Maggie and Chuck talk about knowing your category within your market, and how that can have a great impact on how you do business. Key Takeaways: How to know your category Companies that know their category well and the advantages they have The effects your category has on your research
Maggie and Chuck talk about knowing your category within your market, and how that can have a great impact on how you do business.
Key Takeaways:
How to know your category
Companies that know their category well and the advantages they have
The effects your category has on your research
Chuck Murphy 0:00
All right, Maggie. Well, today we're talking about categories, I would say our discussion today will probably be a little bit meandering and maybe difficult to follow. Because if I picked a very wonky topic,
Maggie Bright 0:12
indeed you did. It's more like Scattegories. We're all over the place.
Chuck Murphy 0:18
We're gonna talk about category definitions, and why it's important that businesses have kind of a clear shared understanding of what their category is, and how they're going to optimize their strategy to reach that category. So it's a little bit of a deep dive into, you know, a kind of niche topic. But it's really important for big brands that are spending a lot of money to make sure everyone in the team has alignment about how they're spending their money. So we hope you enjoy
all right. So Maggie, I picked I picked a kind of a nebulous, difficult topic to talk about today, but I think,
Maggie Bright 0:59
excellent way to kick off 2023 with a difficult and nebulous topic, like, then, like, dive in headfirst?
Chuck Murphy 1:08
Yeah, it's, it's a good time to talk about things where you don't really understand and where we're going, and that are confusing, but I think it's a very important topic for researchers. And I think this is an important topic for marketers as well. And, you know, we, we sometimes even though we talk every day, we do have kind of different client bases, and you have what I would call more traditional clients, and probably spend more time with techie or younger companies, it's good that way, you know, younger companies. And one of the things that I've really, really noticed happening a lot more over the last couple of years is this idea of, you know, traditionally what we would call category, right, like, which I, you know, I'll try to loosely define is that the space in which a brand plays right, like, and traditionally, you know, some companies, you know, some companies might have had an easier time deciding what their category is, right? Like, if you are a company that makes, let's, let's get a good a simple, let's, let's take trucks, right, if you're a company that makes trucks, then you might have thought of your category traditionally, as, you know, people that need a truck for work, which historically was mostly your kind of how trucks were and, and maybe you had like, a, some bounds placed on that, right? Like, hey, the typical truck buyer is 20 to 50 year old, you know, consumer that is 70%, male, 30% female, and, you know, 80% have a job that requires, you know, moving things,
Maggie Bright 2:56
but, I think, super high tech term for it, job and move things
Chuck Murphy 3:02
that are on the move. But I mean, I think, you know, when when I feel old sometimes, but, you know, we traditionally in marketing and research companies that are pretty strong shared definition of what their category was, this is an, you know, they have cute words for it, they might have, like, you know, a personification of it, or they might have, you know, a certain mutation obviously, is almost a must have, but, you know, the traditional world you had these two foundational pieces of research, right? You had your A or your Ain't you and your segmentation, and your AU, cover the heck the category and then to see covering the category would be like, alright, for our buyers, you know, what's our branch here? Like, what percent buy our truck versus a competitor's truck? What's the reason those people buy that truck? What are they, you know, were were considered a better value, or were considered like, you know, more performance, but, but you could ask pretty much anyone in marketing at that company, what their category was, and, you know, probably who their target was inside that category. And you get the same answer.
Maggie Bright 4:13
The competitors were to write
Chuck Murphy 4:15
exactly they knew there was like a shear. And by the way, when I said when I'm talking about the past, this is still the case it made traditional companies right companies have been around a long time I can say which category How do you define it? Where's the boundaries? And who's your target? Who's your na my days? You know, you could ask 20 people the company and they'd have a pretty shared answer, right? If not a remarkably precise answer. Remember,
Maggie Bright 4:43
the ballpark at least
Chuck Murphy 4:44
Yeah, yeah. Cuz you know, it's this kind of stuff gets really really tricky, right? Like, you know, and it's in it. A lot of this just comes from if you play in a certain space you You know, that's a super well, right? If you sell trucks you know exactly what people wanted a truck. Trucks an interesting one, because that's changed so much over the last 10 years. Like, it's always amazing to have trucks now or it seems to be primarily bought by people that don't need them.
