The Forgotten Half of Growth: Physical Availability Explained

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Forgotten Half of Growth: Physical Availability Explained

Podcast: The Marketing Architects
Episode Date: August 19, 2025
Hosts: Elena Jasper (Marketing Lead), Angela Voss (CEO), Rob DeMars (Chief Product Architect)

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Overview:

This episode explores the often neglected "P" in the marketing mix—Place, or physical availability. The hosts discuss why physical presence matters even in a digital-first world, the pitfalls of overlooking it, and how brands—especially D2C players—are shifting strategies to meet customers wherever and whenever they are ready to buy.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Defining Physical Availability in Modern Marketing

• Physical Availability = "Easy to Buy"

  • "Be first to mind and easy to buy. Physical availability is the easy to buy piece."
    – Elena Jasper (04:00)

• It’s about reducing friction for customers and being present at the right time, in the right place, and in stock.

• System 1 Thinking

  • Consumers often make low-consideration purchases. Brands must be present at those low-thought moments.
    • Angela: "How do I reduce friction in the path to purchase? By being in the right place at the right time and being in stock..." (02:27)

• Who Owns 'Place'?

  • Siloed responsibilities for sales, logistics, and marketing often mean no one team prioritizes physical availability.
    • "If everybody owns it, nobody owns it."
      – Rob DeMars (05:32)

2. Physical Availability as the Forgotten ‘P’

• Place is described as the "invisible thread" connecting product, price, and promotion (00:39).
• Mark Binkley's analysis (from The Sleeping Barber Podcast) on Target’s failed Canada expansion stresses poor place strategy can unravel even iconic brands.

3. D2C Brands' Evolving Approach to Place

• Early D2C growth was fueled by cheap digital ads, but increasing costs and shifting consumer habits forced brands back into physical retail.

  • "The pandemic isn't a business model... Facebook costs a kidney. Physical availability and foot traffic are irreplaceable."
    – Rob DeMars (07:17)

• Light Buyers Matter:

  • If you’re not easily replaceable, you lose market share to convenience.
    • "If you're losing market share to convenience or you're not there to pick up where another brand is losing... that's a tough battle."
      – Angela Voss (06:29)

• Real Shopping Habits:

  • Most consumers go to Amazon first, even if brands want to focus on D2C or avoid Amazon for margin reasons.
    • "Something like 75 to 80% of consumers go to Amazon when they're ready to buy a product..."
      – Angela Voss (10:03)

4. Brand and Client Examples: Place Can Make or Break Campaigns

• Amazon Resistance Hurts Sales:

  • "We refused to be on Amazon at first… As much as we resisted it, it was a huge channel for us… through our own stubbornness… they're right, need to be there."
    – Rob DeMars (12:20)

• Importance of Packaging:

  • Packaging is a critical touchpoint; it must stand out and sell in the moment.
    • "Packaging is a channel in and of itself."
      – Rob DeMars (13:42)

5. Notable Modern Brands Excelling at Physical Availability

• Function of Beauty:

  • Transitioned from D2C to retail with a modular system for personalized haircare at Target, balancing customization with mass reach.
    – Angela Voss (14:23)

• Athletic Brewing:

  • Non-alcoholic beer brand securing presence in mainstream bars, marathons, and restaurants—cracking the code for physical availability in a niche.
    – Rob DeMars (16:03)

• Honey Stinger Waffles:

  • Expanding from athletic shelves to gas station energy aisles to meet buyers where they need quick energy, broadening reach.
    – Elena Jasper (18:22)

6. Expanding the Concept of ‘Place’

• Place is more than shelves; it’s any environment where your solution is accessible: portals, search, integrations, etc.

