I met Shawn Phillips a few years ago and have slowly gotten to know him a bit in the last 6 months. I’m one of those “unfit” clueless people who never heard of his brother Bill’s book “Body for Life” back when it was changing the world. I managed to be totally clueless while they grew their EAS supplement company and sold it. I

Yep, that was me, sitting on my ass watching TV while Shawn was changing the shape of the world.

So, why am I interviewing Shawn? Hey, it’s never too late to start paying attention to getting stronger and eating better and growing older with a bit of grace. Is it?

It’s an admittedly awkward interview on my part. It’s half confession, half therapy session.

Shawn’s passion is men’s health in those “middle” years. We’re not young guys any more and we’re not old-timers.

I like his idea of sustainable fitness. I like his Full Strength protein shakes. I like Shawn’s passion for education and his concern for the state of men’s health.

Here’s a chart from his book, Strength For Life, that will help you understand the phases of fitness that he and I discussed. I hope you enjoy the interview.

Don’t expect many direct applications to advertising and marketing. You won’t find them in this book.

However, he doesn’t want to be known for just ringing the alarm bell and sending us all into hiding. So, he will be following the Pendulum with a new book called Invisible Heros. These are the type of people who can lead us out of whatever mess we find ourselves mired in for the next two decades.

If I were you, I’d have a happy movie ready to play after you listen to this one. You’ll need it.

Brett Feinstein - no doubt going negative

Brett Feinstein is a partner in the political advertising agency Pound & Feinstein.

He’s one of those guys that you have to get to know to understand. He’s loved and admired by those who take the time. If you know Brett Feinstein only superficially through Facebook or another near anonymous web arena, you probably only think you know him. That’s because he treats Facebook as his own psychology lab; questioning, pushing, shocking and provoking to see what kind of reaction he can get. It can be alarming…if you don’t know Brett.

I’ve known him for almost 10 years now and I always enjoy getting together for a meal when I can catch up with him or on Skype for a podcast interview. We talked for almost 4 hours. Most of it after I shut down the recorder.

I still ended up cutting about 30 minutes out of our official podcast interview just to get it close to an hour.

If you’re a student of marketing and advertising, you’re gonna like this one. We compare and contrast the various strategies used by retailers and candidates. I was surprised, enlightened and entertained through the entire conversation and I hope you will be too.

What I left on the cutting room floor was mostly a conversation about Facebook that got a little personal for a few third parties. So, I decided not to share it.

We did cover campaign strategy, messaging, research, direct mail and the life of a political campaign staffer.

NOTE FROM DAVE:  The “SoundBites” podcasts are usually re-written in an article style (via Shortcut Blogging), but this one was such an interactive conversation that I decided to simply use the transcript. Enjoy the game!

So far…in these pre-game days, this is my fave: Beuller? Beuller?

Want to read the transcript?

Chris Loghry: Welcome to BrandingBlog SoundBites with Wizard of Ads partner Dave Young. Dave wants to talk Super Bowl. I didn’t know you were into football.

Dave Young: I’m not into football, Chris.

Chris: Oh, you’re into advertising.

Dave: Yeah, that’s right. [laughs] That’s right. Everybody gets focused on the Super Bowl ads every year, don’t they? I mean…

Chris: Oh, they do.

Dave: The die-hard sports fans, of course, want to watch the game. And there are some of us that would just rather see the ad reel at the end of it.

Chris: And there are a lot of people that just watch it for the ads. Of course, now with You Tube and other sources you don’t really have to sit through the whole thing, but…

Dave: That’s true. And sometimes those ads are released on YouTube even before the game.

Chris: So, what’s been your thoughts on Super Bowl advertising? I haven’t even looked to see what kind of rates they’re getting this year. It always seems to go up no matter what the audience, doesn’t it?

Dave: It really does, and last time I paid attention, wasn’t it about a million dollars a second, something like that?

Chris: Something like that. It’s, you know… it’s crazy expensive.

Dave: And, you know the big selling point is the huge reach…

Chris: The captive audience worldwide.

Dave: Yeah, it’s a gigantic audience. And so, if you remember conversations we’ve had about the advertising performance equation and reach versus frequency, what the Super Bowl offers is this huge, huge reach. And reach is just the number of people that an ad reaches. Frequency is how many you’re reaching and you measure frequency over, you know… yearly, weekly, monthly, whatever. And so when we buy radio, for example, our goal is to try to reach people three times in a week. And it usually takes 20 or 30 ads, depending on the station—sometimes more, sometimes less—to accomplish that.

Chris: Super Bowl advertisers aren’t getting much of that then, aren’t they?

Dave: No, no

Chris: With one ad.

