ECC119– Primal Branding
Patrick Hanlon: [00:00:00] People are already hardwired to gather in groups of shoppers, tourists, fans, music fans, sports fans, whatever it is. This objective share is how do we get them to gather around Duke? How do we create a community that attracts people and brings them in? And we have a couple metrics that be useful. For the listener,
Intro: welcome to Endless Coffee Cup, a regular discussion of marketing, news, culture, and media for our complex digital lifestyle.
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Matt Bailey: Hello dear listener and welcome to another edition of the Endless Coffee Cup podcast. As always, we are joined with by a guest and today’s guest you may have heard of, and you may have heard of his book as [00:01:00] well.
We’ve got Patrick Hanlin and he is the author of Primal Branding. I was introduced to Patrick from Jason, part of the marketing podcast network. You know, Jason over at, uh, wind Influence, and he recommended Patrick as a guest. And since then, Patrick and I have gone back and forth a little bit. I’ve been really looking forward to this interview.
Patrick, how are you doing today? I’m doing great. Thanks for having me. Very good. I’m excited to be here. Thanks for coming people. Patrick, tell us just a little bit about your background and what is it that got you into branding. Sure. I was in advertising
Patrick Hanlon: and uh, I wrote Super Bowl spots and worked in other famous brands.
I worked in Madison Avenue in around the two thousands. And I do go back that far back further, even further than that, in the two thousands, there was this question that kept reoccurring in, uh, meetings when we would be presenting a, you know, a big advertising campaign and the [00:02:00] president or a director or someone up at the top of the chain would pop up with a question.
They would say, you know. Google isn’t advertising and they’re doing great. Starbucks isn’t advertising and they’re doing great. And so why should we be spending $30 million on this advertising campaign and pregnant pause in the room and someone would pull something out of their butt as an answer and you know, something about experience or, oh, Google’s crazy.
Anyway, you know, those internet guys. But anyway, it was a lurking question and at that time. People were talking about the Apple Cult. Now remember at For Apple, Steve Jobs had just come back and that was about the time of the Think different campaign. Yeah. And which was of course created out of nothing.
Out of nothing in the sense that Apple usually advertised a new product announcement. But this was created at the time when that Steve Jobs just come back. [00:03:00] Apple was more or less living off of this credit card. I know that he had only invol limited amount of time to come up with a new product and that he came out with the iMac, so the blueberries.
So it was the Apple cult and the Nike tribes and so forth. Some people were talking about this and how people had sort of a almost religious zeal for some brands, products and services, and not for others. And how did that happen? Well, what they did know is that it had nothing to do with advertising. And so.
I had some time to figure it out. And was prompted to start looking at what similarities all the big major brands had in common. What did they have in common other than advertising? Mm-hmm. And so they all had a creation story. We knew that Apple started in the garage. We knew that Coke started at a drugstore.
We knew that Nike started out of the Phil Knight, started on the track field actually, and then they all had. I said, [00:04:00] uh, think different. I was big for Apple and Nike was just do it right and you know, and all these things. So they all had some kind of. Deliberate, you know, tagline usually. But it was some something that held them together.
Some words that were like a creed. Mm, and simplify for the Marines. Of course, men and women are created equal for the United States, et cetera, et cetera. And then they all had icons, though I switched the American flag, the Apple product design, power design. Et cetera. They all had rituals, whether it was, you know, going into the Starbucks, which at that time people had made this huge transformation back in 19 99, 98, and so forth of having coffee at home, but having it going to a Starbucks and spending $3, God help us for a cup of coffee.
What is it, $7 now, God or something, right? Oh, it’s insane. Yes. And so, uh, $3 for a cup of coffee when you could get a cup of coffee for a buck, you know? Mm-hmm. [00:05:00] Or 50 cents at some places. And so for a really bad cup of coffee. And so it slipped this ritual, of course, there were all sorts of rituals changing, um, going from, uh, analog to digital.
