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If you are seeking new ways to increase your ROI on marketing with your commerce platform, or you may be an entrepreneur who wants to grow your team and be more efficient with your online business.
Talk Commerce with Brent W. Peterson draws stories from merchants, marketers, and entrepreneurs who share their experiences in the trenches to help you learn what works and what may not in your business.
Keep up with the current news on commerce platforms, marketing trends, and what is new in the entrepreneurial world. Episodes drop every Tuesday with the occasional bonus episodes.
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Brent Peterson (00:01.422)
Welcome to this episode of Talk Commerce. Today I have Mo El Hawari. He is a DTC creative strategist. go ahead, do it a much better introduction for yourself. Tell us your day-to-day role and one of your passions in life.
Mo | DTC Creative Strategist (00:13.522)
Thank you very much. appreciate that. And first and foremost, thank you for having me with you today. So I'm a senior creative strategist, been working as a creative strategist now for over seven, eight years, worked with brands like Huell, Organifi, Dr. Squatch, Livegood, many brands in the eight-figure arena, nine-figure arena, six-figure arena, less and more. My role on a day-to-day basis pretty much is all about creative, producing content for different social media platforms.
attending meetings and calls with accounting team and both of the directors to understand more about how the business operates, learn more about Matrix, most econ brands do not pay attention to and so on and so forth.
Brent Peterson (00:56.526)
That's great, yeah. And how about passions? What do you have for passions in life?
Mo | DTC Creative Strategist (01:01.522)
Passion interesting. To be very transparent with you, I noticed that passion always changes. So for example, I'm coming originally from Egypt. So, and I was pharmacist. So I was a pharmacist, had different passions. As soon as I graduated, my passion shifted completely to business and marketing. And then I started to have my own business. And then my passion changed completely to be in the creative industry. So I find it like it's a bit hard.
to determine one passion. I mean, at least for me. Maybe there are some people like me who do not believe that we exist, but I believe our type do exist.
Brent Peterson (01:43.756)
Yeah, that's awesome. And then of course, you're in Manchester. Are you a City or United fan?
Mo | DTC Creative Strategist (01:51.44)
Interesting, that's the question I always get from non-European countries. Ironically speaking, literally where I live, I'm in the middle. So I'm like 10 minutes away to the city, 10 minutes away to United. With that said, I'm Barcelona fan.
Brent Peterson (01:55.852)
Yeah.
Brent Peterson (02:11.418)
Alright My my friend who lives in Madrid will not like that, but we won't get we won't we won't go into football Let's let's talk about the content and creatives today But before we do that you have volunteered to be part of the free joke project I'm gonna tell you a joke and all you do is give me a rating 8 through 13. So here we go My wife handed me two kayak paddles and asked which one do you want? I said I don't take
Mo | DTC Creative Strategist (02:16.146)
Of course.
Mo | DTC Creative Strategist (02:31.378)
Go for it.
Brent Peterson (02:39.584)
I don't care either or.
Mo | DTC Creative Strategist (02:42.258)
Okay, I would... That was a one, especially when I thought about it again. 8 to 13. I would give you 10. Yes.
Brent Peterson (02:56.622)
All right, thanks. Yeah, a little bit of a hiccup on my delivery there, but I felt like it was a good wordplay joke, especially for English. All right, so tell us a little bit about your role as a Critter Strategist, what you do day to day. Just give us the 10,000 foot view.
Mo | DTC Creative Strategist (03:05.723)
Mo | DTC Creative Strategist (03:16.7)
So briefly speaking, it starts from delivering briefs, working with creators, finding creators, producing reverse engineer content. And by say reverse engineer content, maybe I can give you example that would explain a lot of what I do. So imagine that you sell weight loss products. Most of what brands do, they try to show their clients how their weight loss products.
is better than the rest of the market. How? By trying to talk about testimonials, us versus them, et cetera, et Where I come handy and how I do the job is by reverse engineering the persona. So I like to understand why do people take our product to lose weight? Why is that? Because of that. Why is that? Because of that. Why is that? Because of that. It's a model called 5Y model that everybody can use using ChartGBT.
Once I find that, then I can understand the core reason why people do need this product. And from there, I can come up with different angles. What is the benefit from that? We can tap into untapped markets to maximize revenue with no need to spend more or with no need to scale the business into different countries or having different product lines. So using the same example, what I have done with one of the brands,
I have helped them tap into a market for women who are like 45, 55. These women delivered babies, their weight started to gain, their husbands or their partners stopped giving them the touches, the feelings that they always needed. So they tried expensive products, worked, couldn't continue due to economical reasons. And then they tried...
