Jason Portnoy 9:48
Yeah. And sometimes your mentor won’t even know they were a mentor to you. Right? You’d be like, hey, this guy mentored me and he’s like, yeah, okay, thanks.
Joshua Chin 9:55
Right. Yep. Yep. And I think the key is to keep things as like Benton. You Just as informal as possible, keep it lightweight and easy on the guy so that, you know, it’s, it’s easy for someone to kind of help you out when there’s no kind of formal, I guess, like contract per se to to sign. So moving on to my next question here, I kinda want to move into how you guys view the landscape of ecom and strategy in ecom. What do you see brands doing wrong? That, especially high growth brands, right? Especially transitioning from like, seven figures to eight figures? When do you see them doing this? Like anything in particular, that you go up? I wish I could be there and change that thing that they’re doing what what is that thing to you?
Benton Crane 10:45
So from my perspective, brands, and just people in general, tend to think really binary, about the type of advertising they do. And they generally fall into one of two camps. It’s either direct response advertising, you know, which is the in your face, hurry by now, while supplies last, you know, direct tracks, I only care about ROI, that style of advertising, versus the other side of the spectrum, which is, you know, your traditional branding stuff that you see from an Apple or a Nike. It’s the type of stuff you see in Superbowl ads, right? And I’m not exactly sure what drives it. But people have a really hard time blending those two worlds. And instead, they think very binary about it. They’re like, okay, we’re, you know, we’re all direct response, we’re a direct response company, or yuck, we don’t like direct response, you know, that doesn’t fit our brand. So we’re 100% traditional branding. And, and I feel like, very few companies can long term successfully live in only one of those camps. So a couple of, you know, a couple of examples. Snuggie is one of the most successful infomercials of all time, you know, depending on what source you read, they sold somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 to $500 million worth of Snuggies No, just just using infomercials, which by all accounts, is wildly successful, right? 300 to $500 million. That’s enormous. But when you take a step back and say, Where is Snuggie? Today? Who knows? Right? I don’t even know if they’re still around. And yes, the upcoming generation has never even heard of them. And so then I have to step back and scratch my head. And I’m like, how do you do 300 to $500 million of sales, and never bothered to build a brand, like never bothered to build something that stands the test of time and becomes memorable, and develops a family of products so that, you know, it becomes a household name, or any home that you go into, they have several Snuggie products around? No, they didn’t bother at all. And that’s because they only thought of themselves as direct response. And they never graduated into thinking about building a brand for the long haul. And you can find hundreds of examples that go the opposite direction. You know what I think about Pets.com, which is like the famous bust story from you know, the the collapse of the.com bubble. But if you look at what they did, there, you know, this new startup selling Pet Supplies online, you know, they’re looking at Amazon and saying, okay, Amazon did it with books, so we can do it with pet supplies. And they go and they raise several million dollars from VC investors. And the first thing they do is they go and buy Superbowl ads, and you know, brand new startup and they’re buying Superbowl ads. And that’s an example of thinking binary, once again, they’re going straight into this, hey, we want to be a brand we want to play with the big boys, we want to act like the big boys. And so we’re gonna go by Superbowl ads. And they skipped kind of that whole phase of thinking about, okay, how do we get, you know, direct track conversions? How do we get a, you know, a return on adspend, all of those things. And, and you know, there’s hundreds of other examples like that. But in either case, when you think binary, you’re not setting yourself up for long term success. And so that’s the number one mistake that I see companies and entrepreneurs making. And so if I could give one piece of advice, it’s, it’s that think of those two worlds as a spectrum. And depending on where your company is at, you’re somewhere on that spectrum, and you should always be growing and moving across that spectrum. So of course, when you’re a brand new startup, yeah, think about direct track conversion, think about return on adspend because that’s what keeps the lights on, you know, that’s what, that’s how you make payroll. But over time, if you get stuck there, you know what, once you you know, once you get past $10 million per year, and then you’re going up into, you know, 2030 $40 million per year. If you’re not thinking really seriously about building a brand, then you’re going to have a recession. short lifespan and really short runway kind of like Snuggie. You know, Snuggie was like three to five years. What else wildly successful during that time, but then they faded into obscurity. In a sense,
Joshua Chin 15:12
I think sequencing is super important. And I think you mentioned this in your LinkedIn, wonderful LinkedIn posts as well. Sales pays the bills and branding ensures the future future. I think that’s that’s a perfect summary of what that is. Jason, do you have anything to add from a paid media perspective, in terms of, you know, we come from the world of direct response first, right, making sure that there’s a there’s a, there’s an ROI and everything that we do with marketing? How do you kind of blend that in with the whole branding aspect of, of media?