Mm-hmm. Right? And the ritual of, you know, having them running a marathon. Most people, you’re old enough maybe to remember this, but most people did not run marathons originally because the creation story of behind marathons was the guy who ran and then he dropped dead, the original marathon. Not a great celebration, but Right.
And so who wants to do that? Yes. But anyway, we had a creation story. They had a creed, they had icons, they had rituals. They had a group of words that they were surrounded with. Ice grande, skinny decaf latte or iPad, iMac, this, that, and the other thing, or other words that kind of, uh, helped define the process or who words belonged to that community.
Right? Really And every day there were new people walking into the Starbucks trying to figure. What [00:06:00] a large coffee was over medium was, or nice round a decaf latte with the upset. And then there were non-believers, people did not want to do that. Mac versus pc. Uh, Coke versus Pepsi. I mean, I grew up in the Burger Wars, you know McDonald’s versus Burger King.
Yep. And there were all these imports versus exports, communists versus. Democracy. And I thought that we just wanted something to bang our heads against as human beings or as Americans or whatever. And uh, so that was a part of this construct. And then finally there’s the leader. And so then I wonder, wondered if there were any other pieces?
Uh, ’cause every time I started adding it up, I started finding another one. But there are are only seven. Mm-hmm. And, um. Someone tries to add an eighth or combine them or something. But, uh, Darrell leaves in his book, um, the YouTube formula or Method, they usually have his book laying around to check the title.
I always, the title Half Wrong. Anyways, uh, Darrell leaves his book. She, he [00:07:00] says there is an eighth one, which is to belong, which is true, but that’s not a part of the code. That’s just the result of all the pieces of seven. Pieces coming together. Okay. But basically these seven pieces they pulled together, we call a strategic brand narrative.
And once you have them together, you ping both the rational parts of our brains and the emotional parts of our brains so that things just made sense. And you feel something, and you think something about these, uh, entities, people’s places and things. Things feed products, they attract you. If you have the, have the same beliefs, so, and beliefs.
You build a belief system and that tracks others who share your beliefs. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a person, a celebrity places, whether it’s designated land or, uh, the other side of town or the other side of the country that you wanna move to, or if it’s things, products and services, which is of course where we devote most of our time.
So we help launch new [00:08:00] products and services, or re-engineer existing brands. To fit new demographics, psychographics, or just new marketplaces? New geographies. Mm-hmm. You know, moving the process, uh, works all over the world. The construct works all over the world and. Done all over the world, big Senate, Antarctica, which is our structural.
Matt Bailey: That’s great. That’s great.
Patrick Hanlon: So if anyone listening has a project in Antarctica. Alright, Antarctica, please
Matt Bailey: take us with you at penguins. The Penguins will, they’ve got a story to tell you just walked us through your seven points of primal branding and I love that. So you had the companies asking you, they don’t have to spend any money.
Why do we have to spend any money? What is it that caused you to make that break? You outlined this. Sure. So how do you then answer that question? That’s
Patrick Hanlon: great. I came up with the idea of PR Iranian in 2001, the summer of 2001. And I shared it with a bunch of people that I knew at Apple, at American Express and elsewhere.
Had people own [00:09:00] company, their own companies, and said, doesn’t make any sense at all, you know, and I just came up with this, you know, and they said, yeah, it does make sense. And so. I didn’t do anything in August. We’re in New York now and no one does anything in New York in August except go to the Hamptons or Cape Cod or Maine or someplace.
Right. And so I, uh, waited until September got booked for, to speak at a national convention, and I got some, uh, appointments with people, and then nine 11 happened. Mm. This is 2001, right? And so nine 11 happened and the world flipped and people weren’t, didn’t care so much about a new branding philosophy or whatever.
And so I stuck it in my file and um, I brought it out when I was asked to speak at different places. And I went on my merry way, did ads, super Bowl spots and so forth. And then. A couple years later, someone came out of the audience. I was speaking at a university about primal branding and asked me if [00:10:00] I liked re reply stuff and some other guy’s stuff.
