How To Create $100M Categories with Category Pirate Eddie Yoon

24:49Well, an outcome from an average consumer is way different than an outcome from a super consumer. Okay. Most outcomes for an average consumer is like, I don't really care about this category. Can you make it cheaper? Can you make it easier for me to buy? That's a good outcome for me. I save money, I save time, right? So take podcasting as we're doing now, right? In the prep email that I got, make sure you have a good mic. Like, I have a good mic. I have my Shure mic here with a mic stand and all that kind of stuff. And the outcome that I was looking for was, does my audio sound good on a podcast?

25:19Because why bother doing it if you're not going to sound as best as you possibly can? It doesn't serve you well, doesn't serve me well, blah, blah, blah with it, right? And that when I first started out, I was like, oh, I have my earbuds and I have my head. It's good enough. And it's like, no, no, no. The outcome is I want to sound good so that I can make my point come across. And so because now I'm not just doing podcasts, I record a lot for category pirates. We record courses. We record workshops. You know, the sound of my voice is part of the outcome that I'm trying to deliver for category pirates, which is unleashing 100 ,000 category designers into the world.

25:54When you become outcome focused for a super consumer, pricing becomes largely irrelevant. It's not an outcome for me, make it cheaper, make it faster. It's not make it sound better. and I'm willing to pay whatever price we need to pay to get that outcome. You know, I get that when tech is involved and maybe when chocolate's involved, but you know, what about when it's just something like frozen peas? Frozen peas are great. So frozen peas, why would I consume frozen peas? And so an average person has frozen peas because I just need to have it on the off chance I make a beef stew or I get a black eye, just need something to put on my eye or whatever else it is.

26:31A super consumer is a lot like what Elon Musk does. He asks the question, if I take this to the limit, you think back to your physics classes. Like, if I take this idea and make it the most extreme and maximum, right? So frozen peas, show me somebody who doesn't have one bag of frozen peas, but has a freezer full of frozen peas. I can be this person because it's me. I'm a mom. You ask me the questions and I'll tell you about my freezer and frozen peas. How many bags of frozen peas do you have at any given time? Okay. At the moment we have about four bags of frozen peas and they're not all the same brand.

27:02And that's really troubling me, but there's also a massive issue with my bags of frozen peas. What is the massive issue with your bags? Well, there's actually two or three. The first issue is that some of them, my kids won't eat some and now I'm stuck with them. And the second issue is none of them have a Ziploc close. So let's start with the first one. So why won't your kids eat them? Do they eat them straight? Do they eat them as part of an ingredient? The only reason I buy frozen peas as a super consumer, frozen peas or a super purchaser, frozen peas, is because it's the only way to get green into my kids.

27:36It's the only way I know for definite that my three kids are going to get some green, that they haven't yet said, no, we don't eat those anymore. Remind me, how many kids do you have again, Fiona? Three. Three. Okay, I have three as well. What you are describing is precisely the problem that the outcome that the Velveeta super consumers was trying to solve for was that Velveeta, it's a rectangular block of cheese. It's shelf stable. It is not on trend. It's processed. And proudly processed is what they call it. Proudly processed. And largely used at the Super Bowl, right, for dips and melting things.

28:09Okay. What the super consumer would buy Velveeta nine times a year, which was 9x higher than the average person that was using it. And the reason why they would do it is precisely the same use case or the outcome that you were describing, is that my kids won't eat greens. And the only way that I could figure out how to do it was to melt Velveeta on top of broccoli, green beans, whatever. And you know what? When they did that, when I did that, they would eat them. Velveeta was the Trojan horse to get veggies into my kid's system because I wanted them to have the nutrition. I didn't care how it got there.

28:43The other thing, I wanted them to develop a palate for that. So when they became adults, they were not unfamiliar with it. And so when Velveeta or something else becomes the Trojan horse to get veggies in. So then it becomes an interesting thing of like, hey, Fiona, like your kids won't eat them straight, but you're trying to get them into your kid's system. What are the other things that you could buy to couple with the peas to get them into the system of your kids with it? I'm not suggesting Velveeta on pea. That actually sounds pretty good, but it could work, could not work, right? But the whole point about Velveeta as an example here was that it was not about the health of the product it was not about the taste of the product necessarily it was not about the processed or it's organic and natural it was about the melt it was by far the best melting cheese in the category in the viscosity was perfect it was ooey gooey drooly in all the right ways where if you put a broccoli stock the velveta would get into every nook and cranny so that it was a different eating experience with it, right?

