Meet Branding and Video Marketing Expert Rick Cesari

Protect your brand, product or invention from the hazards of consumer product launching and go from idea to product to big brand. With guidance from retail product design and development experts Tracy and Tom Hazard. Get the insider secrets to put the right things in the right order with the right resources so you can out design, outsource and out profit your way to retail success.

Hey there, product launchers. Welcome to another meet the expert office hours. And today we're going to meet up with a branding and video brand expert. I mean, we're talking about serious big billion dollar brand expert Rick Cesare. And he and his company, Cesare Media Group. Is that the right name of it?

Yeah, Direct branding.

Direct branding now. Okay, great. Yeah, direct branding. And Rick has just been, I mean, working on products that you're going to recognize. So let's dive in and start to get to know Rick. So, Rick, you got started quite a long time ago, just like I did. What got you into this sort of product branding area?

So first, Tracy, let me just say it's great to be here and get a chance to share some of my background and experiences with your listeners. So it's interesting. I could talk to you for an hour about what got me into it, but the short, abbreviated version is I actually had a degree in biology when I graduated from college and but didn't decide to go on or use it for anything. And I was just looking for things to do and I got involved in going to seminars and people that were teaching you how to buy real estate through seminars. And I started helping someone do some marketing and I found that I had a knack for it and that just led to, from one thing to the next, two different products that I started marketing, but always using kind of a direct response mentality. And, and my passion led me into juicing and I started a company in 1989 called Trillium Health Products and we developed both the Juiceman and Breadman brands and helped make juicing as popular as it is today and then went on from there to help develop and market products like Sonicare, George Foreman Grill, Oxiclean, and more recently the GoPro camera.

Didn't I tell you guys, brand names, billion dollar brand names out there. So you have been working in this marketing world for quite some time. And it's really interesting because there's this sort of the marketing process, I'm going to call it, the tools that you use change over time. Right. Video was so much harder there back then.

Right.

It's so much easier now. And there's all these different things that have changed over time. But the process is pretty much the same. What makes a great brand, billion dollar brand actually has a lot of similarity between back then and now, isn't that right?

Yeah, that's. You're absolutely right. And one of the things I want your listeners to understand is we mentioned some big brand names, but almost every one of these products I started working with when either they were still being developed or new companies, new products. So everything that we're going to talk about that has worked for these products I believe is kind of timeless information that will work when you're developing your own product or service. And I v down something what I call the five keys to building a great brand. And these are very much foundational things that you need to have in place that will help when you launch your product and start growing your business. And it's things that have been very. I've done consistently with all the products we name and many more.

Well, let's start with like 101 for our group here. So for those that don't understand. So I think there's kind of a misconception about what brand is. It's not just a logo or a package design brand, something much deeper. And I define brand very frequently as not who you think you are, but how you're perceived. But in the process of developing that, I'm sure that you have. Because you've got to develop that and cultivate that. You have a definition of brand that you utilize as well.

I love your definition of it. And it's really what the customer's experience is of you and your product and then how you build that or put that out there. But. But you can do your best to build a brand, do certain things, but it's really the perception that the people that come in contact with your company and product have of you is really what your brand becomes. So you can do some things now to make sure that you can take the brand or build it into something that you want to do. And let me just go back. I think probably one of the single most important things is that all of these products I mentioned, I believe that kind of branding is built by selling products and getting the products in hands of people so they can have that product experience. So everything I've done is through a direct response umbrella where regardless of the medium I'm using, if I spend a dollar in advertising, I'm trying to generate $2 in revenue. And we can kind of talk more about that. That's a little bit advanced. But let's go back to the Basics. The very first thing, and this should be a thought process when you're developing a product is, is you need to be thinking of what's your unique selling proposition? Why is your product or service different than any other product or service out there? Because if you're just the same, then you're not going to be able to build a brand. It's going to be a me too product. And ultimately you're not going to be able to get the price you want for that product and be able to build it into a brand. So there's lots of examples of unique selling propositions, but I like to just mainly tell people, how can you differentiate your product from everything else out there? And we can talk into more detail about that if you want.

And one of the things I kind of want to say to the product launchers out there is that what you think your unique selling proposition is or your unique features are, are not all these little details you have in your invention. It's what the consumer thinks is the most important thing. It's what they perceive. And that, at the end of the day, is what becomes that sort of. I call it the me only brand identity. Right. So it's the only thing that you offer that's different from everyone else. It's the only thing that matters, not just the only thing that's different.

