The Story Of America’s Favorite Sponge, The Future of Marketing, Simplicity Is On Prime & More.

Hallo!???? It's Sunday. I welcome you all to our new Marketingoal Experience.

Today's Sunday issue is more dense than the Thursday issue.

So, We've brought 4 big things to you.

The story of America’s favorite sponge, A brilliant advertising example from Amazon Prime, An optimistic perspective on the future of marketing, A lesson for life from marketing. And, there's more.

Hope you enjoy the stories.

Love you!

-WD???

Marketing Storytime

The Story Of America’s Favorite Sponge | Scrub Daddy

What’s the most boring thing in the world?

For most of you, It’s washing dishes.

But, this man with a smiley face sponge in his hand changed it from something tedious to something fun.

This is the story of Scrub?Daddy.

Aaron Krause is the hero in this story.?

He is the daddy of Srub Daddy.?

Aaron started his entrepreneurial journey when he was a kid.?

But his first choice wasn’t dishwashing. It was car washing.?

He was washing cars in the neighborhood throughout his high school years charging $10 for every car he washed.?

But, After graduating from high school, He went to Syracuse University to pursue a degree in psychology.?

The Difficult Decision

When he came back after graduating, he wanted to continue his entrepreneurial journey by starting his own car-washing business.

But his family’s reaction to his decision wasn’t a pleasant one.?

After hearing the news from Aaron, They were disappointed in him. His mom was crying. and his grandma even said,?

‘Just disown him’.

So what did he do??

He restarted the journey from his home garage.?

Aaron scaled his car washing business to some degree within 3 years and sold it to form another company called Dedication To Detail, which sold buffing and polishing pads for the automotive industry.?

After years in business, In 2008, He sold the company to 3M, a multi-national manufacturing giant for millions of dollars.

The Birth of the Scrub?Daddy

One day, Aaron’s wife told him to clean the lawn furniture.?

So he went to clean it and tried to scrub it with a normal green and yellow sponge.?

What happened? It scratched the paint off the furniture.

Then, The eureka moment happened.?

Something came to his mind.?

The scrubbers. The round hard scrubbers look like a face that had been left out after selling his company.?

He grabbed one and put it in the warm water to clean the furniture. Suddenly the rock-hard thing became totally soft.?

He didn’t know that. Because They didn't even try them that way before.?

Then in the night, he tried washing dishes with them. He also cut a smile on it to clean silverware on both sides.?

It was so comfortable and easy to use.?

It gets hard in the cold water and soft in the warm water. wow!

The scrub daddy was born.

After the moment of invention, He knew that was the thing.?

Aaron took $150 000 outta his own pocket and up it to form the company and secure a patent for Scrub Daddy.?

But, Dude was so smart.?

He left out details of the scrub’s material composition strategically to protect it from thieves.?

Because If you wanna patent something, you wanna explain it to them, which is not a good thing in a world full of thieves.?

Now, the product was ready to go to the hands of people.?

The Early?Days?

Every real entrepreneur knows that the earliest days of a company are the hardest days of them.?

For Aaron, there was a giant problem he had to face which could throw him out of business.

Which was that the product was quite expensive and he had no chance to justify the price tag.?

People don’t know about the product, why it’s so special, and why it’s different from all the other products.?

They didn’t hear about it on TV, newspaper, or anything.?

So, When an everyday person sees the price of the product they go like,?

‘$4 for this piece of sponge? Huh! I’m not a fool. ’?

If people don’t understand the product, they will compare it with all other products on the shelf area.?

While he was dealing with this problem, Aaron had the opportunity to bring his products to multiple local grocery stores in Philadelphia thanks to a good friend of his.

And he didn’t take it for granted. He knew what it would take.?

Rather than taking the products the the shelf, he made some display shippers to display the products.?

Then, He went to those stores by himself and pitched his products to people throughout the week to bring Scrub Daddy’s first customers.

He did this while he was still working at 3M.?

The game went on.