Jason Portnoy 15:47
I mean, there’s not much more to add to what Benton said, I agree. I think that is the number one mistake, I think, you know, brands that are that are growing, that are that are hit the seven figure mark, they’re still looking for immediate ROI. And they need an ROI to everything. And they’re so ROI focused versus how do I grow this out? How do I how do I get that lifestyle? How do I get that longevity up? Benton was talking about, that’s so important, because at some point to really build like, think about the biggest brands, some things they do just aren’t like, there’s no ROI to it. Like it’s not like, there’s no measurable ROI to it. But it’s the right move to do right. Like, what what’s the ROI to customer service, but we know Customer service is needed. Right? But you can’t really track that there’s no real tracking per direct ROI to that. I think in the beginning. Yes, yes.
Benton Crane 16:40
It’s no immediate and direct trackable ROI, right? Definitely an ROI? Oh,
Jason Portnoy 16:44
yes, Correct. Correct. Correct. But I’m saying like on paper, day one, like we’ve been spoiled. Look, paid media is getting a big change right now, right? We’re seeing what’s happening with iOS, iOS 14, four, and we’re gonna see a cookieless web by 2022. They’re saying, so a lot of the spoiled nests that we’ve been getting in paid media and I started paid media before, when we have to manually calculate return on adspend. And a lot of these metrics, we’re getting hit with a lot of like, we’ve been spoiled the last few years. If you’re a brand, if you’re an agency, if you’re if you’re an advertiser, we’ve been really spoiled with getting instant data, instant, instant numbers, and needing to build off of that. That’s not how you really build a brand. So you have to ask yourself, do you want? Do you want short term sales? Do you want to just make as much money now as possible and be as profitable as possible right now? Or do you want to build something that’s going to last and stand the test of time? And there’s no right or wrong answer, if you don’t want that, you don’t want that if you’re not interested in building a brand, you know, you’re selling iPhone cases you need here, right, you’re not getting repeat customer rates of 60%. So you need to sell and you need to you need to be profitable. But like Benton said, I think that’s the biggest mistake, I think, and I love the the the reverse of going too much on branding, and not focusing on direct response. But I would I would actually say in from my line of work, the biggest thing is actually the other way that you started with, with always needing an ROI and not focusing enough on branding. And as you see cookieless web creative branding, that’s how you’re gonna that’s how you’re gonna it’s the difference between out living and outspending your competition in my opinion.
Joshua Chin 18:27
I you know what this, this reminds me of talking about initiators and just things that are not immediately ROI focused. Amazon had today produced an amazing video, I believe, titled The show Must Go On during the early stage,
Benton Crane 18:46
I saw that I loved that.
Joshua Chin 18:47
That was incredible. And there was no like literally no call to action, nothing. It was just, it was just a good video and you know that, you know, intuitively because it has emotional intelligence. But from a you know, from a branding perspective, that makes sense, but from an ROI perspective, for Amazon spend, like I presume millions of dollars producing that and distributing that. It’s, it’s, that’s insane. What do you think? Is that thought process behind brands like like these, and what are some of your favorite examples of brands doing it really, right? really well.