29:47And when you talked about the melt, the supers were like, oh, that's an easy way of talking about it. And they would tell somebody else, they would tell somebody else. I got this problem. The easiest way to get greens into my kids is to melt Velveeta. Oh, that's genius. Why don't I try to do that? And that's how the brand grew$100 million, just like that. And that the frozen peas example is, this is the problem with, this is my, a little bit of a jab at the CPG category. Canned food a hundred years ago delivered an outcome. You did not kill people with food, right? Frozen food did the same thing, right?

30:23You were able to preserve food in a way that was safe. Food safety is not the same outcome that's as needed or in demand as it was a hundred years ago. So where are the missionaries in the food business. Like what outcome are you trying to solve here? Right. And so the legit, the outcome that you were describing is one that I have heard every mom and every parent talk about, like, how do I get my kids to eat greens? It is a universal problem. So why isn't Birdseye or other frozen peas providers figuring out like, I got your peas here and, you know, here's pea soup with cheese in it. They'll, they'll eat that or drink that or peas mixed in with, you know, other things and they'll eat that or drink that.

31:06Peas that are roasted and you put a little bit of whatever on it, they'll eat it as a crunchy snack with it or however you want to do it. But like the pea company is largely, I won't pick out any of the brands that you're buying, but they're solving their problem for their outcome. It's production led still. It's a hundred percent. Yeah. It's how do I sell the most peas to get the most economies of scale? They are not considering how do I solve Fiona's problem as a mom of how do I get greens into my case? So if we were a challenger brand founder and we're going, do you know what? This is exactly how categories are created, isn't it?

31:39Somebody says, somebody feels the need and someone says, this is bloody ridiculous. I'm going to shake up the frozen pea category because I feel this need. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to be all about peas in a completely different way. I'm going to have peas in Ziploc bags because then they're not over the inside of the fridge, the freezer. And I'm going to have peas that are the size of your, I don't know, apples. And I'm going to have peas that are tiny weeny weeny peas. And I'm going to have peas that are different colors, rainbow peas. 100%. And I'm going to focus all of my thinking and creativity on delivering outcomes to my super consumer that I've chosen, which was myself, which was moms who are trying to get greens with protein and fiber into their kids.

32:18Yes. But nobody's doing that in the big old fashioned brands, are they? No. You know what you're describing, Fiona, is category design. And when we write about category pirates, it's a three, you got to solve all three alleged is the magic triangle the product the company and the category itself right because what you were describing is sometimes i need a little bit of peace sometimes i need a lot they go in different ways so imagine a iqf frozen container where you could release just the right amount of peas that you wanted right that would be an amazing thing and then two is if you had a nespresso keurig s device that would heat the peas and convert them into like imagine a But actually, this was a category we worked on for one of the big CPGs that got killed by the board.

33:04We almost got it out the door. But imagine a Keurig Nespresso, like kind of a cup noodle type of a situation where peas were the main entry. You added water, you heated it up, and then you had a quick meal that was full of peas that were easily digested by whatever else. So like the point of entry is peas rather than noodles, for example. 100%. Okay, we're talking about understanding super consumers and I bang on about this to everybody I work with all the time. And like I said, I always reference you guys because I think that's really important. And I think you'll see that on LinkedIn that I reference you quite a lot, or at least I link to you.

33:41Talk to us about how do you at Category Pirates recommend or advise founders like the founders that I speak to, to understand their super consumers better. and let's dig into where those super consumers live and work and why super geos matter. In terms of super consumers, the very best thing that you can do is to hire them and to look for the ones that you've hired. I mean, the most obvious one, there are obviously elaborate techniques to get consumer data, market research, all that kind of stuff with it, right? But the part that I will never forget was at Smithfield, the pork company, was that there was a bacon super consumer they relied on who was, I think he worked in accounts receivable or accounts payable or something like that.

34:24Skinny guy ate like a couple of pounds of bacon every week. No one could figure out how he did it or whatever else it is. But when they launched a new package or new product, they went to accounts payable guy because he knew more about the experience than anybody else would, right? So one, look for the ones that you have hired or hire some more. Because I will tell you probably the biggest challenge that I have seen at a very tactical level is that the vast majority of executives, high, mid, low, whatever, at these big CPG companies, they don't eat their own dog food. That is crazy. And they are, some of them are ashamed to actually eat that.