He didn’t stop there. He got the press and took his company story to the front page of the Philadelphia Inquirer. ?

They helped them sell 2 -3 scrubs a minute.?

The Shark Tank?Moment?

But, the big- bang happened in July 2012, when Scrub Daddy appeared on Shark Tank.

Aaron went to the stage and nailed it with an infomercial—like presentation which was marked as one of the most interesting product Shark Tank appearances ever.?

He asked for $100,000 for 10% equity of the company.?

While Mark and Robert left, the other 3 sharks, Lori, Daymond, and Kevin went on a tight bidding war.?

It was fire. They started fighting with their offers like little children.

Finally, Aaron got Lori’s $200,000 investment for a 20% company stake.?

Scrub Daddy found its angel, The queen of QVC.?

After the premiere, the website visits and sales exploded. In just 24 hours, Scrub Daddy sales hit the million-dollar mark.?

Major Retailers like Walmart and Bed Bath & Beyond reached them to get Scrub Daddy to the shelves of their stores.?

Raising the Scrub?Family?

With the success of the original Scrub Daddy, Aaron got the resources to make more products and create the Scrub family.?

Innovation in mind.?

Once the Scrub mommy showed up, the family got expanded fast.?

Now the scrub family has over 20 products all the way from dishwashers to mobile screen cleaners.?

Eco-friendly products, Dye-free healthier products, Drill cleaners, Toilet cleaners, mobs, seasonal items, special scented products etc, etc.?

But even though there were lots of products, they stayed intact. Every product drove enough sales to the company.

Social Media Craze and Engaging?Fanbase?

The next big breakthrough happened for Scrub Daddy when they went on Social Media.?

They created funny videos with their Scrub Daddy products. Every video has at least one product placement.?

But unlike most companies who do boring shit just to make push an advertising message to people, they gave people value to their viewers.?

The marketing strategy was simple.?

Make people laugh out loud.?

What happened??

It totally worked. Their funny videos which have a person in the back of the camera yelling, screaming, and doing weird stuff with the scrubs, gained traction all over social.?

‘Aggressive Marketing’.?

Those videos went viral and people started engaging with the videos. With each and every piece of content, they created an army of fans for their brand.

As one of them, I can tell you that I’m waiting for their next content piece.

When that TikTok notification pops up on my phone, I forget all the other things and go there to watch it.

Could you believe that young people are obsessed with a dishwashing sponge??

Huh! They said the internet is a dangerous place. Umm.. Really??

But, How much advertising dollars does Scrub Daddy earn with each video? I don’t think the effect can be justified with an arbitrary number.?

That kind of engaging community can carry a brand to do anything. Because the scrub community goes with them anywhere.?

Scrub Family isn’t alone.?

The Success As a conclusion

Now, Scrub Daddy is worth hundreds of millions of dollars to become the second largest company in the history of Shark Tank.?

They sold more than 25 million of their core product, the original Scrub Daddy which has become the most successful product featured in Shark Tank.?

Their community??

With close to 4 million followers on TikTok alone, Scrub Daddy now has an army of people on social media to do marketing for them.?

And the two multi—millionaires, Aaron and Lori still working on their journey of changing dull cleaning activities into things that are interesting to do.?

That’s the story of Scrub Daddy.?

Brilliant Advertising

Simplicity Is On Prime?

This OOH campaign from Amazon is a prime example of advertising.

Wanna know why?

First, Let’s start with the goal of the campaign.

The goal of the campaign must be to let people understand their product, Prime.?

Prime is a product which expanded into a wide range of areas like Music, Streaming, Shipping, Book Reading etc, etc.?

Not surprising. Because they’re from the brand of everything, Amazon.?

Because of that, People who aren’t familiar with the service don’t have enough clarity on the product to purchase it. ?

Here, they bring that clarity to people's minds.?

What’s fascinating is the way they did that.?

They didn’t use all the facts and figures to rationalize things. They didn’t list all the things you can get with a Prime subscription.?

What they do here is signal the size of its range of services, the width of its area.?

