Episode 52: From Lemonade Stands to Tech Titans: Timeless Marketing Insights | Jeff Swystun

In the latest episode of the Interesting B2B Marketers podcast,  Steve sits down with Jeff Swystun, a seasoned marketing consultant with experience ranging from global brands to startups. 

The two engage in a multifaceted conversation that covers various challenges and strategies in modern marketing, including a case study on a global social network and another on a tech company looking to enhance its thought leadership. Jeff also shares insights from his work with service businesses that are "invisible," emphasizing the importance of dynamic "go-to-market" plans. 

The conversation takes a nostalgic turn as Jeff reflects on lessons from his early days running a beach restaurant, highlighting the value of understanding customer needs and focusing on foundational aspects of business. 

The episode rounds out with a spirited discussion on the love-hate relationship both have with modern marketing, from its endless potential for creativity and impact to its pitfalls, such as over-reliance on technology. 

Steve and Jeff advocate for hands-on learning and share the timeless value of foundational principles in marketing, drawing parallels between lemonade stands and complex tech sales.

Connect with Jeff Swystun and Steve Goldhaber on LinkedIn.

Transcript

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Steve Goldhaber: Hey everybody. Welcome back to Studio 26 of the interesting B2B Marketers podcast. I'm excited for the show today. Jeff, welcome.

Jeff Swystun: Hey, thanks so much for having me, Steve. I just appeared on the most fascinating B2B Marketers podcast. You know, the most interesting,

Steve Goldhaber: Well, we, we are trying to get an acquisition just finished, so in another couple of months we hope to have acquired that one, but, No, it's not.

Jeff Swystun: All right. It's a great title for a podcast and super happy to be here and happy to be sharing two or three cases with you. Yeah. Awesome.

Steve Goldhaber: Great. Before we jump into the cases, let's just give the audience a 60-second overview of your background.

Jeff Swystun: Sure. Sounds good. So, for the last 10 years, I've operated my own consulting business and had the pleasure of working with global brands, local brands, and startup brands.

Prior to that, I was Chief Communications Officer at D D B Worldwide working out of New York headquarters. And previous to that I was the first global chief marketing officer for Enter Brandand, which is, you know, the leading brand consultancy around the world. And I really got my start with Deloitte and Pricewaterhouse before it became Pricewaterhouse Cooper.

So I might be dating myself a bit when I was working as a marketing consultant back in the late nineties. There were a couple of industry jobs in between, but truly my entire career has been working with the C-Suite specifically on marketing and branding. Awesome.

Steve Goldhaber: Love the background. We're gonna have, we're gonna have a good time on the show today.

Jeff Swystun: I can already tell. Okay. No, I guarantee it. It will be interesting and fun.

Steve Goldhaber: All right, so let's jump into the first case study. This one is a platform that everyone knows about, although true to the spirit of the show, we will not reveal the name, but. This is a company that was started in the B2B world, and they wanted to not migrate over, but they wanted to extend their offering, into a business set.

So give us some background on this one.

Jeff Swystun: Yeah. You know, I think it's fair to say that this is a well-recognized global social network. That and you, and you put it beautifully, they've ob, they obviously had a ton of users, they had a ton of traffic and they were looking to exploit, if I could put it that way, all of that traffic and all of their acumen that they developed into a business offering primarily for small businesses.

And this would be kind of similar to, if you know the company Shopify. So my client wasn't Shopify, but a kind of similar offer. How can we use this platform to allow small to medium business-size owners to use the tools that we were developing and also obviously access the audience that they had?

And when we were introduced and, and it was not only my company, there were, it was a really interesting project in that there were five or six different consultancies or, or technology and professional services firms helping them out. And so we really had to coordinate amongst ourselves as to, you know, what was our lane and what were we doing?

At Swiss Communications, my business, we were taking the brand, the brand architecture, and the product architecture that they were going for. So there were so many opportunities and directions this giant could go, and they had gone in a million directions and basically confused their target audience.

