Philip Barentini (3:25)

Which thing, Andy? No, hang on.

Paul Mellor (3:27)

Carly. No, Carly.

Phil Agnew (3:28)

Wait a minute, love. This is Cali. This is basic gcse. And it's her first week, so it's my responsibility.

Paul Mellor (3:35)

It's not a first week in any.

Phil Agnew (3:37)

Kitchen though, is it?

Paul Mellor (3:38)

You know, like everything goes wrong on top of each other. Here's a lamb, sir. What's that?

Phil Agnew (3:44)

It's the lamb that we've reached.

Paul Mellor (3:45)

Not that, that.

Phil Agnew (3:48)

If you want, I can take it back.

Paul Mellor (3:49)

You can take it back?

Phil Agnew (3:50)

No.

Paul Mellor (3:50)

Get your dirty fingerprints off my plate. This massive compound effect. How the fucking out of that, I have no idea.

Phil Agnew (3:56)

I don't know.

Paul Mellor (3:57)

And because of the type of actor that he is, he brings all of himself.

Phil Agnew (4:00)

This is your fucking fault, my man, because you don't turn up on time.

Paul Mellor (4:03)

You don't do the orders, you don't.

Phil Agnew (4:05)

Do the prep, you don't give a fuck about us.

Paul Mellor (4:07)

You fucking come in stinking a booze.

Phil Agnew (4:09)

You're a fucking ass.

Paul Mellor (4:14)

But the intensity that the one shot take sort of brings you into and almost like behind the curtain of what it's like to work in a professional kitchen.

Phil Agnew (4:25)

Boiling Point has been incredibly successful. It has a 99 Rotten Tomatoes score and earned over $1.14 million worldwide.

Paul Mellor (4:34)

It was a huge success. It was in cinemas in, I think, 25 countries around the world. There was over 300 cinemas ran it in the UK alone. It was nominated for four Baftas. And the people we were fighting against was James Bond. You know, it was Daniel Craig's last James Bond. It was Will Smith. It was, you know, the who's who of kind of Hollywood royalty. And we were up against those guys. And then of course, the crew and the team and a lot of the producers have then since gone on to make Adolescence biggest Netflix series, I want to say, of all time. I mean, a marketer would probably put some massive claim like that on it, but like a mass, a huge hit.

Phil Agnew (5:21)

Boiling Point was nominated for four Baftas and 11 Biffas, including a win for Best Supporting Actress. But hardly anyone, when this movie was being produced, expected it to be such a Big hit. After all, 97% of indie movies like Boiling Point lose money.

Paul Mellor (5:38)

How does an underdog film with a budget of 500,000 pounds, which is absolutely fuck all when it comes to Hollywood movies, really in the grand scheme of things, you know, James Bond is spending millions and millions and millions, tens, hundreds of millions of pounds. We've got 500 grand. How do we get that film noticed? And how can it compete against the Goliaths?

Phil Agnew (6:01)

Well, Poole reckons there's a few reasons.

Paul Mellor (6:03)

Why it employed a number of sort of, or pulled a number of levers to try and generate and sort of sort of self generate its own momentum. So obviously Stephen Graham being the lead, but then the emotion, the intensity, the grit and the rawness was unfiltered. Something very rare in cinema now. And then it used a one shot take, so it is a true one shot.

Phil Agnew (6:31)

The one shot take is an important element here. Firstly, it's distinct from how almost every other TV show and feature film records most use fast cuts. Yet Boiling Point didn't cut at all as a production.

Paul Mellor (6:45)

We recorded five, that was it. And we chose a third one and that's the one that ran. No editing, sort of to split scenes together, sort of splice scenes together. It was a one true shot.

Phil Agnew (6:57)

A one shot take is distinct and the distinctiveness captures attention. In one very famous psychological experiment cited in page 68 of How not to Plan, people were asked to select a loaf of bread. The loaves were all identical except one had a random Alphabet letter stamped on it. So normal loaves of bread and then you see one with the letter H on it, for example. It made no sense for participants to choose one loaf over the other, except they all pretty much picked the one with the random Alphabet letter stamped on it. They were drawn to the visually distinct product. And Boiling Point's one shot take makes it distinct from almost all of its competitors.

Paul Mellor (7:37)

Tactically, a one shot take, that, I mean, it's not as if it's never been done before, it's been done a handful of times. And there are some fake one shot takes, you know, like what is it, 1912 and others, like the war film where it's like actually six 20 minute bits, they're sliced together. But like in terms of true one shot takes, that's a tactic, you know, if you're a marketer, that's akin to a campaign or a tactic that you can pull or increasing your SEO spend or whatever it is. Like, you know, it is a, is a tactic but ultimately it comes back down to the Thing that I talk about all day, every day. Underdogs have to do the thing that the biggest brand in their category can't, won't or daren't do.

