Houseplant: B2B Marketing Lessons from Seth Rogen’s Brand with Director of Brand Marketing at Mailchimp, Greg Shumchenia
What do you need to do to make your brand famous?
You know how you could say “Seth Rogen” and people could easily recall that he’s an actor, they know he’s funny and associate him with Freaks and Geeks or Pineapple Express, for example?
Well, with that same amount of ease, you want people to know who you are, what you do and to make positive associations with your brand name.
How do you do it? That’s one of the things we’re talking about today.
In this episode, we’re learning about aiming for brand fame by looking at Seth Rogen’s brand, Houseplant.
With the help of our special guest, Director of Brand Marketing at Mailchimp, Greg Shumchenia, we talk about aiming for fame, using feeling, and practicing fluency.
About our guest, Greg Shumchenia
Greg Shumchenia is Director of Brand Marketing at Mailchimp. He has over 16 years of experience as a brand marketer, strategist, and category planner. He joined Mailchimp in 2021 after a distinguished career at ad agencies like Fitzco and Dentsu Creative, where he helped shape brands like Coca-Cola, Microsoft, New Balance, Hidden Valley Ranch, and Harry’s. He writes professionally about brand strategy, specifically around the idea of using brands as a point of difference by making them unforgettable, and he cares a lot about a well-crafted brief. He’s been named to the AdAge A-List twice, once at Mailchimp as their in-house agency of the year and once at NAIL Communications as their small agency of the year. He has won awards for marketing effectiveness and for advertising creativity. He has B2C, B2B, and DTC experience. He has also worked across a lot of categories including CPG, SaaS, tech, retail, QSR, healthcare, finance, and nonprofit. Greg is based in San Francisco, so when he’s not thinking and writing about brands, he’s usually hiking, surfing, or exploring the inside of a good winery.
What B2B Companies Can Learn FromHouseplant:
- Chase fame. Aim to be a brand that comes to mind easily and is brought up in conversation. Greg says, “I think fame is one of those words that's kind of synonymous with awareness, but it's more than that. Like, I know Taylor Swift is famous because I know I can bring her up on this call and you know who she is. Fame is trying to achieve that level of talk value, shareability, just call it cultural relevance if you want.” He says, “[Houseplant doesn’t] just speak to the small audience of marijuana smokers. They talk to a wider audience of people who appreciate beautiful design and objects. They're speaking to an entire category, and they do it with really bold and beautiful, distinct marketing. That's one of the best ways to build mental availability. You do it with a big group, and all of that drives growth.”
- Use feeling. Be expressive and get your audience to feel something through your content and branding. Greg says, “You can think of that one as emotion too. Houseplant uses emotion in a lot of different places, from the design of their products, you know Seth is pouring his own self into them. So you can kind of feel that emotion in the products and the design themselves. But also in the stories they tell. People remember feelings more than facts and figures. So if you're trying to build an unforgettable brand, feelings are one of the best ways to do it. You attach a feeling to a memory and people are going to recall that better than a functional message.”
- Practice fluency. Know your brand so well that the words to express what you do and what you stand for come easily. Then communicate that to your audience. Greg says, “[Houseplant] certainly practices fluency in every sense of the word. A distinct yet simple brand, it's easy to understand. It makes them easy to identify and to find. The two biggest things a brand needs to do is be remembered and be easy to buy. And fluency helps you be easy to buy. Fluency in your distinct brand assets and your look and feel is something Houseplant does super tight.”
Quotes
*”From a purely functional perspective, [Seth Rogen is] trying to make the whole smoking experience a Houseplant experience. You can buy the actual flower, you can buy the rolling papers or the pipe or the device that you smoke out of, the ashtray, the matches, the record that you put on that you listen to while you smoke. I think he even sells a chair you can sit in while you smoke. That’s vertical integration. That’s what Seth is doing with Houseplant. He's like, ‘We are going to sell you everything in the smoking vertical. Absolutely everything from the chair to the flower, like just everything.’ It's kind of cool from a business perspective.”
*”95 percent of buyers in a category are out of market at any given time, meaning you're not ready to buy. And 90 percent of B2B buyers are buying off their day-one shortlist. So when they do go into market, that's that 5 percent of the category. 90 percent already have a list in mind. Like you do that [math,] 10 percent of 5%, you're talking to half a percent of the category. You're competing for half a percent of the category if you're not on that day-one short list. So yeah, that's our content strategy to get on that day-one short list when buyers enter the market. So it's too late when they've been triggered and they start shopping. So we are talking to them beforehand.”
*”It's scary to say, ‘We're going to talk to people who aren't interested in buying our product.’ It's scary to say, ‘We're okay with this taking a long time.’ It's scary to say, like, ‘We're going to talk to people who aren't going to be in the market for the next three to five years, and when they are, it might take them six to nine months for that buying process to work out.’”
*”Reframing a challenge for people gives them a real sense that you can help.”
*”If I had three tennis balls and I threw them to you one at a time, you're very likely to catch every one of them. If I throw all three of them at you at once, you probably won't catch any of them. So just one at a time, one message at a time in one spot, in one ad, whatever you're creating. The more you say, the less people remember. So keep it simple.”
*”When we talk about, ‘People not ready to buy,’ how do you reach those people? This is one of the ways: you entertain them, but also sneak in a little bit of a lesson here or there.”
*”It's a tough battle sometimes, but I think, you know, we also have a great collection because we've been doing it for a while. We've been persevering and like, you know, you're not going to strike gold or the magic's not going to happen after one podcast. It's going to take a while.”
Time Stamps
[0:55] Meet Greg Shumchenia, Director of Brand Marketing at Mailchimp
[1:29] The Story Behind Houseplant
[3:25] Houseplant's Unique Products and Philosophy
[5:40] Houseplant's Social Impact and Seth Rogen's Involvement
[10:09] Marketing Takeaways from Houseplant
[22:31] Transition to MailChimp Discussion
[26:16] Marketing Before the Sale: The Challenge
[27:03] The Importance of Building Marketing Channels
[29:09] Understanding Your Audience
[30:17] Reframing Marketing Challenges
[33:09] The Value of Singular Messaging
[34:56] Highlighting Successful Content: The Science of Loyalty
[37:02] Leveraging Intuit's Customer Base
[38:52] Measuring ROI in Marketing
[39:51] Upcoming MailChimp Podcasts
[43:58] The Power of Original Content
[50:47] Final Thoughts on Simplification in Marketing
Links
About Remarkable!
Remarkable! is created by the team at Caspian Studios, the premier B2B Podcast-as-a-Service company. Caspian creates both nonfiction and fiction series for B2B companies. If you want a fiction series check out our new offering - The Business Thriller - Hollywood style storytelling for B2B. Learn more at CaspianStudios.com.
In today’s episode, you heard from Ian Faison (CEO of Caspian Studios) and Meredith Gooderham (Senior Producer). Remarkable was produced this week by Meredith Gooderham, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK.
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