Jesse James Wroblewski, he has been at the helm of a New York marketing agency for close to three decades. His often offbeat work has been featured in Rolling Stone, The Book “505 Weirdest Websites Ever” and Fangoria as well as a plethora of other media outlets.

He is ready to share his new vision for the world. He recently released a new book called Marketing For Supervillains: Diabolical Tips On Differentiation, Decommoditization™ and World Domination.

> Here’s a glimpse of what you would learn….

In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley welcomes marketing expert Jesse James Wroblewski, author of “Marketing for Supervillains.” They discuss strategies for e-commerce brands to differentiate themselves amidst rising competition, especially on platforms like Amazon. Jesse emphasizes the importance of creating a unique brand identity through exclusivity, storytelling, and cause alignment. He shares practical examples and exercises to help brands stand out. Key takeaways include the need for strong brand development, professionalizing brand assets, and leveraging unique differentiators to foster customer loyalty and drive profitable growth.

Here are the 3 action items that Josh identified from this episode:

Action Item #1: Invest in Brand Identity Development: Focus on building a unique, strong brand identity rather than relying on generic, private-label products. A well-developed brand that resonates with its target audience can command higher prices and maintain long-term loyalty. Align your brand with a clear cause or lifestyle that sets you apart from competitors.

Action Item #2: Polish Your Brand Assets: Ensure all your brand elements, such as logos, packaging, and messaging, are cohesive and professional. Avoid disjointed branding efforts from multiple sources and aim for a unified brand presence that elevates customer perception and fosters trust.

Action Item #3: Leverage Differentiators to Stand Out: Identify and emphasize unique aspects of your brand that competitors cannot easily replicate, such as exclusivity, product heritage, or a unique process. Differentiating through factors like scarcity or aligning with a specific niche or identity can create excitement and loyalty among customers.

Special Mention(s):

Related Episode(s):

This episode is brought to you by eComm Breakthrough Consulting where I help seven-figure e-commerce owners grow to eight figures.

I started my business in 2015 and grew it to an eight-figure brand in seven years.

I made mistakes along the way that made the path to eight figures longer. At times I doubted whether our business could even survive and become a real brand. I wish I would have had a guide to help me grow faster and avoid the stumbling blocks.

If you’ve hit a plateau and want to know the next steps to take your business to the next level, then email me at josh@ecommbreakthrough.com and in your subject line say “strategy audit” for the chance to win a $10,000 comprehensive business strategy audit at no cost!

Transcript Area

Josh 00:00:00  Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough podcast. I’m your host, Josh Hadley, where I interview the top business leaders in e-commerce. Past guests include Kevin Keene, Michael Gerber, author of The E-myth, and Matt Clark from ASM. Today I’m speaking with Jesse James Wroblewski, and we are going to be talking about the 12 ways that big brands have successfully differentiated themselves and where you, as a brand owner, should start differentiating yourself to fight the onslaught of overseas competition that is super prevalent right now. This episode is brought to you by Ecomm Breakthrough, where I specialize in investing in and scaling seven figure companies to eight figures and beyond. If you’re an ambitious e-commerce entrepreneur looking for a partner who can help take your business to the next level, my team and I bring hands on experience, strategic insights, and the resources needed to fuel your growth. So if you or someone you know is ready to scale or looking for an investment partner, reach out to me directly at Josh at Ecomm Breakthrough dot com. That’s e-comm with two M’s and let’s turn your dreams into reality.

Josh 00:00:50  But today I am super excited to introduce you all to Jesse James Wroblewski. He has been at the helm of a New York marketing agency for close to three decades. His often offbeat work has been featured in The Rolling Stones The Book 505 Weirdest Websites Ever, and Fangoria, as well as a plethora of other media outlets. He is ready to share his new vision for the world. He recently released a new book called marketing for Supervillains Diabolical Tips on Differentiation and Commoditization and World Domination. So with that introduction, welcome to the show, Jesse.

Jesse 00:01:19  Thank you for having me, Josh. Looking forward to, helping your listeners. you know, if you’re if you’re facing that onslaught of overseas competition knockoffs and you’re trying to lead the life of a superhero and you realize it’s just not working, maybe time to switch gears and turn to a marketing supervillain and take back what you’ve rightfully earned.

Josh 00:01:37  Jesse, like you, you’re speaking. You’re preaching to the choir right now. I think that over the last 12 months, I think that the increased amount of competition on Amazon has only become more aggressive.

Josh 00:01:49  we’re also seeing, you know, not every brand has year over year growth. And I think a lot of people are losing a lot of margin. There’s there’s a big margin squeeze going on? we called it another guest called it the Purge of Amazon. Right. Things are becoming a lot more complicated. Prices are being driven down to basement level prices. And so now brands really have to lean into a being a true brand and not just, you know, selling some commodity product. but they also need to be able to compete and build something that will help them survive and reinvent themselves for the future. So I am super excited to have you on because you’re kind of you. You have that experience working with a lot of brands, how to differentiate themselves and create a moat around their business that, you know, makes it harder for overseas competition to knock them off. So, Jesse, with that in mind, you’re you’re talking to seven figure entrepreneurs that are looking to scale their brand. I want to dive straight into the heart of this.

Josh 00:02:38  You know, we lead with 12 different ways that they could differentiate themselves. Where do you want to start and to help these entrepreneurs out?

