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In this episode, Wendy Coulter, a branding expert, is joined by Hanna Jernigan and special guest Gee Ranasinha, CEO of Kexino. They delve into the essential components of successful marketing, emphasizing the importance of building emotional connections with customers.
Gee Ranasinha shares insights on leveraging the 'hummingbird effect'—where small marketing innovations lead to unexpected business advancements. The conversation explores the limitations of data-driven, purely rational marketing, advocating for a return to creativity and human-centric branding strategies. Gee Ranasinha also highlights the necessity of understanding and speaking the language of finance to gain C-suite buy-in for marketing initiatives. The discussion concludes with practical advice on how marketers can effectively communicate the value of their efforts to finance-oriented executives, using relatable language and focusing on tangible business outcomes.
Gee Ranasinha shares insights on leveraging the 'hummingbird effect'—where small marketing innovations lead to unexpected business advancements. The conversation explores the limitations of data-driven, purely rational marketing, advocating for a return to creativity and human-centric branding strategies. Gee Ranasinha also highlights the necessity of understanding and speaking the language of finance to gain C-suite buy-in for marketing initiatives. The discussion concludes with practical advice on how marketers can effectively communicate the value of their efforts to finance-oriented executives, using relatable language and focusing on tangible business outcomes.
00:00 Introduction and the Power of Branding
01:24 Meet the Guest: Gee Ranasinha, CEO of Kexino
05:31 The Neuroscience of Marketing
09:13 Emotional Buying Decisions
15:27 Challenges in Modern Marketing
24:10 Contrary Thinking in Marketing
30:15 The Power of Targeted Campaigns
31:27 The Importance of Creative Execution
31:59 Choosing the Right Channel for Your Audience
33:11 The Behavioral Advantage of Direct Mail
34:50 Costly Signaling in Marketing
40:35 Bridging the Communication Gap with the C-Suite
50:56 The Emotional Side of Marketing
53:48 Final Thoughts and Key Takeaways
Creators and Guests
Host
What is The Hummingbird Effect with Wendy Coulter?
Welcome to "The Hummingbird Effect," a podcast dedicated to uncovering the subtle yet powerful ways that small innovations can transform your business. Hosted by Wendy Coulter, CEO of Hummingbird Creative Group, this show delves into the stories and strategies behind successful brand building.
For over 25 years, Wendy has helped CEOs and business leaders redefine their brands through innovation and compelling narratives. In this podcast, she shares the insights and lessons learned from her extensive experience, exploring how a strong brand orientation can significantly increase the value of your business.
Each episode features engaging conversations with industry leaders, business advisors, and innovators who have harnessed the power of branding to make a substantial impact. Discover how focusing on core values, mission, and vision can drive your brand beyond mere marketing tactics, fostering a culture that resonates with your audience and enhances your business's reputation.
Inspired by the concept of the Hummingbird Effect—where small, adaptive changes lead to remarkable outcomes—this podcast aims to help you understand and implement the incremental innovations that can elevate your brand and business.
Join Wendy Coulter on "The Hummingbird Effect" and learn how to evolve your brand, attract more customers, and ultimately enhance the value of your business through strategic branding.
23 HBE - Gee
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[00:00:00]
Wendy: hi everyone. I'm Wendy Coulter and I help CEOs and marketing leaders unlock the hidden power of their brands. For years, business leaders have focused on marketing tactics, getting things done, but what truly matters is building a strong brand that resonates.
Have you ever experienced a hummingbird effect, like the co-evolution of a hummingbird and the flower? This is when small innovations and branding or marketing can lead to really unexpected results in other areas of the business, such as increased valuation, a change in culture, an operational breakthrough, [00:01:00] or even a new product development. Um, I'm excited to be here today. I've got Hannah with me, as usual, Hannah Jernigan is our marketing strategist at Hummingbird. Welcome to the show. Hannah, how are you this morning?
Hanna: . I'm doing good, Wendy. I'm really excited to talk with our guest today. He's just a delightful treat to be talking too, so I'm excited.
Wendy: Well, I am too. , today we're gonna dive deeper into the world of brand building, and I'm thrilled to have with us G Ronina, CEO of Kino. Um, I've been reading up on you g um, very honored to have you on the show. Um, you've got a background both as a professor and a agency owner, which I truly admire.
Um, but I found a fun fact about g and that is that he's a recovering perfectionist so he can, he can join my world 'cause I used to vacuum the house every single day, um, and was quite a perfectionist. But I think being an [00:02:00] agency owner kind of changes that about us. Um. Because everything can't be perfect.
And I think sometimes the, the things we find in between the perfection are the little gems that help move everything forward. And so, um, that's just a fun fact. Um, and then something else I found, um, as I was researching g that I found really super interesting, and I hope he is gonna cover it a little bit on the show today, is he says that your biggest source of revenue is the customer that you didn't know existed.
And I find that really interesting. Um, and I see that with our clients sometimes when they kind of find that nugget of what differentiates them and they realize. What that changes about the customer that they've been looking for, and that's been coming into their world and can open that up. So g, welcome to the show.
Thank you for being here today. Um, we're gonna talk about how seemingly small innovations can lead to [00:03:00] big wins, and I'd love to hear more about you. For the listeners, um, please share your story a little bit here.