Maggie Bright 5:15
Right? Well, so even their categories is shifting.
Chuck Murphy 5:19
We who's got a great shooting,
Maggie Bright 5:21
even truck categories are shifting.
Chuck Murphy 5:24
Like is it saying it's really amazing? You know, it's been, it's wild. It is one of the funniest things to me always whenever you go out of America to just look at cars, and then you look at American cars, it's just like, bigger cars
Maggie Bright 5:38
keep getting bigger, and there's keep getting smaller.
Chuck Murphy 5:41
Yeah. And so So okay, so this, I said, this is a little bit of a nebulous topic, but I think it's an interesting discussion. But if you if you were to ask 20 people at a, let's let's call it a tech first company. A lot of don't even know what the question means, if I say, and they don't know who their target is. And of course, if people don't if people haven't had this discussion before, the gut response is everyone, right? Like everyone wants to see like, categories, everyone. And everyone says, either target as everyone. And I think it's, it's a really interesting thing that's happening here. I find myself in this in this kind of situation a lot where I'm like, no, no, you don't, you don't want your category to be everyone. And you definitely don't target to be everyone, you know, because it's, it's like a, it's a little bit of a red flag to be like, Well, you haven't thought this through at all right? Like,
Maggie Bright 6:45
I was gonna say I had this interesting conversation. It was during it was during the pandemic, and shipping times were a big issue. And I was talking to one of our, what I would consider a traditional retail client who does direct to consumer mailings of their product. And their biggest competitor is often Amazon. And what she said to me was, there's just no way I can compete, because I was set up as a retail company, I have a product that I deliver to a very specific consumer. But Amazon is set up as a shipping company. And so like, from a logistical standpoint, that's, that's what they do, they can ship anything to anyone. And, you know, like, it's, it's a, it's a, it was striking to me not in that, you know, not so much the category, slide piece of it. But this idea of like two companies selling similar products, but the way that they target their consumers is 100% different and the things that drive them to their strategic decisions, but also be really, really different, even though at the end of the day, they're both delivering this CPG product. And I think it's just that that framework is so different for a traditional retail company versus, you know, a tech driven retail company. And I think about that a lot when I'm thinking about, like the problems that some of our traditional clients face versus the more tech forward clients. Yeah.
Chuck Murphy 8:10
And it's Amazon's addiction example. Because the way I don't know if you've seen you probably haven't seen that, do you know, that sheen company 100, if I'm saying it correctly, sh EIN, I don't, that's one of the fastest fastest growing companies on the planet. But, but. But it's interesting to see how there's, there's companies popping up now that are that are kind of built to compete with Amazon. And the way they do it is interesting, because Because Amazon also is like, they're such a beast, but they're not. There, there's actually good example for this discussion. A lot of times, it's not clear exactly what their goal is, right? Like, their position is, it's kind of everything and everyone, they're a little bit different, though, because they're there, it's different than a, you know, like a brand that's playing in something like an automotive or food or beverage or something like that, where your positioning is a lot more crowded. And it's more important that you know exactly what you're kind of going after. But it'll be interesting to see, like, if you if you take like a long term view of it, a lot of times when when categories are new, which basically most tech companies are, you know, at least at the very least a reinvention of an older category there that people think of as a new category. But when everything's new, it's kind of novel. And then of course, there's always competition always comes to any opportunity, right? So as the spaces get more and more competitive, we're gonna see, you know, we're gonna have to see some companies learn to do marketing and branding really well to succeed, right and then the ultimate example of this obviously to me is Apple, right? There's Apple is a tech company that understands brand. And it's it's so it's still rare, and it's so difficult for a lot of companies to understand, it's hard. It's hard for them to see they get this kind of performance mindset of like, Can they see the immediate payoff of any investment?