They were really going after, local hairdressers and barbers, restaurants, and dry cleaners. We're not talking, you know Fortune 500 companies. They were appealing to businesses that needed their community being built and tools and technologies and things to get those people to visit their stores.

Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. So tell us about the, the way to get there always fascinates me. Some companies are just, Hey, we inherently know our audience so well that we're just gonna. Have the, you know, the agency or the marketer put together everything and implement it. Did they go that or were they more? Reserved and did more market research and testing.

Jeff Swystun: No,, they were really aggressive and wanted to get something happening fast. I think they sensed that even though they were this giant, there were going to be companies nipping at their heels and niche players going to steal this type of business. So they were, they were quite quick on decision making, which kind of surprised me.

I thought we would be dealing with multiple levels and groups, but they were maybe committees, but they were quite flat and, and quick to go. And what we did, we took 13. And grouped them into one, we shed a couple that we didn't think were going to be commercially viable or of interest to them. And so, I'm sorry, 13 different groups within their business became one reflecting over 200 offers, which were then rationalized, grouped, and bundled.

So not only did we look at them from a brand perspective, we looked at them from a product perspective to say, what can you offer? What can you offer? Well, what's gonna make you money? And, and the big one was, what's not gonna confuse your audience?

Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. So what's the, what's the window here we're looking at from when they came to you saying, Hey, we know we need to do this.

How long did it take them to launch?

Jeff Swystun: Once again, there was there, as I say, there was more than a handful of different agencies and consultancies involved with different skill sets, and I wasn't called in initially. I came in as a bit of a firefighter because even those groups that had come in before, hadn't been able to navigate the culture of this giant social network too Well.

Interestingly enough, a huge part of my role through the years has been facilitation. You know, in strategic planning. I often say I don't have much regret in terms of my career, but, I really would love to have focused on organizational design because that has tended to play a role in every project I've done, regardless of its nature.

And when I came in, this was an organizational design problem. Not only what the client had and their business challenge, but this group of agencies who weren't working well together. So all of a sudden I became a pinnacle person and agency to bring together the solution for the client, which included the rationalization of their business down to something that made a lot of sense.

Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. So it's always funny how the, once you get to execution, You see all these themes with org design and like, oh, now I get it. That's why these four different groups have, you know, they have different agendas intentionally. It's not right or wrong, it's just how they're structured. So the ability to navigate that is always a good one.

So when, when they actually launched it, they had to scale on their existing platform. Did they just use their own platform to, launch it or did they go outside and, buy media or do separate off-platform marketing efforts?

Jeff Swystun: No, they did do it through their platform and they had to actually make a culpa.

So, you know, I'll just go back to your first question 'cause I answered the second one quickly as well. In org design, I, I often say there's, you know, what appears on the, on the organizational chart and there's how the organization actually works and that's what I was able to go in and do.

Flubbing around for three or four months before we really got a work plan together that made a ton of sense. And once again, they were hot to get going. They, they, they were, you know, really putting our feet to the fire to, to get to a solution, like a good plan this week, better than our excellent plan next week.

And, and I could say it was a very good plan, and if we had more time, we could have been better. But I, I like the impetus. The impetus really got us going. No, they, they had to kind of me a culpa to the audience because for two or three years they'd been floundering and they hadn't been doing as well.

They had confused people, and literally turned people off. And we had that discussion. We said, you know, is this actually an external campaign launched through other channels? Some traditional and, and, and some not. And they wanted to reestablish their credibility by doing everything on their own platform, and I actually applaud them for it.

It, it worked out really well. And they had to provide some financial incentives. They had to hook people, you know, in a monetary way, but we were very provocative in the messaging that we put out and that gained attention and, and, and built a, an audience.

Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. What was the outcome of everything? How, you know, how did their audience react and adapt to the offering?

Jeff Swystun: You know, we always say this in branding that you wanna do this. You, you know, if you attend any marketing conference or read any material you want the Harley Davidson community, you know, you want that sort, you want Starbucks as the third place to go. All those things that have been resonant throughout my career.

