Turning Tariffs into Opportunity: How Manufacturers Can Market SmarterTurning Tariffs into Opportunity: How Manufacturers Can Market Smarter

Turning Tariffs into Opportunity: How Manufacturers Can Market Smarter 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 you doing, sir? 

Carman Pirie: I’m doing well. I’m doing well. And look, we are as topical as you’re going to get with today’s podcast. Very rarely does The Kula Ring intersect with global news streams in quite this way.

Jeff White: Absolutely, that’s for sure. And in all honesty, with most of our guests, we’ve avoided talking about these sorts of topics, but today we wanna meet it head on. 

Carman Pirie: Yeah, we, but folks, you need to understand that one of the reasons that we try to avoid talking about politics is that I’m a bit of an opinionated political creature who used to work in politics in a former life. So it’s a hard thing to turn off and just be businessy. But Jeff’s been working with me on it. And I promise to behave. 

Jeff White: I know you’ll be great. I know you’ll be great. But yeah. So I am really looking forward to digging into this topic. We’ve got an exceptionally experienced and talented marketer on the line, and why don’t we just get right into it?

Perfect. Alright, so joining us today is Una de Boer. Una is the CMO at Whitewater West. Welcome to The Kula Ring, Una. 

Una de Boer: Hi. Thanks everyone. I’m very impressed with your podcast voices. I hope I’m coming across nearly as…

Jeff White: It’s great. It’s great. It’s at another level of what we typically experience. 

Carman Pirie: Yeah. Crisp, clear with a bit of mysteriousness to that.

Una de Boer: Oh. And do I have to agree to behave as well? 

Carman Pirie: No. No. All guests can do what they want. I’m the only one who needs to behave. 

Una de Boer: Okay. Excellent. Excellent. It’s great to be here. Thanks for having me. And I don’t know how political we need to be, but certainly I think the topic today is a response to some of the things that are happening in the world right now.

Carman Pirie: Yeah, and look, we should let people know that we’re recording this episode. We very rarely tell you when we record versus when it’s published because we don’t necessarily think you need to know, but in this instance, when this is released, there could be 400 new things that happen in the world of tariffs between when we record. And so I suppose we should let people know, this might be the only time we’ve ever had Rich actually speak on the podcast, so let’s just see if we can do this. Rich, is it okay if we actually say the day that we’re recording? Are you okay with that? 

Rich Caldwell: I am okay with that. 

Carman Pirie: All right. Awesome. Awesome. That was Rich, ladies and gentlemen. Alright, so we’re recording this on March 7th. So it’s a Friday that the day after most of the tariffs have been rescinded again. With the threat of them coming back on April 2nd. And you don’t have to be political to know that we’re living in a world of uncertainty right now that is largely being driven by a tariff situation.

And that’s what Una’s going to be helping us chat through today. Una, perhaps before we jump into that, could you maybe introduce us to the company that you work for, a little bit about WhiteWater? 

Una de Boer: Whitewater West, we just go by WhiteWater is the world’s largest manufacturer of water slides in the world.

But we don’t just make water slides, we make aquatic play. You’ve probably seen on the back of cruise ships those surf simulators. That’s Flow Rider, that’s one of our brands. We’ve now expanded into the world of really large manmade surf pools. So think of Kelly Slater’s wave. But we’ve got something that’s huge and flexible, and it’s gonna change the world of surf for sure.

We have technology, software as a service brands. So the audience that I serve is the world of theme parks and water parks, and attractions around the world. It’s a truly global industry, but it’s a very tiny little niche. It’s certainly the most glamorous my career has ever been.

I get to go on some pretty great business trips to water parks around the world. Although it is too bad that I had to start wearing a swimsuit for work when I turned 40.

Jeff White: There’s so much baked into all of that. Probably one of the coolest, actual manufacturing and hard, hard to fathom that it’s a B2B business too, but just given the context of what we’re gonna be speaking about today, where is the company primarily based? You mentioned it’s a worldwide company, but where is it?