Jesse 00:02:45  Sure, sure. So to further hook anybody listening, I work mainly with with entrepreneurs. You know, usually a new brand or startup is not right for me. You still have those rose colored glasses and the future looks amazing. I really specialize in working with those brand owners that are almost demoralized. Right? So they used to have this incredible pride in their product, their service that they offer. And like you said, due to overseas competition, they’re forced to cut their cut their costs, their their prices. And that pride is slowly eroding away. And it’s just a race to the bottom. I work to not only reestablish that pride they once had in their brand and their product, but also actually enable them to charge a premium where others are racing to the bottom to go to that cheapest price. So that’s what I really love digging my teeth into. but yeah, I mean, I’ll kind of go into the first tip that’s like staring me right in the face.

Jesse 00:03:30  it really has nothing to do with my book. It’s just my my part of my ethos as a as a designer. there was a study done, and we’ll see if anybody resonates with this, where they gave two groups of people a recipe to make cookies. And the only difference in that recipe card was they change the font to something a little less professional, like Comic Sans, and they found the people with the original font followed that recipe to a tee. They took tremendous pride in the instructions, and they made the cookies. Exactly. The second group, because the font was a little unprofessional, it kind of loosened their overall perception of the project and they didn’t follow the instructions exactly. Right. So having that professionalism and I know because I’ve ordered products from Amazon, you get the instruction cards and it’s broken English and it’s there’s so much to be said about presenting your brand in a professional way, sparing no expense, professional logo, professional copywriting that again, not anywhere in my book, but I find that fascinating that people will automatically create the value in their head just based on the presentation and the professionalism of the product and the presentation of it.

Josh 00:04:26  That’s a brilliant, case study there. And I think a fascinating study that was done. I tend to agree with that as well. So you’ve piqued my interest. Jesse, I’m super excited to hear how you’ve worked with other brands to help them reinvigorate and reignite that passion that they have about their products, when there was lesser competition, so to speak.

Jesse 00:04:45  Yeah, absolutely. So I focus on differentiation. I call it the commoditization. Right. So if you’re a commodity, no one can really tell the special, unique, special sauce anymore. They can’t tell the difference between one product and another. So you become commoditized. We specialize in commoditized products. And on my website, in my book, I go into great detail as a free download of something we call the universe of differentiation. And it’s important to know that differentiation is very different than your USP, your unique sales proposition. Right. They get they interchanged often, but it’s often incorrectly done. I say the difference between a USP and a differentiator.

Jesse 00:05:18  A differentiator is like a mic drop, right? If you successfully and meaningfully differentiate yourself, that’s your mic drop. No one can copy you. You know, if you your USP is, you know, we have the best products, the best customer service, the highest quality, a competitor to come in and say, yeah, we do that too. We use the same same ingredients, the same products, the same parts, etc. that mic drop moment is when you say, we do this and nobody else can touch us, right? So going briefly through the universe of differentiation, and I’m going to pull up my little cheat sheet here because it’s hard to remember all 12, but I’ll run through all 12 really quick. And then Josh, I’ll let you kind of pick, what piques your interest? Just just from gut instinct. So, number one, differentiate via definitive cause alignment, process. Timing, lifestyle niching down approachable distinction by product heritage. Reposition the category exclusivity and scarcity and differentiating via identity.

Jesse 00:06:11  So those are 1212 ways that brands throughout history, both large and small, have successfully differentiated themselves. And when people hear the word differentiate, they often think, you know, different can mean weird or odd. And that’s not the case within this universe of differentiation. You have brands like Tiffany, like Steinway pianos, brands that you would probably not associate with differentiation, but they’re successfully differentiated and they charge a premium in their industry. So we can go into any one of these that you may like with the mindset that, you know, you don’t have to wear crazy question mark suit and, you know, be the craziest guy in the room to successfully differentiate yourself.

Josh 00:06:42  Yeah. Jesse, I love this. I think it would be I think it would best serve the audience if we almost deep dive. I mean, we won’t be able to do a deep dive into every single one of the 12, but maybe do like a briefer overview for each of the 12. Maybe. Can we give like, a couple, like, brief ideas of, you know, hey, when I talk about process differentiation, this here’s some brief examples, because I think the listeners are going to be able to pick apart like this makes sense for my brand.

Josh 00:07:06  Absolutely. So let’s go through and maybe maybe approach it that way. Give me a couple examples, maybe a couple brands that highlight, you know, here’s some brands that use process differentiation or identity differentiation etc.. Sure, sure.

Jesse 00:07:16  So I’ll start with process because it’s one of my favorite stories. And then I’d like to go into your brand and maybe throw some workshop ideas for you and your and your wife, who’s the artist. And we’ll see if we can land on a differentiator for you as well. Love it. So process is basically how you do or how you end up with what you are selling, whether it be a product or service. If your process is unique, you should definitely bring it to the forefront. So my favorite example is there is a distilling company here in New York called sweet Amber distilling, and they wanted to differentiate their product. They had a whisky and the first thought was, hey, let’s get a celebrity to endorse the whiskey. But that’s like a USP. Anybody could do it.

Jesse 00:07:51  And you know, you’re back in the rat race. So what they did was they approached the band. Metallica and Metallica was of the same mindset. Yeah, we’d like to endorse a whiskey, but, you know, we just want to slap our name on the bottle. We want to we want to go deeper. So they actually came up with a pretty cool process where Metallica created a playlist. So you have white noise, Metallica created something called Black Noise. And again, I don’t know if this works, but it’s a great story. The story is their process is they have the whiskey aging in the barrels, and it’s constantly barraged with this black noise from Metallica. And the vibration vibrates the wood and the barrels, and you get that extra wooden flavor as it ages. Right. So overall, phenomenal story. It’s a process of how they do their thing and they have a celebrity endorsement. So creating that really quick story, it’s called blackened Whiskey after one of Metallica songs. it’s a story.

