How To Turn Your Brand Into a Thought Leader

Summary

Sweat Equity: How To Turn Your Brand Into a Thought Leader

Podcast Information:

• Title: Sweat Equity
• Host/Author: Marketing Examined
• Episode: How To Turn Your Brand Into a Thought Leader
• Release Date: April 2, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of Sweat Equity, hosts Alex Garcia and Brian Blum delve into the strategies and methodologies brands can employ to position themselves as thought leaders within their respective industries. Through a dynamic conversation, they explore the nuances of influencer marketing, content creation, and the critical shift from traditional performance marketing to building brand trust and authority.

Understanding Thought Leadership in Branding

Alex Garcia opens the discussion by highlighting the growing trend of creators successfully establishing themselves as authoritative figures within specific niches. He poses a pertinent question: “What can a brand do to emulate creators in becoming thought leaders and resources within their space?” (00:00).

Brian Blum responds by emphasizing the importance of brands adopting a creator's mindset. He introduces the concept of the interest graph, explaining how platforms curate content based on shared interests, leading to overlapping content consumption among similar audiences (00:30). Blum asserts, “People buy from thought leaders. They don't buy from teachers.” (00:53), underscoring the need for brands to provide valuable, engaging content that educates without patronizing.

Strategies to Establish Thought Leadership

The conversation shifts to actionable strategies for brands to build authority:

1. Content Integration with Influencers:

   • Alex points out a missed opportunity in how brands like Athletic Greens sponsor influencers without leveraging their authority on the brand’s own platforms. He suggests creating dedicated content series featuring influencers to enhance brand credibility (04:10).
   • Brian agrees, highlighting that integrating influencers into the brand’s content strategy can significantly boost thought leadership, transforming influencer marketing from a mere performance channel to a brand-building tool (05:17).

2. Educational and Shareable Content:

   • Alex shares a success story with a high-tech performance brand collaborating with a renowned figure in the performance space, focusing on creating content pillars that position the influencer as a scientist or expert (03:51).
   • Brian adds that brands should move beyond basic feature-benefit statements, advocating for content that educates audiences on broader, related topics. For instance, Kettle and Fire shifted from recipe content to educating about regenerative agriculture, aligning their content with their audience’s interests (08:41).

Examples of Effective Thought Leadership

Several brands serve as exemplars in the discussion:

• Kettle and Fire: Transitioned to content that mirrors their audience's interest in sustainable and regenerative agriculture, resulting in top-performing social posts (08:41).
• Casita MX: Achieves 15 million monthly organic views through high-quality FPV drone shots and shareable content, contrasting with brands that rely solely on influencer collaborations (06:47).
• Bandit Running: Utilizes educational content like a 16-week marathon training program to position itself as a thought leader, driving long-term customer relationships (27:07).
• More Plates More Dates (Gorilla Mind): Successfully built a multi-million dollar brand through consistent thought leadership and educational content (21:07).

Missteps in Influencer Marketing

The hosts critically analyze common pitfalls in influencer marketing:

• Overemphasis on Performance Channels: Brands often treat influencer marketing as a performance metric rather than a brand-building opportunity, leading to ineffective content strategies (05:17).
• Loss of Trust Due to Inauthentic Promotions: Influencers frequently engage in insincere, scripted promotions that alienate audiences. Brian laments, “Influencers fumbled the bag big time. The quality of content most influencers have put out over the last 10 years destroyed that entire industry.” (22:01).
• Inadequate Integration of Influencers into Brand Content: Brands like Athletic Greens fail to incorporate influencers into their organic content strategy, limiting the potential for authentic engagement (04:30).

Creating Valuable Brand Content

To counteract these missteps, Alex and Brian advocate for creating content that genuinely adds value:

• Aligning Content with Audience Interests: Brands should identify top interests within their target market and create content that educates and engages on these topics. For example, a breathwork app should produce content linking breathwork to specific benefits like stress reduction or improved sleep quality (20:31).
• Using Curiosity-Driven Hooks: Effective content often begins with a hook that evokes curiosity, making audiences eager to learn more. Alex illustrates this with an analogy comparing small and cast nets, emphasizing the importance of broad appeal in hooks (15:37).
• Developing High-Intent Lead Magnets: Instead of generic discounts, brands should offer high-value lead magnets that resonate with their audience’s specific needs and interests. For instance, Cadence could provide comprehensive guides on marathon nutrition instead of simple discount offers (32:17).

Actionable Insights for Brands

The hosts distill their discussion into several actionable insights:

1. Think Like Creators: Brands should adopt a creator’s approach to content creation, focusing on education and engagement rather than mere promotion.
2. Integrate Influencers Authentically: Instead of treating influencers as separate entities, integrate their expertise into the brand’s overall content strategy to enhance credibility and trust.
3. Focus on Educational Content: Develop content pillars that educate the audience on broader topics related to the brand’s niche, fostering a deeper connection and authority.
4. Utilize Curiosity in Content Hooks: Craft content hooks that create a curiosity gap, encouraging wider audience engagement and retention.
5. Invest in Quality Content Production: Allocate resources towards producing high-quality, shareable content that aligns with the audience’s interests and reinforces the brand’s thought leadership.