And he said, I like those things and I’m gonna take that, combine your thing and do my own thing. I thought, okay, good luck. And I was telling a friend of mine that they said, pat, you need to read a book. And so I did. And then that came out in two, I wrote in 2005, took about three months. To do that because I already had the speech anyway, right?
So I just sealed in around it and yeah, it came out in 2006 and Simon Schuster, and then there you go. But while I was writing the book, I realized that I didn’t have to write ads anymore. I could do strategic things, but because I could do the ads, I knew how to do that. I know intuitively how to turn.
What we call primal code, which is deconstructing the brand. I know how to pull it back together again and then distribute that across social. What today we have is social, traditional and digital media. Right? Right. And so I know how to [00:11:00] slipstream. That took a while for that understanding to happen because you know, the last 20 years we’ve.
Had 20,000 different apps and other things come up and for Meka and you know, Nate figure another one to, you know, all the way to Tim Todd. Mm-hmm. And then in 2000, well somewhere along the line, PR Brandy became a required reading at YouTube. Um, a lot of YouTubers picked up audience scroll charts, you know, hockey Stig.
People use Primal to, not only for their own site for, but for helping, you know, there’s YouTube videos out there for just for anything. Yeah. Primal branding from automobiles to real estate agents, so using primal.
Matt Bailey: I like how you call it a system. It’s not a bunch of creatives behind a door and all of a sudden we come out with, you know, a logo or, or something like that.
It is systematized, but one thing you’d say about it is that it’s predictive and that caught my eye. Mm-hmm. So what about this is predictive? I [00:12:00] love it. ’cause in my teaching I tell people if, if I can predict it and I know it’s coming, I can monetize it. So that’s always a word that catches my eye.
Predictive is
Patrick Hanlon: interesting and because most people don’t put all these things together, which is why we have very few truly powerful brands, maybe Apples Diese, uh, Starbucks, Coca-Cola, you know, you can name Google, you can name a few of ’em. There’s probably two handfuls of companies you can name off the top of your head.
The rest of all, you know, the other 99% may or may not have all it be safe. And so there’s always a room for improvement and there are always things to. Update make better. And the other thing of course, is that with social media and the inversion of what we call the marketing pyramid, where companies were starting at the top, here’s how we want you to understand our product or service that’s coming out.
Talking down to the consumer customer at the very bottom of the pyramid has flipped. And so you need to. Figure out [00:13:00] how to do that now, and not as the voice of the company or of the advertising agency or whatever, but as the voice of the consumer. So how do you put that in consumer luggage so that you talk like they do, like you’re part of that community.
And so all of that takes some time and figuring out. And so we do that. That’s what we do. And some of this stuff, uh, we were way ahead of in some ways. The technology had to catch up to where Primal was already at. Mm-hmm. And I don’t mean that in some arrogant way, but that’s the truth. As soon as the iPhone came out, that was huge, but then it was really the integration of.
Being able to sign up for something, using Google or Facebook or some of the other things, and then it be automatically linked into that community. Right. That tech community. Mm-hmm. Right. That app, app community. And then how do you distribute the code, the seven piece, those seven pieces across social, [00:14:00] digital, and traditional media.
That’s kind of predictive. The results are not predictable, but you can predict that they will increase, you know, your audiences will increase, your sales will increase, your business will increase, will grow, uh, as a result of doing it. And we haven’t had any failures as a result of doing that. Doing so. So it’s always been a double digit increase of some kind.
Matt Bailey: Amazing, amazing. You make a statement, and this caught my eye because I like contrarian. Anytime anyone brings a contrarian view, I’m like, yes. We’ll get you on the podcast because it challenges the common thinking and one of the things I saw is the use of the traditional marketing is broken. Tell me more about that.
Well, yeah,
Patrick Hanlon: that’s pretty obvious. I mean, the traditional reliance was on television because with television you could reach, you know, 90% or plus percent of the American public just by placing an ad somewhere. And try to place it on, not just one of the net networks a bbc, [00:15:00] C-B-S-N-B-C, whatever, but on a couple and you reach X amount.
