7 Lessons From Magic Spoon, Dark Horse, and Other Challenger Brands with Louis Grenier, Founder of Stand the F*ck Out | Ep. 346

0:00Hey besties, welcome back to the Marketing Millennials. I'm Tamara Griminski, your guest host while Daniel's out on Paternity Leave. I'm the founder of PMM Camp and a longtime product marketing leader. While Daniel's away, I'm bringing you conversations with some of the sharpest, most opinionated marketers out there. Today is part two of my conversation with Louis Grenier, the founder and author of Stand the F Out. If part one was the strategy, today is the application. We unpack real-world examples of brands that stand out, from serial startups to SEO agencies. We get into why most direct-to-consumer brands hit a growth ceiling, the truth about category creation, and how to show up in the right moments, even before your customer is ready to buy.

0:44And of course, we wrap up with one more marketing hill Louis is willing to die on. Welcome to the Marketing Millennials, the no BS marketing podcast. I'm Daniel Murray. And join me for unfiltered conversations with the brains behind marketing's coolest companies. The one request I tell our guests, stories or it didn't happen. Get ready to turn the f*** up. Welcome back for part two of our conversation. Bonjour, bonjour, again. Bonjour, again. All right, so last time we left off and I was asking for some kind of real world examples of brands you admire, maybe brands you've worked with who you think are doing an exceptional job of standing out.

1:37So I think that'd be a good place to pick back up. So I don't know any brands that stand out, but I do know brands that stand the fuck out. Yeah, tell me that. I've been avoiding swearing this whole time. I'm so prim and proper, but tell me the brands that stand the fuck out, Louis. Ah, finally we have it. So I guess I'm going to ask specifically what? So should we focus on the brands that stand out on the unique positioning side to have a very compelling unique positioning? Not necessarily. I think it's just like - In general. Whatever you think is a good - Okay, so more vibe. And then we can maybe dissect together why we think they are standing up.

2:14So I'm not going to say Liquid Death or Apple or Harley Davidson or Disney or Tesla or Google or Facebook or any of those typical examples that are mostly used in marketing books and podcasts and whatever. Because I think, to be honest, that's another hill that I'm willing to die on. That this is quite lazy because they don't represent most brands. They are overused. We know them already. So let's, you know, I always try to find examples that are real. One real example is a marketing agency in Manchester, UK, called Dark Horse. They offer SEO, PPC services like most agencies, but their branding, so the distinctive brand part is where really they've raised the intensity.

3:02Their entire website, their entire brand, is this kind of detective board style, uh aesthetic so like dark uh like black and red you know like this this this board that this crazy detective would have in there on the wall of their of their house with with links to like maps and and portraits and pictures and whatever so what i like about it is that they didn't just take that idea and use it for a featured image and then that's it they went all in with it right they brought 100 % intensity into it so the entire website from start to finish is like full-on of that aesthetic the copy is just delightful because they go full-on onto that like vibe of of the detective boss stuff and I'm just going to read a couple of things that they say so for example the headline is death to mediocre digital marketing we help aspiring companies parade the bodies of their competition while swimming in money through PPC, paid social and SEO.

4:07So what I like about it is that they don't necessarily have a unique positioning, meaning there is no compelling reason to pick them over the rest. Yes, you might say, yeah, they're very result oriented and whatever, but so is most agencies who know what they're doing. But in crowded markets like that, can you really, really say that there's something compelling that any other agencies can do if you offer seo ppc to most you know small to medium businesses not really so they double down on distinctive brand and that's what they're doing so well and it's working really well for them but what i like about it as well is that they don't go all the way so that people don't even know what they are right so they don't they don't they don't change the way they see our PPC.

4:56Their website architecture is actually very, very similar to what Google will like. They have a footer with all of the type of services they offer. And their copy, despite being quite out there and intense, still describes what they do simply, clearly, still describe why you should pick them, and they still have case studies. So they use the conventions of the category, bar one, really. They just go on into that one. So that's one example of a brand that I really like for that. Yeah, I like that. And I think you made a really good point there about who and what they are is still clear. And it kind of goes back to the category box that you have in your framework as well.

5:37And one of the thoughts I skipped asking you the first time, but was curious about is your thoughts on the importance of choosing the right category and should we always choose a category that exists or is there ever value in you know creating a sub category or a new category and the role that that might play in standing the fuck out there you go episode two at least me now we might have a record the three third episodes just to make sure that you go all in in that. So that's another hill I'd be willing to die on. No one creates new categories. It doesn't exist. It's always, at the very least, if they do manage to create something, it's a subcategory.

