Frameworks for Creating and Dominating your Niche Marketing Gold from Christopher Lochhead

Summary

Right About Now with Ryan Alford: Frameworks for Creating and Dominating Your Niche Marketing Gold with Christopher Lochhead

Release Date: January 14, 2025

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Introduction

In this compelling episode of Right About Now with Ryan Alford, hosted by the Radcast Network, Ryan engages in a deep and thought-provoking conversation with Christopher Lochhead, a renowned expert in category design and a leading voice in modern marketing strategies. The episode, titled "Frameworks for Creating and Dominating Your Niche Marketing Gold," delves into critical issues surrounding communication, marketing methodologies, and the evolving dynamics between native digital and native analog generations.

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Dialogue and Polarization in Modern America

The discussion opens with Christopher addressing the increasing polarization in America, emphasizing the societal inability to engage in meaningful dialogue without descending into hostility.

Christopher Lochhead [03:10]: "There’s never been a point in history where Americans hate other Americans like they do now."

Christopher highlights how sensitive topics like guns, abortion, and immigration often lead to heated arguments rather than constructive conversations. He stresses the importance of fostering conversations that transcend mere agreement or disagreement.

Christopher Lochhead [12:10]: "The number one form of marketing was, is and always will be word of mouth."

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Reflexive vs. Reflective Thinking

A significant portion of the conversation focuses on the distinction between reflexive and reflective thinking, a concept borrowed from Roger Martin's work.

Christopher Lochhead [06:47]: "Reflexive is from a reflex... Reflective... is you say, okay, well, wait a minute. What do I really think about this?"

Reflexive thinking is automatic and reactionary, essential in situations requiring quick responses, such as avoiding accidents. In contrast, reflective thinking involves deliberate contemplation and is crucial for deep understanding and meaningful dialogue.

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The Importance of Category Design in Marketing

Christopher passionately advocates for category design, a strategic approach that involves defining and evangelizing new market categories.

Christopher Lochhead [38:24]: "When you evangelize the category, people assume you’re the category queen or king."

He explains that successfully evangelizing a category not only differentiates a brand but also positions it as the leader within that space. This approach shifts the focus from selling a product to promoting an idea, thereby fostering organic word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing.

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Language as a Tool for Shaping Thought

The conversation underscores the strategic use of language, or "languaging," in influencing consumer perceptions and driving category success.

Christopher Lochhead [23:04]: "Languaging is the strategic use of language to change thinking."

He criticizes common marketing clichés like "full-service agency" or "don't take our word for it," arguing that such phrases often fail to differentiate brands and can inadvertently undermine their credibility.

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Native Digitals vs. Native Analogs: Understanding Generational Shifts

A pivotal moment in the episode is Christopher's revelation about the emergence of "native digitals" and "native analogs," a concept that differentiates generations based on their primary life experiences.

Christopher Lochhead [43:28]: "If you came of age with the primarily the smartphone in the cloud, you are a native digital, you are the first generation of humans whose primary life experience is digital."

He elaborates that native digitals, typically under 35, interact predominantly through digital mediums, affecting how businesses must approach marketing and recruitment. In contrast, native analogs, those 35 and older, primarily engage in the physical world, presenting unique challenges for reaching younger audiences.

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Implications for Businesses and Marketing Strategies

Christopher connects these generational insights to practical marketing strategies, emphasizing the necessity of adapting to the digital-first world to effectively reach and engage native digitals.

Christopher Lochhead [52:27]: "Marketing is all about word of mouth... Marketing's job is to put the right words in the right mouths."

He discusses the significance of targeting "super consumers," the top 8-10% who are most likely to influence broader market adoption through digital communities. By creating compelling, education-oriented content tailored to these super consumers, businesses can amplify WOM and achieve exponential growth with reduced acquisition costs.

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Innovative Recruitment and Engagement Techniques

The episode also touches on unconventional methods businesses are adopting to connect with younger generations. For instance, a restaurant owner utilized Tinder profiles for recruitment, illustrating the necessity of meeting native digitals where they already are – in digital spaces.

Christopher Lochhead [50:24]: "If you don't know that and you're managing a team with native digitals on it and you send them a thumbs up, they're going to think you're a donkey."

This example underscores the importance of understanding digital communication nuances to effectively engage with a digitally native workforce and customer base.

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Conclusions and Key Takeaways

The episode wraps up with actionable insights for businesses aiming to dominate their niches through innovative marketing strategies:

1. Embrace Category Design: Define and evangelize your market category to position your brand as the leader.
2. Strategic Language Use: Employ thoughtful languaging to differentiate your brand and influence consumer thinking.
3. Target Super Consumers: Focus on the top percentage of your audience that drives WOM marketing.
4. Adapt to Generational Shifts: Implement digital-first strategies to engage native digitals while understanding the unique needs of native analogs.

Christopher Lochhead [55:27]: "We are now in a native digital first world and you can't recruit people and you can't market because you can't get to anybody under 35 if you don't understand this."

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Final Thoughts

Ryan Alford commends Christopher for his profound insights, encouraging listeners to adopt category design principles and adapt to the evolving digital landscape to achieve marketing success.

Ryan Alford [36:40]: "We're launching Pirate Sauce Bourbon... you heard it here first."

Listeners are encouraged to visit Lockhead.com and follow Christopher on LinkedIn to further explore his groundbreaking work in category design.

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Connect with Ryan and Christopher

• Ryan Alford: www.RyanIsRight.com, @rightaboutnowshow, @ryanalford on Instagram
• Christopher Lochhead: Lockhead.com, @categorypirates on LinkedIn

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This episode serves as an essential guide for marketers, entrepreneurs, and business leaders seeking to navigate the complexities of modern marketing and foster meaningful connections in an increasingly digital world.

Transcript

[Ryan Alford]

Hey, guys.

[Christopher Lockhead]

Another special edition of right about now. I'm Ryan Alford, your host. And look, it is the new year. I've promised you we're gonna bring it. And I was going back through some episodes and literally this guy's right over my shoulder. Got my wall of fame here in the studio. Christopher Lockhead. He's the master man, master of category design, the master of telling you like it is. And he's not afraid to tell you your baby's ugly. You know why? Because it helps you get ahead. And that's what we' here today to do. Talk to you about how to get ahead with your marketing strategies. Because it's not time to play safe. It's time to play different. Own your different.