Maggie Bright 10:17
I don't do you think the apple one works? Well, because it was. So mission driven is not the right word. But they had sort of a singular focus in the beginning and that that's played through Well, or do you think that there's something else at play that makes that one, a tech company that does brand? Well,
Chuck Murphy 10:33
some people would scoff at this response. But But I do think that, you know, Steve Jobs was not really a techie first, right. He loved it enough, but he understood it, you know, because some of these companies, it's, it's just in their DNA, if they felt like Nike did a lot of things that, you know, Nike and Apple and Disney are, are the three companies that stand out to me, always. I mean, you could throw Coke and Pepsi in there, too. But you there's certain companies that stand out, it's just like they from from day one, they were building a brand. Yeah. Well, it was a lot of other things. It was
Maggie Bright 11:11
design driven, right. And so that thread carries through.
Chuck Murphy 11:15
Yeah. Yeah, it's funny, I saw this, this I'm a I'm like addicted to Twitter, as you already know, but for people on Twitter, and there was this, there was this Twitter thread the other day, where this person had gone back. I actually don't know exactly how they did this, but But it involved like magazines and paper from the 70s. But this person went back and found early Nike ads. And it was really interesting, because like, you could tell by looking at them, that they were they were laid out by hand, you know what I mean? So so and so they didn't, it was really fascinating. They didn't necessarily have, we're so used to everything today looks so polished, everything's, you know, exactly symmetrical and perfectly centered. And they they didn't have there was they were, they were in the back of like running magazines, I assume. They didn't really say where they, they just this person cut out a bunch of these early ads. And they, they posted him on Twitter, they just took pictures of them. And it was really fascinating to look at because the design obviously was nothing like we're you know, like, throughout much of my life. Nike ads have been so polished. And so just so well done. And but the thing that was fascinating is you could see these early ads, they were typeset. But it so much of the core, like what they're communicating like, we so similar to what it is today, like it was really fascinating to see is like what they have from day one, they have, first of all, the athlete is definitely first right. Like there's the ad wasn't like, Hey, you should buy this shoe because it's got this specific thing. It was you should run another mile when you think you can't like it was targeted at renders the stuff I saw. I think that's where all their early advertising was, from what I can tell. But it was so interesting. And I think Apple kind of had that too. Because even before the iPhone, everybody's like, Oh, Apple just invented this amazing product. And but it's funny, if you look at the campaigns they had, you know, obviously that Mac campaign is one of the most iconic ads of all time, right? It was this, this think different idea that like that was just like, from the beginning. And I think in those cases, the since the founder understood where they wanted to go. The company went there, even though some of those expenditures are probably made no sense, right? Like, you're just like, Wait, you're gonna pay this much, but this ad here. And in the end, they came out with these iconic brands that they now you know, like, obviously, if you fast forward, as the company gets bigger, it's much more strategic in terms of we can extend the brand into this category or not, you know, we are gonna go from running to shoes. But I think that's something that as, as a lot of these tech companies are going to have to have to really rethink like, if you have to pick a shared target between marketing and, and products, and like all the different people that are working in different capacities, if if there's not a shared vision for who we're going after, and how we're going after him and why we're going after him. It seems like it would, it would be hard to succeed, like you still are gonna you're still going to be like, chasing money but in a performance mindset. You know, like, it's, it's, I think about this a lot in marketing, but this is gonna, it's not just gonna be marketing, this is gonna be a lot of life, right? As things is as you get more and more like machine learning. There's things that work that nobody knows why they work, right? And that's true a lot of marketing. There's, there's a lot of stuff of we spent, you know, some money over here and we got this return but No one can tell you exactly why that worked. Right? Which is fine. I mean, that's that's just the world we live in. But if that's the primary expenditures and the primary way you do business, it seems really, really hard to then build a brand on top of that, right? Like it's, it's, it's, it's like you have this scattershot approach that brings some things back. But long term, it's the brand that's gonna get you over the hump, I think, right? Not necessarily for everybody, right?