There’s, you know, awareness times frequency equals, you know, a number and you try to reach that number, you know, given your marketing budget. And it was very expensive. It took, you know, millions of dollars, uh, let’s see, seven to $12 million to launch a new product or just have a campaign. And I worked on IBM for a little while.
At that time, if you didn’t have $30 million behind the effort, they just didn’t do it a lot of times. And so the depended on what they were doing, of course. But you know, that’s a lot of key. So the ability to start a company using social media, it’s not free, but it’s sort of free, right? Yep. Um, it’s free in comparison to seven to $12 million or more affordable anyway.
And so the ability to do that. Took the air out of advertising. Mm-hmm. And now, of course, advertising. It used to be the only thing, not just the only thing, but it was in the group of things [00:16:00] that had supremacy over other forms of media. And today it’s just another form of media and equal to lobby on TikTok.
Mm-hmm. Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube. Now
Matt Bailey: do, do you see some of that broken model? People still trying to use it in the new channels? Hopefully not. I think most of
Patrick Hanlon: those companies are out of business style. That great sloughing off of the retail companies and others we didn’t really need in the first place probably.
But the third runners sort of sloughed off, you know, after 2008. So from that point, traditional marketing has been broken for sure. Mm-hmm. And the inversion of the pyramid, like I talked about earlier, reg of that split. From traditional to social voice of the people rather than the voice of the consumer, rather than the voice of the corporation has really taken place.
And the thing is, people are already hardwired to gather [00:17:00] in groups, communities of shoppers, tourists, fans, music fans, sports fans, whatever it is. And the objective share is how do we get them to gather around Duke? How do we create a community that attracts people and brings them in? And we have a couple metrics that will be useful for the listeners.
The first one is, is that. In the United States anyway, and this is based on an Edelman study. People need to see you in at least five different places before they’re aware that you exist. Hmm. So that’s five different places, not just on YouTube, not just on Instagram or TikTok, et cetera, et cetera. Not just a TV commercial.
And just to be able to say, yeah, I think of rid of those guys, or they’re cool, or that, yeah, I’ve seen that. They look cool. And then the other metric is it takes a hundred hours to make a friend. And so if you. Want to be more than just transactional. They want to create a broom or last for a while and bring in [00:18:00] an experience and an relationship.
Have a relationship with people. Mm-hmm. That takes a hundred hours. So you take that five times beyond five different kinds of media and a hundred hours, that’s just gives you some breadth and data of what needs to happen. So it’s five times in the us. In, uh, places like Singapore, I remember it’s something like 17 times.
And there you go.
Matt Bailey: So it
Patrick Hanlon: varies according
Matt Bailey: to the culture. Yeah. I love those metrics because it, it speaks so much more towards building and development rather than Yes, yes. One-offs. Yeah. Just relying on impressions or something like that. Let’s go. Let’s go viral. Yeah. You know? Right, right, right. Yeah. I mean, for years that was the goal of a company and I like these metrics because it speaks to developing that relationship.
Developing, yeah. You know, a focus that’s recognizable because, uh, you know, an impression, one-off base to it’s, you are not gonna carry that recognition [00:19:00] from one channel to the other, from one place to another. It has to be something. So I love that building mentality. Of we’re investing in this and this is the goal.
Those are great, great metrics. I mean,
Patrick Hanlon: people don’t like to hear the fact that you have to build because that sounds like it takes time and takes money and performance, performance, performance. But the, the sad, sad, sad, however of truth. Is that you can go viral and you can disappear, you can be a fast, and my great example of that is si who was the first performer first?
Anything to get a billion views on YouTube, right? Unfortunately he wasn’t able to take advantage of it because imagine s who, for those who don’t knows or remembers or whatever, he lip scenes gang them style. Yes. And he danced and did all these things. Korean, he introduced K-Pop to the world and and did all these crazy things.
And then. I compare [00:20:00] him with an Olympic performer. If he had been an Olympic performer, there have been crews talking to his mom, talking to his neighbor, his first grade, you know, teacher, you know, explaining who he was, where he came from, how he was different, how he was unique, his creation story, uh, actually all pieces of primal code.