Dave: For the most part, yeah. There may be a few companies that buy several ads.

Chris: True

Dave: But yeah, you’re getting a frequency of one with however many gazillion people you have. It’s extra large reach with minimal frequency. The only problem with it… it can be a good thing, depending on the business, right? So, if you’re a big brand that does business with people year-round, all the time, day in, day out, You’re Coca Cola. You’re Chevrolet. You’re just a giant corporation that it can be a good exposure for you, I guess is the thing. If you’re just trying to sell something… it can be a little weird and it can be strange to try to figure out if it’s a good buy or not.

Chris: It can all also backfire, can it not?

Dave: Well it can, because you’re putting all your eggs in one basket.

Chris: Right.

Dave: So if you’re a company that has to save up all year so you can buy your Super Bowl ad… I think it can be either a waste of money or really harmful to your business.

Chris: You would advise against it in most cases, I’m guessing.

Dave: In most cases, sure. And there are some companies that just have money to burn and they want to be on the Super Bowl and it’s important to them… I think of Go Daddy, for example. They always have some Super Bowl ad that’s just got racecar drivers and hot chicks in it.

Chris: Right. And you wonder, “What’s the point?”

Dave: Yeah, the funny thing is, they’re not relevant to the business they have.

Chris: Right

Dave: Right. They try to get you to their Web site and, “Hey, you’ll see more by going to our blog,” or whatever but they don’t talk about what it is the company does. So, strangely enough, if you remember some of those Super Bowl ads from before the dot-com bubble… do you remember that? When all these Internet companies…

Chris: Before the bubble burst?

Dave: Before the bubble burst, yeah. The Super Bowl was full of these bizarre ads from these companies that are no longer around.

Chris: I was just going to say… companies that don’t exist anymore. [laughs]

Dave: And it was just a monumental waste of money buying these ads because they weren’t relevant to what the company did. Go Daddy survived despite that because they offer a valuable service and they do it pretty well… they just have this bizarre kind of marketing concept that I’ve never quite figured out because it’s just not relevant to the services that they offer. They’re an Internet registrar and they offer [laughs] those kinds of services. They don’t have anything to do with racing. They don’t have anything to do with models. That seems to be…

Chris: And up to this point, it seems to work. We’ll see how long it lasts.

Dave: I don’t think they’re successful because they’re super bowl ads.

Chris: Okay.

Dave: I think they successful despite their super bowl ads. They’re spending money on Super Bowl because Bob Parsons wants to spend money on the Super Bowl. The owner of Go Daddy thinks it’s fun to spend money that way. And they’ve got loads of money.

Chris: Sure.

Dave: And that’s what they do with it. I don’t think the super bowl ads are driving business for them, but I couldn’t tell you…

Chris: What about recall? What about two months down the road when someone’s thinking, “I’ve got to register a domain name. How about that [laughs] what was it? Go Something?” Any of that?

Dave: I think you’re more likely to think, “Where can I find a video with Danica Patrick in it?”

Chris: You think it’s more of that?

Dave: Well, what else are you going to remember form those ads?

Chris: Well, that’s true

Dave: If they don’t talk about domain name registration, I guess they’re assuming that males are going to go there looking for more pictures of these girls and if they don’t know what Go Daddy is, come to the realization that, “Oh, Go Daddy is where I can register domain names.” And maybe some day they’re going to need to register a domain name. I don’t know. I think it’s a line item in Go Daddy’s marketing budget just called, “Ego.” And that’s… [laughs]

Chris: You and I are agreed that we don’t get it.

Dave: Yeah.

Chris: Okay.

Dave: I think an extra large reach is like, if you decided… here’s where it works, here’s where it doesn’t. If you go to Costco or Sam’s and you decide, “You know what, I’m going to finally buy all the cheese I’m ever going to eat. I’m going to do it all at once.” [laughs] Does that make sense? Does that seem like a good buy?

Chris: No, not at all.

Dave: It seems kind of stupid even saying it. It feels stupid to say it. Now if you have… there’s probably other products that you can say, “You know, I think that I’ve got this big garage and I don’t want to put anything else in it. Mice can’t get in it. Maybe I’ll buy all the toilet paper I think I’ll ever need in my life.” Maybe that’s a good idea. I don’t know if it’s a good use of space or not, but it’s certainly something you could do. It just doesn’t make sense to most people. And I think in advertising you have to do what makes sense, and in order to do what makes sense, you‘ve got to study it a little bit more than just saying, “Oh, the Super Bowl is here. They offered me an ad for X-million dollars.” Or, my local whatever just called me up and said, “Hey, we’ve got this magazine. Would you like to buy a full-page ad for X amount of dollars. It reaches this many people.” And if your budget… if you don’t take frequency into account, it may not be a good buy for you. You’re buying reach without thinking about the long-term consequences. You’re marketing plan should be as long as your business plan is. You should look forward in your marketing, just as long as you plan on being around.