Oh, absolutely. There's a great book out there for your listeners. You've probably read it before. It's called Differentiate, and the author's name is Sally Hogshead and her sister was an Olympic swimmer. But it's really about. And she talks a lot about your personal brand, but also product brand. And it is like, how can you differentiate your product from everybody else out there? And I'll just give you a couple examples from the products we mentioned. You take the Sonicare toothbrush. When that first came out, they were having a really, really difficult time creating sales because it was $150 product that was sitting on the store shelves and somebody would say, why should I buy this?

A toothbrush is 10. Yeah.

And really, people didn't understand Sonic technology. So to your point, Sonic technology is a feature that. And the engineers that developed the product weren't marketing people and they thought that Sonic Technology would sell it. But what's the benefit of the Sonic technology? The brush was able to clean beyond the bristles and reach into the nooks and crannies between your teeth and help eliminate or reverse gum disease. So you really have to kind of look at that unique selling proposition about what's the benefit to the end user.

That's right. You have to put it into their terms, into their words, and not overdo it. That's like another thing. So, I mean, it's great that you have video marketing tools because it enables you to show a lot more things than you have to talk about. Because if you put them all in, like words and bullets and all of these things, about all these things that it could do, it just doesn't work as well as that emotional connection. And I think the form and grill is the ideal thing. Right. When you talked about that as one of your products, it's like, look, you could cook so many different things. You could try all these things. You have all these different whiz bang ways which you could use it. Essentially, though, it was the convenience and the leanness of it. Right. That George Foreman got across in such a great way in his emotional connection to people that they would pay attention for all the other little things that it could do. But our inventors get caught up in all those things.

Yeah, absolutely. The George Foreman girl. That's a good example too, because the second bullet point on building your great brand is positioning. And that's another one that's a little bit hard to define. But I like to use an example of think about a category in the marketplace. It doesn't matter. It's a niche category, but where you can take a product and dominate that category, that's the way you need to think about it, even if it's a small niche category. And with the George Foreman Grill, when it first came out, it was basically a slanted taco maker. And the idea was that people would cook hamburger meat, put it on the edge of the table, and sweep the hamburger meat into their taco shell. Well, needless to say, it didn't sell. We positioned it to. Basically, the reason for the slant was to direct the fat and grease away from your food so you can enjoy healthier foods every day that you love to eat, like steaks and hamburgers. And it just took off once we did that repositioning.

So that's really where really understanding your brand can also help you in the product development process. Highlight these things. And so I think it's never too soon. In fact, I'm a big proponent of brand first strategy. And you'll see a ton of posts and videos and articles on that, because I write about it all the time. Because if you don't know who you are and who you want to speak to, then it really makes it hard to make sure that your products have that built in. And so I have a much easier time being successful with product designs because we either force our clients to define that, go find someone like Rick to work with them to make that happen and or it's already predefined for us. So all we have to do is brainstorm and design great products to fit that brand.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. And again, you're coming at things a little bit differently, but we're meeting at the same point.

That's right.

My branding tip, I think it's number three or four, it's always listen to your customers, our clients. And so what you're doing and what I just heard you say is you're getting feedback from the people and then working those into the product development. So I've always found that when you're building your brand, the more conversation or more input you could have with your customers and actually listen to what they're telling you will help you improve your product. And that at the same time, if you're listening to what they're saying, you're working on a better experience for them. And that's all part of building the brand.

Yeah. So I want to remind you product launchers that Lara Hazard is our resident market research expert. She's my sister in law and she's killer at this and has worked with big brands like Starbucks and Target and many, many others that you've heard of. And she does a really reasonable pre check, like things that you can ask, surveys you can run. So if you have an existing customer base and you want to know some things, you want to inquire before you spend a lot of money making something or investing in a brand, find out if that brand message you think you have or that brand usp, that unique selling proposition, resonates with the target market you think you're focused on, you can check that and that saves you tens of thousands and sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars by just asking.

I was going to say that would be the best money that someone could spend instead of kind of feeling out blindly like, oh, I think this is a good idea, let's do it.

Or do the friends and family route, which I'm not a fan of.

Like your wife or spouse or partner said, oh, that's a great product, honey.

You know they love you.

Yeah, exactly. Good job. But yeah, the more real feedback you can get from survey research, focus groups, if you've already had your product, getting feedback from customers, that's just like golden information that you should basically build on.

Yeah. Absolutely. Well, let's shift a little bit into defining what direct response marketing looks like today because it's changed over time. I mean, it was a lot more text driven. I think we're heading into a lot more video, which is why you're pivoting in your brand as well. So let's talk a little bit about what you've seen over time as direct response.