Mm-hmm. And he would’ve been salty. We would’ve understand who he was, but he didn’t. And because he did not, you can go back to YouTube and see him reminiscing on how great it was to have been a fad. So if you want to be a fad, that’s what you do. You just go out there and get the performance, you get the metrics, you sell the stuff, and then you go away.
Right?
Matt Bailey: Hey everyone, this is Matt. And thanks for listening. Just a quick break in the middle of the podcast here to let you know there’s a couple ways that you can connect with us. The first is learn.site logic.com. That’s the learning site where you can see courses on [00:21:00] analytics, courses on digital marketing across paid search SEO multiple disciplines.
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Thanks again for being a listener of the endless Coffee Cup. And I look forward to hearing from you.
In a way he’s become a meme now rather than, you know, I’d love to know if that snowballed into anything, but that makes a lot of sense that it was just the now. Of it, the novelty of it. And when that wears off, we go to the next thing. Yep. Exactly. And that happens all the time,
Patrick Hanlon: right? [00:22:00] Mm-hmm. And so you, when you have your opportunity and, and that moment in the sun, you have to take advantage of that and build other things around yourself, build a story around yourself.
Mm-hmm. So this is really. I equate to being meaningless in the beginning because no one knows you. No one cares about you. No one knows anything about you to becoming meaningful. And where people do care and they care so much that they’re willing to create that success for you. And they do that through advocating, through telling other people, Hey, have you heard about this?
Or, where’d you get that bag? Oh, it’s a out this great place. Isn’t this cool? Et cetera, et cetera. And all the rest of the vernacular that we use to build. Communities around not just products and services, but around ourselves, because we belong as human beings. We belong to a lot of different communities.
Whether you’re a music fan, a sports fan, listen to podcasts, fan, you’re a marketing, you belong [00:23:00] to a family, you might be, um, an alumni. I have a school and be crazy about that. As you know, a football or basketball fan or however you express that. You belong to all these communities. All these communities have their own words that you used, right?
Or you’re a foodie, right? They have their own vernacular. They have their own creation stories, that have their own creeds. They only have their own non-believers know in sports, there’s the other team, right? There’s always someone to hate. Yep. And if you’re a lucky, a lot of you belong to a lot of these communities, and hopefully you do belong to a lot of communities, right?
So that makes you a part of the society rather than.
Matt Bailey: Alone in the basement somewhere. Yeah. So I, I wanna leverage that a little bit more. So where you’re going is more on the personal branding side. How is that different or how do you adapt that? So you are really trying to brand yourself as a personality or, or even, one question I received recently is a recent graduate, and the question was, do I apply [00:24:00] branding in now, trying to find a job and networking myself?
How do you modify that for that personal aspect?
Patrick Hanlon: Uh, you don’t modify it. You still use the seven pieces of code. You’re out. And we do this all the time. I get a call every week, either from a friend or someone out in the world who wants to change their life in some way. Mm-hmm. And so as you’re transitioning from one community to the next one, you have to figure out, okay, where do I come from?
And which elements, most of all, which pieces of that story are relevant? For this new transition to this new place that I want to go to or become a part of, what do I believe in? How do I dress for the occasion? What are the rituals? ’cause the rituals are different between communities. Mm-hmm. So, and if the words are different, you have to know what the words are.
Uh, if you wanna be a digital coder, the words are different than if you wanna become a vet tech. Yes. Or um. A poet, you know? And then who are the, [00:25:00] who are the non-believers certainly, but then who are the believers? And a lot of times those believers are mentors or designers that I admire or coders who I admire, or types of code that I admire, right?
Oh, you should be using Python, not something else, or whatever it is, right? And so chap GBT four instead of three, or instead of whatever other one is out there. There’s one called Jeremy or something, I think. Anyway, so which chat GPT are you using? Right. And then you’re the leader, of course. Mm-hmm. And so really that when it gets down to, with Primal anyway, is that anything that has a name is probably something that we believe in, whether it’s Gravity or Freedom, independence, democracy, cryptocurrency, uh, you name it all are supported.
