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Insider Secrets for Digitial Marketing Success
00:02 - 00:08
Intro: This is Performance Delivered, insider secrets for digital marketing success with Steffen Horst.
00:09 - 00:51
Steffen Horst: In today's episode, we're going to talk about moving your brand out of the friend zone. Here to speak with me is Doug Sarkin, the Chief Brand Officer at Goodfeet Worldwide, a market-leading manufacturer and retailer of premium, personally fitted arch support. Doug's career includes co-founding Grey Advertising's Youth, Entertainment and Lifestyle Marketing firm GEWIS, where he honed his expertise in integrated marketing platforms across sectors like fashion, beauty, CPG, sports, automotive, entertainment, luxury hospitality, and QSR. At Avon, he launched the Mark brand, earning recognition for best executed launch strategy. As VP of Marketing at Victoria Secrets Pink, he transformed
00:51 - 01:25
Steffen Horst: it into a formidable national brand. As CMO of Pearl, vision at Aselia Buxotica, Doug led a brand transformation, shifting focus to a premium care-centric omnichannel experience. This resulted in 8 years of sustained growth, increased customer satisfaction, earning him spots on top marketers lists and multiple Effie and Clio awards. Since October 2023, Duck has worked as the chief brand officer at Goodfeet Holdings, overseeing its global health and wellness portfolio, including its nearly 300-unit franchise brand. Doug, welcome to the show.
01:26 - 01:31
Doug Zarkin: Thank you for having me. Despite that introduction, I don't think my dad still has any idea what I do.
01:33 - 01:54
Steffen Horst: Well, I hear you there. It's probably the same with my parents. But tell us a little bit more about yourself. How did you get started in your career? In my intro, I talked about that you kind of co-founded, You know, grace advertising, youth entertainment, life television. But how did you get started? What led you to becoming the chief brand officer at Goodfeet Holding?
01:54 - 02:26
Doug Zarkin: So I would love to tell you that it was a master plan that I've executed flawlessly. But Like many things in life, it comes down to career choices and some opportunities and some setbacks. I went directly from undergrad to graduate school. I graduated undergrad on a Sunday and started an MBA JD program on a Monday. And very quickly realized after my first business law class that while the law was interesting, I didn't want to be a lawyer. So I finished my MBA in 13 months and came to New York thinking that I wanted to be the
02:26 - 02:56
Doug Zarkin: next Bud Fox from the movie Wall Street and work in fixed income. And I interviewed with all the big firms and again, took a temperature check of what I love to do and the curiosity I have about thinking differently and realized that that wasn't the right place for me. Even though I had a marketing and finance background, I didn't really discover the path that I'm on until the very end of my career, look out of grad school. And a very good family friend at the time, because this was pre-LinkedIn, said, look, Doug, if you want to
02:56 - 03:27
Doug Zarkin: really run a business 1 day, if you want to run a business, lead a brand, start at the end, work your way to the front of the train. And the reason why is because you'll not only understand all the roles and functions that go in, you'll understand the language. And critically, this was well before the whole idea of leading effective teams became a popular topic, you'll understand how to motivate those people in those roles. And so I started out in the agency world in media as a planner and buyer and then moved to account management, found
03:27 - 04:02
Doug Zarkin: myself at Gray where I spent the bulk of my career, eventually started with 2 other people, G-Wiz Youth and Entertainment Marketing, and then made the jump to the client side where I worked as 1 of the few male Avon ladies in helping to create the Mark brand for them, Victoria Secret Pink. And then through a series of conversations, spent 11 years at Esl'Oil Exotica transforming their global franchise brand, Peril Vision. And then last summer I made a decision that, you know what, I want to write a book. And so I left Esl'Oil Exotica to spend the
04:02 - 04:34
Doug Zarkin: time to write the book, wrote the book in 16 weeks. And the week that the book came out, which is actually almost a year to the day of us recording this podcast, I started as the first ever chief brand officer for Goodfeet Holdings, who is the owner of the Goodfeet Store, which you mentioned, Premium Arts Supports, Stretched, which is a premium assistant stretching business, OST First, which makes the finest line of socks and compression gear. And then recently we purchased a company called compression health, which is medical grade compression garments, sort of like the Amazon of
04:34 - 04:41
Doug Zarkin: medical grade compression gear, which you don't know you need until you need it. And then there's an unbelievable world. And so that's where I come to
04:41 - 05:05
Steffen Horst: you today. Wonderful. Well, that's very interesting. Now, you know, Writing a book in 16 weeks sounds very fast. Never written a book, so I don't know how much it usually takes. But I remember back in the days when I studied in Germany, I had to write my diploma thesis. It definitely took longer than 16 weeks to write that. Now, what key steps should a brand take? So going to what you wrote about in your book, but What key steps should a brand take? Going to what you wrote about in your book, but what key steps should
05:05 - 05:10
Steffen Horst: a brand take to move out of the friend zone? And what does it mean being in the friend zone as a brand?
