Marketing For Supervillains

0:00I was like, this, I found it. I found it. This is what I've been looking for. I can honestly say it has genuinely changed the way I run my business. It's changed the results that I'm seeing. It's changed my engagement with clients. It's changed my engagement with the team. I couldn't be happier. Honestly, it's the best investment I ever made. What you just heard was a testimonial from a recent graduate of the Duct Tape Marketing Certification Intensive Program for fractional CMOs, marketing agencies, and consultants. Just like them, you could choose our system to move from vendor to trusted advisor, attract only ideal clients, and confidently present your strategies to build monthly recurring revenue.

0:39Visit dtm.world.scale to book your free advisory call and learn more. It's time to transform your approach. Book your call today. dtm.world.scale

1:02Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Chance. My guest today is Jesse Robleski. He has been the at-the-helm of a New York marketing agency for close to three decades. His often offbeat work has been featured in Rolling Stone, the book, Five Weirdest Websites Ever, and Fangora, as well as a plethora of other media outlets. He's also the author of a book we're going to talk about today, Marketing for Supervillains, Diabolical Tips on Differentiation, Decommodization, and World Domination. So Jesse, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. I figured my last name was long enough, so I decided to make all my intros and my titles seem longer.

1:47So mouthful, well done. Yeah, there were some hard words in there. I don't hear that one. But speaking of names right, I usually ask guests ahead of time, did I nail the pronunciation? You did it well. Absolutely. Awesome. All right. So my first question is, what's a super villain got that we need to be using as a role model? Sure, sure. So there's actually a lot of parallels. The first parallel, obviously being after 25 years of being in marketing, I think we all go a little mad sometimes. So it's some cynical takes on what's going on in marketing. But what the real mantra was when you're a challenger entering a market, there's usually always a mega brand, right?

2:28A name brand vertical. And that name brand is kind of like a superhero, right? They have huge public favor. They have huge muscles, which in marketing equates to huge budgets. And for a smaller guy entering the market, it's almost a recipe for disaster to try and go head to head with them and try to out be more popular or spend more money. So if you think about movies, the supervillain usually doesn't have all the resources a superhero has. They certainly rarely have the same muscle tone. So they have to use their cunning wit and brains to outstart the bigger guy. So a lot of the book comes from an underdog mentality, a challenger brand mentality, and kind of using things that the tried and true marketing that everybody else is doing, where you might not be able to compete on social media or SEO or pay-per-click, going where the other guys aren't.

3:20You know, I noticed quite often with Supervillain, there's a bit of polarization too, right? I mean, a lot of people love the Supervillain in a movie, right? And of course, a lot of people really hate them. Is there an element of that in our marketing that is actually kind of good to be a little polarizing? I think so. I think so. You know, being everything to everyone means you're nothing to anybody. So I think, you know, I'd rather be adored by a few than kind of in the middle of the road with a lot of people. Yep. So there are a whole lot of industries out there that feel, again, emphasis on the word feel, like what they do is a commodity.

3:57I mean, there's no way for me to differentiate except be like the cheapest out there. What do you say? Because there might be occasionally a case where that's true, but not very often, quite frankly, is what I've discovered. And so what do you say to somebody that just feels like, oh, I don't know, we're this kind of company and everybody's the same? Yeah, absolutely. Because that's the crux of the book, right? So in the book, excuse me, most marketing books will tell you, you know, run out, find your differentiator, and then figure it out and tell it to the world nice and succinctly. And that's a task, right?

4:30That's not easy to do. So in the book, I codified 12 different ways that brands throughout history have successfully differentiated themselves. Right. And for those that say, you know, I'm really not that special or I can't be, you know, we're just like everybody else. I always harken back to the ultimate commodity, which is water. Right. So water in the developed world is free. And, you know, if the government came along and said what you do for a living, the government's now going to offer for free. How would you continue to get people to pay a premium for something they can get for free? So rather than carrying a bucket of water around with you all day, which is free, you buy bottled water in the tune of 17, 18 billion dollars a year.

5:13What are you really buying? Chances are you're buying convenience of not carrying that bucket around. Or maybe you have a bottle of water in your car and you're buying refrigeration because it's cooler in the refrigerator. So there's a lot of byproducts for what we do. So you could say I'm an accountant, I'm a marketer, I'm a this, I'm a that. But chances are you're not really selling accounting. You're not really selling marketing. You're selling peace of mind. You're selling convenience. You're selling all these things that are secondary. But in the back of people's minds, you're actually curing a lot of anxieties.