6:26So they're leaning on something that already exists. Very much like the first cars out there were actually called horseless carriages because they were leaning on what existed, which was a carriage that was carried by a horse. And when you remove the horse, you still call it. It's like a horse carriage, but without a horse, a horseless carriage. So, you know, what boils my blood is when a CMO with a big ego claims that they're going to invent and create a new category as if they can shape the minds of millions of people and behavior of millions of people. Marketers are not gods. We can only find where the demand flows.

7:12Demand is way too big for us to create out of thin air. So we must always find where the demand is and position ourselves so that we capture some of the demand in a way that people understand and want. If you go too far and create a new category people don't understand, they are not going to buy from you despite the hundreds of millions of investments you might put out there. As an aside, for example, Drift, which used to be very known for like they created the conversational marketing category. Well, no, it doesn't exist. That category didn't exist. They tried to create artificially, but it never held on.

7:51Good luck trying to find any companies out there selling conversational marketing. It just popped because it wasn't a real category created. It was just, you know, pushed with millions of dollars of investment and it still didn't hold. So I think as marketers, we need to make peace with the fact that we can't change what people think. We can only lean on what is already there. So a smart thing to do is absolutely sometimes like finding a subcategory of products or services that are in demand, that highlight your unique positioning, that highlight your differentiation, that highlights the way you solve struggles that others don't.

8:28an example that i give in the book is the um the uh the fry maker so like the typical fryer that you put like with oil in and you fry your your your your uh chips this way if you found a way to cook those chips without oil but you still want to be in demand so that you sit nicely in the shelf next to those fryers well you wouldn't call it something else than fryer you'd keep the fryer but you probably say something like air fryer because instead of oil it is air so it's a subcategory of a product that is understood a small appliance small kitchen appliance that is understood and in demand and you lean on that to highlight your positioning so i'm always worried when people say you know what we don't do anything like the others so we have to create our own terms here and and all of that and usually it just doesn't work it just does not work.

9:21And I still want to hear from a real case of an actual category creation in the world. Yeah. I tend to agree with you. I've evolved my thinking on this quite a bit as well. So one brand that I think stands out, I'm just throwing a brand at you. You're going to have to Google it. I Googled yours, but you might have known it. It's called Magic Spoon. It's a cereal company. We have it here in North America. I don't know if you have it in Europe. It is a very bright, kind of playful website. What is Magic Spoon? Magic Spoon is cereal for adults that anchors back on our childhood memories. And the reason I bring them up is, yes, of course, they have the colors and they have some of the components of the brand kit.

10:07But in your canvas, you have this point of saying how to build memories. And I feel like this brand does that well. Not only are they building memories, but they're anchoring on our past memories. So the whole philosophy behind this, and they're starting with the product. To your earlier point on part one, they're not making something up. They're anchoring on where they actually have a differentiation in the product, which is they figured out there is a group of people, let's call them millennials, who now are adults. They are more concerned with health, and they want to make sure that what they're eating and starting their day with is good for them and going to fuel them for the day.

10:45Great. Right. So they've figured out that segment, right? They've really niched down. Now, if you are older, like if my dad went to this website, he would never buy this product. It's not built for him. It's not positioned for him. Right. If he tried a bowl of it, if I offered it to him, he might enjoy it. Right. Um, but it's, it's not targeted to him. But what I think they did so well is they understood exactly for this target customer, at least for me, like a millennial who grew up in North America, the, what my cereal boxes used to look like. They don't look like that anymore. They even had this extra little side product they released, which was like a spoon that literally changed colors.

11:21Because we used to get that in cereal boxes when I was growing up where, you know, if it had the milk, it would change. And they've just like tapped into nostalgia so well that, but they deliver on it. Very, very good example. Yeah. So. For many reasons, right? Because if I had to break it down, when they describe, for example, their best selling product called fruity, a fruity cereal. Right. So it's not like we grew up eating cereals, but we decided there was something better. And we're going to call it loopy breaky. And the loopy break is a new category. No, it's a cereal. Okay, cool. Now I understand the category.