On one side, there’s a person or a movie that people love, and on the other side, there’s an everyday product people familiar with.?

Both are completely different and have no connection between them.?

That’s exactly what Amazon trying to emphasize here.?

And in the bottom, with the simple line, they show that those two completely different areas connect through Prime.

This approach makes people curious about their service range. They press the curiosity button inside them.?

They aren’t just curious to find out what’s on Prime but to find out what’s not.?

With all these elements combined, They successfully communicate something hard to understand in a way that is easy to understand.?

It’s on?Prime.

Perspectives

Why I’m Optimistic About The Future of Marketing?

What’s Happening

Let’s take some time to see what’s happening in the marketing world right now.?

Google And Yahoo, the two email giants recently announced extreme guidelines for email marketers.?

According to Google, bulk email senders should authenticate outgoing emails, avoid sending unwanted emails, and make it easy for recipients to unsubscribe.?

Google also announced that they cut third-party browser cookies completely by the end of this year.

Also in recent years, Apple changed their OS to prevent tracking with their critical IOS 14.5 update which hit hard for social media advertising, and Mail privacy protection which caused inaccurate email performance data.?

I understand. For most of us, this news is depressing to hear.?

It makes some of us feel anxious about our careers.?

It’s okay to feel that way. Because this is change, it’s hard to accept it even though it benefits us in most ways.?

But, Today, I’m gonna unveil things to you from an entirely different perspective.?

Trust me, It’ll make you feel good.?

Looking back at the?history?

If you look back at recent history, especially at the industrial age, and if you compare that life experience with today’s day and age, you’ll understand that we made progress.?

We made improvements. We evolved.?

Things are a little bit better than it was in the past.?

In the past, People cut trees and destroyed the atmosphere with toxic materials. There were ongoing wars. slavery, and discrimination.?

They invented things that are harmful to the very planet we live and breathe in.?

But Now, things are a little bit better.?

There are fewer wars. We established human rights. People live with the environment now instead of living against it. People even rally for social and political issues.?

Countries made peace with other nations without trying to colonize them.?

Yeah, there are dozens of problems still here. But nobody can argue about the progress we made.?

Same with the technologies we invented to solve problems.

Every technology comes with its own disadvantages.?

After the telephone was invented, scammers tried to scam people.?

Even Telemarketers ( not every cold caller) tried to interrupt people with their mass calls.

The Internet is the same. evil people tried phishing attempts. They invented malware and viruses. Stupid nerds tried hacking internet devices.?

They did all those things to abuse this amazing thing.?

But, Things are better now. We improved things over time.?

Not because It just happened as an accident. But the people who cared about those problems led people with the right answers.?

People like Dr. King led people to fight against racism.?

Inventors like Henry Ford made things that carry human life forward.?

Authors like Jane Austen showed the world what women are capable of and inspired millions of women to write. Etc etc.?

I believe it’s the purpose of marketing. It’s to make change happen.

The purpose of marketing is the act of helping people solve their problems. (Defined by Seth Godin)

But, the problem is marketers forget or don’t even know the game they’re in.

Instead of solving problems people have, ‘marketers’ have become the problems.?

Need proof??

There are 8 billion people in the world. But, Not one person wakes up in the morning and says, ‘I wish there were more marketers in the world’.?

And, What’s the best part of being a problem??

Someone will come and solve the problem by eliminating you. ?

These so-called ‘marketers’ or ‘promoters’ have been a headache to people.?

They flooded people’s inboxes with spammy promo messages. Placed dull adds on social, used click baits to get views, sent stupid flyers to addresses, sent SMS messages without their permission, etc, etc.?

But, Not anymore.?

All these were possible because there were not enough associated costs for making those bad choices.?

You could be a headache to most people and still be fine. Yeah, you couldn’t win. But you could survive.?

Not anymore.?

With AI and ChatGPT, anyone can generate a dull marketing message, email, or something.?

Already, the price of being a part of this broken system is getting lower and lower.?

