The 7 Human Hijacks - Covert Marketing Methods the Brain Can't Resist

All right. I'm not jealous of any people on earth. I think I'm jealous of Craig Clements because Not only has he built a successful billion dollar company with no outside investors But he has made hit after hit after hit. And

I asked him to come on the podcast and he thought it was just gonna be a normal episode, but then When we started talking, I realized that I wanted him to give me a master class. And when he's given it to me, he's giving it to you, which is To teach us. The seven ways

That's He, as a marketer, has sold over a billion dollars of products online. He calls these the seven human hijacks. And he goes through example after example of how Great. products and things that we take for granted, like brushing your teeth or

How people eat bacon for breakfast. Those weren't things people did back in the day. It was guys like him, marketers. that use specific tactics in order to make those a thing. And if you're an entrepreneur who's uh yeah wants to be successful You need to be good at marketing. You gotta be able to sell your product. And it's very rare to be able to sit with somebody like Craig, who's actually

One of the best to ever do it. And ask him. How did you do it? I don't I mean I feel like he's doing this. He doesn't have to tell us these secrets, like You know, I think he's at that sweet spot where he's been running his company for fifteen years, he's been doing this for a long time, he's six You know, the company's super successful. I don't feel like he has to like guard those secrets anymore.

So I told him to give them to us. And I don't know about you, but I've had professors in school have took marketing classes. But those are not people who have actually been in the game. Done it. People have actually created categories, sold hundreds of millions of dollars of single products. Yeah.

A year ago nobody had ever heard of. And so Craig tells the story of how others did it and at the end He tells the uh s story about how he helped create The probiotics category. If you ever had probiotics

You can thank Craig because he was the one who created uh that category and made it mainstream. So enjoy this marketing master class. on the seven human hijacks, how marketers have hijacked your brain with Craig Clements.

What's up, dude? You uh I have this theory now. of guests who come on the podcast, the more their video setup looks like they were either taken hostage or are like, you know, in some motel somewhere. Uh, the better the guest is. And we had Bology on and he was like White wall

Nothing in the room. And he was just like, you know, at the time he didn't have his like videos set up, like you know, he was out not on his home video set up. And like the higher your IQ, the worse your video setup. And the opposite is true, unfortunately, for me, which is the more HD and beautiful your video setup. The less interesting things you usually have to say. Yes, yes. And the cool thing is you're like the real life badman. You you're you're an ad guy.

And a copyrighted. Who translated those skills into a billion dollars of sales, which is why when you were coming on this time, we started talking and We kinda realize that you have a master class in you. So normally we hang out, we just shoot the shit about business ideas, but occasionally

Mm. We just drop a knowledge bomb. And the knowledge bomb is what we call a master class, which is Just let somebody Do their thing for thirty minutes. And the cool thing about this is

You said you had given a talk internally to your team, to your company to pump them up. And it sounded so dope that I just said Can you just please do that on the pod? And you you agreed. And so My friend, the floor is gonna be yours. I'm here when you need me. I might chime in here and there, but I'm really gonna let you cook. during this and uh let Craig Clemens do this master class. So

Take it away. So Sean, did you brush your teeth this morning? Did you take an elevator or are you wearing sneaks right now? Any any yes. One of three ain't bad. One of three ain't bad. One of three ain't bad. Okay. Well, marketers created all of that. Marketers created So much of our daily behavior

That uh People that I tell these stories to don't even want to accept it. And You know, it's it's okay though. I mean that's that's uh

That's the case for everyone. You're not alone. So Do you know who this guy is on the left here? I do not, but he looks very sophisticated. Who is that? This is uh this is a smart motherfucker. This is Sigmund Freud. Oh. And

This gentleman on the right. Do you know who that is, I'm guessing you don't. I do not. Okay, well this guy has changed your life. This guy is

A man named Edward Bernays, he's often called the father of public relations. And he is actually Sigmund Freud's Nephew. So I don't know uh what

Exactly kinda kinda shirt your word over there, Sean, or if you uh put some some style into it. But this guy is has his His hands and so much stuff that he he literally Created consumerism. So Quick example.

Before Bernays People would buy clothes uh as you know, unless you were in like the the upper classes, people would buy clothes to go to work. Um He's the one who got together with a bunch of other people and they're like, Wait a second, these work clothes, people aren't buying enough of them. If people use clothing for expression

then people would buy more clothes and he got the expression uh vibe to go all the way down the line from anyone who could afford clothing to be buying more clothing and then buying more things when they came into season and this and that. No, it's people who don't have the means that buy buy more buy more clothing they can they can afford, right? Well let me just get into some of the the examples here. And that he'll see that this guy was operating on a level that uh is uh is unfathomable. So

In this presentation, I'm gonna share with you What I've discovered studying and creating marketing campaigns. That have caused world change. And I call them the seven

human hijacks because When you use these seven things You are hijacking the limbic system of the brain. And Uh a human cannot

help themselves but to pay attention And either respond or at least log what you're going to do or say into their brain and maybe they respond the next time. But

The seven hijacks, I'm gonna share each of them after I share these marketing campaigns, and you're gonna see how they repeat. And not every campaign uses all seven, but um you'll see that Some of them are extremely powerful and then when you put them all together that's when You can really Do this type of thing yourself.

So If you're watching this right now and you're excited about You possibly change the world forever. This is the recipe. Let's go. Okay, one of the most interesting marketing campaigns of all time.

was created by a guy named Claude Hopkins. So Claude Hopkins Was approached By A toothpaste company called Pepsodent and they said, Claude, we want to s sell more of our toothpaste.

And He looked at the lay of the land and he realized there was a problem. He said to Pepsi Ed, he said, look. Only five percent of people Brush their teeth.

on a daily basis. So why are you even in this business that not a lot of uh people are taking part in. Can you believe that, Sean? Nineteen twenties. Ninety five percent of the women that you kiss are gonna have terrible breath. No one brush their teeth. Back then. And so Claude tells the the founders of PepsiDen, he's like, Look

You guys really wanna sell some toothpaste. You're gonna have to get people Brushing their teeth. And so he created this masterful ad campaign. That built peps it.

into the the dominating toothpaste brand for for decades. And This is the ad. The ad says the film That discolors the whitest teeth. And then he has you do a demonstration.

So do this with me, Sean. Take the tip of your tongue. Put it over the the The fronts. Mm-hmm. Okay, do you feel that film?

Yeah, I kinda do. Okay, do. So the ad goes on to say that brushing with pepsin is gonna remove that film. And behind that film

Is a movie star smile. And it's so genius, right? Because everybody wants that movie star smile. Everybody has that film, whether you just brushed your teeth five minutes ago or not. Then if you feel that and you're like, Oh shoot, I got this film, you know? And then it talks about how Pepsi did it.

is the way to get rid of that film. So the result of this ad Within a decade. Eighty five percent of American then brush their teeth on a daily basis. And Pepsi D.

is still around today. Um they ran this ad campaign for I don't know, fifty years, something like that. Um and I'll tell you something interesting. is about ten years in there was other companies trying to compete with PepsiDan. And they were using a similar ad campaign, you know, it's very common to steal an ad campaign.