Conclusion

In wrapping up, Alex and Brian emphasize the critical shift brands must make from traditional performance marketing to establishing themselves as trusted thought leaders. By integrating influencers authentically, focusing on educational and high-value content, and leveraging curiosity-driven strategies, brands can build lasting trust and authority within their industries. This approach not only enhances brand reputation but also drives sustainable growth and customer loyalty.

Notable Quotes:

• Brian Blum: “People buy from thought leaders. They don't buy from teachers.” (00:53)
• Alex Garcia: “If you could own those three pillars like you were talking about… you're in a very good place to start influencing somebody's purchases.” (11:24)
• Brian Blum: “Brand marketing is the new performance marketing.” (05:17)
• Alex Garcia: “How do you evoke curiosity? You know, foreshadow what the video is going to be about and then get that out to as many people as humanly possible.” (15:54)
• Brian Blum: “People have affinity for you. If someone's way ahead of you in terms of product, market, fit, good luck.” (08:41)

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Timestamps

• 00:00 – Introduction to Thought Leadership
• 00:30 – Interest Graphs and Content Overlap
• 00:53 – Importance of Buying from Thought Leaders
• 03:51 – Example of High-Tech Performance Brand
• 04:10 – Athletic Greens Sponsorship and Content Integration
• 05:17 – Transition to Brand Marketing as Thought Leadership
• 06:47 – Case Study: Casita MX vs. Wander
• 08:41 – Kettle and Fire’s Content Strategy
• 11:24 – Middle of the Funnel Content Importance
• 15:37 – Content Hooks: Small Net vs. Cast Net Analogy
• 20:31 – Educational Content for Breathwork App
• 21:07 – More Plates More Dates as a Thought Leader
• 22:01 – Decline of Influencer Trust
• 27:07 – Bandit Running’s Marathon Training Program
• 32:17 – Effective Lead Magnets Over Discounts

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Note: This summary captures the essence of the conversation between Alex Garcia and Brian Blum, emphasizing key strategies and insights on transforming a brand into a thought leader. For a more immersive understanding, listening to the full episode is recommended.

Transcript

[Alex]

So something you and I have been texting a bit about is becoming an authoritative figure, like as a brand. Right. What can a brand do? And look at a creator and kind of say, okay, creators are very good at becoming thought leaders within a space, within a category and owning something. And like being seen as a resource. We've been then, because you and I both work with a lot of brands. Well, then how can brands do that?

[Ben]

Yeah.

[Alex]

I would love for you to jump into examples right out the gate. I know you're working on this with current brands, and then we could share some other examples as well.

[Ben]

Totally. And the thesis comes from brands thinking like creators. Every single platform has changed the way that they understand your content to show it to people on what I've called an interest graph. So this is. You and I have probably really similar interest graphs. Brand marketing, sports, comedy. So, you know, that's why we see the same podcast clips. That's why we see the same Jordan ads. That's why we see.

[Alex]

Is this why we have the same hooks?

[Ben]

Pretty much. Well, there might be another issue with. But it's truly like, how brands can connect with consumers is understanding the interest graph. And the reason that brands need to make themselves thought leaders is because people buy from thought leaders. They don't buy from teachers. So no one wants to be taught something. Right. That makes them feel stupid. They feel as though you're kind of yelling at them or reminds them of high school when they had to learn stuff they didn't want to know. But what they do want to do is learn things that are interesting to them and learn more about those topics. And so as a brand, you have an opportunity to know intimately what your audience is interested in. If they support you, then there's very high likelihood they're going to be interested in the things that you're able to educate them on. This applies to any category, whether it's streetwear, shoes, nutrition, health and wellness, beauty, it doesn't matter. You're always going to have more information to share with these people than they have themselves. And they're following thought leaders. They're following Huberman for sleep tips. They're following Carnivore MD for nutrition advice, although I wouldn't recommend it. And they're following all these people, and that's why you've seen kind of the rise of the thought leader, cult of personality creator, who has a lot of pretty basic stuff that you could just look up in a research paper. But they're making it socially native, you know, like Huberman, sharing some Information from a Stanford research paper is a lot more interesting than reading the paper. And brands have an opportunity to create that same sort of experience for their audience by becoming a thought leader. So.

[Alex]

Yeah, couldn't agree more. There's a brand that we work with and they have a, a collab product with somebody that's very, very, very well known in kind of like the, the performance space. 2,3ish million followers. Anytime he drops like you know, it's a home run. And the way that we're looking at him is because they're very, they're high tech performance brand. Right. This individual isn't an everybody else that they sponsor is an athlete. Not to say you can't leverage the athletes for thought leadership. You probably can at some degree. But they have this person over here that's like the perfect character to own the thought leadership within this space. And so the way we're thinking about and we're working on it now with him is like how do we create a content pillar around you as like you're the scientist.

[Ben]

Yeah.

[Alex]

Around this, you know, around here. Because very similar to what you're saying is people trust who they learn from.

[Ben]

Absolutely.