Maggie Bright 15:35
I think consumers want to be able to connect with a brand, right. And so in order to connect with a brand, it has to stand for something. And whether that's, you know, if you from a, from the, you know, like when we did the pastor purpose, right, in that case, it's like consumers wanted to be able to identify the mission. And if they could understand the mission, then they could buy into that mission and feel good about that purchase. On a different level, I think brands have that sort of responsibility or goal to write, you want to know what it stands for. So if you you know, if we talk about a Disney or an apple or a Nike, like, you know what it stands for, even if you don't, exactly all these understand how each product ties back to that sort of core essence of the brand, like, you still get what the brand is about. So if you're, as a you know, as a consumer, if I can't like really pinpoint what a brand is, I think you're less likely to be loyal to it. And so like, even if I still need the product, it's providing if someone else comes along with the same product or same offering, I'm more likely to try it out. Because I haven't like really connected with who this brand is. And so I think that's the that's the part where the strategy and the research becomes super important. Because if you can't tell people who and what you are, why in the world, would they invest in helping you continue to build that brand, it's too nebulous, like you in some way you need to connect to the brands that you're buying. And, you know, I think that that level of connectivity is very different across categories are at different price points and things like that, like I don't need to connect as strongly with like, my, I don't know, the frozen peas, I buy as I might with the car I own or something like that. But there's still a continuum of, I want to I want to feel good about what I'm investing my money in. And so I want to know what it stands for on some level.
Chuck Murphy 17:28
Yeah, it's interesting that you bring up the mission driven thing, because obviously, the mission driven thing is is another angle on this. That's kind of different, right? But it's, it achieves the same purpose, right? Like, like we were talking before about trucks, right? So Tesla is an interesting example. Right now, Tesla, very early on did a great job of establishing that they have a mission, right, and that all decisions are going to be done by the mission. And I'm trying to remember like, I don't remember this, but in like path to purpose. I think Tesla's in the top 10 For sure. Right. Maybe in the top five. I should look that up. I don't remember exact but I know they're out there. I think
Maggie Bright 18:03
it does. Well. Yeah. Relatively speaking.
Chuck Murphy 18:07
Although it's obviously polarizing for some people. But it's interesting, if you they have a mission, which is clearly described. And well understood. I think, by most people, people may disagree with it like it is. Obviously, it's very polarizing. My wife and I were talking last night, it's so easy for things to become polarizing now. And not just like slightly polarizing, but but like really polarizing.
Maggie Bright 18:31
I think that's an entirely different topic that we can talk about is like why we're so polarized right now. But I agree with you.
Chuck Murphy 18:38
It actually is a fascinating topic, because I think we could do a whole podcast on this gas stove thing, which to me is the
Maggie Bright 18:43
oh my gosh, fascinating.
Chuck Murphy 18:45
I mean, it's fascinating to me that like out of nowhere, people are arguing about stoves, like who like I bet you half the people argue about stones have you used on the last month?
Maggie Bright 18:56
My favorite today was what did I read today? It was like cavemen had been using fire to cook food from the beginning of time. Like why would we get rid of our
Chuck Murphy 19:07
like, I will say like, if you mean one of my kids has asthma and it kind of blew me away that they could trace 30% of asthma cases to stone so I was like, really?
Maggie Bright 19:17
That is huge. And it but my first thought was like why aren't we just making better stoves like do we? I don't know maybe that's not the right question. But it's like seems like there be a way to like reduce the will the
Chuck Murphy 19:31
ones are the better. That's what I like that's what it kind of a night it's funny because I we just recently just like a month ago, we were at this friend's house and they just redid their kitchen and they had an induction oven and I was they were like have you seen one of these things before? And I was like No, I haven't really and we were they were playing showing me it was it was actually really wild. I was like you can touch it your hand doesn't get hot but the water instantly anyhow let's sorry. We got we got we got off track.