But they couldn't get the repeat orders. And They did a a focus group. And they found out. that people love pepsod because it had this like minty flavor that made their mouth

Kingle after they brushed with it? And then the toothpaste companies, the other ones started knocking that off. And when people felt the tingle, then they would stick with other companies. Otherwise they'd try the other one. They would feel wouldn't feel the tingle and they'd be like, Oh, it's not actually working. Yeah.

So they'd go right back to PepsiD so They they owned it for like ten years and then it got actually competitive because then people were not only stealing their ads, they were stealing uh, you know, their their secret of the tingle. So one of the The human hijacks that Claude Hopkins used. Why he sold the dream.

of the movie star smile. You're gonna see this theme reoccurring throughout this presentation. Uh second he created a powerful demonstration that anyone could do.

And that's just rubbing your tongue over the the front of your teeth. And then the next thing he did is he made it about them, he made it about the potential user. And this is a a big thing that uh a lot of companies mess up is they just talk about their own product and you know

why they're so excited about it, but they don't talk about why it's gonna be exciting. Or The user and Claude did a really great job of that. sharing how it's gonna give them that movie star smile.

So that's that's like the m there's this diagram that I love that's like Um the I call it the Mario marketing. I I don't know who e originally created this. I saw it from that company Buffer, but I don't know if they created it originally. But it's little Mario. Um, you know, Mario when he's small, that it's the fire flower. And then

When Mario gets the fire flower, he's able to shoot fireballs out of you know out of his hands. He's run around, he's huge, he got he can shoot fireballs and basically it says Uh don't sell this the fire flower, which is your product. Sell this which is the customer going from little Mario to being big Mario who could shoot fireballs at right and it's like That's what you want to sell is

how the user will be more badass rather than all the features and uh facets about your product. Yes, exactly. So think about benefits. What's the benefit? What's in it for them? You know, these people are busy. Right now, Sean, I think people see something like four thousand ads a day. And

They did a study and it showed that the human brain has the Um Uh same intelligence span as a goldfish. It's like less than you know. Uh uh the ability of a goldfish to pay attention. So how do you grab their attention?

Well, you have to talk about something that's exciting to them, something that keeps them up at night or something that they you know have a Deep dream hope and desire for. So I wanna get back to that demonstration though. Where did Claude get the idea for this demonstration? So eighteen fifty four There's a guy named Otis.

And Otis gets into the elevator business. And He didn't invent the elevator, but he came up with a a a braking system for the elevator. So back then people We're afraid to use elevators because every once in a while just like today you hear about a car accident, you'd hear about a elevator accident where you know people get on and the elevator falls down. Right.

So Otis creates his great breaking system. First year out he only sells three elevators. The next year out he sells seven elevators. Like no one cares, you know. He he doesn't doesn't uh have the ability to get the word out. And then he meets this guy named P. T. Barnum.

And so everyone probably now knows uh P T Barnum, one of the the greatest uh marketing and showmen of all time. And Pete Barnum says this is where we're gonna do. We're gonna Go to the Crystal Palace in New York City, which was this big Exhibition hall.

And we're gonna do a grand demonstration. So Otis gets up. There on this elevator shaft. And

He has his assistant get up there with an axe. And so he's standing on it, they the elevator goes up the shaft just like it normally would in a building. And he's like, Cut the cord, Jimmy! It was Whew, but it cuts the first chord, the elevator drops like just a little bit.

And then there's one more cord hanging and everyone's looking out and they're like oh shit what's it gonna do This is the card. Uh Oh But

And I'll be Only two feet and stops. He's like all safe here, gentlemen, all safe. And those are like the famous words that were published in the newspaper all safe here. And it showed that Otis had invented

A braking system for elevators of work. So over the next decade he sold two thousand elevators He got all the greatest commissions. He did the the Elfle Tower, the Empire State Building. And Even today

If you look at your elevator I found about half of the elevators I get into. Have this little Otis logo. Yeah, that's the is still crushing out. All my zippers. All my zippers say Y K K and all my elevators say Otis. That's all those are the only two things I know.

Yeah. So uh so that's the power So what did what did Otis do? The the powerful demonstration stands in people's minds. And he also made it an event. You know?

So What's greater about an event? Well One people are gonna show up and two it's gonna get covered by the newspaper. But if you think about it on a on a more primal level, have you ever heard the phrase Sean, nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd.

No, but I like that. It just shows that Humans cannot resist an event. Yeah? If you're walking down the street and then you see like a big crowd of people and something's going on over there, there's a band or whatever, it's like you gotta see w what's going on. It's just just natural.

And so if you make your advertising an event Then People cannot. Not. Pay attention to it.

And then he also showed unquestionable proof. w using that demonstration and putting his own body on the elevator. He didn't use a dummy, he didn't use a monkey. To himself.

Was on that elevator while his assistant was was cutting the cords. And so That's the type of unquestionable proof. That lead people to Go ahead and take take a uh

action to buy without questioning it. And of course he made it about them. He didn't get up there. And show his fancy braking system or how it worked, you know. He addressed the fear in everyone's mind that

was about the safety of of getting on an elevator. And he did it with the powerful demonstration. So Oh let me show you something. Hold on. All right. Do you know this brand? Mini katana. Have you seen them, Craig?

I have not. Alright, so I am about to uh YouTube, don't be alarmed. This is inside here is a giant sword.

And um This company, so this brand, they sell These It's called mini katana, but it's actually humongous. So They sell these swords.

Now the problem with selling swords is that Google and Facebook don't let you do it. You can't advertise weapons. So how does an e commerce brand work when you can't advertise weapons? Well What they did was they started they hired like twenty YouTubers and TikTokers. And they would have them do what you just described the powerful demonstration. So they would take this

They would take this sword. And they would instead of saying, you know, why you need a sword, because most people don't need a sword, let's be honest, uh, instead of Talking about how long it is or how sharp it is or whatever, they would show that the sword could cut through a bullet that was fired at them. So this video starts with a guy holding the sword. And there's a bullet aimed at him and he's gonna try to split it in half. And uh then when he does it, it's a powerful presentation about like how

Badass these swords are. And they they all of their marketing, they'll take a stake, though you just see a stake plop down on a cutting board, and then a giant sword cutting through it. Which is completely unnecessary, but it is a powerful demonstration. Um and you know, I I remember seeing those TED talks where Guys take a glass. And they s you know, it's like, here's dirty water. Would you drink this water?

It's like no way. And then they put it into their filter. And then like with their bottle filter, and then they start to drink it. I don't know who this was, Bill Gates or something. It's like chugs in the water first, right? For for really. They make it disgusting and then the whole crowd is gasping. Yeah, like They could tell you how the filter works. Or they could show you that they're willing to drink the water through this filter that was like disgusting water.