Jesse 00:08:35  You know, next time you pull up to the bar and if you’re a metallica fan or someone’s wearing a metallica shirt, you have to tell the story, right? So that’s a real quick here’s our process that nobody else has in an incredibly crowded space, right? The alcohol beverage space. There’s 17,000 new SKUs entering the market every single year. But they were able to create this unique process, create a story around it, and they’re off to the races. Hugely successful.

Josh 00:08:56  Man. All right Jesse I love this. All right I think we need to go through all 12 and give me just a brief example just like that, for each each of those because it’s already got my wheels turning here. So let’s start let’s start at the very beginning. And if you can give me like a great brand example, just like you shared with process, I think this will help us like double down on what it is that you’re preaching to us today.

Jesse 00:09:16  Sure, sure. So next up, we’ll pull another story that I really like.

Jesse 00:09:19  Heritage. Right. So everyone likes to lean on heritage. If you if you have heritage that no one else can copy, you should definitely lean on it as a differentiator. Perfect example. vodka, right. So for a while, everyone was saying our vodka is, you know, it’s the best out there. They made it look Russian. They made it sound Russian because the best vodka has come from Russia. Stoli, which is a Russian vodka, Barker said. A lot of a lot of vodkas. Look, Russian silly is Russian, right? So they leaned on their heritage. And my favorite story is everyone knows Ginsu knives, right? They slice, they dice, they drop tomatoes and choose. So when the creators of the Ginsu knife realized that Japanese knives have this cachet of high quality heritage tradition, their knives are made of Minnesota. But they decided to name the knife Ginsu to give that impression of heritage. So they didn’t have heritage, but they kind of hinted at it. So when you hear Ginsu, you think Japanese, you think quality.

Jesse 00:10:13  so that’s kind of a way they I don’t want to say illegally, but they use the differentiator to their advantage in creating their overall brand.

Josh 00:10:19  Beautiful example. Love that. All right. Keep it going. Jesse.

Jesse 00:10:23  Let me get my cheat sheet up here again. What else do we have? All right. So do we do a video version of this podcast or just audio.

Josh 00:10:30  Yeah yeah it’s video. So you’re welcome to share your screen too. This will be published on YouTube. So to our listeners, when Jesse shares something or or he’s got a really fun background. so if anybody’s watching this too. His background is ten times better than mine. You’ve got a great background, so check it out on YouTube Ecomm Breakthrough.

Jesse 00:10:46  So I was I was going to allude to my background. So I am a big collector. One of those collectors collections are action figures. Right. So years and years ago, before the term action figure existed, Hasbro bought the rights to a comic strip that really celebrated the American soldier.

Jesse 00:11:04  Right? So they started making figures of these, of these soldiers. But then they came into a problem. They realized that traditional American dads wouldn’t want their kid, their their male sons playing with dolls. Right. That’s that was the nomenclature back there. You had a you had a figure that was in the form of, of, you know, a toy. It was called a doll. So they had this issue. So they actually coined the term. And this, this is called repositioning the category. They coined the term action figure. And they went to market with GI Joes. So GI Joe was responsible for creating the term and the whole industry of action figures. So even though they’re creating a doll, right, they came up with a completely new way to present it to the market. So if you feel like your product, your service is just head and shoulders completely different or aimed at a completely different audience, you could successfully differentiate and pretty much own the market by quote unquote, repositioning the category like G.I. Joe.

Josh 00:11:53  I love that. So is it almost focused on like you’re almost serving like a niche audience when you’re when you’re doing that.

Jesse 00:11:59  It could be, it could be. Or you can just take, you know, an unappreciated portion of your business or your service and really exponentially does it lean into it and say, you know, you know, back in the day, there were computers and then there was Intel inside. What does that mean? Right. So it was it a computer or an Intel computer? so there’s there’s different ways that’ll resonate with different pieces of people of your audience. so that’s that’s something a little more technical, a little more deeper, but a super interesting story.

Josh 00:12:25  Yeah. Love that. All right, Jesse, keep it going.

Jesse 00:12:27  All right, so we did heritage. We did repositioning the story, the category exclusivity and scarcity. Right. So I tell a story in my book about how I came very close to building a website for the Mafia. I did not know at the time, but long story short, I had a client that sold hair products, shampoos, conditioners, etc. and I walk into this meeting and there are these two gruff guys and they’re talking about how they can get these high end hair products, and they have a special laser that can remove these serial numbers that are actually inside the bottle without opening the bottle.

Jesse 00:12:57  So it went a little deeper, and I realized that these high end hair product companies actually track each of their products through a serial number printed on inside the bottle. And they only give these specific products to high end hair salons. And if that particular product ended up in a Walmart or on eBay, they would be able to reverse engineer and figure out who they gave that product to and say, you know, we want this only sold in your salon. Seeing our brand on the shelves of Walmart actually damages our brand, and it makes us have to reduce our pricing. So they came up with a way to kind of circumvent that. So in a way, creating that exclusivity, that scarcity, that you can only get these products in a high end salon. It may be the same crap that’s in the bottle at Walmart, but that perception, seeing it on that, that that shelf in your salon, the top shelf actually enables you to charge a premium. So creating almost, I want to say an artificial scarcity or an artificial exclusivity could be another way to successfully differentiate your brand.

