Selling to Yourself is Soooo Much Easier
The best marketing happens when You are the target audience
Welcome to the latest entry in The Workaround. You’re in good company with thousands of fellow entrepreneurs and innovators who have subscribed!
I’m your host, Bob, and my mission here is to share personal, behind-the-scenes stories of ups and downs from my career leading tech startups and corporate innovation.
I write to make you think, smile, and discover a shortcut to success or a trap to avoid.
Here we go…
This week our recruiting team placed an amazing marketer in a key role with a high-growth startup. It was a special win for me because I had one-on-one screening discussions with dozens of candidates in the process. As I learned early in our conversation, this winning candidate has a passion for and direct experience as a customer in the industry this startup is building in. It helped her stand out in the process, and she brought unique insights to her interviews. I’m sure it will also help her ramp-up quickly.
It turns out that your work is much better when you, as a marketer, are the target audience for a product. It’s a lesson I learned myself years ago when launching a category-disrupting innovation in the car care aisle for the biggest marketer in the world.
Welcome to Project Lexus
It’s late summer 2002, and I’m sitting at my desk in the Tide detergent team bullpen at Procter & Gamble. I’ve been working as an assistant brand manager (ABM) on Tide for nearly two years. It’s my second ABM role, and I’ve been at the company for a little over three years.
Things are going well, but I’m itchy to get promoted into a Brand Manager position. After all, this is an up-or-out company in the marketing department, and my “class” of hires is starting to get placed. I’m still bummed that someone else on my floor got the Gain detergent job that just came up. It would have been sweet to join this high-growth brand, especially with all the laundry knowledge now lodged in my brain. Alas, that guy had worked at the company six months longer than me…c'est la P&G.
The phone rings. It’s my two-up boss, the marketing director, John. He’s on the road calling on a retail customer but wanted to share the good news immediately: I’ve been promoted to Brand Manager for Project Lexus.
Me: “Wow, great, John. Thanks! What is Project Lexus?”
John: “It’s a new business idea that has been in the works for five years or so. It’s a device for washing your car. We need you to take it over from Jim in the NBD group. He’s got too much on his plate, and we need you to figure out what to do with it. Maybe launch, license, or divest it.”
Me: “Uh, OK…thanks…”
Not exactly the big promotion opportunity I hoped for. I guess my lack of excitement came through the phone to John, as a few minutes later, my manager, Brian, rushes in to drag me out for a coffee. He ribs me a bit for not being pumped up for the promotion, but he also knows that before Tide, we both worked on a new business launch that the CEO later called the worst in the company’s 150-year history. Let’s just say I’m not excited about leaping into another new, questionable product category. And 5-years in the R&D lab isn’t what happens with high-potential projects. No technology idea ever dies in R&D, so it’s likely to be serving a life sentence in the land of misfit tech.
I can’t see how this is the right job for me.
But Brian pumps me up—which he’s the best in the world at—by telling me that he and John think I’m the right person for this. It needs someone who is both an optimist and a realist around new product categories. And if the best decision is killing the project, then I’ll have the freedom to do what’s right.
I come into work the next day and begin learning about this new product—with much more “realism” in my mind than I used to hold. Project Lexus is a hose-connected sprayer device for use in at-home car washing. You don’t have to dry your car when you use this device.
As a guy who has washed many cars in driveways throughout my life, it definitely gets my attention. I never considered myself a “Car Guy,” but I love a clean ride and have gotten under my cars to change the oil. I knew well that drying was the most frustrating part of the process. You run around with an armful of towels rushing to dry the surfaces before the water leaves mineral water spots on the surfaces you just cleaned. The Lexus device solves this issue thanks to a special soap that sheets water so that the mineral-laden water runs off (“hydrophilic properties” for you science geeks) and a filter that removes the minerals from the water.
I don’t have to read any research reports to realize this was a really big deal for the millions of guys like me who love a shiny ride but hate the timeless battle of drying. The auto care category hadn’t seen innovation since once-a-year waxes decades ago. Everything in the market promises to be “spot free,” and we all know it’s B.S. This product can potentially disrupt the market while putting P&G in the pole position of another new cleaning category.
And this realization stops me in my tracks…
It’s not the business potential that hits me—it’s the fact that I don’t need to read any research reports or estimate the market opportunity. I already know this will be a winner because I am the target audience.
I had never been the target audience for any product I worked on until now. Most brands at Procter & Gamble target the Female Head of Household. Over 80% of the purchase decisions for its leading brands—like Tide, Pampers, Crest, and Pantene—are made by Mothers of Children. It’s not that the non-Moms don’t buy these products. But as the target audience, our work revolved around getting inside the heads of people much different than me.
