Guerrilla Marketing Lessons for Manufacturing MarketersGuerrilla Marketing Lessons for Manufacturing Marketers

Guerrilla Marketing Lessons for Manufacturing Marketers Transcript:

Jeff White: Welcome to The Kula Ring, a podcast for manufacturing marketers brought to you by Kula Partners. My name is Jeff White and joining me today is Carman Pirie. Carman, how are you doing sir? 

Carman Pirie: Doing well. Happy to be recording today’s show. 

Jeff White: Yeah, me too. It’s an interesting topic, something you have a bit of experience…

Carman Pirie: How? 

Jeff White: Oh, I wanna bring back the landlord Lou!

Carman Pirie: aha 

Jeff White: Guerilla marketing idea, putting kitchen sink plungers in coffee shops throughout Atlantic Canada with URLs written on them.

Carman Pirie: That’s fair. That’s fair. That was… 

Jeff White: pretty guerilla. 

Carman Pirie: Yeah. Yeah, that’s true. I appreciate the reminder of that actually. 

Jeff White: And early days of the internet. 

Carman Pirie: Indeed. Indeed. Yeah, a pro tip; If you put a full size plunger under a coffee table, people will scream because of course they think it was gross and formally in a toilet. But if you put one of those small little ones that are like designed for a sink, but nobody’s ever used once in their life, nobody ever assumes it was used before. And they all actually just go to the URL that’s painted on the handle 

Jeff White: and then trade them and try and win the big prize. 

Carman Pirie: Yeah. 

Jeff White: Yeah.

Carman Pirie: But that’s not what we’re here to talk about. I must say, I do find, like I’ve really appreciated on the show when we’ve been able to bring guests on, that they bring a unique marketing background to the business of manufacturing and industrial marketing and therefore they just tackle it in a different way. Think about it a different way. They exceed in a different way. And that’s why I’m excited for today’s show. 

Jeff White: Me as well. So joining us today is Michael Garza. Michael is a Marketing Specialist at Sanyo Denki America. Welcome to The Kula Ring, Michael. 

Michael Garza: Thank you guys. Thank you guys for having me. 

Carman Pirie: Michael, it is awesome to have you on the show. When was the last time you used a plunger in a campaign? 

Michael Garza: You know what, I would say about a couple years ago we did some plungers for some giveaways at a trade show. They were actually meant for like the pop sockets you have at the back of your phone, so you can hold onto your phone a little bit better. So it was kinda like a two-in-one giveaway. 

Jeff White: Michael, this is not the response I expected. I expected, no, that’s insane. Why would I ever use a plunger? But it went the other way. This is amazing. 

Carman Pirie: Yeah. Look, and we’re only a couple minutes in. It’s only bound to get better from here.

Michael, why don’t we start with you telling us a little bit about the company if you would, Sanyo Denki? What do y’all do there? Give us a bit of a quick corporate introduction if you would. 

Michael Garza: Yeah, so Sanyo Denki is a hundred year old Japanese company. We have three business lines dealing with UPS, which is uninterrupted power systems fans and servo motors and stepper motors.

So we’ve been doing that in America for the past 30 years. We just had our 30th anniversary this last August. And things are going really well COVID took a little bit of a downturn, but we’re seeing two, three X inclines since then. And, so I’m just, I was brought on to implement new media, new marketing efforts and they’ve been very successful.

Carman Pirie: Yeah. That’s really cool. And tell us a bit about your background, Michael, if you would. I appreciate that you just mentioned that they kinda, they brought you on to just expand the marketing effort and try to get into a bit more new channels, et cetera. What was the experience leading up to this for you?

Michael Garza: I’ve actually been doing marketing more than half my life. I’m 35 now. I’ve been doing marketing since I was 19. Started in street team marketing, so guerilla style marketing. Mostly working for live events, venues, concerts, festivals and artists. From there I branched off on my own, built my own business, doing the exact same thing expanding my reach from live entertainment into movies and music general entertainment, other things like that. In between all that, I’ve had a couple of full-time jobs in B2B, a lot of it in manufacturing, which is very interesting. COVID shut down my business overnight. Unfortunately I had to reroute and in doing so I started focusing on businesses that were open but they weren’t getting customers in, and a lot of those were local eateries. 