Josh 00:13:46  What. So I’m going to put you on the spot here. How would you say you could do that if you have a brand that’s on Amazon. Right. and I’ve actually got an idea in the back of my mind, but I’m interested to hear your thoughts here.

Jesse 00:13:57  So tapping back into my my wide collection, it’s very, very popular. I don’t know if this is I don’t know if this is possible on Amazon, but a lot of independent artists, a lot of even even bigger companies like Hot Wheels, they’ll do like a random drop or a specified time and drop and say, we’re dropping this car, we’re dropping this post or this piece of art Tuesday at 12:00 Eastern Standard Time. Here’s the link. Get it while you can, and there’s a limited number available. And that creates a frenzy. I mean, Nike does it, right. You see people on social media, they post a little graphic. I got mine right. So you create this, this buying frenzy by creating the scarcity.

Jesse 00:14:29  And I don’t know if the the Amazon model accommodates for that. You know really short sales, really high frequency, high volume sales in a short amount of time. But that’s what I’ve become accustomed to. In my world, someone’s coming out with something cool I gotta like, I gotta be on my computer, hitting the refresh button every every two seconds and trying to battle everyone to the shopping cart and the checkout process. So that’s what I’ve become accustomed to in the scarcity model. but yeah, I mean, what’s what’s your idea?

Josh 00:14:49  Yeah, I like that. So it’s basically piggyback piggybacking off of that same idea. We’ve talked about a lot of people wanting to add like get more sales off of Amazon. And so my encouragement would be you could come out with a exclusive designed product, or it might just be like a different color that’s not available on Amazon. Right. And so I think that that exclusivity that’s like, guys, this is our, you know, partner, you know like I like the Metallica.

Josh 00:15:14  You could partner multiple of these differentiating factors. It’s like the Metallica version of our you know wine bottle opener is only available. We only we only have 1000 units. And it’s first come, first serve. And we’re dropping it on this date because then it creates that flywheel and you’re, you’re generating. I think the way that I would encourage people to see Amazon is like, that’s where people learn about your brand first and they get introduced to your brand, and then it’s your responsibility to be able to educate them and get them to fall in love with your brand through off Amazon remarketing, through meta ads, through TikTok ads, to get people to come to your website where you’re going to have the most profitable sales, where you can differentiate yourself with these product drops. I see this happen a lot with a lot of other brands in our space, specifically that have raving Facebook groups that just love the designs of their products, and when they drop something, it will sell out really quickly. And so a really good example of this.

Josh 00:16:09  So Caden Lane is a really good one that does that does kind of like these limited time drops. It’ll come back to me. But it’s a pajama brand and they do partnerships with specific licenses. So they’ll go get like a Disney license and they’ll drop like a, a Bluey or a Mickey mouse like version of their pajamas, and they sell out. And they’re not even offering this on Amazon, but they do have other SKUs available on Amazon. And so you’ve got a couple different options. So anyways, I guess anything else that you would add to those thoughts?

Jesse 00:16:37  yeah. I mean, it’s as you’re speaking, I’m thinking maybe it’s kind of a backhanded technique, but maybe the exclusivity and scarcity is the anti Amazon. Right. So you have your product with your variations. And then that one variation like you said unavailable on Amazon. And they need to go out and find where it’s available. And that gives you the opportunity to to grow your brand in that connection even further.

Josh 00:16:56  Yeah. Love it.

Josh 00:16:58  All right, Jesse, let’s move into another differentiating factor.

Jesse 00:17:00  All right. Next one’s an easy one. Identity. Right. Differentiate yourself through identity. So you can have a thousand bubble baths. And then you have Mister Bubble. Right. So giving your brand an actual identity, you can have vegetables and you can have Green Giant. Right. So giving giving your brand an identity lets people gives them the opportunity to connect. Even though it’s a made up character, it gives them the ability to connect with that identity. so I know, you know, Mr. Bubble is is more appealing to me. I don’t buy bubble bath, but it’s iconic at this point. It’s appealing. and judging by my background, I just love I love a character. So that would cause me to actually pay a little bit of a premium for a bubble bath compared to some no name brand that, you know, who knows where it came from?

Josh 00:17:39  How would you recommend, you know, somebody start with that. What if you were you’re coming to the market.

Josh 00:17:43  Brand new brand. You know, I know that’s not necessarily where you specialize, but Mr. Bubbles is definitely more iconic. Right. And you think of like, the Brawny Man. You know, we’ve all seen these TV ads over and over and over again for decades. That makes it like more appealing, obviously. So what how do you recommend if you’re like, I’m reinventing and I’m creating an identity that nobody’s ever really seen before. Any thoughts or ideas there?

Jesse 00:18:02  Yeah. So we have we have the perfect exercise. And this should be done by everyone, not just someone looking for, an identity. So what we do is we give homework to our clients, we give them about a week to think about it, and they come back, and they’re usually wrong. But it’s a good it’s usually a good jumping off point. So we say if you could have a spokesperson, a dream spokesperson, do not consider money as an option. So don’t pick the rock because he has a million followers. The dream spokesperson that would speak not only have access to your audience, but speak their language, know exactly what they need, vibe with them, right? So start with your dream, dream, dream alive.

