Hey Hero Makers, it's podcast producer Bobby Richard. I'm jumping in to share with you a new episode of our brand new podcast. Why That Worked presented by StoryBrand.ai with Donald Miller back in the host seat. Now, since we launched Marketing Made Simple, we've been so grateful to have everybody tune in each week to learn how to make your marketing easy and make it work. Which is exactly why we're sharing new episodes of the Why That Worked podcast here in the old Marketing Made Simple feed.
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You're listening to the Why That Work podcast presented by StoryBrand.ai. If you've ever wondered why certain brands, trends, or cultural phenomena find success while others don't, you're in the right place. Every week we unpack why something worked, then give you actionable insights can use in your own life now let's dive in with your hosts Donald Miller and Kyle
Welcome back to the Why That Works podcast where we look at messaging campaigns that worked, why they worked, and how you can apply those ideas to your business. Today, we are talking about weird, annoying marketing campaigns. That worked. That worked. Like this one. Ch-ch-ch-chia. Do you remember that? Oh, how could you forget? Have you ever bought one? No. I think I bought one. As a kid, I was like...
If only. They're fun stocking stuffers. As a kid, you're right. It's a great kid stocking stuffer. And I really wanted an ant farm, but that's not what we're talking about. I just thought an ant farm was cool. Now that I'm a parent, I get the whole, like, let's leave the ants outside. Yeah, let's leave it outside, which makes total sense.
But you brought one up to me I'd never heard of. You kept saying it to me. Head on. Apply it to the head. Head on. I had to look it up, and I've got to play it for people who, you know. Now this is going to be one of those things. You're going to play it, and if you're older than about, how old are you? 38. Hey, if you're older than like 43, I'm guessing right in there. If your birthday falls, you know, in the 70s, you'll get
I think it was like 25 years ago. It looks like that. We're going to play this right now. You'll hear it, but you also have to go see it. Go to our YouTube. You'll see the ad itself. Let me play the head-on commercial. Head on. Apply directly to the forehead. Head on. Apply directly to the forehead. Head on. Apply directly to the forehead. Head on is available without a prescription at retailers nationwide.
Hundreds of millions of dollars. Hundreds of millions of dollars. You have to go see it because it's just a woman. rubbing something on her head like a headache relief that's it what's amazing is she doesn't say what it's about no but you know you you kind of infer that it's a headache medicine
It's a differentiator. You don't take a pill. You apply it to the forehead. It's her showing you how to do it. That whole campaign is a lot of what we talk about at StoryBrand in terms of not making the customer think. It's why explain something that they already understand. And they just repeat it over and over, which I think is super smart. That would play, by the way, that would play on the radio. It would come up on television, that exact commercial, and it was constant.
And I don't know what happened with the company. I don't know if it's like poor leadership or whatever. They made hundreds of millions of dollars on that. Do we have any numbers on that? So here's what happened when they ran that campaign. It was about in 2005 when they ran. The sales increased by 234%. So their average revenue per year was $1.9 million. Okay, so tiny, tiny company. Very tiny. Making a knockoff to Tylenol. Yes. Or whatever. Invest a lot of money to buy commercial.
space, you know what I mean? To run ads. and they increased by 234%. I'm curious, because that would be... So they went from 2 million... to about six point something million i wonder what their ad's been on now here's the thing extremely low production yes on the on the ad uh probably bought ad space for like
I mean, it's television, right? But at the same time, where they were buying ads and how short those ads were, I mean, you're literally talking under $100 to buy those ads. So it probably wasn't as expensive as you think. It was ridiculously memorable. And the reason was it was so freaking annoying and startling. It was like, buckle your seatbelt. You know, buckle your seatbelt, accident imminent, bucket your seatbelt, plane going down, plane going down. It was that kind of like,
Voice. I mean, really kind of brilliant. Don, you seem to like the campaign. What can we apply from that? Why is it so annoying? Well, let's just be honest here. Let's talk about the fact that dirt, dirt cheap. No major ad agency involved.