Gee Ranasinha: Well, thank you very much, Wendy. Th firstly, thank you very much for the invite. Delighted to be invited. Um, so yes, I am. I'm G Ranas. I run Kick Cino as you, as you mentioned. We are a team of marketing, creative and business development specialists that help. We work with startups and small businesses to help produce, you know, better and more relevant marketing. Um, we combine strategy branding, um, with behavioral science. Um, so this is bio psychology, um, and we're doing this to increase awareness, reputation, trust, but most of all, it's about increasing sales, right? Because sales is what it's all about, right? That's what we're doing. This all for. Okay. It's not a charity we're running here.
Um, at the end of the day, it needs to generate sales. If your [00:04:00] marketing doesn't generate sales, it's not marketing. It's fluff. Um, so that's who we are. We've been going for 17 years. We're 19 people in nine countries. Nine of us are in the us, the rest are in Europe, South Africa Japan, and I have two people in Australia as well.
Um, we've been operating in a distributed working environment since day one, which as you can cast your mind back to 17 years ago, was a pretty bold move in the agency space at the time. Um, and even though our headquarters is in Europe, around 90% of our clients are from North America. Um, don't ask me why.
I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining. Um. But Appar, apparently, I don't know if you've heard of it, Wendy. There's this thing called the interwebs or something, and apparently they, they find you from this. Yeah, I [00:05:00] think it, I think it's like a Yellow Pages or something like that,
Wendy: that's the second time I've talked about Yellow Pages in one day.
That is too funny. It's like the
Gee Ranasinha: It was meant to be.
Wendy: I think it's a little bit bigger than the Yellow Pages, but, um, it, it
Gee Ranasinha: I dunno. I remember some of those yellow pages were really thick.
Wendy: I love it. Yes. But we are in a connected world now that is beyond, um, the city that the Yellow Pages was for in the past. And so I love that you bring that up. Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, so tell us about the neuroscience piece of this and what you're doing within the educational space, um, to help marketers, um, figure that piece out, because I think that's very, very interesting.
I'd love to hear more about that.
Gee Ranasinha: Well, I think there's, if, if, if we look at the state of marketing today, okay, we've got all of this technology, [00:06:00] you know, customer audience profiles and remarketing tags and AI and all of this sort of stuff going on, okay? Yet, if we actually look at the effectiveness of our marketing, it's actually falling,
Wendy: Yes.
Gee Ranasinha: right? And if we ask the average person in the street, somebody who's not involved with marketing, I call them civilians. Okay? If you ask, if you ask a civilian marketing has never been so hated distrusted today than at any time in the past. And we have to ask ourselves why is that? And I think that the reason is that most marketing today is using technology to hide behind the fact that many marketers, not all, maybe not even most though, [00:07:00] but sure is still out on that one. But certainly a lot of marketing today is, is coming from a position of pragmatism and rationality. It's coming from a a logical perspective that's being driven by software technology. Um, that it's a, it's a, it's a Newtonian physics model. One plus one is always two. Okay? Now that works for other areas of the business.
It certainly works in finance, it works in manufacturing in r and d, in, you know, various other parts of the business. We know how each component, part of the system operates in isolation and how it contributes to the efficacy of the system as a whole. And so if we want to increase the performance, the efficiency of the system, we [00:08:00] know that increasing the efficiency of smaller parts can have a positive effect on the entire system. But the problem is that whole argument falls down pretty quickly when we deal with marketing, because in marketing we're not dealing with, um. Manufacturing, we're not dealing with r and d. You know, if, if we're in manufacturing, right? Supposing we are a company and we make widgets, okay? Now, if we want to increase the efficiency of that widget making system, okay, there are various things we could do. We could buy a better widget making machine that runs quicker, right? We could buy our raw materials from a different source where the pricing is lower. Um, we could reduce the salaries. We are paying our workers [00:09:00] to run the widget making machine. There's lots of things we can do, okay? And there is a direct line of causality between what we do and what we result with.
What's the resulting, um, effect? The issue with marketing is that we are not dealing with. Known quantities that do not vary. We're dealing with people, and people are anything but logical, rational, and pragmatic in the way they choose to buy stuff. Okay? We change our minds. Our, the decisions that we make as buyers is heavily influenced by context and emotion. And this is where that whole thing breaks down in trying to create, we we're trying to, we're trying to make marketing into the wrong kind of science. We're trying to make [00:10:00] it, um, infinitely repeatable regardless of context, but that's not how human beings work, okay? Many of the levers that we can pull that influencer buying decision. Are not logical or, um, rational in their source. And not only that, they change with context.
Wendy: Hmm.
Gee Ranasinha: For, for example, if we, if we go back to the, you know, the Newtonian physics model of the business world, right? Um, we have units of measurement, which are easily quantifiable and communicable across different disciplines, right? You know a kilogram is always a kilogram, okay? A mile is always a mile, okay? 212 degrees [00:11:00] Fahrenheit is always 212 degrees Fahrenheit. You know, these are easily communicable units of measurement, okay? But if we look at some of the levers that we can pull for a customer that influences their buying decision, they are things like. Fear, anger, regret. Right? I mean, you think about it, the entire insurance industry is built on fear. Okay. So how do you quantify that? How do you measure that? How can you form some kind of, um, attributable information? If you're talking about emotions also, we change our minds. We think about things in one way when we have certain amounts of information or in a certain frame of mind, but we can quite easily change our point of reference with new information or [00:12:00] just simply because we're in a different mood.