35:01They will disdain the product. If this episode is inspiring you to think about new ways that you can drive growth for your business, don't forget to click follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast app and even leave a review. Your small gesture has a big impact on me and my business and will be truly appreciated. I've got people sometimes sitting from bigger companies, you know, in workshops I give and they are, you know, for example, it might be a vegan product or it might be a dairy product, but half the team are vegans. It doesn't work. It does not work. It does not work. It'll be better for you as the vegan to find a job at someplace else where you actually believe in the product and you consume it and you'll feel great about marketing and selling it.

35:47And it does not work for the company in the categories. I think that's kind of the first things first is that the best CPG companies that I know, I just wrote about my friends at Anheuser, when they would go to a bougie restaurant, Fiona, they would call the distributor and make sure they dropped off a pallet of Anheuser product, even though they knew it wasn't like, you know, you were having a great high-end dining meal and you had a Bud Light there, but it was important to them, you know, to consume their own product. Royal Canaan, the high-end vet food company owned by Mars, they bring dogs into the interviews.

36:18They want to see if you're interviewing for an HR gig, do you get down to your hands and knees? Okay, interesting. What's the point? I can find an HR person anywhere, but I want somebody who loves the category, loves the end consumer, so has a love affair with it. So that's kind of one. The super geo is another excellent way of doing this. And so a simple way to describe it is birds of a feather flock together. Or as Seth Godin says, people like us do things like this. Absolutely. This idea that, again, line number one is a big CPG, you need a national strategy, sales strategy, marketing. No, national is largely for efficiency's sake.

36:56It's, I'm going to spend a lot of money and I want to get my dollars worth, so I'm going to spread it all over everywhere. And the reality is, if you actually look at the data, a small set of postcodes drive the lion's share of a category. And when I remember, this is like 25 years ago, for Unilever, we looked at the sales of not just Ben and Jerry's, but Cherry Garcia, right? And guess what? In the United States, there were 3 ,000 of the 30 ,000 grocery stores that drove 80 % of Cherry Garcia's sales. It's amazing, isn't it? And so it's kind of like, one of my regrets, I never figured out why.

37:33This is like the weird data you talk about, you know, I read up about you. And this is also, you know, Clayton Christensen, one of your HBR colleagues, I'm sure, wrote about this with the McDonald's milkshakes and the job to be done. But I wonder why the Cherry Garcia was particular in that area. I mean, maybe was it an ethnic thing? Was there a particular large group of Italian families you grew up with cherries? It's not obvious, but when you deconstruct it, when you really go down and you figure out what's going on, it always makes logical sense. And so I'll give you a different example from a category from Hormel, spam, right?

38:07Most, I don't know how Brits feel about spam, but I imagine in most places it's a look down upon food and product. It's something from history, something from the war, something that lots of people have heard their parents talk about. Okay, perfect. Perfect. That's exactly the right sentiment in the US. Now, where I was born in Hawaii is the highest per capita consumption of spam in the United States. Okay. So you might ask why, right? And so exactly the same thing, remote area. So shelf stability, really important. Military presence, a lot of military bases in Hawaii, right? And high Asian population.

38:46Asians love spam, right? Why do Asians love spam? So let's go back and further with it. So I'm also Korean by ethnicity. So Korea, also the highest per capita country in the world for spam consumption. Again, back to the Korean War, military base, presence of the U.S. military, hungry people needed spam as a source of calories. And when you have necessity to stay alive, there begins a love affair with it, right? So it's part of your comfort food, childhood comfort food. 100%. Do you also have recipes? like would everyone have a spam recipe there there's a there's a korean dish called budechige which is um called army stew basically okay well there you go so it's made it into the fabric of society it's made it into the culture and it's it's comfort food it's like ramen noodles and stew and tofu and literally vienna sausages hot dogs spam like all the processed stuff from that you could imagine a u.s military base they all go into it and you eat it and you know it tastes great.

39:46You feel terrible after you eat it or whatever it was. But when you go to Hawaii, though, here's what's really kind of fascinating is that every convenience store gas station has what's called Spam Musubi. I don't know if you're familiar with this. A Musubi is a sushi variant. It's like a rectangular block of rice. There's a piece of cooked Spam on it with a piece of seaweed wrapped around it. So it's like a Spam sushi sandwich that you can have on the go. they sell for about a dollar or two dollars per right and they're ready to go food that is probably a 20x price premium on a can of span wow right on a per ounce serving so like when you look at that you're like well how do i take this brand that is like has this nostalgia not necessarily in a good way and how do i actually create a new category around it you see a super geo super geos are basically local zip codes or post codes where the category per capita consumption is off the charts.