[Ryan Alford]

Christopher's going to tell you like it is.

[Christopher Lockhead]

This is the most action packed episode we have had in years. Listen, heed his advice. Own your different, own your category and own the market. Enjoy. Appreciate you on right about now.

[Radcast Network Announcer]

This is right about now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month, taking the BS out of business for over 6 years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping necks and cashing checks? Well, it starts right about now.

[Ryan Alford]

I'm excited, man. You know, we do a lot of interviews. I get to do a pick and choose. We're getting to do whatever the hell we want on the Radcast these days. And when I can have Christopher Lockhead on my fucking show, I am having him on. Christopher, what's up, brother?

[Guest Speaker]

It's great to see you. Big sexy man, dude.

[Ryan Alford]

I mean, it's funny. I mean, I've been in the business. People go, who do you listen to? What do you read? What do you do? I'm kind of like, I drown a lot of it out.

[Guest Speaker]

But.

[Ryan Alford]

But there's one voice. One Voice that literally 9.5 out of 10 is the closest thing to 100% there is in life. I said you need to fucking go follow Christopher Lockett on. On LinkedIn. You need to fucking go. Subscribe to category P. Know What? Send me $100 and thank me later.

[Guest Speaker]

Thank you, Ryan. It's very kind of you to say.

[Ryan Alford]

I know, but I, I. People know I don't blow smoke. I'm a nice guy. I got southern charm, but I kind of tell it like it is in my own way. And it's the truth. 13 time bestseller, probably more than that. Now Apple podcaster of the universe and the most legendary category designer I've ever met. I could go on and on the titles. I'm going to stop blowing smoke because I want people to hear some of your brilliance. I really. So we've been talking and, you know, I nod my head every day at the daily, you know, Bible verses I get from lockhead on, on LinkedIn. But, but there's been a few topics of late. I want to get into them, but I do want to just first, Christopher, I mean, let's, let's set the table. You know, what's been just gathering your attention, you know, with, with the newsletter and with your team and I don't know, I wouldn't mind maybe just getting a preamble of where you're at in the state of the world of business in general.

[Guest Speaker]

Well, you know, our little business is doing great, so we're very fortunate about that. The big topics on our minds right now really start with our inability in America and in a lot of the world now to dialogue with each other. And there's never been a point in history where Americans hate other Americans like they do now. And so on our mind a lot is the power of dialogue and is getting people to understand that just because somebody disagrees with you doesn't mean you need to hate them. And we need more conversation. And what most people call a dialogue in our country today is actually just called waiting to talk, or even worse, waiting to yell. So, you know, that's on our mind a lot. That's a big one. We think there's implications, you know, the way our politics are in this country right now, I find very terrifying. Not because of, you know, a left direction or a right direction or any of that. It's. It really, it comes down to an inability to have a conversation about anything of substance with almost anybody anytime. You know, you could pick a topic, guns, people are going to lose their minds. Abortions, people are going to lose their mind. Immigration, people are going to, you know, we can't have a thoughtful discussion. And more even in addition to that is we all need to understand steel sharpens steel. I don't want to live in a world where everybody agrees with me. You know what? I'm not always right, really. And I have changed my mind or I have changed my positions. You know, people today call that flip flopping. It used to be called learning. So that's a big one. The other one, the sort of the biggest hiding in plain sight that nobody's talking about, of course, is the shift to a whole new category of human the emergence of native digitals and the fact that those of us who are 35 or older are native analogs, and we are the last native analogs that will ever live. And it has profound implications for us in marketing, but really, it has profound implications for everything about the way we live, work and play.

[Ryan Alford]

Chris, let me ask you this, you know, because I. I can't wait to dive into that, that last one. And I know that's going to be a lot of the meat of what we talk about today, but, you know, we live in such a world where there's a lot of damn gray, you know, like the. And we've gotten to this point of drawing these hard lines, like you said, and it couldn't be more polar opposite than what reality is, which is there's nuance to everything. And how the hell did we get. I mean, I know we could. There's been this firebrand of politics and other things, and I'm sure we could have a whole episode on this, but I just, I really value your mind, and so I like to pick at it when, when I have you here. But, like, how the hell did we get here? Like, when we all know, like, I think if you have and you can, like, get someone discharged for half a second, they'll agree with what I just said, you know, but it's. Everything's charged, everything's fired up. Like, how did we. Are we just compounding? Is that what. I don't know. What's your. Why did we. How do we get here?

[Guest Speaker]

Well, I think, and this may sound more trite than I mean it in a very real way, we don't know how to think. And so a lack of learning about thinking causes this. And Roger Martin, who's considered to be the number one business management thinker in the world, the quote unquote, new Peter Drucker, he's got a book out that's fairly recent called the New Way to Think. We were lucky enough to have him on the podcast, and he makes a very important assessment, which is he delineates two types of thinking, reflexive and reflective. And as the name suggests, reflexive is from a reflex. So if you go to the doctor and she bangs your knee and your knee is going to do that, and she's going to say, your reflexes are good. And there are many points in our life where reflexive thinking and action associated with that reflex are very, very important. If you and I are driving and somebody cuts us off or something, you know, an animal jumps out into the road or something like that, we're Going to hit the brakes, we're going to swerve. And we will take a reflexive action based on a reflexive thought that might save our life or the lives of others. And so that's very powerful. Reflexes are a very powerful thing. We train ourselves to become unconsciously competent at things. And you could argue much of that is reflexive. However, and then reflective, as the name suggests, is you say, okay, well, wait a minute. What do I really fucking think about this? Not what have I heard or what got tweeted yesterday or any of that. And when you stop and think, it takes some work. And around here, one of our expressions is. One of our favorite expressions is thinking about thinking is the most important kind of thinking. And in business, some of us got taught early if we want to really think, ask why five to seven times. So now if you bring that to our world, you say, okay, guns. I bet you have a position on guns, right? Yes, I do, and I have a position on guns. And if we wanted to get to the heart of why you think what you do about guns, maybe we don't have to ask why seven times, but we for sure have to ask why three or four times.

[Ryan Alford]

Yeah, yeah.