Okay. I mean, I don't know how many times I've come back on a Friday evening, maybe having one too many glasses of the falling down water I, and hit Amazon. And, and, and bought some utter crap that turns up like the next day and it's like, oh yeah, that wasn't a dream. I did actually buy that left-handed screwdriver.
You know, it's, or whatever, you know? So
Wendy: I was gonna buy a purple hat yesterday and Hannah talked me into a pint glass. I don't know. I don't know. It's
very interesting. We make those decisions right.
Gee Ranasinha: make those decisions and we make them emotionally. And the, the thing is that, that that's the way that we as buyers buy, and that's how we buy anything. Okay? I don't care what you're selling to whom you're selling it to, whether it's B2B, whether it's B2C, okay? We buy from [00:13:00] here, we buy from the heart, we buy emotionally. Anything that we buy, we buy emotionally. And then after the fact, we post rationalize logically. I. We steal ourselves, we tell ourselves a story. We spin ourselves a yarn to justify that purchase in our heads, right? So I'm, I'm walking down the high street. I pass a shoe store, I see a, a pair of shoes in the window and I go, oh my goodness me, they're amazing pair of shoes.
I've gotta see if they've got in my size. So I go in and I try the shoes on, and they're awesome. They're absolutely brilliant, fantastic pair of shoes. So they box 'em up, they package 'em up, they swipe my credit card, I'm out the door and I go home. And I, you know, in the comfort of my own home, I open the box and I take out these shoes and I look at the, look at the bill and, you [00:14:00] know, I don't know, I don't know if that's, if the price of the serial number, you know, it's just like, how much have I spent on a pair, on a pair of freaking shoes?
I. Right. All of a sudden you're going, oh my God, what have I done? Right? The, you know, the, the, the, the, the cold light of day hits you straight between the eyes. So what happens then? What do we do? We tell ourselves a story. We try to justify it to ourselves, right? We look at the shoe, we say, look, feel that leather.
Oh my goodness me, it's as soft as a baby's tushie. It's wonderful. It's, it's, it's great. It's gonna look at the styling. It's so classic. It's gonna go with so many different things that I wear. Um, look how well made these things are. It's like hand stitched in Italy by 87-year-old grandfathers, right?
Who've been skills have been passed down from man or all that, These [00:15:00] are the only pair of shoes I'm gonna need for the rest of my life.
they're gonna last so much longer than the other shoes. I'm actually saving myself money. Right.
Wendy: right.
Gee Ranasinha: This is what we tell ourselves, and if we tell ourselves a convincing story, we keep the shoes. If we don't, we're down. We we're down to get our money back. And that's the point. What's happened in marketing today is that we've forgotten that there's two halves of the whole. So too much of marketing today is logical and rational and pragmatic. It's, you know, it's basically a bunch of bullet points, right? I mean, you, you, you know this with your own clients or you, or with the competition of your clients, right? You could, you could get two pieces of marketing side by side from [00:16:00] companies in the same category, but our competitors, and if you covered up the logo. The actual messaging could be interchangeable, right? There's no differentiation. There's no distinction. They're saying the same crap as everybody else is saying, right? So how, how, how can you as a buyer, make a measured and confident buying decision When you are surround? You, you, you know, you've got this sea of sameness.
You are a surrounded in a, in a, in a sea of grays, and there's nobody else who's out there who's standing out. There's nobody who's pulling on those emotional levers which drive buying behavior, right? And that's why I'm saying we need, we need to get the emotion back into our marketing. If we've got any hope of standing out from the [00:17:00] deluge of. Just crap that's being vomited out day on, day in, day out. Right. Espec, especially with ai, I mean, you know, you know, you know this vibe marketing thing. Have you had this vibe marketing
right? Where, where, you know, you just, you just, you know, throw a bunch of words at a bunch of AI and it'll vomit out like 500 ads with different creative, different headlines, different body copy that you then throw into the media platform of your choice.
And the, and the, the two ads, which give you like 0.001% better uplift are considered to be the successful ones, and you double down on them. And that's called marketing. That's called vibe marketing. So the, the fact that outta those 500 ads, 498 ads have been crap and have [00:18:00] just been annoying. Your ICP to the point where they're not gonna make any differentiation to the one that's giving you this tiny little bit of increased effectiveness doesn't seem to make any difference to people,
we're sizing creativity outta the equation because we don't know how to measure it and we don't know how to bill for it, right? If, if you look at, if you look at from a production standpoint, you know, for, we'll forget strategic from a stand for, for a minute, but if we just look at it tactical, you know, we know how much media costs, we know how much design costs, we know how much images, video, audio, whatever else.
And we can budget for all of these sorts of things. And we know how much media costs and we know, you know, um, we know what our CPC limits are. We know what our eyeball, um the eyeball, um, spread is going to be, [00:19:00] but we don't know how to budget for creativity. We can't say, okay, let's put $2,300 worth of creativity into this campaign.