  • "Place is any environment where your solution becomes accessible."
    – Angela Voss (19:09)

• Emerging Tech:

  • Digital ads, streaming TV, shoppable ads, and even LLMs (Large Language Models) are new surfaces for availability.
    • "Can the ads become the place themselves?... shoppable experiences with checkout and everything baked into the ad"
      – Rob DeMars (20:14)

• AI Agents as Gatekeepers:

  • Need to ensure brands are easy for search agents and AI assistants to find and purchase.
    – Elena Jasper and Rob DeMars (21:36-22:09)

7. Personal Stories: When Place Fails

• All three hosts mention protein/energy bars they would buy more often if they were simply easier to find, especially in places like gas stations.
  • "It takes a while to get them. I want to buy them at Target. I want to order them on Amazon."
    – Angela Voss (23:08)
  • "I have to go on a quest to get a Quest protein bar."
    – Rob DeMars (24:10)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "You can have passionate consumers—people willing to wear your fricking T-shirt and your logo—and I can't go there." – Rob DeMars on Piggly Wiggly’s lack of Minnesota stores (02:52)

• "When was the last time a can was awarded for best shelf-talker?" – Rob DeMars (05:06)

• "If everybody owns [place], nobody owns it." – Rob DeMars (05:32)

• "The pandemic isn't a business model." – Rob DeMars (07:17)

• "We are not as loyal as we think we are. We buy from a repertoire of brands and you will easily be replaced with somebody else that's right in front of their face." – Elena Jasper (07:51)

• "Be first to mind and easy to buy." – Elena Jasper (04:00)

• "Packaging is a channel in and of itself." – Rob DeMars (13:42)

• "Place is any environment where your solution becomes accessible." – Angela Voss (19:09)

• "Can ads become the place themselves?... opening up new doors with shoppable experiences." – Rob DeMars (20:14)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:00 – Introduction to the importance of physical availability
• 02:27 – Simple definition: "being in the right place, at the right time, and in stock"
• 04:11 – Why ‘place’ is overlooked in organizations
• 06:29 – The D2C reversal: from digital-only to multichannel presence
• 10:03 – Client examples: refusing Amazon and the consequences
• 11:26 – Transitioning D2C brands into retail: “Stuffies” and “Hurricane” case
• 13:42 – Packaging as a key channel
• 14:23 – Modern success in place: Function of Beauty and Athletic Brewing
• 17:41 – Nontraditional place strategies: Honey Stinger Waffles in gas stations
• 19:09 – Place as any surface (including digital, B2B, SaaS spaces)
• 20:14 – New digital surfaces: shoppable ads, streaming, and beyond
• 21:36 – The rise of AI agents and place
• 23:08–24:10 – Personal buying friction stories and importance of convenience

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Key Takeaways for Marketers

• Physical availability often gets ignored but is crucial for sustained growth, especially as digital-only strategies face diminishing returns.
• Convenience out-competes brand loyalty; if you’re not present when and where the customer wants to buy, someone else will be.
• Think of ‘place’ expansively—beyond retail shelves to digital, experiential, and AI-powered channels.
• Packaging and in-store presence are marketing touchpoints, not mere afterthoughts.
• Own or collaborate cross-functionally to make physical availability a priority—not leave it to chance.

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Summary by The Marketing Architects Team
This episode is essential for brand builders, marketers, and anyone facing the challenge of making their product as easy as possible for customers to find and buy—in every channel possible.

Transcript

[A]

Where does your brand surface when the need arises? And why does that matter? Because to a brand without physical product, I think place can more easily be forgotten.

[B]

Marketing Architects hello and welcome to the Marketing Architects, a research first podcast dedicated to answering your toughest marketing questions. I'm Elena Jasper. I run the marketing team here at Marketing Architects, and I'm joined by my co hosts Angela Voss, the CEO of Marketing Architects, and Rob DeMars, the chief product architect of misfits and machines. Hey guys, we're back with our thoughts on some recent marketing news. Always trying to root our opinions and data research and what drives business results. Today we're talking about physical availability. We spent a lot of time on this show talking about mental availability or how to make sure your brand's top of mind. But today we're going to give physical availability the spotlight it deserves. What does it mean in a digital first world? And why does Ehrenberg Bass teach that it's one of the keys to growth? I'll kick us off, as I always do, with some research and I actually have two articles to cover today. They are both published in March of this year. The first is 4P's place physical availability the marketing factor you're likely overlooking by Mark Binkley of the Sleeping Barber Podcast. This was published by Quanticle. Mark makes a compelling case that Place, which is often the forgotten P in the classic marketing mix, is actually the invisible thread connecting product price and promotion. He revisits Target's failed expansion into Canada, showing how distribution missteps, poor location strategy and mismatched brand promises can unravel even the strongest retail brand. Physical availability isn't just logistics. It's central to delivering on your brand's value and harvesting the mental availability you've worked so hard to build. The second article is from Ad Age. This one's titled the State of D2C. How the category has shifted, what's working and what's ahead. This is by Adrian Pascarelli. It charts the evolution of direct to consumer brands from their early digital native success to their post pandemic reckoning. DTC brands have learned that being physically present, whether it's in pop ups, wholesale partnerships or flagships, isn't optional anymore. Brands like Warby Parker are proving that strategic physical presence builds awareness, lowers acquisition costs and sustains growth. In other words, being digital first doesn't mean you should be digital only. So in this episode we're going to ask, what does physical availability look like today and how should marketers think about it in a world that's still obsessed with digital. Let's get into it and start by getting on the same page with some definitions. What does physical availability mean to us in 2025?