I’m a big proponent of small and local businesses because that’s how I built mine as well. And so I really wanted to go out into my community, into local organizations and try to help them because their doors were still open, but nobody was out getting food, doing things, whatever the case may be. Since then I have done a couple of other positions in different forms of manufacturing. And that seems to be a trend in my non-freelance work working within these manufacturing realms. 

Jeff White: Tell our listeners a little bit, if you would, just in case they don’t know what a street team is. 

Michael Garza: So basically what we would do is if we had an event coming up I used to work with a lot of festivals so we would have a main date that we would work on and I would try to go out and put out flyers, put out tickets, any kind of giveaways at local record shops, local music shops, different things like that. And then at nighttime I would schedule and arrange a team of people to go and hit concerts. Basically we would be the annoying people standing outside of concerts, handing out flyers, trying to get people to take it. And so that was basically the start of it. And then from there, doing different forms of experiential marketing.

Jeff White: Man, having been an entrepreneur it’s like you’re a glutton for punishment. Being the one standing outside an event, trying to pass out the flyers and then going into business for yourself. These are two of the hardest things to do. 

Michael Garza: No, that, that’s very true actually. It’s so true because a lot of the time that we would be out there, 80% of the time that we would be at night, I’m talking about 2, 3, 4 o’clock in the morning we were seen with 80% of the people that were just bothered by us even being there. It’s very interesting for somebody who is naturally an introvert to go into this type of marketing. But it seems to be the case because no matter what, I’m still striving, I’m still grinding everything I can out there and doing whatever I need to.

Carman Pirie: Man, that level of rejection sounds like my early dating career at this point.  It is incredible I just don’t think I’ve ever met anybody that is active in B2B industrial manufacturing marketing that has that level of depth of experience working in that kind of street team environment. They seem just so polar opposite. 

Michael Garza: It really does seem polar opposite. But when I was thinking of this conversation we were having and I was breaking down my different roles and how I’ve had to adapt, it’s the exact same thing that I was doing out in the street team. I was never going to hand anything out or get any kind of reception just standing there. And so I had to find different ways to get my audience to be able to take my flyers information, whatever the case may be. And I find the exact same thing that I’m doing in B2B marketing, especially in manufacturing B2B marketing because; A lot of the time these manufacturing companies don’t have these huge budgets. You have to just try to figure out how to do more with less that you have and try to really take on this kind of do-it-yourself style of marketing. And so it’s actually trained me to be able to do these types of marketing and approach things in a very different way than the average person coming in and doing these types of jobs.

Carman Pirie: I could almost break that down in my mind on two sides. I’d say, one is to do it, the DIY side of it, and that ability to jump in and figure it out and do what’s just necessary to get to a result. And then I’m almost wondering if there’s something else that is somehow connected to it, but this notion of the rapid iteration that’s required in a street team, like it feels to me that… When you were doing that work, you couldn’t take any of it too preciously or too seriously because basically if it didn’t resonate with the people that you were trying to connect with, you needed to find another way right then to connect with them. So, if you held on too closely to thinking that you were right or that this was the only, the one right way to connect with that audience you’d be dead before you start. It seems to me to be a lesson in that. Does that make any sense to you? 

Michael Garza: No. Yeah, that’s very true. And that’s exactly what I was alluding to is that, you have to be able to pivot while you’re out there doing street team work and try different approaches and different avenues of the way that you’re speaking to your customers. And that’s the exact same thing that I see in manufacturing. Marketing is having a pivot and trying to figure out what’s the best way to get the audience to interact in a sense. When it’s B2C, there’s a lot of fluff, there’s a lot of stuff that makes you believe in that sense and trying to attract the customer. But in B2B, especially manufacturing, the customer knows exactly what they want and exactly what they need. And so you need to figure out. How to get that messaging across so they can activate in a sense. And that’s exactly what I was learning out there, and it was a way of forming myself and trying different things, something that I heard a while back that really resonated with me was marketing is basically a scientist position. You’re doing experiments the entire time you’re doing marketing because you don’t have or know and that you’re gonna get a certain kind of result. You’re just hoping for the result.

And so you’re taking the scientific, experimental approach when it comes to marketing. And a lot of the time you have to understand that 70% of all marketing efforts are not gonna land. And so you need to figure out how to increase the opportunities in that 30% and figure out how you can divert the other 70% to do what you wanna do.

