Episode 10: The Disney Brand Strategy All Small Businesses Can (and Should) Implement

Jill Goodwin-Helgerson  0:00
Marketing doesn't operate separate of sales. It doesn't operate separate of operations. Every every single piece is intertwined. So I personally, even if you've been around for 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, if you've never done that discovery of who your audience is and what they need, and then find the messages that they resonate with, and then find the places where they are. Use the right media. Don't just be somewhere because you think you should or everybody else is. I think that starts, and then making sure every single decision that gets made in those executive rooms moving forward align to that.

Randi Beth Burton  0:43
All right, welcome back to the Atlas Rose Podcast. We will jump right in. I'm excited to introduce today's guest. You know when people say that you could write a master's thesis on this or that because you have such a depth of knowledge into a subject. Well, Jill actually did her research during grad school was on why people cry at Disney World, and she turned that research into a 20-year marketing career. So, Jill Goodwin-Helgerson is our guest today. She is the chief magic maker and fractional CMO behind Brand Magic. Her master's research at Colorado State explored why people don't just buy brands; they join them. What she found is that magic is not fairy dust, but rather 1000s of tiny details telling the same story until you start trusting it, and that became the foundation for how she works with organizations today. So her process closes the gap between what a company says and what its customers actually experience. And Jill is also one of our newest ARLs here with Atlas Rose, she just wrapped our cohort launch in Canton, Georgia in August, and she is in the middle of the Ascent right now, where she has literally set the pace for the entire group. She keeps trading leads with one girl, but she holds the longest streak of daily biz dev activity that we've seen. She's a pace setter for sure. Jill, it's great to have you here today. Thank you for joining us.

Jill Goodwin-Helgerson  2:26
Yeah, thank you. And you read up on my thesis background. That's impressive.

Randi Beth Burton  2:32
Yeah. Well, you told us about it too.

Branden O’Neil  2:36
Yes. I was about to say I didn't know about that, and then you just said that. I don't think I knew that. I knew that you did your thesis on that, but I didn't know what the title was.

Jill Goodwin-Helgerson  2:48
That's the informal title. There's a very academic title because you have to use a certain format. But RB's version is the easier way to say it for sure.

Randi Beth Burton  3:00
It has more magic to it. Yeah. Okay. Well, Jill, I have a question for you to kick us off, but I actually want to ask Brandon a question first because Brandon is going to be at Disney next week, and I want to know if you have ever cried at Disney World.

Branden O’Neil  3:22
I'm pretty sure the answer's no, but I'm pretty sure that I've wanted to. But that's mostly when I'm taking my 11 kids through the park, and it's 120 degrees outside and nowhere to hide. I felt like crying a couple moments there.

Jill Goodwin-Helgerson  3:46
A different kind of crying.

Branden O’Neil  3:47
There's a different kind of crying.

Randi Beth Burton  3:50
Oh well, Jill, take us back to grad school. At what point did you decide I'm going to study why people cry at Disney World, and what did you find in that that surprised you?

Jill Goodwin-Helgerson  4:02
Yeah, so it it actually started sooner than that. I did the college program at Walt Disney World years before my master's thesis, and what was really cool at the time is we could take courses through the Disney Institute, and we had the option of doing formal coursework, where we had to complete so much and do presentations, and we could either earn a master's or a duck-torate. Yeah. So I actually went the duck-torate route, and I studied the Disney, you know, guest experience and the way they handle branding and marketing, and basically what makes them so different, and why they're one of the world's most known, well-loved brands. And then when I went back to get my master's, I had been doing the thing for a good 10 years, and what I realized really quickly. Was there was this very kind of siloed need between communications and marketing and one's business and one's journalism and in the real world I feel like we all understand that it's not that that siloed right and when I was looking at it's like nobody was studying events, nobody was studying that that feeling that we have when we walk away from every touch point magically aligning, and you you feel something.