05:11 - 05:43
Doug Zarkin: Yeah. So great shameless plug for the book, Moving Your Brand Out of the Friend Zone, available on paperback and Kindle on Amazon. You know, it really comes down to in today's marketplace, if you really think about it, we have all been taught that you wanna create a relationship with your consumer. What we haven't been taught is the depth that is needed in that relationship to ensure that your brand is protected from the new shiny object, the latest Instagram or TikTok brand. And most importantly, those dreaded moments in the third quarter when you look at your sales
05:43 - 06:15
Doug Zarkin: forecast and you realize, you know, holy shit, I am way off. All of those things are results of just being friends with your consumer and not having that deep, passionate, loving relationship. And you're asking yourself, that sounds probably creepy. It is and it isn't. To create brand love, what it really does require brands to do, and something I talk about in the book, is really thinking human. The idea of treating every customer as if they were your only customer. So think about that for a second. How many times have we called customer service, whether it's for
06:15 - 06:51
Doug Zarkin: a credit card or an airline or a hotel or for anything we've purchased. And they're reading off a script. You know, I'm really sorry that, you know, that you have experienced this problem. I'm really sorry that you're disappointed. No, you should be really sorry that you've disappointed me. You should be really sorry that you haven't taken great care of me. It lacks that human empathy, it lacks that prioritization in making every engagement sticky. And so in the book, I talk about things like the brand value equation. How to create brand love starts with really passion and
06:51 - 07:26
Doug Zarkin: trust. How do you create passion and trust? Are you delivering brand value? And then it talks about how to really think about building that effective marketing plan. It is not a instruction manual because 1 of the biggest misnomers about brand marketing is that there's a right way or a wrong way. Newsflash, there's just a way. And the a way is based on fundamentals, foundational data, and insight that you as a leader bring to the table. So it would be disingenuous to say, here's the roadmap. What the book is, is a guide. It helps you navigate through
07:26 - 07:35
Doug Zarkin: your journey of building that brand love based on your situation with your brand and the leadership team that either you're a part of or reporting to?
07:35 - 08:04
Steffen Horst: Yeah, interesting. I love that you say, you know, you got to build this brand, otherwise you're replaceable, basically. And I have to tell you, I speak to so many leaders in marketing, obviously, as an agency, that's what we do, right? When it comes to what is the campaign going to be about? And I think there are still a lot of companies out there that just solely focus on the lower part of the funnel. If we think about the funnel as kind of a linear, right? And then they're like, well, my CPLs are too high, my cost
08:04 - 08:25
Steffen Horst: per se are too high, or we don't get more, we get less. And when you answer, well, you need to invest in brand and it's not a 1 month investment. It's probably more A123 year investment, etc. And it's not about how many leads I'm getting once I start doing it. Quite often, the answer is no, unless I get a 3 to 1 return, I'm not going to do that.
08:25 - 08:49
Doug Zarkin: Yeah, I mean, the performance marketing can't perform if, you know, like take page 1 Google, You can buy your way onto page 1 Google, but if your brand doesn't mean anything, the fact that you show up doesn't mean anything. It's not going to perform. So performance marketing is a direct result of what you're doing in upper and mid funnel. What's the story in the narrative that makes when somebody's searching for your brand and it pops up irrelevant.
08:50 - 09:06
Steffen Horst: No, you're just a name that offers the same thing in 2 or 3 other brands. And if you haven't differentiated yourself before they come to the point of decision in 1 out of 99 or 100 times, you're going to lose. You're not getting that lead or sale or whatever it is you're going after.