Phil Agnew (8:26)

Most Hollywood films won't even attempt a one shot take because it's extremely hard to do.

Paul Mellor (8:31)

But that's the reason why it's going to work because nobody else does it in your category. Of all of the underdogs, you think about the biggest brands in your category first, second and third in market, sort of market share first, second and third, they got it easy, mate. Just maintain the status quo, maybe squabble between those three places, but literally anyone between fourth and 10th place, they've got to do the thing that the big three can't, won't nor dent.

Phil Agnew (8:59)

When we encounter a message that is genuinely distinct, we will pay attention. Former Nudge guests Ava and Tim write about this in their book the Housefly Effect. Ten years ago, the Dutch tax service sent out blue envelopes. So kind of distinct there, but also containing a very distinctive handwritten note on the front of the envelope which read, could you manage this in the next 10 days after receiving this incredibly unique looking letter? I've never received a letter with a handwritten note on the front of the envelope. The taxpayers on average submitted their tax returns five days earlier than the control group. That distinctiveness saved the tax service a great deal of work in follow up phone calls. And for Boiling Point, it became the trait that elevated the movie above most other feature films.

Paul Mellor (9:46)

Because what's remarkable is that it's filmed as one shot. And this time I looked so carefully I thought I'm gonna see a camera reflection, I'm gonna see someone mess up a line. I couldn't see anything. I mean, the stress of filming it must be incredible.

Phil Agnew (10:01)

That's the presenter, Jeremy vine, talking about the movie. He interviewed the Boiling Point director, Philip Barentini about how hard it is to film in just one shot.

Philip Barentini (10:11)

To be honest with you, the third take wasn't perfect and I thought, let's do the last, let's do the last one, it's going to be perfect. After the third take, I then went around everybody, gave all my notes to everyone and you know, I was like running around the place like a lunatic trying to give notes to actors, and not only actors, to, you know, Matt, the cinematographer to the sound team. I was like, right, we got this one, now this is it. And then we did the fourth take and technically it was flawless. It was perfect. However, the performances were, well, were a bit flat just because Everyone was exhausted and it just didn't have the energy that that raw, organic energy that the third thing had. So when we come to watch it, I was like, we have to go with the performance. We always have to go with the performance. Because if the audience are watching the one take and watching, you know, the technical side of it, then we've completely lost them. That's a gimmick that we've made, a gimmick, gimmicky film.

Phil Agnew (11:01)

The reason why most Hollywood directors avoid one shots is that you have to accept that the movie will contain dozens of small imperfections and sometimes fairly large imperfections.

Philip Barentini (11:11)

The one big thing was the clock in the kitchen. On the wall was the wrong time. And the third take, everyone's going to see the clock and everyone's going to go, it's 4 o' clock in the afternoon, it's dark outside. The restaurant is so busy at 4 o' clock in the afternoon. It's just not believable. And so we have to change the clock. And that cost us a lot of money, money to change it.

Phil Agnew (11:31)

In vfx, it's stressful, it's costly, it's emotionally draining to record in one shot. So very few movies do it. But by doing something so distinct from the competition, Boiling Point became incredibly popular. I want to share one more study that just amplifies how impactful distinctiveness is. Researchers at Northwestern University gave online participants information about a pair of sofas, two different sofas. In his book Pre Suasion, Cialdini refers to the two sofas as Dream and Titan. The two sofas, manufactured by different furniture companies, were comparable in pretty much all respects except for their cushions. So similar price, similar design, just different cushions. The Dream's cushions were softer, but the Titan's cushions were more durable. In this one on one comparison, the potential customers tended to prefer Titan's sturdier cushions to Dream's softer cushions. 58% picked Titan, only 42% picked Dream. But that changed when the researchers sent out the same information to another sample of online participants, but included extra information about the features of three other sofa models. So don't compare two sofa models. You're going to compare five now. And Cialdini writes that the new sofas that were introduced, these were not strong competitors. They were weak on a variety of dimensions. However, they all had durable cushions like the Titan. So suddenly, Titan's unique point, its durable cushions, became far more commonplace. Within that set of comparisons, the Dream sofa vaulted over all the other models, this time being picked 77% of the time compared to all the other sofas. It's a really astonishing finding. You would assume that adding competitors to the mix of options would reduce the number of people who pick Dream, if for no other reasons than simple probabilities. There's now five choices rather than two. But instead, Dream became distinct from its rivals. It was the only sofa that had soft cushions, and because it was distinct, it was preferred to all of those sturdy cushion competitors. It is a niche study, but I really like it because I think it has much broader implications. If you are noticeably distinct from your peers, from the people your customers are comparing you to, you will be preferred. Buyers didn't care about Dream's soft cushions until that softness became distinct. In many ways, Boiling Point is following this same playbook. The storyline, cinematography, score, actors were quite familiar, but the one shot take separated it from all of its movie peers. And as we know, being distinct from your peers increases both attention and also likability. But that is just one Hollywood movie. Paul has used these techniques to help dozens of underdog brands challenge market leaders. After this quick break, we'll hear How Content is Profit, hosted by Louise Anfonsi, is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network, the home of business shows that don't ramble on and give you insights as quickly as possible. Content is Profit is one of those real, practical listens. You'll get tips on selling things that actually work. You'll hear frameworks, tactics, and you'll learn from guests who have done it all before. I would suggest if you want to get started, listen to the how to get your first 500 email subscribers. That's a great example of how wonderful this show is. A good mix of insights and ideas. So go and listen to Content Is Profit wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, you are listening to Nudge with me, Phil Agnew. Today's guest on Nudge, Paul Miller, helps underdog brands succeed. But what is an underdog brand?

