statement because there is value in looking at brand, of course. And I never in a million years would say I know everything about. I mean I look at image advertising for companies that are having success and be like, well, what are they doing and why is this happening? So, you know, I'm not one of these people where I am so rigid on anything. I just know from experience and having sold, you know, at least a couple billion dollars worth of things for our, my clients and you know, companies and stuff that all through direct response I think I've kind of earned the right to have, you know, some say in this matter. All right, so it goes on to say for people who have been sold to BS by so called branding experts, the quote applies. It is easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled. Quote by Mark Twain. As for people like you who are willing to challenge bullshit, the quote applies. Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and choose instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly. That's a quote by Einstein. And then let's see what else. Then let me find one. It says Paul from. I know Paul Pierce from. He's in England. Wow, Joe, as usual you create a lot of excitement. Your article is good and has caused people to respond, which is great. The thing is, the responses are great too, is there's a magnitude of information of advice being offered. So thank you. Yeah. Yep. And then Derek writes, telephone conversation. Saw your van, didn't catch the number. Search on Google and recognize the logo. Another one, Facebook. Saw your van outside my neighbor's house today and felt weirdly starstruck. See you all the time here, but when I see you outside of the house, it was like I'd seen a pop star. I could go on. Branding is essential in this modern, everyone connected era. Before social media, maybe, maybe. But times are changing. I got an idea. Joe Polish, change your Facebook name to another market marketing guru and watch your rate drop. Why? The name Joe Polish is a brand. And of course my response to that is if there's a. If the name Joe Polish is a brand, it's because I've spent years actually producing results for people. If I didn't do, if I didn't have the background, my name would be nothing. It would just be some other dude on Facebook. I mean, so that to me, if we have any brand whatsoever, it's not because we have a. A logo or an image or whatever. It's because we've actually produced results. Another guy, Justin, says, I love you, Joe. Probably one of the smartest marketers I know. But if you tried selling Genius Network without the name or using your name, I'm not convinced it would pull to $25,000. Direct response is great. Should be starting point for everyone. However, you reach a point where your brand is what separates you from anyone else, imho. Now let me comment on that and I'd like to get your. He said direct response is great. Should be everyone's starting point. Point. Absolutely. Totally agree. And it shouldn't ever stop because he goes on to say, however you reach A point where brand is what separates you from anyone else. Yeah. And as you're doing direct response, you can also be building your brand because it always goes back to that thing I said earlier. You know, image advertising or brand building just for the sake of brand is get your name out there. Direct response is get your name out there and get a response back. It's not about not building a brand. It's not about not having a great image. We're not saying you should somehow be like, direct response is some bad way to represent yourself. I mean, direct response is really focusing on what people really want, what they'll respond to, and setting it up so it's accountable. So you actually know. So you're not guessing if your communication is working or not. It is more effective communication and you can build a very big brand, if you want to call it that, using direct response and not go out of business in the process. Process, you know, so. And here, let me see, Dean, let me see.

You know, you talk about that and people say that, well, there's a. There's a Joe Polish brand and there's a Dean Jackson brand. And it's only built on the back of years of people's experience of what Joe Polish means to them individually and what Dean Jackson has come to mean to them individually. If they don't know us, the names don't mean anything. The only meaning that the names have is that that's the placeholder in their mind for the bucket of value that we've been able to demonstrate and add to their life over years.

Yeah, yeah.

I looked at. While we were talking, I looked up the top 100 brands. And so I'll just name some of them as we go here. Coca Cola, Apple, IBM, Google, Microsoft, GE, McDonald's, Intel, Samsung, Toyota, Mercedes Benz, BMW, Disney, Cisco, HP, Gillette, Louis Vuitton, Oracle, Nokia, Amazon, Honda, Pepsi, H and M, American Express, SAP, Nike, ups, ikea, Kellogg's, Canon, Budweiser, JP Morgan, I mean, Pampers, ebay, all these things are brands that are built on the back of years of our experience of what that means, you know?

Yeah, totally, totally.

But it's only as an individual if you don't know. I imagine if I get further down the list, if I get into the top 100 here, some of these people may not know what they are. And if you don't have any experience of them, then that brand doesn't mean anything to you. See, here's one, number 76. I don't know who Santander is. Do you know what that Is say it again. Santander. S A N T A N D.