Doesn't mean anything, does
it? does that mean? Okay. It it, there's, there's no, we, we, we can't, we can't do that because there, there is, there is no, we can't quantify that resource in the same way. So what do we do? We don't do it,
right. We that that's too much. Yeah.
we just, we just, instead of that, we just think, okay, more is be, is automatically better.
So we just do more. Okay. So it's, it's, you know, it's what I call pasta marketing, right? So, you to your point though, GI think that it gives good marketers, I. Who are interested in the creativity and differentiation, which is really what, what you're talking about, a fantastic opportunity today [00:20:00] to take that creativity, create something more emotional, to speak to, um, the target markets and make a difference and not be in that sea of sameness.
Wendy: And so I, I think what's amazing now is if you do differentiate, you can really stand out in a bigger way. Do you agree with me on that?
Gee Ranasinha: Up to a point. Up to a point, and I don't, I don't wanna sort of, I don't wanna sort of keep on banging the drum, like, you know, we're all doomed. The world is gonna end, wo is me. And no, that's, that's not what I'm trying to do at all. But I, the, the, the problem is even if you have an enlightened, talented person in marketing, they've gotta convince their boss.
They've gotta convince their client.
Wendy: right.
Gee Ranasinha: Right, and all the client sees are dollar signs [00:21:00] and all the client sees is what you mean? I can do more for less. That's a win for me. Right? They're not looking, they're not looking, they're looking at efficiency and not effectiveness, right? They're efficiency, which is, um, how much more can I get for my buck as efficiency, right?
So whether it's actually effective is immaterial. We're focusing, we're focusing again on the wrong thing, right? Far better to spend more on the campaign and have it generate the expectations, the commercial expectations expected of it, rather than blitz people with this generic vanilla crap that does nothing more than dilute.
The reputation of your brand by associating it with, [00:22:00] you know, visual music. Just spam, just crap. Just nonsense.
Wendy: So g when we're talking about outcomes, right, um, I think from where I've been as a marketer and the way that Hummingbird Effect came about is that there are other outcomes that can come from great marketing, um, that can impact the business in other ways. And [00:23:00] sales certainly we're always wanting to drive sales.
I totally agree with that, but sometimes we've seen some really awesome outcomes in other areas of the business that also impact the success in other ways. So that could be, um, a great creative idea that lends itself to a new product. Um. Being developed that might come from insight interviews with customers and understanding what they need and then move you towards something or a culture change, right?
Really understanding, um, how culture needs to change. Um, so as I transition us into a hummingbird effect, and you think about that, can you share a specific instance where you saw a seemingly small change in marketing or branding that affected a positive outcome in the business that was unexpected, [00:24:00] that wasn't really what you were necessarily looking for.
Um, but it made a tremendous difference in the business.
Gee Ranasinha: Absolutely. And I, I, I think you know, what we can distill this down to is contrary thinking, okay, it's allowing us to solve these business problems. I. In seemingly irrational ways. And we need to look at the irrational, the uncommon, the road less traveled. Because if all, if, if our, if our solution space is filled with simple pragmatism and logic, then we're always gonna come up with the same output.
Right? Who, who, who, who, who was it who said, you know, if you keep doing what you're doing, you keep gonna keep getting what you're getting. Was that Stephen Covey book? I think it was right. Um, so we need to encourage contrary thinking. We need to [00:25:00] encourage experimentation. Um, and that goes against the grain of this, um, economic, physical mindset where we need to have, you know, absolute attribution at a.
Seemingly molecular level for anything that that marketing does. And an example of, let's call it contrary thinking, was a a client project that we had a few years ago now with a, a, a company, um, in one of the southern states of the us. And they produce their, they're one of these meal box, um, suppliers.
You know, you, you subscribe and you get a box of French ingredients delivered to your door with like a recipe card. And it's like, no more than 20 minutes, you've got everything to make, like a [00:26:00] proper home-cooked nutritious meal. And it's all, it's all there, right? So it's better than getting takeout. It's certainly cheaper than, you know, going to a restaurant and that sort of thing.
And, you know, it is, you know, vaguely nutritious and certainly more nutritious than going out and shoving a burger down your throat. Right? So these guys were doing really, really well. They'd grown very fast in a very short space of time. They were targeting their, their, their ICP was primarily, um, 20 early, early twenties to late thirties. Couples or individuals, um, dinky, primarily Duke dinky, you're familiar with the term dinky Dual income? No kids. Okay. I wasn't sure. Didn't know if that was, that would've made it across the bond.
Okay. Um. So they were doing really well and they were using, you know, lots, lots of different channels, lots of different media, and then got to a certain point, but they were sort of hitting a bit of a ceiling sales wise. Revenue wise wasn't [00:27:00] growing that much. Also, they wanted to get into older markets, older as in demographically older, age-wise, they were looking at perhaps like the newly single okay.
From divorcing or bereavement or, you know, whatever. Um, and they, they'd done some research and they, they thought that there was a market area for growth in, in that sector, but none of the stuff they were working seemed to generate very much, um, of, of a success rate. So we suggested for them to, to in instead of, or as well as using the digital channels that they were using. To use something which was, let's call it old fashioned, let's call it a little bit staid. [00:28:00] And this was direct mail, printed direct mail, USPS, direct mail, printing something out, sticking it on an envelope and putting it in a post box
Wendy: We can still do that in the world today, G. Right,
Gee Ranasinha: AP app appar. Apparently. Yeah. Well, every, everywhere except Denmark.