Maggie Bright 19:57
I don't even stay on category.
Chuck Murphy 19:59
Sorry. Sorry. I love you. We got to say, okay, but let's get into the testing person, because I think this is a really interesting example of mission driven, is is in a very, like a very clear, clearly articulated mission. But not a real clear category strategy. Right. Right. Like and it's it's really interesting to contrast them with traditional auto who pursues a very, what I would call I mean, it's funny they don't they do. I am guessing a little bit here because I don't do a lot of automotive work, but But it's more category driven. We're gonna make you know, this sub contract for this subcompact sorry for this, you know, suburban mom, who needs this like? And I think that I think the way that Elan Musk talks about marketing is indicative of how a lot of people think about marketing, right? Like a lot of people in tech, think about marketing, where he's like, it's this this just proud. He's very proud of the fact that they've never spent $1 on marketing. And from one angle, you're like, Yeah, wow, you've sold all every car you can make without having to spend $1 and marketing, like, as a business, you're like, Oh, that's great. But you do wonder, like, that's kind of an early stage thing to be proud of. Right? Like, eventually, you don't want to be demand constrained, do you want to be able to produce as many as you can make, and then you want to be able to sell as you know, as many as you can. And, you know, if you look at if you compare, like the ultimate comparison to be would be like, if you compare something like PG to something like Tesla, right? Like, it's, it's it, they're different accomplishments, right. But to be able to, to maximize your sales of something as as innocuous as toothpaste, or mouthwash is really hard.
Maggie Bright 21:54
There's a discipline to how they approach it, though. And I think that's the difference, right? You can have a mission. And if you don't continually go back to that mission and say, okay, are these is this product or this campaign are this message or this target in line with that mission, then you're going to lose sort of the integrity of that mission, right, or the focus of the mission. And that, you know, great brands like p&g, the reason that they can maximize sales on a toothpaste is because they're disciplined in the way they approach it. And they're in it for sort of, you know, for the most part, I'm sure they have products that aren't necessarily this way, but it's a long term proposition versus a, I need to quickly capture this market share, because that's the newest, it's sort of like the shiny ball, like, I'm going to follow the shiny ball, and I'm gonna get, you know, this incremental gain, but at that, you know, they're eroding the core of the brand. And I think the like, really good, long term brands are constantly coming back to those missions or values or, you know, sort of whatever, whatever, you know, piece of paper they had, on the first day that they wrote down, this is what we're trying to accomplish. And they, they, the brands live that and I think, you know, we were talking earlier about, like, if you walk into some of these traditional categories, or traditional companies, and you say, who's your target? Who's your category? You could add to that? What's your mission? Like, what are you designing for, and they would also be able to tell you that, you know, and that makes it easier for anyone in the organization, whether it be someone in innovation, design, research strategy, you know, sales to be like, hey, this, this, I know, the mission, I know how to sell this, I know how to talk about it. I know what's congruent with the values of the company set up on, and it makes for a more cohesive conversation. And I think that's the big difference. Two companies could start with very strong mission statements, but lose it if they're not disciplined about, you know, coming back to that mission statement over and over again.
Chuck Murphy 23:51
Yeah, and the long term discipline is hard. It's hard to learn at an organizational level, right? Because it requires a lot and, and it's funny, that's kind of what what I noticed about this, this, this lack of a shared category, like you know, if you think about it, like from a marketing perspective, that's like, your, that's still the table the contents of your book, right? It's the title page, like you haven't even you haven't gotten to the meat of the book at all. Like, it's just like, what, who are you going after? It's always amazing to me that, like, it hasn't even been discussed at some companies like and I'm not talking about little companies like knowing that small like, I'm talking about big companies that it's shocking to me, sometimes I'm like, wait a minute, like, Who Who are we? Who's whose target like, Who are you gonna have? Like, you know, a broad level like in it. And it's really interesting. I would expect that that is there's going to be there's going to be examples of really sophisticated marketers that are going to come in and take share a as these as these companies are getting more as the as the categories evolve and mature, you're gonna see people that this whole, like, you know, the people that are writing books about like product product is the only thing that matters is like, no, like, it's not that you did like that, that that could work in an early stage environment, you know, but eventually, if you look at a mature category looking to this, these the two phases to gamble again, you get to a point where they all work, right? And they all basically, you know, so now you have to find a way to differentiate in a difficult category.