Una de Boer: Yeah, so I’m in beautiful British Columbia. So we are based in Vancouver. But we are truly global. We have offices in Shanghai, Munich, Germany, in Dubai, in the UAE. We have an office for our surf brands, which is based in San Diego, in the US. So it’s a global company, and we market globally.

Carman Pirie: It’s wonderful to have you on the program, and I wonder if we could maybe learn a little bit more about how you ended up at WhiteWater as well, but tell us a bit more about your background. 

Una de Boer: You can probably tell from my somewhat mutated accent that I originated on the other side of the Atlantic.

So I grew up in the UK, and I started my career working for Royal Mail, leading the campaign team there. So I was responsible for generating junk mail, as my friends would tell me. And then I went to work for a really large services company, Rentokil Initials. So Rentokil kills things and Initial Cleans things.

So I was responsible for the hygiene brands globally. I found this handsome Canadian along my travels and ended up marrying him. And I think Canadians and Kiwis, they always wanna go home, so we relocated to Canada, about when was that? 2011. I managed to miss both Olympics, the one in London and the one in Vancouver. And I’ve been here and I’m a Canadian now and I’m proud of it and independent. 

Carman Pirie: It’s a little-known thing that the only kind of Canadian men there are the handsome ones. It’s actually quite a remarkable thing for the country. 

Jeff White: It stands out as a thing we should put out there more.

Una de Boer: I agree. I agree. 

Carman Pirie: But, a bit biased, however. Okay. Let’s jump into this feet first. Because your message is quite, while there are lots of nuances to the message, I’m sure it is, in some ways, quite simple, is that this isn’t a time for marketing to step to the background. This isn’t a time for marketing to be quiet. 

Una de Boer: Absolutely not. And I know that there’s a huge level of uncertainty in companies as they’re facing up to tariffs, and how are they going to respond? I think one of the challenges that owners are going to face is concern about their bottom line. And sometimes that means actually cutting back on marketing.

It’s an area where it’s easy to make cuts. My challenge is to everyone: you should be doing the opposite. This is a time when you need to be looking for new customers and new places and avenues to sell your product. And that means you need to be investing in marketing. And perhaps that means you need to look beyond the current customer base that you’ve got, particularly if you are Canadian and North American-focused, but maybe your audience is much broader. Talking to a group of Americans who are trying to sell into Canada, and that’s also going to become increasingly challenging. So I thought it would be a really great opportunity to talk about international marketing. What are the steps you should take? How different is it? How can we help companies? ‘Cause we all want to have thriving economies, and I don’t think any of us are loving the situation we find ourselves in. So what can we practically do to protect that bottom line and continue to see that? In every challenge, there is an opportunity.

Jeff White: Yeah. And you’re, you are known to say that the Canadian-US relationship is one of convenience. We’re close to each other. It makes a lot of sense for us to do a lot of trading, but as you were just mentioning, we should really be using this as an opportunity to explore new markets. How far a field do you think people should be thinking as they’re going about tackling this issue? 

Una de Boer: There are some markets internationally that are more challenging to enter than others. But I think you need to be guided by your current customer base and what you sell. So the first place I would look is, who are you selling to right now?

When you look at traffic to your website, where is that traffic coming from? You are probably ignoring opportunities in your current customer base, and I suspect most companies will see their international customers. If you’re a manufacturer, if you’re business-to-business, they’re probably finding you already, but you are just not actively going out to serve those audiences. There’s, in all things, a kind of continuum and I think if you want to go jumping feet first into China, you might find that a very challenging transition. The culture is very different. The platforms are completely different. WeChat and Baidu, it’s not Google, it’s not LinkedIn. And the language itself, I’m certainly not fluent in Mandarin. So you are going to find that a much more complicated transition in terms of expanding internationally than you would perhaps if you were going into European countries or into the Middle East.

Although there are cultural factors you need to understand in every single market, it depends on what you’re selling. So, if I look at selling into the Middle East for WhiteWater, while many of the platforms and channels are easy for us to navigate, we have to be very careful about imagery. We tend to show consumers on water slides in swimsuits and bikinis and that. That doesn’t go down well in Saudi Arabia. So you need to be thinking as you are looking at your markets about those cultural factors, how easy is it for me to take this step? And I would certainly start small and take smaller steps to begin with, so that you learn how to expand out.