Jill Goodwin-Helgerson  5:28
And there's of course brand studies in the business school, but in communications, there's mental models and other versions of looking at it. And so coming from a heavier events background, I really wanted to understand like why do some events do really well and what is it? Like for me, yes, Disney has done things wrong over the years, but those aren't the things that stick. And if somebody tells me I hate Disney, like that's a conversation I'm gonna dive right into. So what is it? It's more than brand affinity, right? And that's where I learned about brand communities and how psychologically this thing I had been doing in practice all these years actually plays out in the research that the way Disney pays attention to every touch point, and that means internally as much as externally is what sets them apart. All of their cast members are bought in to the Disney brand, and they know how to take care of people before they're ever allowed to set foot on stage, as they they call it. So that that's a huge part of it. It's the studies they did on how far apart you have to space trash cans so people don't litter-it's having that janitorial staff there to pick up stuff immediately, so it always looks clean and sparkly. It's not doing renovations during the day; it's painting during the night and taking care of the garden during the night. It-they pay attention to every detail that seems small on the surface, but because when you experience something with Disney, when you watch a movie and you can go get the merchandise or you can go live in that land and in one of their parks, they they have tied everything together so tightly and so seamlessly that you feel like you're in what everybody refers to as the Disney bubble, and even a bad experience is usually quickly made right by a cast member, so they know how to kind of reel you back in, and it's it's that type of seamless interaction that ties you psychologically closer to the brand.

Jill Goodwin-Helgerson  7:45
And Disney actually coined the term synergy back in the 30s and 40s, which is another thing I was lucky enough to study in college. But that there's elements of synergy that have been studied that they identified, and you know, it sounds cheesy. The whole one plus one equals three, but really, they set up their company structure to do that, and then they make sure all the decisions go back to that. Right. So they used to have a director of synergy who kind of made sure. Okay, well, we're launching a movie. What are we doing here, here, here, and here to tie that in? Or we need to refurbish this ride. Do we stick with what it was, or is there something IP-wise you know that's more prominent right now that we need to give a little love and attention to that kind of stuff? So they're very intentional about every single detail, and that's why they're who they are. That's why Universal, you know, grew trying to copy that model.

Jill Goodwin-Helgerson  8:49
That's why the Starbucks of the world use their employment model. There's so many brands that have taken bits and pieces of that, and when you talk to clients, they say, "I want to be like Apple, or I want to be like Starbucks, Costco," whatever these models that intentionally were different, and that's what they're doing. And it's the hard part. It's not. It's not the easy part. It's not a quick dashboard hit that makes us feel good. But it's that long term game that really builds that brand community and those people that'll come back to you every single time.

Randi Beth Burton  9:25
Yeah, wow, you're right. It's not a quick, like a quick hit. It is a. I mean, you have to be committed to the process of orchestrating those tiny details.

Branden O’Neil  9:39
Jill, where where do you think it starts? So you know we work with small businesses. So small business might might hear this and be like, "Yeah, but I don't have multi billion dollars to to make sure that all my and and a plethora of resources and times to make sure that you know and blah blah blah they can we can easily write it off." Which you and I and RB know by experience that's not true, right? So, like, we can. There is a version that is actually better for small business than it is for the big business. It's easier for small business to do what Disney did as a small business than it is as a as a big business. So, but where does it start? You know, like I'm just thinking, it feels like there's a little bit of a chicken or the egg situation going on because the employees being totally all bought in, totally bought in to the brand and the and the the customer experience happens first, right, and then, and then the customer has a great experience, which then you know fuels the employee side. And so, so that kind of, so does it start with the employee training, or does it start with defining what the experience is in the first place? You know, with the customer, and then training your employees on that because you have to have something to train them on. You see, I'm saying, like it's it's difficult to find the beginning of of that. What do you think?

Jill Goodwin-Helgerson  11:07
I think it has to start with alignment internally before anything goes. You have to be willing to have a discussion and understand. You know, marketing doesn't operate separate of sales. It doesn't operate separate of operations. Every every single piece is intertwined. So I personally, even if you've been around for 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, if you've never done that discovery of who your audience is and what they need, and then find the messages that they resonate with, and then find the places where they are use the right media. Don't just be somewhere because you think you should or everybody else is. I think that starts, and then making sure every single decision that gets made in those executive rooms moving forward align to that. So yes, the internal training. I think that's super super important. I think the recruitment process is important. I think ongoing engagement is super important.