a couple things about the campaign one is they didn't over explain and this is a massive problem with owners and founders they just freaking owner i was just with somebody i won't name them they were at the house we were talking about their campaign and i would say what about this tagline they said well that doesn't quite cover it because blah blah literally my eyes are glazing over as this guy is explaining the ridiculously nuanced uh you know truths about his product
And I can't stand it. Not only that. This person's wife was with them, and the person's wife literally said, He did this to a waiter today, and you can see the waiter trying to get away. And I'm like, this is exactly, I call it over-enlightening. When you're over-enlightening the customer, you're actually moving them away from sales.
right if i hand you a it's not a jar whatever a stick of head-on yeah right if i say apply directly to the forehead you're inferring that one this is some sort of headache medicine the lady on the ad looks like she has a headache so now you don't have to say it you're not asking the customer to burn any calories to understand that this solves a headache you're really emphasizing the differentiator between this
and uh tylenol or a pill that you take so now i go okay i apply this head rather than this People believe that when something is the same but different, it works better. It's a headache medicine, but it's different, so therefore it's going to work better. But you don't have to explain it. The second is... that annoyingly high-pitched panic INDUCING
You listen to that and your stress levels go, you cannot ignore that. How many television commercials do you ignore as soon as they come on? 98%. That's right. You're not going to ignore this because it's going to be grating on your nerves. There's something that's kind of brilliant about that. So I think there's some things to learn here, but let me just ask you this as a thought exercise to all of our listeners. If you had to say something like this,
about your brand. You know, if I had to say, what I would say is don't go bankrupt, clarify your marketing message. Don't go bankrupt, clarify your marketing message. Don't go bankrupt, clarify your marketing message. So I'm being annoying and I'm getting my message into the brain of that. I'm shoving it into their ears.
into their brain where they have to process the idea. I'm not saying everybody needs to do this. I'm just saying that's why it worked. There's a principle inside of it. I think that it's so easy to go over nuanced in your marketing. You talk about this with your website where you go into your whole family history. Our brand started 75 years ago, and my grandfather, blah, blah, blah. Head-on could have gotten nuanced.
Yeah, there's a different acetaminophen in our thing, and it absorbs through the skin much better than that. Now, let's stop here. It absorbs through the skin much faster than a pill. The fillers in a pill eventually clog up your arteries. You know, whatever. All the nuanced reasons. They literally go, if we say that... Which is an amazing thing to say. Nobody will listen. What can we say that 100% of people will actually hear? That's the controlling idea behind this.
What can we say that nobody will be literally able to tune out? They're going to have to hear us. Keep it short. Make it high pitch. put it in a panic-inducing voice, and freaking repeat it. And I'm just sitting there going, That's genius. And you know what they paid that ad agency? Nothing. It's so true. And I think the thing that's so fascinating about it is they add so quick that you can't really process. You're really just sitting there going,
Oh, I have a headache. I'd love relief, but you can't think about the utility of it. Because once you start, you're like, wait, you rub it on your, it goes through. How does that work? Well, not only this, I haven't heard that ad in 25 years. And when we came up with this idea, annoying ads that work, I literally went head on, applied a forehead, head on. It was stamped into my subconscious. If it's so successful, why don't they exist anymore?
Well, I did some research on that because I wanted to make sure that I didn't look like a fool here. The founding company was Morales Healthcare. It's a Florida-based company. And according to storybrand.ai, the product was gained in 2006 because of its minimalist and repetitive advertising, which became a viral sensation. And you ready? They sold it. So they made a truckload of money, and the people they sold it to in 2008, two years later, were called SirVision.
And under Cervision's ownership, the product was reformulated, problem number one, to include herbal ingredients.
while maintaining its homeopathic positioning. So I guarantee you what happened with Cervision is they went nuanced. Yeah, they took something that was steaming hot and they said let's make it better but in order to explain how it's better you're going to lose all the efficacy of the simple campaign so one they sold it to somebody else the geniuses who scaled it up Sold it to somebody who changed the strategy.