40:46It is unusually high by a factor of 10 or more oftentimes. And in most marketers, CPG, they dismiss it as, that's just weird people doing weird stuff, right? And they don't kind of expect it to be, no, it is actually a crystal ball into the future of what could be if you were to design it, right? Now, I am not saying that spam musubi will take the UK by storm. However, if I find a place that has a lot of Asians there, and I find a place that maybe has some Americans or people from Hawaii or whatever. Some Korean restaurants. Korean restaurants. I guarantee you, we can build out a spam per capita spike there.

41:27And then what ends up happening is that a super consumer has found that spam delivers an outcome, which is to say, you know, is spam making me healthy? No. Here's the part that's always interesting. Most marketers and CPG companies, they think of their categories of their brands in a vacuum. Is spam healthy? Yes or no. However, if you have empathy and you put it into the context of a super consumer, I'm hungry. I'm driving from Manchester to London or whatever it might be. I need something to eat. Is spam health, a spam move to be healthier than stopping at McDonald's? Probably. Yeah. And so it is always in relative to the outcome and the problem that you're solving, your brand could take on a completely different life and a completely different value if you actually understood what that would look like.

42:13And if you did that homework and you did that digging, and then you asked yourself the most important question of anyone in CPG should ask themselves this question is not what is true or what will be true. That is the bane of every large company brand manager. They're like, Fiona, I don't want to get fired. I don't want to make a prediction that's not going to be true. You ask the question, what must be true for spam to become as universally accepted in the UK, in Manchester, as it is in Honolulu? It's a completely different framing. It's like, I'm not asking you to predict the future. It's like, what else would need to be true?

42:48Okay, we need a bunch of Koreans and Hawaiians and whatever to move to this area. Okay, check. We would also need a bunch of leading-edge, convenient stores of gas stations to take a leap of faith. Is there somebody, a retailer, a Marks and Spencer, who's willing to take a leap forward and try something? Okay, check that. We need some edgy branding that speaks to them. 100%. And then maybe you might need to adapt it for a UK palate or whatever else. Or maybe the actual ingredients in the spam would need to be British beef. 100%. And you can say, I need anenomy. is there this is where my imagination falls short here Fiona is there something that Brits eat in that type of I'm driving I'm going to a petrol station I eat something I don't feel good about it I would rather eat this instead of that what is that?

43:36Gregg's what is that? Gregg's is a chain bakery I'm sure there's loads of people who eat Gregg's Gregg's is on every high street and it is known for its sausage rolls which is like a big long pastry full of sausage meat. And it's, you know, the truck drivers and the builders and they do a vegan sausage roll and, you know, they do very well for themselves, but there's a lot of people who would feel really crappy if they ate a Greggs. Now we just need to find a postcode that could be the start of something where a lot of Koreans, Hawaiians, Americans, military people, you know, there's a Greggs there that we can compete against, market the enemy.

44:17And again, Greggs, not a competitor to spam, obviously at the superficial level, but you could make it so in the outcome. That's the other part is that when you go outcome focused, like features, comparison narrows your competitive set. Benefits elevates a little bit. Outcomes can be solved by many brands in many categories. And the idea of share of wallet becomes much, or share of stomach in this regard, becomes much, much bigger. And you might find that is way easier to position your brand vis-a-vis a Greggs than it is to your direct competitor, where you're probably not that different. So talking about outcomes and how positioning against an outcome puts you almost into competition with lots of other categories.

45:02Let's talk about the outcome being high protein or gut health. Okay. So imagine I'm saying my outcome is it's a high protein sweet treat. Does that not then put me up against so many different competitors? How do I then, without becoming really like fastidious about my benefits, how do I then make myself remarkable being the only high protein sweet treat worth talking about? So a high protein sweet treat is still, I would argue, in benefit land. And so the question you got to ask, why like a toddler? Why do you want a high protein sweet treat. Well, I have a sweet tooth and I feel guilty. I can't stop eating sweets and chocolate and whatever else it is.

45:47I'm training and I need my protein, but I still love dessert and I wish I could eat more. Perfect. So let's say I'm an athlete training and then I have a sweet tooth. And when people say protein, protein is not a benefit onto itself. The outcome is I want satiety. I'm either building muscle or maintaining muscle, or I'm trying to stave off hunger. Then the question becomes, why is that important? Well, I'm building muscle so that I can improve my race times, or I'm eating protein so I get satiety so that I don't overeat so I can lose weight. Nowadays in the UK, I don't know what it's like in the States, but it's all about the menopause.