Carman Pirie: It occurs to me that not only are you maybe having to bring different cultural sensitivities and nuances to the marketing as you begin to diversify your markets. But for many manufacturers, I would think it also means that they end up having to… To use muscles that they haven’t either had to use before or haven’t had to use for a very long time, in terms of, they may be a dominant brand within their existing markets. 

They may be quite well known within a customer base. And now, all of a sudden, they need to play the awareness game again. They haven’t had to try to do that for a long time. I can think of dozens, hundreds of manufacturing organizations like that. They live off the fact that they’ve had salespeople for the last 30 or 40 years who know everybody in the categories that they serve.

Has that kind of entered your mind as well, that there’s a kind of, sometimes you’re actually attacking a different part of the buyer’s journey when you go into a market that you just don’t have that history in? 

Una de Boer: For sure. And then think about what that’s gonna do for your marketing overall. If you’ve been on cruise control, because you are an established brand in a market, and now you’re gonna have to step up your game and learn how to position yourself in a new place, that’s only gonna help your core marketing as well, because you’re gonna start to re-examine how you position yourself, what your product-market fit is, how you reach your customers. Where are they? And these are all fundamental questions we should be re-asking ourselves on a fairly regular basis, to deliver excellent marketing. So let’s start with, there are a few things that I would suggest if you are starting to think about international markets, are you ready?

Are you ready to step outside of your comfort zone? The markets you’re looking at, who’s serving those markets right now? If you are not the dominant brand, you have competitors who are; do you know who they are? What is it they’re selling? How similar is that offer to your offer? Do you know where your customers are in those marketplaces? Is it a very similar market structure? If I think about my current industry, there is a very established trade association. And the buyers come to the trade shows that are organized by that trade association. Is that true in the market that you are in? Or is it more of retail-led and you’re actually going to have to look at establishing a distribution network, looking at partners who can bring you into that marketplace.

So it does change according to how global the industry is and how fragmented that industry is. Are there many local suppliers or are there a few global suppliers? 

Carman Pirie: That makes sense to me. Frankly, it’s really hard to argue with what you’re saying. But what’s interesting to me is that none of this sounds cheap. We started this off by saying, it’s that we’re leaning into a time and people are maybe inclined to dial back their marketing spend. And we’re not saying just dial it up because you need to diversify and know new markets, but you may be doing some of the marketing that actually has the least ROI attached to it, that early awareness stage building and things of that sort. You may not be able to draw really quick revenue attribution to it, it seems like a challenge on both sides of it. 

Una de Boer: So yes and no. I don’t think it necessarily needs to cost an awful lot to dip your toe in the water. So if you think about some of what you’re doing already, you’re probably already doing social media. You probably already have a decent enough website and are doing some digital marketing, Google AdWords, pay-per-click, all sorts of that type of stuff. How have you targeted that? Have you, once you’ve identified that there seem to be buyers who seem to be interested and have occasionally bought your product in market X or Y.

Have you tried targeting those with your digital marketing? Yes, you’re gonna be expanding your digital budget, but it’s extremely controllable. You can turn it on or off. You can do it from the comfort of your current office. You don’t have to be in that market to start doing that. Are you sponsoring your LinkedIn posts in those geographic regions?

That’s a very small step. It’s very scalable as a way to get started to see whether that starts to generate any interest. The great thing about starting from digital is that you’ll see immediately the traffic difference. You’ll notice when the profiles change and that yes, you are reaching those audiences because you’ll see it in your Google Analytics coming through. The steps to start doing fa ull market entry. I would probably get a PR company and I would be looking at really trying to target some local press, build those relationships, some trade shows, some sponsorships. Yeah, that’s gonna cost more. But you don’t have to do it globally.

Start by choosing the markets that you feel have the best return for you, that will enable you to make the most rapid headway and scale it. It’s definitely something that you can step into market by market. You don’t have to suddenly go global. And I wouldn’t recommend that. I would test, I would learn, I would review and and move forward on that basis.