[Guest Speaker]

And here's the incredible thing. When you ask a lot of people and do it in a friendly way, not in a confronting way, why five to seven times on a belief that they hold, most people can't get past two or three whys. Right. So, you know, if you use guns as an example, you say, well, what's your position on guns? I support the Second Amendment. Okay, great. Why? Well, I believe that we have the right to defend ourselves. Okay, great. Why? Well, and then they start to break down.

[Ryan Alford]

Yeah, somebody told me I should care about it.

[Guest Speaker]

Yeah, yeah. And then you say, okay, well, we have the right to defend ourselves. Are we going to draw a line there somewhere? So, for example, nobody can stop me from taking boxing classes. That's self defense. Nobody can stop me from going to a Krav Maga class. That's self defense. But we as a society have decided that regular citizens can't own tanks. So we've already drawn some lines, right? We're allowed to go boxing in most of the country. You're allowed to buy a handgun or a shotgun or a rifle. And there's different bars you have to get over in different parts of the country. But to the best of my knowledge, there's no part of the country where you can legally acquire a tank. So there's some spots in South Carolina where there might Be one in the backyard, maybe in Arizona, maybe parts of Nevada.

[Ryan Alford]

On the whole, I think you're right.

[Guest Speaker]

And so my point is, at some stage of the game as it relates to guns, collectively, we decided there was gonna be some rules and there was gonna be some lines that we were gonna draw around what citizens can and can't do. Well, we're no longer able to have a discussion about that in any level of detail without people yelling, pick another one. Abortion. Well, people immediately, and this is the other interesting thing, people immediately start conflating things. So you ask somebody about abortion, you say, well, what do you think about abortion? And they give you their opinion. And then let's say they say, oh, I think. I think abortion's fine up until the 20th week. I'm just making shit up. You say, okay, why do you believe that? Well, because at week 23 or whatever, I'm not an expert. So I'm guessing that's when the fetus becomes, quote, unquote viable or likely to be viable outside the womb. And that's the cutoff point. Okay, well, why do you think viability is the cutoff point? Well, most people don't answer that question. Yeah, and then people who are pro choice say, well, it's fine up until viability because it couldn't survive on its own. Okay, well, why is that the line?

[Ryan Alford]

Right.

[Guest Speaker]

I'm not agreeing or disagreeing. I just want to understand.

[Ryan Alford]

Right.

[Guest Speaker]

And they say, well, you know, here's the other one I love. I don't believe that life begins at conception. Okay, well, then you're a moron. Because what the science tells us is when the sperm gets to the egg and does its thing, or the two do their thing, if it plays out over nine months, it's going to be a person. And I'm no doctor or scientist, but best I could tell, that is when life begins. Now, you can say that viability is the line, and you can argue for why you think that's the line if that's what you think. But don't say, you know. So somebody says, yeah, but life doesn't begin at conception. Okay, well, come on, we have to have some intellectual honesty in our discussion. I understand that you're pro choice. I'm pro choice too, for the record, But I'm not an idiot. Life begins at fucking conception. Because when conception happens, barring something horrible, if the pregnancy goes relatively well, we're going to have a person. So life begins at conception. And just because you're pro choice doesn't mean you have to Say dumb shit because we, most people who are smart understand that life basically begins at fucking conception or another one. I really love just to, you know, get on all the tough topics. They say, well, what we need is an assault weapons ban. Okay, well you do know the minute you say that you've exposed the fact that you don't know what you're talking about and people say, what do you mean there's assault weapons, AR15s and that's what all these school shootings happen with. And we need to get rid of the AR15. Okay, well do you know there's only three kinds of guns? There's handguns, there's shotguns and there's rifles. There's no such thing as an assault weapon. All an AR15 is, is a scary looking semi automatic rifle. Technically, that's what it is. So when you say you want to get rid of the AR15, what you're saying is, well, black cars kill more people than any other color of car and they're the scariest kind of car. So we need to get rid of the black cars. Okay, well a rifle is a rifle and yes, they have different features and some of them are this and some of them are that. Da, da, da, da, da. But if you get, if you say we want to get rid of the AR15, essentially what you're saying is we're going to make rifles illegal in the United States. Is that what you're saying? Oh, well, no, we don't. We just. Well, okay, so my point is the minute they say something like that and you say, well, why? They don't even understand what they're fucking talking about now. Maybe we should outlaw rifles, if that's what you mean. Let's have that conversation. All I'm saying is we accept reflexive thinking that makes us feel good as thinking and it's not. And when I say to people on the pro choice, on the abortion issue, you know, part of the reason we're having the problem that we're having in America is because of the pro choice movement, that they lose their fucking minds. Or when I say to the people who want more gun control, of which I am one, you realize the anti gun people are the reason that there's no movement on guns, well, they lose their fucking minds. Well, no, no, no. It's the gun owners, it's the nra. Yeah, I understand their position, but you know that every time you say you want to ban something, it's gonna cause people who believe in it to dig their heels in. So the more you say it. Every action has an opposite and equal reaction. And so when you present a case to the, the groups in our country who want more what they call, quote, unquote, responsible gun laws, which I want, well, they don't know what they're talking about because they say they want an assault weapons ban. And I say to them, when you say that, you make, quote, the other side crazy and go, we're not going to give you an inch because if we do, we're going to give you a mile. The reason they say that is when you say assault weapons ban, gun owners look at you and go, you don't even know what the fuck you're talking about. And so my point is, whether it's those topics or others, if we want to have a three to five to seven wise conversation about any topic, most people stop listening and they immediately have reflexive thoughts. And those reflexive thoughts calcify over time. And that's, of course, what's happened on the Internet. We can now, what an echo chamber is, is people passing back and forth reflective, or, excuse me, reflexive thoughts. And there's almost no reflective thinking happening at scale either on the Internet or off the Internet, which is what makes, you know, radical dialogue so powerful.

[Ryan Alford]

That's why I'm reflecting on what you just said, literally. And I think this is where a lot of your practical ability to. And we're going to talk about business and marketing, but I think this is what really, I think encapsulates the brilliance of a lot of your approach and what you do. You talked about just some firebrand topics right there, Some super. But the thinking part of it and the reflective refractive, all of the. That aspect is the problem that channels through everything that drills down into business and marketing eventually. And I think people can understand that because of how you just encapsulated it.