By this primal code, by this translation of parts that [00:26:00] tells us you know, who they are, where they’re from, what they’re about, uh, how to talk about it, what they’re not or to become. Mm-hmm. And you know who the leaders are. And once you can do that, whether you’re a startup looking for funding, or I should also mention that, um, Darrell Leaves, she goes into great detail about how he used Primal to get.
The largest media crowdfund raise in the history of humankind, which was over $10 million. And they used Prival gap to, uh, produce their streaming series called The Chosen. Mm. If you’ve seen that or heard about that. Right. And so, so it’s very fundamental. Mm-hmm. The fundamental construct that I just happened upon.
And of course, I, I don’t know, I was reading reviews. Over the weekend, which is never a good thing to do. No. But anyway, the, uh, anyway, I was reading through something and someone had done, there were a lot of YouTube videos about Primal and I was, uh, reading the review of [00:27:00] one where they said, did Elon Musk use Primal?
I know for the fact that he did not, but his wife Justin did read the book. He told me, and so she knows Primal. He’s just smart. And and that’s what people like Coca-Cola and Apple and other students. They had the vision, they had the gut, gut instinct. They hired smart people and they were able to pull together where we’re from and what we’re all about, et cetera, et all pieces of code on their own.
And through time, over time. Right, right. And having enough money when they messed up. So I know that she didn’t use Paral, but the the point is, yes, you can use this for building your own brand. Certainly and for just about anything else,
Matt Bailey: concepts. Yeah. You went back to Darrell Eves and, and what they raised for the, the show there.
Yeah, I mean that was one of the things when I was going through the seven areas there, you know, and it’s very interesting. I was looking at one of your recent posts there. I kind of saw a couple things that, that yeah, there’s a lot of religious imagery in this. [00:28:00] Um, you know, and so it is, I understand where you’re coming from when you call it primal, because it’s almost built into us.
Um, I’m also looking at this, I see elements of the hero journey in here as well. So it’s unique to, I mean, not, you know, unique, but it’s part of who we are in storytelling. It’s got the religious, uh, overtones in it that really penetrate deeply into our psychology of what makes us human. Absolutely.
Patrick Hanlon: Yeah.
And I just remember what I was gonna say and that people were saying, well, people do this in marketing anyway. And yes, it’s like, of course the big dipper’s up there. Everyone knows that. But until you realize that it’s the big dipper. Or that DNA exists or that there is gravity, uh, you don’t know that it’s there.
Right? And so I think that I just found this pattern and that has always existed. Uh, someone once told me you didn’t do anything that St. Paul didn’t do, and I went, okay, [00:29:00] fine. But okay. That it has the ability to, I call it a belief system. Yeah. And because in the end, when you pull these pieces together, people start to believe in what you’re doing, whether you’re.
Selling oat milk or uh, falling to your knees. Uh, it’s just making that transition from something, like I said earlier, that’s meaningless to becoming meaningful. And for some people, this is how I end my talk. Is for some people it’s so meaningful that they’re willing to stand in front of a tank and see ’em in square or, or, and stand in front of a bull.
Matt Bailey: Yeah.
Patrick Hanlon: You know, in order to protect the release or stand up for their beliefs and, um, take a stand for their beliefs and as people.
Matt Bailey: That’s powerful. I wanna ask you this just as kind of a final question here, but you’ve got a lot of brands listed that you worked for, but I’d love to know, was there one project that you worked on where you just felt like.
I was made to do this. It just inspired you. The passion rose up [00:30:00] and you just felt like this is your purpose. Um, was there a project ever like that that just consumed you like that? Oh, there’ve been
Patrick Hanlon: several. I mean, brands that people would know about it. You know, Levi’s, brave software, um, sunrise Banks, which is the most socially responsible blank bank on the planet.