That's one thing. Is it still sold today? It is available on the market, but it's largely faded from public consciousness. It's primarily marketed as a homeopathic remedy, which is not how it was introduced. And so when you try to change something like that,
It's not going to work. They've also got, according to AI, there's four things. Lack of proven advocacy. They never had case studies that really proved that it worked. There was a marketing shift. The viral success of commercials, they stopped doing that. I think they could probably bring it back, but I guarantee these people are too snooty to do that. What homeopathic company wants to annoy the heck out of everybody listening to the radio or watching TV?
regulatory pressure thanks get big government Thanks for making sure things work. before we actually sell them. Early claims about headache relief were removed following objections from the Better Business Bureau. No, that's not fun. Let's just find out later. Well, it was working fine to make money, Better Business Bureau.
We're kidding, of course. We're kidding. Leaving the product with a little more than a memorable tagline. Very memorable, by the way. Niche Market as a homeopathic product with questionable efficacy. Head-on appeals to a limited audience today. A bunch of hippie... Ah, homeschool. That's all that's left. That's what StoryBrand and I said. That was me adding editorial comments. I love... Way to kill a brand. But I love the beginning of the brand because they...
They said, what's the problem our customer's facing and how do we solve it and how do we make it as simple as possible? I love it. Maybe one of the better examples ever, ever of just simple, almost Let's be honest. Almost too simple. Yeah. Well, once it stood up, probably some testing. It didn't make it. Tired of taking pills? Tired of taking pills for your headache? Apply this chair for it. That's it. Problem is, it doesn't work. But don't take us up on if it works or not.
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So this episode is all about annoying marketing and messaging. That's right. That was one of them. So that was one of them. Another one we have to talk about is... That we like a lot more. Yes. The Chia Pet. All right. Let's play that one. Ch-ch-ch-chia! Chia Pets, the pottery that grows! And now, there's the Chia Gnome! Bye bye! Chia SpongeBob! And everyone's... Chia Hello Kitty. It's fun. Soak your chia, spread the seeds, water, and watch. Ch-ch-ch-ch-chia!
There's even Chia Alex and Chia Marty. So many... You can collect them all! Chia pets! The pottery that grows! Ch-ch-ch-chia! There's so many! Who's Chia? Ow! What's Chia Alex? No idea. They tried to make their own character. did a whole lot a whole lot of good going on there i mean so much so much really effective messaging it's gonna be hard to make a long enough list yeah go for it think about how think about how um economic sorry
Think about how economical that messaging is. What I mean by that is an economy of words. Very, very... Very, very succinct messaging. The pottery that grows. Now, that all sounds like super simple, like nobody thought about it. the pottery that grows is actually a way of describing something now you do need to see the visual on it where you see those sprouts coming out of the thing and making hair for them. They never went that fast. Oh, you had them. Yeah, they never...
Maybe. I think so. Well, it never worked in seconds. Yeah, yeah. It never worked in a way. Kind of like head-on. I can tell that you were six when you got your first chia pet. You're like, well, it's supposed to be growing. No, it takes a minute. But, you know, the pottery that grows, a great way to describe it. Another thing that they did, and then let's also catch the chia. 100%. They are literally... branding and causing you to memorize a tagline or a name of a product.
It gets stuck in your brain. That is really freaking brilliant and actually a little bit hard to accomplish. Did you notice there was a plan in the ad? Yes, I was going to bring that up. I think it was three or four steps. Just add water.
You know, all the things that you're saying. Yeah, plant the seed, add the water. I noticed that too because, again, I'm always in the story brand framework mindset. Well, let's talk about what that's doing. It's like, okay, it's the pottery that grows. It's called Chia Pet. They're available in a bunch of different things.
And then the cognitive dissonance, okay, if I buy this, Like, the subconscious mind says, I'm not going to buy this because I don't understand how it works or whether it will work for me. And literally in the ad, they overcome that. They overcome a subconscious objection. Nobody would actually say that's their objection, but it is. and they overcome it in the ad, plant the seeds, water the freaking thing, put it in sunlight, whatever that plan was.