46:30Do you have it all about the menopause over there? Sure, absolutely. So it's like women from whatever, 46 plus are all thinking about, I need more protein at every meal. So it could be that. You have three super consumers, an athlete, someone who's trying to lose weight and someone who's trying to manage menopause. And basically, and the menopause one is the most interesting one, I think, in the sense of like defining the outcome is not gonna be, I get younger. That's not realistic. Defining the outcome is not going to be, I stop having menopausal symptoms. That's probably not realistic either.

47:04And because this is the part that's so benefit, like important to this conversation is that you don't want to over-promise an outcome that you cannot deliver. Then no one believes you, right? Like I'm going to, you know, you won't feel any of the downsides of menopause. That's not realistic. However, protein to take the edge off of menopause as you search for a way in how your next phase of your life is going to look, right? And that invariably menopause is a physiological manifestation that comes with an emotional upheaval and aspirational upheaval and a life upheaval one, an identity one. Can I suggest it's about strength?

47:42So I think it would be in this instance, and again, this is us jamming, which is kind of fun. I didn't expect us to spend the podcast doing this, but it's great. I think it's like, because of that upheaval that you're talking about and you're so rightly painting. It's like, I feel the need as I'm speaking for this woman to make sure that my body is maintaining its core level of strength as I age to set myself up for this future that I'm not quite sure about. A hundred percent. It's, it's one of the things that I think I've seen in a lot of fitness things for both men and women is that weightlifting way more important than cardio at a certain age so that you maintain muscle strength so that you can if you fall, you can pick yourself up again, right?

48:27Like very basic everyday things we take for granted. You need to have the muscular strength and the bone strength to be able to do that, right? And so it could be, I need protein and I need stronger muscles because I'm trying to improve my race time. It could be, I need protein, I need more muscle because I want my metabolism to increase so I can lose weight. Or it could be, I'm trying to prepare myself for a life post menopause where I might have the financial resources and the wisdom to live my best life, but my body isn't keeping up. Exactly. I don't need to be a bodybuilder, but I want to be core strength.

49:02I want to be able to do what I want to do without feeling pain and aches afterwards and the like. So all three of these things, super tangible outcomes. And that what it tells me is that packaging probably plays a much, much bigger, if it's a functional beverage or whatever, like it's like look you need to be packaged for the context in which the outcome is going to be readily apparent right so if it's an exercise one it's on the go packaging that needs to help and that can be a meaningful differentiator for the same underlying product if it's i'm trying to lose weight i want it to be easy to consume because sometimes the thing that ends up in my mouth is the easiest thing to open right so i want it to be super easy to unwrap and whatever And if it's for menopause, it could be, you know, I never know when I'm going to have a hot flash or I'm going to have some sort of a reminder that I'm in menopause.

49:56So it needs to be portable on the go. I could keep it in my purse, keep it in the car. Or I need to have it so that it's packaged in a way like the Coke with an arm's reach, right? That was a strategy and a choice. It was not I want to swap out a Coke for a Pepsi. I want Coke within an arm's reach. That meant distribution. That meant alternative forms of distribution. It meant refrigeration. It's way, way different than physical availability. It is about designing an experience through category design. Can this product, though, that we're designing here appeal to all three of those people? 100%.

50:32They're all looking for the same outcome. Or do I need to niche down? You just hit the nail on the head, Fiona. is that the secret to super consumers is that 99 % of the experts out there will say, you're leaving behind so many people. Whereas the reality is when you solve a super consumer's outcome, no matter how niche it gets. So it could be English women having menopause who live in Manchester, who are of Mediterranean descent. I don't care how niche it gets, right? The nichier you get, the more the probability of you solving the outcome goes up because you're so dialed into the consumer, right?

51:08You're going to say, okay, I know what, I don't have to solve for everybody. I'm going to solve for this, you know, Mancunian, Mediterranean, menopausal woman. That's great in the States when there's millions of these people. This is the part that's the magic that you have to have experience at the sea is when I solve for this Mancunian Mediterranean menopausal women in such a way that it delivers a massive outcome, something about the lengths to which you go to design the product, to design the company in the category to solve for that, other people will say, I'm not that triple M consumer. The way that you deliver that is awesome for me.

51:47So when Rogaine came out for hair, it was badly positioned as hair replacement for men, women were using it. for hair thinning. Had they launched it as a women's hair thinning prevention product, it would have been 10 times larger, right? But women still found it, even though the brand was saying, it's not for you, it's not for you, it's not for you. And the same thing is true of like my Keurig friends, there were lots of non-coffee drinkers who were buying it. Why would you buy that? Well, when Fiona comes over and she wants a cup of coffee or whatever, I don't know how to make coffee. Keurig solves it for me, right?

