454 WSJ celebrated Burger King’s 8.5% growth, but doesn’t get BK’s Category Design is still broken | The Pirate Street Journal

0:00Thanks for pressing play and welcome to this very special episode of the Pirate Street Journal. My name is Christopher Lochhead and yes, I am also the host of Follow Your Different. And what you're about to hear is something that I've been dreaming of for quite some time and we got a lot of feedback that people wanted us to do it, so we're doing it. And so what the it is, is a regular look at kind of relevant business news through the category design lens. it's predicated on the crazy idea that the Wall Street Journal doesn't know how business works. And as outrageous as that sounds, it's true in the context of most business press is focused on companies, maybe products and technologies, but almost never market categories.

0:49And so what the Pirate Street Journal is, is we take three important business topics of the day. And Eddie, Bree, and I look at those topics through the category design lens and share them with you and in and out in 30 minutes. It's the Pirate Street Journal. It's a very different look at business, and I sure hope you enjoy it. And we're going to be releasing PSJs on a regular basis for the foreseeable future and drop our regular follow your difference that are either one-on-one with me or a conversation with a legendary guest. So without any further ado, this is the Pirate Street Journal on follow your different.

1:26Hey ho, let's go.

1:43Christopher Lochhead: topic one burger king just took the number two spot in american fast food back from wendy's and it started with a new bun and a phone number topic two reddit is now the most cited website and AI answers, so brands are paying agencies$4 ,500 a month to sound like regular people in it. The moderators have declared war. And topic three, mascots are back. Crocs just hatched a six-foot crocodile. The catch is that mascots take three years to work and nobody in marketing has three years. We are recording on Friday, August 21st. Hey ho, let's go. Topic one, Burger King just posted 8.5 same-store sales growth in the U.S.

2:21Christopher Lochhead: That beat McDonald's by the widest margin in at least two years. Wendy's went the other way down 7%. Burger King also beat both on-visit growth in July per Placer.ai, and it has taken back the number two spot in the U.S. burger sales for 12 months, ending on June 30th. So what did they do? They rebuilt the Whopper. Premium bun, new mayo, a box instead of a wrapper so it shows up hot. They hired Amy Alcaron, the chef behind Popeye's chicken sandwich that broke the internet in 2019, and Tom Curtis, who runs the US and Canada business, started putting himself in social videos telling customers to call him personally.

3:00Christopher Lochhead: The company says he has taken 3 ,300 calls. Now look at what everyone else is doing. McDonald's ran$5 meal deals, then buy one, get one for a dollar, then under$3 menu that most of its franchises never offered. Wendy's built$4 and$6 and$8 biggie bags. Both chains have now admitted that deals disappointed them and they're rethinking the whole approach. Wendy's cut its dividend, brought in a new CEO, and Nelson Peltz is circling to take it private. And here's the strange part. Burger King's franchise profit actually went down. Roughly $185 ,000 a location from$205 ,000 hammered by record beef prices.

3:42Christopher Lochhead: The chain making less money per store is the one winning the traffic. So Eddie, is this comeback about the Whopper? Well, Bree, this is a good example of the journal playing mind games with math yet again, right? So 8.5 % sounds great, but that might mean I ran a mile in 30 minutes and I was 8.5 % faster. So So like a relative percentage, always be aware when the journal puts it out there because you don't know if it's off a weak base. Like was it the prior quarter was a lower number and therefore it's a higher beat or a smaller base, which is obviously easier to beat. And we know in the story, buried down in the lead, McDonald's, as they report, is five times larger than Burger King.

4:23So 8.5%, you know, interesting if it tells a story, but it really is a nothing burger, so to speak, of what they're actually talking about because - That was a good one, Eddie. You like that? It's a nothing burger. Is that, here's the thing that's interesting. People conflate marketing and category design, but marketing cannot solve for flawed category design or weak categories. And so what you heard when Bree was kind of recounting the story is multiple POVs, all of which that contradict each other. So Burger King, flame broil. Sounds like a taste-driven POV, which can work, although it's not that different of a taste than McDonald's or Wendy's.