Jill Goodwin-Helgerson  12:08
Like all of those those internal employee based needs are foundational, but those bigger executive level pieces and buy in has to come first. And I I've seen the clients who say they want that, but at the end of the day, when you get in that room, it's like, well, I think we need this, or I think we should say this, or our competitors are doing this, and it's like, it's not about us at that point, right? It's not about what we think. It's literally putting, okay, but what does your audience need? What does your audience care about? Does this serve that? Is this everything we said we wanted? And if not, you know, there's there's a harsh saying out there. You know, you got to kill your babies, but sometimes you got to kill your babies. The thing you love the most might not be the thing that's gonna work and and resonate. And I think that's the hardest part in business. Is it's really get easy to get caught up into the I I I I I, and it's really not about what we want or like.

Branden O’Neil  13:09
100% yeah, 100% Why is that though? Why do you guys think that is? Why is it that that's difficult? I mean, like, it feels it feels obvious to say that we exist to solve a problem of our customer of somebody, right? Yet, what you're saying is 100 true, and we get into the I, I, I, I. Is it ego? Is it I know the best way this way it's going to be done, or is it comfort? Is it lack of knowledge? Is it what do you guys what do you guys think that is?

Randi Beth Burton  13:47
It's definitely a paradigm shift to not do that, and you see that in almost every business. I think because all of your energies are going towards perfecting and optimizing your product, and then and you're putting it out there, and you're like, you know, somebody is gonna like it, and you just sort of pray and hope that you find those people, but you're in the business of that product. You're not in the business of those people. Is is is how you feel? That's it. That's how it's it's pretty common. So all your energies go into as a business person go more often than not into operations, into even staff culture, employee culture. How can we be better so that we can serve our customer better? How can our processes be more fluid. I mean, that's the that's that's the easy thing to go and focus on and make better. The more abstract component of it is who's actually buying this this thing.

Jill Goodwin-Helgerson  14:53
I think psychology and what we do got lost along the way. The nuances, the psychology of the humans that you know that we're working with and and also trying to serve, and I think it's because it's harder, right? Again, I go back to I think marketing has done itself a disservice over the years in terms of how we talk about what we do and allowing everything we do to be put on a dashboard. Because the reality is, is not everything we do can be put on a dashboard, but that's what feels good, and that's what's easier, you know, to get more financing and and money coming in when we have those nice clean metrics we can point to. So I think so much funnel building discussion and so much ROI discussion has happened over the years that we forgot about the art part of it, that's what I say. So it's science and it's an art, right? Like there is this this piece of it that we can't put on a spreadsheet, and that's uncomfortable in a boardroom.

Branden O’Neil  15:53
Yeah, you know, it's funny. I I just I wrote down the question of does experience equal revenue, right? So does a better customer experience equal revenue? And I think so. I can I can give 100 reasons why yes, it can, and we can talk about a couple of them. But I think when customer experience is done in a half-ass way, or when it's when when it's done in sort of a when it's not really done authentically, like culturally, then the then dangerously it could be it could be no. Like you could be doing you could have this idea, like I really like what you're saying, Jill. I really love Disney. I feel things when I go to Disney. I want my company to feel like Disney, and so then let's do some fun things, right? And then but it starts to get into. It's just another baby, kind of, right? And it and it becomes, and it's so just like a flavor of your babies. Maybe I'm going too far with that.

Randi Beth Burton  16:55
We've lost this analogy.