And I still remember that was like twenty years ago. I still remember that video because It's just hi you're right, it hijacked my brain. Yeah, the the knife company, they're genius. Any knife infomercial will do this, where they'll be taking a knife and cutting a penny. You know, or like effortlessly slicing tomatoes through the air. And you know who was

Uh The king of this was Doctor Oz. Doctor Oz, what did he do? Every Episode of the Doctor Oz Show is a marketing master class.

Ha. I'm sleeping on Doctor Oz. Yeah, he advertised these nutrients and I don't know if he had some type of deal with manufacturers or something like that, but he would advertise like um Like resveratrol or like um Garcinia Cambosia berries, which were like weight loss. But he wouldn't Ever advertise a specific brand. He would just talk about García Cambosia.

If you look One of the reasons it's hard to advertise supplements online It's because Dr. Oz would go and talk about Garcinia Cambosia or whatever berry. And then all these scammers would create websites Uh selling Darcina Cambodia on auto ship that you could never get out of.

You know, you'd sign up on the website and somebody would disappear. But that thing would be d docking your credit card for years later. You know? Whatever. So Doctor Raw's Is he'd go on there And he'd say

Vies Is your body And these balloons on it, and then you'd have a like a mannequin with with balloons on it. These balloons are the fat cells. Oh, Garcinia Cambosia is a miracle berry.

That works. For any body type. And then he take out a pin. He'd be like, This is the berry. Huh.

Pop, pop, pop, pop. That's what Garcinia Cambosia does to the fat cells in your body. I don't think they're crazy, man. Like A billion dollars of garcinia Cambodian we get stole over the next few months. Mostly to these scammy auto billing marketers. It was it was wire. And he did this with like five

different berries over time and eventually he got pulled into Congress to testify and all this shit and like no way. He rolled with it because he was getting all these allegations that he was starting him on one episode, he goes uh he gets a character behind him. And he goes down to one of the companies that's selling the Garcinia Cambosia and he knocks on the door and he's got the camera behind him, the founder comes out, he's like, Hey, I didn't give you permission to use my name and likeness to sell your Garcinia Cambosia. And like you're auto building customers and this and that, you know, and he was like pretending that He was the the good guy. But I don't know, man. I don't know if like our CA was lining his pockets or something before it happened, but like

It it it's crazy, man. It was like billions of dollars of fraud happened'cause of'cause of his show. You know you know what I love about this is um a lot of the audience who listens to this and a lot of the people I know who are uh entrepreneurial or technical type engineering type people. often so um rational and logical and like sort of analytical about the way that they wanna About the way they see the world.

And so the idea that hey, we're gonna Do this event with the uh the axe swinging at the the the rope or, you know, we're gonna blow up these balloons and the they'll be like, Well that's not what the fat cell looks like. That's way too big. That's not to scale. Um, you know, like You have to almost You have to use the other part of your brain if you're gonna do this. You have to make something powerful, visual, dramatic, and those are not skills that typically

You're kind of Um operational or technical person is used to flexing. And so what I love about this is These examples that give you inspiration to be able to like go use that other part of your brain. If you look at these we got the hijacks up here, right from Oh, this elevator?

All of these apply to what I just said about Dod Draws. The event is that it's a T V show. You know, so that makes an event already. The demonstration. The unquestionable proof is him, he's a doctor, saying that this is gonna work for you. And then making it about them. He says, This is the miracle weight loss cure for all body types. Like those are almost his exact words.

And by the way. Y you know who else does this amazingly well? Elon Elon, who's the you know, the scientist, the hardcore engineer, you know what he's brilliant at? Just yesterday the news was

Um There's the they're getting they're hyping Cybertruck right now. And y you do n did you see that news that came out, which was That they unloaded a full magazine of some assault rifle at the door and so there's a bunch of holes in the door like So you could see where the bullet hit the door but didn't go through. And so he's driving that car around

And leaked that kind of the tweet rumor that hey, they tested it this way. And he did this at their on stage event too, but it it fucked up. Like He tried to take a sledgehammer and show how indestructible this was. He swung the sledgehammer and then they like broke through the window and he's like, Oh shit, that wasn't supposed to happen. Like this is supposed to be bulletproof, but Um he was trying to do that. He was trying to, you know, P. T. Barnum. uh you know, they're Cybertruck, which is which is really really cool to see. Yeah.

You know what was another incredible success that I think was complete bullshit. Was the the power balance bracelet. Do you remember those? It was like when you did the The tongue on the teeth, that's the first thing I thought of.

Where people used to say, Hey, hold out your arms. Yeah. And now watch how e I go on one foot, watch how easily I could tip you over. And then you put this bracelet on and which way you press on the arm. Yeah, totally, totally hyper recently and he was doing that with me and I was like uh god. Am I getting s beaten by this this chiropractor?

But uh yeah, I think power balance actually got popped uh for that as they Right deserves. Um But that was that was a a very effective technique, even though it was uh, you know Unethical in that case.

Yeah. Okay, let's get into some uh so those are those are last two are are for good, right? We want people to brush their teeth. We want elevators to be safe. Uh now let's talk about some evil campaigns.

Okay, nineteen thirties. All the the men had come back from the war. You know, and they gave him free cigarettes. So like if so many Men were hooked on smoking. that there was no room for growth.

So the cigarette company has come to Eddie Bernays, uh, Lucky Strike in particular is who who came to him and they're like, Hey, we need more customers. Like, Well you already got all the men. But at that time, Sean, it was illegal for a woman to smoke in public. It was Literally fucking illegal. Um

There was like cafes in New York City where the you know there's there's stories of of like high society women getting asked to leave. And then women that could afford it would have like special smoking rooms in their homes that would You know, that that really liked it'cause they weren't allowed to do it. In public.

Oh, and I should add something too. Women didn't really want to smoke, uh mo for the most part. You know, they they weren't really pushing back against it. Yes, it was illegal, but it was also considered unlady like. It was a it was a man thing, you know. So He says to Lucky Strike, he's like, Look, you know, you gotta you gotta get the women smoking. So what was going on at the time was the women's rights movement.

You know, so women were out in the streets marching about You know, wanting the right to vote and Um Brene's capitalized on that. So

The big social event of the day, kind of like the Oscars of today. Was the easter parade. Which would go down Fifth Avenue and all the reporters would be standing on the sidelines. And so Bernays organized a float. And he called up all the the socialites and debutants like the Paris Hiltons and Kim Kardashians of the day.

And he got them all to go on this float. And Their cruising down Fifth Avenue, the parade's happening, you know, when they get to the corner where all the reporters were. The women

Do you uh go into their stocking, they pull out Cigarettes. Put'em in their mouths and light'em up. So imagine, you know, Paris And uh Chloe and all the Kardashians and even all the Jenners on one float, they all just start blazing up, right?

And the recording like what is going on here? This is This is y obscene, you know, w women aren't supposed to do this. Bernays and his crew went around to the reporters and they said, Oh no, no, no. They're not smoking.