Mm-hmm. Um. They’re smaller, but they belong to the Global Alliance for banking. The values, their nonbeliever would be big banks, but very many. I mean, we worked with the UN that was. Fun. Yes. And, but you know, as a lot of people say, it’s the thing I’m working on now or the thing I’m working on next, that’s always the most exciting because there is a, been there, done, that sort of thing that goes on.
Yes. Initially it was always, how can I prove that this thing, we actually works in the market and every time we had a success and did. We used to be about our last slide, and this is that article I sent you that you referred to earlier. Uh, you might remember in the [00:31:00] last slide on our presentations. Our pitch was everyone who has hired us has either been promoted or gone on to a better job.
So that was kind of the last, uh. Theresa er advertising era arrogance, but we don’t work with the funnel. We work with the siv and the people that we have worked with have always come to us through word of mouth. And so we’ve never wanna let anyone down. They’ve only been a couple times where I think that we may have let people down, but, or not totally fulfilled, but for the most part it’s been 110% more than they expected.
And we, uh, strive for that. Mm-hmm. So it’s only once I think that way. Didn’t perform, perform as well as I would’ve liked wasn’t our fault. What’s typically the resistance that you run into? Because we’re word of mouth. Not everyone has heard of us, so we’re our own cult. Yeah. I think the resistance used to be traditional marketing.
What’s this show? You [00:32:00] know? So we would come in through the innovation group or the, uh, trends group or something like that as something new that was out there because we. We were legitimate and we were working with big companies at Levi’s, PepsiCo, um, Google, Microsoft, PayPal, and that took people by surprise.
Some people wanted to sign up for that, some people didn’t. And we don’t work the way that traditional agencies do, and we don’t look at social media or going viral as the end product, right? That’s not one of our KPIs. Our product is to build me into your product. Or service and make it meaningful and over a long time, it may.
So it’s long lasting and it’s not just a fad. Mm-hmm. And, um, it doesn’t take a long time to do that necessarily. Uh, it’s not the one hit thing on TikTok or can’t do it one quarter that Yeah. Yeah.
Matt Bailey: The one quarter turnaround or, yeah, by the end of second quarter. Yeah.
Patrick Hanlon: [00:33:00] Um, you do get a sales lift, but it might not be as.
Immediate Depends on what category you’re in, of course. Mm-hmm. All companies are different. I mean, I think that’s the thing that we look at human as marketers. We look at other companies and see what’s they’ve done successfully. And so we try to either transfer that, okay, they did this, but what can we do that, how can we do the same thing only different for our category or for our ad or spot or whatever it is.
It’s what we’re doing. And sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn’t work. Primal is able to do is take what’s inherently unique and different or above you and. Even if you’re in the same category, I mean, there’s a hundred kinds of jeans, there are 300 kinds of automobiles, you know, a hundred kinds of drinks you could have had this morning.
Right? And so it’s very hard at this point, uh, to differentiate yourself no matter what you’re doing. And so we live in a world of choices, but with the seven pieces of code, if you’re one or 2% [00:34:00] different, well you wind up being seven to 14, 15% different. Yeah. In the end. Yeah. Through each piece of code, and that’s enough to make a difference and to cause an uptick in whatever you’re doing.
So there you go.
Matt Bailey: Yeah. I, I love the idea of that as a system, that instead of focusing on one area, I can differentiate myself in multiple areas which leverage out and, you know, make a big difference. I love that statement, how you did that and how those work together. It gets back to that, uh, you know, I can’t improve one thing by a thousand percent, but I can work on these smaller things.
Get that incremental improvement your competition may
Patrick Hanlon: not be looking at at all. Right. And so, you know, 2010 years ago, not everyone was looking at scent, for example. Yeah. Yes. Except for aber Crom. And Yeah. And Chinese restaurants. But then over time, you know, people started [00:35:00] going, oh yeah. And now every hotel lobby has a scent.
Yes. You know, most stores have a scent, you know, attached to them. And all retail establishments did not music being piped in. Mm-hmm. Or if it was music, it was music zag. River, whatever happened to them? I have no idea. But they went away with calendar companies maybe, but it was horrible stuff to listen to.