5:03And you can't win on taste in a world of five guys in Shake Shack. Can't do that, right? You can't win on convenience because McDonald's has many more locations than you. And they're notoriously great at speed of service and clean bathrooms. And then lastly, you know, this whole, you hire the chef that built the chicken sandwich. Your category is about beef. Like, where are you? Like, what's going on here? And the value meal is the sign of a desperation of an executive who doesn't know where to go. And I know this because Burger King has dipped into the value play for decades. When I was in college, there was a Burger King near us.

5:39And you know what we would do as poor college students? We'd show up during finals at about 10.30 when they opened or 11. We'd buy three Whoppers because they had a dollar Whopper special. We'd eat one for lunch and we'd pack it and that's all we ate for the rest of the day. And it was disgusting and it was great and it was cheap and it got us through finals and that's what we did. But, you know, it's not like I've become a Burger King super consumer since then. And that I think between the three of us, we were asking about, like, when was the last time you'd been to a Burger King? And it really is not something that you can do.

6:10I think it was during the Nixon administration. The last time I was at a Burger King was during the Nixon administration. And Brie, when was the last time you were at a Burger King? High school. High school. Okay, perfect. And I think Brie thinks Nixon is a surf fashion brand.

6:26Christopher Lochhead: I am familiar. Don't worry, I'm familiar. She's seen the movies. So at the highest level, like if I were king for a day, the Burger King for a day, I would not be fighting for number two. I would be fighting for different, as we often talk about, right? And so what we always say is follow the money. Because Bree, when you read the story at the end of like 8.5 % is great, but you don't deposit percentages into the bank. You deposit dollars. So the fact that franchise dollars go down is really, really bad because Burger King is not just about the shareholders. it's not just about the customers. The most important people in the Burger King ecosystem are the franchisees.

7:05They are the ones who are the stakeholders. They're like the dealerships in a car company and the like. And so a couple of strategies they could do. All the money in fast food are in beverages. We know this. We've talked about this all the time. And you know what? You don't have to double down on sodas. You can look at coffee. You know, could Burger King double down on coffee? You look at some of these other drive-through only coffee places. They're doing great. Beef, high commodity prices, of course, but you could win on protein. You could win on high protein yogurt desserts and shakes and things of that nature.

7:34Would it put it past them to put creatine into some of their stuff? I don't know. But then obviously drive-through and delivery and drones, this is the future. This is where they should be betting on if they actually want to be relevant going forward. But the relevance for Burger King is always going to be indifferent. Fighting for number two in a weak category is a stupid strategy. Amen, hallelujah, brother. And just to put a fine point on it, So what's happened here is, if you think about the magic triangle, product, company, category, what's happened here is not in category. It's all in product and company.

8:08So what did we have happen? We had them acquire one of their largest franchise owners, I think roughly 1 ,000 stores, get them back under control, get their menu under control, bring in a new chef, focus, clean things up. And from a marketing point of view, they have done some smart things. It's not category differentiation, but they got rid of all of the crazy stunt stuff that they were doing and that weird creepy king dude that looked like Ronald McDonald's psychopathic brother or something. and yeah they were called creepy king commercials anyway they went around doing all this wackadoo marketing and stunts and this quote-unquote edgy bullshit and they got rid of all that they simplified the menu and they brought in a new tagline that is a tip of the hat to their old tagline in the 70s their tagline was have it your way because apparently you can make things and you can have them put shit on your burger that you want them to as opposed to McDonald's where you sort of get what you get.

9:13Anyway, the new campaign is called You Rule. And there is an interesting piece in this, which is that when they were doing all the stunt king bullshit, it was all about their brand. And they had fallen into the big brand lie and they were just trying to jam their brand in your face. At least now what they've done is they've improved and simplified the menu And with the new marketing, you rule. Guess what? Their marketing celebrates, wait for it, the customer. So look, all that's wise. But the thing I wonder about, Eddie, is this, I don't want to say deck chairs on the Titanic, but let's just say that last night at around midnight, I rolled into an In-N-Out burger after an evening of adult entertainment with my buddies.