09:06 - 09:37
Doug Zarkin: Marketing is such a equal and opposing forces. On the 1 hand, you have to be pretty damn arrogant to believe that you can motivate the consumer to do what you want them to do when you want them to do it. I mean, that is the purpose of marketing. On the other hand, you have to have the humility to recognize that it's always about listening in order to lead. So you've got to balance those Arrogance slash confidence, humility slash listening in order to find the right balance to put into the blender to spit out what you're going
09:37 - 09:39
Doug Zarkin: to do and how you're gonna do
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Steffen Horst: it. Yeah. Now in the book, you talk about the power of emotional connections and creating black love. What are some practical ways brands can build this connection without feeling like they're trying too hard or coming off
09:52 - 10:27
Doug Zarkin: as inauthentic? It's a great question. I think the first thing is humility. Take email, for example. Email has become a crutch to engage with your consumer. I can fire out an email. Think about how many emails we get. Go back 20 years, think about how many pieces of direct mail we got. People moved away from direct mail because there was too much, they went to email. People are now moving away from email because they're realizing there's too much. So again, humility is the first thing. The second thing is really thinking human. Going back to that theme
10:27 - 11:03
Doug Zarkin: of if every customer was your only customer, what would you do? How would you behave? What would your customer service model be? What would your email engagement model be? What would your post-purchase relationship be? Those are all moments. But the precipice is the fact that consumers make emotional decisions before they make rational choices. We decide with our heart before we decide with our head. The end of the day, the rational reasons to believe substantiate why we love. But first we love. Think about the last time you went on a great trip. Somebody asked you, what was
11:03 - 11:35
Doug Zarkin: the hotel like? Oh, it was amazing. Why was it amazing? Well, service was excellent, I loved the pool. You start getting into the rational proof points. But your first reaction is an emotional 1. And so if you can create stories and position them to the consumers that tell an emotional tale where your brand can be seen in their life, which could then be internalized to be relevant to your consumer, you're 1 step ahead of where everybody else is. Although a lot of brands are getting really good at it, many brands are
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Steffen Horst: not. Yeah. Now the concept of thinking human is central to your approach.
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Doug Zarkin: 100%.
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Steffen Horst: How does this mindset help brands build stronger emotional bonds with their customers? Are there examples of brands that have nailed this?
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Doug Zarkin: So it creates stronger brands because you're not thinking about the relationship as transaction. You're thinking about lifetime value. You're thinking about the contribution that you've made to them, not just the product that you've sold. Product you've sold is a conduit to your brand having meaning. And that's so incredibly important. Are there brands that have done a really good job? Yes, but in spurts. I think if you are lucky enough to be in a loyalty program for a hotel or an airline and you're in the upper tier, more often than not they're gonna create real brand love.
12:24 - 12:56
Doug Zarkin: Okay, but let's not disguise it. You bought your way into that situation. I actually think small businesses probably do the best job of creating brand love. And they do that because nothing's a problem. You know, nothing is a problem. They're willing to bend over backwards to help you. They're willing to bend over backwards to say thank you. I love a handwritten thank you note. I mean, maybe I'm too old school, but somebody takes time to write a thing, you know, pretty amazing. And so brands that really do that, that kind of thinking can really get them
12:56 - 13:11
Doug Zarkin: out of the friend zone and really move them into that brand love category. There are also a ton of brands that are in brand hate that are highly profitable. And they have to know that their consumers hate them. But more often than not, it's because you don't have another choice. You have to use
13:11 - 13:22
Steffen Horst: them. Yeah. You said some brands do parts well. What is missing from these brands that do some parts well to do it completely right?
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Doug Zarkin: Consistency. Consistency. It's like how many times have we engaged with somebody in customer service and you get somebody who is amazing, right? Amazing. And bends the rules a bit, looks in the gray area. You know, okay, your warranty is a week out of date. Let me see what I can do. Or, you know, your flight's been canceled. Let me see if I can get you on the flight without a change fee. You find those people, but you could call back and get somebody else and it could be a horrific experience. So I think it's consistency. It's
13:54 - 14:09
Doug Zarkin: not because brands don't understand what it is to create brand love, in my opinion. Brand love costs money. Brand love takes more time. So brands that take the time and can do it really well time after time are the ones that are in
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Steffen Horst: that love zone. So it sounds a little bit like earlier in your examples, you use customer service as well. Is it just the human touch elements or the kind of the 1 to 1 conversation where they fail or other elements too because you know there's a there's a communication level for all brands how they communicate outside of just the 1 to 1 point.
14:26 - 15:02
Doug Zarkin: I mean look personalization is probably the most overused word in marketing next to the initials AI, which is an entire separate topic. So a lot of the impact that consumers have related to their perception is very personal. You know, 2 people could go to the same restaurant and have wildly different experiences. So it is very much in the eye of the beholder, which is why it makes it challenging. But it's not what it isn't is about assuming that the consumer is always right. Consumer is not always right. Sometimes they're just darn difficult. But it's how you
15:02 - 15:38
Doug Zarkin: deal with it in the moment. And most importantly, you can be empathetic without being apologetic. And there's a difference. Somebody who's had a rough experience that they've caused, There's no need to apologize, there's a need to empathize. But know when that moment is definitely 1 where you need to apologize. And then how do you act? How do you put your muscles behind it? And it's not about grand gestures. It's about small moments of care and connection. It's somebody that you've bought something that calls you a week later and says, hey, how's it going? Do you need
15:38 - 16:00
Doug Zarkin: any help? Somebody who says, listen, don't buy this. How many times have you been to retail and they try to not sell you on the most expensive. That's pretty damn amazing when they do that. So, I think there's a lot of there there, but to find it requires a mindset of, I'm going to be in this for the long haul with my consumer.
