[00:00:00] Donny Dvorin: Modern marketing changes fast and great marketers needed edge marketers from challenger brands need to be especially brave this season. All our guests from challenger brands join us as they unveil the strategies and tactics behind the risks that they’ve taken. They’ll talk about the biggest coldest marketing campaigns that got their brand noticed and made an impact in the industry.

[00:00:29] Hosted. Brave software and me Donny Dearborn, head of sales at breathe. Join me to get fresh new perspectives and the inspiration to say yes to brave marketing moments.

[00:00:43] You’re listening to a new episode of the brave marketer podcast. And this one features Chris Neeland. Now Chris is the CEO of. And one of the veteran marketers out there, he’s a senior advisor to CMOs at Zappos, Harley Davidson, best buy GoDaddy [00:01:00] and other brands. And before founding Colt, Chris was the marketing leader at John Deere and the home Depot.

[00:01:06] And when I think you could find interesting about Colt is they’re not a typical ad agency. They’re more of a consultant with 30 person company and really focus on engagement for brands and less about average. we think that you really going to like this episode, because he talks about how his clients are challenging industries and picking fights with the status quo versus competing brands themselves.

[00:01:30] It talks about why demographic segregation can actually hurt more than it can help when buying media and what are the actual insights that cause customers to buy and how cult thinks about elevating this customer experience. I also put in a couple of things about crypto in here, which I think you’ll enjoy and also talked about the brave browser itself and how we position ourselves.

[00:01:52] But before we hop into today’s episode, we want to highlight our brief pick of the week. Every episode we choose a brand that has run an ad campaign with brief, and this [00:02:00] week we’re picking avalanche. Avalanche is the fastest smart contracts platform in the blockchain industry. And their campaign objective was to get the word out about their largest defined incentive program in history.

[00:02:11] And they ran a sponsored image and push notifications with. And a winning combo for best results. And we’re excited to have him on board. And now for today’s episode of the brave marketer

[00:02:29] Chris Kneeland: Hey Chris, welcome

[00:02:30] Donny Dvorin: to the brave marketer podcast. How you doing?

[00:02:32] Chris Kneeland: I am excellent Dani and even better knowing that we get a chance to talk here. Yeah. We’re

[00:02:38] Donny Dvorin: excited to have you on the show today. why don’t we kick things off by asking a question? I asked a lot of my guests, which is what’s the most exciting thing that you’re working on right now.

[00:02:47] Chris Kneeland: we are insurgence or pirates, if you will trying to challenge the status quo. So excitement is not one of our problems. We wake up every day, telling emperors that they’re [00:03:00] not wearing any clothes or shouting. No, in boardrooms. That just want us to say yes. And so somewhat provocative or somewhat contrary.

[00:03:09] And, um, we’re on a mission to sort of help people,not just behave differently, but believe differently about what their brand is possible to accomplish and what their marketing is likely doing wrong.

[00:03:20] Donny Dvorin: Got it. can you share some

[00:03:22] Chris Kneeland: examples of that? Yeah, of course. as an example, we work with the UCLA.

[00:03:27] system or network it’s over 200 clinics and hospitals all throughout Southern California. most hospitals would not be viewed as beloved brands. Most hospital marketing departments would not be viewed as the most sophisticated. marketers, you don’t frequently see them in the traditional ad agency awards scene.

[00:03:48] And yet hospitals, particularly in America play an incredibly important role for the health and wellbeing, not just in terms of helping, you know, remedy cancer, but, all the preventative things that can make our lives [00:04:00] better and improve, our longevity. they had a very bold, courageous, brave leader.

[00:04:05] Who didn’t understand. Why do people love apple computer? Or why do people love Tesla cars? But nobody loves their hospital, given whether it’s impact on, their families and on their communities. And so we’ve been on a journey with them for the past couple of years to change that. And, they’re receiving tremendous accolades.

[00:04:23] The people that rank that kind of stuff, like the us news and world reports of the world about boy, this is a hospital that’s behaving more like a beloved consumer brand than a traditional hospital institution. And, we love that because we think that, those types of businesses, there’s dozens of them that are just right for more creativity and more courage so that they could become more meaningful to people’s.

[00:04:48] Got it. That’s really

[00:04:49] Donny Dvorin: good. So as you know, this podcast is all about brief marketing moments. So an example where somebody you’re on the agency side, but brand [00:05:00] or an agency where they exemplified bravery and took a risk. and you’ve been able to work with some world class brands out there. Is there one kind of moment, either in your career or with certain brands where you felt like you’ve exhibited a lot of breaks?