Paul Mellor (15:12)

So they are between fourth and tenth placed in their market share category. First, second and third are the biggest brands. They are not underdogs. They are maintaining the status quo and anyone below 10th is too small, doesn't have the critical mass, doesn't have the budgets to actually kind of make a difference. One of our clients is Brooks Running Shoes. They're a billion dollar business. They're still an underdog. They're still fighting Nike and Adidas and Asics as the biggest brands in their category.

Phil Agnew (15:38)

Paul shared how he helped Boiling Point, an underdog movie, succeed, but I wondered what other Brands he's worked with.

Paul Mellor (15:45)

So we've worked with Mango Bikes, so they're the seventh largest bike brand in the uk. We created their positioning bikes for non cyclists. We work with Fat Lad at the Back, another cycling brand. So they make cycling jerseys for fat people. They don't make them for racing snakes like Raphael. We work with sort of a whole host of tech companies, so we've worked with Klarna, we've worked with GoCardless, we've worked with fintech brands like Remitly.

Phil Agnew (16:15)

One of the things Paul advises all the brands he works with to do is to really consider distinctiveness. He tells each of them to never copy what the largest brands in the category do, because if you do that, you will struggle to stand out.

Paul Mellor (16:27)

Well, the biggest brands, the 1, 2, 3 brands in a category, they don't. They talk, oh, yeah, we want to grow. They might have a share price they need to maintain, but that is it. They are maintaining the status quo. They have climbed their Everest, they have so little to fight for. Their whole raison d' etre is to maintain their position.

Phil Agnew (16:49)

Copying these large brands is kind of useless. It's often too expensive to even do. And the underdog brands would never be able to compete. Boiling Point could have never stood out if it copied the cinematography style of the standard Hollywood blockbuster. Instead, underdog brands should try to steal customers and attention off the leading brands by being distinct. And stealing these customers is probably a little bit easier than you might think, because most customers are incredibly disloyal.

Paul Mellor (17:17)

Humans are illogical, feckless, awful people. Let's get this cut straight to the chase, this idea that everyone's lovely. No, if you put a sign up that says, don't walk on the grass, we're going to walk on the grass because we're a bunch of assholes. And the idea you walk into Tuesday at 9:00am, into the meeting room 32F, and you're like, right, here we go, we're going to start talking about loyalty of our customers. And you forget how you actually behave in your own life. The idea that It's Sunday at 3 o' clock in the UK and you suddenly we're cooking a Sunday lunch. We are a Tesco customer. And I got to drive because I've got to put the roast on at 4 o' clock to have it done by 6. I got to drive 20 minutes to Tesco. Or I could just drive 10 minutes to Sainsbury's. Probably go Sainsbury's. The idea that we are loyal is ludicrous. Coca Cola, for example. I think the most recent study I saw was that the average person, I think globally buys Coca Cola four times a year. So the idea that you as an underdog are going to get someone to buy your bar of soap or whatever it is that you sell more than four times a year, you're smoking something really strong. If you think that's going to be the case.

Phil Agnew (18:37)

Paul tells the brands he works with to pretty much ignore loyalty because most customers are disloyal. Instead, these brands need to constantly think about attracting new customers. And the easiest way to do that is to be distinct, doing the thing.