[A]

I think in my view, this is just how do I ensure my brand can capture the share of market I want, given the minimal thought some consumers are willing to put into their buying decisions. Right system one thinking mode we've talked about. Just how do I reduce friction in the path to purchase? By being in the right place at the right time and being in stock, I think is the most simple view for me. What do you think, Rob?

[C]

You know, it's funny. I didn't intend to do this, but I realized today that I put on my Piggly Wiggly T shirt because I just really like this brand. It's so fun. I don't know if you can see it, but it is. It's so cute. It's got like this Porky Pig character on there. I'm like, I just. I think this is such a great brand. There are no Piggly Wigglies in Minnesota. This is kind of ironic because we're talking about physical availability. I'm passionate for this brand. I looked it up in my maps. There's one in Wisconsin, three and a half hours away. This is the reason why physical availability is so important. You can have passionate consumers, people that are willing to wear your fricking T shirt and your logo. And I can't go there.

[B]

I think that's the second time on this podcast you've brought up the Piggly Wiggly.

[C]

Yes, it is, actually.

[B]

Yes, it is.

[A]

Love the Piggly Wiggly.

[C]

Did they rip off Porky Pig or did Porky Pig rip off the Piggly Wiggly?

[A]

I don't know, but we're getting tongue twisters going here.

[C]

Yeah, we are.

[B]

I'd agree with both Rob's. I'd agree with both of you. Yes. To me, physical availability is. If we had to really simplify it. I love the phrase be first to mind and easy to buy. Physical availability is the easy to buy piece. Is it easy for people to find your products or service? Are you available where you can show up in their buying cycle at the right time?

[C]

Remove the friction.

[A]

Right. Remove it. Slippery. We need slippery surfaces.

[B]

So Mark, in that article that we opened with, he talks about how he thinks that place is overlooked compared to the other P's in the marketing mix. I think on this show before, we've talked about product being overlooked by marketing. But why do we think place is also overlooked?

[A]

Well, even just thinking about. I'm curious your guys take like where place lives within an organization? Like whose single job is it to ensure that our product is easy to buy everywhere a customer expects it to be. Like sales owns retail relationships. Usually product or ops handles the supply chain and the logistics. And then marketing owns messaging and media. And marketing is responsible for awareness and engagement. And roas, but not necessarily responsible for in stock rates. Sheriff shelf fulfillment speed like all are in other places. So that's hard when you don't have someone that's going, how am I easy to buy? That's my job.

[C]

It's not sexy to go I. You wake up in the morning and my job is to make sure we get some good shelf space. When was the last time a can was awarded for best shelf talker, you know?

[A]

Yeah, but like it's a really fun challenge though too if you just think about like how do you stand out? How do you ensure that? I mean you think about the biggest brands, you walk into a store and just run into Tide and Coke and you're like, it's everywhere.

[B]

Right.

[C]

You wonder if it's one of those, like if everybody owns it, nobody owns it. And like everybody just assumes of course shelf space is critical. Like we're in business, we have to sell stuff. So therefore you just think it's so obvious that you don't really pay the attention it deserves.

[B]

Yeah, I think it probably suffers from what product suffers from for marketers, which is it's often not something that marketing has a hand in or is expected to have an opinion on, but it's very important. I know we're going to talk about how we've seen this impact the advertisers we've worked with. But if you don't have any control over that place part of the equation, it could be detrimental to the rest of your marketing. Speaking of place being very important, why do we think, Speaking to the second article, why do we think so many D2C brands have reversed course? I mean when DTC became very popular, it was almost of a bragging, right, that I'm only online. Everyone's going to go direct. Like stores are over. Why do we think that has changed and more of them are moving into retail now?