They are declaring Their rights. With these torches of freedom. Oh wow. And so the the the newspapers ran with that. They're like, you know, w uh women

Uh. Present torches of freedom to show that they are equal with men and They can smoke too. And so it turned it into a movement. And

If you think about smoking to this day, if you think about a women's Uh a woman who smokes. Um, I think I'm a bit older than you, Sean, but I think of like Cape Moss and like the you know, sexy model smoking. Now it might be considered gross for a woman to smoke.

Again you know, or anyone to smoke. I don't really know what the kids these days are thinking. But Yeah, we you know, you think of like some like badass badass woman and you remember that with old movies with Audrey Hepburn You know that famous scene I think it's uh Breakfast at Times where she's puffing that long cigarette, you know? So

Yeah, completely change the world there. That's amazing. I had never heard that story. Um uh but I love that. That that's like a combination of You got the event. you have uh kind of newsjacking, which was jumping on uh to an existing trend, but then also Um

The the c just the copywriting of the w the words there of you know, these aren't cigarettes, these are torches of freedom. That's really, really powerful. Yeah, the plant. If you like that plant strategy Ryan Holiday wrote a great book called Trust Me, I'm Lying and he talks about all these Phrases that he Planted it. In the heads of these reporters when he was

promoting things like uh Tucker Max books and and you know, wild stuff back then. So There's a new lesson in here. Uh new hijack, so to speak, and that is Help them rebel.

Or feel superior. So people have this tendency in them, they want to go against the grain. They wanna show that they are not one of the sheep. You know, they wanna show that they are not gonna bow down to the the mainstream pressure or society standards. Things like that.

You know? And This is a really powerful concept that you're gonna see appear Throughout uh some of the the other demonstrations here. But that's that's what

Brunei's allowed them to do is is to rebel And and maybe even feel superior. to the rest because they're they're leading the charge. Right. Okay, keep going. By the way, I'm loving this, so keep going.

All right, so Brene's had a problem. Lucky strike. Uh did this big campaign to get women to start smoking and they did start smoking, but they didn't smoke Lucky Strikes.

Because if you remember boop boop boop. See the lucky strike package there, Sean? What color is the main color? It's green. Well, green was a very undesirable color back in those days. It was considered an ugly color. And so Bernays got all these women smoking, but Lucky's like, What the fuck, Bernays?

They're not smoking lucky strikes. So he has to come up with something new. So he goes back to his his debutants and and socialites, and as they say here, women of prominence. And they create the first ever Gala Green Ball at the Waldorf Hotel in New York City. And the magazines started following around the Kardashians of the day to see what type of outfits they were gonna wear that were styled in green and

Women started bringing green decor into their homes, and it just became a a big thing, and the gala happens and the women are photographed and they're exotic. greet outfits and it it became the most fashionable color. Within one year. Going from the the ugliest color to the most fashionable color. And Lucky Strike without even trying became the number one selling uh brand of cigarettes for women because they subconsciously wanted that green box.

Holy shit. Wow. Is one of the hijacks, by the way, using people of prominence or you didn't you don't include that in the in the hijacks? Unquestionable proof. That falls under unquestionable proof. It's a great question.

But yes. When We humans see someone uh as they just said in the New York Times article. Someone of prominence. Doing something, we automatically assume it's been vetted. We automatically assume it's okay. And we automatically have something in us that makes us want to do that.

Maybe it's from when we were all in tribes and you know if the chief is doing something And you do it too? Who knows? But that's that's unquestionable proof, you know? So Uh You know, he made an event where this unquestionable proof happened.

And also There was this force that that they wanted to rebel against. You know, these celebrities are like Oh. I'm cool enough where I can wear green.

And it'll look good. You know? Yeah, I heard this other other thing, Sean. Today. So uh how old are you? Are you public with your age? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm thirty five.

Thirty five. Okay, I'm forty four. So When you think of emojis, what do you think about? When I think of emojis? Yeah, like who do you think uses emojis? I would have said like teenagers, teens and tweens, um but I think but then I see people in India and like my auntie my aunts and and and my aunts are crazy about about emojis.

Yes. I would have thought the same. So My my buddy is a uh dad of two teenagers. He said they will not use emojis because they think emojis are something adults use.

Yeah, you do not want to be associated with the adults. So kids these days they don't use emojis, they'll just use like different text characters. And things like that. So you've probably seen These little like one to two Uh sorry, two to three character terms that they use like TBH or like

you know, it stands for to be honest or FR, which means like for real. You know, they use those type of things. To separate themselves. From the adults. You know, people want to push back. It's a it's a natural human instinct.

Yeah, when um when Snapchat came out and was getting really popular, one of the things that Uh, I remember in Silicon Valley all the like product genius blogger guys were like Yeah, it's you know, what the what Snapchat should do is make it easier to use,'cause look at this, like Uh at the time, like you know, to use those face filters. You had to like

There was no button on the screen, you had to just hold down on your face for three seconds, like a magic trick, uh like a like a secret door that you didn't know that nobody else. Um, or even just in signing up. There was like all these like funky ways to do it. And um And then the people I think one of the guys at Snapchat came out was like Look, it's intentional. We want you know, you know you baby proof medicine.

We're s we're boomer proofing this app. Like The way that this is gonna become really popular amongst young people is that we don't make it easy for older people to get in and figure out oh how this whole thing works. And we wanna make it easy for one friend to tell another the secret on how to do something so that they feel like they're in on it with with them. And that it's like a word of mouth virality of how do you do that. Exactly. It's like once your parents and your grandma got on Facebook, it wasn't cool anymore.

You know? Right. And then everyone went to Instagram. And now, you know, Uncle Bob's on Instagram and it's just like Lizard type, you know, so everyone goes over to TikTok, right? And we'll see if something comes next. You know, I think the the moms are well, moms are definitely a big group on TikTok now. Um

I don't know if like I don't know. Are you on TikTok? I'm I'm not. I I have like a I I love TikTok even though, you know, it's my lucky strike. I know I know I probably shouldn't be be smoking that TikTok every night, but I do. Well, you know, TikTok is crack. It is digital crack. Very well designed digital crack. So don't blame yourself. People say that, but like when I think when they say that they mean avoid it, and I'm like, Wait. Crack like isn't crack supposed to be like the greatest experience when people do it and I and then I open up TikTok and I start swiping.

Yeah, well, you know, actually speaking of drugs, funny enough, there's another rebellion I'm seeing in m in my community against alcohol right now. Mm. And and I remember In my twenties that it was all about the alcohol. You know, if you sh didn't show up Uh if you should have a party empty handed. You know, it's like

Not cool. I'm going to parties now with a bottle and maybe like oh This is a non alcoholic party. Can you go put that back in your car? It's like this was pushed back, you know?