11:59Okay. But it's different because there's more protein in it. There's no sugar, no artificial ingredients. So that gives people a compelling reason to buy from them. do they have any placement in retail? Like is it only online so far? It started online and I do believe in America. So I'm in Canada, but I do believe in America you can get it at like Target. I believe I've seen it. So they have hit shelves. I don't think they're in like the average retailer, but yeah, I think they're doing really well. So the reason why I ask, because that's another heel, I could die on as well. So all of the DTC companies, if they remain online, will die eventually.

12:41um i can give you an actual example of a french company i work with i consulted with them uh recently um they are called it's they need to change the brand name we talked about that as well they're called 900 care and it's essentially reusable uh soaps like hygienic products like soaps shampoos or whatever that doesn't use water so you add water to yourself and and wash like that that's kind of the key differentiation is like no more waste you don't buy water you know in the supermarket for just that portion all natural ingredients a lot of stuff like that right and they are just they were DTC and they when they reached out to me they were basically hitting a plateau of they were squeezing every euros out of their Facebook meta Instagram account they were basically tapping as much of the market as they could but they were hitting a ceiling because at the end of the day there's a limited number of people you can reach and so they were worried because their market share started to stall.

13:41And the advice I would give to any brands anyway is that they need to be, in order to grow their mental availability, in order to be more known, in order to increase market share, they're going to have to be seen more. They're going to have to be where people buy and people still buy into more markets. And that's why most DTC brands really struggle because they need to transition from believing that internet is the way to grow at Vita Mithernum. You cannot. you're going to have a ceiling. And if you really have huge objectives, you're going to have to like build physical availability. So be seen where people buy instead of thinking that loyalty is going to bring you there.

14:23This is perfect. You've given me a perfect segue into the last section of your framework, which is continuous reach. And yeah, exactly. Thank you. You threw me a bone there. You know, as a product marketer, obviously a lot of my work in the past has been focused on product launch. And your philosophy, as I understand it, is we need to, yes, launches are important, but we need to be continuously reaching both prospects who are not ready to buy as well as prospects who are ready to buy. Can you maybe walk us through how, if we're a marketer, we're bought in, we've come to this part of your framework, how do we actually tangibly start to do that?

15:00Because I feel like that sounds easier conceptually than it actually is in reality. Like, how do we know all of the moments before someone's ready to buy and make sure that we're showing up in those places without just wasting ad dollars or whatever it might be? Yeah. So this is not my philosophy, to be clear. I'm standing on the shoulders of giants, smarter people, way smarter people than me. I'm merely curating a lot of the stuff I've learned over the years and trying to lean on scientific facts. So one of the scientific facts, there's a few in marketing, is that in order to grow market share, in order to grow, to reduce your churn even, the only way to do so sustainably is to reach more people.

15:43Which is counterintuitive when you talk to people in customer success or believe in loyalty and loyalty programs. They don't really like you saying that, but that's just the way it is. the higher a company with uh the higher the market share of a company the less their churn the more uh customer will be loyal to them that's just a fact of life that's been tested over industries sectors decades yes even in sass yes even in whatever obscure product you can think about so um that means that the only way to sustainably grow is to continuously reach new people, finding new people, finding new people, finding new people.

16:23So after a while, once you have truly reached the maximum size, you can reach like this core segment. If you want to continue to grow and grow market share, your unique positioning is going to start to dilute because you cannot really create a competing reason anymore because others do the same. The only levers you can pull is a strong, distinctive brand and reaching people even before they're ready to buy so the core concept here is triggers uh or catalyst or category entry points whatever you want to call it concept is the same it's it's the series of events that lead people to essentially buy or make a decision uh but that could take years that could pay years in advance so it's the different it's a trigger is not a pain point or a struggle or a problem right so those are two separate things uh a quick example would be you can have like a little back pain for years that has been semi-deliberating but you haven't done anything about it until you've heard that your grandkids coming over this weekend and you visualize that you go play in the park whatever and you're like fuck i need to do something about my back so they literally you literally have a pain in your backside for 10 years that's the pain it's still there but you haven't done anything so we need something else to to show that there is a chemical reaction that make people from inactive to active and that thing is the trigger so once you ask that's why i was asking i was talking about in the first episode about the uh about understanding what compares people to to buy if you understand that you can essentially go back in time and anticipate people's needs right it's almost like you can predict the next move uh and to keep the example of the back pain let's just assume that you know in holidays are the time where grandkids come to visit their grandparents let's assume that there's a big enough market for that whatever well then you can almost anticipate the fact that okay we need to create campaigns around that particular tree trigger point and associate our brands with that trigger meaning grandkids are coming to visit are you ready right i'm just this is a shitty example not real but this is the thinking behind it i I think that's fair.