Branden O’Neil  16:57
You know what I mean? Where you it where then it just becomes a thing, and the customer is not really the thing again, right? It's like experience is the thing, but the but the customer is not actually the thing, and so then experience that is the customer experience doesn't equal revenue there. But when you really are nailing it, like you, Disney has no problem with word of mouth marketing. Everybody talks about Disney. We all know what that feels like. You know, Apple doesn't have any issues with word of mouth marketing because they're remarkable. You know, so these brands that are really nailing it and understand it, these are the big ones. But there's a lot of small businesses that are great examples of that too, and so that's where it does. It can start to show up and in a on a dashboard, maybe not directly, right? But it is. It starts to become trackable. So I do think I do think revenue absolutely because I guess where I got to that question from was why the the question of why don't small businesses just grab onto this like this feels like a no brainer partly because they look at marketing as being a lever to pull so I can get $1 tomorrow right or today for that matter and we just need to have a little bit more foresight into that, and then so for the fractional CMOs out there, we need to help our folks get there. You know, we need to help them get there.

Branden O’Neil  18:30
But Jill, you really you specialize in helping companies out with that put on events, that go to trade shows. So you you are really really good at the event side of things, especially with your background and training with Disney. So how does this this parlays really nicely into that, right? And then so I want to hear how. And then I want to like I go to a trade show and everybody looks exactly the same and and and it feels like a carnival, except it's not fun, you know. So you walk away with a bunch of pins with

Randi Beth Burton  19:08
logos on it. Yeah, you have no idea what they do. Fidget

Branden O’Neil  19:12
spinners, for God's sake, stop with the fidget spinners.

Jill Goodwin-Helgerson  19:18
Yeah. So I think I've done all the areas of marketing, Stratcom. You know what you want to call. I think where I fell in love with events is it's that living, breathing version of your brand, right? Like, there's no, it's your own personal Disneyland, for lack of a better word. You're you're building, and every brand. It doesn't matter, you know, if you're healthcare or you're a pet store or whatever your brand is, like you can still do really cool stuff even if you're in a regulated environment. We'll put it that way. So there's a lot of room for creativity, but what I will. Is the event world is really really good at building these gorgeous environments and having really cool technology forward digital things going on in those spaces where I have seen things lacking is is they treat events as separate from everything else right they don't bring it into the marketing strategy or the larger business strategy, and then they wonder why we built it and nobody came, or we spent all this money and we walked away with nothing, and that's because we're not treating it as a whole as a part of of the marketing strategy,

Jill Goodwin-Helgerson  20:42
And it's it's everything from what you should be doing pre and post show. How are you handling leads to training the people that are in the space. It's it's not the same as a normal sales job, right? It's not the same as walking into an office or whatever people's sales team's process is. It's a very over it's like being in Vegas all day in a casino floor, right? Like it's a very overstimulating, overwhelming thing. And then you have the psychology of the audiences walking through, where it's almost like the more beautiful and bigger spaces, the more they walk by and they're like, "I don't see you. Don't talk to me. Like they're intimidated by it. So it's figuring out how to activate these passive audiences in a non-intimidating way, or get them information at the very least, even if they don't talk to a human. But then, how do you track it? So there's so many nuances that happen on those trade show floors that I find fascinating because at the end of the day, the situations I've been in, it's usually they work with an event company to build the thing, but the event company doesn't have the background on all these other marketing pieces, and sometimes these companies aren't even giving those event partners the insight they need into their strategy or their analytics from certain things, which makes it hard for them to advise.

Jill Goodwin-Helgerson  22:06
Sometimes they have agencies, sometimes they don't. But most time, they're building the thing, they're throwing their sales team in there, and just expecting things to happen. And it is just to me such a sad wasted opportunity because you're not just spending a lot of money to be there, but like there is no better way to immerse people in your brand and who you are and what you stand for than being at an event, whether it's a trade show or some other form. So that is that is the way you get people to remember you. Having a 1015, 30 minute phone call with somebody, they may like what you're saying when you're on the call, but they're not going to have that same memory of you. You know, a week later, it'd be like, "Who did I talk to that did that?" like it's harder recall, but you put them in that space and give them an experience they can't forget. They're going to remember you. You're going to be. You're not going to have to do that. What is it now? 40 touch points to be remembered instead of seven. Yeah, and there's ways to do it without having a booth, which I find fascinating too. Like a lot of the really small companies, like you don't have to spend 20, 30,000. A lot of times, you can get creative and still reach your audience, and I just don't think there's enough conversation about the event-within-the- event things you can do yourself as well.