Chris: Because there’s plenty of ways to throw your money away.

Dave: There’s plenty of them.

Chris: But you want to spend…

Dave: People are not going to endure all the time. You’ve got to think about your buying cycle. You’ve got to think about frequency, you’ve got to think about what your competitors are doing. And not just look at large reach, no matter how much it costs.

Chris: Who are you picking in the Super Bowl, then?

Dave: I don’t even know who’s playing.

Chris: [laughs]

Dave: I’ll probably watch some of the ads.

Chris: How about we’ll get back together after the Super Bowl and talk about what happened.

Dave: Sounds good.

Chris: Well, we can talk about the Super bowl ads, maybe. All right… thanks Dave. You’ve been listening to BrandingBlog SoundBites with Wizard of Ads partner Dave Young. For more information visit Dave Young’s BrandingBlog.com. Please feel free to share this broadcast by sending the link or this mp3 to someone who can benefit from the information. And thank you for listing to BrandingBlog SoundBites with Dave Young.

Roy Williams has more to say on the subject of Reach and Gross Rating Points.

When you’ve got a writing mess (a dog’s breakfast, as my Aussie friends would call it) you need to call in an expert. Scribendi is to bad writing as Winston Wolf is to Jules and Vince.

Scribendi is a professional editing and proofreading company. I did some copywriting work for them a few years ago and reconnected with CEO Chandra Clarke for this podcast.

Chandra and I had a nice rolling conversation about how businesses can utilize her editing and proofreading services and why. I learned that her company has employees in every time zone on the planet and is available for projects 24/7, year round.

A couple of sites that I mentioned in the podcast were www.duhcorp.com and www.huhcorp.com which are fictitious companies on real websites with very creative tongue-in-cheek copy.

In case you’re wondering what kind of mess Vince and Jules have in their car… (If the bad words bother you, don’t play it. Seriously.)

This is age old advice in management circles.

Kinda funny how hard it is to do in practice. And it’s one of those topics where you look at business owners and managers and you think, “They really should take this advice.” I really want to talk about the “fire fast” but I’ll just touch briefly on the hire slow, because there are loads and loads of resources on how to hire people. Just remember that the worst thing you can do is hire the first person through the door that you think could probably learn to do the job.

The biggest pressure point on hiring somebody too fast is that often it’s the owner or manager that’s having to pick up the slack for not having someone there in the first place. So their goal is, “I need to get somebody in here so I don’t have to work as hard.” And yet, if you hire the first warm body that comes in the door, you can actually create bigger problems. Just Google “hire slow” and find some ways to hire better and hire more slowly and more deliberately. You’ll do a much better job of getting the right people in and you won’t have to fire as fast because you’ll have hired better.

The firing fast it’s really something that, if you’re not doing it, could really be a killer in your business. It can really damage things. Not only the way the customer perceives your business but the employees that work with them.

Just look at the different points of view.

From the manager: if you’re not firing fast, you’ve got somebody that’s just a drag on your time. You can’t get them to do what you want them to do. You can’t get them to do it well. You can’t get them to work well with other people.

From the co-workers’ point of view: keeping them is kind of a slap in the face because here you are paying this person that everybody knows shouldn’t be there, and you’re not paying as much attention to your good employees because the bad employee is taking up all your bandwidth. So the co-workers get upset.

You’re also damaging your reputation with your customers: we’ve talked about the Personal Experience Factor. A bad employee that is interacting with your customers is a recipe for disaster.

Finally the business owner perspective: it’s just a drain on profitability. You’re paying somebody that’s basically a cancer inside your organization.

The simple way to solve this is that if you want to improve morale, fire all the unhappy people.

That seems kind of glib and like it’s the punch line to a joke, but that’s really the core of it.

The unhappy people are going to fall into one of three camps. They’re either victims “Oh they just work us too hard, they expect too much of us.”

Or they’re non-believers. “Ah, I would never buy the car that we sell.” They don’t use your products. They don’t believe in the kinds of things that you’re doing in your business. So they’re just poisoning everybody. Again, they’re there for a paycheck.

Finally, the know-it-alls. These are the people that they’ve been around so long, “Oh, I’ll tell you why we can’t do it that way. You know, we tried that ten years ago, that’s not going to work.” That’s the know-it-all attitude. Those can sometimes be turned around, but usually they’re so set in their ways that they’re hard to turn around.