Jeff White: And back to that rejection point too. Being okay with the F you’re never going to get a hundred percent, it’s never going to be a slam dunk all the way. So being okay with hearing no, not this time or even worse, especially if you’re on a street team, you learn to accept that, okay, that didn’t work. Now I pivot, I try something else. Not go, ah, I guess that didn’t work because, only three people out of 10 actually agreed to take my flyer or to respond to our Google ad or whatever your B2B tactic is. 

Michael Garza: Exactly. Exactly. You have to be able to accept rejection in one form of another, whether it’s direct or it’s an idea that doesn’t work, and be able to change that accordingly.

That’s one of the things that I’ve learned in my over 15 years of marketing. You cannot just get hung up on certain things. And the things that worked in the past may not always work. And that’s the idea that I bring in coming into new companies is what are you guys doing previously? How has it worked before? Have you experimented into other things that I’m thinking about or other things that are newer or different? And what would be the idea of return that you wanna have when it comes to that? Because a lot of these things, because they’re in their infancy, are almost like a do-it-yourself kind of style.

Carman Pirie: I wanna just explore that science/art point just a little bit further because I hear what you’re saying. Rapid experimentation is certainly a scientific method. This notion of the need to continue to experiment and that, but in some ways that science versus art comment… It almost seems to suggest in some way that there is a playbook or a science to it. IE the number of things that you can try can be somewhat scientifically itemized, et cetera. If you notice this, then do that. But then part of me, especially on that street team side of things, imagined it being much more about instinct and gut feel and a little bit more arty. Maybe, like a little bit more, this is how I’m feeling, these conversations are going, so I feel I need to maybe do this differently. All of that talk about feeling has a lot more like art and science in some way. What would it say to that, Michael? What’s the balance on that side of it, that kind of instinct or intuition versus. If not A then B. If not B, then C, if not D, on and on. 

Michael Garza: So it’s actually very interesting, right? The idea of being a marketer, and a scientist is not a foolproof thing. In reality, we are both right? Because we do have to think about it. In both instances, we are setting up campaigns where we have to think about it scientifically of what’s the return, what’s the experiment, how are we gonna approach it, things like that. But then on the other side, okay, what are we gonna show? What’s gonna be the emotional response to get the customer in. What’s gonna be the turning point to get this person interested? And so you have to be able to work both sides of that coin in all essence of marketing. At least in, in my belief.

And so I really want there to be systems in place. That’s the scientist side of things. Okay, if this equals that, then how are we getting to A, B, and C? But then you have to think about the other aspect of things okay, what’s gonna be the driver behind these things? In reality, as much as we work with the technical side of things when it comes to manufacturing marketing, in all reality, any kind of sale is an emotional response combined with an intellectual response at the exact same time. Now, do we try to invoke one side over the other? That’s the balance that we need to have. In manufacturing marketing, I’m noticing that it comes on the more scientific side, but there are still opportunities to be able to approach things differently. And we’re seeing that across the board. Especially when it comes to things like social media. A lot of the times you are seeing a lot more responses on social media. Items or content that has to do with social items. So that’s talking about doing site visits, going to trade shows, talking to customers, and so on and so forth. Doing community activation events. Those get way more responses than anything technical ever happens, and that only enforces the idea that, although we do work in a very technical space, we do still thrive on the ability of having that social and emotional response. And so you need to be able to have those, grouped together in the best way possible. And you need to be able to approach your marketing campaigns in those ways as well. It’s great to have your technical marketing, it’s great to have your technical campaigns, but what are we doing differently?

Are we doing activations at trade shows? Are we doing any form of experimental marketing? Are we doing things like podcasts, things where we’re taking the experiment and trying to approach it in a different way? Sometimes it lands, sometimes it doesn’t. But I do say when you approach things in a very different way than your more traditional side of things, the response seems to be a much stronger response than it does when you’re doing things in just a technical side of things.

Jeff White: Man, it really does speak to that notion of just human connectivity. When you talk about things that are social situations where people can be getting together, whether that’s at a trade show or attending a webinar together, it’s a thing that they can talk about amongst themselves. They can talk about it with others, and it’s all about those connections between humans at the end of the day. It really does bring it back to what you’re talking about around the street team side where you’re trying to connect directly with other people. So bringing that to B2B is interesting.