Jesse 00:18:35  Dead from a book, from a TV show. Doesn’t matter. But who is that dream voice for your product? And then from there, there’s other steps that we go down and we use adjectives to decide, you know, describe that person down, down, down, down, down the list. And then as you get further down the list, you have this kind of unique identity that it should sound like, it should look like it should speak to the pains. And if you’re not even considering identity, all of your social media, all of your email, all your all of your outbound messaging should run through this test of does it sound authentic coming out of that person’s mouth? Right. So if you’re, you know, a green, eco friendly brand and you choose, you know, a stereotypical like brawny, you know, lumberjack, right? Probably not going to match, not going to sound authentic coming out of his mouth. So I think that’s a great exercise, a thought, thought experiment to anyone considering building a brand and then exponentially using it on social media, TV, etc..

Jesse 00:19:24  That voice should be consistent throughout all your messaging. It’s hard to find that voice.

Josh 00:19:29  Yeah, great. Great tip. All right, Jesse, let’s keep going.

Jesse 00:19:32  All right.

Jesse 00:19:33  Put me through the ringer here. Let’s see, what’s another one? Approachable distinction. So this is this is my my favorite. And this is where you typically can have fun, be comedic. You know, where where the crazy clothes. But we find with specific industries, the SaaS industry, you know, high end cars. you know, let’s use the SAS industry, right? So people usually only use 10% of a piece of software that they pay for, right? The other 90% is just too much to comprehend. So we find that when people are searching or shopping for these particular products, they are intimidated. They don’t know what questions to ask because rightfully so. It’s complicated. Right? So if you’re constantly out there saying benefits and features, features and benefits, here’s why you should use us. It’s it’s very complicated.

Jesse 00:20:17  Or even using the iPod. Right before iPods came around, it was an need an MP3 player. How much storage does it have? What’s the megahertz? What does it sound like? Like all these technical things. And Apple knew that. And they just said, all right, we’re going to wrap it in plastic. We’re going to give it a shiny color. And this is your MP3 player. You don’t need to know anything technical. We made it approachable. Right. So SAS companies that are feature benefit, feature benefit, feature benefit, cost savings they need to consider, hey, how do I make this more approachable than the, you know, the CPA website? That’s all numbers, all technical. Look I’m intimidated. I want to work with someone that’s fun. Someone I can talk to, someone that understands me. So I think approachable distinction is probably the biggest differentiator that most people, most brands out there can grab onto. Because, you know, in the marketing industry, most of my clients don’t understand marketing.

Jesse 00:21:00  So how are they going to choose? They probably going to choose the lowest price. But if you give it something that’s a little bit more approachable, you know, we talk about we get the best CPMs, we get the best CPAs, the best keywords, SEO results through the roof. That’s too intimidating. I don’t want to enter that conversation because I feel stupid. Make it more approachable, approachable. Distinction. Differentiate yourself with approachability.

Josh 00:21:17  I love that. Okay, Jesse. So next question here is I’m going to put you on the spot again. How? Out of these 12 that you’ve listed, what would you say are like the top 2 or 3 that you think would like highly resonate with, like an e-commerce brand that is selling on Shopify or on Amazon that you think or that you’ve seen with your clients, like, guys, this these are the if I were to only choose 2 or 3 levers to pull to create a moat around my brand through marketing, these would be the ways I would do it.

Josh 00:21:45  Any any leads or insights there? Sure.

Jesse 00:21:48  I mean, every single brand is different, which is why we created the universe of differentiation. but using your your designs as an example. I never met your never met your wife who told me what she does, and she’s an artist. so it immediately, as a fellow artist, I wanted to hear her process. I wanted to hear her heritage. You know how she comes to the designs? Why? She’s an artist. What these designs mean to her? I’ve never seen her products, but I think that could, you know, completely separate. Is she a mom running a business? How does being a mom affect her designs? You know, things like that that people can automatically, you know, grab on to. So I think that story for you heritage maybe niching down if she’s creating a lifestyle brand, you know, in the future. I know we’re starting with stationery, but could this be leveraged into an entire lifestyle brand? but I immediately maybe because I’m an artist, I wanted to know more about why.

Jesse 00:22:35  Why these? Why the stationery? Why should I pick this design versus a cheap knockoff? Does it have. You know, I’m choosing stationery. It’s a special. It’s a special item. It’s not just, you know, a commodity. It has a design on it that means something. I’m going to buy it because it resonated with me. It means something. Let’s go deeper. Why does it resonate with me? Who made it, why did they make it, etc., etc.. So I think there’s I think there’s opportunity there, especially for the smaller brands or small business owners. Everyone’s, you know, shop small, yada yada yada. They have that sentiment. Tell me why? Why should I shop small with you as opposed to a bigger, more established manufacturer?

Josh 00:23:05  So let’s let’s go down that rabbit hole and use our brand as a as a case study then. So why don’t you ask me the questions you would ask a client and I’ll, I’ll kind of give you more details. You know, my wife has just been a She has loved art since the day she was born.

Josh 00:23:18  She was one of those kids that was just naturally gifted at art, and she would win greeting card contests. She would always, she entered various contests through the community or even like one of her greeting cards she submitted for like a big brand or something back in the day, like, actually got published and went, you know, National, like when I can’t remember what age she was. But she was young and so like, she has always excelled there. her story is that she went to college and everybody’s like, oh, you don’t want to major in art? Like, what a waste of time. There’s no money in art. Why don’t you go and be a doctor? Right. So she’s like, went down the doctor path for a hot minute and she’s like, yeah, no, that’s not it. Then she went down like the business route for a minute and then she’s like, I don’t know that. That’s it. Then she ended up doing her degree in early childhood education. But as soon as we graduated college together, she was like, hey, you’ve got a full time job.