E R actually, I do not.

I don't either. But they're the 76th most valuable brand here and so that doesn't mean anything to me. But I know what Kentucky Fried Chicken means.

Yeah.

Because I've had experience of that.

I hear you, fruitcake. Hey, let me do this. Let me do this, Dean. Because you know, I like reading my own stuff.

Because that's not your own stuff. Just because it's actually.

You gotta. You gotta actually question the sanity of people that read their own stuff and think they're smart.

I love it.

So what I want to do is because what I'm going to do with this episode is I'm going to post it where all these comments are. So it's good to fit all this in because then people at least hear coming from my mouth. I think it might have a different context around it.

Because of the Joe Polish brand.

Yeah, of course. In the logo. Definitely. So a couple of my friends actually wanted to debate and disagree and this and that. And so what I wrote back is, and this was coming in during doing my 25k meeting, so I wasn't spending time on Facebook. So I wrote. Thanks for the comments everyone. I appreciate it. And for some of the comments. Thank you. That are sort of disagreeing or challenging what I'm saying, let me suggest that yes, I have a brand with my name, Joe Polish, with my company Piranha Marketing, with my Mastermind Group, Genius Network aka 25K Group, and with my podcast@ilove marketing.com and 10X talk.com. however, the reason I have all of this and have developed any sort of reputation is because I've been running a company using direct response for almost 20 years. A brand didn't build this. Effective communication and marketing built this. Selling products and services that produce results for my clients built it. And to hopefully keep this in the right context, you can still build a brand using direct response and education based marketing. Apple Computers, American Express and many big and branded companies have incorporated both. Image advertising is about getting your name out there. Direct response is about getting your name out there and getting a response back. Branding for the sake of just trying to brand is a total waste of time and money for 99% of all business owners. Therefore, I will stick with the title of my short article, Branding equals bullshit. You can't deposit a brand in the bank until you've really built something substantial. At that point you can focus on. Then you can focus on your brand every day. I build a stronger brand using direct response and that is the most intelligent thing I know how to do. And this ain't my first rodeo. My marketing strategies have generated close to $2 billion in sales from my clients over the years, so I'll end up with this. Please watch the interview if you want to learn a valuable way to look at branding. And then I put the link for episode 94, the one with Jeff Madoff. And then I wrote and thanks again for the comments. And then a couple of people commented and the last thing I wrote is, hey, two people, hope you're doing fantastic. Thanks for the feedback. And then I wrote at the end of the day, a business owner that wants to make sales long term and short term and have the highest possibility of success will always do best learning and using direct response as they develop and nurture a brand. I think the most important thing that all business owners need first is a sales letter and a clear offer. And if they can get that right, everything else becomes a hundred times easier. We have a free report that doesn't sell anything on ilovemarketing.com called breakthrough DNA. It applies to all businesses and nonprofits. If people follow the eight profit activators, it will be a far better use of their time than trying to build a brand. Because of this will help them develop an amazing brand. And then of course I know that people would always want to throw in something about oh, you know, what about this brand. And I wrote and I'm currently the largest fundraiser in the world for Richard brands since charity Virgin Unite. So I spent a lot of time working with brands because we're getting ready to do our fifth trip to Necker island and I've spent about a month on Necker island and I've had numerous conversations with Richard Branson about brand and about virtual and you know, and I know what applications are useful for small business owners and what are utter bullshit. And so anyway, those are my thoughts.