52:20So this idea that the part that people fail to realize or fail to really, and some of you just have the experience. You solve for the super. The outcome that you need to deliver requires you to elevate your game. And when you elevate the product, the company, the distribution, the category itself, it often ends up being a relevant outcome that you can deliver for other people that are not in the niche. That is the magic. So don't be afraid of it. Do not be afraid. The Keurig one was as Northeastern offices, to solve for that. And there emerged a mainstream product and scale from that. Like it is, the truth of the matter is, if you solve for features, you'll be undifferentiated and you're relying upon all the old stuff, right?

53:07Solving for benefits is a lightly way of improving the game. But you solve for an outcome. You need to niche down to a super to credibly solve for an outcome. You hold yourself to a higher standard. And when you do that, you will find that in your solution, there is a mass solution that's available. Again, I go back to the Tesla example. They started out the master plan that Elon wrote in 2006. I'm going to build an electric sports car. Niche, niche, niche product, right? I'm going to use that money to build an electric luxury car. I'm going to use that money to build an electric mass market car, all while providing sustainable power generation for everybody else, right?

53:43And so this is the part that when you solve for the higher bar super, you end up with a credible outcome that is more universally applicable. And most important, Fiona, is that you don't need to spend a lot of money in marketing because the supers will spread word of mouth in a way that is so powerful. Let's talk about the lightning strike then, because this is really important because we are all spending, you know, in CPG, in every single European country, and I'm sure in America as well, we are saying, right, what does our calendar look like? You know, what are the themes? What are the seasons?

54:19And then how do we spend big bursts of money? Some of that's going to be with agencies on retainers every month of the year and on advertising spend every month of the year. And then there's going to be big bursts. Talk about the lightning strike because this is revolutionary. So a lightning strike is the concept where you want to take all of your resources. And here's what a lightning strike is not. It's not peanut buttering or spreading your resources thinly every week I have a flight calendar and to the point where you become noise and meaningless, right? And no one can hear you. It's really placing a big bet in a one-off location.

54:55It might be a smaller one, but it creates so much conversation that the earned media becomes overwhelming. And again, supers are talking about it and you don't have to talk about it. Now, it is completely counterintuitive because the vast majority of people who join big CPG, They're risk averse people. I want to join an established brand and learn the old ways of how to do it with a budget that's huge and this and that. So I don't have to worry about whatever else it is. And a lightning strike, it says, I want you to bet the farm on this one particular thing. So it's very counterintuitive. But this is great for my community because although we do have lots of people who work in big CPG listening, usually it's those who are waiting to jump ship.

55:36So let's imagine we're talking to a founder who has only got 60 grand in his marketing budget for her marketing budget, right? And they're trying to spread that throughout 12 months, and they're not seeing it move the dial. What should they be doing instead? Just today, we launched a lightning strike mini book on Category Pirates, how to do it with$0,$10 ,000,$100 ,000, or a million dollars. Oh, that's incredible. And we tell the Dude Wipes story. So Ryan Megan, the CMO of Dude Wipes, has this amazing story of, again, you have to be able to reject the premise where 75 % of his marketing and his lightning strikes are unplanned.

56:12They're completely reactive, which would give a heart attack to most marketers. Like you want me to have a calendar that's completely empty three quarters of the time? No way I'm going to do that, right? Why he does that is his lightning strikes are completely reactive because he knows that a lot of the advertising properties will have brands that fall through. Oh, I was going to be on this billboard, brand drops out the last minute. Digital property, brand drops out the last minute. Ryan has cultivated these relationships where they know I can call Ryan to save my behind. Because when Fiona's brand dropped out of my billboard, the day passes, that revenue is gone.

56:50It's never coming back. I will take one pound to fill that space there, right? So I call Ryan. Ryan says, no problem, can help you out. that normally is a 20 grand. Can I get it for 10? Can I get it for five? And so me, owner of the billboard, like, thank goodness you saved my butt. I went from zero to five grand. Ryan got a piece of media for a 75 % off. And then he says, okay, now, not only do I want a great price, I want to be able to do what I need to do to dutify it. I need to make it my brand. And they're like, well, normally we don't do that. So I'll give you a great example of the NHL.

57:27So the National Hockey League had a situation like this where Ryan came to the rescue. And they're like, great. We'll give you a great deal on it. We're going to put your logo on the hockey, you know, the barriers there, right? He's like, logo is not important. I want to put my message out there. And they fought, fought, fought, went all the way up to the NHL commissioner. Ryan won because he had all the leverage, right? And then now on the NHL, it says, dude wipes, protect your crease. Nice. Right? And it's all on brand and all points. So number one is if you, the lightning strike requires you to be agile versus large, right?