Um I hope you grab some ketemy. Yeah, exactly. Okay. I'll last campaign I'm gonna share with you about Uh, Eddie Bernay's

is the great American breakfast. So Early in the you know Nineteenth century, uh twentieth century. Breakfast was like some coffee and and maybe a roll or some oatmeal or something like that, right? No one actually had like a

actual hardy. Breakfast. And Beachnut bacon comes to Burday and they're like, Hey, we want to sell more bacon. He's like, Well

People are eating bacon usually for dinner. Sometimes for lunch. There's another meal here we can take advantage of. So Bernays goes

to uh his his on staff doctor Or actually no, it was it was uh it was Beach That's on Staff Doctor. And he says Hey, Doc, would you agree that a hearty breakfast containing bacon would be the best way To start your day.

And the doctor's like, Oh, of course I agree with you. Do you think some of your doctor friends would agree? So he has him write Five thousand letters. The doctors across the nation. I think bacon is the healthiest breakfast and people should be eating a hardier breakfast. Do you agree?

Forty five hundred doctors wrote back and they're like, Yes, I agree, that makes perfect sense. They didn't turn this into an ad campaign. But what they did do is they shared that result. With all of the newspapers. And so newspapers started publishing headlines.

Doctors agree. A hearty breakfast Containing bacon. Stor energy.

To last throughout your work day. And But that's how people started eating eating bacon for breakfast and You know, all the all the bacon companies started Going crazy.

'Cause it became a breakfast thing. Wow. So what are we doing here? There's we're selling the dream. You know, of a of a breakfast that's gonna give you more energy to get throughout your day. You know, so that's making it about them as well.

The unquestionable proof Forty five hundred doctors can't be wrong. Right? And then there's even a little bit of a um Feeling superior here because

I if your buddy is over there eating a roll, you're like, Hey Sean Got something to tell ya about that role, man. It's not as hardy. Is this your bacon? Right? So it taps into all these these same psychological hijacks. You keep seeing'em over and over.

Okay, so let's take a step back now uh a couple decades to the nineteen tens. Orange juice. Now I grew up In the eighties, and my mom had us drink orange juice every day for vitamin C. Was this a thing, Sean, when when you were a kid? Totally. Totally. Orange juice is g uh when I was a kid, orange juice is good for you. It's vitamin C, which is, you know, good for your immunity. This is what I was told. And uh

Drank a lot of sugar because of that. Yeah, so orange juice actually has the same amount of of sugar as a Coca Cola. So orange juice is you know, it's it's glucose or something. I don't know, maybe it's a different kind of sugar, but It ain't good for you. So this was all the the result of a a marketing man named Albert Lasker who was probably the uh the man responsible for more consumer change um in the early nineteen hundreds than anyone.

Claude Hopkins PepsiNet Claude actually worked with Albert, he was his top copy writer. And Prior to Claude coming on board, Albert was contacted by the California Growers Association. They're like Al Albert We got so many oranges here in California, we're gonna cut down trees.

Because They overproduced and then we need to get rid of'em and it brings the bugs and all that stuff. You know, how can we sell more oranges? And he look at the lay of land and all these orange growers were competing against each other trying to say, like, we have the best orange, you we have the best orange, or whatever. He goes, okay.

First of all, you guys are all teaming up. And so he teamed them all up together and he put'em under one brand name and he called it Sun Kissed. Which I think is a a pretty genius name. Yes. And then As he's he's meeting with him.

He notices that What the the growers would do for their kids as a as a as a special treat is they'd take that orange and they'd they'd squeeze it into a cup. And they'd give their kids little shots of the juice. It's like Ah, wait a second. How many oranges did it take to make that juice? And they're like, Oh, you know, three or four or whatever.

So you thought what about if we could make that Mainstream'cause the juice tasted really good. And so He had a uh engineer invent this device that you could

you know, cheap plastic device that you can put an orange on. And then he created this campaign. Talking about how oranges have all these vitamins in'em and you know will help you get More of your nutrients from food? Tying orange juice to meals.

So you think about oh well I'm I wanna get the nutrients in this food so I'm gonna drink orange juice with it. And then he had this campaign. Where You buy a box of oranges and you send in your your proof of purchase and they send you this juicer thing. So it was like you get something for free. And

Created orange juice. And so what is he doing? He's selling the dream of getting the more nutrients from your food. The uh Um, unquestionable proof. You know, if you if you gotta go and actually read that ad, there was like, you know, doctors recommend and and things like that. Um he made it about them because it's showing them that they can get some benefit here.

And then Here's a new IJack that's appearing for the first time. Um Actually maybe I mean I guess it would apply to toothpaste, but uh change daily behavior. If you can change someone's daily behaviour.

You can create something big. So Two modern is example of this. Bulletproof coffee. Are you familiar with bulletproof coffee?

Uh I'm just familiar with it from the surface level, but yeah, tell me tell me about it. You know what do you know what it is? Uh it's like the butter coffee or the oil coffee. M C T oil coffee, is that what it is? So you walk into any Starbucks in the country, they don't serve bulletproof coffee, but they know what it is. Everyone knows what it is. And the genius that that Dave Aspury had Well

He changed the behavior of these Uh of people. That were already doing something. Like intercepted their coffee. It's an additive to your coffee rather than a new new behavior. So so now he's he's changing the existing behavior. Yes, changing the existing behavior.

And so There's a there's a book called The Miracle Morning and it Talk uh talks about The power of journaling every day. So you buy this book called The Miracle Morning.

And then you do the specific journal every day. Right? Long after you read the book. And I met the author of that, Hal Elrod. He told me something that that stuck with me, I thought was fascinating. He said, When was the last time you recommended a book? And I was like, Well, I was just read this book on Genghis Khan, you know, I've been telling all my friends about it or whatever.

He's like When were you telling them about it? I was like, Well, I was telling about it when I was reading it He said, Okay, well most people recommend books during the the time they're reading that book. And then they go and they read the next book. Right now I'm reading Elon's biography. It's great. That's why I just told you about that, Sean. I'm literally in the middle of it. You know, I can tell you what book I read last month or last year. People talk about the things they're doing now.

So if you change their daily behavior Like Hal did with getting people to journal in the morning, they they talk about it all the time. So that book has sold hundreds of thousands of copies or maybe even millions by now, um, because this is ten years ago when you told me this.

Because people are doing this behavior every day and so they're talking about it every day. Like, Oh, what'd you do today? Oh, I just did my morning uh miracle journaling. Like, oh, what's that? You know, so long after the book is through. So if you change ba daily behavior, It has a a a viral effect that is uh untouchable by anything else. Love that.

Okay, so let's get to some more modern examples. The nineteen seventies. Sean, do you know who this guy is? Um no, some some runner. I don't know who it is. Okay, so this this guy's before our time, but uh gentleman's name Steve Prefontaine. And pre Fontaine.