Josh 00:24:02  Do you mind if I just explore this graphic design stuff? Because I’ve always loved it, but I’ve never learned it. It’s like, sure, go do your thing. That then, you know. She then started doing, like, wedding invitations for some of her friends and designed those wedding invitations. Then those friends were like, you’re amazing at what you do. I’m referring you to this friend that’s getting married, right? So we started this wedding invitation business. Then that transition to, hey, we got to stop doing custom one off jobs with people. Like, is there a way that we could, like, mass produce something? And so that’s when we started getting into, you know, stationery all the way from calendars to party invitations. And what we’ve learned over time is the one thing that customers, if you look at all of our reviews, the one thing that people will say over and over and over again is, this is super cute. This is super adorable. I’ve never seen anything this cute.

Josh 00:24:46  Any of like our influencers that are posting about our products. They’re like, guys, you got to take a look at everything she has to offer because everything is just adorable, right? She is a mom, fourth child. so four children. and she’s she does it all right. Running a business, designing, raising a family. so there’s kind of the details from my side. Now, I’m interested to hear you kind of pick things apart. And how would you piece these together?

Jesse 00:25:11  Yeah. So obviously, you know, this is very, very top of mind, very off the cuff. We probably go a little bit deeper. But everything everything you told me, I probably probably half a dozen differentiators that I could lean into, things that I could really sink my teeth into. but one of the things that a lot of people forgo when they’re, when they’re differentiating themselves is they don’t go all in. So one of the one of the differentiators we didn’t get to is cause alignment, right? It’s the flavor of the month.

Jesse 00:25:36  Now, every big brand aligns themselves with the charity. And, you know, are they differentiated if they give 5% to the save the Whales? Absolutely not. What makes a brand truly differentiated by aligning with a cause is that they lean into it completely. You know, it becomes their DNA. Tom shoes. You buy a pair of shoes, they donate a pair to someone underprivileged. Ben and Jerry’s, right. That’s synonymous with, you know, cause alignment, right? You buy their buy their ice cream, and you’re you’re buying into a cause. So something that I would recommend and I’m going to give you a couple examples, is you don’t want to you don’t want to flirt with the idea. You want to make it part of your brand. So something I love, you know, I have a mental picture of your of your demographic may not be correct. Based on the data I have, I’m making assumptions. But you know the people that would buy extremely adorable, as you say, stationary.

Jesse 00:26:20  There may be a flip side, right? So everyone, everyone loves the trailblazer. Everybody feels like they’re you know, I think a lot of people have a an outsider or a supervillain side to them that they keep hidden. Right? So the fact that your wife always had this passion and people said, you know, go to medical school, don’t do art, it’s stupid. I walk the same path. The fact that she decided to you know what? I’m going to go all in on my passion, screw with the other people, say I’m going to be a trailblazer. You know, I think that could lead to an entirely, you know, self-contained lifestyle brand where, yeah, you know what? I’m the person that would buy extremely adorable stationery. You know, I don’t know a lot of people that buy stationery. But you know what? I’m still a badass. I’m still, you know, so I can have a kitten. That’s a secret badass, right? So kind of ingrain that super villain, that that trailblazer mentality with the overall cuteness.

Jesse 00:27:06  Just a thought. That’s something I would do if this was my company. You know, I probably need more information about your demographic, but, yeah, I mean, heritage, you know, most people, you know, we’ve been doing stationery since 1911, right? Maybe something like, you know, heritage stationery since eight years old or something like that. Like, yeah, your wife is the artist and she’s been doing it forever. And you can kind of leverage that story. And when I’m looking at it done correctly, compared to a knockoff, you know what? I resonate with this person. I get it. They did. They did something against the grain. They’ve been doing it forever, mother running a business. Whatever resonates with that audience, I think you can lean into, and kind of bring it into your brand DNA.

Josh 00:27:40  So really focus on, you know, maybe even, like, meet the artist, right? I’m thinking, like one of our secondary images on Amazon is almost like, Meet the Artist.

Josh 00:27:49  And here’s a little blurb about her background. Right. Would that be something you would double down on?

Jesse 00:27:53  Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I mean, look, I’m assuming your wife is very personable and, you know, that picture, you know, speaks a thousand words. Some people are not. They think they are. And they get on camera and it’s like I no one’s ever going to resonate with you. So, you know, you leverage, you leverage your strengths and you hide your weaknesses. So, if you think that’s something that would resonate. Absolutely. You know, I know Amazon has videos as well. So quick 30s story. I think that could that could greatly set you aside from the knockoffs.

Josh 00:28:18  Love that. Man, this this has been a lot of fun. Jesse. what else would you, What else have we not touched on that you think our audience needs to hear to help differentiate themselves?

Jesse 00:28:28  Yeah. So, you know, I, I came out with a book called marketing for supervillains, and everybody asks, you know, what the hell is it? Is it a joke book? Is it a comedy book? But the the supervillain marketing mindset really came from, I think what a lot of your listeners were experiencing came from my 25 years of agency experience, where I needed to start stacking the deck in my favor, right.