[A]

It was so hot, wasn't it? I think in the 2000 and tens brands could grow on the back of underpriced digital media. But then you've got iOS 14, five came and CAC started climbing and ROAS was in decline. And brands I think are discovering more and more every day how hard the loyalty game is and how important light buyers are. There's virtually no pain for the consumer if they can't find the specific product they're looking for. There's a very suitable replacement readily available to them. So if you're losing market share to convenience or you're not there to pick up where another brand is losing to convenience, that's a tough battle. I think we're seeing that more and more and I think that's why we have DTC brands. Course correcting back into the retail world.

[C]

It's also influenced in recent years by, you know, people recognizing that the pandemic isn't a business model. At first it was like, Holy smokes, this D2C things, amazing. But then people start getting out of their house again and they're like, oh, we're not available in all the places they're now leaving that. That house and going to. Quite honestly. Also, the economics of some of those D2C channels like Facebook costs a kidney. It's like here we can have physical availability and we're getting all this foot traffic and stores come with foot traffic. Facebook doesn't.

[B]

Yeah, I agree. That feels like it's definitely part of the equation. If you're not easy to buy, you need to drive someone somewhere else to buy your product or service. That's going to come at a cost. And I agree that just changing behaviors too, during the pandemic, it's no wonder people were more likely to go to different websites when you're not leaving your own house. And what you said also reminded me of what Dale said when he was on the show a couple weeks ago, which is that I think another reason why D2C brands have realized we need to be in retail, we need to be easy to buy is because like you said, if you're not available in the store and people are in that buying mode, they're probably not going to wait and buy you later because we are not as loyal as we think we are. And we usually, like Dale said, we buy from a repertoire of brands and you will easily be replaced with somebody else that's right in front of their face.

[A]

I just had this happen. I use a Kristin S dry shampoo that I've used for years and went to Target. They didn't have it. They had a lot of other options. Like the one that I use is. We're getting into details here, but it's a brunette version and I didn't even default to their non brunette version. I ended up with a different brand entirely that also was non Brunette. And I love it. Like, it smells great and it's like dry shampoo.

[B]

We don't have time for that.

[C]

I just use body wash. Yeah, you're.

[B]

A man and you're bald, so don't worry.

[A]

Yeah, but, like, that's just simply how it happens, you know? Now you're like, oh, gosh, I really like the smell of this new one. And it's lost customer.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

So quick.

[B]

Definitely. I bet everybody can think of an example like that. I think about, like, the egg shortage recently. I've in like, three or four different egg brands. Just whatever's available. You're not just gonna not buy what you need. You're just gonna switch to something else. Definitely. All right. I said earlier that I wanted to cover some examples of when physical availability really mattered to a campaign. And I was hoping you can help us out with this. Have we ever worked with a brand and we don't need to out anybody here, but have we had a moment where we really thought that place physical availability, but made or broke that campaign?

[A]

Yeah, many cases. I would say more than we want. An example would be working with a brand that was just very principled about not wanting to be on Amazon. They felt like it would dilute their brand. It would drive down price integrity. It could hurt their D2C margins. And I get it. But the problem is that's not how real people buy. I think something like 75 to 80% of consumers go to Amazon when they're ready to buy a product, regardless of whether or not they sell the brand elsewhere. So it's just you working against the force, major macro forces just in terms of how consumers buy. And it becomes really problematic when you're like, oh, I gotta go directly to a client's website. I have to order. I have to wait for that shipment to get here. That takes three days. Which we were a very impatient culture when we've got Amazon showing up on our doorstep in two hours. So those are major things to consider.

[B]

We've probably had other examples too, where it's not as obvious, but you've got to wonder, if you're online only, how much is that hurting you not being in retail? And how many more sales might you have gotten if you had been there? We've been a brand ourselves. I know we've talked about Stuffies and Hurricane a lot on the show before, but those are two products that we did bring into retail. Rob, could you tell us a little bit about what that experience was like?