I dunno if you read that recently. Denmark's, um, is going to stop the collection and posting of letters. Parcels carry on. But letters will stop at the end of this year because simply there's
not enough people using it.
There's not enough people. But then also you look at USBS look at, look at the prices now of UPS mailings, how they, I think they're going up again the end of this month and it's like 8% or 11% right. But we wouldn't know because we've got the forever stamp. So we, we just go buy the Forever stamp [00:29:00] and we don't
Wendy: even pay attention.
of it And, and, and then we don't care, right? We don't, we don't, we don't look at that. But you know, if, if, if you are a, um, a, a multi locational warehouse, sending out half a million mail drops a month,
right.
Gee Ranasinha: right? If your costs suddenly go up 8% overnight.
Wendy: Big difference.
Gee Ranasinha: That's a big difference. Right? So anyway, I suggested snail mail and the marketing director from the client, you know, I think, I think she, she thought had just dropped out of the sky or something.
She said, think what, what us mail shots, right? It was just so far out of her, certainly her experience. Okay. But just her, her, her, her, her range of ideas did not come even close to thinking in an analog world. [00:30:00] Okay? But I kept on her and I kept going on at her about this. I said, trust me. We need to try this.
Even if you turn round and you tell me, gee, see you were full of shit. Right? This has just been a total waste of time, money, and effort. Right. And she wasn't giving any of it. And I just kept on, they were call after call and eventually, you know, to her credit, she acquiesced and she said, okay, let's do it in a very tight geographical area.
We're gonna title, we're gonna target these zip codes, um, and we are gonna do a control because it's vital that you do a control. Okay? Um, so we had another set of zip codes that we were measuring business from that weren't targeted. So we could see, um, what the differences were. And put something together. And the, the, the the, the result [00:31:00] was 34% uplift. And that one campaign, and o, over and above any single campaign in any medium, digital or otherwise, they have ever done, ever in the history of their company. They've repeated it again and they've, I've repeated it three times I think, and they got double digit growth each time. Right. And the, so the point is, if executed correctly, right. I'm not saying to everyone, all you need to do is scribble something down on a piece of eight and a half by 11, shove it in a padded envelope and throw it in the mailbox. That's not what I'm saying. Right. You know, the creative execution has to be there.
The idea has to be there. The whole thing needs to hang together. There is work to be done. Okay. And it has to make sense from the expectations of your ICP Of course. Right. But that's the point. We need, [00:32:00] we need to pick the channel that's most apt. For our buyer, not the other way round. Right? You know, if we're targeting 86-year-old retired pastors, right?
TikTok is probably not the best channel to use, right? No disrespect to all the 86-year-old retired pastors who are booing away on TikTok, right? If
There are, I don't care. There probably is, and I would hate to exclude them,
Wendy: If not, it might be a very innovative idea, G
for want to go niche, niche of a niche, then, you know that, that's, that's pretty darn niche of a niche, I think.
Gee Ranasinha: But the point is, it didn't occur to them because it wasn't their experience, because they're coming at it from a digital first mindset. And that's the issue. There's this thing called maslo hammer. It's also known as the law of the instrument. Most people know it as, um, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, [00:33:00] right?
So if. All you are thinking about is how to solve a digital problem, then you are only ever gonna come up with digital solutions. But the problem is never digital. problem is behavioral always right? And especially, especially right now, snail mail, direct mail has a huge advantage over many digital channels, okay? You are getting pretty much a guaranteed 100%, 100% open rate, okay? 'cause if I, I can guarantee you, Wendy, if I, if I send you a bright blue envelope where it looks like it's been hand handwritten, addressed to you, you're gonna open that envelope,
Wendy: Absolutely
Gee Ranasinha: You are gonna open that envelope. Right now, you might file it in the round been filing cabinet straight afterwards.
Right, If it's, if it doesn't resonate, but just as [00:34:00] the same with any piece of collateral, right? It needs to be targeted. It needs to attract attention. There needs to be a communication, there needs to be called all the usual stuff that we, that we know for in many of the other medium needs to be there.
Right? But direct mail hangs around. It's tactile, right? It tends to hang around you put it on your desk, leave it, it'll, and you come back to it. Right? Also, there's this thing in behavioral psychology also. Actually, it's, um, it's something that we can look at from a, from a more Darwinian aspect, from if we, if we look at, um, natural selection, um, which is a thing that behavioral scientists call cons, conspicuous consumption, okay?
Or costly signaling. What does that mean? The very fact that I've spent money to you by [00:35:00] printing out this piece of paper, putting it in an envelope, putting a stamp on it, and throwing it in a mailbox gives extra gravitas to the perception of the message that I'm sending you because you know that it's cost me money to send it to you.
It's, it is effort involved, right? Which is missing from most digital channels. Certainly email, right? You get an email. Dear first name, because, to, because, because the substitute, the name substitute hasn't worked. Right. You know, half the time we, we, we read the subject heading of the emails, and we don't even open the, the rest of the bail.