Branden O’Neil  23:29
So probably for the small guys, they're like they're like about to throw up in their mouth because of how much it costs to just get the piece of concrete, you know. And so then to think about anything beyond just getting there is like is it feels like overwhelming. And what you're saying though is, yeah, that's true. It is is really expensive to be there, and you better do something strategic about it. Don't just check the tactical box. Don't hire somebody to put you a booth there and expect that your salespeople are going to stand there and sell you enough deals. It's worth being strategic about. And what I'm hearing you say, connecting the dots, is it's worth being strategically experiential about.

Jill Goodwin-Helgerson  24:18
It's that whole idea of a curated experience.

Randi Beth Burton  24:21
What are some fun ways that you've seen companies engage at a trade show that are that like to your point, Jill? The experience within the experience, like what are some throw out some fun stories I think might inspire the audience with some ideas.

Jill Goodwin-Helgerson  24:35
Yeah, so I've done a lot in healthcare, which is very very restrictive. We can't give things because of the Sunshine Act. It's less than $10, and it has to be able to be used in a doctor's practice. And like, there's all these restrictions.

Branden O’Neil  24:50
So a fidget spinner?

Jill Goodwin-Helgerson  24:52
Yeah, not you can't even do that. Like, yeah. And then if you do, if you have something in your booth that is like if you're doing a quiz or something, everything has to be educational. So there's a lot of parameters around this, but I've done some pretty cool things with clients over the years that have made it feel more like you're not in this highly regulated environment. So in one, and this is this comes from having a client that partners with you, right? Somebody who actually gives gives you the information you need to do these things. But so I had a client in the ophthalmology world, and they were probably a medium sized player. They weren't like one of the well known huge names, but they weren't tiny, and they were 100% glaucoma focused. And there's two big ophthalmology shows a year, and at one of those ophthalmology shows, there's the foundation that puts on the show decided, you know what? Like, there's all these people in third world countries that can't afford cataract surgery, and so they started a matchmaking thing for donations to cataract surgery.

Jill Goodwin-Helgerson  26:05
Well, we partnered with this client to come in, and they have nothing to do with the cataract world for their product, right? But they're like, "What a we'll do the signups in our booth. Like, we'll we'll take it. We'll push it out to the doctor. Like, we'll make it a part of our event program." And so they did it for five years before getting purchased and year over year, it just the amount they were able to bring in heavily increased and so they started to become known as this company that was building a community in the ophthalmology world. Well, they leveraged that and they went into so in healthcare shows you there's a commercial portion, but if you're talking like the scientific by the book, the way you should be using on label the drug or the device, like that's called the medical affairs portion of the booth, and sometimes they're completely separate and sometimes not. But you can't have any branding or commercial talk in that side. It's strictly scientific. Well, as you can imagine, those are the sides that usually don't have much traction and stuff and do well.

Jill Goodwin-Helgerson  27:12
Well, they decided, look, like we have all these people coming to our booth. We love the fact that we're building this community. What could we do to further it? And we put an activation that we grew over a couple of years on the medical affairs side of the booth, where we brought in a couple of key doctors that everybody knew and respected, and got quotes from them. And the question was, what would you tell the younger version of yourself? Like, what would you want to know then that you know now? And so, what this turned into, which I don't think any of us could have predicted, was these doctors were coming by and waiting for their quote to rotate on the big screen and taking pictures with their quote. Like they'd wait 10 minutes. That's how long the loop was, and then they were bringing over other people, and it just became this whole other conversation starter that we ended up doing video clips, and then you could self-select on a kiosk. Like we evolved it over a two-year period, but it was really kind of fun because it was really again aimed at building community among these group of doctors that weren't necessary. They're not getting anything readily out of this, right? Like I'm not selling you a glaucoma drop because you came to my booth and had. But I guarantee they they knew the name, and when they got bought, they got bought by Alcon, who is a very well-known brand who was just starting their pharmaceutical division at the time, and they were on Alcon's radar because they were well known in the community and they were known for bringing people together in a a very different way. So that's one example.