[Alex]

If I'm consistently getting. And it happens with you and I like if people are consistently getting value out of what you're talking about, the content you're creating, they're going to trust you to buy your products, to take you to hire your services. Doesn't matter if I see you as a resource, I then want your resources. Right. The things that you are then pushing.

[Ben]

Yeah.

[Alex]

One thing I think is a huge, and hopefully I'm not jumping in the gun. But one thing I think is a huge missed opportunity is the fact that brands don't leverage those creators as pillars within their content. A huge missed opportunity is the fact that Athletic Greens doesn't have a content series with Huberman.

[Ben]

Yeah.

[Alex]

They sh. They pay Huberman probably seven figures a year.

[Ben]

Right.

[Alex]

For that sponsorship. Right. On the pod. And that's great that they sponsor the pod and that they, you know, he shills the 30 second 1 minute AD. But what if you had a, an only AG1 content series that lived on AG1's feed or collab post with him.

[Ben]

Yeah. Right.

[Alex]

To take advantage of the fact that he is probably the largest. Him and Natia probably like the largest thought leader in the space and you're not leveraging that on your own social account. Like that to me is crazy. And such a wide open space. I hate that brands kind of break up the two things where it's like, hey, we have these influencers, they just need to hit their deliverables or these thought leaders, they just need to hit their deliverables. And then we have our internal organic content strategy versus yeah, this like if you look at the overarching content strategy, there's hey, like the things that your team's producing and then you have these influencers. How do they get become part of this content strategy and how do they have their pillars that then influence here doing that. Great recipe for becoming a thought leader within whatever category.

[Ben]

You nailed it. You totally nailed it. And it's because people view influencer marketing as a performance channel and not a brand channel. You know, and if there's one thing we're going to preach about on this podcast, it's that brand marketing is the new performance marketing. It's we're back. You know, the cycles are. People used to think it was all about brand and then it became performance with digital blowing up. And now that digital is like, you know, really not driving the returns that it did for about a decade. You have to be building trust and affinity with the consumer. How do you do that? You know, everyone trusts Huberman. So if he's going to be talking about your product authentically. Except women, women don't trust and they have a reason.

[Alex]

I had six girlfriends.

[Ben]

Yeah, no, he was keeping it play up. But no, I, it's like integrating those influencers into your brand content. And you know, a lot of brands do do this, right? They, they try to like wander who's someone that I've talked about before. They're this, you know, luxury Airbnb. I ran the numbers on their content because I was trying to pitch them on some stuff and did it work by the way?

[Alex]

I know you were trying to get.

[Ben]

I need to send, I'm, I'm gonna send the most fire cold email that bro's ever received. Like seriously, he's gonna be like, what the hell is this?

[Alex]

But that'll be a whole nother segment. You gotta hit that segment on the pod. Yeah, the cold email it.

[Ben]

I will. I could hit it right now. I'll hit it at the end of this episode. But I'm waiting on the warm intro from Ben. You know Ben, dude, it's like he tells me he's got me. He sends the first email. He hasn't even hit them back. So there's a lot of follow up.

[Alex]

Yeah, follow up too many times. Yeah, I'll come to the office on Monday. Never hear back.

[Ben]

Ben. But you know, with them, what they're doing that I think is really inefficient, is they're relying exclusively on collab posts with influencers as their brand content. And you see this, right? They post nine times in the last 30 days. None of it did anything average of like 120 likes, whatever. And even their collab posts with their influencers like don't do that well, you know, I did a compare contrast with them versus this brand, Casita mx, who is not venture backed, you know, runs a similar business where it's like super high end vacation rentals that are not on Airbnb. It's a collection of owned properties that they do all of the booking and management for. Very similar, they're just niched into, you know, specifically Mexico. And Casita MX is running 15 million views a month organically just by themselves, just on FPV drone shots, headlines. Because they know how to make the content very shareable, they understand how to create social content. Wander could be doing the same thing. They actually have a better opportunity in my opinion because a lot of their destinations are US based. You know, they could be focusing on showing their products to people, but they don't invest in their organic content. And so, you know, that's a huge low hanging fruit. And it's something that when I'm talking to a lot of these brands today, they subtly know. I think everyone kind of knows because if you're a business person, you're seeing a lot of brand content, a lot of founder content on your feed. There's no way it doesn't reach you unless you're just really not paying attention to things you should on social. And naturally their next question is, well, how do I create that exact type of content? And so this is how you're gonna do it. So people don't buy from teachers, they buy from thought leaders, right? So they want people to educate them on topics that they're loosely familiar with or they wanna plant new ideas in their head. So, you know, it's like the meme, like I'm waiting on the all in podcast to have my opinion on this, right? Like you wanna watch your favorite podcast so you can know how to talk about on this issue.

[Alex]

I can't stand that podcast.