[Guest Speaker]

Thank you. And a core tenant in category design is. Listen to the words. Listen to the words. You know, I assume this is going to come out after the midterms, right?

[Ryan Alford]

Yep.

[Guest Speaker]

Yep. So the Democrats have been painted by the Republicans as weak on crime. And the Democrats don't understand why they're weak on crime. They point to all these facts that show that crime is moving in the right direction in a lot of the country and so forth and so on. And look, we can argue about where the data is and where it isn't and so forth and so on, but here's the bottom line, your party. And by the way, I'm a radical independent, so I'm neither Republican or Democrat. And in the current midterms, I voted for both Republicans and Democrats on the same fucking ballot as I often do. But what they realize is you can't have a thoughtful discussion with these folks at any kind of a detailed level. And when the Democrats say defund the police, when that was going on, I was pretty vocal about how stupid I thought that was. One of my best friends was murdered. And I'll tell you, when you sit there in front of the sheriff and the coroner in this case with my friend's family, his mother on one side and his sister on the other, and the sheriff confirms that it's him. In our case, Sheriff Jim Hart in Santa Cruz, California said the one thing you want to hear in that moment, after you've heard the most horrible thing you could possibly imagine, which is the confirmation that one of your closest friends is dead, murdered. Sheriff Jim Hart said, we will stop at nothing until we get him. And they did. And it was a very large, very costly investigation that had great old fashioned police work and technology and it was a massive project. If you had to hire a startup to solve this and do what has been done here in this murder case, it would have been over $10 million. Okay, why do I bring that up? Defund the police. Go fuck yourself. Because I know what you want to hear the cops say in that situation. Well, at the time, people on the left were saying, oh, we don't mean defund the police. What we mean is we. And they go into all this stuff. Some of the stuff was valuable, some of the stuff is right. Do we use police for things that we shouldn't maybe use police for? Maybe we do. Is there evidence around that? What are the experts? Okay, do we need more health care worker? Do we need more homeless program? What? I'm not an expert. Let's fucking have the conversation called maybe we're asking too much of the police. But listen to the words. If you don't mean defund the police, if what you mean is we need more social services or whatever the fuck it was you think you meant, don't fucking say defund the police because I'm going to take you at your word. And so this becomes a stupidity. So one of the keys to thinking is language, because words create thinking. That's why we invented them, so we could share ideas. Because if you and I don't have language, we grunt and point. That's what we got.

[Ryan Alford]

Yes, right.

[Guest Speaker]

So language was literally created as a way of sharing thinking. That's why we invented it as human beings so listen to the fucking words. If I say to you, hey Ryan, I'm stoked to be on your podcast, take me at my word. And if I'm a Democrat who says defund the police, or if I'm a Republican who says I want to outlaw abortion in the country, I take them at their word.

[Ryan Alford]

Words matter.

[Guest Speaker]

Words matter. And words in marketing and words in category design change the future.

[Ryan Alford]

Yep. And you know what? I gave myself because I don't even take notes anymore. But for when Christopher Lockhart comes on my shows, I give myself a few things because I don't want to. I can't. You know why? It's selfish. Because I want to get stuff out of you. I want people to hear what you have shared and literally you've gone down like the fucking. I have this word, it says languaging on my sheet of paper in order, which is right down the path of what you're talking about. And I want to get into our digital, our native digitals, native analogs. But I want you to go a little further down the languaging path because I think it's spot on right where you left it.

[Guest Speaker]

So a demarcation point. So languaging is the strategic use of language to change thinking. And most people in business, in marketing are lazy about their language. I'll give you a simple example. How many companies do you know who talk about what they sell and market as a solution or solutions?

[Ryan Alford]

Too many.

[Guest Speaker]

Right. Okay, well here's an aha for you. Just listen to the word solution. If somebody's going to buy a solution, they need to have a problem. And one of the biggest unlocks in category design, as distinct from idiotic marketing, is don't market your product, market your problem. Because the bigger, more urgent and more strategic the problem, the more time, money and energy people will invest in solving the problem. But we don't do that, do we? Marketing is not focused on customers, it's focused on us. Branding is about us branding our name in their head. That's what it's about. Well, that's a big mistake. Branding is terrible. The way it's practiced today, even the word is terrible. Most people don't even realize where the word comes from. It comes from putting a stamp on animals to prove that you own them. And it's painful and horrible to the animal. And a bunch of marketing idiots got together and said, oh, let's call, why don't we do that? We want to, we want to fire burn our logo into our customers heads. Really don't market Your brand or your product. Market the problem. Because without a problem, nobody buys a solution. And so I guess my point is, on a lot of things, if all you do is take a step back and go listen to the words, what do the words mean? And let's be thoughtful about, well, why are we using those words?

[Ryan Alford]

How about this word? Amen. Praise the Lord because I came. I grew up. I grew up in Southern Baptist church. And you know when the preacher would say something and you're like, you know, you're wanting to support them, you go, amen. The deacons are going, hallelujah, that's me. When I hear you talk about it, it's so true. And look, I'm going to call myself out like I do. I use these terms even more. And I have Christopher Lockhead in my head. I'm like using them and I say them. And it's because I'm being lazy. Because I know people know what they think it means. And so I'm lazy and I use it. But in the back of my head I'm going, I got to think of a different way to say this. I got a language that's better, you know? But then people are conditioned to know what they know. And so I guess I'm lazy. Not in that regard, but I find myself doing it sometimes.

[Guest Speaker]

Sure, it's easy to be a little bit lulled to sleep. I'll give you another great one. In the agency world, we hear this a lot. Full service. We're a full service marketing agency. Okay? Have you ever once. Have you ever once heard anybody say, they're a half service agency? We're a quarter service PR agency. You know, this guy was telling me about full stack. We're a full stack developer. We train full stack developers. Yeah. But sometimes when I go to have breakfast, I like a half stack. I can't eat a full stack. What the fuck's a full stack developer? If you're in that world, you know what that means. But outside that nichy little world, it's meaningless. And so there are all of these throwaway things that we say. Here's another stupid one that never gets thought of in marketing. I always love this one. Don't take our word for it. So let me understand this. You are paying to put an ad in the world where you tell people to not take your word for it. You're telling people. You're paying to tell people not to listen to you. Fuck, that's dumb.