Benton Crane 19:25
So, look, you have your Amazons of the world, your Apples of the world, your Nikes of the world. Of course, these guys, you’re never going to see, you know, a call to action in one of their ads this like, you know, click now while supplies last or, you know, hurry, learn more, you know, that’s just you’re not going to see that from them. And those brands have all reached a level and a size where they don’t have to think that way. They have the luxury of they can afford to ever present in our lives, and so they can afford to be subtle. And, and I guess much softer and less in your face with their, with their approach. But, you know, to Jason’s point, we don’t start there, you know, we as entrepreneurs, we have to start scrappy and lean. And we’ve got to figure out how to pay the bills. And, and so it’s okay for us to, you know, to think much more salesy much, much more direct focus. But where the graduation needs to start to happen is, you know, what, once you’re, I would call it kind of, like, you know, that $10 million per year range, if you’re a $10 million per year company, and everything you think about is still direct response, then you haven’t even started to make that shift and change your way of thinking, and, and you’re going to, you’re going to limit yourself and you’re gonna, you’re going to limit your company. But that doesn’t, that still doesn’t mean you have to jump all the way to let’s just let’s do it like Amazon, where we just put out a feel good message, you can still blend those worlds, you can start to think about things like brand, character, brand voice, you know, do we want to engage humor, do we want to engage, you know, more of a feel good vibe, and you can start to build those elements into your campaigns, but still have them be, you know, still have them, continue with your direct response elements, things like problem solution, to build credibility, overcome concerns. And you know, that blend is kind of where we’ve made a name for ourselves. And if you go and look back at, you know, our most famous campaigns from whatever Purple mattresses, Squatty Potty, Poo~Pourri, whatever, go analyze those ads, and you’ll see that they contain both, all of the all of the emotional elements that make a great branding campaign, the shareability, you know, the the conversation piece that gets people to talk about it gets people to share, it gets people to, you know, to comment and all that stuff. It’s all there. But so is the sales structure. And so you can absolutely build a really nice bridge between the two worlds, and gradually work your way across that bridge. And hopefully, we all get to the point where we’re like Amazon or Nike, and, and, you know, we get the luxury to just do the really fun. You know, I love watching Superbowl ads, and oh, yeah, it’s it’s as much fun as the game. And it’s because those are the brands that have reached that point where they have the luxury to just do the really fun branding pieces.
Joshua Chin 22:45
Jason, you mentioned, the recent change in iOS 14, what do you foresee is going to be the future of paid media as a growing brand, especially in that transition that Benton just mentioned, right, reaching that 10 mil mark and starting to think about branding versus direct response and on a spectrum.
Jason Portnoy 23:12
So I actually think, I think Benton is being a bit generous with that with the 10 million mark, I think it should happen a lot sooner. I think, even even if you’re doing six figures, I think some of your budget needs to be spent on on getting your brand out there doesn’t mean you have to be like maybe 10% of the budget gets spent on building your brand out there. Because I think the biggest mistake people do in online marketing is they throw out real world sales tactics. Right? You don’t walk into a bar and scream, buy my product, everyone, you build a relationship, you start talking about it, people figure out who you are, what you do. And then you develop a relationship, and then you do business. And, you know, in, in online marketing, we’ve just think, okay, broad, throw it out to everyone, throw it out there yell as loud as I can try to yell over the next person and and see what happens. And I don’t think that’s the way to do it. I think you have to build that relationship with with your consumer. And it starts with them, knowing who you