With the shifts that are happening right now, I see a future that looks like this.?

(Note : I'm just talking about the bright side.)

In the future, there will be no browser cookies.?

A cookie-less world.?

There would be little to no cameras. If you want to place a camera, you will need people’s permission.?

The cold emailing will end. It will be replaced with warm?—?emailing.?

SEO ranking will be based on more contextual metrics.?

Organizations will be forced to change their systems that won’t benefit the customers.

Companies that aren’t friendly to the environment will face public rejection and then fail.

Most fundamental marketing metrics we know today like view count, open rates, and click-through rates will be replaced with contextual metrics.?

Because there will be fewer distractions, the price for quality marketing will be higher and higher.

With all of this, marketing & technology will be transformed from being labeled as distractions to pure tools that help our lives.?

This future will happen only if the people like us work for it.?

The way we could step into this future is simple.?

It’s mentioned as the golden rule in the Bible.

Treat people in the way you would like to be treated.?—?Matthew 7:12?,Luke 6:31

Life Lessons From Marketing?

Phone Calls And Relationships?

I hated getting calls.?

I didn’t like somebody calling me, even my mother, the person appear the most in my call log. Receiving a call from somebody wasn’t really a pleasant experience for me.?

And I didn’t know why.?

Even after I answer the call, from the way I say ‘Hello’, You can feel that I hate it. And I tend to end the conversation quickly.?

But a week ago, something happened.

When I was scrolling on TikTok, I found a song that I truly adore.?

It’s the beautiful ‘let’s lay in the dead grass’ song.?

So, I wanted to change my ringtone to that song.

But, I am not a ‘settings person’. I rarely change my phone settings. Especially sound settings. Most of the time, I’m okay with the defaults.

But, I downloaded the song, went to the sound settings, and set the song as the ringtone.?

Also, I adjusted a few sets of settings like vibration and volume.?

So guess what? It changed my perception of recieving calls completely.?

Now, I love it when someone calls, even a stranger because I love the ringtone. Unlike in the past, I don’t say ‘Hello’ with exhaustion or try to end the conversation quickly.?

So what happened?there??

Phone Calls, We receive them every day.?

But, Do you like getting calls? You’ll say not much. or not really.

If you ask the question yourself, you’ll find that It’s not just because of the one who calls.?

It’s also because of the way your phone signals it.?

When you get a call, the first thing you experience even before seeing the name of the person is your ringtone.?

If you don’t like the way your phone signals the call firsthand, It’ll negatively impact your entire conversations.?

But, If you change it to a piece of music that interests you, It’ll flip things on its heads.?

You can try things.?

If you’re a normal person, change it every once in a while with the hit song.?

It’ll bring you some kind of novelty.?

Or If you’re a lover, set a song that remind you romantic memories of you two.?

It’ll bring you closer to each other.?

If you do these these right, over time, you’ll surely strengthen your human relationships.?

Is it just the ringtone?

No. Your phone also uses vibrations to signal you the incoming calls.

It creates more urgency to answer the call.

But, The problem is by default the vibration modes create unnecessary urgency in our minds.?

This creates distractions that are hard to ignore.?

It creates a fake goal in our minds.

It convinces us to think the goal is to answer the phone as quickly as we can and get the message or we’re gonna miss out.

So we forget all of our important work for a moment and answer it.?

But, It’s not real.?

The goal needs to be to have a quality conversation with the person on the other side.?

By hurrying you to answer the phone It also subconsciously make you leave the conversation quickly.?

Over time, this behavior negatively impacts the health of your relationships.?

But, If you change the settings to not create that kind of urgency If you change it to just give a calm signal of incoming calls,?

It’ll change things completely.?

You can take your time and settle your ongoing work, and then you can answer the phone or call back.?

Now, you have time and energy to have a quality conversation.?

…

The size of these changes??

Small.?

The impact it bring??

Huge.?

Congrats! You just spent your time reading something that truly matters.

Now, It's time to say goodbye for now!

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