You know, we did build a community and to cite another brand as a comparison, I really in, I, I was kind of emulating as I went through this process, certainly the strategic process with them to emulate American Express's Open Campaign, which is now sort of that small business shopping thing and, and really developing that sort of environment, community look and feel emotion to it.

You know, the one thing about B2B and I would say listeners, Too much of B2B marketing communications is sort of clinical sales sheet boring, you know? And there is such an opportunity to inject great storytelling with emotion into it. And that's what we did on this project, and I think that made all the difference.

It was appealing to people. You know who this was pre-pandemic even. We're struggling, you know, with small business or medium-sized business owners to find the right tech platform to stay connected with their prospects and customers. And so it really was like a way to be a consultant to scads and businesses across North America and the world.

Steve Goldhaber: Yep. I had a chance to do some small business work in a former life and it's, it's fun. I mean, it was B2B small business, but it's. It's very much a B2C play. And my, my lesson on that whole stint of work for like a year was just all about like, you just gotta find the pain of these small business owners.

And if you can, if you can lead with the pain that they have and acknowledge it, then it's kinda like, hey. We know how to solve the pay.

Jeff Swystun: You know, it's so funny how we, I wrote a book five years ago now called Why Marketing Works and I can tell you that there's not an insight in there that would cause anyone to go, wow, this guy's a brainiac.

It's really a collection of seven principles that are tried and true, and we have to go back to those all the time. We have to remind ourselves that. As interesting and as complicated as you know, involved as marketing is in whatever environment, B2B or B2B, there just are some tenants we need to never forget and constantly apply.

Steve Goldhaber: Yep. Alright, cool. We're gonna jump into case study number two. This is my favorite type of business service business because as a marketer, I love things that are invisible. They're the most challenging and the most fun. So let's take it away. Case study number two.

Jeff Swystun: Yeah, thanks, Steve. And I think you've done a great intro segue since I opened up my own shop about 10 years ago, About 70% of my business has been working with services, you know, professional services businesses, whether they be consultancies, architectural firms, digital agencies, you.

Even advertising agencies. So I, I come from that world. I'm known as, a bit of an expert in assisting businesses of this sort, and this was my second client after I'd hung out my shingle. I continue to work with them to this day, which is a fantastic relationship. I've seen their evolution and nearly exponential growth.

They were just injected with a ton of private equity. They're doing some really, really cool stuff. They're in space that we're still struggling to define because they're almost creating it as they go. So a great challenge for a professional like myself, but on broad strokes, they are, they come from the loyalty world, in fact.

Their parent company, which they broke away from years ago, is credited with the idea of opening when you open up a bank account. You know you got a toaster that goes back that far. When you cut your 50 years with the company, you get a gold watch. So you know, this company's lineage goes way back.

But this was the Canadian operations and it broke away from the US parents. Because it really wanted to do some cool stuff. As it turned out, the Canadian entity was more progressive than the American, and they were beginning to compete for clients in North America. So, it almost made no sense.

So I didn't know it at the time, but I, I, I rebranded this company from X to Y, and they, I. Have just exploded in the past 10 years. As I say, I've done multiple projects with them. On two occasions. I was their outsource CM O. I love working with them. They're very complex and I'm currently working with them now.

They have two tech offers, two specific technology offers primarily in loyalty, but you could say experience and customer improvement. Once again, it gets not nebulous. It gets a broad challenge of really trying to articulate their offer. One of. Significant loyalty platform or engine. So we all have Most North Americans have, or the average North American that belongs to something like, I don't know, nine or 12 loyalty, you know, clubs from brands.

So you could, could you imagine our wallets, right? If we had all of those plastic cards in them? And for years we did. So this one offer basically takes care of all that. It manages each customer's. Portfolio of points, portfolio of interactions, and touch points with the company. So that's a significant piece of technology that several major brands are using to power the guts of their loyalty tracking and business.

