E370: How to paint yourself as the underdog, even when you’re the incumbent.
It’s a quick hack to make yourself instantly likable.
Find the incumbent in your niche - the mainstream - criticize them relentlessly.
Done properly, it doesn’t make your brand appear weak; it makes your competitors seem exploitative to their consumers.
Being the mainstream isn’t cool, being the underdog is.
Works for incumbents too, though requires a bit more creativity, explained in the episode.
00:00 The Epiphany: Underdog Strategy 00:42 Criticizing the Mainstream 00:59 Elon Strategy 01:23 The Google Leak: Underdogs vs. Mainstream 02:50 SEO Strategies: Top vs. Bottom of Funnel 04:12 Peak Design vs. Amazon: A Viral Victory 07:37 Underdog Branding 09:45 Final Thoughts
#branding #brandbuilding #marketingstrategy
The Edward Show. Your daily marketing podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/
I had this big epiphany the other day. The epiphany is about how being the underdog is cool, but how it's possible to even be an incumbent and position yourself as an underdog. And this is something anybody can do. Paint themselves as going against the mainstream, criticize the mainstream, say how your brand is different from the mainstream, or from the people in power, the brands in power, the individuals in power, officials in power, companies in power, whatever it is. And then it makes you cool. And the uncool thing, the uncool thing today is being the mainstream, not being rebellious, not being different. And the brands that are losing an image are the ones that are doing this. I said to somebody over a WhatsApp, I said kind of an epiphany actually, just criticize the mainstream in your niche, criticize the people in power, who is the mainstream in your niche, and then criticize those people. And if you're dominant, if you are the mainstream, position yourself as a victim and an underdog. And then I thought about Elon as an example. Elon's competitors, they mostly talk about how great they are, and Elon does that a ton. You can see it on his Twitter, he's always sharing updates, big updates that are being done, things that are really positive with his companies. But he also talks about competitor lobbying, the government, media corruption, all these things getting in his way. And he's constantly positioning himself as an underdog. Whether or not you agree with this, let's go to the Google leak that happened recently. One of the reasons the Google leak was such a huge deal is because it went directly against what Google officials were telling the public, and everyone loves to hate these Google officials. These Google officials, they are the ones with the perceived power, and they would tell the SEO community, we can't measure this, this doesn't help, this doesn't make a difference, and the Google leak revealed, these people lied. The things that they said they couldn't measure, they could measure. The things that they said didn't make a difference, made a difference. Now, we don't know the exact agreed to which it made a difference, because the weights of the attributes that were revealed, the weights themselves were not given, the attributes were revealed, but not the weights. But nonetheless, it showed that all these things Google said that they could not measure, they actually could. Clicks are a great example. Google said that they couldn't measure clicks, and that this didn't play any part in their search algorithm, when actually they created the Chrome browser to get clip data, so they could see what people in the search engine results pages were clicking on, time on site, all these different things. And suddenly, the SEO community were these underdogs, going against the mainstream of Google. So position yourself against the mainstream. Find the mainstream in your niche, and position yourself as the black sheep. Something that I'm doing with my product, I'm making a product about doing bottom of funnel search engine optimization. The SEO community, they do top of funnel search engine optimization. This is seen as sexier, because there's more volume behind it. But the conversions are a lot less. When you do bottom of funnel, you are targeting people who are at the bottom of the purchasing funnel, they know what they want, but they don't know the brand that's gonna give it to them. And so the conversion rate on these keywords on bottom of funnel keywords is very high. Top of funnel is exploratory. There's a lot of volume behind it. A lot of people just wanna learn things, but they don't wanna actually act on those things and make purchases. But the thing is, the SEO community will advocate to their clients targeting top of funnel keywords because this gets more traffic. And these keywords take longer to rank for. So agencies retain clients longer. Oh, just stay with me a few more months. We're getting some movement on these keywords. They're more difficult, they're more competitive. Yeah, just give us a little bit more money for link building, for getting backlinks. But actually, bottom of funnel keywords, less competitive, you need less backlinks to rank for them and you rank a lot faster. And they're not sexy. The search volume behind them isn't super great. So clients don't appreciate just how amazing these keywords are. They don't appreciate how much they convert and how easy they are to rank for. So I'm going against the SEO mainstream with my product. You know, it's funny, in Amazon's early days, they portrayed themselves as the little guy taking on these big brick and mortar chains, doing things so different. One of my more viral videos, it's about this company Peak Design. Peak Design made a camera case, and Amazon Basics ripped off that camera case, stole the exact designs for that camera case and sold it for less on Amazon. And