18:37One place I see this, I'm just thinking about where to go next. I mean, I agree with what you're saying. I think in reality, it is where I see marketing teams fall when they try to do this is they try to then sell their entire product or their entire brand at all of those different trigger points. And I think there is a level of nuance of, okay, the first time someone has a trigger point, they're probably not ready for your full solution. And there needs to be an additional activity here where we're kind of mapping back what needs to be presented at what point. Does that make sense? So I remember like, I'll give you an example.

19:19When I was at Kajabi, so I worked at Kajabi. I was the VP of product marketing there. Kajabi's like an all-in-one. It was really fun. It was actually a great place to work. Loved the product, loved our customers, but we were marketed as like an all-in-one platform, which the company believed was a distinctive value proposition against, you know, very specific niche offerings. But for us, it was like, well, I can't market an all-in-one platform at every single step. Like there has to be somewhere that the customer starts, right? Like often if you're a creator and you're looking to take, go offline or like go off of social platforms and start monetizing, what do you start?

19:58You usually start with a newsletter or you start with a podcast. You're not immediately going to like a full-blown course. And so I can't market the course platform at that time. And so there was a level of almost like breaking the distinctive value proposition down into more granular mini value propositions that we could then layer in at specific trigger points. And I think a lot of marketing teams don't go this far and that's why they're not able to succeed. Yeah, they don't go this far because most times they're not trained to go this far. They don't necessarily even know that because they're not trained on that concept of triggers.

20:33They're not trained on this concept of category entry points and what make people, you know, go further to knowing your brand. And most board members are not trained in marketing, psychology or the way people think and whatever. So the easiest way to think about it, it's actually fairly simple to explain. Yes, it's difficult to execute, but if it was easy, everyone would do it, right? So the easy way to describe is like roughly 95 % of people are not currently looking at buying your category right now. The only thing you need to do is associate your brand with a core trigger. So you don't have to go deep into explaining the features.

21:11To take your example of Kajabi, great example. Let's say the trigger is they want to start a newsletter or they are starting a newsletter. Okay, so that's enough. Let's say that's far enough in the past. I might argue that what led them to start a newsletter, but, you know, we can go even further. But let's just start there. Okay, they've started a newsletter and we know that. So then the only thing you need to do, and when I say only, I understand that it's not that easy to execute, but that's literally the only thing to do, is to associate Kajabi with starting newsletter. That's it. So it's about repetition of associating a trigger with starting a newsletter.

21:47And so when the person, you've created the right memory structure in people's brain, because memories are built with association. They are not created in silos. The neurons connect to each other. So when you are able to associate the word Kajabi or the logo Kajabi or whatever else Kajabi with trigger start my newsletter, when they are ready to start the newsletter, they think of you first. And so that's your job. for that group is to raise the likelihood that when they experience a trigger, they think of you first. That's your only job. So that means you can get away from features and stuff like that.

22:21This is why brands advertise on the weather channel, like right when you have a weather segment. Why the fuck would those brands advertise there with no offer, no features? It's literally sponsored by X. Well, it's just to keep people in, you know, to repeatedly show up your distinctive brand assets in front of people so that they keep remembering you which is why mcdonald's and coca cola are still advertising because they need to refresh memory uh in people's brain to make sure they don't forget about it so that's the first group and then the other group that tends to be more understood it's the five percent who are in markets well then this is where you highlight more of your unique positioning or at least unique positioning based on the specific situation they And so this is why you highlight your compelling reason to pick you other than the rest.

23:10And it's more like making them understand that you're the least risky option, not necessarily the best. And that's a subtlety as well, but you need to be showing that they are making the right decision. They've already thought of you. They already know Kajabi starting first newsletter. Now they just want to know they're not fucking it up. They know they're not making a mistake, which is, again, why big brands tend to be picked in that scenario, because you don't get fired from hiring IBM. I think that's a really important point and not to bring it back to B2B again, because not that this always has to be about B2B, but I had this, so I was at a conference last year and I heard April Dunford speak again and she mentioned this, the same thing, which is actually when anyone makes a decision, and it was like a light bulb moment for me, like, yes, of course, but when people make a decision, they're actually just worried about protecting themselves, especially in a business environment.