5:45So I say any brand, any product in the world can absolutely be differentiated if you have enough courage. Well, and I remember like Perrier and Evian, you know, those were like premium brands, right? It was like, oh, you're drinking that. Again, I think some of the shine has gone off of that. But I think at one point when it was unique, that was what they were selling was like, we're the trendy water. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, and the water industry just keeps growing and growing and us suckers keep throwing money at it. I'm just, I'm curious. There are numerous Japanese references in and throughout your work.

6:21Is there a particular interest in the culture? I'm a lifelong martial artist. so I guess coming from you know I was always the smaller guy in school smaller stature I was in I think the largest high school in the country with 20 2600 students and I was the smallest guy in the high school so I guess that was some stem of me kind of joining the martial arts and there are a lot of a lot of I say parallels or a lot of things that don't equate to the English language, but are very relevant to lifestyle and marketing. Yeah. I think there are some, I think what's interesting for other cultures is a lot of times there's a word that literally means, it doesn't mean anything, but it's a concept.

7:03If that makes sense. I never can remember, but I live in the middle of a national forest and the Japanese word for forest bathing, which now I can't remember, but it's, you know, it's not a literal translation to that, but it just, it's a concept. I don't know if we have many words like that in the English language that can't really be translated other than a concept or a feeling. Yep. Yep. Yep. So you started talking about the, I think you said 11 or 12 ways. Is that your universe of differentiation? Is just, so do you want to hit on a couple of those by name? Sure. Sure. So on my website, there is a download of what we call the universe of differentiation.

7:42And it's just a visual guide of 12 different planets that have each identified as a different way to successfully differentiate your business. And then once you figure out which differentiator kind of resonates with you, your business, your brand history, then we kind of take a look at who lives on that planet, right? So who would be most attracted to that differentiator? So out of the 12, there are some common ones, right? So the first one that people usually draw to are definitives, differentiating by definitives. And you've probably experienced this because this is the high time of differentiation for the summer.

8:20If you've ever seen an ad for a theme park, they use this differentiator like crazy, specifically talking about their roller coaster. We have the tallest, the fastest, the scariest, the longest, the oldest. The nice thing about differentiating by definitives is you rarely get challenged. So you can make pretty boastful claims. And there's usually not a metric to challenge it. So, you know, you mentioned becoming commoditized. As a general marketing agency owner, I felt that I was on the verge of becoming commoditized. So I felt that I was usually the driving factor. Even though a client paid me money, I was always striving to get them to launch their website.

8:58Give me your copy. Give me your approval. So I deemed myself the world's most proactive agency, the most proactive agency on earth, the no homework agency. So it's a fun little way. You might need some additional differentiators, but it's a fun exercise to kind of say, hey, I'm sticking a steak in the ground and this is my domain. I'm the blank industry. 25 years ago, I started calling duct tape marketing the world's most practical small business marketing brand. And same idea. I had heard a couple of people tell me, well, your stuff is just so practical. But you're right. I mean, nobody's going to say, show me the statistics on that, right?

9:33We're more practical. Better versus different. That's an argument I think a lot of people is like, we have the best widgets. right? And well, that's fine, but we have purple widgets. Which one of those do you think from a marketing standpoint is more important to a consumer? Yeah. So I liken it back to differentiator versus USP, unique sales proposition. And people, they usually get them confused and I'll give you the best analogy that I can figure out. So going back to the example of water, the ultimate commodity, there is a brand, one of my favorite brands, not only for water, which tastes the same or the other waters, but for marketing in general, which is Liquid Death.

10:09Right. Yeah. I mean, it's absurd. So they have captured the imagination of the millennials like nobody else. Exactly. Exactly. So while all the other brands are chasing their USP, hey, we're hydrated more, we have a better delivery system, all these different things that tell you why their water is better. Liquid Death came along and just differentiated themselves and created a lifestyle brand to a very niche audience. And in my opinion, that differential will blow away any USP that claims they're better at what everybody else thinks. Yeah. So go ahead. I'm sorry. I was just going to say, so to some extent is one of the real goals of differentiation to actually project emotion, feeling, you know, you said lifestyle, I mean, that whoever you're trying to attract is actually more attracted to that than really any feature of the actual product or service.