[Ben]

It's gotten really bad now that Saks is out of it. So brands have the same opportunity to become thought leaders as creators in today's day and age. So someone like Kettle and Fire, what we've done for them is we ditched the recipe content, right? So instead we create videos around the food system so their brand pillars are quality source ingredients, regenerative agriculture, you know, better for you protein sources. And their audience is already aligned with those interests. They know that. Right. If you support cattle and fire, you're going to be interested in those things as well. So instead of creating recipe content of how to use the product, we're creating content to match that interest graph. Right? So we want to create videos that confirm their preexisting beliefs. Stuff like once you ditch processed food for good, it all starts to taste like trash, or, you know, pointing at the food system as a cause of our obesity crisis. Now, when a competitor's brand is next to them on the aisle, what is that person going to think? Well, I saw this brand that stood for something I believe in compared to this is just a product. And you're trying to win on the shelf space, merchandising. And, you know, this stuff is working like tremendously well. Like with Kettle and Fire, we have their top three social posts of the last five years have been stuff that we posted for them in the last 30 days. So, you know, it's a huge win.

[Alex]

In this IG or TikTok on this.

[Ben]

IG and you know, it's a huge. And they were similar, right. All of their top performing posts were, we're doing a giveaway with this brand or this creator or, you know, it's.

[Alex]

Just like an engagement.

[Ben]

It's all just engagement hacking. And what I'm here to tell you is that you don't need to engagement hack. You can actually meet customers where they want to be with stuff they're interested in because. And this applies to smaller brands as well, you know, if you're someone that's just getting started, you can look at your market and understand what your competitors are doing, maybe where they're not servicing people properly with their attention. And that's a gap in the market you need to exploit. See a bunch of people trying to do this with Streetwear, you see a bunch of people trying to do this with, you know, you name it, beauty products, whatever. I think in those heavily saturated places, your only chance is to become a thought leader. Your only chance is to stand out because people have affinity for you. Because if someone's way ahead of you in terms of product, market, fit, good luck, you know. Yeah, I mean, we, we see this all the time. All these brands are like, well, how do I get affiliates promote me on TikTok shop? I don't know, start generating $300,000 a month so that they think they can make money with you, because otherwise you're asking for charity. You know, like they're going to take a free sample and make a, make a video that doesn't make them any money. They don't care. They can make a goalie video right now and make $400. So you know, you have to like understand where these people, your audience or whoever you're trying to work with are really coming from and then feed them the content that'll satisfy their desires.

[Alex]

This is the importance of middle of the funnel content 100%. Where it's at least what I classified as is brand education category education or product education. Like those three pillars. And if you could own those three pillars like you were talking about like you did with Kettle and Fire, you're in a very good place to start influencing somebody's purchases.

[Ben]

You said brand category and what product. And I would add market as a fourth there, or there's something maybe macro as a fourth because I think you nailed it with the middle of funnel. But brands have so much more of a top of funnel attention opportunity than they think. Like Kettle and Fire's ability to educate people on the regenerative agriculture movement. So they source products from farms that practice these regenerative agriculture processes, which is reducing the water, the impact on the soil, there's more nutrients in the soil, it's better for the animals, the cattle get raised healthier. It's all these things that you know, realistically anyone would with a brain would agree is a great idea and their credibility comes from that. They're a brand that is actually sourcing from those places. Right. And so the macro environment, like if they can macro educate people on this broader movement. There you go dude, there's your thought leader content. But I just, it just seems like people don't. And then they try it, they try it. Like Kettle and fire had a YouTube video where they talked about regenerative agriculture, but I promise you they just outsourced that as like a video project. They didn't think about YouTube retention and what amplifies a video. You know, like they didn't laser in on making that first minute as captivating as possible. And like doing the YouTube stuff where it's like, and later in the video you're going to hear about this. You know, they just kind of made a promotion and like it didn't work. So they're like, oh this, this can't work.

[Alex]

And that's something we've been talking about a lot on in cut 30 and like we've been working with clients on is this because a lot of brands, they, for example Kettle and Fire or another brand that we work with that they think they have to go super niche in what they say. Right, right. And they think they have to be so, so direct on, on a specific topic. And what I'm trying to teach brands is you have to use your TAM or sorry, use your hook to open your tam. Right. If I'm, if you go very specific on something that only like a small, small group of people would know about. Bone broth. Right. And like it's too nitty gritty where like I wouldn't even know. Somebody that's in health and wellness wouldn't even know kind of what you're talking about. But if you, you're able to open and kind of leverage a different hook to open your tam, then you're able to like increase this top of funnel potential.

[Ben]

Yeah.

[Alex]

An example would be, and this is just an example from for example cut 30. Somebody was, somebody was made a video where it was like, here's why your cost caps are costing you like potential in your. At something like very specific on like ads manager.

[Ben]

Right? Yeah.

[Alex]

Versus you can just. And that closes your tam. Right. Like that reduces your TAM to maybe.

[Ben]

Yeah. Use a keyword that. I've, I've run $40 million of Meta and I'm still not even sure what a cost cap is half the time.

[Alex]

Yeah. So for somebody that's interested in paid ads, interested in performance marketing, you just got so deep that you, if you made a banger video, max is probably getting 20,000 views.

[Ben]

Yeah.

[Alex]

If it is a best of all time.

[Ben]

Yeah.

[Alex]

10 out of 10.

[Ben]

I agree.

[Alex]

But if all of a sudden you just change the hook to something along the lines of like this is what's, what's killing your ad performance, all of a sudden you're talking to performance marketers, founders, potentially even creators that are running ads on their own, like, or CEOs.