58:06And it requires you to be flexible versus, you know, the 800-pound gorilla and somebody who's pre-planned everything. So that's kind of the one. if you only have$60 ,000 in the name of the spell spend, try their reactive strategy where you are looking for opportunistic ways to deploy your money, where you can buy it for 600 and it'll feel like 600 ,000, right? And that, so number one, it's the Warren Buffett adage, I don't make money when I sell, I make money when I buy. So you buy the property cheap is one, right? The second one is actually, this is where CPG, a sector of CPG has done this very well, is your friends at Nestle, my friends at Nestle, all the confection players, is seasonal marketing is effectively a lightning strike.

58:54So is Halloween not a thing in the UK? It might be an American thing, I think, right? No, it is. It's pretty big. It's pretty big. I mean, it's not as big as Easter or Christmas, but it's big. Halloween, great example, right? Is in the US, the single largest SKU, for confection is the costco halloween bag okay right and it's like well how is that the case well the costco halloween bag um has the most number of pieces it's obviously a bison bulk it's great price point but more importantly it has every major brand from nestle from mars and from hershey and it's a sampling opportunity for them 100 percent of sampling and now will hershey do this no so Costco buys all their confection and they pack it themselves and they sell it.

59:40It's the number one skew, right? Because they understand the outcome is not, I'm consuming the chocolate. The outcome is I'm giving it away. And the outcome I'm trying to avoid is a bunch of rude teenagers egg my house because I ran out of candy and the like, right? And so it's a very different outcome. Piece count is what matters. And with the very best seasonal marketers who do the lightning strike is like, don't change the candy. You don't have to make it funny shaves or whatever else, because you're going to lose money. You're giving the candy away anyway. You might change the packaging on the outside, so it's a little festive or whatever.

1:00:18But what really matters is a larger bag with a larger piece count at a great price so that you avoid the problem of, I ran out of candy and I'm the loser house on the walk. So it's understanding the outcome again. That dictates the features and the benefits. Yes, and that's the part that I would say because the vast majority of marketers either do not understand the problem they're solving and the reason why they don't understand the problem because they're not the consumer and they're not a super consumer, right? They don't have four bags of peas in their freezer, most of them most likely with it.

1:00:54So the problem never occurs to them And so the outcome is a non-obvious outcome for them. And so if you just kind of befriend, look for the people that you've hired and look for in a super geo, and then you look for, if you have clarity in the problem, the outcome that they want, and you design a lightning strike to create the biggest buzz, because people need to remember that I don't care if you buy a Superbowl ad or a World Cup ad or whatever, like it does not compare to word of mouth, which is, was, and always will be the most powerful form of marketing. And it's not the earned media or the media saying, oh, this ad was a great, clever creative.

1:01:29It is when you have such a clear outcome and such a clear POV, a point of view, that is so memorable and easy to repeat that I can say, when I have this problem, X brand gives me this outcome. And they give it to me because of A, B, and C reasons. Spread, spread, spread. Goes viral. That is the goal. And that most brands and most marketers cannot. They think they are the star on stage. They are not. The super consumer is, you need to put the microphone in them. You teach them the lyrics for the words to say, but it solves a need that they have to deliver as an outcome and that they can talk about other people.

1:02:07And that's how you make a lightning strike that you spent 60 ,000 pounds on and feel like 600 ,000 or 6 million pounds. It's so funny, isn't it? We just finished our latest mini MBA cohort. I make all of the founders who do the mini MBA program call five super consumers a week. Most of them are niching down now. And this is as a result of your teaching to me over the years, kind of reading your newsletters and then doing your program as well. They're niching down in different ways because one, for example, a protein cheesecake company that I now work with, realized that most of her 80%, 90 % of her sales come from a particular area in the north of England.

1:02:46And there's a reason for that. Yeah. Once realized that, then realized, okay, this is why I started the company originally, decided to, that I was told that I needed to go broader. So went very broad and then it didn't really mean much to many people. And now I'm going to niche back down and matter to the people who are still representing 80 % of my sales. So it's just so powerful. Thank you so much, Eddie. Are we forgetting any major rules before we sign off that I need to share? No, I think this is only for people who are willing to accept that everything that they've been taught might not be correct.