Michael Garza: No, that’s definitely true. And it all comes full circle with the idea that we’re all in reality. Just in my thoughts marketing a lot of it. There’s a lot of science, there’s a lot of process, there’s a lot of education behind it. But in reality, we’re all just forms of sociology. In reality, we’re looking at tribes and different groups of people and trying to figure out how we can insert ourselves into those groups of people. So we have to take those things into account and see what the conversation is, the language that they’re talking about, how they’re going about things, what kind of information they’re wanting to receive. And a lot of the times that’s forgotten in the sense of these reports, these numbers, these things. But when you look at marketing holistically, you’re, in reality, just trying to insert yourselves into different tribal areas to be able to get your message across and receive response back.

Carman Pirie: I’ve got so much to talk about with all that. Michael, you’re just… Now you’re answering lots of questions. I wanna be clear, but you’re also creating more questions as a result. But no, I just love this idea. I hadn’t really thought about it. I’ve thought a lot about trade shows. It’s a huge part of manufacturing, marketing, obviously. It’s never just, when you were talking, I’m trying to remember anytime I’ve ever talked to somebody about what they liked about trade shows. Why do you go to trade shows? What do you like about them? Even if part of it is we get to see the cool stuff all in one place that we otherwise wouldn’t be able to see all in one place, even if that is highlighted as a benefit. The bigger benefit is still always the connectivity and the people’s side of it, to your point. I’m trying to think back, my mind spinning for the last 20, 30 years have I had anybody say, it’s only about the stuff and not about the people. Never once have I heard the opposite though.

I’ve heard they don’t give a damn about the stuff at the show. They only care about reconnecting with the people. I’ve certainly heard that. So that’s really interesting to me. I think that’s a very strong point. And then the other point that you made, Michael, is you were very specific about talking about groups of people, tribes, groups of people. And I love that, and I wanna just highlight that because I think so much of today’s marketing, or at least one component of it, when people are talking about neuro marketing and how we’re tapping into human psychology and they talk about it as though. You’re directly impacting one person’s brain. Like it’s a one-to-one relationship between the brand and I think you’re raising a very good point. It isn’t about how your brand, how your product socializes and interaction comes to life within that group, within those target groups, not within the individual person. Because when things work within a group, they’re fundamentally different. ‘Cause the group behavior and the connectivity changes things. And I think that’s just something that we’ve lost in marketing in some ways that you highlighted so well. 

Michael Garza: You know what, that’s actually very true. And a lot of the time I think about myself. The people that I follow, the people that I put on the pedestal. Or brands, not, maybe not individual people, but brands. And I think of some of my top followed brands that I think about all the time, and people like brands like Red Bull, brands like Apple, where they’re doing more than just. Providing a product. They were socially trying to provide a space where people could interact and come together.

Red Bull, doing all different kinds of experimental marketing, different kinds of sports, things like that. Where it was beyond just the idea of pushing out energy drinks. Apple is a big thing that comes to my mind because I’m from Southern California. I was part of that Apple experiment that happened in the early two thousands, late nineties, where Apple gave all of California schools free computers.

I know that, while growing up, we had computer labs in my schools, but they would not have been as well off had they not had those donations. And what happens, right? That activation comes in early and it activates into a child’s mind. And as you grow up, you bring those ideas along with you.

And now that brand no longer is just a logo. I can notice an Apple logo anywhere in the world, a Red Bull logo, certain things like that because you have that emotional connectivity towards it. I would say that’s probably the greatest thing that I would have to say when it comes to social media marketing.

And social media as a whole, right? Is before social media. A lot of the time brands were just pushing things out. Buy my products, here’s my information, buy my products, buy my stuff, whatever the case may be. I’m not listening to you. We may have a customer number, but in reality, you know what’s really happening with that number now with social media is you’re opening up into a two-way street where we can push out as a brand or even as a person, push out, this is the information that we have, this is what we want to bring in.

But now we’re opening up a space of conversation where people could say, Hey. This A, B, and C is going on, and we can take that into account. Brands are able to have that cross communication, and I believe, and that’s going on to you. What do you like about trade shows? I believe that needs to happen when you’re having a conversation. It can’t just be a one-sided conversation because then you’re not having a conversation. You’re just speaking to the person and hoping that they respond. In order to have a conversation, it needs to go back and forth. There needs to be a two way street happening. And so I value those opportunities where we can approach somebody and say, Hey, what’s happening? How can we help? What are you currently doing? This is what we can do. Let’s work together. 