Maggie Bright 25:38
Yeah, I mean, that's, that's where you have to, like lay the tracks for your loyalty or your brand loyalty story, right? But if you haven't, like, I mean, it's not even laying the tracks, it's driving on the tracks, I guess, right? Because you should have laid the
Chuck Murphy 25:50
side where you where you want to lay tracks, right? You have to decide what direction this trades go when we go north, south, east or west? Why or why are we going there? Where are we going?
Maggie Bright 26:01
I think to the thing about the the reason that the weekend point to an apple and Nike or Disney or Coke, or Pepsi is that they have someone and it either is the CEO or the founder, or maybe it's a you know, a group that is like actively policing in some way, adherence to that initial mission or goals or target, right, as opposed to, and that sometimes that slows down the process. I always think about, like, the amazing thing about our portfolio of clients is that we have these traditional iconic companies. And then we have these really fast moving, innovative, and they're all innovative, but like you know more these more tech companies that are sort of more, I don't know if nimble is the right word, but they're constantly adapting and evolving. And I think what's really interesting is that it's really amazing that the tech companies can move so fast, and you know, bring something to market so quickly. And there's something you know, that the traditional companies can learn from sort of some of those models. But there's also something really amazing about these traditional companies that are disciplined and message and you know, are thoughtful about how they expand their portfolio for the most part that the tech companies can really learn from. And so I think there's this, you know, if they could meet in the middle, and the traditional companies could pick up some speed and the tech companies could slow down a little bit, it would be really interesting to see what emerged because I, it does sometimes feel, you know, when I look at the timelines for some of our more traditional clients versus some of the timelines that you're working on for tech, I'm like, wow, they're moving so fast. How do they even have time to figure out what they're doing? And, you know, it's impressive a lot of times when when things get to market that fast, and there's there mazing benefits to it, but I agree with you, I think sometimes it's hard to see the strategy, if you're going so fast. And you're not stepping back to be like, why did we even make this product? What need does it actually solve? Is it these people we, we would even consider customers? Are we just chasing the next thing?
Chuck Murphy 28:04
It's funny like to use a sports analogy, right? Like if you go back, this is a really old school analogy. But if like Paul Westfall is a basketball coach, the his whole strategy was we're going to shoot as fast as we can. So we're then we're going to score 140 points a game. It's totally fine. If your strategy is fast, as long as all the players know, that's the strategy. Nobody's going in the same direction. Yeah. And they know how to execute that, right. So like, the way to shoot fast is, you know, quick inbounds pass, and then like willingness ticket through which, whatever it is, but when you when your strategies go fast, but everybody goes in different directions, you're totally you're, I don't want to use the S word. But you're you are not going to work. In
Maggie Bright 28:44
analogy, like, important that everyone's in shape enough to go fast, right? Like there's a lot of factors that have to be
Chuck Murphy 28:52
done. There's a lot of things they have to work out there. And it is and that and I think that's one of the reasons that the category definition jumps off the page for me sometimes when people don't know because I'm like, wow, like, if you guys if the if the leadership hasn't decided what we're going after designing a strategy to go after it is a little hard, right? Like you need to know like, what do you what are we trying to do here? Are we trying to convert this this audience or that audience? And and it's, it is it's really interesting, because so much of what some companies focus on is just discovery of new opportunities. And right, it'll say send a bunch of try to think about the right analogy is to like, you know, you'd like I was like fishing, just throw you throw lines everywhere and see what comes back, which is there's benefits to that too, right. But, um,
Maggie Bright 29:40