So when I joined the company, I learned the science of getting inside other people's heads. I found this fascinating. I learned to read data and speak with consumers with a wide open mind. I tested hypotheses and adjusted our marketing based on their responses. My discussions with senior leaders are mostly fact-based, logical, and democratic—rather than based on the gut instinct of the most senior person in the room. To this day, I highly recommend early-career marketers work at a big consumer goods company where they can similarly learn these core skills.
The Fun Begins…
In the following weeks, my R&D partner Alan and I bond between trips to guys’ driveways to test our sprayer. They, too, fall in love with it. Alan gets access to an empty taxi garage on a sketchy side of town. It becomes a hybrid research base and hangout spot.
When I’m back at headquarters my friends and colleagues on other brands stop by to ask how the job is going, and I eagerly share my excitement and explain the product. Over and over again, ignore the core concept and make the same suggestion:
“Why don’t you sell it to automated car wash services?”
Which, of course, they would say—and maybe you thought that too, dear reader. They are not that into their cars, and their six-figure incomes give them the financial freedom to hand the job over to Mike’s Car Wash. They simply aren’t the target market. So I smile, nod, and reply, “We’re looking into that.”
Meanwhile, I draft my first direct report, Nick, to help me get this product into the market in time for Spring 2004. Nick drives a Porsche Boxster. He gets up to speed quickly, and we proceed to go with our guts…
We brand the product under Mr. Clean. We played around with a few new name options, but guys love Mr. Clean and he brings decades of cleaning cred.
We call the product Mr. Clean AutoDry Car Wash. “AutoDry” was a placeholder name that stuck because it describes the benefit perfectly. We know guys want something simple and direct.
Our product and packaging team gets inspired by the Tool category at Home Depot, and we design our sprayer and kit in a way that guys shop for tools.
Car guys read car magazines, so I fly out to L.A. to cut a deal with Motor Trend magazine. Its editor gives AutoDry a thumbs up and a Motor Trend Approved badge for our marketing.
In October Nick and I fly out to L.A. for the annual SEMA car show. It is where the auto industry and car guys worldwide go to see the sweetest new rides and new ways to accessorize them. So we get a booth that allows us to run ongoing demos. An editor from Popular Mechanics stops by to give us an award for product innovation. Our Mr. Clean actor works the crowd like a pro. Later, he would turn out not to be a pro—but that’s for another post.
The Internet in 2003-04 was not dominated by today's social media channels. Instead of Discord or Reddit for your passions, there were discussion forums. And car guys had many of them—everything from Saturn Owners of Jacksonville to Classic Mustangs in Albuquerque. They went online daily to share their passions and discuss new products. So we send free starter kits to forum moderators and simply ask them to give honest reviews. The buzz begins.
NASCAR is a no-brainer for this product, and the start of the season fits perfectly with our launch. I meet several of the movers & shakers in the sport, and we end up striking a deal with NBC that involves a branded car, a live demo during a race, and lots of shots of our Mr. Clean character mingling with the crowds. We get a call from the EA Sports team, who give us an absurdly low-cost integration within their NASCAR game launch—including a special unlock of a pit crew of seven Mr. Cleans.
We must drive awareness of our product and establish some cool+cred in the market. Our agency creative team is a pair of car guys who are absolutely going ape shit to work on this product rather than another detergent commercial. They present a kick-ass idea of two cars racing in the desert that’s something between a Road Runner cartoon and The Fast & The Furious. Today the kids would refer to this as Badass.
This is all great fun and feels right, but it’s really hard to communicate how freaking crazy this is at P&G—the biggest and perhaps oldest consumer goods company in the world. Almost everything above was a company first.
And I was doling out money like Montgomery Brewster, thanks to my launch budget of over $40 million. So, periodically, I would present my plans to our General Manager, “Christine.” I will never forget the time I needed her final signoff. She patiently listened, asked a couple of good questions, and told me: “Bob, I have no experience in this category, and you’re the one who has spent all the time with the auto channel retailers, distributors, and consumers in their driveways. I trust you to make the right decisions.”
I had no doubt we were going to crush it.
Crushing It
And we sure did.
Our pre-launch seeding strategy drove awareness to nearly 50% among our Car Guy target by the day of the national launch. The product flew off the shelves as people entered the auto aisle on that first nice day in spring and saw something revolutionary on the endcaps.