Jeff White: I think that all makes a great deal of sense. I want to peel back a little bit, ’cause I believe that there would be marketers and sales folks who’d be listening to this episode who are like, this all makes a ton of sense. I want to do this. You have a great deal of experience and are part of the C-suite in your organization.

Una de Boer: Yep. 

Jeff White: If you are not, how do you bring this message to the C-suite, to the decision makers within an organization that, you know, in these crazy uncertain times with the imposition of tariffs and things like that. We need to double down on our marketing and not cut budgets. How do you convince people of that 

Una de Boer: Lean in on the data. And I think that you are going to have to be convincing the CFO and the shareholders. Just show them the money. What is it that you anticipate will stop coming in as revenue. If you are predominantly looking at sales in North America, what percentage of your sales is that in comparison to other markets?

And the conversation you need to be starting is how are we filling this gap? If we see that there is going to be, and we are anticipating a rapid drop in our ability to sell to these customers, we need to find alternative revenue sources. Let’s start that conversation. This is an opportunity for us. And then bring the data that says, look, we’ve already started selling this product to this market over here, or there’s an opportunity we started to explore, let me give you an example, and it’s a vertical example, not a geographic example, but I think it shows what I’m talking about.

We have a software-as-a-service offering within our portfolio called Vantage, and it was designed to track guests. As they wander through a waterpark, so that you can make it easier for them. Open lockers with a wristband, pay for things with a wristband, but it also gives a whole load of data for the waterpark to understand how their customers are experiencing. The slides wait times, things like that. And we started marketing it, and we noticed that a lot of hotels and resorts were responding to our marketing, and we were getting great engagement from hotels and resorts to the things we were talking about, the guest journey and guest experiences, within a venue.

And the convenience that you’re trying to drive, which opened up the ability for us to go, oh, this is really resonating, and there’s market fit for hotels and resorts. It wasn’t our primary market for that product. We were looking at the market that we need and we know well, which is water parks and theme parks, but now we’ve been able to extend our reach into the hotels and resorts area and create activities and campaigns, and reports that really help educate them and show them what this opportunity is. So that’s why I am saying, when you’re trying to convince some of your C-Suite about the need to look into new areas, you probably, if you dig around in your data.

Have indications of where you can go instead, that maybe you are missing. Just go find those things. They’re probably there. 

Carman Pirie: I wonder too, if this is an interesting kind of trigger point for more inside-driven sales activities. If we’re looking at more rapid market diversification, building out a sales team in a new market, sometimes a bit intimidating, takes some time. Have you seen that it is sometimes this type of pivot can also be associated with moving to a bit more of an inside sales model, so that the sales piece can scale geographically, maybe a bit easier. 

Una de Boer: For sure. The big difference that you’re going to have is potentially a language barrier. So when you start to look at international marketing, and if you are using an inside sales team, let’s say you are looking into South America. Yeah, there’s opportunities there, but if you really want to use inside sales, they’re gonna have to speak in Spanish or Portuguese. So you are still probably going to have to think about those factors, which is why I think starting with your CRM and looking at your email marketing might be a great way to move forward.

It’s much easier to control your message and to translate things and try to do some email marketing to start that conversation and see what that engagement is. Looking at your customer data and seeing repurchase patterns, having a look at like, where is there an opportunity for us to go back to existing customers?

Every marketeer should be starting with existing customers before they try to go out to new customers because they’ve already, you’ve already established that connection. The return on investment is gonna be much higher. So I would completely agree. Start with who you’ve sold to and then move out from there.

And that’s not to say that your existing customers. In the markets that are tariffed are just gonna ditch you, there may be other alternatives where you are thinking about pricing mechanisms, ancillary offers that enable you to keep those relationships alive. So if I look at water slides, we have a large North American waterpark industry.

You might not be in a position to buy a new multimillion-dollar water slide, but a refurbishment project, trying to make sure you’re maintaining your existing slides. We have a service line of the business that goes back out to our North American customers and says, okay, so perhaps your capital expenditure budget is on hold at the moment.

Let’s make sure we are here to help you maintain your existing product. And those are the types of opportunities that you could be exploring within your existing customer base, which will not be tariffed to the same extent as goods that you’re actually selling into those markets. 