10:03and in mountain view california when you roll into an in and out burger on a thursday night at midnight guess what you discover it's standing room only why well in and out burger is radically different and i can explain why but there's one point i want to make here at the end which is burger king how many owners has burger king had over the last 40 years any any idea oh i I don't actually know, but it's been not a stable franchise for sure. Yeah. In-N-Out Burger has had one owner since their founding, the Snyder family. And the sole grandchild of the husband and wife founders, her name is Lindsay Snyder.

10:50She's about 44 years old today. And she is a female billionaire, one of the world's youngest. And she has 100 % control of the company. There are no franchises. I don't know if they're investors, but there's certainly no investor that has control. They are not publicly held. And she said they will never franchise and they will never go public. She's told Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to go SF off. And the reason for it is clarity, simplicity, focus, and radical differentiation. They have one of the simplest menus in the history of fast food, and they get it right every time. I can explain why.

11:29And as a result, people don't say, hey, let's go for a burger. Uh-uh. Last night at midnight, me and my buddy said, you guys up for in and out? That's the difference. In and out is arguably a category of one. Radical differentiation. And Burger King can change their marketing and their burgers all they want, but they are just not that differentiated. Christopher, you hit upon something really important, which is that, yes, the customer is important. Have it your way. Sounds great, right? However, they forgot the magic triangle is they're designing the product side, but they're forgetting the company side and that have it your way is a disaster for the category called fast food.

12:13so that if I walk into Burger King and I say, I want it with mustard and ketchup with my name spelled out and I want it to say happy birthday, Brie, on it and I want pickles stacked in one, you can't do that. You're going to screw up and gum up the whole system, number one, but you compare it to In-N-Out and you have perceived personalization, which is to say the menu is simple for a noob like me who didn't grow up in California, but for people who are super consumers of In-N-Out, the famous off menu, they know what it is. Now, Christopher, you tell me if this is correct or not. What the off-brand, the off-menu, the secret menu, allows for customization, but it's fixed customization.

12:52I don't know that you can go in and ask at In-N-Out for any rando thing, right? No, look, I don't know the whole secret menu, but I do know the one that I use all the time, which is animal style, which means grill those onions. And there's a few other things that you could ask for. The yummy sauce, I forget what that shit is called, but you can get the yummy sauce that's on the burger on your fries. Got that last night to it.

13:18Christopher Lochhead: And the cheese. Don't forget the cheese. Oh, the cheese. Yes. Right. And what's cool about that is that's not on the sign. What's on the sign is burger, double burger, shake, drink, French fries. That's kind of it. And so it is fun that they have, I don't know, maybe half a dozen modifications and adjustments you can make that are off menu and you have to kind of know the secret. And that's part of the fun too. And it's Americana. Which keeps the supers loyal, but it keeps the mainstream people fast. That's the secret of the category design that they have there that I don't think anybody else has.

13:53I mean, you tell me, Christopher, it's like I've not seen a consumer brand hit the mark so perfectly. They've threaded the needle where it's busy enough so that you want to crave it. Like, oh, all these people want it, but not so busy that you're like, how am I going to go? and it's not quite fast food it's somewhere fast ish food right there's two businesses i'd really love to own i'd love to own purell and i'd love to own in and out burger and the beauty of in and out burger you know it's it's it's like um it's it's it's warren buffett talks about this all the time right they just have kept it simple as shit seize candy is the same thing in the chocolate candy world anyway legendary company legendary brand radically differentiated and with Burger King, they've cleaned up operations, they've focused the company, they've improved the marketing and stopped the stupidity, and they're still not different.