are. I’m going to talk about spending ads on Super Bowls. And, you know, there’s a reason why 18 t buys sports arenas. I obscurity is the biggest reason why brands disappear or fail or fail, right? One is if they don’t know you exist, they can’t do business with you. And then they forget you exist. If you don’t keep reminding them that you’re there. They’re gonna forget to keep doing business with you. Right? They won’t, they won’t keep doing business with you. doesn’t mean you have to go buy a sports arena and raise your money. And first thing you do is buy a sports we know but that’s the reason why they do it. That’s the reason why they run these feel good ads, because they don’t care. They just want the impressions. They just want always be top of mind for you. And you get to a point where that could happen. But a lot of these people also run direct response or they built a relationship where they don’t have to be direct response. Right? That’s, that’s building a lifestyle brand. When you get to that level. You don’t have to be in your face. We just have to remind you that we’re there. And you’re gonna keep shopping with us. That’s a whole Different level to get to. But But yeah, when it comes to paid media, the future of it is it’s going to come down to building a community around your brand, about about building a brand about how good your creatives are going to be, to give Benton and credit, I think one of the best commercials you’ve ever done was the ChatBooks. One, talk about a building a talk about building a brand and transformational selling. Like, they’re like, it’s so subtle, like, from a marketing perspective, if you’re a marketer, go YouTube commercial, and look at it and then break it down and understand that Mother, what she’s saying in every single thing is a pain point, with a solution pain point solution, but it’s so subtle with humor, with with different ways to like, reset, and snap you out of it, because it’s a long commercial, right. And after like 10 seconds, our attention span starts going. But there’s so many subtle ways like the arrow flying it like, I could break that down that commercial down into into a course in itself. And it’s brilliant. And that’s the type of creative people need. That’s the type of you know, what people need to focus on. That’s building a brand that’s doing direct response that’s doing both. And then yeah, then you have retargeting. You can retarget anyone who watch a video with a bit more direct response. But the future I think, is going to be less on immediate ROI. And I think brands need to start looking at Mr. structure, and not what channels producing the biggest ROI, what channels produce. How much of a budget Are we willing to spend on advertising? Okay. 25%. All right, we’re spending 25% of our money on advertising, advertising costs versus revenue in? Are we profitable? Yes. Cool. Let’s keep going. We’re not profitable. Okay, now, let’s zoom in on the channels and see what’s going on. where’s where’s our best channel? What’s what, what do we see most traffic coming from? How do we figure out that way, because once we stopped being able to track and get immediate ROI, so we’re gonna have to measure it some other way, right? Like, you don’t just turn off Facebook ads, because you can’t track anymore, when you know it represents 70% of your business, right? That’s not going to go away. It just won’t be trackable won’t be like direct in your face. But doesn’t mean you kill it. It just means we have to start looking at it from a more holistic point of view, and sitting there saying how do I build that community? And how do I build that brand. And, frankly, it’s something I preached for years, even while we were spoiled with this, and I’m kind of excited for it, because I think you’re gonna see a lot of digital marketers now who don’t understand marketing, and they just are really good at manual bid strategies, or different bidding strategies, they’re going to be finished, they’re out, right? If you don’t understand how to how to market, how to really dissect what your consumer wants, how to write good copy, how to write transformational, you know, advertisements, like Benton and his team do transformational selling, you’re gonna have a really, really tough time.
Joshua Chin 27:43
Now, you mentioned lifestyle products. Sorry Benton, go ahead. Do you have anything else to add?