absolutely. I mean, there's tons of amazing innovations that have happened that way. And I'm fulfilled like, fundamental needs that we didn't even realize we have, right so I think there's room for that in any strategy. But it it for me, a lot of times it comes back to this idea of like There are these foundational pieces of research that you need to do as a company to figure out who you are and where you fit in a consumers life stage, right? Because a lot of times one of the things that even when I see this very established companies, they have this idea of who they are and what needs they feel that is not correct. It is absolutely not how the consumer sees the category or the product or the positioning. And if you're not, if you don't have a method for figuring out that piece of the puzzle, then how in the world are you going to continue to innovate and meet needs of these consumers? And, you know, maybe you do your A and your attitudes and uses research, and you figure out, yeah, you're perfectly positioned, and everything is great. And, you know, you're like, why did we do that we knew what we were doing. But a lot of times, there's so much more nuance to it. And, you know, I see, often companies putting consumers into these very siloed categories to where they're like this consumer wants x and this consumer wants why. And it's not that simple. It's never that simple, right? consumers aren't buying one product in one category and moving on to the next category to buy something. And so I think if you don't have a really solid understanding of who, like, who's buying and wants your things, then how in the world are you going to continue to meet their needs?
Chuck Murphy 31:21
Yeah, although I would, I would argue that if you're going to like build a brand, you might have to oversimplify your target. Like to use the right like, nobody has a car just because they want a safe car. Or just because they want a fast car. Yeah, especially want a cheap car, right? You're gonna always be this. But if you want to be known as like, the safest brand, like, you know, yeah, I still think we might one of my favorite ads of all time is the baby in the tire thing. Which is pretty funny, because a lot of people now probably don't even remember that, because that was iconic from when I was young. But isn't it? Yeah, it's Michelin. And then they, they these amazing case studies, I think they probably still talked about a business school Michelin had that for they ran an ad for seven years, I think they actually read the same man. It's not like they, I think they did some iterations of the campaign. But I think they basically ran like a lot of the same executions. And it was so effective. And then they, they stopped, they felt like it was a little bit played. And a competitor immediately started running basically the same and it worked like people should, like it was like, it was a very effective campaign. It was just, uh, you know, I, you always see the temperament in marketing stuff, you always want to want to reach a motion, right? Like, you know, that a baby, and, you know, it effectively, like gave people that like, oh, safety, that that feeling, and talk about our product to sell, I mean, establishing a brand and tires,
Maggie Bright 32:44
right? You don't buy it that often. And it is not like a warm and fuzzy feeling. And you don't like you know, it's not like you buy tires, and then you're like,
Chuck Murphy 32:55
so we used to I used to, I've done a ton of tire research in my life, which is hilarious. I've, at this point, have done research, cut everything. But do these ads, where are these ads, these studies were way back in the day, we'd have to find people to buy tires that often right? If I remember a couple years, they they're not involved, it's very difficult category to research. And then it's very difficult. It's very difficult to go back and reconstruct why they made the decision. Right, which is what we're always kind of trying to do. And we would people would have to be fine people over the phone. Who had recently bought tires. And we'd ask them what they bought what they consider this and things but they had to get off the phone that was such an old school research like that to get off the phone and go out to the car because of course you don't want no he's like, brand model size. And your tire sizes are like are 15 370 millimeters. It's you can't see it, you know, because it's black on black. But it was like the most hilarious, difficult research like it was always such a fight, but also like, some incredible marketers, because it's like, there is no easy path there. There's no and so you really have to know what you're doing. And you really have to kind of be organized as a team. And, you know, it's pretty crazy. So I'm actually kind of its, it might be a sad part of our personality that we've been talking about categories for Oh no, we really probably like no one is gonna, like, everyone's gonna be like, What are you?