[Ben]

Yeah, CEOs who are skeptical of the market potentially. Like, yeah, everyone's skeptical of what the marketing team's doing.

[Alex]

And so all of a sudden you just opened up your TAM by casting a much wider net. Right. So the way I want people to think about it is if I went to a pond and I had a little scoop net, like a little, little small net, and I'm trying to catch fish, I'm not getting anything. It's going to take so many times of me doing it until I catch a tadpole.

[Ben]

Yeah.

[Alex]

Right. But if I go in with a cast net, a 10 foot cast net, And I throw it across shore. Like, chances are I'm catching a lot of fish. Your hook and how you address your hook and how you leverage it to be able to address the market is the difference between that small net and the cast net.

[Ben]

Yeah, totally nailed it. And I love that you pulled in your Florida man background.

[Alex]

I had to.

[Ben]

It's needed. Sometimes I gotta flex on these people.

[Alex]

The crazy thing is, I've been both of these people.

[Ben]

What, small net, big net guy?

[Alex]

Yeah. When I was a kid, it was always, like, just being at shore, like, with a small net. And then as you get older, turns.

[Ben]

Out when you were eight, fishing for tadpoles, you didn't know you'd be using it on a podcast 30 years later.

[Alex]

I knew it would come around.

[Ben]

20 years. Yeah. I mean, dude, you're totally right. You have to cast a wide net. And something that, you know, what you just did as well is. And I don't even think you thought of it because you're probably on autopilot at this point, but. But you built curiosity with that hook versus there's no curiosity when you name the cost cap as the problem. When you're saying that this is the problem with your cost caps. Okay, well, yes and no. It's like, I don't even know what a cost cap is, so I'm probably swiping. But if I do know what a cost cap is, I probably don't want to respect your opinion anyway, because I think I'm an expert on this already. So there is even, like, when you want to get more granular, you know, if you're saying this is the problem with your ad performance, or here's how to spot wasted money in your ad account, like, that is, you know, building a lot more curiosity for a wider group of people, which is really what the purpose of your hook is, is how do you evoke curiosity? You know, foreshadow what the video is going to be about and then get that out to as many people as humanly possible.

[Alex]

We had somebody on cut 30 yesterday. I. I forget his name, but I think he's gotten 90 million, 100 million views on. On tick tock in the last 6ish months. And he was talking about all of his hooks, Right. And all of his hooks are statements that evoke a curiosity gap.

[Ben]

Yeah.

[Alex]

An example, one of the videos he made is Seat to Table is the best grocery store in Naples, Florida. Out the gate, you ask yourself why. Yeah, you know, I mean, you're saying like this, and there's a few Parts to it. A lot of people are going to agree. A lot of people are going to disagree.

[Ben]

There's an incumbent big player in Publix.

[Alex]

Exactly.

[Ben]

And so there's your enemy, marketing. You're also curious to why the reason is that this David versus Goliath situation is going the way of David. I mean, there's a lot right there.

[Alex]

I can't believe you knew that Publix was a Florida.

[Ben]

I've had a pub sub.

[Alex]

Chicken tender. Buffalo chicken tender.

[Ben]

Foot long. Shoved it in my mouth.

[Alex]

Pause.

[Ben]

It was good.

[Alex]

Triple pause.

[Ben]

Yeah. No, I mean, look, I, I.

[Alex]

Did you like it? Oh, we gotta. I need it.

[Ben]

That's almost more sus you asking me did I like it when I shopped it in my mouth?

[Alex]

My mom listens to this podcast.

[Ben]

Okay. Yeah, that was out of pocket. But I did, I did love it. It was excellent. I don't know the scenario where you eat a pub sub, though. This is. Yeah, it's like it's too big for a single setting, which I think is the point. Cause you want it for. You want that last third for like I even think about. Just came out. But the. You want that last third for later. Right? Always. And that's kind of the point is like you want a little bit after, you know, round two.

[Alex]

Yeah. The best setting for a pub sub is you go to the beach.

[Ben]

Yeah.

[Alex]

You kick up the. The, like the beach chair and you're just chilling. You have a buffalo chicken tender sub or post. Post beach is the other thing.

[Ben]

I actually prefer getting a breakfast taco and riding around a concrete jungle like we do in Texas. It's great.

[Alex]

Sure.

[Ben]

Nothing there. So this framework applies to anything though. Right? So, you know, if I was to build a content plan for a breath work app, here's what I would do. So identify the top three interests that people have when seeking breath work. Likely. It's likely stress reduction or focus or sleep aid. And now we're going to educate people on how breath work can lead to better outcomes for those interests. But you need to get specific. It's not just that breath work will help you sleep. It's that breath work using breath work will produce more melatonin or reduce cortisol or prevent racing thoughts. You know, you want to name that specific benefit people are going to get. You then rinse and repeat that across the different desired outcomes of your audience's interests. So, you know, it's breath work. It's not breath work will help you focus. It's breathwork will release norepinephrine. Which is the same ingredient that caffeine releases, but without the crash, you know. Now you apply this framework across carousels, talking head, you know, faceless content. And you fill up the calendar with stuff that positions your brand as a thought leader a la Huberman, while still integrating your product seamlessly.