Benton Crane 27:49
Yeah, yeah, I want to share an opinion on this, you know, iOS 14, change, that’s, that’s coming down the pipeline, I think it’s really interesting, because, you know, iOS, or Apple is kind of leading the charge on this, they’re coming out with iOS 14. And, and they’re severely limiting trackability, particularly cross platform trackability, which, you know, to Jason’s point is going to make a direct response advertisers job much, much harder, because the the granularity of what they can track is going to be greatly reduced. And at first glance, you would think that when that happens, that would really hurt Facebook, because you know, Facebook has built its whole business on that type of that type of advertising. But this is what’s interesting. Facebook is adapting its platform, to fall in line with what iOS is doing. And then they’re applying it to their whole entire system, including Android, which to date, Android hasn’t gotten to that same level of, I guess, stopping the the tracking, but Facebook is going to do it anyways. And so when you actually step back and say why would Facebook do that? Why would Facebook take away that level of tracking for your roughly 50% of the market, which is, which is Android? And here’s my opinion on it. I really believe what this comes down to is when you think empathetically in the shoes of the viewer, what does the viewer Want to see? What does the viewer want to experience? I think as an industry, we’ve let the pendulum swing too far towards you know, that direct sales in your face, shove it down your throat. And and I think Facebook sees that and I think that because as an industry, we’ve gone too far that direction. people’s experience in the newsfeed has been degraded by just constantly being bombarded, you know, with these with these hyper targeted, hyper focused direct sales type ads. And so Facebook realizes that it’s actually in their best interest Let that pendulum swing back a little bit to focus more on brand messages that are more empathetic toward the the end viewer. And and I think that’s really, really important for us to think about as advertisers and content creators. Way back in our early history, my my partner, Jeff Harmon, was launching a campaign for Orabrush, which was a tongue cleaner that gets rid of bad breath. And this was right after Google had bought YouTube. Oh, you’ve got it. You know, right there. Nice. Right there. Yeah. So what was so fascinating about this was that he made the spot two and a half minutes long, which is like a total oddball link. Normally, you’re like, 30, or 60 seconds for television, or you’re like full infomercial. And he had this two and a half minute ad, and everyone’s like, no, it doesn’t work, you know, you can’t do a two and a half minute spot. And he goes to YouTube, and says, Can you give me a skip button, so that people who want to see this can and people who don’t want to see it? can skip it. And YouTube, you know, at this point, they just barely purchase or sorry, Google had barely purchased YouTube. And so they’re acting like a startup. They’re they’re scrappy, they’re experimenting, they’re trying to figure out how to making make it an ad platform, they’re sure no problem, we’ll give it a try. And so they build the skip button. And that one little innovation ended up changing the whole entire industry, because now instead of advertisers being able to force feed whatever crap they want to, to the viewer, now all of a sudden the viewer has the power to skip things they don’t want to see. And so that forced advertisers to start thinking empathetically and say, What can I give that adds value? What can I give, the viewer actually wants to spend their their time and their focus on? And that was huge, huge, huge. And I believe that’s exactly what’s happening right now, with this iOS 14 change, is it you know, as advertisers, we have to stop saying, like, how can I squeeze every last penny out of the viewer this instant? instead? How can I provide value so that the viewer voluntarily gives their time and their attention and their focus?
Jason Portnoy 32:18
It’s interesting that you’ve, I’ve never heard that perspective, before that you think it’s actually going to help the end user? I’m, I’m not. Personally I’m not too sure about that. Because, you know, your experience is based off all the data Facebook has on you, right? So whatever you scroll through, chances are you somehow expressed some sort of interest in it. I mean, yes, there are the the weird targeting things. But what happens when you’re you know, you live in California, you start seeing ski like ski ads, or, or things that don’t apply to you and your, you know, your user feed is filled with things that don’t apply to you. Because now there is no hyper targeting anymore. I agree with you, though, I think internet marketers came in and ruined everything and really took advantage of things and kind of, and the pendulum did shift away too much. But I’m curious whether it actually it actually swings back down that way, and what the user fee is going to be like, and the next thing is, I’m also worried about small businesses, like the ones that aren’t doing seven figures, the ones that don’t have big budgets to spend on branding and, and getting it out there. And they relied on being able to be hyper targeted in order to build their brand or build their business. I’m worried more about them. And, and let’s not pretend Apple’s doing this for the sake of privacy, right? They’re, they’re keeping that privacy for themselves. They’re keeping all the data for themselves, which I mean, are do they invent their own ad platform at one point, because they have all the data, but like, they’re not just doing it for the sake of just Hey, we’re, you know, we think everyone should be entitled to their data, right? They’re still keeping all of it, which is one thing that doesn’t get in, and I think Facebook just did a lousy PR battle on it. In my opinion, they kept going after, you know, Apple and not talking exactly about how it affects the end users, and why people should actually, you know, opt in versus opt out, they’re going after attacking. I think just it was a bad PR move. But it’s an interesting perspective. I just haven’t heard it. I’m, I come from the my mindset that I think it will actually make user experience worse, but I’ve never really heard it the other way.