what Peak Design did, instead of suing Amazon, which would have been really hard and expensive, they made a viral video congratulating Amazon for ripping them off. And they were able to use this viral video to show how they use recycled materials, total carbon neutrality, a lifetime warranty, fairly paid factory workers, all this stuff. And then they paint Amazon as this big evil corporation that comes in and rips them off. And this video went really viral. It was shared on The Verge, on Business Insider, on CNBC. I made a video about it. This company went up against Amazon and won. I'm about to show you the video they made exposing Amazon ripping off their designs. They could have taken Amazon to court. That would have been costly and may not have succeeded. Instead, they made this viral video, which got tens of millions of views. This is the Everyday Slings by Peak Design. And this is the Everyday Slings by Amazon Basics. It looks suspiciously like the Peak Design Everyday Slings, but you don't have to pay for all those needless bells and whistles like years of research and development, recycled blue sign approved materials, a lifetime warranty, fairly paid factory workers, and total carbon neutrality. Instead, you just get a bag designed by the crack team at the Amazon Basics Department. - Yeah, keep coming up there, okay. I'll get right on it, boss. We'll stop right there. Let's everyday sling. It's a hot seller. (sighs) Let's basic this bad boy, right on. Aluminum hardware, let's do plastic. Durable zippers, sounds pricey. Flex full dividers. Let's do the floppy ones. Done. What do we call it? I'm thinking the Everyday Slings. (bell dings) (sighs) That's good, boss. - So if you're tired of supporting companies who innovate and just not willing to pay for responsibly-made products, don't the Everyday Slings by Peak Design and by Amazon Basics, whichever one you buy, you'll get exactly what you paid for. - This video not only gave Peak Design a ton of publicity and sales, it not only highlighted the positive traits of the Everyday Slings, but it also got the Amazon copycat taken down as a product. It's now unavailable on Amazon. If something bad happens to your brand, it may just pay off to think like Peak Design. It may just pay off to think out of the box instead of directly fight because it's not Everyday that this happened. - Amazon changed the designs because this video went so viral. And so it made Peak Design more money, it made them more popular, and it got Amazon to change their design. Pretty crazy outcome. - What did they do? They painted themselves as the younger dog, as the little guy going up against Amazon, the incumbent in their category. Apple right now is the mainstream. It's pretty easy to criticize Apple, and that's a pretty popular thing to do. Well, when they started, they were the rebellious brand going up against the status quo. They were fighting against the big corporations, this brand for artists who criticized the mainstream narrative. I think it's really a hack, finding the mainstream in your niche, and then criticizing them. The mainstream might not like you for doing this, but it'll make you more popular, and it'll make you more popular fast, because lots of people, when a company gets really big, even if people once liked that company, if that company doesn't keep painting themselves as underdogs, they're going to lose support really fast. So it's a brand hack to figure out who the incumbents are in your category and criticize them relentlessly, because lots of other people in your niche are probably thinking the same thing. Now, the thing is, it's still gonna be up to product. If your product isn't as good as a competitor, people are gonna buy the competitors in a lot of scenarios. However, this makes a difference because it's an opportunity to elevate your messaging, to get more visibility specifically on your messaging. Lots of people who are purchasing this incumbent product, they will still reshare what you are seeing about the product, about the brand. They will still reshare the negative things that you are seeing about the brand. Lots of people buy iPhone and MacBooks, but also hate Apple, and they will continue to buy iPhones and MacBooks, and then they will reshare messaging that criticizes Apple. So what you could do, you could do something like what Pete designed it. You can put messaging about how you are different from this company. Let's use Apple as an example. You'd put messaging about how you're different from Apple. Lots of people will continue to buy iPhones and MacBooks, but there will be a small percentage who sees your messaging going viral, getting shared, and then this very small percentage will convert. Suddenly, you've captured a little bit more of the market. You can reinvest into product and this cycle can continue until now you're more formidable. I think being the underdog is cool. And when you are the incumbent, you still want to seem like the underdog. It's a brand hack. Criticize the mainstream in your niche. People will reshare your messaging more. They'll like your brand more. They'll agree with what you have to say more. The people criticize the incumbent. The people who are listening go, oh, they nod their heads. Criticize the people in power when you can. Don't bite the hand that feeds you, but criticize the people in power when you can. And it'll be an easy way to get shares early on. That's the epiphany that I had. This is episode 370 of my daily digital marketing podcast. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you so much for listening. The underdogs are cool. Even if you are an incumbent, you can still paint yourself as an underdog. Find the mainstream in your niche, criticize them. And that's it. I will talk to you again tomorrow.