[Alex]

Agreed. Like I, there's really nothing for me to add there. I think it's, it's pretty dialed.

[Ben]

Well, you know, people really struggle with it was I, I hopped on a call this morning with a guy who is a product sourcing house. Right. He, he designs products for people and he's just baffled by what to do with marketing. And the secret is, you know, you kind of just need to understand like the audience you're creating for their desired interests and then meet them where they are, which is on social. I mean, everyone's attention span is on social. It continues to consume more of that every year. And socially, native formats that are interesting and educate them. That's how you're going to do it.

[Alex]

One of my favorite brands that does a good, great job of this is the More Plates, More Dates guy.

[Ben]

Yeah.

[Alex]

And I think it's Gorilla Mind or. Yeah, Gorilla Mind is a gorilla mind. Yeah, it's. His brand is Gorilla Mind. Sneaky. Huge brand.

[Ben]

Huge. Well, he's bigger than you think too.

[Alex]

Yeah, he's. No, I mean he's.

[Ben]

Yeah.

[Alex]

Mega big.

[Ben]

Yeah.

[Alex]

But I don't think his brand, I don't say gets the respect, but it doesn't get the notoriety of like it is a 150 million, 200 million dollar brand. Like it's absolute behemoth of a brand. It's all built off of thought leadership.

[Ben]

Yeah.

[Alex]

If we talk about the funnel, the funnel is thought leadership.

[Ben]

It's Derek, of course, it's trust.

[Alex]

Literally sitting there and pulling like the Huberman card and just talking to the camera and explaining things and breaking everything down and then funneling to products. And you're so you look at Derek, you're like, I trust nearly everything you say.

[Ben]

Yeah.

[Alex]

So therefore I just trust out the gate, your supplements.

[Ben]

Well, and this is, this was what influencer marketing was supposed to be. Right. Is people had, you know, trusted relationships with an audience and then you could seamlessly integrate in there. But influencers fumbled the bag big time. Like the quality of content that Most influencers above 100k have put out over the last 10 years destroyed that entire industry because all they were doing was just bag chasing. They weren't actually trying to drive performance. Like maybe 15, 20% of creators tried to drive performance. And they instead created stuff that just was so sponsored, you know, they just read off a script and it's on the brand as well because the brand is probably trying to constrain the creator too much. I mean, we've seen this with, you know, our podcast ad reads even, you know, it's like if the, if they don't want us to, we'll script it for you. So it's like if you don't want us to read it in our authentic voice, then that's how you get a certain meme level of hook for one of our ads which you might see on this podcast. And instead you could have a podcast ad read where it feels like we didn't even break character. It feels like 30 seconds into the ad read you don't even know you're getting sold something. Every creator was capable of that. But because of that relationship, you know, they broke the trust of influencer marketing. I don't think there is a lot of trust now in most sponsorships. That's why you're seeing a lot of creator led brands where the creator has, you know, Emma Chamberlain is one. I just found out about this girl Ashley who has Nami Matcha. I haven't seen her, but she's a big YouTuber. She's been drinking matcha for 10 years. So she dropped a Matcha company because she has trust. Yeah, like, and you know, it's, it's, that's really the creator economy right now. It's not this how to connect brands and creators that make sense. Like that's kind of dead in my opinion. I think the grassroots stuff, you know, TikTok Shop has done this Instagram and YouTube. Apparently YouTube had some pretty crazy announcements at this social commerce summit like a week or a month ago.

[Alex]

I haven't dove through them.

[Ben]

They're, they're just trying, I mean they're going to aggressively try to clone TikTok shop.

[Alex]

Interesting.

[Ben]

I'm bearish. I don't think Google can ship good products anymore. So I doubt that they'll do this effectively. But it just goes to show, you know, that's a dream scenario for platforms like Snapchat, for Pinterest, for YouTube. Like the problem with those, they're just not meta. Like they'll never crack the performance marketing side and they're losing out on billions and billions of advertising revenue by not doing it. So how do they do it? They have to integrate commerce with their social network. And I mean, you know, YouTube is very. But it just doesn't work. It's like no one's on YouTube shorts trying to get, I don't know, like.

[Alex]

Really, Even long form. Like, it's rare that my journey from long form, even if it has it sold underneath, is see YouTube video, go to Instagram.

[Ben]

Yeah.

[Alex]

And then, like, look and then shop. Like, that's my journey. I don't know if what it is for you, but that's mine. Even if the products are right underneath, I've never. And I'm somebody that buys. You and I probably are both people that buy a lot off of social, for sure. We see something, we make the purchase that moment. Right.

[Ben]

It's the worst quality about being a marketer is I'm paying way too much attention.

[Alex]

Yeah.

[Ben]

Like, I'm like.

[Alex]

And that's my. My excuse for everything. This is market research.

[Ben]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Alex]

You know that. Hoodie market research.

[Ben]

Vanessa asking about the credit card bill.