So I'll throw and here's the thing. You know it's funny how this nine word email has become kind of a brand of its own in a way. You know Kathleen Buckrossi, she was in with us in Phoenix in January. The dental. Hi, Janice Trainer. She sends me this email. She says hi Dean, I hope all is well. I love the conference. Thank you so much. Learned tons left with great ideas, happy to be a part of what your job to offer. I actually dreamed of you guys last night. Too much marketing on my brain I'm afraid. So when we were there we talked about Sending the nine word email. She had a great opportunity for some hygienists who get audited and they found out on third. The notices go out on Thursday whether they get audited. So we helped her craft a little email to send. She said, well, I sent out the email on Friday. I didn't send it out right after the conference because I wanted to wait until the notice was sent out. So on Thursday everyone found out if they were being audited or not. I sorted through this list and sent an email to those who are not part of our portfolio manager program. This is what she's going to to sell them. These are prospects. People in profit activator number three. It worked out to be 2,980 people. So I've received 899 responses so far. OMG is all I can say. I'm still deep in our portfolio reviews for those who need to submit by January. I'm now trying to put those cookies out to the group. I'll be glued to my computer for this next two weeks, I'm sure. Thank you for everything. I look forward to our next session. I'll keep you posted. Thank you, Kathleen. So there's something. What's that? You know, 900 out of 2900. It's almost a 30% response. You know, today, Sunday too. Not even two days later.

Yeah, I'd like to see an HTML email sent out with a nice pretty logo and a pretty logo and branding jingle and. Yeah, slogan. Exactly.

That's the thing. It's just. So I think that the takeaway from this lesson is what?

The only thing worse than singing the wrong note is singing it louder.

I think that's perfect. Right. Figure out where you want to go. What is it that you're trying to do? What is going to make the boat go fast? Faster and sometimes making the boat go faster is sending out a nine word email to the people that you've got in profit activator number three and engaging with them.

Yeah. And if someone has not watched the interview with Jeff Madoff, they can watch that. Watch episode 94. This is a guy who literally really has a great perspective on branding. And we've also had other episodes on branding. This is not, you know, this is a very, you know, in depth sort of discussion. And Dean Nor I are opposed to anyone having a great image or a great brand. I mean, you should. And that should come as a result of really useful, powerful direct response strategies that will, you know, not only most effectively communicate what it is that you're offering to the world what value that you're offering, but it's also accountable and you know what's working. And what is working. That's the biggest challenge with branding. It's like, how the hell do you know it even works until you've spent so much fricking money, which most people don't have? I mean, if I had a dollar for every business that went bankrupt going down the branding route, I'd be one of the biggest brands in the world. We're not opposed to branding, and it's not an either or discussion. What we're opposed to is that's how people go about it. And at the end of the day, what we're interested in is not being right. We're interested in being effective. Yeah. And being rich and having that for all of our clients. Because we're not getting paid to do this episode here in terms of someone giving us money. What we're doing is we're creating relationship equity. If we are getting paid, it's in the equity and the bonding that we're having with our listeners. Because we're actually not only helping them with how to look at this and giving them a perspective, but in many cases is we're helping people from being advertising victims. We're helping people from getting screwed. We're helping people to protect themselves from many advertising vampires that want to just suck the blood out of these business owners by convincing them of some of the bullshit that they're trying to sell them is being useful. And it may be useful, but it may not be useful right now. If someone doesn't have a sales letter, if someone doesn't have an offer, if someone hasn't identified a market or a letter list. I mean, like, you're wasting your money if you're doing something without having those things together. And we want everyone to be effective. And you know what? Me and you are totally open to being proven wrong, giving different perspectives. So this is not about just trying to. Oh, yeah, we want to lord our opinions on everybody because we just know. It's just, hey, if someone wants to say, here's a better way to do it, show me the results. Just show me the results. That's all I ask for. You know, what have you tested? How do you know that? And we have plenty of ads, plenty of sales letters, thousands and thousands of clients that use our direct response stuff that we can show that we have saved their businesses, turned a few of them into millionaires. You know, we know the stuff works. So we're only talking about what we know and what we know has results in case studies to prove it. So, you know, that's our opinion.

There we go.

Yeah. So please give us your comments. We'll maybe continue another episode talking about this because I think there's a lot to this subject and if you need more right now, go type in episode 94 into ilovemarketing.com, listen to it, watch it. Actually watch it online because you can listen to it on itunes but you can actually watch the video and you can see some pretty good looking Victoria's Secret movie.

The first two minutes is much more exciting than video.

Yeah. Yeah. Because after that it's me and Jeff talking. It gets really boring. Right? I gotcha nonetheless. And that's it, everyone. So thanks for listening. Thanks, Dean. And we'll talk to you next time on the next episode.

All right, Joe Polish.

That's right. Bye.