Joshua Chin 34:13
All right. So my next question goes out to, to Benton you so before we started recording, you mentioned that one of your dream clients is Tesla. And actually all three of us are fans of Tesla. Unfortunately, we don’t have Tesla’s yet on mass production in Singapore. But uh, they they have a very interesting model where in it’s like a lifestyle brand. They act like lifestyle brand, but they don’t do. They pretty much do zero marketing. And their version of marketing is basically a good product, a unique product that ultimately sells itself. True Elon Musk’s Twitter account. I suppose. What’s your take on that? And I so Benton, you, you had a good, really good breakdown of that kind of the anomalies of having a really good product that sells itself and having really, really good marketing that sells a maybe an average product? What’s the picture that you kind of envision for Tesla, if they had good marketing on top of what they already have? Right now? What is that going to look like?
Benton Crane 35:30
Well, I think it speaks a lot to the power of a personal brand, and the strength of Elon’s personal brand. And then, you know, to have world class uniquely differentiated and innovative products like Tesla has, you know, it’s been able to grow to the point that it has on the strength of, of those two things. And, you know, as recently as a year ago, people were still thinking of Tesla, as you know, just a, just another automotive manufacturer. And so all the comparisons were, you know, to Ford, and to GM, and that sort of thing, but I think the public has kind of woken up in the last year to the fact that Tesla is much more than an auto manufacturer, you know, Tesla is an energy company. And, and, and a car company, and several others as well, you know, they’re disrupting, like a dozen industries all at the same time. And so to your question about, you know, what would happen if they combined, you know, they’re great products, with great marketing. And I think we’re going to see that in the next, you know, I would probably say, you know, within two to four years, you’re going to see Tesla adapt a marketing strategy. And the reason for that is because they’re going to be moving past their early adopters. And they’re going to be moving into kind of that mainstream mass market. And they’ll have the product line and the pricing and everything to the point where they can go mass market, and they’re going to be talking to customers who are not Elon Musk fanboys, and they’re not Tesla fanboys. But instead, they’re just, you know, everyday consumers who need a car, and they have to make a decision between a Toyota or a Hyundai or whatever. And, and Tesla is going to need to be getting in front of those people. And so my hope is that, and I suspect they will, I think, you know, knowing that Tesla likes to do things different knowing that they like to innovate, I doubt you’ll see them take the same approach as all the other car companies where they, you know, just kind of put out these generic ads, that, you know, you could look at a dozen different ads across the car industry, and you could almost like pull the brand, and pull the car out of one ad and stick it in another. And nobody would know the difference, right? Yes. It’s like, it’s that generic. And, and I’m sure it’s as if
Jason Portnoy 38:14
as if we’re all going off road trucking and driving through the mud and through the snow and through the mud mountains. I like it. I always watch a commercial, like some kind of a man who’s doing that. Sounds fun, but I’m definitely not doing that with my car.
Benton Crane 38:29
Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s pretty crazy how, how generic, the industry has been. And so I suspect that when Tesla does get into the marketing game, we’re going to see them take a vastly different approach. And so, you know, of course, all marketers would love, you know, to have Tesla as a client and love to get to help in that in that process. And, you know, I’m no different. I’m a huge fan of Tesla, and I’m a huge fan of where they’re going. And, and their their stock has treated me very well. And so, you know, I would love to get to help Tesla be innovative in the way that they approach their marketing.
Joshua Chin 39:17
Jason, what would you do if Tesla was a was a client of yours?