[Alex]

One thing I want to go back to is so we could give even. You already did. But, like, take some more examples and add some actionable insights for people. Here is what you were talking about. You have to find, like, that underlying reason that somebody buys your product, and then you have to say, okay, how do I then take that underlying reason and build a series. Create a content pillar around that. One of the best examples, in my opinion was a long time ago when we did Rare Air and we were doing Kane's content. Kane Footwear's content. The most viral video that they had was a video that we did with Matt Choi, where it was how Matt Choi warms up before doing his. Any of his runs.

[Ben]

Yeah.

[Alex]

30 second clip. It walked him through. It was educational. It wasn't that thought leader, you know, very much on the thought leadership side. Shot well, 1.5 million views, very simple video. Not a hard video to execute at all. But it's the reason why people wear canes. Warming up is part of the recovery process. People buy canes. Yes. Because they, you know, they look cool, they're cool to wear, they're cool to style. A lot of top athletes wear them. But their narrative is, you know, around recovery and prep.

[Ben]

And. And I. I mean, that. That's the other thing, though, is not only where does recovery start? In prep.

[Alex]

Exactly.

[Ben]

You know, it's those adjacent topics that most brands need to understand. And this is how creators think. Matt would have made that video anyway, you know, like, because he knew it was packaged in a way that would get to a lot of people. And if more brands can just understand that, like, we'll all be better for it, because I can't see another features benefits, you know, graphic anymore.

[Alex]

No, you know, no, not at all. And so let's take a brand like Bandit Running, for example. They had that 16 week marathon training program that we talked about a long time ago that positions them as a thought leader in this space. The underlying goal is people are buying Bandit Running before they go run their marathons. Well, what happens if I teach you for 16 weeks on how to PR for your marathons?

[Ben]

Where are you going to go for your gear?

[Alex]

Exactly. You're going to go to Bandit Running.

[Ben]

But the problem is that is not a dollars in, dollars out equation. That is a marketing team pitching a concept and saying we need $30,000 to execute this campaign and we don't know how it's going to go. And everyone has become so risk averse. You hear it all the time. You know, they're like, I might not work so I need to like guarantee the roi. And I'm like, what kind of operator are you that you think there's any guaranteed ROI in anything?

[Alex]

You know, part of being a marketer is finessing how you position things.

[Ben]

Absolutely.

[Alex]

Straight up. Like, yeah, you then have to position that as, hey, well what is your, what is our current cost per lead? If we were going to generate emails, how much do we typically pay for an email? Okay, if we spend 20, 30k on this and we generate this many emails, then our cost per email, our cost per lead is significantly lower than if we did it through meta. And yeah, and at the same time these are people that are going to be, we're going to have 16 weeks of having constant touch points. And like that is more so a lesson on how you can pitch big ideas to somebody and get them over the line. Because a lot of great ideas never make it over the line because you don't know how to position them to get over the line.

[Ben]

And I'm just trying to think of how we make this more valuable for someone that, that doesn't have the same resources as Bandit. You know, like there, there are a lot of brands out there that don't like, don't have the appetite for risk because if they, if they whiff, like, they're dead. Yeah, so I'm trying to think, you know, that's why this like, you know, it really comes down to your ability to create founder content is borderline free. I mean, you can get an editor overseas for around, you know, 1200 to $2,000. If you can find that and listen to this podcast. I honestly think that you should be able to create founder content, to position yourself as a thought leader. And what you just described is something that a lot of software companies do, which is lead magnet. That's inherently what Bandit was creating. They're creating a lead magnet.

[Alex]

That's all it was.

[Ben]

Educational guide. Give us your email, give us your information, boom, we'll give you a lot of value back. That's a simple exchange. I don't know about you but the worst experience in e commerce is giving my email and SMS number for 10% off.

[Alex]

It's the worst.

[Ben]

I'm at a point where I'd rather pay full price.

[Alex]

It's you know, because when you think about an $80 product and I'm clunking.

[Ben]

Around clicking shit like the mobile experience breaks, I click on the customer support chat all of a sudden like I'm trying to autofill my information, it auto fills the wrong email. Like this is broken, you know and klaviyo like it's your fault, right. Like you just haven't shipped a good pop up in you know, five years. Screw you. But like that is such a broken way to collect emails compared to something like what Bandit did where it's like I'm happy to give you my email now. You're not forcing me at gunpoint saying you want that discount. You want that discount bitch.

[Alex]

Like especially on a, on a high value product Bandit. And I'm not saying Bandit does this. I actually don't know what their pop up is now but a lot of brands that have products that are 120, 150, $200, 10 off doesn't matter to your core customer.

[Ben]

No.

[Alex]

They don't care about 10 off.

[Ben]

No. And you don't want to give 20.

[Alex]

Right now if it was like a rotating pop up on how to, like how to style, if it's street wear. Right. How to style or something along those lines and it's like how to style guide trend report.