[Christopher Lockhead]

Don't take our word for it.

[Guest Speaker]

Here's what the customer says. Or here's what Gartner says. Are you out of your mind? You're undermining yourself. And so my point is there are all of these lazy uses of language that go unquestioned and a. It can be damaging to our businesses because it's not differentiating. When we say the same things as everyone else, we create the impression we are the same as everyone else. And being the same as everyone else is the core of not being differentiated. So if you're gonna be differentiated, you have to fucking be different. If you're gonna be different, you have to say something fucking different.

[Ryan Alford]

Exactly. Right. But there's, I mean I grew up in the nucleus of the ad business, but is there a more self absorbent like bunch and like in the whole world? I don't know.

[Guest Speaker]

One of the things I love about the ad business is the ad business gives itself awards for creativity.

[Ryan Alford]

Yes.

[Guest Speaker]

Now if you're in the movie making business and you want to evaluate a piece of art and give it an award, which I think is sort of dumb, but whatever, do whatever you like. You want to give certain movies an Academy Award, have at it based on artistic merit as decided by some group. But in the ad industry it's really. Do other ad industry people think it's cool? Here's what's rarely part of the discussion. Did it sell anything?

[Ryan Alford]

Don't ask that.

[Guest Speaker]

Did it increase the market cap of the company that put out the ad? No, but it really used this awesome hue of purple in it.

[Ryan Alford]

I listen to you talk about that all day. It's just so true. The words matter. And you know, I'm going to encapsulate for everybody listening because you know, Chris is, you know, brilliant, smart and you're going to go follow all his shit anyway. And hopefully you already did from me talking about him all the time, but encapsulating it all, he just did it there, you know, embrace your different, find different, you know, challenge the norm. I mean that's at the end of the day, like I like to distill potentially complicated things down, like, and I sometimes I with you and like other things and the categories and all that, it's just like embrace your day. And the thinking part, I just think we've got it. I don't know what the renaissance is going to be in that, but I hope we can bring it about. Maybe just talking about it is what will help.

[Guest Speaker]

I, I hope so. I mean around here we're on a mission to do that. And on, on the political front, I make it very clear A, I'm an independent, and B, I love people on both sides of the aisle deeply. Who I disagree with deeply. And that's why I don't hate them, because I have friends on the far right who have ideas that I think are absolutely fucking off the chart wrong. And I have the same on the left. And what I know is they're very good people who do very good things in the world, who care deeply about themselves, others, and our country. You know, when I get into the abortion debate with everybody, well, my pro choice friends are furious about what's going on. And I say, well, can we at least find some common ground to start? And they're like, there is no common ground. They want to outlaw abortion. We think that's terrible. It's taking away women's rights. Okay, I get that, but can we start somewhere? How about we start here? Nobody wants one abortion. Everybody's anti abortion, aren't they?

[Ryan Alford]

Yeah.

[Guest Speaker]

I don't want one abortion. I don't want one woman to have to go through that. I don't want one potential life to be lost. I don't want any of that. So let's all start with, we care about women, we care about children, and we would rather these horrible things don't happen. Okay, great. We can at least agree there, can't we?

[Ryan Alford]

Yes.

[Guest Speaker]

Now, we may disagree that when it happens, how we deal with it. Okay, fine, then let's have the disagreement. But my point is, if we look, can't we at least we can come to a place where we understand that the other person, despite the fact that they have a different opinion, isn't an evil person, even if we ascribe that to them. And, oh, by the way, if you treat them and speak about them like they're evil people, they're never going to come and talk to you.

[Ryan Alford]

Chris, do we just want to jump to the end? Is that what it is? You know, like. Because I heard you talk right there and I'm, like, trying to distill it, like, how people are like, we just want to get to the end point. Instead, the journey that it takes to find common ground, we just want to get to the point of, again, like I said, the actual negative thing that has all the polarization around it, but there's like 30 steps before it.

[Guest Speaker]

Right.

[Ryan Alford]

We just want to jump to the final conclusion. That is so divisive. Right.

[Guest Speaker]

Well, and we're committed. Here's the truth. We're committed to being divisive.

[Ryan Alford]

Yeah.

[Guest Speaker]

I was listening to a very popular political podcast recently, and the gal providing the analysis was talking about how the amount of vitriol in our politics has never been higher and what a problem this is, etc. Etc. And then she went on to talk about and why it's all Republicans fault. And I said like I'm, I'm yelling at my phone because I'm listening to a podcast going, you don't, you don't fucking. You're so dumb that this is a very smart person. Supposedly. You're so dumb that you don't realize that you're now doing. Two seconds after you said it was the thing that needed to be not done, you're now doing exactly it. You just like being divisive in a Democratic outfit as opposed to a Republican outfit. And you just think the Republicans are more blatant about it or whatever. You think, well, you just, you're doing the fucking same thing. So you're not gonna make friends in this case with Republicans by calling them assholes. It's not going to work. I don't understand why President Biden doesn't come out and say to every MAGA person, we love you, we want to work with you. We want to understand you. Why wouldn't you say that? Look, I disagree with some things on the far left. You know, I'll happily have a debate with AOC about whether or not we need universal basic income, but I'm not going to call her names because she says that we need that and I think it's nuts. Let's talk about it. I don't hate her because of it. I might not like her position, I might not like her style, I might not whatever. But Americans hating Americans because we have different opinions, really, that's what we're doing.

[Ryan Alford]

And that's the key. Americans hating Americans isn't good for anybody if you're an American.

[Guest Speaker]

Well, no, and look, why would you. Have you ever sat down and talked to an American? You know, I live in a very Democrat area. Well, have you ever been to the middle of the country? No. I mean, really, I was just in Arizona. I asked people how they think about the election. I want to hear what they say. I might not agree with everything and oh, by the way, just because I'm from California doesn't mean anything. You know, people can paint anybody with any kind of brush that they want, right?

[Ryan Alford]

Yeah.

[Guest Speaker]

And so I personally believe we need a breakthrough in listening and a breakthrough in real dialogue. The ability to ask five to seven whys and have a thoughtful conversation about stuff. And in marketing, it's everything because roughly 90% of the marketing that we see is not something that somebody thought was legendary. It's something a committee could agree on.