[C]

Yeah, absolutely. There were really three big takeaways probably more, many more. But three big takeaways that I think we learned being a D2C brand that moved into retail. The first was right now we're talking about you should be in retail. But guess what, it's actually not super easy to be in retail like that. So we launched in television and built a brand first. And I do think that gave us an unfair advantage into fast tracking into retail. It was like having a Disney fast pass where we could just jump to the head of the line. So much so I think within less than a year for Stuffies, we secured the end cap at Target during Christmas. And that's some serious physical availability. And we would not have been able to do that had we not built a brand that all of the retailers had heard of and were now actually seeking to put into their stores. So I think the fast tracking was a big one. The second one Ange already mentioned, it's helpful when you eat your own dog food because, you know, we are very passionate about telling our advertisers, you need to be in Amazon. But that was because we refused to be on Amazon at first. We did not want to play ball with Bezos for all the same reasons they're in control. Does it impact your margins? But the reality was we were building a brand on television and our customers were going to Amazon and they were using Hurricane and being found in search were all the competitors because the name was in Amazon. So there was no choice. We had to be on Amazon and it turned out to be the right move. As much as we resisted it, it was a huge channel for us. So there's a reason why Amazon is an amazing company and through our own stubbornness that they are, they're right, need to be there. The third thing I would say is that packaging is a channel in and of itself. And you need to spend the time making sure that when they get to where it's physically available, that it's still as persuasive as possible. That's still an opportunity to make sure it stands out from your competition, whatever that might be like. Make sure that the benefits and the features are coming through. That if it's a demonstrable product, is there a way to demonstrate that in retail as well? So just a lot of creative opportunity that you can continue to invest in your packaging just to make sure you pop.

[B]

That's a great point about packaging and making sure that you have clear, distinctive assets and you can be found easily. Because it's not enough just to be on the shelf. Someone needs to see you and recognize you right away. So that's a great, a great point. Seems like Amazon's just a necessary evil at this point. All right, speaking of examples, I want to ask who's a newer brand that we think is doing a great job with physical availability today? And Ange, why don't you start us off?

[A]

Sure. Sorry, Rob, we're back in the hair care space again. But I thought about function of Beauty. They're a D2C brand and they offer like hyper personalized hair care through this quiz based model. So whether you need like, Rob, I think you'd be like a frizzy hair guy probably. I would imagine. Yeah. Afro or you have like color needs or whatever, you're oily, whatever it is. And you know, they found success early on, but as a lot of brands experience in the DTC world, they're limited by high fulfillment costs, retention issues, and so they started to expand into Target with. You can see the challenge. You're like, we're custom hair care. How do I move into a retail environment without taking exorbitant shelf space? Which would be really expensive and hard to convince retailers to do that as well. So they've got a modular approach, which I think is cool. They offer these base formulas and then you can buy these like mix and boosters. So they're trying to simplify customization in the mass retail space and I think this is good move to broaden reach and ensure that they can compete with the challenges of physical availability as women and men have a lot of hair care options and still try to retain that kind of like brand DNA in what they're doing. So I think that's cool that they're not abandoning that customization. They're really trying to like modularize it for mass availability.

[B]

That's a great example. You can see how a lot of other D2C hair care brands just never made it. Yeah, but they did. It's probably a reason. Rob, have you got one?

[C]

Yeah. Non alcoholic beer is really transitioning from kind of a novelty to more mainstream. And I think it's hard though for those brands to compete in situations like in a bar. And where are you available for those non alcoholic beer drinkers? And athletic brewing, I think is doing a really great job. They've got a great brand, first of all, they've positioned themselves in a way where they actually win international beer festivals against alcoholic beers. And yet you'll see them show up at marathons, you'll see them show up at your local pub. Now offers athletic brewing It's. I swear to God, you go to any restaurant, like, yeah, we have two options like Heineken Zero and Athletic Brewing. It's a new category. Trying to get restaurants to be able to carry you is a huge investment on the restaurant's part. And for some reason, they're cracking the coat.

[B]

That's a great one. They've got a first mover advantage to it seems like, in that they do and they don't.

[C]

I think they. They feel like they do because they've done such a good job. But any beer has been around for a long time. Just. It's just they're feeling like they're owning the category because they're showing up, they're different, they feel good.