The cheap ones, crap, never worked. During this process of this journey, this poor persona is struggling until she came across our product. She did not only lose weight and she looked pretty, but she teased her partner. She fired her partner. She's now with another partner who appreciates her for her, not for her body. So this is another
Mo | DTC Creative Strategist (05:39.918)
industry that I have done to help people tap into. So it's not just about looking pretty, but it's about why do you want to look pretty? These examples are endless, but this is how I usually do my job.
Brent Peterson (05:55.896)
That's great. So go back to the five whys. I'm interested for those who aren't familiar with it, tell us the five whys and then maybe, let's start there.
Mo | DTC Creative Strategist (06:07.228)
So the 5Y and the SIT design thinking model, they could be used to support each other. So the 5Y model is you ask yourself, why do people need to use my product? They will tell you because it tastes nice, because they would lose weight, because they would look better. OK. But why do they want to lose weight? Why do they want to look better? Especially with apparel, why do I wear your clothes?
because it represents who am I. But why is that? Because of whatever that is. And then you start asking five why's, not just to touch the surface, but to go to the deep value. You will find so many interesting data and interesting angles when you do that. You will find angles that can encourage the customer to ditch alcohol or any bad lifestyle habit with your product.
So rather than keep showing people how your product help them look nice, look decent, help them make money, save money, whatever that is, your product could help them also solve other bad lifestyle habits. Like again, to give another example about the 5Y model, imagine that you sell bedsheets and your bedsheets are $500, which is pretty much expensive.
And this is a case study, by the way, from one of the brands. So how would you present it? Yeah, maybe you can say my bed sheet has patented technology that can help you adapt, can help adapt your body temperature. So if you're a sleep, hot sleeper, can make you cold. If you're a sleep, cold sleeper, it can make you warm. Great technology, great benefit. As soon as the customer finds out that it's $500, $200, $300, they will say, well,
Walmart is cheaper. Target is better. Amazon is right. But if you can show and target women who have many pores, how this spreadsheet will not only help you as you, but would help your partner not step away from you, due to your warm body. How did we achieve and came to that conclusion? By using the 5Y model. We understood that people want to nice
Mo | DTC Creative Strategist (08:32.506)
relationship with their partners and this is the core value. Connecting that to the SIT Design Thinking model which is a model that most 10 figure brands use to develop new products which is all about what can we do to make our products better? Do we need to add to it? Do we need to remove something from it? Do we need to break it down?
Do we need to multiply something? Like what do we need to do? Like back in the days, literally like maybe like 10 years ago more, there used to be if you want to clean the floor, there is the mop, there is the bucket, there is the water. Maybe 10, now five years ago, six years ago, they invented that mop where you don't need buckets, you don't need water, it just have tissues. And then you have them up with the tissue, you clean, the job is done.
So they have removed elements to achieve the job. How did they do that? By understanding their customer persona, their sociology, their economical situation. What do these guys see, hear and listen and interact with every single day? So to me, creative strategy is not just about duplicating ads or finding winning angles and double down on them, but also challenge.
what is already working to tap on tapped markets.
Brent Peterson (10:05.462)
I think that customer persona is always daunting as a merchant because you want to find your ideal customer, your ICP. Do you have tips for a merchant or somebody that's running a brand to come up with their first persona for a client?
Mo | DTC Creative Strategist (10:23.482)
I love this question. When you say first persona, you mean new DTC brand, correct?
Brent Peterson (10:29.324)
Yeah, just, I mean, just getting started, think a lot of times that somebody with a brand is just so in the weeds that they don't even know where to start.
Mo | DTC Creative Strategist (10:37.434)
I love that. This is exactly what, what the way you ask the question is unfortunately what most people do, which is they come up with the product and then their second question is who is going to be my ideal customer? It should be the other way around. You should never come up with the product without knowing who you're going to target. It shouldn't be like you're sitting on the chair, looking up to the ceiling.
and then thinking, what do I need to do to come up with a product that makes me $1,000,000? No, you should have already witnessed something. And this is my best tip that you personally, as the brand founder has faced something that you believe you could be your own customer for life. This is the base. So I want to come up with a new product. Great. Step number one, something that I personally suffer from.
Something that if nobody else buys from me, I'm happy to keep using it forever. And this is step number one. Step number two is to validate the concept, to make sure if it's a good hobby, if it's just good for some few sales on eBay or Amazon, or if it's a real business. That's why it's always advisable to start only with one product, one SEO queue.
Brent Peterson (12:02.786)
Yeah, that's great. think that there's a couple of examples of the Gillette guy. I think that he bought the Gillette. There's a lot of examples of founders who love that brand and who bought the brand or have started a brand because they needed a solution. And I think that even in the SaaS space, a lot of platforms come out of a brand that has found a solution that works for other brands. it sounds like that's kind of what you're saying is you come up
You have a solution for a problem that fits your needs and it can work for a lot of people. Is that a good way to look at it?