14:48Christopher Lochhead: Topic two, Reddit. Reddit is now the most cited website in AI answers, according to Parse, and marketers noticed. The jewelry company Brilliant Earth posted a job ad for a Reddit strategy manager whose job was to shape how the brand shows up in conversation that then cascades into search engines, LLMs, and what customers decide to buy. A moderator on Our Jewelry saw the ad, posted a siren emoji, and warned the whole community that it might be possibly the very last place on the internet for genuine company reviews and feedback. There's a whole cottage industry now. One agency, Retcho, is nine months old and tells brands to lurk for weeks before they post anything.

15:28Christopher Lochhead: Another sells 35 to 100 brand mentions a month starting at$2 ,500, plus a reputation package that includes removing or replacing negative content starting at$4 ,500 a month. A third advertises comments posted from profiles that moderators will read as legitimate community members. The moderators are fighting back. The software as a service subreddit banned promotional posts outright in June. Meanwhile, Reddit's own ad business did$762 million last quarter, which is up 64 % year over year. And Reddit has reportedly discussed cutting Google off from its content for AI use entirely. So the most trusted room on the internet became the most valuable room on the internet.

16:11Christopher Lochhead: And the money showing up to buy a seat is the same money that makes the room worthless. Eddie, brands are paying$4 ,500 a month to look organic in the one place people go precisely because nothing there is bought. Is there a version of showing up on Reddit that isn't a con? Yes, and it's a very, very difficult one for brands to do because it requires them to shut up. This is the hard part. Most marketers are people who love to talk. They love to sing. They love to be on stage. It's hard because to be a great CMO like Christopher was, you have to listen. And that's a huge part of the thing that's being missing is that Reddit is, with honesty, comes all the cesspool complaining and it can be a pylon situation.

16:55And if you think about it as the back alley where consumers complain, the only real role that you have when you're the one being complained about is to listen. You're the eavesdropper. You cannot join the conversation right away. You have to be very, very careful about what exactly you do. And so, you know, there's a way that brands can listen and learn. That's a great role. And if you choose to participate, you have to have empathy, apologize for the things. even if you're not right or you're not right or wrong on it, you have to meet them where they're at and make good on it. You can't change a conversation or gaslight people or deny the truth that they got mad.

17:30Now, if I kind of elevate it up to the four capitals, here's what the brands are really missing. They are scared to death of reputation capital being destroyed on Reddit. And there's a reason for that, right? They're complaining about you. And they're worried that that reputation capital loss will turn into financial capital loss. what they miss is the opportunity to build relationship capital and intellectual capital and that on the relationship capital side you know what the best consumer that you can ever have is a pissed off one that you made things right with and here's the nuance you don't really care as much if it's a light consumer comes into the category but doesn't really use it if you have a pissed off super the very best thing that you can do is to say i see you i hear you i feel you let let me make this right.

18:18And that the best complaints can turn into your best advocates and evangelists if you do it correctly and do it right there. And that if you can do that, that's an opportunity to build relationship capital. And that will ultimately build your reputation capital. Now, the second part that you have to learn is that it is complaints, guess what? Fertile ground for category design. Some of the best ways to do it. And you have to look at it, not personally about it's the brand they're complaining about, they're complaining about the category. And it's something that you can own, but others can own.

18:52So it's not just the pressure on you. But you think about some of the great category kings, you know, where did Netflix come from? Blockbusters late fees. People were pissed off about that. Where did Keurig come from? Office coffee sucks. Christopher likes his coffee a certain way. Eddie likes it a different way. And why am I, you know, who's subject to the one who made it and the like. You know, why did Hydrofacial succeed? Empty promises and hope in a bottle of stuff that was supposed to work and never did. And, you know, I didn't understand the word salad that came out of it and stuff. And that with Hydrofacial, you saw the gunky, you saw the stuff that came out of your face.