[A]

They have like a micro brew feel. There's like, you always had the water down like you said, the Heineken Zero or what?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

But they've got IPA and they've got this, they got that.

[C]

They nailed the pee product, right? They nailed the pee and now they're nailing the place and it's company to watch.

[B]

I compete in triathlons and so when you're training a lot, you need stuff to eat on the bike and when you're running. And one of the things that I don't use as much anymore, but I started using are those honey stinger waffles I don't know if you've ever seen.

[A]

I haven't had these.

[B]

Yeah, they're. They're good. They're kind of crumbly, but they're basically like a snack you could have on the bike. And they give you like quick sugars and carbs and things to help you build up your glycogen stores and stuff like that.

[A]

Okay. So it's more like a granola bar.

[C]

It's not just like a waffle. It's for athletes, though, right? Well, I've seen those showing up, but are they, like, showing up for kids too?

[B]

Okay, no. Where I saw them the other day is in the energy aisle at a gas station.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And I thought, that is so smart. I've never seen another. There's a lot of a ton of these brands that offer. Rob, you just ran a marathon, so, you know that's the gels and goos and chews and like all these delicious things that makes it fun to work out things that you can eat.

[A]

All these. Okay.

[B]

Yep. And I thought that's so smart because I've never seen another brand like that expanding. And it makes so much sense to go into gas stations when somebody's looking around, they need a quick pick me up. They don't know the brand because like you said, it's targeted at athletes. But it seems like they're trying to link themselves just to energy in general, which I think is seems pretty smart. Smart as a way to expand something I've seen.

[A]

Very cool.

[B]

Alrighty, what is one way we think that marketers could expand their thinking about place or physical availability today?

[A]

Yeah, I was thinking about this and having a focus ensuring that P shows up in your mind, I think regardless of the brand you work for is important. So how do we do that? I think thinking about places, not just shelf space. How do you think about place as a surface? Where does your brand surface when the need arises and why does that matter? Because to a brand without physical product, I think place can more easily be forgotten. How do you surface still really matters to your brand? So place is any environment where your solution becomes accessible. So for a telehealth brand that might mean showing up inside an employer's benefits portal or for a SaaS tool it might mean integrating with the platform your customers already use. For a home service brand it could be ensure that you're a top result on the local search and being bookable. Right. Then that's the inventory. So if your buyers can't find, choose and act in the moment, you're not available to them and that really matters. So surface versus place. I would say the one thing I.

[C]

Would think about as well is how is technology impacting the way a consumer can buy, specifically in ads and in ad units. How do you start to look at what's going on in streaming? There's just so many different new types of ways to interact with the ads. Can the ads become the place themselves? And going beyond what we've traditionally seen is direct to consumer advertising to almost more of these shoppable experiences with checkout and everything baked into the ad units within streaming TV format or a variety of other ones that are just starting to pop up now where you're like that opens up new doors.

[A]

Have you bought any products through shoppable ads, Rob?

[C]

I haven't. So that's a big wah wah. Yes. I've actually bought Athletic Brewing through shoppable ads, right?

[B]

Perfectly.

[C]

That's a really good point. I think. It's so new and it's so interesting as you see them up here, we've all seen them and they're like, oh, I haven't seen that version of it before. It's like a choose your own adventure. It's A different type of use of a qr. There's all these different new ways of connecting with people. Are they as persuasive as they need to be? Is a good question. It's still advertising at the end of the day, but it's certainly a new opportunity.

[B]

I'm surprised, Rob. I thought you were definitely going to say showing up in LLMs as part of physical availability.

[C]

That is a great one. I was just thinking about that today. Not for this. So, yes, you're absolutely right. It is becoming our new search engine. Right. No one argues with that. And how do you show up? And gosh, that's such a great point, Elena, because then you think about the agents. Right. The agents can buy the product for you. So how are you making sure that you're found by agents and easy to interact with for the agents?

[B]

How are you physically available for a agents is a good. A good question. And you've sort of. Actually not sort of. You stole mine. Which was. I was thinking the same thing. Thinking about linking place to your category entry points.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

As well. And that could expand to a whole bunch of different things. But if you have your ceps and you could be thinking about. All right, when someone's in this need state or they're thinking this, where could I show up? And sometimes that might expand you. Like, there might be more opportunity beyond your traditional retail store. Totally. You were talking about athletic brewing, showing up at. At events and stuff. Like, there might be more options than you think.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

Okay, to wrap us up here, is there a brand that you'd purchase more if it were just easier to buy? We'll go Ange first.