We just bid it, right? Because we know there's no cost to the marketer when they've sent that piece of communication, right? And even most digital channels, especially organic ones, you know, it's virtually free, right? But you know, if, [00:36:00] if I'm, if I'm, if I'm trying to sell you a, um, a set of a thousand dollars steak knives, right? I could do, you know, 20 Instagram ads and put them everywhere and YouTube pre pre-roll showing and all that sort of stuff, and you'll have one perception of the quality of those knives, right? But if I stick it on with a 48 sheet poster, um, on your way to work with a picture of a celebrity chef saying, these knives are absolutely frigging awesome, right? That's creating a whole different perception of the quality of the product, right? there's costly signaling involved, right? This, this, the word costly signaling, it comes from the natural world because it's things like the peacocks tail. Right. So the male peacock has this huge, big, ornate show of tale to signify to the females of the species that they are strong, they are [00:37:00] virile, they would make good mating partners, right? For the rest of the time it's just a, it's just a it's, it's a weight over there. It's a, it's a, it's a dead weight over these to care for this sort of stuff, or even like flowers. Okay? You think about how much energy is expended for a flower to create all these, all ornate petals and colors and all this stuff to attract bees, right?
So that they can pollinate, right? So the bees come along, they see this flower and they say, oh, there's loads of nectar in this flower. I'm gonna remember this flower the next time I come along. I know that this flower gives me loads of, loads of nectar, right? S and the, the reason why these flowers do that is because they're offering a promise.
They're offering a promise. Listen, Mr. B. Mrs. B, well, no, Mrs. B is in the hive, right? It's only Mr. B who goes out. So listen, Mr. B, [00:38:00] you can take, um, comfort in the fact that when you see a flower that looks like this, you are on a, you are on a certainty, right? You're gonna get a good payoff, right? So it's worth the energy that the plant expends on creating this ornate flower and, and, and the perfume and the whole other stuff that goes along with that, because it's creating this, if you like, buying trust the bee to actually bother to come along. And this is the same thing that we're doing.
Wendy: well, I love that you've just described the actual hummingbird
effect, um, using bees. But, um, that's exactly what has happened with the hummingbird and the flower, and it's what we do as marketers as well, when we're doing it the right way. Um, I wanna come around to the fact that, um, you're, you're talking about things that people [00:39:00] today do not look at as innovations, but you're talking about them as innovations, right?
And remembering these tools that can be used, um, to reach a specific target market. That we don't always remember, um, exists. So I think, I think that's pretty cool. Um, I wanna talk about innovation with you and I want your opinion on how, because we are in this fast-paced environment and everybody is focused on digital because it's fast, they feel like they can get it out to more people with less effort.
And all of that. Um, what is your advice though on how companies can still stay nimble and adaptable and capitalize on these types of ideas? Um, and I wanna go back to what you said at the beginning about getting the buy-in. From someone else within the company to take a chance on something like this.
What is your advice when you are working [00:40:00] with a director of marketing and they've got to go to the top and get the buy-in on this? And I know you said like, I kept on her, I kept on her and I kept telling her she needed to do this. Um, but what, what would be your advice to a marketing director who has an innovative idea that could create, um, great results with a new target market or a a d going in a different direction to be able to get that buy-in that they need?
Because I think that is a, a tremendous roadblock for marketers today.
Gee Ranasinha: I think the issue is one of communication. I think there seems to be a basic communication disconnect the marketing department and. Pretty much every other department of the business, if you'll be, if you'll be totally honest, but certainly the C-suite and especially the finance [00:41:00] department. And I think this is fundamentally due to the different goals that each department has. But more than that, I think it's a question of language. It's the language that we as marketers use when we are talking to civilians, right? We forget that people who are not in our little world don't know things like excess share of voice or salience or, um distinctive brand assets or all, all of the terminology and jargon that we love to use and bandi around within our own little clique.
Okay? Civilians don't know that stuff and they don't want to know that stuff. And to be honest, especially when you get to the C-suite, it scares some shitless, right? Because we are, we're talking about [00:42:00] things which have no direct correlation to anything that's, that's logic factual based, right? When we, when we, when we talk about brand awareness and customer fidelity, and we're talking about these things as like wind through the fingers, tie dye, go up a mountain retreat, sit under a, sit under a pyramid and start chanting and worship the power of the crystal, right?
I mean, it just sounds all sort of weird and wonderful crazy shit. Right? And that's our fault, right? Because, well, I think there's, there's, there's two things. It's, it's. It's, there's a, there's always a conflict between marketing and finance. Okay? Even if they're both trying to do similar things, they just come across to do them t [00:43:00] typically in different ways.
Okay? Um, but at the end of the day, the language of the business is the language of finance, okay? And it's based upon the underlying strategic goals and measurements set out by the CEO, okay? Part of the job of the CFO is to communicate that information in strictly business terms, right? So this is where you hear things like balance sheets, p and ls, ROI, cash flow ebitda right now, you know, marketers, marketers can spell ebitda, let alone tell you what it was, right?
We don't talk bored, We don't talk C-suite, okay? Our message to the c, to those C-suite as the stakeholders should be seen as equally important. But since we use a different set of language terms, that's unique to us, what of what we, most of what we say just flies over the heads of most of the economics, [00:44:00] finance driven people.