16:00 - 16:26
Steffen Horst: Yeah. I mean, I would say it's probably also difficult to school the client facing people in a way that they are consistent. Because you said it yourself a second ago, it's like you could have 1 person that is really empathetic and takes care of you and then you call in another day and the person is completely the opposite. Even if you teach, I think there's still quite a bit of room for people to go in different directions.
16:27 - 16:55
Doug Zarkin: Well, that's why operations guys make the big bucks. Guys being relative, not gender specific, that's why they make the big bucks. The most important tool in a toolbox for a marketer when it comes to brand and brand experience are your frontline associates, which is why it's so important to really understand what brand love means that you get out of the office. And if you have brick and mortar, work in brick and mortar. If you are working in an econ business, get on the phone with customer service. You wanna know how you're doing, talk to a discontent
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Doug Zarkin: customer. You get a reality check really quick.
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Steffen Horst: Now you introduced the brand value equation. Brand value equals experience divided
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Doug Zarkin: by price.
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Steffen Horst: Yeah. How does understanding this equation help brands to move from being like they truly love by their customers?
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Doug Zarkin: Yeah. I mean, look, the greater the Delta between your numerator and the denominator, the numerator being experienced, the denominator bringing price, you can charge a premium price. As long as your numerator is significantly greater than your denominator, you're gonna have a positive brand value equation. If you're paying $400 for a room at the Ritz-Carlton, you got to deliver an 8 or a $1, 200 experience. But the same thing is if you're delivering $199 room at the Courtyard Marriott, if you happen to deliver a $500 experience, your net output of that fractional equation is 5. Wow. And
17:47 - 18:17
Doug Zarkin: so that's why for us, when we encounter somebody from a customer service perspective at a big box retailer who actually takes the time to care about you, we're always so impressed. The same way we are not impressed if you have bad service at a smaller retailer because you're thinking like, wait a minute, there's 5 people here. How could there be nobody here to help me? So it's all relative, which is why for people like me, the challenge is always about how that bar is raised or how that bar is different brand to brand.
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Steffen Horst: That makes sense. Now, so what's storytelling? It's a big part of moving a brand out of the friend zone. How can brands craft stories that resonate emotionally with their audience, making them feel more connected and invested?
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Doug Zarkin: The advice I would give is, for me in particular, it's a work in progress. You try to tell a lot, the story isn't going to resonate. You know, it's trying to cram too many messages into a commercial or a piece of digital creative. The complexity of what storytelling is truly lies in the simplicity. You know, what is that emotional dynamism to your story? Fear to not being fearful, joy versus pain, you know, the emotional roller coaster and the intrigue of building that narrative so that your brand, your product, your service is seen as hero. That's the
19:05 - 19:17
Doug Zarkin: challenge. I mean, that's the opportunity. In fact, after we finished recording today, I'm jumping on a virtual edit session with our creative team to go through final edits on our new campaign for Goodfeet. And it's all about perfecting the story arc.
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Steffen Horst: So how do you approach that? I mean, how do you find the right message? What's your approach for the good feed? Well, how do you approach that?
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Doug Zarkin: So it starts with really, what is the strategic insight? What's the need state that you're solving for? You know, Your job in marketing is to motivate that consumer to take the action that we want them to take when we want them to take it. The challenge is how do you put your brand on the brain of that consumer? Scale it back. The way you meet that challenge is to figure out what is going through the mindset of that consumer. And honestly, that's where your frontline support becomes incredibly important, because the insights could really reside from anybody.
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Doug Zarkin: You know, 1 of the things that we do on our team is we work 1 day a quarter in our stores to make sure that the team is always taking that consumer facing approach. I think too much data where you're dialing by numbers when it comes to what your insights are is not a good thing. Data is only as good as the questions that you ask. Those questions that you know to ask don't come from data. They come from insight. And so it's important to get out of the boardroom, get out from behind your computer and
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Doug Zarkin: really enjoy the relationship that you can have with your consumer and your frontline associates. That's what's really so important.