Last summer, a client of mine actually went through and got rid of the victims, the non-believers, and the know-it-alls. They got rid of all their unhappy people. They have three retail stores and they cleaned house of those people. Their sales for Christmas this year were up 24% over last year, unreal in a retail environment. I don’t know what the average was this year for Christmas versus the previous 12 months, but to be up 24% is pretty good. I don’t know how much of that to attribute to getting rid of the unhappy people. But the people that they kept sold a heck of a lot more, and their stores were just more fun to be around.

Your other employees will be so happy, so relieved to get rid of those victims, non-believers, and know-it-alls. They know those people have been dragging down the business.

Sometimes you may have to rely on co-workers. Meet with all of them, and they’ll all tell you who the victims, the non- believers, and the know-it-alls are. You won’t have too much trouble identifying the people that you need to let go if you ask all of your employees. The hard part about it is, from a manager or a business owner’s point of view, you want to be a caring boss. You want to be empathetic. You want to give people as many chances as they deserve. And I’m not saying don’t do that but, don’t do that. I am saying don’t do that!

Give them what they deserve, but don’t let them keep screwing up. You’re just messing up your business. You’re just destroying your reputation in the marketplace, with other employees, with your customers. You just can’t afford to do it. Fire fast. Hire slow. It’s been said a million times, but it’s never been more true and the beginning of the year is a good time to turn over a new leaf. Make that your New Year’s resolution. “We’re going to fire faster this year.”

Please feel free to share this podcast by sending the link or the MP3 to someone who could benefit from the information.

BrandingBlog Soundbites are produced using the Shortcut Blogging method.

Many business owners know that they should be blogging. Why? Because, blogging creates relevant content on your site, gives you increased credibility as an expert and gives people a reason to talk about you in a good way.

Trouble is, most business owners are so time-deprived that they just can’t make writing a priority.

Hiring a ghost writer for your blog won’t save you much time. You’ll have to spend a lot of time with the writer just making sure he/she understands your business and then going over revisions before posting.

We’ve made it simpler. Think about it this way…if the local radio station called you up and asked you to go on the air for 10 minutes to talk about your favorite subject, would you hesitate to say “Yes”? Of course not.

What if you were able to brainstorm a year’s worth of “favorite” topics and then have a weekly interview where you covered each one? Yes, again? Of course!

Paul Boomer and I have taken that idea and made it a service for business owners. We’ll produce weekly interviews, post them as podcasts on your site, create articles based on your spoken words and post them as accompanying blog posts. All you have to do is show up for the interviews…and we’ll batch them in once-a-month recording sessions.

Our guiding mantra has been, “How can we make blogging so easy for a business owner that they will feel like their contribution is really a break in their work instead of something that adds to the load?”

The business owner shows up for the interviews, we do the rest. All of it.

Yes, this is a shameless plug. But, I’ve been telling you to blog for almost 8 years now. Have you done it?

To sweeten the pot, we’ll even buy you a microphone just like the one pictured here. You’re gonna sound like a million bucks.

What really made this one fun is that we were face-to-face instead of on Skype. We were both in Palm Springs to have an annual meeting with a client that we’ve worked with almost as long as we’ve been Wizard of Ads partners. This past year our retail client grew 28% over the previous year. That’s a big deal any way you look at it.

In this rambling conversation, we discuss trends in societal change, sports (was it baseball or football?), politics and New Year’s Resolutions, or the lack thereof. You’ll learn about Michele’s F.A.R.E. mantra and my own twist on it.

I hope you enjoy it. I think I managed to maintain my family friendly rating on iTunes. Somehow, turning on the recorder kept us both from flinging f-bombs around the room.

This picture was from her Wonderbranding Class at Wizard Academy on Halloween, 2007. Yes, she taught the class dressed like this.

Until you have to spell it. Or search for it.

Stoopeed.

We chatted about 3 of his amazing creations. RealStatistics.com is an online graphing tool that lets you upload all of your business stats and helps you make sense of it all. If you need to keep your training ducks in a row, he’s also developed a platform called RethinkTraining.com for managing your company’s training materials while monitoring your trainees’ progress. Brilliant.

And, if you’re a local business that relies on brick & mortar sales, plus ecommerce, plus email marketing, plus putting your goods out there on Craigslist, all while keeping close tabs on what’s working and what’s not…his team co-developed GreySuitRetail.com. It’ll blow you away.

Raffy is truly one of the good guys on the internet. I met him when he was just starting to grow his empire. (This picture is a very young Raffy at Wizard Academy.)

At the end of the podcast, we talk a bit about Hana-Li, his very talented singer-songwriter wife. Check out Hana-Li on Facebook.