[Ryan Alford]

You've made my life harder, my friend. I just. I just want you to know that, because I. I know I joked earlier, and I know I'm going to keep saying it, but like, literally every time I'm in a meeting with a client now and we, look, I name my agency Radical. I didn't name it Radical because I gave. I gave everyone in my agency license to call bullshit and to push the envelope when you name your agency Radical. So there was some thought in that. However, I said in every meeting now, and your voice is in my head, and I'm going, are we really pushing it? Are we trying to, you know, are we speeds and feeds? Are we trying to be better than the competition? Or are we trying to completely damn demand and fucking, you know, like, literally. And that practical thought, though, I think there's not enough of it. And it's hard. It makes you think, it makes you work harder. But it's not all supposed to be easy.

[Guest Speaker]

Yes. And in category design, one of the things one of our core tenants, another one of the core tenants, is reject the premise. So whenever we go to do thinking work, creative work, strategic work, we start with reject the premise. So we look at, well, what's the premise for this, right? What does everyone else say about this topic or about this market or about the type of product or service, or what does everybody say? Write that shit out and look at it and go, okay, let's reject all of it. Let's start with, it's all wrong. Now, look, you might reject the premise, do some real thinking about thinking, and come back and fully accept the premise after you've gone through that exercise. That's fine if you really go through the exercise. Because the only way we know to open the aperture of our minds and consider something radically different. I say those words on purpose, is to start by rejecting our own premise. And now we're free. And my friend, the legendary designer John Builenberg, says, start by doing the opposite. That's his way of rejecting the premise. So he teaches university courses on innovation and creativity and all this good stuff. And one of the exercises he does with university students, Ryan, is he gets them to build a bike, and the bike only has one design point. They can do anything they want with the bike. Except there's one thing that the bike's got to do. It cannot be rideable. Go. And the reason he does that is to have Them go through an exercise that is 100% reject the premise.

[Ryan Alford]

I love that, man. I love it. And. All right, I'm gonna talk. I gotta get the native digitals and native analogs. But last thing, one of the first exercises I went through when I was in the ad game, this was in like 2000, 2001, and literally was worked on Verizon. And you know, we talked one of our first campaigns and there used to be this thing. I don't see it as much anymore. And maybe because I'm, you know, we work with medium sized companies. I'm not working, you know, with, you know, Fortune 10 companies like I do in the past. BDI and CDI. You remember that exercise? Brand development index and category development index. And I want you to hammer this home for me. But I thought I had, I had this thinking back, because when Verizon, when we were kind of kicking Everybody's ass in 2000, 2001 and can you hear me now? Was one of the first campaigns I worked on. It was the premise was we had to develop the category which was walking around with a cell phone. That actually worked, you know, because. And we didn't. They did talk about their network and it became chess. It got worse and worse on the chest beating. But it was all about category design in the beginning with wireless, right? Because no one had fucking known what, what do I do with cell phone? Why do I need that? And so it was all category design in your mind. Is it. Should it just always be 100? Is it 100 to 0? Category design versus or category development versus brand development?

[Guest Speaker]

I'm going to say yes, but not 100% mean it. But here's why I'm going to say yes with a little bit of an asterisk. All right, let's pretend I 100% mean it for a second. Here's the big aha. And very few marketers understand or can understand this. And the minute you do, it changes everything. When you're the company evangelizing the category, that is to say, evangelizing the problem, that is to say, talking about legendary marketing creates a different future. It moves the world from one place to a new and different place. Right? So you're evangelizing. We call them Frodos, those from tos. Right. It doesn't have to be this way. It could be a lot different, Right. When you're the company and or the person doing that. Here's the interesting thing. The consumers of that message assume you're the category leader because the only person and or company they've ever heard evangelize a category in a. And I'm going to use these words very purposely, missionary way. Like that is the company and. Or person bringing the idea to life. And so here's the irony. When you evangelize your category, people assume you're the category queen or king. And so you get brand for free because you watch. No one else in your space is evangelizing the category. You know, I just spent the better part of 20 minutes or whatever it was going off on our need for real dialogue. Well, Follow youw Different is a real dialogue podcast. How could the guy who has a real dialogue podcast not be an ambassador, an evangelist for fucking dialogue? And, oh, by the way, when you do that, I happen to believe it, it's not just a technique. But when you do that and you go, oh, yes, and he's a dialogue podcaster in the business and marketing space. Well, yeah. And then people go, well, shit, he must be one of the leaders, at least, because he just spent 20 minutes talking about how important real dialogue is and making me think about topics that I don't normally like to think about and probably slightly pissing me off. And so my point is, when you evangelize the category, you don't have to say to people, and by the way, I'm one of the leaders in business dialogue podcasts. You get it for free. And it's more powerful than if you actually promote yourself or your product or your brand. You're promoting an idea. You're promoting what's possible in the future for your prospect or customer. That's a way more powerful thing to talk about than, hey, isn't my fucking carbon dulator Athom?

[Ryan Alford]

I love you, man. All right, man.

[Guest Speaker]

What?

[Ryan Alford]

It's been plain sight, and it's hitting us and it's smacking us in the face every day, and it never. And I was like. I'd been getting sm. I was getting smacked around, like the last few years, like in certain meetings. And I didn't know what it was, but it was like ringing in the back of my head. And then you distilled it so eloquently in the last year, 18 months. I don't know this. I know you've. You've been talking about it for a bit now, but what's this wave, man? We got native digitals and native analogs. There's so many implications. Let's hit it.

[Guest Speaker]

All right, so let's start basic principles. The aha for me came a few years ago. I had my Friend Paul was visiting from the UK with his family, his wife and his two kids. And the kids were teenagers at the time, you know, 13, 16, kind of sort of in that ballpark where some of your rugrats are.

[Ryan Alford]

Yeah.