Yeah. So really, the direct response principles themselves haven't changed a lot. The underlying strategies, the delivery vehicles have changed greatly from print ads in a newspaper to ads on Facebook to YouTube, things like that. And so I got most of a lot of my learning using direct response television. But the point I want to make for your listeners are. And again, I'll recommend another book. There's a great book on if you want to learn about basic direct response by Dan Kennedy. He has called the no BS Guide to Direct Marketing and he's got the no BS Guide to Direct Branding. These are all good, great resources for people to learn and understand direct response marketing.

Yeah, Dan Kennedy is the king of this. And you're right. I think this is exactly what he's a proponent of. And Dan Kennedy has been around, understand that he's not even a big emailer. Like, that's not his thing. And so. But the principles of direct response doesn't change how people perceive that. The process by which you discuss things with them, you engage them, that hasn't changed. It's just the vehicle by which you're promoting it out there.

Yeah. And this is a good time because we're talking about brand. And there's different advertising that falls into two camps. There's brand advertising, which you have to have a really big budget for that to build your brand. And there's direct response advertising. And I mentioned earlier at the beginning of our conversation, I'm a big believer in selling to build your brand, generate revenue, get your product out there, and direct response is one of the best ways to do it. And when I use direct response, all I'm really saying is, you know that when somebody sees any type of advertising, wherever you're advertising, that there's some type of vehicle for them to be able to go to a website, go to a landing page, call an 800 number, just some way for people to take an action, to actually visit the company or buy the product, and then you're able to measure those results so you can compare what you spend on advertising to how much revenue you're generating.

So to put that in perspective, product launchers, those of you that come out of the Amazon selling world. The ones of you who are doing multimillion dollars per year are all doing direct response marketing. I have not met one yet that isn't doing that from the get go or already had tremendous brand awareness. And so they had pre invested before Amazon. So I have a few of those clients as well, who their brand was already a household name or a competitive name. But you really cannot get in today's world just through the utilization of Amazon. You can't get to that multimillion dollar brand without some outside traffic being driven in. Amazon requires it nowadays. And so because of that, that direct response has been the most successful vehicle I have seen from anyone. And it happens in multiple ways. Sometimes it is Facebook, sometimes it is YouTube, sometimes it is serious, just email campaigns. So it happens in all kinds of different ways. But the ones that are more successful, the ones that achieve that level and get up to $10 million and beyond, have a whole entire revenue stream that comes directly from that part of their business. So if you're building a big brand here, which I hope you are, that's why you're here. This is one of those things where you really want to tune into Rick's office hours, get some feedback from him, download his, because we'll have that in the resource library. Five keys to building a great brand. Don't miss this. And really listen up to what Rick has to say here because he has experience in this over time. So what does work again and again, no matter what category you're in, and that is my number one rule, Rick, of who you work with and how you decide who you should work with or who you should listen to, is that they've done it again and again in multiple categories.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. And you talked about video. And I went from using video and infomercials and things like that, and now I'm working with a lot of large Amazon sellers. You were just talking about that, helping them basically create videos that are more effective for helping them sell their product and increase conversion rates. And just a really simple statistic to tell you how powerful video is on Amazon is that we're seeing that people go from not having video to using video are seeing as much as high as a 20% increase in their conversion rates. And everyone knows that if you're selling on Amazon and you can have that much of a difference between you and your competitors, that's a big deal. And what's interesting though is the type of videos that work on Amazon and it goes back to Again, one of the foundation. The very last principle in my five keys to building a great brand is using authentic testimonials and some of the brand. I'll give you an example. A sous vide supreme. You're familiar with sous vide cookers?

I am.

One of our clients is sous vide supreme. And if you look at their site on Amazon and you look at their video, it's basically a demonstration video of a chef cooking two pieces of chicken and one the conventional way and one with the sous vide. And basically just a very visual, here's what it looks like dried out when you cook it in a pan. Here's what it looks like when it comes out of sous vide. And that basically tells the entire story and helps people decide that this is the right product to buy.

Talk about authentic reactions. You can't fake a reaction. If you were to bite into that and go, that's going to be real. And people recognize facial expressions and all of those things, they identify with that so much faster than the words that they're hearing. And. And so you can't fake that on a video. And that's the wonderful thing.