[00:05:16] Chris Kneeland: Yeah. on a personal note, we actually stopped being an agency. 10 years ago, we had a vibrant multimillion dollar agency. And I like to say we grew a conscience. We were tired of taking our clients. Producing solutions that we knew in our hearts weren’t going to work, but they were what they asked for.

[00:05:35] And, so we killed that business and we,created a new type of species. we call it an engagement firm. We stopped doing, media based ad campaigns and big creative platforms and started solving businesses problems in a way that we thought was more, ethical and filled with more intense.

[00:05:53] So that was terrifying because. when you’re an ad agency, you can do anything for anybody as an engagement from, [00:06:00] and particularly with our, point of view about Colt branding, we take something creepy and scary, like a cult and said, there’s actually genius. there’s actually something to be learned from how they get people to devote their whole selves to a cause to a religion, to a fraternity, to a military, whatever it might be.

[00:06:19] And, uh, there’s probably some commercial application for that. I’m quite proud of the team for the courage that they displayed to make a, business and a strategic pivot. And then certainly with our clients, I mean, there’s really no shortage examples. Gatorade comes to mind. Gatorade was, pursuing shareholder value.

[00:06:39] they were a remarkable product when they came out, they legitimately improve sports performance, but their success bred copycat. And, uh, for many years they just chased market share and they lost everything that was special about their brand. they didn’t realize that there was a cancer growing inside their business for about three years, until one day they [00:07:00] woke up and they fell off a cliff and the Powerades of the world and dozens of knockoffs started to replace them.

[00:07:06] And. in hindsight, Gatorade would tell you that they stopped being a performance drink for performance athletes and started to become colored water for thirsty people. And when they lost that, special-ness they lost everything that made them. And desirable and sought after. And so they had to do a lot of brave things.

[00:07:25] Re-imagine their culture, their hiring practices, their marketing strategy, their distribution strategy. And what I think is most interesting, their product portfolio, where you look at Gatorade today, it’s not even a sports drink company anymore. They’re into nutritionals and powders and gels and all sorts of things that actually make you perform better.

[00:07:44] you know, Nike was famous for what you wear. And what’s on. You makes you perform better, but Gatorade wants to become famous for what’s in you to perform better, which is actually more substantive than your sneakers or your, sweat wicking t-shirt the Nike sells. [00:08:00] So that’s a scary, tough thing.

[00:08:01] Now that was done out of necessity. And unfortunately that happens a lot businesses kind of run into a wall or fall off a cliff before they decide to take some brave, radical new moves. We try to get to them before they go into cardiac arrest if you will.

[00:08:15] Donny Dvorin: You know, this is all about marketers having key takeaways. They could say I’m totally going to apply that to my brand. So maybe top one, two ways that a brand can get that cultish following.

[00:08:28] Chris Kneeland: Donny philosophically, what I would say is it’s really three things and it comes down to the founder and, or the new leader that’s assumed the business, following the founders noble brand purpose, because the business is usually started for a reason. That’s more noble than just creating profit. They usually have to solve a problem or to make the world better in some way, shape or form.

[00:08:50] so the first, which you’ll like, I think you like all three of them, the first deals with just your amp. Are you trying to be successful or are you trying to be significant? there’s a lot of [00:09:00] successful businesses that have no meaningful significance and they could go away tomorrow and nobody would really care.

[00:09:05] there’s less significant businesses that are wildly successful, but are also achieving something bigger than Patagonia they’ve been in. Jerry’s the doves of the. the second deals with your courage. building a cult brand requires you to do things that mediocre brands don’t do. And that can be scary if you find comfort in the masses, or if you want to only travel down paths that are well-trodden. And so deviating from that, putting your neck out, doing something risky, spending your money differently, pushing back against the, status quo is not for everybody.

[00:09:42] Unfortunately, most, fortunate 1000 sort of C-suites they’re playing defense. they’re not red bull dropping somebody out of space like that. Could’ve gone wrong a hundred different ways.

[00:09:52] But they proceed because red bull is not just about market share or shareholder value. Red bull was trying to enter conscience of [00:10:00] society in a different way. So I think courage often lacking. And then the third is the know-how. The know-how is what are the eight practical steps? How do we benchmark ourselves against the most cult-like brands in the world?

[00:10:11] And that’s the easiest part to do? The

[00:10:14] Donny Dvorin: season of the brave marketer podcast is all about challenger brands. you actually, in a way, cult is a challenging brand to agency. But then you’ve also been working with a lot of challenger brands. Why don’t we talk about how cult is challenging the agency model.

[00:10:31] And then if you can give us an example of how maybe one of the smaller brands that you were working with had to basically challenge the entire category, you know, not just

[00:10:40] Chris Kneeland: there is actually a lot of similarities. One of those eight cult brand principles, we’ve labeled, picking a fight and there is some similarities between picking a fight.