Mo | DTC Creative Strategist (12:38.576)
Right. Absolutely. It doesn't have to be existing problem because there are different awareness stage levels. Like there's product, aware, product, unaware, problem, aware, problem, not unaware, solution, aware, solution, unaware. They're different. Like, like Apple, for example, what Steve Jobs has done, he came up with a product to unaware problem. People didn't mind having phones with buttons. They were okay with it.
So he came up with a product or with a solution which was unknown solution to unknown problem and it worked. It rarely works like this one rarely works but it does exist. Why it did work from my humble experience and perspective? Because he believed in it himself. It was an issue that he himself faced as an issue and he wanted to work on it
and believe that not many people are aware of that. As soon as they will, they will absolutely be into it. So, exactly what you said.
Brent Peterson (13:49.046)
Yeah, and I think that you've really struck something there where a brand founder has so much passion in their brand, if they can work on then conveying that to the end user, that that's really the magic and making sure that your solution fits that other person, making the other person know that this solution fits them as well, right? Is that kind of the word to put it together?
Mo | DTC Creative Strategist (14:13.68)
Absolutely. Well said.
Brent Peterson (14:18.43)
so Mo, this has been such a great conversation and time is just flying by. what, kind of advice do you give as we're going into the holiday season and the U S we have black Friday, cyber Monday, and I know it's going to be busy in England as well. What, kind of advice do you give brands right now to position themselves already in a month? We're going to have big sales coming up in Christmas and boxing day and all those fun things. How do they, how do, what kind of advice can you give them?
position themselves.
Mo | DTC Creative Strategist (14:49.148)
for existing brands.
Brent Peterson (14:50.786)
Yeah, for an existing brand that's going into the holidays that needs to do something.
Mo | DTC Creative Strategist (14:55.57)
Right, for existing brands I would say your primarily focus, like 70 % of your focus should be towards what is already working. So many brands get distracted and they want to do a million things at the same time during this holiday season and they miss it. Every day is a million dollar day. So make sure that you prioritize 70 %
towards the product that is already working for you, the strategy that is already working for you, double down. So this is what 70 % of your focus should be. 20 % of your focus should be towards what you want to get rid of. Imagine that you have stock that has been sitting on the shelves collecting dust for a while, specific product, whatever that is you want to get rid of. This is where 20 % of your focus and budget should go to. And 10 %...
should be towards testing new concepts, new products, new whatever you want to do. So long as this will not consume 10 % of your money and time. This is pretty much the main thing I would say as we're approaching this holiday season. And maybe they can try the pre-holiday season offer. Maybe you have seen this already. Like people say, we're having early Black Friday, early Cyber Monday offer.
Because now a day, not nowadays, been working like that for now two or three years now, even more, that brands understood that people actually happy to buy early. They don't need to wait because they understand it's going to be the same offer anyway. So this could be like another marketing tactic.
Brent Peterson (16:42.062)
Yeah, and I think Amazon is a great example. They do Amazon Prime Day, which is usually in the middle of the summer. And it seems like there's going to be a Prime Day almost every day pretty soon. But yeah, you're right. You're exactly right. You need an opportunity. I suppose you have to be careful not to oversell it, right? That your discount is just a regular price.
Mo | DTC Creative Strategist (17:04.178)
Very true.
Brent Peterson (17:05.951)
Mo it's been it's been such a great conversation as I close up the podcast I get to ever be a chance to do a shameless plug about anything they'd like what would you like to plug today?
Mo | DTC Creative Strategist (17:15.068)
Plug in what way.
Brent Peterson (17:16.286)
Just to promote, what thing would you like to shamelessly promote?
Mo | DTC Creative Strategist (17:23.337)
Frankly speaking, have loads of things to promote, but maybe one thing I would vouch for, not myself, it would be like a brand. Like it would be something that I would encourage everyone to visit, which would be Huel. It's a very already well-known brand anyway. They do not need my advertisement or my promo for people to know them, but I 100 % encourage everyone to know and go and learn about the founder story.
more than the product. Like it's really in this firing. They will understand. Just to give you a nutshell and to make people more enticing to check his story, he stepped down himself from being the CEO of the company to the CMO of the company, just by realizing he's not a good CEO. And he dropped the titles. He said, will do what I'm good at. I will hire someone who can do the hiring, the firing, managing the team, all of that kind of stuff. I will just do what I really like.
Brent Peterson (18:21.292)
And who was it again?
Mo | DTC Creative Strategist (18:24.909)
Huel Founder. Oh yeah.
Brent Peterson (18:25.066)
Okay, great. Perfect. I'll make sure we get those in the show notes. Mo El Hawari, it's been such a great conversation today. Thank you so much for being here.
Mo | DTC Creative Strategist (18:33.212)
Correct.
Appreciate that. Thank you, Brent.