Was Uh best comparison I can think of is like the the Michael Phelps of his time. You know, no one was really thinking about swimming until Michael Phelps came around and was such a dominant athlete. From the USA, you know, so everyone wanted to get behind him. So Prefontaine was that guy for running and Prefontaine had all these great quotes like Muhammad Ali Ali, he's like, you know

Yeah, someone can beat me, but if you're gonna beat me, you gonna have to bleed, you know? I think it's why you know if you don't run until you're you till you feel like you're gonna you're gonna die, you're not honoring your gift, you know. So you had all these great quotes. He was a great media figure. He won every college record from like five hundred meter up to two thousand meter. Prefontaine was the man and Nike was just coming up. They'd actually just started like making their going from being a distributor making their own shoe. And

Fortunately, Prefontaine was in Oregon, so were they. And they got him to to wear Their shoes And It was a a big thing because

The Unquestionable proof now. You've got Prefontaine, the top runner in the country wearing Nike shoes. Um tragically Prefontaine passed in a car accident. before he could go and and honor his Olympic glory.

But Before we do that. He really put Nike on the map because, you know, running was his thing. Running what's the one accessory that you need. Shoes.

And so This was such a big deal. Um, that it actually changed the entire industry. So so prior to Prefontaine, Prefontaine was around in like the seventies, right? Um, if you read Phil Knight's book, he talks about If you went jogging in like the forties, fifties, or sixties.

People were like throwing bottles at you from your car'cause the they're just like mad. They're like, What is this idiot doing? You know, he's in the road or whatever. And it was just like really hated upon. And Free Fontaine comes along and running actually becomes cool again. And so Nike got to ride that that tailwind.

And then what also happened is is back then the People were wearing shoes that were like uh you know, kinda like the loafer or work shoe or or whatever, like pretty basic shoes. And people wanted to Rebel against that, rebel against the shoes that their dad was wearing. And so they started wearing these athletic shoes, these running shoes.

as a part of their daily attire to make a statement that like I'm rebelling and I'm superior. And it changed the entire shoe market. Now athletic shoes Are probably the Best selling shoe. And

Only a tiny percent of them are worn for athletic activities. And then it all started in the in the seventies with with prefontaine. And then of course Nike had the amazing campaign with Jordan, which was more unquestionable proof. You know, making them feel superior'cause they got the best basketball shoe and selling the dream that they're gonna be able to to fly like Mike. So

That was a A world changing campaign. that not a lot of people think about when they put on their kicks every morning. Yeah. You know, one of those that's I feel like is happening right now in a small way. Um So you remember like

I don't know, ten years ago or something like that, those Vibram five finger shoes were like getting popular. Do you remember those? Yeah. So like You would see one and you'd be like, What is this person wearing a foot glove? Like what is this thing? And then they would immediately go into the spiel about why this is better for you and like how they do whatever And I think this is like I I've seen this a lot now. There's um there's a popular YouTuber or or Instagram guy called Knees Over Toes Guy, and he's basically like It's like a rebellion. He's like

Have any of you ever been told when you're working out, like don't let your knee go over your toe when you're squatting'cause it's bad form. He's like Bullshit. Like um I had all these knee surgeries, nobody could tell me how to d fix it. I fixed it myself because I started training that way specifically. So it's like a rebellion against the fitness industry. Then he's like a rebellion against Nike, because now Nike's the big bad Like

The incumbent. And so he's like, uh Nike shoes, those are like wearing high heels. Um, you know, you shouldn't have uh these like huge heeled shoes. You should have Low drop. N uh flat shoes, basically. And so he came out with his own shoe, but also there's just like a bunch of these brands now that are kind of like uh

flat more like you're walking barefoot, uh barefoot shoes, like you're walking on on the ground. And it's funny that like now Nike is the big kind of status quo that they want to rebel against and point out wh why why you shouldn't be wearing Nike shoes because of this other reason. Doc five thousand doctors agree that the Nike, uh, you know, cushion is actually bad for you. So yeah, so uh you know, big one was uh MacBook.

launched this ad that was called nineteen eighty four and it aired during the Superbowl. And it it uh was a big rebellion against IBM. Everyone was using these IBMs and MacBook came out and they're like, We're the new thing, you know? And I think I got the idea from this Volkswagen ad right here. So Volkswagen when they came out, I think it was uh in the sixties.

All those cars were huge, you know, if you think of like the sixties uh seven Chevy's, you know, these Huge cars that you couldn't Get into a parking spot and had all this extra Stuff on them that you didn't need. They came out with this think small campaign.

Yeah. Absolutely crushed it. And it was like the The hipster statement at the time was to To drive a a VW buck.

You know, and made it one of the best selling cars. Um, there's another Ad that just came out from someone who's a master of this and that's Trump. So This is another video that that

I would suggest you play if you can,'cause it's really fascinating and they show Hillary talking about how the Trump People ha have to be the programmer. Have you seen this ad? It just came out like two days ago. No, I haven't seen it. So what what is it? With Trump taking a commanding lead. and biodynamics hurting Americans.

Genius Hillary Clinton. has come up with a way for Biden to win. There needs to be a formal deprogramming of the cult members. Formal deprogramming of the cult members. Deprogramming of the programming. A brilliant plan. And here's what that would look like. Pay attention, pay attention, go by feet, defeat.

Yeah. Uh Biden has done an amazing job. Amazing job. But there's one small problem. The basket of deplorables. Deplorables. Deplorables. Deplorables. Working Americans are idiots. And they know.

Who's on their side. To American workers watching their take home pay shrink. And watching inflation destroy their family and their lives. To all of you. I have your back.

Donald J. Trump, and I approve this message. Wow. That's so well done. I mean love and right'em the the man is a master marketer.

And he just rallies his base to to rebel against uh you know the the Um Incumbents, what's the word the Yeah, the elite's the kind of the the status quo. Yeah.

Do you think uh like in this case, do you think Trump has input on any of that or this is just they hire some ad agency that does these things? Like is he the master marketer or I mean he he makes the sound bites, you know. That sound bite I think was live from a speech. That they plugged that at least it looks like it was. And

You know, a lot of times these speech writers they think about that. So there's a famous uh Um Speech Bobama did Yes we can. Do you remember that speech? Yep, yep.

Obama didn't like it. He didn't want to give that speech. He thought it was too basic. He's like, I don't wanna repeat the same thing over and over. You know, the the Audience deserves something more intelligent.

And they had to convince him to to do this yes we can speech and present it as a rally cry and and finally Okay fine you know, goes out and gives a speech And that's sound bite, man. I think it was uh uh Will I Am turn that into that music video that went crazy. You know? Right. It it's just uh a a really powerful sound bite and and I find that

The best politicians And of speaking and sound bites. Yeah, Trump's so effective at what he's doing. The blogger Scott Adams, if anybody wants to get a go deeper on this, the blogger Scott Adams, who created Dilbert, he when Trump was running in twenty sixteen and nobody thought he would win, Scott Adams was one of the first people I saw that came out and was like

Oh not only Can he win? He will win in a landslide. Which is what exact is which is what happened. And he explained, he goes, Trump has verbal kill shots.