Jason Portnoy 39:24
Look, I think you have way more creative space if you’re the ones behind the creative, right? In terms of a dream client i think that that is a perfect if you’re making the creative if you’re if you’re a Harmon Brothers type agency, and you’re involved in your creative agency. That’s a lot of fun from a paid media perspective. I mean, look, the the bigger brands have a lot of bureaucracy and a lot of red tape. Right? So there’s even from paid media perspective, like there’s just so much you know, I always I speak to all the people who start off and paid me like, I wish I had Nike as a client like no you don’t you What if Nike called you tomorrow, you wouldn’t be able to handle them, right? Like you wouldn’t be able to, you wouldn’t be able to do it, right. It’s just, it wouldn’t happen. I like to work with, with brands who have a proven concept, proof of sales that have good creative. And their and their product could sell themselves. And they just need that distribution, they need to be put in front of the right people, and they want to build their brand. And they understand that, to quote, a digital marketer reference like that consumer, they’re their customer value journey, they understand that, you know, they have to walk through different cycles, and they’re omnipresent, and they believe in, in every step matters and values created after the transaction. So they’re willing to meet creative for post transaction, just as much as they’re willing to create the creative to get the transaction and build the community. Those are the brands i like i like to work with, they make it very easy for me, which it should be, and but at the end of the day, I think paid media, we’re not, we’re not the fire, right? We’re the gasoline on the fire, you need to have some sort of fire burning. So so many people go to it and think that this is their, their Hail Mary, I’m going to run a Facebook ad and I’m going to make billions of dollars. Well, no one is you probably don’t have enough creative to test at that scale. To do that, and to you know, you have no proof of concept. So we’re not it’s not a sales machine. And I think that’s the part that like, we were talking about earlier that so many brands Think of it as it’s my sales, it’s my sales force, it’s my Salesforce, Facebook, my sales, no are not, you know, at the end of the day, if your offer and your products suck, paid media is just gonna accelerate the speed at which you’re gonna fail. That’s all good marketing does anyways, right will speed up the rate at which you’re gonna fail if your product and service is good, man, like I said, gasoline on the fire. And we’ll just, we’ll just get ready for takeoff. But I think that’s the biggest mistake people have when it comes to paid media. So in terms of dream brands, yes. Obviously, those dream brands I’d love to work with. I mean, like Apple, for example, doesn’t care about ROI they care about impression. So as a paid me has paid media guy, what brand? Wouldn’t I want to work with that judges me on? How many people can you show this in front of? And bring me and bring that to me? Yes, obviously, that that’s a great brand to work with. But, but yeah, I think I think it just be careful how people look at paid media.
Joshua Chin 42:25
Amazing. And just a final question for both of you. What’s next for your agency? Oh, so Benton and then Jason.
Benton Crane 42:35
So historically, advertisers used to be able to rely on commercial breaks that came in the middle of entertainment. Yep. And that’s gone away, right, you know, Netflix, Amazon, you know, all the big streaming platforms, they no longer have these these commercial breaks. And so that’s, that’s forced one brands to move over toward, you know, social media, you know, your Facebook, your, your LinkedIn, your Instagram, that sort of thing. And that that’s one place where brands can be seen and brands can be heard. But I believe that the next several years, is going to put brands and entertainment on a collision course, where you’re going to see the brands integrated more deeply and in more meaningful ways right into the entertainment. And I think we’re already starting to see that, like, if you go look at Apple TV Plus, in their catalogue of shows, any one of those shows that you watch, you’re going to find Apple integrated into that content, all throughout, they’re always going to be on Apple devices and, and using Apple services and, and such. So I think product placement is going to is going to grow like wildfire. I think it’s all product placement is already booming. But what we’re really interested in at Harmon Brothers is actually like the deeper integration of how to how does a brand story become part of the entertainment that you’re watching? So, you know, going back to that Tesla example. You know, Tesla is a company that’s trying to change the world and move the world over to sustainable energy. And SpaceX is a company that’s trying to get human life on Mars so that you know, we can be an interplanetary species. And, and those are like these massively huge goals that those companies have and imagine all of the ways that you can integrate that brand story into entertainment, you know, through documentaries, through through movies, through TV series, all of these different ways. So, at Harmon Brothers, we’re trying to find ways to pioneer that we’re we’re actually working on our first television series right now. Because we know that, you know, branding and entertainment are on a collision course. And we’re going to see those integrate in new and, and innovative ways over the next several years.