Maggie Bright 34:24
I feel like we owe it to anyone who's made it this far. To give up, give them some sense of like, what you do like so if you found yourself in this situation where you you you have you don't know what category you're in or what your target is like, what do you do? What what do you do next? And I know there's a million that there's many paths to take and it's you know, you're turning a ship basically. So it takes a lot, but like what do you what do you recommend or what are your thoughts on kind of like if I find myself here What happens next?
Chuck Murphy 35:01
Right and so it's funny. That's an excellent, that's an excellent, you're an excellent moderator, I can tell. Because I, early out of this conversation, I was like, Oh, I find myself in this discussion a lot lately. And it kind of blows my mind. But to me, everyone and I said everyone's first instinct is we want to target everyone. They want it as wide as possible, just like the young founder who's trying to fundraise and wants to say that, you know, there's 400 million people out there that could use my, you know, stargazing app, or whatever. But really, what you want is to narrowly defined the lowest hanging fruit and who you who, you know, you could convert at the highest level, right? And really hone in on who your target is. But the most important thing is, if you have a company that's got hundreds, if not 1000s, of people, working in some capacity around marketing, it's really important that as a team, not to overuse the sports analogies, but the team has to know what the playbook is, right? Yeah. What are what are we trying to do here? Are we trying to like, you know, attack, are we trying to play defense are we trying to be efficient, and so there has to be a shared understanding of what the goal is. And then the first part of that goal is like, what is the category and it's really, really important that people know, from the highest level of lowest level, hey, our category is people who do X, you know, this many times a month, or why this many times a month, or fit in this certain demographic profile. And you actually want to narrow that down, so that you're focusing your resources on the easiest convert first right to kind of build the business. And then once you've totally locked down your primary target, then you could start widening in concentric circles, but you always want to be very focused on who you're going after. And make sure you get them first and that I think that's a really important thing that that a lot of people they struggle with it at first, and then it you know, it's it's, it's been, you know, kind of shown over and over again, like, if you think about go back to Nike, just I want distance runners, right? Riyadh is like just like the obviously now Nikes in you know, golf, tennis, you know, leisure ever, they're in every single thing. But you need to be like you want to do really good job of converting the person that you're most interested in, and they are built for,
Maggie Bright 37:25
right? establish their credibility, which gave them the freedom to expand into those other areas. But you're right. I mean, you had a very focused objective in the in the beginning, and I think we had talked many months ago about sort of segmentations, and how to make the results of them actionable. And one of the big things that we talked about throughout that process is like you have to get buy in at every single level, as you develop and create the segmentation and figure out who the priorities are. And, you know, I know that not every every strategy decision is made from that segmentation. But it's the same thing, right? It's this idea of like, you have to be having these conversations at all levels of the organization so that everyone is moving in the same direction. And whether that's about a segmentation or, you know, needs dates, or attitudes and usage, or even, you know, very tactical types of research. It's this idea of like, our, our job as researchers or marketers, is to make sure that we disseminate that information much further than our own departments or presentations. And I think that I mean, that leads into like, all the other steps that we do, like the storytelling piece of it and the creative deliverables, and you know, that the strategy conversations that hopefully we're having with our clients on a on a regular basis, is kind of a shameless sales pitch. And
Chuck Murphy 38:47
I love it. Well, I appreciate you. You dive in into this little dusty corner of marketing with me today.
Maggie Bright 38:54
I love it. I always love the dusty corners, right? You never know what you're gonna find the category
Chuck Murphy 38:58
jokes. Do you think there's like a little like dark corner of Twitter that's got like category jokes. Sure. Caesars you know,
Maggie Bright 39:09
I mean, I mean, it's probably like an extension of dad jokes, right? It's
Chuck Murphy 39:14
exactly what what did David David Akers say about the category? I'm gonna write a category joke. I'm gonna work on it.
Maggie Bright 39:21
Maybe if you went back through like old madmen episodes. Like some they may not be very tasteful or politically correct. But there's got to be some category jokes in there. So that's what you should yeah, thank you. I
Transcribed by https://otter.ai