19:22You're like, oh, this clearly works. And so when you see it as an opportunity for relationship capital and intellectual capital, then great things can happen. And that the only way to build up your reputation capital is to actually do it through trusted relationships and real kind of POVs driven by non-obvious insights that lead you to a non-obvious problem that you can solve for radically generous. And again, tactically, there's lots of ways of doing this. If you want to do a tactical thing, if that's too heady, just think about this. Pirate Clint would often use complaints about their competitors as an opportunity to win, right?

19:59So again, you think about complaints. If they're complaining about your brand, they're really complaining about the category. And what he would say when he would take over CEO of a new device company, he'd say, if you're unhappy with your old device from us or from anybody else, trade it in and I'll give you X dollars off a new device. And what Clint would say to me, he's like, every CFO gets mad when I do this. And he would say, I keep the guardrails as loose as possible. I could care less if Bree comes in with a toaster oven and says, this is my competitor device. And he's like, what do I care?

20:34As long as it's a fixed discount on a 70 gross margin product, I got a sale at a high margin with a controlled discount, I could care less about it. And so their tactical ways of taking advantage of this, but most brands can't help themselves because they think they are the star and they are not. I agree.

20:54The question, Eddie, is where do they go now? What do they do? Back to the Burger King story where that guy that they hired was taking calls and conversations. If I was a CEO, if I was an investor, I would spend time on Reddit. I would look and I wouldn't, I would lurk, but I wouldn't lean in and, you know, try to take over the conversation. So I just think learning is a great opportunity. And if you come in, you know, what would be an amazing thing is you hire somebody not to be a Reddit spokesperson. You hire somebody to listen, learn, and then reinvent and flip the lens, right? To reject the premise and you take the complaint of the category and you turn it into POV opportunities problems to solve for and ways in which you can say, you know what, this category sucks.

21:39The way it should be is X, Y, and Z. I've seen it with rental cars now. Like they're, they're finally coming out with like, you know, the problem that, you know, Christopher, you and I would have like, this is pre Uber and the like is like, I'm on a business trip. I had a rental car and I'm going to miss my flight. What do I do? Right. And Daryl Morey, who was a president of in the NBA teams and this and that would famously rent cars. He was going to miss a flight. he would leave it at the curb by the check-in stand and just tell him it's there you guys deal with it and now they're finally offering a service that does that that right they will pay you to do that there's a disgrace disgraced comedian named louis ck and he has a bit about this where he's late and he checks in and he's he's he's mimicking the phone call that he makes from the plane he's like look no no i'm not bringing it in no it's waiting for you i'm on the plane i don't care It's your car, right, et cetera, et cetera.

22:32And it's like, so yes, make this a service. Here's the other thing about Reddit, a couple points. One is, you know, when you have ubiquity and anonymity, people say it, dude, dumb shit. So there is a lot of, you know, forget AI slop. There is a lot of human slop on there. And when you give people, look, look, I see it on LinkedIn. People behave like complete assholes. And I assume they're themselves. And I actually, when they do it, I say, you know, you do realize that you can't unring the bell and you're saying this idiot shit on LinkedIn in front of your customers and your boss and your coworkers, just so you know.

23:11But anyway, when you have an anonymity, the bad behavior goes even further. And so if somebody is making a complaint about a company, if they were doing it in person, standing across from somebody who works at said company, they would say it one way. You give them anonymity on the Internet and they're going to amp it up 100 times. So the point is there's a lot of slop on Reddit. There's a tremendous amount of garbage. That said, there's something that doesn't get talked about much in marketing, and it's called marketing signal measurement or marketing signal monitoring. And you could build this today.

23:49There are software products that did this. We were actually involved in creating the category years ago, but you can build this today with agents. And you go out on the internet and essentially you create the ability to monitor or everything that's said about your company and do sentiment analysis of it. If I was Reddit, what I would be doing is I would be selling my fire hose, my proprietary fire hose for that with a whole bunch of purpose-built AI capabilities. So at least at a minimum, brands can know what people are saying about them. And then rather than doing this duplicitous setup, fake bot accounts and post reviews that are bullshit from you about how great your product is and all this kind of stuff.