[A]

Yeah, I. And I feel terrible for this one because they're.

[C]

Is it another hair product?

[A]

No, this one. You know, Rob, you've purchased. Elena's purchased. I've purchased, but it's been a while since I've purchased. And it's the Roar bars. R A W R Rawr Organics.

[B]

And they're local.

[A]

They're right here in Rogers, Minnesota. But gosh, like, you gotta go to the website. It takes a while to get them. I want to buy them in Target. I want to order them on Amazon. I'd be ordering more. Just saying.

[C]

It's so weird. I picked a bar, too. That's so funny. Did you pick a bar, Elena?

[B]

I picked bar bars.

[A]

Did you not?

[B]

I did. Because the other day I was completely out of them. And then Angie takes so long to order. Like, if I. If I could order them easier. I have a lot of lapses. Not by intention. Like, I know. I. The same one. I know.

[A]

And then I feel bad, and I'm like. And then I drop off, and it. Sometimes it's a year, and then I'm like, oh, my gosh. Like, got to order some cars.

[C]

Well, I picked the bar that Elena's gonna shame me for, but I just really like the Quest Crispy Protein Bar. It's a particular version of. Of the Quest Bar, and it is. It's better than a Snickers. It's just. It's so good. And they've just really perfected the bar, and I. I can't get them in a movie theater. I would buy them if they were in a movie theater. I can't. I can. Occasionally, you'll see it in a gas station, but usually they carry their Lesser Delicious bar version of the Quest Bar. So I have to go on a quest to get a Quest protein bar. So I. Isn't that funny? Three bars. What? What in the world? We. We must like our protein that's in the form of a kale.

[A]

Yeah. It's a little bit of a specialty. And you're like, I love what you're doing, but, yeah, it's a little hard to get.

[B]

Yeah. At least Quest is in the store.

[C]

Yeah, that's.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

And I think in a lot of cases, we're thinking about physical availability. Like a gas station. Right. Like a gas station owns physical availability because you have to go there, generally speaking, to fuel your car. You're impulsively in the need for your own kind of fuel. Snack, soda, whatever it is. It's just. It's the epitome of it. And for them, they probably have very limited shelf space, so they're like, sorry, y', all, but protein bars aren't what many people are going for.

[A]

Clearly, we need to spend less time together because the three of us are like, that's weird.

[B]

Yeah, those are. Those are bad for you, but I'll let it go. But you really should consider something different. If you're trying to be healthy, if you're trying to have a sweet trait, fine. But if you're trying to use it.

[A]

As, like, an actual protein, it's 190 calories.

[C]

It has 20 some grams of protein. How is that bad? And it's delicious.

[A]

It seems that eating 20 White Castle burgers once a month, like, right.

[C]

I mean, I am here, to my.

[B]

House, the least of Rob's problem.

[C]

Anchored.

[A]

Totally.

[C]

It's like. It's a vast improvement over 20 white castles.

[B]

Can we.

[C]

We all agree on that.

[A]

I'm going to go with you on that one, Rob.

[C]

All right.

[B]

I will say, I think your eating habits helped you in your marathon because people often have, like, gastrointestinal issues. And you were fine, right? You were just chugging along issues. You've been training your whole life.

[C]

Yeah, I just. I just start taking those goos.

[B]

Yeah, your body loved it.

[C]

It was like, oh, yeah, no problem. Where these, Ben?

[B]

Yeah, usually that's.

[C]

These are just like your melted Jolly Ranchers.

[B]

Rob, what was the longest you ran before your marathon?

[C]

Before that? Before the. The longest was about 10 miles.

[B]

It's amazing. It's amazing that you finished that marathon in such great shape. I just can't believe it. White Castle might be the secret to marathon success. That's it for this episode of the Marketing Architects. We'd like to thank Taylor de Los Reyes for producing the show. You can connect with us on LinkedIn. And if you like the podcast, please leave us a review. Now go forth and build great marketing. Marketing Architects.