Jill Goodwin-Helgerson  29:00
Another thing we did with them that was really cool is in the healthcare world, you have a lot of they call medical advisory panels, and they're usually very sterile. They're in a room, somebody's asking a question, and people around the room are responding, and everybody's taking note, right? Like they're very formal, usually, but we made them very informal. We would get suites, decorate them to where they were more loungy, bring in you know good food. You'd have couches to sit on, and we'd do very small groups, like 2, 3, 4, groups, four people at the max, and really have kind of these more, you know, not full one-on-one, but tiny group conversations, and it felt more like a conversation. And then the info they were getting back from these doctors on why they would or wouldn't use a product or what they experience-they were getting so much better, robust data out of it because it's-it felt like you were sitting in somebody's living. Room having a real conversation, not around you know a conference room table where everybody is watching every word you're saying. So it's those types of things where it's just taking a different look at it, and just because everybody else is doing it one way doesn't mean you have to do it the same way.

Branden O’Neil  30:19
In fact, you shouldn't. I celebrate when everybody's doing everything the same way, right? Because it makes it very easy for us to to differentiate and be different. Yeah, that's cool. Wow, that's awesome. That's really meaningful. I mean, those are a couple of really cool, meaningful, interesting ways of doing that.

Randi Beth Burton  30:40
And the the first story you told-that's that long term thinking that is needed. I mean, the success that that company ultimately experienced by being purchased because they had created and fostered this community-that was not an overnight lever that they were pulling. That was that was building into their audience. That was creating something for them that didn't immediately turn into $1, but paid off. Paid off in the long term, which customer experience does. Okay, Brandon, what's what's one of your stories?

Branden O’Neil  31:18
We've done we've done some crazy things, like we hired a graffiti artist to do a big piece of art in Chicago in a Chicago show for the metal fabrication industry, but and it doubled as a customer experience like research project where the customers told us what experience they wanted out of us through that through that art piece. There's there's some really easy practical things that if you do consistently can end up just driving driving traffic right. So like just some quick staples are one is t-shirts. T-shirts like really really cool design T-shirts that don't have your logo on it, or have your logo like really small and hidden maybe on the back. The point is not your brand. The point is a really cool ambassador, a really cool T-shirt that they're actually going to wear. They're not going to wear your logo. Hate to break it to you. They could care two less, two two lesses, two shits, two cares, whatever I'm trying to say about about your logo, right? But if you make a really cool, fun T-shirt, they're gonna wear it all the time. So like we've we've done this where we've seen our T-shirts, people taking pictures across the world with these T-shirts, so giving them 1000s out. But the key hit key there is that we've done that now three or four years in a row, and now people are coming to us to get the T-shirt of the year, right? So that's that's another that's a way for us to disrupt and get conversation going, but then bring them back and give them a good experience. It's a fun T-shirt. It's not about us; it's about you and giving them something cool. So that's one way.

Branden O’Neil  33:01
Another way is, and then I'll I'll shut up. Is is I believe you should always give your customers gifts and make a huge huge deal out of them. So when your customer comes to your booth, you want everybody to know they are your customer, and you want to celebrate them like crazy. They should be feeling like VIPs. They should be like you know beating their chest because they're customers of yours, and everybody should be envious that they want to be customer of yours also. So like we we give we give big time gifts. I mean I'm talking about like $200 to $300 gifts to our customers, and so when they come when they come to the booth, we all stop. You know the prospect call to you know these these prospects that we are that we're engaged with, which you might say is pretty rude, but that's okay because we're celebrating those who have chosen to to work with us, and that says something to the prospect. You're like, hold on just a second. Customer just walked in. We just had. I just had to say, hey. So you celebrate them, bring them in, take a picture with them, hand them some stuff, and and then and they're feeling proud. Your prospects are feeling envious, and you're feeling great about about the experience that you've been able to give all those involved. And then the actually, I think the last one was the last one. I will say is a key point, and I'm actually I'm going to point this back around to something you said earlier, Jill, and that is, it's like it starts with the employee training. You've spent 10s of thousands, if not hundreds of 1000s, sometimes millions of dollars on this show, and then you just plop people in it and say good luck.