[Ben]

That is if someone is interested in much more valuable, if someone's interested in streetwear, they're going to be interested in what are going to be the Trends in summer 2025. So collecting their email that way going to be a no brainer. And what does that cost the brand? Well probably I don't know, three hours of the founder's time, maybe someone on their creator's time and then some chat GPT action and like hopefully a designer maybe 5 to 10 thousand dollars. Now if you think about what and you know, shout out to C4 because they're who really made me think about the P and L in this way. But it's, you know, you gotta balance like promotion, opportunity costs. Because if you're giving 10% off for every email and say you drive $30,000 of email and that's $3,000 a promo that you just gave like, you know, would you have had a better customer experience in long term brand marketing relationship with your customers if you gave them the lead magnet value for the email and that costs you that same $3,000 that you spent the promo on like pro. Everyone thinks promo is just like negative to margin. It's actually an opportunity cost. Like when you're giving discounts, you're not investing that number into other things that might have a better long lasting appeal to people.

[Alex]

Couldn't agree more. The, the, the discount too is you're bringing in sometimes the wrong person.

[Ben]

Yeah.

[Alex]

If you're bringing in the person that cares about trends and it cares about how to style something or how to perform better, that is the. Because you know, give another example. Cadence, they have a pop. I I, it might be a discount but regardless of what it currently is, they put together the ultimate guide to marathon nutrition or something like that. And I told them, I was like turn that into the pop up. That thing is absolutely dialed. It is a 10 out of 10 pop up or sorry, 10 out of 10 content piece. If that is your pop up, the people you are a company completely based off performance and fueling and hydration. If you have and people the people your your car core target customer base are the people running marathons. Are the people doing hierarchies. If that is your pop up, you're going to convert the right people. Yeah. One is it, is it super value dense?

[Ben]

They have higher intent lead magnet. Yeah.

[Alex]

But they've super high intent of okay, if you're telling me here that I need to be consuming a thousand milligrams of sodium magnesium have to have this right before and then those are the products you then offer me. Those are going to be people buying those products.

[Ben]

It's almost like Cadence has an opportunity to be a thought leader. If they just start talking about why you need potassium. I don't know. I was told to eat bananas. Right. That's it. Like back in the day. And again it's, it's finding these topics people are loosely familiar with and then educating them further on those things. I know I need potassium. I don't really know why I need magnesium. But if you told me, I'm sure I feel bad in some type of way that you can connect it back to mineral deficiency. And all of a sudden I now need your product. There's demand for it. You create that demand through thought leadership.

[Alex]

And that bridge is so strong when we're thinking about, I'm the one telling you why you have. You need to take magnesium because of these deficiencies. And then I'm the one selling the magnesium.

[Ben]

Yeah.

[Alex]

And then I also talk about how.

[Ben]

So there better be trust of quality. Right. So there better be trust established in the content relationship. Because if there's no trust, this is, I mean, where I kind of armor is like the most insane marketing ever. You know, at this point, they're telling me that I can, you know, save my hairline and have six babies with, you know, it doesn't matter. Right. Like, it's insane what they are able to claim. I mean, they're in a class action lawsuit because of it. They're an example of, I think they made some outlandish claims which very much fueled a profitable acquisition funnel. Initially. They were really early with a new product. And so they would be, to me, a counter example of what we're saying where they didn't really try and establish thought leadership. They actually just spammed influencer content, made outrageous claims, you name it. And I think that's why they're a flash in the pan. Right. I think Colostrum is a trend product. And don't get me wrong, their founders made absolute racks like they did a great job, but I don't think that's a brand that'll be able to stick around for a long time because they weren't actually educating the background to a lot of their claims. And why Colostrum did these things. They just made outrageous statements and then put that on an ad. And someone's like, yeah, my tummy hurts and I feel like I'm losing hair. And so I'm going to trust $130 products.

[Alex]

There's a Twitter brand we know that's very much like this as well. Supplement company, Pink packaging.

[Ben]

Yeah. Yeah. They are wild with manipulating older women.

[Alex]

Absolutely wild with their claims. Some of the things I see, I am just like, I'll say it. How do you get obvious?

[Ben]

Yeah, I don't care.

[Alex]

How do you put this shit out.

[Ben]

There in good conscience? How do you sleep at night? Yeah.

[Alex]

Some of the, I mean, is the most outrageous claims I've ever seen for an ad.

[Ben]

Yeah. And you don't have to do that. I mean, I'm, I'm selling. I, I've got a weight loss client. You know, like, we've, we've done a lot of weight loss stuff and you know, honestly, like collagen sells itself to the right people or fat burners sell itself to the right people. So, you know, the more aggressive you get to me, the more scamming you feel, to your point, brings in a certain type of customer that is not necessarily the one I want to build a brand on top of because they're going to be very skeptical of you, potentially leave a damaging review. But, you know, same time it can be profitable. And a lot of brands do a really good job of capping professionally, short term profit, long term loss.

[Alex]

That's a good way to end this shit.

[Ben]

As always, please, you know, subscribe. Like means, means a lot to us. We see a lot of y'all commenting without subscribing. By the way, YouTube exposes you. They give a little red dot if you're subscribed and most of y'all are not. So that would be huge if you could subscribe for us. If you got value out of this, Leave us a review on Spotify, Apple, and we'll catch y'all next week.

[Alex]

We do got to do some. We got to do some merch, bro.

[Ben]

Yeah, the name's too hard.