And now you go, oh, I can do that. And so you end up buying. And by the way, making truckloads of money. Do you have the report on how much they're actually making? So when they ran this, this translated to $300 million in annual revenue at their peak. Macro. $300 million. just selling something that grows I don't think it's the sort of grass you can mow, but I would imagine that it's actually like you can trim it.
they have budding buddies by the way one of my favorite movies of all time is step brothers yes when i just need a good stupid laugh they actually have will ferrell and john that's good that's a good marketing yeah budding buddies kind of well We were talking to her about Chia Pet, some of the things they did right in a commercial. They also introduced characters. that you could buy or identify with. You know, I was curious, what did you think of the square?
Squarepants Spongebob thing. Because they probably had to pay some money for that. I'm sure there's a license, which was probably a good move for them from a business standpoint to start licensing out.
characters yeah i think you called it out while we were watching it the mistake they made was they tried to introduce their own characters i think that was i mean the actual hedgehog was their own character but who the heck is alan Yeah, it's cheaper, obviously, for them to make their own, but just licensing out, you know.
spongebob and and your favorite characters on tv i mean imagine if they're well they probably are still around but if they're doing all the disney princesses and or all the you know the the things that that kids watch these days You can't beat the original T-Pad. I literally... I literally... I love that. I bought the original one because MLI is going to love this. Yeah. We should set up a live feed of watching it grow. And you can check in and watch and see how it develops.
all right so chia pet nailed it uh let's talk about another one and let's real quick though summarizing what you can apply memorization, the art of marketing, a good marketing campaign will cause your client, your potential customer to memorize your offer. They define, we always talk about passing the ground. What do you offer? How will it make my life better? And what do I need to do to buy?
That short radio ad or whatever, that television ad covers that. What do you offer? I offer pottery that grows. Now think about how hard, how long it took for them to figure out how to explain. I mean, it sounds easy, but it wasn't easy. It wasn't at the time. Novelty. Right? It's called a Chia Pet. They caused me to memorize that. Endless hours of fun, you know, whatever. I don't know if the ad even covers that. What do I need to buy it available?
That's right. It's all there. And in the ad they gave it. Here's how you do it. Here's the steps you take to be successful. Can I just tell you how everybody listening to this, including perhaps us, Kyle, would have approached this marketing effort. We can teach about botany. And we can teach kids will love it. Your aunt will love it.
Your grandmother? You don't need to explain that. People are going to infer. I literally looked at the chia pet and went, my daughter would love that. Do they have to explain that to me? Then don't. Don't use the words explaining what people already understand. Use the words explaining what they don't understand. What is that? It's pottery that grows.
Right? It's lots of fun. You can get it at Walgreens. It's a great... That's good. Let me tell you what will sell a lot this Christmas season for almost everybody listening who has the right product. It's a great stocking stuffer. Kids will love it. Kids will love it. Your grandmother's going to... Kids will love it.
It's a great stocking stuffer. As soon as you say it's a great stocking stuffer, I'm like, okay. I don't want to think about what a great stocking stuffer is. If you're saying it's a great stocking stuffer, it's a great stocking stuffer. That's so good. It's not about explaining why you'll love it. Is that what you're saying?
Well, I don't, you know, that should be pretty darn obvious. And if you can say why you'll love it in, you know, a very short period of time, I think that's okay. Okay. But I think that really what you want to say is like, what's in this for me? What I got to do is fill stock. That's what I've gotta do. What I've gotta do is be a good dad. What I've gotta do is have something fun to do with my dog.
what i'm going to do and this is this is actually saying all of it it's inferred in the in the marketing campaign but the bigger thing is again kind of like head-on sort of annoyingly repetitive You know, it's standing out. And that was very, very smart of them. All right, so I got one more for you. Do you remember the George Foreman girl? Yes. So here's the George Foreman 30-second commercial that I found from... Play the whole freaking thing. God rest his soul. What a great man.