Branden O’Neil  34:48
And you may have given them some cool tools, like let's say that you've built experiential things in there. Let's say that you've you're doing the T-shirts, the customer gifts. You've got a really cool engagement strategy inside, and you've you've done all that stuff. Do a write up on it, or you sit them down in the booth the the day before, the morning of, and you're like, here's what's going to happen, here's a write up, and here's your training, and but that's how everybody else does it. Don't do it that way. That's not how Disney does it, right? You give them the experience first. They will be bought into the experience if you've given your employees and those that are managing your booth, if you've given them the experience that you're expecting them to deliver, or you are expecting them to deliver to to the prospect, it's worth it. You know, I mean, again, if you spend if you're spending $20,000 on a booth, if you spend $2,000 on an experience for the people that are going to be in it, and wrap a little bit of a training into that. That's you are setting the tone and the energy off in the right direction. So that's been another big aha for us. It's just again going back starts with that employee training.

Jill Goodwin-Helgerson  35:55
Yeah, 100% And it's it's funny your note, Brandon, about giving them like stopping everything to recognize them, you can do that without giving them something too. We did something similar where we gave people; they were specially invited to us a one-on. It was 50 of us in a room, 25 of us, and 25 doctors. So it really was a one-on-one. It was a surgeon inventors symposium, but it was like the golden ticket, right? So when these doctors that had been invited to participate showed up in the booth, that we made this big deal of them getting this big golden ticket to come to this special event later. So we weren't breaking the rules, but we still were able to do something very similar. So I think people just have to get creative about it, like how. And then there's a little bit of jealousy, right? Like, how come he's getting that? I'm not getting that. Like, I want to be special.

Branden O’Neil  36:48
Exactly.

Randi Beth Burton  36:50
I'll add one more practical piece of advice, and that is, if you do something that gets you in trouble or gets your wrist slapped, you're you're probably doing good.

Branden O’Neil  37:03
You're not trying hard enough if you haven't.

Randi Beth Burton  37:08
That is advice I have taken from Brandon, which I love, and and several stories come to mind of trade shows where we have kind of gotten a little our wrist slapped a little bit because we're doing things that we didn't really ask permission to to be able to do, and it's getting noticed. So that's a good that's a good thing.

Jill Goodwin-Helgerson  37:27
It's because they want to make money off of you.

Randi Beth Burton  37:30
that that was not a part of our sponsorship.

Branden O’Neil  37:33
And they're upset that they didn't think about that when they came up with their sponsorships. I'll tell you what I do. I don't know, Jill, what you think what you do with this, but like, if I'm doing a site visit for, let's say, there's a big trade show, and I'm I go ahead, I'm looking and I'm reading all the sponsorship opportunity. I never buy the sponsorships, ever. Like I never do because they don't work the way you expected and all that stuff. I don't. I know I'm not a big fan. I mean, like now I have a lot of trade show companies that are not a big fan of mine right now, but um, sorry, I never do. But what I do look for is all the all the things in between. You know what I mean? Like, where are the opportunities to to show up to give an experience and all that stuff that's not expected because when you expect it, you're not gonna get much out of it.

Jill Goodwin-Helgerson  38:19
And same thing with the meeting rooms, like a lot of trade shows offer meeting rooms now, and I mean, if if you only have the bandwidth to not leave the trade show floor to go to a tidy little white box, okay, but usually that same facility has nicer rooms just down the hallway, or you can rent something nearby, like uplevel that experience too, because if somebody's gonna take the time out of their day to come have a one-on-one with you, make make that special too. Those those things are so funny because people again spend a lot of money to have this little 10 by 10 sterile space when you could really uplevel the experience very easily for less money, I think in a lot of cases. 100%

Branden O’Neil  39:05
Did you call it? Did you call it a tidy little white box?

Jill Goodwin-Helgerson  39:08
Yeah, tidy little.

Branden O’Neil  39:09
Not a tightey whitey, little white box?

Randi Beth Burton  39:14
Tighty whitey.

Branden O’Neil  39:17
Can you tell I have nine boys?