24:04or in a work environment where like, you know, imagine you choose a piece of software and your colleagues hate it. Do you want to hear for the next two years of like, well, Tamara made me buy it. You know, it was Tamara's choice. Like, of course not. It actually has very little to do with the outcome that they need that software to do. It's like, wow, will my boss think that I like got a good price? Will my coworkers like the software and think I'm like a good team member? And so that was like a light bulb moment for me as I went, but now I'm like, yeah, okay. how do I reduce the risk of this?

24:33Or how do I even understand what the risks are, first of all, rather than just the like desired outcomes, but how do I understand what the risks are and then make sure that I am the least risky option when I'm selling whatever it is that I'm selling? Which is that, that behavior is called satisficing, which is a portmante term between satisfying and suffice. That's been coined by an economist, I think in the 60s or 70s. And it's, yeah it's people don't pick the best option literally the best option they pick the least risky option and you become least risky by being number one right if you're number one in your market in your market you become the de facto least risky but there's other ways if you know about the brand if if if you like the brand if you've seen the brand you tend to like it right which is another thing which is uh i don't remember the name of the bias but essentially the more we see something the more we like it that's as simple as it gets so you need to show up show up show up to become the least risky and then whereas the more you grow market share the more people are going to pick you over the competition because you're becoming the least risky the more they're going to stay with you because who else they're going to go with because everything else is a risk your choice so you can see the dynamics that are at play when you're a smaller brand who want to actually gain market share you better find a very compelling reason for people to buy from you so that they actually forego picking the number one and instead pick you right so you really have to show a lot more than the than the category leader yeah that makes a lot of sense and i guess as we wrap up our second conversation i'm curious about let's say someone has done this well they they are the underdog they've chosen something that makes them stand out they are doing a good job at attracting those best customers what might be some signals that what helped them stand out before is no longer helping them stand out anymore.

26:25And they need to revisit this entire exercise. I think more than revisiting it, it's almost forgetting about it. It's like once you've used the unique positioning as a way to gain this market share and to grow and gathering the resources to do so, there is a moment where you're either going to plateau and you're happy with that or you're going to decide to go after like a slightly larger category, larger market. And this is when you kind of have to catch up with what is traditionally done in that category and essentially becoming an option offering roughly the same things than the others. Like if you're being truly honest with yourself, it's roughly the same product.

27:09The only levers you can play on is the distinctiveness, so distinctive brand and the continuous reach path. And that's okay, right? This is why, again, I'm going to use big, big brands as an almost counter example. Coca-Cola has no true unique positioning against Pepsi. Like, you know, like the taste or whatever, they try to make you believe. It's the same shit. So the only way they compete is distinctiveness. So making sure that their logo, making sure that everything is distinctive, that is remembered, that when you think of a refreshment, you think of them and whatever, and then continuously enriching more people.

27:44so it's after that it becomes a game of repetition it becomes a game of until you are sick of it until your team members are sick of it until your accountant is sick of it basically never stop I don't care if you're sick of it that means it's starting to only get through the average person so it's very basic after a while it's basic because it's simple to explain how to do but again if it was easy everyone would do it All right. So I promised you that you would get a second marketing hill that you would die on. So why don't you share what that is? Oh my God. It's this obsession with direct response marketing, obsession with copywriting and direct response to be the almost summary of what marketing is.

28:34So a lot of books are written on the topic of how to make offers and stuff like that. And most business, most marketing books start and end with offers as if picking the right price and packaging it the right way and adding the right bonuses and the right scarcity is the only thing you need um in my book that's the last chapter uh and it's as a statement to say that like you don't necessarily need a fucking unbelievable offer if you have everything else so yeah this obsession with direct response this obsession of the last step of the marketing discipline grinds my gears because you're missing out on so much if you just look at it from a direct response lens okay i think i'm gonna have to go back on both these episodes and bring together all of your marketing hills um all the hills together we have a mountain range right now well thank you so much for coming on twice if people loved our conversation love you know your contrarian approach where can people find out more about you maybe find out more about your book you just search stand the fuck out and it'll stand the fuck out right you'll find it amazing okay well thank you so much for coming on well you're so welcome and thank you for letting me hijack your podcast of course thanks so much for listening keep tuning in to hear more great insights from the coolest marketers from around the world if you haven't ready make sure to subscribe and follow the marketing millennials podcast on apple podcasts spotify youtube or wherever you get your podcast And if you like what you hear, I would greatly appreciate you giving us a five-star rating.

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