Things went so well that we started to run low on starter kits—one of the ways great things can go bad in the CPG industry. So we got permission to fly jumbo kits of starter kits over from China, allowing us to skip the weeks-long shipping container trip. The cost was about $100,000 per flight back then. But it was worth any penny to keep our momentum.
We keep revising our projections upward and make plans for an even bigger year two. And when the first year of sales numbers came in, we hit over $80 million in retail sales. Pretty great for a new product of any kind. But in this case the entire auto care category had been historically flat at $150 million per year.
I gotta say, it's pretty awesome when you put your butt on the line, and it actually works.
My Favorite Marketers
But I’ve come to believe that your decisions are much more likely to work when you are the target audience. A couple of other examples come to mind:
Red Bull - When my friend, Kevin, moved from traditional consumer food brands at ConAgra to Red Bull, he shared a few eye-opening insights. All new hires must personally fit the brand's character so that decisions are better and faster. The marketing team looked at its job as to “come up with cool stuff we can do.” It keeps working for them.
Arby’s - Jim Taylor and I played basketball together when we were both at P&G. He didn’t fit in with the typical P&G marketing path and yearned for somewhere he could flex more creative skills. Years later, he ended up leading the strategic re-branding of Arby’s. You know his work from the countless memes we’ve seen in recent years. A few years ago, he told me he was having a blast “leading the vertical sandwich category.”
Influencer Marketing - I’ve seen this market explode personally as co-founder of a previous influencer company and chairman of our newest venture, A2 Influence. Influencer marketing continues to grow and prove itself because it taps creators who are passionate about brands and their categories. This passion turns into authentic ideas that capture attention and trust better than traditional advertising.
Some Watchouts
Of course, your mileage may vary. There’s a fine line between what’s personally fun and what’s best for your brand.
I’ve seen my business judgment get clouded by celebrity pitches or free tickets to events that come with sponsorship. Marketing legend Seth Godin has suggested a great rule: If you spend your company’s budget on sponsorship, you’re not allowed to attend.
Another danger is bending a brand to your personal interests and gut instincts. Take the recent Bud Light fiasco. Its new marketing leader claimed sales declined because it had become “a brand of fratty, kind of out-of-touch humor.” That may have been the right problem statement (for the record, I would beg to differ, as most mass beer brands have been declining for some time, no matter their ad copy). But her answer is insightful:
“We need to evolve and elevate this incredibly iconic brand, and what I brought to that was a belief in — okay, what does evolve and elevate mean? It means inclusivity.”
She brought her beliefs in, leading to work that caused friction with the core customer that buys the vast majority of Bud Light. Perhaps a better solution would have been to simply update the humor that made these buyers bond with the brand in the first place.
Try Going With Your Gut
Some marketers will spend their whole careers working in categories where they are not the passionate target customer. You can definitely find a lot of personal meaning in these positions. I’ve got a friend who works in toilet paper marketing, and he truly enjoys helping people enjoy the go.
But we only get one token to play the game of life, and I think it would be a shame not to see where your marketing skills take you—and how much more fun your day job can be—when you personally love the product you’re selling.
I’m incredibly fortunate to have gotten the opportunity to learn the science of marketing with a company that has done more than any other to establish research-based methods for success.
But I’m even more fortunate that the company allowed me to practice the art of marketing by creating something that felt right based on my personal experiences and skills.
I guess I ended up being right for that job after all.
(For Part 2 of this story…a sequel the likes of The Empire Strikes Back…see the next post here)
How we might work together…
My team and I lead Hearty, a boutique recruiting service that helps tech-forward companies hire proven talent. Our senior team of operators sources and screens, saving you time and money. When you need help, let’s chat.
Need help with a software project? Perhaps a product MVP, a project that requires outside help, or a fractional CTO for key strategic decisions? Our team at Shipwright Studio has worked together to build multiple successful startups, and we love helping leaders turn their dreams into reality. We're the team our clients trust for software built to last.
Looking for Influencer Marketing and Content Creation? The team from our previous company is back by popular demand with A2 Influence. We’re ramping up now and would love to share more.
Feel free to schedule time together during my Open Hours for questions, feedback, networking, or any other topic!
BONUS: Cool Content of the Week
A little something I found meaningful. You might agree…
How Brands Grow
While we’re on the topic of Marketing, the book I wished existed before I started my career in marketing is How Brands Grow. Author Byron Sharp does a masterful job of making the complex seem simple while cutting away so many of the old biases that continue to plague the craft. Sharp attacks dogma, like the need for a tightly defined target audience with real-world, in-market data. In a category where so many thought leaders are serving their own agencies or egos, Sharp simply delivers truth.