24:32If I was Reddit, I would sell this ability to monitor the marketing signal and have advertising and sponsored content against it as opposed to this silliness that's going on right now. And the reality is, as a marketer, I just want to know what the sentiment is. Well, I love that, Christopher, because if we were kings and queens for Reddit for a day, not only would you sell it, you would actually have the point of view. The Comedy Central roast, Jeff Ross, the roast master, what general would say, you roast the ones you love. That's the part that you have to know, right? Is that, yes, you will get the rando person that's complaining about something.

25:12But if it's a light user, they don't care about it. You can brush that off. The people that have the most virulent, hateful things on Reddit, it. Hate is not the opposite of love. It is a cousin of it. It is love in motion, love spurned, love disappointed. Indifference is the opposite of love. So the angrier and more hateful people get, you have to kind of treat that as marketing signal, as Christopher said, that there might be a super consumer who cares very deeply. That that signal of understanding where that passion, where that ache, where that unmet need comes from is going to be the same place that the the angrier they are and the louder they are, if you can turn them with radical generosity, with a point of view that makes their heart sing, they will be the greatest evangelist that you can ever have.

26:00So if Reddit was down to this, the greatest place for, you know, to turn hate into love, you know, whatever that might be, the greatest opportunity for category design, it would be one of the greatest opportunities for them to really add tremendous value and that you get CEOs that would say, please complain about me more so that I can find the undiscovered love. this is what people miss right uh a marketing genius i used to know named rich minnell would be in meetings and he would literally scream at the top of his lung make me care make me care right that nobody nobody cares about your product nobody cares about your brand nobody cares about your company well when somebody's angry if they don't give a shit if you piss them off they're like ah fuck you guys and that's it you don't think about it if you're angry is because you care.

26:44And so if you care, you're flippable. And if you're flippable, to your point, a pissed off customer who becomes a happy customer, I don't have the data in front of me, but it's three to five times roughly, if I'm not mistaken, more valuable than a happy customer.

26:59Christopher Lochhead: Topic three, mascots. Crocs just introduced Niles, a six-foot crocodile who hatched out of an egg on social media. First real mascot in the company's history, and in the last few months, Liberty Mutual launched Liberty Biberty, a yellow fezball. Stanley Black and Decker launched a talking toolbox named Stan. InfoSeas launched a partly AI-generated Yeti named Leon. And New York City's water department launched a walking water droplet named Drippy. This is not new. We have the Michelin Man debuted in 1898. Liberty Mutual's Limu Emu ran on television more than 300 ,000 times between January of 2024 and June of this year, and the most visible brand character on TV, Pillsbury, put the Doughboy back at the center of its marketing last fall, and units sold rose 3.3 % over the baking season, with cookies up 12.6%.

27:54Christopher Lochhead: Liberty Mutual went through Jem Hennison's Creature Shop, reviewed six characters, and more than 160 ad concepts to land on a ball of fuzz. Then there's the number that should scare every CMO in this parade. System One says a mascot needs more than three years of consistent use before you see the results you want. And the best proof isn't in the journal's story. It's Duolingo. Zaria Parvez joined out of college in 2020, took the green owl to TikTok, and grew that account from about 35 ,000 followers to 16.7 million. 8 billion impressions over five years, and one campaign where they announced the owl was gone did 1.7 billion impressions by itself.

28:34Christopher Lochhead: She left last August and she's now the director of social at DoorDash running a seven-person team with a mandate to produce one viral movement a month. Every company in this story is buying a character. Not one of them is buying the three years it takes to make a character mean something. So Christopher, is a mascot a real category design asset or is it what a brand reaches for when it has no category to claim? Well, the answer to that question is both. It can certainly be both. It can be an act of desperation, or it can be legendary. And I'll just tell you a quick little story. So I grew up in Montreal, Canada, and we had an expansion baseball team for many years called the Montreal Expos.