[00:10:49] And what we’ve come to know is more traditional challenger brand, marketing. So Pepsi picks a fight against Coke burger king picks a fight against McDonald’s. [00:11:00] we’re kind of more interested in something like Southwest airlines picking a fight against the road. Right. Southwest airlines, wasn’t fighting Delta, or I guess TWA back in the day but Southwest airlines was birthed to democratize air travel so that families don’t have to waste two days of their vacation.

[00:11:20] driving to grandma’s in the back of the station bike and kind of an idea. So their entire pricing model was can a family of five fly. Cheaper than the cost of gas, meals, hotel in the cost of a car. you know, Patagonia’s villain is not north. Patagonia’s villain is American policy that you roads public land and privatizes national parks.

[00:11:47] And so,you know, they start to fight different fights and challenged different sorts of establishments, you know, swell water bottle, they’re challenging plastic water bottles, not knockoffs that are selling, [00:12:00] comparable, keep your beverage cold for 24 hours

[00:12:02] Donny Dvorin: Yeah. And if I can interject for a second, just thinking about brave as a browser, you could say, oh, we’re picking a fight with Chrome, but it’s not specifically Chrome.

[00:12:11] it’s big tech, which includes Google and Chrome, but it’s also any of the surveillance capitalism that’s going on. That’s not protecting users’ privacy. So I really like what you’re saying. Like it doesn’t always have to be. Coke versus Pepsi or home Depot and Lowe’s or whatever it may be. It could be David against Goliath where the Goliath is,the entire category, or it could be just, the way America operates,

[00:12:35] Chris Kneeland: if you will.

[00:12:36] Yeah. And sometimes it’s a negative, I think, brave browsers, a great example of fighting. and that not privacy so that you can do creepy stuff online, but just that your data is proprietary and you’re not being properly compensated for the benefit that brands are getting from your data.

[00:12:52] liked that. I worked with home Depot for many years and they would never say that they were fighting Lowe’s they would say they [00:13:00] were fighting insecurity. And the homeowners, lack of ambition or know-how to actually accomplish that task. Like there are whole, you can do it.

[00:13:10] We can help was an empowerment brand message that you should tackle that project. You can, paint your walls, redo your garden, put on the addition to your house. And so I liked that sometimes the villain is really bad and you see that most often in politics, right? Like. It’s us versus them.

[00:13:28] And so there’s certainly energy and emotion that can be wrapped up in that. If the villain is evil, But I like the more upside, the more empowerment side of you’re capable of more, you have more potential than you think. there’s not an injustice being served. There’s just a lack of opportunity that’s been capitalized on.

[00:13:48] And that was the apple approach. It wasn’t just . It was we exist so that designers can design more creatives can create more musicians, can do more, music, et cetera. Yeah. And it’s

[00:13:59] Donny Dvorin: the same thing [00:14:00] with like crypto Bitcoin, you could say, oh, Bitcoin is going against the us dollar, but it’s so much bigger than that.

[00:14:06] Chris,

[00:14:07] Chris Kneeland: are you a crypto guy at all?

[00:14:07] I absolutely am. I think that crypto is a really interesting one because some people. I don’t know don’t care. I just want to make money. I just see people making money in that space. And for that group, you talk about the exceptional returns over the last five years. There’s another group that is trying to create better forms of stored value for third world countries or for, democracies that are imploding under themselves with corruption or inflation.

[00:14:36] And that’s a different sort of. And then there’s just the love, like the best, most vocal crypto enthusiasts,like, this is just a superior way. Like the blockchain is just better and, the stored value of the transferability, the, and so you have to know kind of your audience, and then you have to decide which of those battles or which of those opportunities do you want to explain most.

[00:14:58]

[00:14:58] Donny Dvorin: Yeah. And I think about the book, [00:15:00] crossing the chasm by, by Jeffrey Moore. And that’s all about, to your point, getting the cult. and you probably have your core clients that are like your cult following, and then you go out and get more brands.

[00:15:11] And then same thing with brave. Like we had crypto users that are mostly male using the browser, but how do we get, all the females and soccer moms across the country, also using the browser. and you have to open it up. I mean, the going after that niche audience works very well in the beginning, but then if you want.

[00:15:29] you got to go broader

[00:15:29] Chris Kneeland: you know, a secret for your listeners is it begins by completely eliminating demographics. Segmentation demographic based segmentation actually hurts more than helps. It’s only prevalent because people buy media based on demographics. And we have this unholy love affair with media buying.