Jeff White: In some ways, I feel like it’s 2013 and we’re talking about how awesome Twitter is. Like brands can actually have connections and conversations and it was, I don’t know, it was a lot less toxic back then, but I haven’t heard somebody talk about social media in this way in a long time. All of the brands that we work with certainly have a social media presence. It would be falling out to be on some of the platforms at a minimum. But, I don’t know that people are necessarily thinking about it the way that you just described it as much anymore. Do you think it’s changed or do you still think romantic notion is the wrong word, but do you still have this idea that these platforms are still best served through the connection that people make on them?

Michael Garza: You know what I do? I think that’s the best way that you can activate your social media. And since I am on both sides of the spectrum, I do see the activations happening on the B2C side. And I do see some activations happening on the B2B side where it’s not necessarily manufacturing, but I will have to say on the manufacturing side of things. It still very much is providing information, but no real response or conversation back afterwards. And that’s where I’m a big proponent of and not just with your customers and your post and different things like that, but having conversations across the board when it comes to industry topics, when it comes to ideas that are going on. Partnerships research and development, you can have these conversations through social media. Obviously not on the confidential side, but you can still have these open conversations and figure out what is wanted and where can we go from there? 

Carman Pirie: And it occurs to me that when you’re part of a street team. That feedback is coming at you fast and furious, whether you asked for it or not. And it’s an adapt or die response after, afterwards. Because if you don’t adapt to that feedback, just nobody’s going to be taking whatever it is you’re trying to give to them. I entered this conversation thinking like a rapid iteration.

Are there new ways of connecting with customers? Maybe the core lesson of that street team experience. And I’m leaving the conversation thinking actually maybe the real lesson there, if you had to only take one. Maybe the openness to rapid feedback and building even channels for getting it. Because so many manufacturers can operate in isolation. Otherwise they’re just, if they’re not open to that feedback, they’re not actively building channels. It’s just hard to get. 

Michael Garza: No, yeah, that’s definitely true. There’s been multiple times that I’ve gone into a company and said what are you guys doing? Okay we’re doing A, B, C, and D. How long have you guys been doing that? Past 20 years. How do you guys see the results? We saw the results are great. Fine. But the reason why we’re bringing you in is because it’s plateaued. You’ve been doing the same things for the past 20 years. You gotta be able to adapt and gotta be able to look and try different things and so that only brings home what you’re saying. Yes. You have to be able to, in all forms of marketing, you have to be able to take information in and say, okay, what can we do differently with this new information? When you’re doing a campaign and a set of forget it style, you may be producing some opportunities there, but you’re not maximizing the value of what you can do through changing. Interpreting different things and altering. And so yes when being on the street team, I have to be able to do that on a fly. If I say something to one person that didn’t hit, let’s try a different approach on another person, so on and so forth. And that’s the exact same thing that I do in manufacturing marketing because a lot of the time these systems may be old or they may be new, and so we need to change things up and try different things. But at the same time. Doing street teams working for a lot of different companies. There’s times where I was working for almost 20 different companies at the exact same time, and I had to learn what I was doing that night. And this exact same thing every time that I step into a new role in a new company with a different industry. I don’t come from engineering, I don’t come from these manufacturing backgrounds. I was a student of Communications and Humanities which is basically sociology. So, I have to learn all this stuff.

I don’t know what a servo motor was, but you know what, I put in the time and I talk with engineers and I do things differently to be able to learn my product so that I can market it efficiently. And I know that the way that I learn the best is being able to have open dialogues, open conversations and ask what’s going on here? And so I take those approaches when I come to marketing because we all learn and we all interpret information very differently. And I think a lot of these companies in the past have just pushed out the information in a singular tone, singular aspect. And I don’t wanna do that. I wanna be able to approach it in multiple aspects and see where we can get that interest coming in.

Carman Pirie: Some spectacular advice there, Michael. The notion of set it and forget it and just blowing that up basically, forget ever saying those words again is your advice. And I don’t think I could agree more. How many times have I heard people saying We want it, if we can create this and set it and forget it. No it isn’t. Or we create this way for this vertical and we’ll be able to replicate it the exact same thing across our other 20 verticals. No, you won’t. ’cause guess what? Those other 20 verticals all buy a little differently and have different considerations. And it’s not just differences in messaging, it’s different people that act in a different way and need to be connected with in a different way.

So I think you’ve given both us and our listeners a lot to think about in today’s show. Thank you, Michael, for bringing it. It’s been lovely to have you. 

Michael Garza: Oh, thank you.