Jesse 00:28:45  So I had a client come to me, you know, hey, we sell business phone systems, and we want you to put us on social media. That’s going to fix everything, right? No thought as to, you know, the tool, why we’re using the tool. So I would immediately go down the path of okay, why should I follow you on social media? Are you the business phone system for agencies? Are you the approachable phone system? Do you have a celebrity endorsement. I’m not going to put you on social media with the same boring crap, and six months later, you’re gonna get mad at me because your idea didn’t work, right? So I was always stacking the deck in my favor. I’m not going to take you on as a client unless we differentiate. We have something to talk about. A reason to have people follow us. So that’s kind of where the the super villain mentality came from. A lot of people, when they’re entering the market, they look at the big guys and they say, I want to, I want to look like them.

Jesse 00:29:26  I want to talk like them. And you know what? I’m going to do everything they do. I’m going to try to SEO them. I’m going to try and do more social media than them. And typically the big brands like superheroes, they’ve got great public favor, they’ve got big muscles, which in marketing equates to big budgets. And for someone new entering the market that’s under-resourced, going head to head and doing what they do, it’s a recipe for disaster. So you specifically need to do everything they’re not doing. Find your niche. Find your whole find your strategy where you can start chipping away at their market share. And before they know it, now you’re the big guy and they’re they’re the underdog. So a lot of underdog mentality in the book. So if you feel like at all you’re an underdog. You’re trying to chip, chip, chip away or you felt like you had a leadership position and someone came and stole it from you. You want to get it back? This book might be for you.

Josh 00:30:06  Beautiful. Love this. I think you’ve, piqued too many people’s interest on this.

Jesse 00:30:10  I hope so.

Josh 00:30:11  So, Jesse, as we wrap up this episode, I love to leave the audience with three actionable takeaways. Here are three that I noted. You let me know if I’m missing something. But number one, I think you need to actually lean in if you’re not truly creating a brand. At this point, you were behind the eight ball, right? Because if you do not have a brand and you’re just coming up with, you know, I’m slapping a private label on top of another commodity product that’s only going to get you so far, and you’re going to be constantly in the rat race of, you know, a race to the bottom. And my belief on Amazon over the next 5 to 10 years, it’s going to be the people that double down on their brand and could actually drive traffic off of Amazon in order to keep that Amazon flywheel going. And so it’s not going to be sufficient just relying on Amazon traffic and, you know, the cheapest price that will allow you to win.

Josh 00:30:56  So that’s action item number one. If you don’t have a brand lean into a brand action. Item number two is if you have a brand but a lot of these, you feel like maybe we haven’t done a good enough job being professional with our brand, because I love the study that you shared at the very beginning, right with the recipe card. If it’s a well written recipe card, it looks professional. Then people are going to treat the whole recipe and cooking process professionally. So if you feel like you know you had some guy on Fiverr, put together your logo logo, some guy on Fiverr did your slogan, some guy on Fiverr is doing your A+ brand story content on Amazon. You’re going to have a lot of disjointed assets, right? And so the more you can really clean that up and again, double down on some of the brands that are the most professional, which I’ll kind of pause on this know and ask you, Jesse, like, are there any brands that you would encourage people to really emulate that you feel like it’s really done a good job piecing their brand together professionally?

Jesse 00:31:46  That’s a good question.

Jesse 00:31:47  So I, I tend to follow more of the off brands. so I don’t have like, not like a brand loyalist with the big brands. But I mean, there are so many big brands out there that, you know, do the job well, you know, you could look at Tiffany’s. so I usually struggle to come up with the big mainstream brand names, but, Yeah, I mean, look, look at the big the big names in your in your industry, but don’t don’t try to act like them. You can try to maybe look like them and sound like them as far as their, their messaging goes. Make sure everything’s professional. But take that strategy and then completely flip the script on them.

Josh 00:32:18  Yeah, I think that. So here’s two that I would recommend that have done a really good job with their branding. So Doctor Squatch is a really good example of kind of, I would say an off beat and brand. They’re definitely rising though. And then Magic Spoon, another brand that does a really good job with their branding from their DTC site to what you see on their Amazon listings.

Josh 00:32:34  So I think doubling down on that and creating that cohesive experience, that’s action item number two. And then last but not least, action item number three is then being able to double down on 12 of those different differentiating factors that Jesse laid out. So take one of those. We went through identity exclusivity your process approachable distinction your your course alignment. and choose something that’s going to set yourself apart that overseas competitors cannot replicate. And when you do that, you’ll be able to edge out the competition. You’ll actually have people that want to follow your brand, that want to stay loyal to your brand and will be excited for your products when they come out. So. Jesse, did I misspeak? Anything else that you would add here that I didn’t know?

Jesse 00:33:13  I mean, the universe of differentiation is a big, big thing to bite off. So if you go to my website commoditize.com, you can download a PDF version. Each planet has a number of examples, so we can get you off to the races if you want to do some exercises on your own.

Jesse 00:33:26  So that’s a handy little freebie. You can also download the first few chapters of my book absolutely free. So commoditized.com.

Josh 00:33:32  Excellent. All right, Jesse, I’d love to ask each guest the following three questions. So we’ll start from the top. Number one. What’s been the most influential ebook that you’ve read and why?

Jesse 00:33:40  Most influential book I got to choose one. So I would say, and I don’t know if this is going to be relevant to your listeners, but there’s a phenomenal book called The Win Without Pitching Manifesto, and it’s just basically one of my favorite quotes about business. And it could be for e-commerce as well. Business is the polite battle for control. So if you’re going to someone and you say, hey, Josh, I got this, I got this phone, I think you’re going to like it. Would you buy it versus me having this amazing phone and you coming to me and saying, Jesse, I heard about this phone. I’d really like to hear more about it. Can I buy it? Those are two incredibly huge dynamic shifts in power.