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Steffen Horst: When you create that story, do you pay attention or do you consider that your audience obviously is a big club, right? But within that big club of audience, There are sub segments of audiences with different needs, different problems, etc. Do you consider that when you create that story and you build a story that can be adjusted to each of these sub segments?
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Doug Zarkin: Oh yeah. I mean, you've got to know who you're talking to in order to know if your message makes sense. So, a demographic is 1, a psychographic is another. What is the insight? What is the need state that you're solving for? If you don't know that, you're never going to be able to develop effective creative.
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Steffen Horst: Makes sense. So what come pitfalls to brands fall into when trying to create brand love and how can they avoid these traps to build a more genuine lasting relationship with the audience?
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Doug Zarkin: Yeah, I mean, the biggest pitfall is arrogance. The desire, not having the desire to continually to evolve. Because it worked yesterday, it doesn't mean it's gonna work tomorrow. So realizing that the consumer is an evolving facet of your marketing plan, you have to evolve with it. I think secondarily, realizing there is a very, very big difference between awareness and educated brand awareness. Throwing a logo on a billboard at a stadium is brand awareness. It doesn't educate the consumer without you need the context. Brand awareness is key because it starts the dialogue, but if they don't know
22:15 - 22:44
Doug Zarkin: what they're seeing, I mean, this year's Superbowl, I forgot what the brand is, that's how bad their commercials were, but they had like 4 or 5 commercials in the Super Bowl. I wanna say maybe it was T-Mu, if I remember correctly, not to put them on the spot, sorry if you guys are listening, but like their marketing was awful. It was just awful, because it didn't tell a story, it had no idea what you did. It was just the logo everywhere, which again that's different if you're pepsi. What was your order night where the storytelling is
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Doug Zarkin: there but they always have great storytelling not just big logo registration So those are a couple where you've got to be just really smart about understanding where you live in the world of your consumer. That will allow you to make really good decisions about how you're going to improve it.
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Steffen Horst: Yeah, I mean, that's for that's the next step in the funnel. You first build a brand awareness. So when people then go and look for a solution to their problem and you pop up, they recognize, oh, I saw these guys before. Therefore, I'm going to dive into what they have to offer. If that is missing, you might miss out on a good amount of people, but it needs to be confidential, basically, in kind of your communication.
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Doug Zarkin: Exactly.
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Steffen Horst: Now, when it comes to fostering brand love, how should brands measure success? And that's actually a very interesting question. What metrics or indicators should they be looking at to know they're building deep emotional connections that were lost?
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Doug Zarkin: Yeah, you know, the interesting thing is it's not sales. Like everybody on a leadership team has sales as a key KPI, But marketing doesn't sell product. Marketing creates the handshake operations, creates the hug. So marketing has got to look at brand love through either a brand health tracker that you create through lifetime value of your customers. What is your active versus latent database? You know, in your first party data, you know, that frequency of purchase. Your reviews and ratings, you know, are you measuring your star scores on Google? Are you looking at your Yelp? So there
24:17 - 24:34
Doug Zarkin: are definitely a handful, but you gotta really dig in. You gotta really dig in. You gotta really get a tracker in place to allow you to see how things move. Store traffic is probably 1 of the bigger ones, because again, marketing's job is to motivate that consumer to take action. So I want them to come into store.
24:34 - 24:40
Steffen Horst: Duck, thank you for joining me on the performance of our podcast and sharing your knowledge on moving your brand out of the friend
24:40 - 24:41
Doug Zarkin: zone. Thank you,
24:41 - 24:47
Steffen Horst: my friend. How can people get in touch if they want to learn more about you and Goodfeet Worldwide?
24:47 - 25:11
Doug Zarkin: Yeah, So easiest place to learn all about the book first and foremost is my website, dougzarkin.com, W-W-W-Dougzarkin, D-O-U-G-Z-A-R-K-I-N.com. I have a pretty unique last name so you can find me on LinkedIn. It's probably a great place to get a hold of me. And the book is available on Amazon and Kindle. So, payback at Amazon and Kindle. So, feel free to check it out.
25:11 - 25:30
Steffen Horst: Thanks, everyone, for listening. If you like the focus about podcasts, please subscribe and leave us a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast application. If you want to find out more about Symphonic Digital, you can visit us at symphonicdigital.com or follow us on X at Symphonic HQ. Thanks again and see you next time.
25:31 - 25:41
Outro: Performance Delivered is sponsored by Symphonic Digital. Discover audience-focused and data-driven digital marketing solutions for small and medium businesses at SymphonicDigital.com.