29:19And the Montreal Expos, because they were an expansion team and they were in Canada, were essentially like a triple A team in the major leagues. And everybody who played on the Expos were rejects from existing teams or players who couldn't make it to existing teams out of triple A and got onto the Expos. So anyway, we had a team where the players were characters because that's kind of who that sort of team is, right? And I can tell you many stories. And so we had a team of characters who the community fell in love with and we had a mascot. and the mascot's name is Yuppie. And you can look up Yuppie.

29:55He's a big orange looking thing. Anyway, here's the interesting thing. Yuppie is so beloved in Montreal. The Expos have been gone for decades and Yuppie's still around. So there's something about a mascot that feels like a stuffed animal that a child would have that is incredibly enduring, enduring and endearing. And so I think there's real power here. However, to your question, if you're just coming up with a mascot to have a mascot, so what? Lots of teams have mascots. Very few teams have a UP or the Philly Fanatic. Now, there's another interesting thing here, which is categories hide in plain sight.

30:46And so the category of mascot making company is on fire. And I think what we're seeing there is a tremendous amount of creativity from a whole bunch of companies. And they have convinced brands that one of the ways to endear themselves is to have a mascot. One other thing I will say about this is, I don't want to say this without sounding like a complete asshole. um let's just say that uh american youth are um not what they used to be and so when we have a disproportionate number of people who are 35 living in their parents basement with their mom doing their laundry uh they can be childlike and so i think part of what's going on here is an acknowledgement by marketers that childlike adults who have sort of launched or half launched or not really launched, this is a strategy to get to them because they're kind of like adult kids.

31:49And so no matter how you look at it, it can be a very powerful part of your marketing, but it has to tie not to your brand to your category. You know, when Aflac has a duck screaming Aflac, well, what does a duck have to do with insurance? I don't fucking know. So mascots good when they tie to a category design strategy and they're fun and they're playful and they bring a new dynamic. Mascots not good when you have a shitty brand and all you want to do is create a stuffed animal that you hope people want to cuddle. totally agree with that it's funny that um my observation is that you know brie as you were reading it uh some of the mascots uh categories that are the most commoditized tend to attract the most mascots why are there so many insurance mascots it's the same there's no difference to it it's a financial services product maybe you get a different underwriting product but it you know there's no insurance at the same price and the same coverage is any different than anybody else's maybe in the claims response and this and that but it's a commodity commodities attract mascots because how else are you going to remember the brain that's kind of the one one interesting too let me say sorry mascots can also be people so there was the maytag man for years and years and years and then um i think it's progressive has has a mascot who's a person who's an actress actor named Flo.

33:20That's the character's name. She's got her own X account and all these sorts of things. And I don't know, Flo's been doing these ads for 20 years. So you can make a person your mascot too. However, beware the Jared. Just in case people don't know, yeah, the Jared Subway story is a very tragic, sad story. And actually, you know, it, man, I didn't think you were going to go there, but since you did, we're, well, Jared became a human mascot, just like Flo. Yes. And then the human mascot did very bad things. He was the epitome of the best and the worst of a mascot, right? Of why was he the mascot in the first place?

33:59He lost a ton of weight eating Subway subs. And, and it was just one of those like amazing stories of like, and this was long before GPL ones. Yes. Before GLPs was Jared. Right. And so, and so, and this whole premise before you had a magic pill that could help you lose weight. It was just a simple$5 foot long, eat this and you will lose weight. It was an amazing promise and it did amazingly great things for Subway. And then of course, as Christopher said, like it's the high beta risk of like, he turned out to be a horrible person who did horrible things. And so a criminal, I will try to segue off of this one because it's such a legendary example of what to do, what not to do.