[00:15:49] But if you look at an apple user, it’s very difficult to paint a demographic, is it mailers? Is it a 13 year old, a 30 year old or a 50 year old, right? is it in the [00:16:00] fluent? There is some degree of a fluency in comparison to Samsung, than if you had to pinpoint it there.

[00:16:05] Their household income is probably a bit higher, but it’s much more of a psychographic. It’s much more of a feeling. It’s much more of a tribe that I want to be a part of or a group that I want to associate with. And when you start doing that, you’ll find that your audience is actually much bigger than you.

[00:16:20] Yeah,

[00:16:21] Donny Dvorin: definitely at Colt. Do you feel like you have a competitor? I mean, it’s just, there’s so many, well, I know you’re not an agency, but there’s so many

[00:16:27] Chris Kneeland: agencies out there. Yeah. Again,we start thinking about ad agencies a dozen years ago, our competitors would be somebody like. Profit is a large several hundred, employee.

[00:16:37] That’s more like a Bain or an Accenture or McKinsey, but they go in through the marketing door, not through the finance, the supply chain or the infrastructure door. probably my biggest competitors, Accenture interactive. Because Accenture interactive says We don’t buy ads for any client we’re in the consumer experience business.

[00:16:54] We’re going to make the experience better from dressing rooms at your favorite, apparel, [00:17:00] retailer to the fast pass at Disneyland, right? Like how do you. More valuable to people. Not because you say you are or because you send them coupons, but because you’ve actually thought through how people go about finding you, using you and talking about you and you make it better,

[00:17:17] I just got back from a trip. Like the experience of renting a car is still so obnoxious. And the fact that I have to still go to that counter and deny the insurance three different times and deal with the line and deal with the pissed off agents like that entire thing. Uber has already shown us what good looks like.

[00:17:34] renting a car should be as easy as getting an Uber and yet it’s not in. And that’s where I think a Hertz or an enterprise carving owner needs to, re-imagine not their advertising straps. But their customer experience strategy. And, that’s what, an engagement from like Colt works on.

[00:17:50] Donny Dvorin: Chris, what are some of the more interesting things you’re doing at Colt? Maybe out of the box that another engagement from like an Accenture, wouldn’t be necessarily.

[00:17:59] Chris Kneeland: Well, you [00:18:00] know, we really view our role as kind of evangelists. we’ve seen what good looks like, and now we’re out there spreading the gospel if you will. And so outside of being guests on podcasts, or we’ve written a book or we’d go and do teaching, we started an event. So every year for the past nine years, we’ve taken a thousand people, and sequester them in this 200 year old castle in Banff, Alberta.

[00:18:25] Spectacular. My kids call it the Harry Potter castle. And we simply say, don’t take our word for it. I’m clearly not unbiased here. I want you to pay me and my team to help you,improve your Colt worthiness if you will. But there are hundreds of brands that have transcended their mediocre peers and are already doing amazing things that you could just learn from.

[00:18:47] And so we just invite them to come and tell their tails. whether it’s in the automotive space and you’re like Porsche or Jeep or Landrover, or you’re in the electronic space, like your beats by Dre or Nintendo or [00:19:00] GoPro. last year, the most popular, brands, was Yeti.

[00:19:03] Yeti is such a great example of. Everybody wants a piece of Yeti. And yet everything they do is non-traditional to how most businesses market themselves and create a community. And so I think it’s as simple as crack Yeti open, look at how they’ve organized themselves, look at how they.

[00:19:22] Themselves look at how the deer themselves to consumers and see which of those ideas you can steal for your own business. Yeah.

[00:19:29] Donny Dvorin: I like that a lot.

[00:19:30] So, Chris, you know, things have obviously changed in the marketing world over the past few years. It feels like it’s changing at a faster and faster pace. We’ve talked about, privacy on our side and we’ve seen, connected TV grow. if you go back a few years, programmatic was really, really hot.

[00:19:45] And I feel like people are talking less and less about DSPs these days, from. What are you seeing are the big trends that are coming up in marketing, what’s working for your clients or what do you, what are you starting to, tell them to start looking at. And on the flip side what’s [00:20:00] not working.

[00:20:00] Like what did you use to spend time 10 years ago on that? You’re not anymore.

[00:20:04] Chris Kneeland: So great question. I think on the working side, I graduated grad school in 99, so it’s essentially a 20 year. Career window from 2000 to 2020, if you will. And that I think the hottest thing over that 20 year window was how marketing and it became these bedfellows to incorporate big data, to do CRM launch loyalty programs, update point of sale, trade e-commerce platforms, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:20:34] I now think marketing and digital are so synonymous that there’s more, it capability oftentimes within the marketing department that having to partner with a more traditional, it group and the new bedfellow for the marketing group is HR. And we’re seeing all sorts of fascinating things around employer brandingand brands that are the best places to work, or also the brands that are being the most loved for their [00:21:00] category and are exceeding expectations in the marketplace.