One of the reasons video is so effective is that it appeals to two senses, which is what you just said. You're hearing it, but you're seeing it with your own eyes. And you can't fake that. Or if you are faking it, people can see that you're faking it. And that's something we don't recommend you ever do. And I always use the word authentic testimonials, authentic demonstrations, so that you're not faking it.

Unscripted, guys. There you go. I mean, guidelines, but unscripted. So you have a new book on that coming out.

Well, first of all, let me just tell you because I. Well, not by the time people see this, but I actually will have three books. So my first book goes back to 2011, and it's called Buy Now. And it really goes into detail about some of the early products that we started, like the Juiceman, the Breadman, Sonicare, Oxiclean, that's available on Amazon. My second book, which will be out in mid August, is called Building Billion Dollar Brands. And that kind of takes what we started with the Buy now book and to the next level. And again, we go through these five keys, but into a lot more depth and detail and how we actually deployed them with the brands. And in the last book, which I'm in the process of writing now, I don't know if it's my Last book, but it's my book.

The most recent one.

Exactly. It's called Video Persuasion and that's probably about eight months away from being published. And it's all about how best to utilize video to get a viewer or consumer to take a specific action.

Well, I can promise you here product launchers that as soon as Rick tells us it's for pre sale and it's ready to order, we'll get that information to you so that you will be some of the first to be able to get your hands on that. Because that sounds really intriguing, Rick. We try to wrap up sort of this meet you episodes that we do here with the things that you see going wrong. Because this is product launch hazards, right? All the bad things that go along and all of us here to protect you and help you to keep those things going wrong. What so often goes wrong with either brand development or in the direct response marketing. What big rookie errors do people miss make?

I don't know if I'd call them rookie errors because I still make them.

And it happens.

Yeah, more from your mistakes than you do from successes. And I feel like every time I've had a big success that it kind of came easily or flowed. And every time I had a big failure, I was trying to force my views, what I thought the market wanted with a product, and I thought I could overcome that. There's the ego talking now with marketing and money. Roy Rogers has a famous saying. When you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you need to do is stop digging.

I love that. That's awesome.

I see a lot of entrepreneurs make that because there's a other side of the coin, which is you're an entrepreneur, you never give up. Never giving up doesn't mean doing the same thing over and over again. And so I think that the market will tell you both when you're onto something correct. And also it'll tell you when you're not onto something correct. And listen to the marketplace.

Oh, Rick, that is like the most original answer I've gotten here. And I love it because it is so true. Because I hear that all the time, especially the inventorpreneurs. Right. And so you get this model of I can just teach them what's great about this.

Right.

And it is so much harder. And you will run it. And I've never seen it work because you run out of money before you've managed to do that or someone bigger comes in and just does it a little bit faster and a little bit easier with more access to a market. Than you. And so I've never seen it work. But you're right, it is this sort of ethic of if I just throw more hard work at it and if I just talk more and sell more, it'll be fine. And the reality is just like digging a bigger hole.

Absolutely.

Well, well, so wonderful. So what can our members look forward to hearing from you in office hours? And what do you think you want to talk about?

You know, moving forward? Today we covered a lot of broad brushstrokes of things and maybe if it made sense with you, I could isolate any one of these products and go do a deeper dive into the launch part of it and how some of the things that we did so we could pick out some of those products, I can go much deeper in the video area and how to about the importance of testimonials. How do you create a good testimonial? How do you find them? They work so well. So that might be a good next one that we could talk about is because they're so important for any product launch is having really good authentic testimonials. And I can go into a lot of depth on that.

I think that's a great idea. So, yeah, testimonials, let's make that your very next one. So members be looking for that one. And then I love the idea of you doing a case study that maybe touches around one of your five keys so that you could really highlight that as this is the five key, this is number one. And here's a case study of why this worked or why this is so important and critical path on that. Because I think all of you out there, when you start to see how other people have done it, then it helps you build a better model for yourself. And it also helps you say, maybe Rick's the right person to help me vet my answer and ask the important questions of him, because that's why he's here, to help make sure that you're going on the path that is likely to lead you to success. So, Rick, thank you so much for becoming an expert on product launch hazards. We're really excited to have you here and I know I'm personally going to be tuning into your next office hours. Great.

Thanks a lot, Tracy. I really enjoyed it and appreciate the opportunity.

Thank you for joining us on this episode of Product Launch Hazards. To get the most out of your membership, visit productlaunchhazards.com to join the expert Office Hours live and ask us your burning questions. Check out the resource library for document templates and guides and get exclusive articles and shares each day. Don't forget, you can always book a private consult with any expert so you can out design, outsource and out profit your way to product launch success.