11:09Yeah. So I say, you know, finding your successful differentiator is like the mic drop moment, right? So we as marketers and, you know, lucky for us, we get in bed with the company and it's a rebrand, right? So we got to get a new logo and then the competitor gets a new logo. It's like, Like, oh, we've got to redesign our packaging. And then the competitor redesigns their packaging. And we've got to lower our prices. And the competitor lowers their prices. If you can find that differentiator, that is the thing. Like, here you go. No one can touch us. Like, you can lower your prices, you know, compete with us on logo, you know, the arms race.

11:42That differentiator is checkmate. You can't copy. You can't, you know, clean up our dust. So I think that's kind of the checkmate moment in marketing. So over the years, I'm sure you've experienced this. I have as well, particularly maybe a little more buttoned up brand that, you know, feels like, well, we're architects, we're professional service providers. You know, this is what everybody in our industry does, which to me is like the ultimate opportunity, right? For differentiating, but they're scared. I mean, like, wait, we don't want to be seen as, you know, how do you get somebody over that idea that, you know, that's actually like screaming at you to be different?

12:20Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, the common question I get asked, which is what you illustrated perfectly, is different is usually synonymous with odd or weird. Right. But in the universe of differentiation, we have examples from brands like Rolex, Sotheby's, Tiffany's, Steinway Pianos. They all use the universe of differentiation to successfully differentiate themselves. And you may not associate Rolex with being different in your brain, but they're head and shoulders above the competition because they have successfully differentiated themselves. So it's not just for the outlandish or the guy that's not afraid to wear a weird shirt.

13:00It's for everybody. Yeah. So when you go to start work with somebody, or maybe you've just seen people do this, you may not be a client of yours. I mean, what are some of the biggest kind of traps they fall into? They like drink the Kool-Aid. Yes, we need to be different, but then they screw it up. Yeah. So I, you know, everyone asks me, you know, how do I get the client over that final hurdle? Right. So everybody comes to the table, whether it's marketing or whether it's fitness, I want to get fit. I'll do anything. I'll get up at 5 a.m. I'll run 50 miles. And then five weeks from now, you're sleeping in that discipline.

13:35So, you know, I tell my clients that I am great at branding and differentiating, but I suck at reading minds. Right. So trying to get them to be vulnerable and look, we have at minimum 12 opportunities to differentiate and differentiate. If you say, hey, you know what? I really don't feel like comedy or, you know, being approachable is synonymous with my brand. Let's figure that out up front. That way, when we get to the finish line, I don't come up with you with this crazy, you know, outlandish head. And now you got to stay up at night. We'll get all the vulnerability out of the way in the beginning and we can make great decisions leading up to the finish line.

14:14And then the rest is data. What is the data support? Then we pull the trigger. So it's never a frictionless effort, but I think setting the bar, setting the table properly can be very beneficial. What role do you think authenticity plays both good and for good and bad? I mean, you know, we're a stodgy old brand, but we're going to like do something to, you know, so those kids like us. I mean, and it just doesn't really come off. Right. I mean, so so how important is it that that it not only be different, but it be real and true? Yeah. So I think it's I think it's a term that's thrown around too easily.

14:51No one knows what the hell it means. But, you know, I say in my book, and I am absolutely guilty of this. I failed a bunch of times repositioning my agency. It was great fodder for the book. And one of the ways I failed was I was 100 % logical about my repositioning, which means I found an industry that had a problem that I could solve. They had a ton of money that they were throwing in marketing. And I basically said, hey, I can come in and revolutionize this market. But when it came down to writing a blog about it or attending a trade show, I was like, oh, it was homework. There's nothing I would have rather done.

15:28So it really wasn't authentic to me. So I think it's not a pivotal ingredient, but if you can align it with your differentiator, that's like such a huge leg up on your path to success. So if your differentiation pairs with your natural authenticity, it's going to be a huge headstart for you. All right. Let's talk a little bit about rebranding. You see a lot of companies out there that feel like, oh, it's been five years since we've done this. And sometimes they're sort of informed by trends. You know, I mean, they're the hottest business going apparently today is an AI marketing agency, you know, just kind of.