Wendy: Yeah. I have to jump in on the EBITDA train because I talk a lot about ebitda. Um, and I think that the C-suite is not giving marketers the credit that they deserve because most, most directors of marketing in today's world that I meet, really do understand ebitda, and they know they need to use that language.
Um, and it has gotten them into the C-suite, which I think is your point, is, you know, you, you also have to learn to use that language, um, and figure out the way that you can tie the marketing language to. The corporate language and the things that are important to the C-suite. And I think that is how we bridge that gap and get, and get buy-in.
I think. I think using some of that language does, um, does bridge that gap. I always tell a story. I was on a bus going up to DC with a group [00:45:00] that's in the, um, in the defense space, and I was talking about EBITDA kind of off to the side to someone and impact on EBITDA by, um, by branding and marketing. And a woman who's a CEO specifically like leaned across the aisle to me and said, what did you say that you do for a living?
And I said, I, you know, I run a branding and marketing agency. And she said, and you just used. The word ebitda, like I would've never expected that out of a creative type of person. And I just don't think we're given that credit. I mean, you obviously know what it is. You know how to speak to ebitda. I know how to speak to ebitda.
Many of the marketing directors that I work with do. Um, but it's not all, we're not respected that we do know that. Um, which I do find very interesting. I think we're all challenged by that, um, daily with our clients. [00:46:00] But, um, I do think we need to let them know that we understand when they use words like that, that we're, you
Gee Ranasinha: I think we also also need to use finance derived terminology the ways that finance talk about them. Right? Right. The way that most marketers define ROI. It has got nothing to do with what, what somebody in finance or economics thinks of ROI.
Okay. totally agree.
I think the, you know, if, if you look at marketing and, and marketing 1 0 1, right?
Is adapting your language to your target audience. And yet we are falling at that first fence because we are not adapting the language. You know, EBITDA is one thing, but it's, it's, it's framing our communication in a way that's, um, most receptive to our target audience. Okay. You know, it's, it's a bit like, um, you know, some of the medical professions have [00:47:00] issue with the placebo effect. Okay. I mean, it's not that doctors don't believe that the placebo effect works because you know, clearly there's plenty of authoritative evidence that shows It does. Okay. What upsets them is that they don't know why it works. They have no idea how it works. Right. And I think in the same way, finance has an ingrained discomfort with marketing, not because they don't think it brings results, but because they can't make a pivot table out of it.
Okay. So I think the underlying issue is partly one of language. Yes. But I think the bigger issue is for marketers to have a better understanding of the finance world in general. Okay. They need to recognize our marketing's thought processes and measurements are different to how finance people understand the business. And I think they need to be aware of the need to reframe the information that we are giving. And the [00:48:00] reporting that we're sending to be more attuned and receptive to a finance centric mindset. And I don't think we are doing that. We, you know, we, we, we are jumping up and down about, um, ebook downloads or podcast views or videos or, you know, how many likes and comments and retweets and this sort of stuff.
But, you know, that's all great. It's all wonderful. Um, but we need to translate that into sales,
right? Yeah,
And, you know, the CFO's going, oh, great, you know, you've, you know, you've got all of these ebook downloads and we've got all of this um, all of this traffic. It's wonderful. But what does that mean?
Okay. What they're looking for is how do we translate all of this stuff into stuff that rocks their world, which is cash flow. Right. Yeah. They're happy with all the traffic and visibility, but well, from where they're sitting, there doesn't seem to be anything [00:49:00] tangible, right? So what, what we forgot to do when we are talking about this is, like I said, know your audience, right?
So we want to hear something, we want to communicate something alongs of lines of maybe, you know, based upon our experience with similar programs that we've done in the past, we can confidently conclude that if the business spends X amount of dollars on this particular marketing initiative, we can increase revenue by this percent over the course of this timeframe
Wendy: right.
Gee Ranasinha: when compared with the status quo.
Because that, that part is absolutely vital, right? What is the con, what is the consequence of doing nothing? Would we have got those sales anyway? Or is it as a direct result of what we've done? And we don't, we're not that, that sort of stuff, I don't think we are [00:50:00] doing
Hanna: Yeah.
Gee Ranasinha: as an industry. And if we were, we wouldn't have. Um, I, I read our HBR survey about three or four months ago, beginning of the year, I think it was. And like 80% of CEOs aren't happy with their CMO. Why is the average tenure of A CMO like 14 months? Because we don't talk bored, because we're not adapting our language in ways that make sense to an economist, to a, to a finance person.
Wendy: So the lesson here,
we've gotta, worst enemies,
we gotta teach the communicators how to communicate with their target market to get what they need. Yeah,
Gee Ranasinha: Isn't it scary, isn't it is absolutely ridiculous. You know, it's do as I say, not as I do. It's like the shoemaker's kids we've got, you know, it's, it's that whole thing, right? Do as I say, not as I do.
Wendy: so, Hannah, are you learning anything from this as an a, [00:51:00] as a account manager type Yeah, no, it's funny, and I feel like this idea comes to me a lot when we start to end all of the podcast of just your customers buy with emotion, but your budget comes from logic and just how do you explain to someone that while you're excited about your idea, on one hand you can't speak so excitedly to the people that need to fund it.