[Guest Speaker]

And we just live a couple blocks from the beach. It's very beautiful here. And so my wife Carrie, being the amazing person that she is, is. Let's do a wonderful beach dinner. We can have fires on our beach here. So we're gonna roast some weenies and we're gonna do some s'mores and we're gonna watch the sunset and I'm gonna have a great old time on the beach. So that's exactly what we do. So we go out there and we're looking at the sunset and we're enjoying the beach and we're enjoying the waves and we're getting dinner ready and we're having a nice conversation. What are the kids doing? They're on their phones. Yeah. So me being their unwanted, unwanted Uncle Sedom. Hey, Pst. You might look over there. There's this big orangey pinky Reddy thing in the sky. It's looking pretty cool right now. They look up, maybe they take a picture of it and then they go back to the phones. A few minutes later, I'll slap them on the shoulder and say, hey, there's this amazing greeny bluey thing right there flip flopping on the sand. It's called the Pacific Ocean. You don't have one of those in London you might want to take a look at and then go back to their phones. So we do this for a bit of the night and that's that. And here was the aha. I said to myself the next morning, I said, why is it one of the most beautiful things that happens ever, a beach sunset is not powerful enough to pull them away from their device for more than a few seconds? How, how can that be true? And the aha is because that's where their life is. And that unlock unlocks everything. And so the big difference between native analogs, that is to say people who are plus or minus over 35 and people who are under 35, is not an age thing. It's a where you experience life thing and what you'll notice. And look, there's always outliers and exceptions and I get all that. But what you'll notice is there's 180 degree difference. For those of us native analogs, we would always prefer to be in person. We're always going to watch the sunset and maybe we'll take a picture and a video of it too. But our primary experience is an analog experience. You go to a rock concert today, and young people are watching the concert through their phone as they tape it. It's there. They're right there. They're right fucking there, and you're watching them through your fucking phone. Why? Because their primary life experience is on a screen. They came of age with these things. And so the aha is if you came of age with the primarily the smartphone in the cloud, you are a native digital. You're the first generation of humans whose primary life experience is digital, and secondary life experience is analogous. And if you're older than that, you're the last native analogs to live on planet Earth. And once you realize how different that is, I'll give you a simple example why this matters. So we did a little bit of work. It turns out in the S&P 500 companies, there's 500 companies. And the average age of the average S&P 500 CEO is 58 now, most 58 years old. And by the way, I'm 54. So I'm a radical native analog. So, you know, I can throw all of us under the bus. You can throw shade. Throw shade, yeah, exactly. Most native analogs don't understand this is happening. Well, that's a problem for two reasons. Number one, you can't hire, and number two, you can't market because you can't get to anybody under 35 if you don't understand this. Now, it's interesting to me how small business owners adapt so much more quickly than bigger and big business owners. I'll give you a favorite example of this was during the pandemic. I talked to a. As the pandemic was ending, and I talked to a restaurant owner who was having a very hard time hiring people. And he was telling me he used all these job sites and this and that and the other, and he said it wasn't working. So you know what he did? He and his management team set up Tinder profiles so they could meet young people. And they use Tinder to recruit employees. And they made it very clear that's what they were doing. But. Well, how many hiring managers in The S&P 500 are doing anything like that? Zero. Now, the reason small business owners, restaurant owner in this case, does it is he realizes he can't get to them because they're nowhere that he usually used to go in the past. So you must go to where they are. And this is a massive unlock for people. If you have young people that you love in your life, you have to meet them in the digital world. They won't come to you. You have to go to them. And if you have young people in your life and you discipline them by taking away their screens, which may or may not be a bad thing, I'm not going to. You decide whatever you want to do. My point though is when you take a screen away from a younger person, you're taking them out of their regular world. Now, this unlock is everything because every time you see a television ad, what you're seeing is either A, a category of product or service that's not targeted to anybody over 30 younger than 35, or B, wasted marketing dollars because nobody over 35 watches any fucking TV. And so once you understand that the way they live life is different. Once you understand that if you're native digital, you got to have digital game to meet a significant other. When you and I were kids, we had to have analog game. You had to figure out how to go ask the girl to dance or whatever. Today you got to have, you got to have emoji game.

[Ryan Alford]

Yes, yes.

[Guest Speaker]

Really good emoji game.

[Ryan Alford]

Emoji game.

[Guest Speaker]

Right. And emojis. Emojis are the fastest growing language on planet earth and might be the fastest growing language ever. And I just found this out as a native analog. Do you know that if you give somebody a thumbs up and they're a native digital, you just insulted them. I've heard that. They think it's a passive aggressive kind of pat on the head.

[Ryan Alford]

Yeah, yeah. So our point is kind of like.

[Guest Speaker]

Right, yeah, well, if you don't know that and you're managing a team with native digitals on it and you send them a thumbs up, they're going to think you're a donkey. And so that's how big the difference is. And so the big aha is if we want to build legendary categories, companies and products into the future, we must realize the following. We are now in a native digital first world and you can't recruit people and you can't market and sell to people who are native digitals using analog approaches.

[Ryan Alford]

And it's, it's, it's so apparent, you know, like people probably just, you know, anyone listening now was listening. You talk and they're going, mm. And it's been in plain sight. But the brands are so freaking. They're not agile, man. And they're not, they don't get it. So unless they've got someone on their team, like feeding it and they think, well, let's just run some more organic Facebook posts. That's the solve. It's just so bigger than that. I mean, like. Correct. So like, if you're counseling, I'm, I'm gonna get, I'm getting nitty gritty, Christopher. So, you know we have some executives listening to this. I know. So we're gonna, we're gonna take them to school. Like, what are we. You're counting brands beyond. Okay, I need to run more Facebook ads. Take it a level deeper of implication maybe, or opportunity.