[00:21:03] a couple of years ago that these CMOs were talking about how much of their time is spent with HR improving the recruitment process. There was some terrifying data about like 60% of people who apply for your brand. If they have a negative experience, then, negatively adjust their shopping behavior.

[00:21:24] So if you’re Yeti and you’re getting 10,000 unsolicited resumes every year, because people love you so much, they want to work for you. But your HR group is sort crapping the bed and not treating them with kit gloves. they don’t like Yeti as much. Now it’s a brand problem. Now it’s a purchase intent problem.

[00:21:42] I also see a lot of things where marketers are working with alumni programs, kind of like what universities would do, where, if your Chili’s, you have 60,000 people turn over at your company a year. That’s insane. That’s 60,000 people who now have an opportunity to have a really great taste in their mouth because of the.[00:22:00]

[00:22:00] Or the six months of the 12 months that they spent, attending bar or waiting tables or being a host is for your brand. And that’s a marketing opportunity, not an HR opportunity to keep them in the family, not just as employees, but as customers for a much longer period of time. So I think that would be if you’re a marketer and you’re.

[00:22:17] In close cahoots with your HR team, especially now with those, this war for talent, and just finding people to come work for you is becoming one of the biggest inhibitors to growth. Then I think you’re missing a big opportunity. And then in terms of where what’s broken, You know, 10 years ago, Harvard and McKinsey came out with what I thought was game-changing research that kind of killed every aspect of the purchase funnel.

[00:22:45] And the purchase funnel was this sacred marketing construct that we learned about ever since the Sears catalog in the early twenties, it was popularized by Northwestern university in the fifties, but it’s like most people today think that the [00:23:00] purchase funnel is a pretty good. construct and they talk about filling the top of the funnel with leads and qualifying them all the way down to purchase.

[00:23:06] And the Harvard McKinsey collaboration revealed. None of it is true because it was all invented before social media and mobile devices and search engines and all these things that allow for different elements of inbound market. And the perforation of choice. And so I think we have to just wake up and say to ourselves, what if everything I thought I knew about marketing was in fact, no longer valid, where would I start?

[00:23:31] What would I do differently? How would I spend my dollars differently? And that might be, I think that’s where, what you guys are doing with your search engine is really fascinating as well, because I think there’s just too much. surely Google’s the biggest or the most popular. They must be the best and just the nurses, but allows people to not take the five minutes necessary to read about the deficiencies or to investigate a better alternative.

[00:23:54] And I think we have to stop being lazy that way we should be constantly saying if this is what I was doing three years ago, should [00:24:00] I still be doing it today? Probably not. Cause the world’s moved

[00:24:02] Chris Kneeland: on. Yeah.

[00:24:03] Donny Dvorin: So,Chris, thank you so much for joining the podcast and where can people get.

[00:24:08] Chris Kneeland: the easiest thing is just to check us out@cultideas.com. We have lots of, content. You can get the book, you can get a scorecard, you can get,tickets for the gathering. We’re doing our best to try to,shout from the rooftops in as many ways possible that there is a better way. And, again, like I said, don’t take our word for it.

[00:24:25] Just copy the playbooks of the most beloved brands on the planet.

[00:24:29] Donny Dvorin: Great. Well, thank you so much for coming on today. We really.

[00:24:32] Chris Kneeland: No. Thank you, Donnie.

[00:24:33] Donny Dvorin: Thanks again for listening to another episode of the brave marketer podcast. I have a question for you. Do you want to stay on top of everything that’s going on with brave ads?

[00:24:45] Are you a marketer? Do you want to know about our new product launches? Do you want to know about marketing in a cookie plus world, but do you want exclusive content and industry. Sites where there’s a very, very easy way to do that. And that’s signing up [00:25:00] for our brave ads, insider newsletter, and you can do that@brave.com forward slash ad news.

[00:25:08] Again, that’s brave.com forward slash a D N E w S. And one other special special treat for you listeners. Do you want some brave swag, some free, brave swag? Well, if you do just do two things, write us a review on apple podcasts, and then just tell us that you wrote a review. So we know ad sales@brave.com.

[00:25:33] So again, we’re going to send you swag. All you gotta do is write a review, an email. A D S a L E s@brave.com and finally musical credits go to my older brother, Ari and special, thanks to Sam and Chez for all their amazing production work. And until next [00:26:00] time .