Um you know, he has these phrases that he'll say about opponents where he'll be like um Low energy Jeb Bush. And then you can never look at Jeb again and see anything but low energy. And Jeb's so offended by it that he feeds the energy into that. Uh like he know he starts to be flustered by it and then he starts to try to up his energy and then Trump will pat him on the head, be like, Well, at least you're trying now, Jeb. Yeah, that's good. You're trying to pick up your energy. I like that. And he would just destroy candidates with like

Yeah, crooked Hillary. Um you know, and he would just just brand people in a one shot kill with with the with these phrases. And even the one you that video you just showed, the kind of I have your back. Like you know he He's very, very good at

Just Repeating simple messages and and branding himself one way and and positioning himself against the others the other way. Alright, so The eighties.

Here's a a force for good. So Did you know, uh, Sean, the phrase Uh have one for the road. Do you know where that came from?

No, but now that I think about it, it's kind of a fucked up phrase, huh? So I would think that The the worst Use of that phrase would be

go and have one and then go drive it. It actually meant take a beer in your car. And drink it while driving away. From uh wherever you're going, right? So drunk driving was out of control. And

A can't uh uh Campaign was created. Friends don't let friends drive drunk. And it had Three things to do. Drive your friend home, have your friend sleep over, or call a cab.

You know? And this cut drunk driving in half. It it it was something like a forty to fifty percent. uh drunk driving decrease when this started going around. That's like um Craig, if I say the phrase

This is your brain on drugs. What do you think of? Yeah, you think of that fried egg, a powerful demonstration, right? An egg hitting a frying pan sizzling Like that was how long ago? That was like I hadn't been I was a kid. Like I was that was twenty plus years ago, and it still has hijacked my brain where If I if I

See an egg, I think about drugs. Or if I hear this is your brain on drugs, I hear the egg, right? Like Uh that's that is so powerful how that worked. These powerful demonstrations are unforgettable. You'll never look at a sword and not think about the sword slicing through the bullet. Yeah. There's something about it that that really sticks in in the human mind. Maybe it's a way we are taught How to learn, you know?

Uh I have a I have a daughter now and she's learning physics. Not The way I think of physics, and it's not something I thought, but You know, you have kids too, y you see how they learn the way blocks fit together and gravity and all of this, you know, it teaches you a lot about how the human brain

Learns. And if you think about what these demonstrations are, they're they're Th really physics demonstrations. So it's like that's how we've been learning since age zero. Yeah.

And and and right, we need that foundational physics to survive. You really notice it in babies. Like they need to know. that i if they're crawling and there's something here That it's gonna hurt if they hit it. Like it's so basic, but the kids don't know that. They actually have to learn that. You know?

And You think about I I always was like why don't we remember anything before we're five years old? And I think it's because the brain is optimizing to learn physics. They g the physics are just so important that you just like we don't need memory right now. Physics are like the fundamentals, man. If you don't know physics, you're gonna fucking die.

Like just you know, walking down the street, right? So it's all physics. I think these are like new physics lessons that that that we find really fascinating. Um, you know what else people are really interested in is these uh They call'em ASMR videos. Oh, the soothing things that are happening.

We did this as an ad for my ecom brand. So I was watching TikToks and there's these TikToks that are these soothing ASMR things. The ones that uh I was watching were like A bottle there there's a bottle filled with sands or marble sand or marble marbles. So I think it's marbles. And they would they would roll the glass bottle down a set of Cement stairs. So you hear like the clink rolling like a glass bottle rolling sound, and you hear the clink as it hits the stair.

And then by the second or third stair, it cracks and then you hear marbles bouncing like in synchronicity like down the stair. And for some reason these view these videos always have like ten million Ten million views on them just because they're like oddly satisfying to watch. And people just love that combination of of the visual plus the sound. And so we took that and we remixed that with our product, basically. We we we've integrated it in with our product so that the video starts with that rolling thing and then we just sort of hijack the video and show our product upon the smash. And way more people watch that than if we just start with our product, even though it's a complete bait and switch.

That's interesting yeah, I mean If you go up to someone on the street and be like, Hey, do you love physics? Do you want to study physics? Like, No but That's actually not the truth. Humans love physics. We all love physics we're obsessed with physics. And it starts at A zero. I'll just take.

So yeah, so this this uh had uh prevent drunk driving did the You know, all these these same things. And it worked. So okay, so here's a a a modern story. So

Two thousand ten when we were were starting Golden Hippo. My brother comes to me and he says, Hey, have you you heard of probiotics? And and I hadn't and I was like, What are those? And he he says, Well, you know, you got all these bacteria in you And I was like Okay, what do you mean? He's like, you know, your microbiome, like what's that? You know, and he goes on to tell me that Yeah, you

the take these probiotics, which are good beneficial bacteria supposed to do something, right? So I take'em And I started having a lot more regular poops. I don't know who what I was eating before. But they start working and I was like, Why? Why is this affecting me? I'm a pretty healthy guy, I'm in pretty good shape.

Um this is this is actually helping me out. And I started looking into it. And I realized that all of these foods I was eating that I thought were healthy'cause they said uh low fat or whatever on them.

Had sugars or artificial sweeteners or things like that pumped into them. From the food companies and they were Uh on the na on the labels under different names, so you don't know what they are. You know?

Like Sucralose or um Right. You know, agave nectar. Things like that, you know? Like uh you you would say zero sugars.

on the label, but the ingredients would have these little s substitutes. Yeah. Yeah, but it's got agave, it's got corn syrup, it's got like, you know, natural fruit juices, you know, all those things are are sugars. And so I started digging into this and There was some shady stuff, man. There was some

Some experiments done where like Like You know, the sugar companies would would pay a farmer to uh Uh you know, li food is very expensive for livestock and and farmers always dream that they could

Livestock sugar. Instead of food. And they they'd be able to Use that as a nutrient so they could stop this big food expense and like they'd do that and they'd try it and the cows would all die. You know?

And then they tried it, Okay, well let's take the food and let's add sugar and see what happens. And then the cows would still die. And then they bury the studies, right? And then the the uh artificial sweetener things were even worse. So there was a company, uh GD Cyril, that invented uh artificial sweater called aspartame, it's now known as NutraSweet. What a lot of people don't know. Is when they He came up with his artificial sweetener. They knew it'd be a a billion dollar product.

Um, because the sweetener market had already been built out. They started testing it on lab animals and the lab animals were growing tumors. And The scientists got popped for the first time ever that um the government filed criminal charges against a food company for falsifying studies. 'Cause the scientists were cutting the tumors out of the animals.

And sewing them back up and saying, Oh, no tumors here. And they got caught doing that. Wow. And so I found out about all this and I was just Like Completely mystified.

And so I wrote this presentation about This And I talked about probiotics and how A way to combat the

artificial sweeteners and and sugars that are being pumped into your foods that it'd be impossible for you to Uh discover them all. Yeah. Is to add good bacteria because those Um

You know, the the bad bacteria growth that that happens because of all this consumption that makes the bad bacteria Get really frothy. Um need to be offset by good bacteria. And so I put this video together.