34:36But like, if you think about a spectrum, you have mascots that are about the brand. Affleck, as you said, like it does nothing for you. What makes Affleck insurance difference? I don't know, right? You have mascots that tiger the product. Scream their name at you in an ad. The product, like if I think about Rice Krispies, Snap Crackle Pop, at least it told you what the eating experience of the product was going to be like. And you're like, oh, okay, I might want that. Frosted Flakes had Tony the Tiger and he would say, they're great. And to me, it's one of the most honest forms of cereal marketing in the category of, there's so much lying with the truth of breakfast is the most important meal of the day, eat your Wheaties.

35:13Cereal is not a healthy category. It's an indulgent one. And at least they were honest about it. Hey, they taste great, right? That's what they did. And then you have mascots that are about the category. You have Mr. Clean, and it was a kind of muscular looking dude. And it just told you like, hey, the category was going to work. It was strong enough to work. Maybe not whatever else it is with it. I have a pierced ear. I don't wear an earring but I have a pierced ear and there was a while there where just for shits and giggles I got myself a Mr. Clean t-shirt and put the earring in and wore it and when you have my hairdo and you're wearing a Mr.

35:52Clean t-shirt and a loopy earring it's kind of funny well so and then the final end of the category mascot is what Christopher you said about the category I would say Mr. Clean is about the category and there's no cleaner that's real different than the other one it's just a reminder that they're strong and they work the mascots that get to the outcome, the transformational outcome that the consumer wants, those are probably some of the most powerful ones. So, Bree, you talked about the Pillsbury Doughboy. You could argue, is it about the doughiness? It just reminds you of the product and this and that.

36:23I would say it's the belly button poke and the giggle. It's like, hey, reminding you of the giggles and the laughters and the family outcome that you want to get to with that, right? And that you have certain things that are when you get a mascot about the outcome itself, that's probably the most successful outcomes or mascots that you can find is that it reminds you of this is why you're here. This is what you're going to get. And so if you kind of think about it from that spectrum of brand is the lowest case situation, product, if you have a differentiated product, then at least you can remind you of the experience of eating the product.

36:57If you can get to the category promise itself, that's great. But I would say up there with the outcome is the Energizer bunny. Did I want a bunny that would clap? Tied to the category, tied to the brand. But it kept going and kept going, and that's what you wanted. The outcome was the battery would not die, and I would get to use whatever silly thing as long as I wanted to use it for. Well, the dumb part is I don't think they use the Energizer bunny. And for the better part of 20 years or more, people said, Oh, you know, Jimmy's really energetic. He's like the Energizer Bunny. But one other thing I'll just say quickly on this, you mentioned the Doughboy, the Pillsbury Doughboy.

37:35Mascots, when you have a mascot and you don't turn it into a ubiquitous toy, what are you doing? My grandmother, I kid you not, had the Pillsbury Doughboy. He came as this little plastic rubbery guy, and you stuck him in this stand. His feet went in the stand. And she had it on the top of her fridge my entire childhood because it was, I don't know, it was a fun toy. And we as kids would pull it down off the fridge and play with it and she'd put it back on the fridge. So if you're going to have a mascot, A, tied to the category, Mr. Clean. B, make it a toy. Yeah, I mean, the other one that, to your point about the toys, what comes to mind is Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse.

38:17when you go to the Disney princesses, right? You have the actual people in the costumes and then you have the real people who eerily look like the characters. I don't know how they found these people and the like. But it's to your point where not only, you know, Disney probably has some of the most legendary mascots because A, it tied back to the product and the experience. Like you saw Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse in the animated movies. You got to experience them live at the parks that were costing you an arm and a leg. And to your point, Christopher, it tied to merch. You could buy Mickey Mouse.

38:48You could buy the Disney Princess. One of my favorite videos of my kids are us going to Disneyland and them playing with the little figurines, having seen the shows and singing and this and that, and they're lost in the world with it. And so when you have a mascot that is a triple threat like that, it reminds you of the product, reminds you of the category, and reminds you of something else that you can buy in multiple fashions, in the movie, in a live experience, and in merch. Those mascots pay for themselves.

39:14Christopher Lochhead: We'll see you next week, Pirates.