Paul Mellor (18:50)

That the biggest brand can't, won't or daren't. Now that can boil down into the two things that marketers love debating but actually are very bad at implementing, which is differentiation and distinction. It'd be like if all the brands in the world actually focused on either their differentiation or their distinction or both, then the world would be full of brands that were shit ot. I think it was a study with Kantar and waq, I think that showed brands tend to sort of herd around these category norms. And a brand that is able to be meaningfully distinct outside of those category norms increases their chances of being noticed by 21%. 21%. I've got clients. There are marketers all over the world that would sell their Grandma for a 21% increase in attention.

Phil Agnew (19:49)

Brands that are meaningfully distinct inside of their category norms increase their chances of being noticed by 21%.

Paul Mellor (19:57)

I know these things sound really throwaway and they sound so easy and they're like quite lofty. A lot of it's common sense. A lot of it like gets overly intellectualized and gets sort of overly bogged down in the sort of the theory and really like, it's like go and do the thing that nobody else is doing. Just do that and put some money into it and see what happens.

Phil Agnew (20:19)

I really enjoyed this conversation with Paul and it reminded me of one of my favourite Dave Trott stories. This one is from his brilliant book Creative Blindness. And as all of his stories, it's a real world story. He writes how Warwickshire Wildlife Sanctuary was at first a very peaceful place, but that was until the mayor's wife met Barney the parrot. Admiring the parrot's colourful feathers, she leaned in and Barney squawked, you can fuck off. Everyone hoped this was a one off. But the next day when the local vicar visited, Barney looked at his dog collar and said, you can fuck off. And all this badmouth parrot was reported to the authorities, two policemen arrived to investigate and Barney gave them a once over and said, fuck off, wankers. Deemed a threat to public decency, Barney was moved away from the children and the elderly. This worked until a group of brownies, which for those of you outside the uk, is a group of kids part of a youth club. While this group of brownies passed by and they were enthralled by Barney's colours, they came close. Barney saw their uniforms and yelled bollocks. Repeating it over and over again until the brownies ran off. Barney was moved to solitary confinement and visitors now had to be 18 or over to visit him. See, Barney had been donated by a lorry driver who kept him in a room with the tv. The driver hated authority and whenever a uniform appeared on screen, he shouted what he thought of them, which is how Barney learned to talk. Jeff Grukok, who runs the sanctuary, tried to reform Barney by introducing two well behaved African grey parrots, Sam and Charlie. But instead of civilising Barney, he corrupted them. Now Geoff says that the pen sounds like a builder's yard with all three shouting fucking and bollocks. Barney has done everything wrong, naughty, loud, inappropriate and yet he is the only bird in the sanctuary and probably one of the only birds in the UK to make national headlines. The Guardian, the Telegraph, the Times, the BBC have all featured this bird. Visitor numbers at the sanctuary soared because everybody wants to see the bird who breaks the rules, not the one who behaves like every other bird in the sanctuary. Because in a world full of well behaved parrots, it will be the distinct parrot who swears that gets remembered. That is all for today's episode of Nudge. Massive. Massive. Thank you to Paul Mellor for joining me on today's show. Paul has written a fantastic guide for underdog brands that contains 13.5 tactics you could use to grow. I've linked to it in the show notes. It's well worth a read. Today we covered distinctiveness and disloyal customers, but he has many, many more tips in his guide for you to follow. So do go and check out that guide now. Today we have covered lots of studies and lots of insights. We've covered research by Northwestern, examples from Cialdini, that story at the end from Dave Trott, and if you're like me, you probably want a way to refer back to these studies and insights the next time you're doing marketing work, the next time you're actually working and thinking, oh, I really want to apply this stuff, it'd be great to go and just quickly remind myself what Phil said Well, to help, I'm building a database of every single insight I have ever shared on Nudge. That is all the studies, research papers and examples I've shared on the show. Currently, the database has 444 different insights. I've categorized them by the behavioral principle they refer to. So social proof, scarcity. In this case, lots about distinctiveness. And I've listed different ways they can be applied to emails, to direct mail, to advertising, that sort of thing. My idea is to create a database of simple, low cost ideas that can lift your conversions, boost your engagement and just drive more sales to improve your business. I'm calling this the Nudge Vaults. For longtime listeners of the show. You'll know that I've worked on this for a while and it'll give you proven ready to use ideas to improve your work. Now, I plan to launch this later this year. It's not ready yet, but if you're interested in learning more, getting an early sneak peek, and even getting exclusive offers when I launch, then you might want to sign up to the Nudge Vaults waiting list. It's free to do so. You just go to nudgepodcast.comvaults to sign up. That is nudgepodcast.comvaults to sign up and that way I can get in touch with you to tell you more about it it and give you an offer when we finally launch. Please do do that if you're interested. But if not, don't worry, I won't be mentioning again, at least for a couple of weeks. All right, that is all for this week. Thank you for listening. I'll be back next Monday for another episode of Nudge. Cheers.