Hanna: Um, and you've said it really good g about just how to do that. So we really had to put a focus on it. But I felt that this whole. Interview was a really strong reminder that we've gotten so caught up in the science of marketing that we've forgotten that people buy emotionally, not rationally. And we all know that.
I think if you really like sit down and think about it. So it doesn't matter how data-driven or efficient your marketing is, if it doesn't make [00:52:00] someone feel something. So it was a really nice reminder to think about that shift moving away from purely pragmatic tech-driven marketing and bringing humanity and emotion back into what we're doing.
So, and it can open up our opportunities that we didn't know existed. Um, channels that we might not have even. Been considering even though they exist there. Um, so like you said, from your story of the mailbox company, so switching from direct to or digital to direct mail, this wasn't a ta just a tactical shift.
You had explained that it was emotional to the target audience. It landed differently and it worked. I think you said that there was a 34% uplift in the first run, and that's the hummingbird effect. It's a small change from their digital to direct mailing, but it had a huge effect. Um, so it's a great reminder for anyone listening that if your marketing is feeling flat or you're just blending in or nothing's really [00:53:00] working, it's maybe time to stop optimizing for the algorithms or the science and really focus on your customer.
a great reminder, I learned a lot, I have a lot of questions
Wendy: I know we could,
Hanna: of this, but
just to, about neuroscience
yeah, and you really do, you stop and like, you start remembering, you're like, oh, yeah, I did learn that in science class, or psychology or those things.
But it's the opposite. Whenever you're, you're, you get in that weird middle place of who do I need to be speaking to? So it was a really good reminder to like, remember, like when you're talking to your customers, talk to your customers. When you're talking to your bosses, speak their language and be effective to get what you need.
Wendy: Yeah. I love it. I love it. Well, gee, I really, I really appreciate your time today. We've learned so much. Do you have a final thought to share with us?
Gee Ranasinha: Well, you know, I, I think Hannah knocked it, um [00:54:00] said it very eloquently, and you mentioned it earlier on, Wendy. We don't, we don't talk to customers enough. Customers will tell us what we need to do, how we need to do it, and if we let them, but too many of us. Don't speak with customers enough. Okay. We're too, we are too busy trying to game the system.
You know, Hannah, you mentioned about trying to figure out the algorithms and stuff. Okay. It's not, it's not about, you know, how, how does Instagram work? How does the LinkedIn algorithm work? How does TikTok work? It, it's, it's about how does the customer work? How does the human mind work? How do we need to frame our value articulation in a way that'll resonate in the minds of our ideal customer profile? And we, and we find that out, number one, by speaking to the people who've bought from us, who've put their hands in their [00:55:00] pockets and shelled out their hard earned cash to buy from us. Because they want us to succeed. They want to help us. They are our biggest advocates. Right. They will bend over backwards to help us.
But for some reason, and when I say speak, I mean pick up the phone and speak or, or zoom or something. I don't mean some frigging survey or an email exchange. Right. Okay. It's, it's, it's human to human. It's none of this, you know. Oh. But I emailed them. They haven't come back to me. Yeah. Okay. And what they don't have a phone?
Wendy: Well MG we see when clients email, like, let's ask them for, to email us a testimonial. Well, if you talk to them on the phone, they say completely different words than what they typed up or what AI typed up for them. You know,
Gee Ranasinha: No. Exactly. You know, when, when we, when we do, when we do customer interviews, customer testimonials, right? They say, can [00:56:00] you, can you send the questions in advance? And I say, no.
no. Not, not only will you not get them, but 50% of the questions aren't on that list. 'cause I don't know where the conversation's gonna go. Right.
Wendy: Absolutely.
Gee Ranasinha: it has to be like that because not only does that help you in terms of messaging, but it helps you in SEO because that's the stuff that they're searching for those words. So we know all of this stuff, right? AI can't help you do that. You have to have somebody who has experienced taste and judgment to work that stuff out, to be able to then put it into whatever you wanna put it into.
But we are not doing that and then we are looking round and saying, why is our marketing not working right? The reason your marketing working is not working is not because marketing doesn't work. It means you suck at marketing. That's what it means.
Wendy: And I love that we're ending today's conversation on the vocabulary and voice of the customer because, um, [00:57:00] it's something that we truly believe in. We're definitely on the same page of that, um, g and it's just great that your entire, um, conversation with us has led us there. And, um, I think that's a great note to, to kind of leave, um, all of you listeners with.
Um, it's, we're so thankful that you listen to the podcast and I think the voice of the customer is the great, um, message here at the end of this podcast for you to take forward and help you find your hummingbird effect. Thank you so much, and gee, we really appreciate it. Can you quickly share with us your contact information, how to find you online?
Gee Ranasinha: Best way to get hold of me, Wendy is on LinkedIn. That's where I spend most of my time. Would you believe there's only one G ran on LinkedIn? I.
Wendy: I bet.
Gee Ranasinha: Who to thank. Right? Amazing. Yeah. So find me on [00:58:00] LinkedIn. That's the easiest way. Otherwise Keino, K-E-X-I-N o.com. Um, you can find me there as well.
Wendy: Thank you so much. Have a good day,
Gee Ranasinha: Been a pleasure. Thank you very much for inviting me.