Carman Pirie: That’s a really great point ’cause it’s not about diversification of markets at that point. It’s about diversification of the service that you offer into an existing market. Exactly. Yeah. 

Jeff White: Yeah. And not abandoning a great potential group of existing customers either. Offering them other alternatives to work with you that aren’t going to be tariffed in the same way is really quite brilliant.

Una de Boer: Why, thank you. I’m not sure. It’s an entirely original idea, but I think it’s an example of how my recommendation is starting to understand really what’s happening in your customer base, in your data. Looking to see who they are, what they’re buying, how often they’re buying, where are new people buying or interests.

And the same is true with your marketing. Where do you get responses? Where are people coming from? And if you start from that point, it’s because it’s already working and it’s much more likely to be successful and is easier for you to expand out from there. Small steps are more likely to deliver that ROI you are talking about, as you said, moving an entire business into an entirely new market where you need to make sure you understand the legal and compliance factors, that you understand the data protection laws.

If you go to Europe, there are very different data protection factors that you need to be aware of. Sustainability regulations. Your audience is a largely manufacturing audience, I understand. And therefore. The sustainability regulations that are in Europe are much more stringent than they are in North American markets. Are you ready to be able to meet those requirements? And there are some things you need to really understand before you step into those markets, so it doesn’t end up costing you. So aside from just looking at your customer base, make sure that you understand the markets that those customers are coming from and your ability to step into those profitably and make sure you’re protected. Do you have your intellectual property patented in the markets that you’re looking to go into? You do not want to be jumping into a brand new space and not protecting yourself because you have some short-term revenue needs that end up creating a huge, long-term problem for you.

So there are some checks that you need to do to get ready. Which would include understanding, regulation, compliance, and protecting your intellectual property before you make those moves. And yes, there are costs associated with that, but if your product really has potential in these markets, you should probably be looking at protecting your intellectual property in those markets anyway.

Carman Pirie: Yeah, that’s powerful advice.

Jeff White: Before your next question because I’m pretty sure I know where you’re going.

Let me ask about one thing that you mentioned, around Europe having higher sustainability requirements for a lot of things. There’s an interesting angle there for perhaps a North American company that has chosen to differentiate itself on those angles. Those could be real opportunities for companies that go-to-market as a more sustainable alternative in North America, which might give them a leg up on their competitors who may also be envisioning the EU as the land of opportunity right now.

So, just an interesting thing popped into my head as you were mentioning that. 

Una de Boer: Oh, I think it’s something we all have a responsibility to be doing. And in WhiteWater we just went through the process of becoming ISO 14001 certified, which is a sustainability process. I think lots of people, as manufacturers know, 9001. As the quality certification. So there’s an environmental one, and I think if you are going to use sustainability as a differentiator, you better make sure that you can prove it, that it’s a credible part of your offer, not greenwashing.And for us, we chose to go down the 14001 route as the way that we were demonstrating the the authenticity of this as part of our offer. 

Jeff White: Very cool. Sorry to interrupt you, Carman. 

Carman Pirie: No, not at all. It wasn’t an interruption. I almost forgot my question, though, ’cause I thought it was interesting and I started following along too much.

But no, I guess, where I was going to go is… I think there’s an interesting kind of competitive shift that might be happening here too, because while we may be looking at the tariff situation and saying maybe some North American companies might be looking more towards Europe as an example.

I wonder if the reverse is happening? where an awful lot of European manufacturers have looked at entry into the US market as their greatest growth potential. 

Una de Boer: And there’s gonna be more space for them. So if the tariffs really penalize other Canadians.  Some of those European manufacturers might be like, Whoa, we’re gonna be cheaper than those tariffed Canadian companies. So you, it could actually, you’re right, stimulate some market entry from your competitors in other markets coming into your home turf. 

Carman Pirie: That and I was wondering too, if the European manufacturers may double down on serving European customers, actually making new market entry more difficult as well.