This is my George Foreman family-sized grill that's... No, it is. It's my George Foreman griddle that cooks pancakes. No. It's my George Foreman bacon oven and it's making... No, no, no. It's actually my omelet maker that... What is it? It's a grill. Grill. Calm down, guys. You're all right. It's the next grilleration. All right. A lot there in the next grilleration. That's amazing. The controlling idea from the very beginning, it knocks out.
Yeah, I heard that. That's the one. Well, it was also the main controlling idea early on in the infomercials. The whole idea is you can make a piece of meat and the fat would drain off of them. Yeah. Okay, so why is that? Well, back in the day, this was during the day when we all thought we were supposed to be eating grains and we weren't supposed to be eating. And there's still some truth to that. If you eat grains and fat, it's not very great for you. If you just eat fat...
You know, all that kind of stuff. Ketosis, I'm not a doctor. But it would knock out the fat in such a way that you could take a piece of steak and eat it, or a piece of chicken, and you wouldn't have the fat that they thought was harmful. See, I always thought they were selling convenience. Well, that's because you were a bachelor. Did you have a George Foreman?
I remember, I've used a George Foreman, so I'm guessing we had one. I think maybe we had one in my home when I was a kid. I remember as a kid, maybe a teenager, wanting one. Why? Wow. Because you saw it on infomercial. Probably so. George Foreman was freaking awesome. But I remember it was terrible. The food you cooked on that, it was not good. Have you heard that comedian who does like... on the George Foreman ground.
He's pretending to be George Foreman. He's in a meeting, and they're like, should we have an off switch no no no just drain the fat should we be able to put some sort of safety thing on it so the thing doesn't close your no no no no just drain the fat like it goes through the whole thing the only thing i think of is the michael scott in the office where he Burns his foot on his George Foreman because he wanted to have bacon when he woke up. That's the only one I can think of.
But the third was not good on it. But that's interesting. It's a glorified panini maker. It really is. He hasn't been in Italy since the invention of electricity. So the... the annoying side of this marketing we've been kind of talking about is Okay, this time they introduced a celebrity and put a celebrity's name on the market.
Because George Foreman is the king of invention of food products, right? How much money did they make? Did you look that up? I did look that up. You ready? Yep. The George Foreman Grill has sold over. X units, guess. I hate when you do this. How many units? Ever. Ever. Now there's 330 million people in America. So there's a number to start. 23 million. 120 million units.
120 million units globally. And they're probably like, what, like $59? One of the best-selling kitchen appliances of all time. Sales skyrocketed from $5 million, which is pretty good in 1996. to $400 million six years later. and that's all from its peak year it's in its peak year they sold 14 million Today, the grill remains popular, consistently outperforming competitors. Think about it. It launched a whole industry of fat trimming grills, I guess. Now, George Foreman. Poor George.
Only got 40% of profits making $8 million per month. More than any fight. That's unreal. Yeah. $8 million. I doubt he made much more than $8 million for any of his fights because he was fighting back in the day when there weren't these $40 million paydays. In 1999, Salton bought out the rights to use its name. They paid $137.5 million. Imagine George Foreman's payday on that, including cash and stock.
Overall, Foreman made much more than 200 million from the grill, far exceeding, of course, his boxing career. Here's some interesting tidbits about the company. i didn't know this origins of the grill the grill was originally pitched as the fajita its slanted design for fat drainage was key to its eventual success. So that really was big.
That was big, but if you think about it, selling it on how to make fajitas really quick, you're going to sell 37 units. Drain the fat out of your meat. You get all the protein without the fat. Somebody found the right messaging angle on it. It's the same freaking thing. That's right. Now, this is really important. Same or different, which is what you talked about earlier. Also, just think about for our listening audience. It's the same product. The difference between 5 million and
120 million or whatever the numbers were earlier, was talking about it differently. That's the whole point of this podcast. If you just start talking about things differently and experimenting, your business could explode. It's the whole freaking point of this podcast. so you know the fajita express versus george foreman grill focusing on Knock out the fat. Knock out the fat is worth all that money. And George Foreman was absolutely worth $40. But by the way, it's a great take.