Jesse 00:34:11  One, I have no power. And number two, I have all the power in the world because you’re coming to me. So the win without breaching manifesto basically puts you in that mindset and gets you to literally not have to pitch anymore. Create your brand, create your business, create your product in such a way that people come to you and they say, hey, you know, I want you to. I want you to pitch next to this guy, I don’t pitch. Here’s what I do. You read my book, you saw my products. We stand head and shoulders above the best, above the rest. So definitely a good a strong piece of my foundation, of my thinking.

Josh 00:34:38  What’s, what’s the biggest golden nugget, in regards to that? How do you make people want to come to you versus you happen to pitch people? What would.

Jesse 00:34:44  You say?

Jesse 00:34:45  So in that book, they lean on something similar called positioning. Right. Your brand position. How does your brand sound? You know, what your unique your unique selling challenge proposition.

Jesse 00:34:53  What’s your specialization? Right. So you’re not a. You’re not a marketer or you’re not a you’re not a stationary person. We sell stationary to people that appreciate cute art, but behind the scenes they’re trailblazers. Or, you know, they they appreciate cute, but they walk to the beat of their own drum or whatever, like figuring out that positioning and, you know, important with positioning and even differentiation. It’s a it’s a huge mindset switch and mindset. Right. So most people are out there saying, how do I appeal to more people? I need a bigger audience. I need more customers. I want to be more appealing. Successful positioning and differentiation is a reductive process. So it’s very difficult to wrap your head around. But you want to start saying, all right, these people aren’t for me, these people aren’t for me. And just keep reducing your audience until you find that really strong differentiator or brand position that will resonate with a select few.

Josh 00:35:37  I think that’s really good words of wisdom right there.

Josh 00:35:39  I think especially for people that come to, you know, that start their business on Amazon, the initial mindset is like, I want to appeal to as many people as I possibly can, and I do think that the niches are actually in the the riches are in the niches where if you actually speak to a customer, right. I love, again, going back to the example of Doctor Squatch. Who is it that they’re targeting? They’re not targeting females with their sense right now. It’s men that don’t want the, you know, the girly soap that don’t want to smell like a tangerine on their way out the door. Right? It’s like, hey.

Jesse 00:36:06  They just did a Fight Club licensing deal. Oh, they almost got me to buy it. But yeah, it’s it’s it’s aimed at me. They they they targeted me. Perfect. They created a product that’s perfect. So yeah, they’re doing a great job.

Josh 00:36:16  Awesome. All right. Question number two. What’s your favorite AI tool that you’ve been using and why.

Jesse 00:36:20  So favorite AI tool I I’m actually on a task force for a consulting gig that I have, where I use almost every AI tool that comes out as it comes out. And there’s a lot of stuff that I use. They’re gimmicks and they’re fun, right? So I come to a meeting and I bring these tools up and everyone’s like, oh, that’s hilarious. I want to try it. I gotta, gotta, gotta. But the tried and true is Midjourney, right? So I use Midjourney every single day. It’s integrated into my workflow both professionally and, you know, personally I not only collect toys, but I enjoy making toys that should exist. Right? So slightly deranged at times, but occasionally I’ll make toys. And in recent case studies, I’ve had Midjourney create an image of a character, and then I was like, that’s so cool. I’ll use that for the packaging, and I’ll sculpt the toy. And it’s just a one off thing, a piece of art. but yeah, I’m taking, you know, from the 2D realm very much into the 3D world.

Jesse 00:37:08  and it’s just been a really fun tool for iteration and ideation. So Midjourney gets gets the daily thumbs up.

Jesse 00:37:15  Yes.

Josh 00:37:16  So I’ll ask you this question then on Midjourney. Any specific prompts or tips that you would recommend to actually get what you want out of Midjourney?

Jesse 00:37:24  yeah. I mean, that’s the number one question people tell me. You know, put things in quotes. be as descriptive as possible. Just just work with it. Have fun with it. There’s no real science yet to prompt engineering that I know of. It’s all. It’s kind of like SEO. Everyone has a tip. You know, I got to do this. I got to do this. But there’s no text yet, so everyone’s just going off of hearsay. So. Yeah, just I mean, it’s it’s for most people, free or very cheap. Go crazy idea. Refresh remix. Keep doing it.

Josh 00:37:49  Awesome. All right, final question. Who is somebody that you admire or respect the most in the e-commerce space that other people should be following and why?

Jesse 00:37:55  So I was thinking I was thinking about this question since I got your script and, you know, I don’t really have a if you want to say, a identity or a personality in the e-commerce space that I regularly follow.

Jesse 00:38:05  However, I do have a couple of clients that are emerging TikTok shop owners, which is a brand new medium, which I’m fascinated with. So if it wouldn’t be hedging my bets and I could say I’d like, I admire, and I’m watching emerging TikTok shop owners, that would be my answer.

Josh 00:38:22  Awesome. Love that. Yep, I agree, TikTok shop. Definitely a disruptor. Jesse, this has been a lot of fun. If people want to learn more about you, they want to pick up your book. Where’s the best place people can follow you and learn more?

Jesse 00:38:32  So they shouldn’t have too much, too much trouble finding the book. It’s on Amazon. Marketing for supervillains. my website is d commoditized.com and my socials are marketing super villain on all socials.

Josh 00:38:42  Awesome. Well, Jesse, thanks again for your time today and joining the podcast.

Jesse 00:38:45  Thanks for having me. It’s a great time.