Joshua Chin 45:23
Beautiful is I had a conversation with Daniel, just recently is that Tuttle Twins, is that yeah.
Benton Crane 45:32
Yeah, so so Tuttle Twins, it was originally a book series for children. And it teach it teaches the Principles of Economics, the principles of freedom. These are principles that like most adults don’t even understand let alone kids in this book series was written for kids. And it blew up but went wild, like they’ve sold well over 2 million copies. And, you know, this has only been around for just a few short years. And, and so now we’re adapting that, to become a TV series, which the books are like 90% education and 10% Entertainment, we’re kind of flipping that we’re going like 90%, entertainment and 10% education. And so if you think about, you know, if you if the Simpsons and Magic School Bus were to have a baby, that’s kind of that’s kind of the vibe that we’re going for, we want it to be super fun, super entertaining. You know, we want it to be fun for adults, like right to humor in a way that it’s, it’s intelligent enough for adults, but yet we’re gonna keep it family friendly. And we’re gonna keep it educational, kind of like what you get with with Magic School Bus. So that that’s the, that’s the vibe that we’re going for on that.
Joshua Chin 46:51
Beautiful. Jason, what’s next for you?
Jason Portnoy 46:56
What’s next, we’re gonna keep doing what we’re doing and doing it? Well. I think the only part that we’re we’re really adding now is realizing that there are a lot of brands that may not necessarily need to hire an agency or could afford to hire an agency, or shouldn’t hire an agency because they’re missing all the other key components. So we’re, we’re launching something called the Market Domination Method, which is going to be like a year long coaching, that’s going to help entrepreneurs who are doing the round, you know, high five, six figures who want to scale a brand, but want to understand how to kind of build their own platform, and be omnipresent and learn what that what that means and create a brand and get the authority in their space and and use all the tricks that that Harmon Brothers teaches that everyone teaches on on how to build a brand. Our goal is really to help 50 entrepreneurs this year, at least 50 entrepreneurs in 2021 be able to scale their brand and not be reliant on heavy agency fees, or need to spend millions of dollars on Facebook ads in order to do so I think there’s so much that like I said in the beginning, and I make my living off paid media. But there’s so much more that’s in your control, that that will help every dollar you spend on paid media go go even further. And I think people don’t focus enough on that. And that’s the goal with that. And then keep doing the podcast and keep talking to people like you guys.
Joshua Chin 48:21
Amazing. And Jason, if someone’s interested in getting in touch with you about the program, how should they contact you,
Jason Portnoy 48:27
you can email me, Jason@JPORTMedia.com or on all social media platforms on at Jason Portnoy very easy to find
Joshua Chin 48:35
awesome and go follow download Perfectly Mentored podcasts amazing podcast, and also we didn’t get a chance to talk about From Poop to Gold podcast. It’s also one of my go to podcasts that I listen to at a gym. Amazing stuff. Love your interviews. Well, Benton if someone’s interested in getting to know a little bit more about what Harmon Brothers. What do you guys do and how to get in touch to working with you guys? Where should he go to?
Benton Crane 49:02
Yeah, so if, if, if you just want to follow it a distance, follow me on LinkedIn, or our podcast, from Poop to Gold. And if you’re interested in learning how we do what we do, HarmonBrothersUniversity.com or if you’re interested in working with us, HarmonBrothers.com. So lots of options. lots of ways to get in touch with us. Yeah, appreciate it. Thanks for having me on the show.
Jason Portnoy 49:29
Guys. It’s been amazing. Thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you.
Benton Crane 49:34
Thank you.
Outro 49:39
Thanks for listening to the eCommerce Profits Podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get notified of future episodes.