40% of the profit is a great take because he's not running the company. He's not hiring and firing people. He's not negotiating health expenses. He's not buying buildings. He's not doing vendor supply chains out of Korea or Vietnam or China or wherever they're making these freaking things.
He's not having to do any of that. And he's getting 40% of the profit. Fantastic, George. Way to negotiate. Man, that is a... I heard knock out the fat. I skipped over it. You were so right. Well, but it's because What we listened to was a commercial where it's like the ninth iteration of it. Knockout the Fat was mentioned in there, but it was actually at the beginning of the campaign, it was all the campaign was about. Yeah, that was the newer version of that commercial, but you're right.
and once you it's kind of we've been talking about once you nail that tagline or that message just watching sales and things explode. Later, George would say, it's so good I put my name on it. is interesting. That was also an interesting sort of sub-tagline because you have a celebrity who's vouching for a product giving it authority. The visual demonstrations, the infomercials that showcase the fat dripping off food into trays, emphasizing the health benefits, the convenience of it.
That really appealed. And then you can't beat just the authenticity of George Ford. He's just such a likable, likable guy. I mean, you know, perfect storm there in that product. And it's still selling. I love, though, how they figured out that one thing.
That one problem that people experience, it works. Drain the fat. A lot of stuff to copy there if you're a brand. What would you copy if you were a brand? You don't sell anything like a grill. Talk to me about. It's the same but different. It's the finding that one thing that goes, we're the same as this but different this.
way there's there's the one we're like a waffle maker so what's the same but different well we are we are like a lot but it drains the fat that that to me was the difference yeah we're we're we're a way to cook stuff but without the fact And so the enemy there is fat. The benefit, you know, you got to be able to say, oh, you know, here's something you can apply. What is it that your product gets rid of that's harmful to your company?
okay what is it what is your product gets rid of that you're harmful to a customer well you then you've talked about this you then make that the villain yeah Because I think a lot of brands, they try to solve their own problem and make that the villain. But really what you're trying to do is make the problem, the thing that's harmful to their customer, that's the villain. That's what you attack.
You know, I went down to the basement the other day. I had to punch a nail into the inside of a bookshelf. The inside of a bookshelf punched a little nail in so I could hang the bottom part of a movie screen for a family movie. And I just happened to have, I don't even know where I got it. I happened to have a little short hammer. It's like literally like four inches. And I'm like, oh, perfect.
so i get in there i could actually take that hammer and sell a truckload of them and just call it the hammer for small spaces yeah It's like, you got a hammer, but do you have a hammer for small spaces? And then just show somebody losing their mind because they're under a kitchen sink trying to do something with a giant hammer and they're busting pipe.
and hitting themselves in the forehead. That's the sort of thing that you want to think about. What's the thing that you're saving somebody from that you may have never thought of? You've got to find the thing that your customer is weary of. Tired of.
trying to avoid and talk about how your product is solving that problem for them and focus on that. That's good. And there's so many examples we could go from here. We want to hear from you as you're listening to this. What are those funny... uh camp commercials you remember those annoying ones that you can't get out of your head there's a ton leave us a comment on youtube or on this podcast but don yeah what's the annoying messaging that you
But it's because they're clear. And I think that's the thing I'm walking away with is having that clarity of what you are solving, that problem you're solving. And sometimes it needs to be a little annoying to get the attention of people. Doesn't hurt. Thanks for listening to the Why That Work podcast presented by StoryBrand.ai. If you like the show, follow wherever you get your podcasts.
And if you're enjoying this on YouTube, hit that subscribe button and leave a comment letting us know what you think and what you want the guys to talk about in a future episode. Curious about how storybrand.ai can help you create clear, effective messaging? Well, you can try it out right now and create a free customized tagline for your business. Just go to storybrand.ai. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.