It almost drove you out in a way, right? Yeah, but it was, it was scientifically designed to keep you in. But
Matt Bailey: you know, I’d rather listen to Bruce Springsteen. And funny you should say that, um, I think about a month ago I was in a Marriott. I woke up middle of the night and to the scent of a Marriott. It it’s like they had to be pumping it through the system at three in the morning because I immediately recognized it.
It was the Marriott smell, but it was just overwhelming at that point. Like, I didn’t realize they pumped it through at one time and then someone
Patrick Hanlon: got a little too busy. Yeah, I think
Matt Bailey: so. I think so. And that’s something that’s [00:36:00] always, uh, intrigued me too, about the, the music that’s being played and.
Throughout brand branded hotels. When you do travel, there’s, you know, in certain hotels you’re going to hear certain music. And, uh, right now I think we’re getting taken over by the, the lounge version of eighties music, so that’s, I hear that almost everywhere I go. It’s a good thing and it’s a bad thing.
Yeah,
Patrick Hanlon: it could be better. Yeah. Marriott’s interesting because I remember we’re in Beijing. And the Mar Mar happened to be at a Marriott for some reason, I think. Yeah. We went there because it was, uh, Beijing’s, very polluted. And we went in there and just for clean air and the San was great. And then I remember there was a band clean, uh, do you know the way that San Jose Oh, those are great.
Those are great. Slightly Asian little to it. It was a, an oasis. Mm-hmm. Basically.
Matt Bailey: When it’s, yeah, when it’s familiar. And, and I think part of that too, it builds that familiarity and that when [00:37:00] you are in a foreign country when you’re traveling, it, it adds to that sense of I can relax, uh, there’s something familiar here that I can hold onto.
In an otherwise stressful trip. Yeah. In an otherwise very foreign environment. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Well, Patrick, this has been such a great conversation. Thank you so much for your time today. It’s been wonderful. Thanks. Thanks
Patrick Hanlon: so much for having me. As you always say, you always want to say if you remember, I hope it’s been productive and useful for all of.
Everyone out there, Rosa,
Matt Bailey: I’m sure. I’m sure we’ve got a lot of, uh, students and I’m learning more and more about my audience. It’s a lot of professors, students, and people looking to improve their career. So, uh, I am sure that this system’s really going to be valuable to the listeners. And Patrick, uh, if someone wants to get in touch with you, what’s the best way they can find out more information about you or primal branding?
Patrick Hanlon: Oh, please just go to, I, it’s at Primal Branding. That’s one way or the web Primal branding.co. [00:38:00] Fantastic. Yeah, that makes
Matt Bailey: it easy.
Patrick Hanlon: I like it. Yeah. And for the students out there, primal is a great way to differentiate. I mean, there’s nothing more generic than getting outta school. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right.
Absolutely. And trying to get that first job, that first internship or whatever it is, and you really need to. Stand out. And so you can tell people, here’s where I’m from. Here’s what I’m all about. Here’s the way I like to work. Here’s the way I like to do things. I would like to perform. Here’s how you know it’s me and, uh, here’s what I’m not, don’t want to become, know the terms of art for the category that you want to be in, whether it’s a designer or analyst or code or coding, or.
The business jargon is, and it’s important. So if you can pull all that together, then people just, not only the takeaway is you have your shit together, right? And so, absolutely. Um, yeah. And they just lean in a little bit more toward you because [00:39:00] as long as you stand out from the person who came in before you, and they’re gonna talk to after you, boom.
Matt Bailey: Nailed it. Absolutely. It gives you a framework to follow and you will be more than confident, uh, that you have something to follow and tell that personal story. That is a great, great advice and that is going to make a perfect sound bite, Patrick. I appreciate that. Well, thank you dear listener for tuning into another edition of the Endless Coffee Cup podcast.
And as always, if you have comments or questions. Please leave them on the show page. You can interact with us there, uh, through the comments. And as always, I look forward to talking with you again on another conversation over a cup of coffee or whatever your preferred drink is, and the next edition of the Endless Coffee Cup podcast.
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