Una de Boer: I don’t think so. They probably already… most of us don’t make big changes until we have to, we work on it, it’s like a status quo, and to make these types of changes and double down or enter new markets. They require effort. So I suspect these guys are probably just going to keep doing what they’re doing, but see an opportunity somewhere else and possibly not the threat. ‘Cause they know that it’s, it’s not easy to make this step. It’s not impossible by any means, either. But generally speaking companies ignore their own customers and are more focused on looking for new ones. If you look at how marketing budgets are balanced, I would say acquisition definitely outstrips loyalty spend. So I suspect they probably won’t. 

Carman Pirie: Anybody who’s looked at the promotion of a phone company about their latest package deals or what have you, and then looked at their own phone bill and knows that the difference between acquisition and loyalty spend. 

Una de Boer: Oh yeah, we just cancelled Disney as one of our family TV channels and it’s suddenly available at a rapidly reduced price. That wasn’t available when I was a subscriber. Early in my career, I worked in, I consulted on direct marketing to some financial services companies and the churn that credit card companies create by constantly having an offer for new customer acquisition and ignoring their existing customer base. You’re just training your customers to go shopping on a regular basis. It’s crazy. 

Carman Pirie: Una I feel like we could probably continue having this conversation for hours, frankly, and find interesting nooks and crannies to go down. And…

Una de Boer: But there’s one thing before we head out of this conversation that I do want to bring up, and that is about branding.

Because when you look at international markets. I think if you talked about yes, you’re gonna have to work on awareness and you’re gonna have to invest to a greater extent. But I think there is a challenge that most people face, and that is how consistent they are with their brand positioning.

So there is a cultural element you need to be factoring in with international marketing. You may be encouraged by this, especially if you establish entities or salespeople in those markets, to try and rapidly change how you go to market and what you say to fit the culture of that environment. And I would say be cautious. Remember that media, especially digital, is increasingly global. So it’s very hard to say something in one market that isn’t going to come back to you in your home markets. So, as you look to start marketing internationally, make sure that you are comfortable with this global versus local brand positioning.

If you are looking, and probably one of the easiest things to do is start outsourcing some of your marketing because it’s in a different language, so you know, whether it’s a PR agency or a social media supplier. To look at WeChat, for example; Make sure that you know what’s being said. Make sure that you understand how you are going to market.

And it’s not blind faith and trust because your brand is your, I believe, your greatest asset. And you talked about some of those investments being long-term. You have spent a lot of time creating that brand reputation. Don’t let these steps you take erode it because you are not in control of your message.

So step carefully with your brand as you make this step into international markets. 

Jeff White: That’s great advice. 

Carman Pirie: That is fantastic advice. I can think of so many instances where, when people are entering into a new market that is geographically far from their current market I feel sometimes they, think they have more wiggle room. And I don’t know that they always think about that other side, most media is very global these days, particularly digital, and it will come back to the home market. And I could see various tools to help with brand consistency, brand archetypes being right up there among them.

I can see that as being a useful kind of backdrop tool for brand consistency across a more international footprint. It allows you to maybe interpret some of the cultural nuances more uniquely while still communicating a consistent archetype. 

Una de Boer: And I think everyone is gonna do this differently, but starting from home and reaching out and then starting to have a couple of suppliers, don’t rush into this. Do it cautiously, do it with market research. Test. But stay true to who you are because the reason you’ve had success is that your product works for a group of people. You’ve established that reputation and build on that. All I’m saying is take these international steps based on who you are and where you are, and expand from there and do it gently and use the things that you can do from your home. To reach out before jumping in with two feet because there is more complexity with international marketing. I don’t want to make it sound more difficult than it is because it’s very achievable. And I think when companies go back into their data, they’ll see that they’re already doing it.

They’ve just not recognized that opportunity. 

Jeff White: There’s something really nice about the idea of moving forward gently in 2025. Indeed. In the current client. Gosh. 

Una de Boer: Yeah. So we could apply that much more broadly than marketing.

Carman Pirie: But exceptional advice for an exceptionally unusual time. Thank you so much for joining us Una. It’s been a pleasure to have you on the show. 

Una de Boer: Oh, it’s been great. Thanks very much. 

Jeff White: Thank you.