16:09And, you know, 10 years ago, it was a social media marketing agency. So, you know, how do we kind of balance that idea of we want to stay current, but we also kind of look silly chasing, you know, the idea of the week? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a tough question that I don't necessarily have the answer to other than every pendulum is going to swing the other way. Right. Right. So we were actually contemplating at our agency as everybody's trying to be AI this, AI that, coming right out and saying, we are the 100 % human agency, anti-AI. Everything you get will be created by a human with human feel, human emotion.

16:46So, you know, if you're thinking of chasing a trend and it doesn't feel authentic or it's rubbing you the wrong way. Maybe the pendulum coming back the other way, you might be able to position yourself for the future. Yeah. I mean, once Twitter put out a user guide, you know, all of those social media marketing agencies, you know, went out of business, didn't they? And I think that's, I think it's important to really understand that fundamentally what we're here to do, you would probably agree with this in the marketing space actually hasn't changed. I've been doing this for 30 years as well. And I think that's probably a point of view that people lose track of, isn't it?

17:21Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I put out a video, like just kind of a lot of the perspective of my book is a cheerleading for our fellow marketers, right? So we as marketers have been through a ton of revolutions. And I say, if your marketing agency didn't call you and try to get you to open your wallet for NFTs, Clubhouse, the metaverse, you know, all these things, you should call them up and just thank them, right? Because as a salesman, I'm always looking for a chance to upsell, but I have a fiduciary responsibility to tell my client, hey, you know what? Maybe we don't invest in Snapchat right now, or maybe we don't jump into the metaverse.

18:00And to their, in often distaste, they kind of want it, even though I tell them not to. So it takes a ton of integrity to be a marketer and that easy money in regards for a client's wellbeing. Yeah. You know, the question that has served me well over the years is when some new tool has come along, I've said, you know, how could this help me serve my existing clients better? And if I couldn't really see a practical way to do that, I mean, like NFTs, I, you know, I was drawn by the hype, but I just looked at it and went, what, how? Yeah, it's hard. You get those phone calls. Hey, I want to do an NFT and it's easy money, but it's also, you know, you got to battle with your integrity.

18:42So yeah, I agree. Sitting where we are today in 2024, we're recording this. Are there any current kind of shortcomings in traditional marketing practices that we all still see or have seen for the last 10 years that you think people need to immediately chuck? Yeah, I mean, I think exactly what you just touched upon, right? So, you know, I'm a big analogy guy. So I am not a party goer, right? I kind of go to the party. I make sure everybody sees me. I make my appearance and then I bounce, right? So I could say I was there. I think a lot of businesses kind of take that approach with social media.

19:17They just want to be in the conversation. They don't provide any value. They don't even provide a dialogue. It's more of a monologue. And they're just putting mindless content out there. And I think as I call it commoditized content, as commoditized content grows, and now we're seeing a massive spike with AI, right? How much content, completely useless content is going to be swarming these social media platforms. There was an interesting stat that came out for the first time in human history. Something happened on the humankind level that people are willing to pay more for less, meaning people have suddenly realized that instead of paying$100 to my cable company for 200 channels, which works out to 50 cents a channel, I'd rather pay$5 for one channel and get rid of all the crap.

20:04Right. So it's a, I call it human climate change. We're changing the way we take in content because there's just so much of it. And I think that's unquestionably going to be, you know, in the form of marketing, particularly social media, where if you're putting out crap, people are not only going to ignore you, they're going to repel you and do whatever they can to get you out of their funnel. Well, and I think marketers, you know, for the last 10 years, gotten pretty lazy, you know, ad targeting has been pretty easy to do, you know, actually getting results in search engines has actually been pretty easy to do if you knew what you were doing.

20:37And I think it made a lot of marketers lazy when some of that goes away. I think a great deal of what you're talking about is going to be the thing that draws people, you know, into specific businesses. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, they just took away the middleman. Now everybody can market and everybody shouldn't market. It's an art form. I think we're going to finally start learning that again. Yeah. More than ever strategy. So Jesse, I appreciate you taking a moment to stop by. Is there someplace you'd invite people to connect with you or certainly pick up a copy of Marketing for Super Villains?

21:09Sure. I would love everyone to check it out. It's on available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble. And I tell everyone that I am at heart a frustrated filmmaker. So I put lots of explosions and lasers into my YouTube videos. So if you find me on Decommoditized on YouTube, I'm sure you're going to find a video on there that's entertaining and educational. Awesome. Well, again, I appreciate you spending a few moments with us. Hopefully we'll run into you on these days out there on the road.