And It went. Absolutely bananas. So Yeah, it was seen by probably uh you know, a hundred million people. It's hard to track, uh, but um

The last we checked there was over a hundred million and this isn't a period of Of about Four months. Joe Rogan tweeted it out. And someone wrote they're like, Hey Joe, do you realize this is a

Uh actually an advertisement for a probiotic. And they wrote back Oh yeah, you you know, I didn't see that'til the end. I t I tweeted out before I I got to the end of the video, but you should still go watch it or something like that. You know? Um And it it created the biggest uh probiotic brand In the world at the time.

And it was because of this educational component. Showing people. That D your food supply's messed up. And you have something called a microbiome that's getting affected

Buy your food supply. And one way to Aid that is with with probiotics. And so If you look at the Google trends, which we didn't have in the twenties, you know I'm sure if we could do this for Google for the twenties and look at like you know, uh

Cigarettes. Right. You see like the big spike after the the uh Easter Day parade, right? Uh where VW Bug you'd see the big spike Uh after the uh the think small campaign. Well we have this now. So if you look at probiotics, you know, probiotics were gaining some steam here.

And here's where Um our ad comes online as Uh Key Biotics was our brand. So look at the general spike in probiotics. Okay, so what what happened there? Well you you can see basically the day we get kicked off of Google.

And it goes down. And uh you see the trend line goes down too. Um but there is the it it It goes back up again. And

You know, this is w we watched our next probiotic brand perfect biotics. Uh, you know, did did okay. It d it wasn't the the huge banger of success that that key biotics Was? But Fear not.

Met a guy named Doctor Gundry in twenty sixteen we left a brand with him. And look at look at these spike lines. Look at the probiotic spike lines. compared with with the term gundry. And the reason we synchronized Henry some days is when the the campaigns will be running.

really strong, you know, we have the The video's running running a lot. That's where the the searches would go crazy. And that was because Dr. Gunry is out there. With with our

Educational presentations talking about the microbiome and talking about probiotics and prebiotics. And really just educating the world On this stuff. And

You know, we didn't bring probiotics to America or or anything like that. Uh but I like to think we were Probably a company that taught more people than anyone about the microbiome and now You know, the probiotic trends uh you know, keeps keeps going and I think it just keeps going uh up and to the right if you if you Fine.

The current data, you know, and and by now The Uh market has changed. You know, I I talked about uh I did a Twitter thread. Oh, wait back. Three stages of a product market.

So There's clueless. Which is when you did you need to create uh the the the marketing wave,'cause your your market knows nothing about the the product, right? So back then When I started no one knew anything about probiotics. So if I just said like hey Years probiotics, try'em out.

No one would have cared. But I started with something they did care about was was like, Hey, is your digestion messed up? Are you having irregularity at the bathroom?

Well, here's the reason why. And then the next stage of the market is um Is curious where someone's probably heard the term probiotics. And and you can jump rent. And so While my ads in twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen were starting with digestive health.

I had an ad in twenty eighteen, I believe it was. And the headline was Doctor says throw your probiotics in the trash. And enough people knew about probiotics by then, they were like, Oh, that's wait, wait, Eric, these are good for you. You know? Right. And then you click on it and then it goes on to talk about how most probiotics don't have enough strains of potency.

And also, you know, prebiotics are important and and this and that, you know? So that's just knowing the market where it was and and and where you need to jump in. And then the next level the uh market is is saturation. And that's kinda where the probiotics market is now. I'm not Watching new probiotics, uh you know I I

Every time I go to a conference, someone comes up to me, like I'm launching a probiotic. I mean Good luck. You know, it's it's pretty commoditized by now. But there's still some that have have broken through with with strong campaigns. Amazing. And so see these are the seven hijacks. Uh I'll read'em out here. So Number one, make it about them. So that's make it about the customer and the benefits that they're gonna get. Number two, make it an event. That's the

Um, you know, nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd. Um Then number three. Is A powerful demonstration. So that's the PT Barnum. That's the elevator. Uh With the axe, that's the sword cutting through the bullet.

Um that's the drinking dirty water. Um show unquestionable proof. So that's using experts like doctors or uh influencers plus Um You know, like you said, he was willing to be in the elevator while the thing was cut. You know, that's a a demonstration of proof.

Five, change in daily behavior. And I think this was change in existing daily behavior. Um Uh is that right, or is it change any daily behavior? I mean it could it could be either. You know? Okay.

So this is like bulletproof getting you to add something into your coffee, something you're already doing, or like breakfast, uh having a hearty breakfast as the start of your day versus uh, you know, just a coffee and in a in a bread roll. Yeah, so he hijacked Dave hijacked to the Daily Behavior. And

What we did with probiotics is we changed the daily behavior. We Uh encourage them to take something every day. So then six is sell the dream. That's the the movie star smile that's underneath that film. If only you would start brushing your teeth, or this is Uh Craig pooping regularly because he now takes Uh, you know, probiotics, prebiotics.

That's the dream. And then number seven is Help them, um uh be a rebel or feel superior. And so that's, you know, be able to to stick a middle finger to the man, whoever the man is, whether it's Nike or it's uh, you know the women not having equal rights or whatever, um, h give them the tools and the badge to to feel like they're superior and uh

In a rebellion. A part of a rebellion. That's right. Amazing. Well said. You're you're uh I'm a good student.

Yeah. Well, this is I mean, the stuff that's in here is um I guess like this is rare in two ways. Number one, I took marketing classes in college. And I had marketing professors. None of my marketing professors have ever done what you did. They never created a category. They never did a billion dollars in sales. They never sat there and crafted Um you know Even this presentation, when we talked three days ago, it was gonna be like

Marketing throughout the decades. No, and you were like, No, that's not gonna be the title. I gotta think of something good. And you come back with seven seven human hijacks. How marketers have hijacked your brain. And I'm like, oh God, just seeing you go from two days ago with no title or a shitty working title to like, A really strong title is seeing somebody in action or hearing you you what you did with the the Uh probiotics market. So number one The opportunity to have a teacher who's actually

A master of the game is so rare. So obviously I'm sitting up in my seat, I'm paying attention. Number two. Any one of these, like I'm thinking as you were talking, my brain was like having almost a hard time listening because I'm firing ideas for any of my companies on like Oh, a powerful demonstration. How could we show this?

in a way that's exaggerated and would would would sh almost be kind of shocking or add some drama to what we're doing versus just saying the feature or saying it's good. Like now how could we like Do do a powerful demonstration that would give people unquestionable proof. Right. So I couldn't even like Stop my brain from moving while I'm doing this. Now that's the I don't know, that's the entrepreneur in me, but I think there's a lot of people who are listening that are like that. That like If you pay attention to this, even one of these hijacks could Like literally like change the trajectory of your company. So I anyways, I appreciate you putting this together.

This is kind of a uh this is amazing to me. Um, I don't know how other people gonna feel feel about this, but like as a as the only student in the room right now, I was uh Yeah, I I'm pumped about this. This is this is great. Well, I I appreciate the kind words and you know, if they s as they say, if you can change the life of just one person. Right. Then your job. Well, I'll take it. All right, this has been a master class uh for sure. So thanks for thanks everyone for watching. That's the pod.

I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I put my all in it like my day's off On the road less travel never looking back

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