Randi Beth Burton  39:22
Yeah, start calling it that. Don't get the whitey tightey box.

Randi Beth Burton  39:28
Speaking of funny names, Jill, I was gonna ask you if you go to a dinner party and somebody asks you what it what it means that you're a chief magic officer. How do you answer that?

Jill Goodwin-Helgerson  39:40
So, a lot of my branding is based off of it's intentional, right? So, because I'm Disney inspired, and I believe all companies can have the same level of attention to their brand, I made what I do very Disney inspired, and Disney has their own language. Guests and you know cast members and all the on stage everything is is on a theme. So I decided people don't know fractional CMO either. Like I'm constantly explaining what it is. So I was like, you know what? I did brand magic because it's inspired. So instead of CMO, I'm gonna be a CMM, a chief magic maker.

Branden O’Neil  40:25
Yeah, I love it because I I truly feel the whole name came from this idea. Like it's not magic that makes it happen, but it feels like it, and and that's that's the element to the Disney experience, right? Like it's not magic that's making all of that that happen, but it feels like it because of the intentionality behind every single interaction that you're having, and so I'm trying to subliminally help that along.

Randi Beth Burton  40:52
I love that, and it evokes conversation and the wait, what what is it that you do? So I think it's yeah, your brand has has good legs to it because you have such a good opportunity to explain a real core principle that people don't understand. It's not. I mean, they come to marketing companies looking for magic. Like, what's the thing? What am I not doing that I should be doing? And it that opens the door for you to be able to explain how to intentionally build into their brand in these in these ways. What's that mindset that they need to have? I like that.

Jill Goodwin-Helgerson  41:34
And people are floored that there's not like this prescriptive template that works for everybody. Like I don't know if you guys come across that too, but they really. What do you mean you can't just do for us what you did for them? And it's like you're not the same company, you know. You don't. You may not talk the same. You may not have the same audience. You might not have the same goals. Like I need to better understand, and I think that's the hardest part of marketing, right? Like it. There's the easy fun stuff that everybody gets to see, and then they think, "Oh, I'll just do that. That's why the AI conversation is where it is today. But there, you know, there's a real strategic nuance to finding the right mix and knowing what works. The you know us as humans bring to the the table, and I think that's the part when people think AI can do their marketing in full. That's that's being missed. Is there's there's something psychologically all three of us know when we hear a conversation. Like our brains, I'm sure your gears start turning. Like there's just little key things people say, and you you already are kind of quietly diagnosing in your brain what you think, but then we got to go back and get the information to know if what we think is true.

Branden O’Neil  42:47
That's good. Maybe one last. I know we're trying to wrap up here, but one last point that I really love, Jill, and I'm just pulling some things together. You probably would say this outright, but customers, our prospects, come in the door. Most people come in the door, thinking, wanting the brand, the the brand magic slash easy button, right? Or thinking that marketing can be a viral button and that it's magical. All of a sudden, I'm going to start growing. But what your message is is brand magic is it's what did you just say? You just said it feels like magic. What was your line again? Say that again.

Jill Goodwin-Helgerson  43:29
It feels like magic, but it's really the intentionality behind all the different experiences, touch points, however you want to define it. But all your interactions with that brand.

Branden O’Neil  43:40
So that's so that that's strategic, right? So so what what they come in the door thinking the magic is magic, but you are explaining to them and showing them the path towards a strategic magic, which is what is what it's real, anyways. Because we all look at Disney and think they're an overnight success, don't we? Like all of a sudden now they're just successful overnight? No, we know that it took a long time. Apple, these companies, these majorly successful companies, are not overnight successes. It took a lot of strategic intentionality in order to create the magic that they have today. And you've become an expert in that, and you deliver that for your clients, so thank you for doing that. It's awesome.

Jill Goodwin-Helgerson  44:23
Yeah, it's fun. It's a fun thing we get to do. It is a fun thing we get to do. I love it.

Randi Beth Burton  44:28
Well, thank you for joining us today, and we'll catch you on the next episode.

Jill Goodwin-Helgerson  44:36
Sounds good. Thank you, guys.