1:03:25And that if I'm open-minded about, and I care mostly about my outcomes and my customers' outcomes, then there's a world that you'll learn from category design and the category pirate substack with that. So that's the best place to start. But like the other thing that I would talk about is in a world of AI, probably the most effective thing that we've launched in recent times is the founding tier of our Substack at pricey. It's at$350 a year, but you get access to a Pirate Eddy AI bot. Yeah. So tell us about the Pirate Eddy AI bot. What does it do? Because I've read about it, but I didn't really get it.

1:04:01It's built on a platform called Delphi.ai, and it is trained on all 200 of our mini books. So the reason why that's important, Delphi has a much larger context window, so you can upload more content than you can with a chat GPT or Claude or Grok. And it functions like an AI librarian, but the beauty of it is the interface is you can chat with it on a computer. You can text it with a live phone number. You can call it and have a conversation. It's trained on my voice. But you can have – it's designed for, oh, I read about this. Tell me about lightning strikes. And then you can have an ongoing conversation about how to do it for you and your brand in a way that like what I've discovered is like teaching people and take my own medicine.

1:04:46People want outcomes. They don't want to read my stuff or our stuff. They want the answer to the question so they can deploy it to get the outcome that they want. And the AI bot is a far superior way of getting to their outcome. Like some of the people might want to read this stuff. Say I paid for your founding tier and I went into the Eddie AI bot. Would I be able to say, how do I best market my Tempe product? Yes. If you said, now, I'm marketing this product. You give it the context that you normally would with an AI tool. What mini book is most helpful for me to read about this? And then it goes back and forth with you about the problem.

1:05:28And like, hopefully it would say, I think you should read The Problem Is Your Problem. And this is a great mini book that we have, which is that most brands, the problem of your brand is you are not solving a problem. You're offering a feature or a benefit at a cheaper, faster, better rate, right? And solving a real legitimate problem is the key to giving an outcome. But most people haven't done the work to, I'm solving for menopause in my new transition to lose weight, to build a faster race time. That's the problem that you're trying to solve, which gives you the outcome. And so it might say, for a Tempe product, what problem is my problem?

1:06:03You read it. You jam. I think my problem might be this. Here's three examples. Can you give me five more? Ooh, it's really like this. And it'll prompt you, tell me about a super consumer. Tell me about why is it that most of your sales happen in Northern England. And it'll have, as if like we're doing now, it is very similar to the jamming experience that we're just going through, trained on our books. and it'll get you to a place where you have more clarity about the problem that you need to solve and therefore what outcome you need to deliver. Now, it won't deliver all the way to Bright, but that's what we're working on.

1:06:33But I have found that if, you know, you can't jam like we are jamming, this is a really, really good alternative to that. Because there's only one Eddie, right? And only one Eddie can help so many companies at so many hours in the day. You can work one-on-one with someone like you or you can work in a group in like one of your programs. but this is a way of getting to millions of people and helping millions of people. Yes. It's all about scale and leverage, which has been hard to do in this traditional format and stuff. So. Yeah. Well, listen, I'll put links to your category pirates sub stack.

1:07:06I highly recommend that everybody reads it. Lots of the stuff is free and there's only a very small paywall for a certain level and follows you on LinkedIn. And yeah, where else can they, oh, buys your book. Your book is amazing. Oh, thank you. Yeah, yeah. All that's good. I would actually push people towards a sub stack because our latest writing on even super consumers is all there too. So, you know. Eddie Yoon, Category Pirates, thank you so much for your time today. Absolutely. Thank you, Fiona.

1:07:35That was one of my favorite conversations ever. I can't believe we were talking about K-pop, Demon Hunters and new categories. We talked about how Nespresso and Gillette grew new categories by, you know, showing consumers that they had needs they didn't even know how to articulate. And that's the thing. Breakthrough categories don't come from just better features or slightly nicer packaging. They come from deeply understanding what are the outcomes that your super consumers are looking for around an insight or a truth. So what are you going to do after this? You're going to go away, find your K-pop stack, your Velveeta moment, your peas problem.

1:08:13And that is where you're going to find the exponential growth that you need to super scale your business. So thank you so much, Eddie. You have been, you know, a longtime hero of mine. And on the Mini MBA program, I mentioned you and the Category Pirate group so much. You're an absolute star. Thank you for coming on the show and see you all on the next episode. don't forget to like and subscribe and share with a follow founder. It really means the world to me. We do put a huge amount of work into this podcast and we hope that it creates some transformation inside your heads to let you build something incredible.

1:08:52As always, thanks again to my tech guru and sound engineer, Jip Bagan of Ballagroove and my podcast producer, Catherine of Social Cues.