[Guest Speaker]

Yeah. So I think running more Facebook ads is often a very big mistake there. Having spent 35 years in the Silicon Valley tech ecosystem, startup ecosystem. There are startups over the last couple years who spent approximately half their venture funding on Facebook and Google Ads. And so we need to understand when we do that, we're playing a game called demand capture. And she who creates the demand wins. And so here's the first. Aha. Marketing. The number one form of marketing was, is and always will be word of mouth. And nobody in marketing talks about it. Because your brethren in the agency business don't think they can make money on word of mouth. They make money placing ads and doing all that shit. Well, it turns out marketing can help tremendously with word of mouth. And when you realize that it's all about word of mouth, then you realize a couple things. Marketing's job is to put the right words in the right mouths. Marketing's job is to use marketing campaigns and strategies to create and multiply wong word of mouth. And here's the beauty wom scales in the digital world in a way that it never could scale in the analog world. So if you understand that what we need to do is find who our ideal customer is, we call them in category design super consumers. They're typically 8 to 10% of the category who are most forward leaning, most progressive in their thinking, most willing to experiment with new ideas and new things. You find who those people are and you deliver them. I'm going to say these words very much on purpose. Content that is based on a different point of view and you interact with them digitally where they live in the digital world and you get a small percentage of them talking and buying. You can create radical, rapid digital wam in digital communities. And then when you get a certain community to tip, away you go. We're working right now with a company called Lomi. And Lomi is in my opinion, the most important new home appliance in more than a decade. It's the first smart home composter. You Take your food waste, you put it in this thing, you press a button and three to four hours later you get some of the most nutrient dense dirt on planet earth as opposed to creating more waste and more CO2 and more bad shit.

[Ryan Alford]

I thought you were going to say Doc Brown, like turning it into a time machine, but you know, like in fact the future three comes back with, you know, you just pour trash down in it, like turn it, but that's cool too.

[Guest Speaker]

Well, and the reason I bring them up is because Matt and Brad, the founders of the company, CEO and chairman, are really legendary at direct digital marketing. And they're now at a point where their level of precision in being able to measure how much digital wam they need to create to get it to a certain point that a certain area will tip, they almost have it down to the penny. And so when you know that, when you know who your perfect super consumer is and you know how to get to them through digital channels and be part of their digital community, and you take an education oriented approach with a point of view that is thoughtful and capture their attention and imagination, all of a sudden they will interact with your content and your company and then you open the aperture to them trying something different. And when you get very good at this, the amount of precision that you have in your marketing is extraordinary. And your cost of acquisition goes down exponentially because the more wam you drive, the more you have customers doing your marketing for you. And so the folks at LOMI are getting to a point where we call it category science. The category science analysis is so tight that we know if we spend a certain amount of money in a certain amount in a certain type of digital community over a certain amount of time, we will drive revenue. And once revenue in that digital community gets to a certain point, we don't have to invest anymore because the WOM will do the rest of the work for us. That is the most legendarily powerful kind of marketing that I've ever been associated with. And so the aha here is if you understand category design, if you understand super consumers, if you understand digital communities, if you understand native digital versus native analog, and that you can't get to native digitals in other ways, this is the way to get to them. And that native digitals more than ever, more than any kind of human being ever, are like, they're not going to go to some unknown source for information, they're going to ask a friend, they're going to be part of a digital community and they'll ask that digital Community if they don't have a specific friend to ask. And so today, success is very clear. But it has to be digital first. It has to be focused on supers. It has to have a thoughtful, education oriented point of view, AKA legendary content. One of the things we like to say today is the content is the marketing, the content is the marketing. And people engage with your content. It's going to create affinity, it's going to create scalability of that wom. If you're creating new languaging to get back to that, the new languaging that you're creating will have some real lift to it. Because of the wom and because digital womb happens at scale around the world, you can really do something legendary in a fairly short period of time if you understand some of these core principles.

[Ryan Alford]

Big man. And the implications are so big. And I'm going to, even, I'm going to distill it. Not Facebook ads, Facebook groups or discord groups and, or. And you know what? There was a second thing that I took away there. I'm a fucking Christopher locket super consumer. I mean, you know, like, who knew? I am, I'm the living, breathing, you know, like super consumer for Christopher Lockhead and category pirates.

[Guest Speaker]

Well, and here's the interesting thing you tell me is as one of our supers, here's the other thing most people don't realize about supers. Supers will spend a giant amount of money with you if you let them.

[Ryan Alford]

Yeah, yeah, you're right.

[Guest Speaker]

You think about music. People want to go to the shows, they want to buy the T shirts, they want to get the DVD or not dvd, the streaming video of the fucking concert back behind the scenes, you know, the biography story. Like if you think that Lizzo's unbelievable, you want to consume all things Lizzo.

[Ryan Alford]

Yes.

[Guest Speaker]

And so most people leave a tremendous amount on the table. That is to say, they don't give their supers enough to buy from them.

[Ryan Alford]

Yeah, that's why you need pirates.

[Guest Speaker]

This is why Hal. This is why so many of these digital creators are being so successful. Mr. Beast is a legendary example. You become a fan, you'll buy almost anything from the guy.

[Ryan Alford]

Yep, my kids would. That's why when you get pirate sauce, I'm going to be the first one in line.

[Guest Speaker]

You heard it here first. We're launching Pirate Sauce Bourbon.

[Ryan Alford]

Yes. Varti by Radical. Oh, man.

[Guest Speaker]

Get. Get sauced on the pirate sauce.

[Ryan Alford]

It's so good, man. I know I've taken you over, Tom. You've been very generous and I know we could talk forever. But I think you unlocked a lot for our listeners there. And the great thing is you're one quick away to. For them to get more. I know. So let's tell everybody where to do that.

[Guest Speaker]

The simplest thing is just go to.

[Ryan Alford]

Lockhead.Com lockhead.com we'll have that and all these off that. Yeah. And do yourself a favor, go follow this guy on LinkedIn. It'd be the smartest move you make whether, look, you might be listening. We have people all over the place. We're kind of the mainstream marketing and business podcast. We got people all over the map. But the thing is, you'll learn from this guy. Like as you heard on today's show, the passion, the energy, the knowledge, it just, it transcends the marketing in the business, which is why I love Chris and I'm going to keep asking him on my show and hopefully you'll be lucky enough that he'll say yes.

[Guest Speaker]

I'll come back anytime, Ryan.

[Ryan Alford]

Yeah, man. You know where to find him. Lockhead.com search category Pirates. You can find them anywhere on that. And if you look, if you follow me, you'll, you'll hear it one way or another. You also see the highlight clips from all of these shows. Ryan is right.com you know where I'm at at Ryan Alford on Instagram, on tick tock on LinkedIn. Trying to break category design with Christopher in my head every day. Thanks for all, all you do, Christopher. Really appreciate you coming on.

[Guest Speaker]

Thank you, Ryan. I deeply appreciate it, brother.

[Ryan Alford]

We'll see you next time.

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