The second technology offer that they have is pretty new. They launched in January and February. It's AI-driven and we're all scared of that stuff, but I actually think it makes total sense in the loyalty and, and customer experience area. AI will revolutionize the space. There's no doubt about it. So what this one does, if that's sort of the, the base, the one I mentioned previously, this one is the brains, so ours and legs and brains.

And the brains here., I was taken through a demo. A demo on. I just couldn't believe what popped out, you know, in terms of anticipating the client need, providing a copy for advertising, providing an idea of the frequency of touch, providing an idea of benefits, promotions, deals, it, it's, it's absolutely fantastic.

So I'm in the process of developing two go-to-market strategies 'cause these are, could be bundled together or sold separately. These two techs technology offers. It's also gotta ladder up, you know, to the master brand or the, the overall professional services brand. Because where they differentiate in operations is they're, you know, they're like a Deloitte, they're like an Accenture.

They've got research and consulting services, and then they're selling their own proprietary technology. Yep. And that pits them against basically, Everyone out there.

Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. So they've got a range of, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna pick your brain on the go-to-market plan as you bring this to life. When I do these things, there's essentially the, Hey, there's all the stuff I've learned in the past that I can just access.

It's like a library of marketing learnings. And then for every go-to-market plan there is the unknown, the categories, reinventing itself. The marketplace has changed. As you navigate that process, where are you in that walking that line, you know, between that? I already know how to solve this problem, versus like the jury's still out.

Jeff Swystun: Well, you know, the secret in any consulting methodology is completing it because if we could run to a solution, which we're, we all think we're the most brilliant and, and I remember working way back in Pricewaterhouse and reporting to the country managing partner for marketing and he would say at the beginning of every engagement, I know exactly how many, you know, back then it was a little bit about cost-cutting in the nineties.

I know how many people are gonna be cut. I know, or how we're gonna rejig things. I know how much this is going to save them. And you know, the guy was shockingly accurate many times, but most of the time he wasn't. You know, you have to go through the process. So I too, when I started this project, I was running to almost like Don Draper and Madman.

I was running to like taglines before a strategy, right? I was thinking I'll have with Licked and I'm gonna work from. You know, the solution back and prove my thesis with the research rather than my research forming a thesis. Yeah. So, the difference between why I suggested this, this makes a lot of sense for me to go to a market plan, We know was originally structured for new product and service offerings, but I actually don't even do traditional marketing plans anymore.

 I find them backward thinking. Backward looking for sure. Oh, what did we do last year? Well, let's just pump up, you know, this line item 10%, we'll take 3% out of this. More into our digital, you know, you almost get into an annual planning cycle that is dumb, you know, that really doesn't have the fresh thinking or intelligence to it.

If you can get into the mindset of a go to market plan or your entire business, and you know, there are two benefits to going to market as I see them, is they're forward thinking and they're fast. So you're getting the results back right away so you can iterate and the biggest difference is, A traditional marketing plan resides in the marketing department, and no one else gives a crap about it.

A go-to-market by its construct is supposed to be layered across the entire organization and there's ownership or at least buy into it and everyone knows what's going on. And here we go. Thematically, we're back to organizational design again. You know, it's, it's really about making sure that your brand isn't siloed and that your marketing, in this case, the go-to-market is a driving engine for this.

Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. It's so funny that you mentioned the budgeting process for marketers, right? Like when I worked for bigger companies, I'd say most fell into the following two scenarios. Hey, we're doing really great. Let's spend 10% more money. Ooh, we're not doing so great. 10% reduction. However, those were the two marketing strategies that seemed to be pursued.

That absolutely made no sense, but it was very convenient in the annual budgeting process where you weren't really. Upsetting anyone or taking risks. So it, I'm with you. I love marketing plans. You know, I, when I was working at an agency, I once had a client that they just said, you know what, for the next year, we're actually just doing some internal rebuilding.

Therefore, we don't really need anything and we're not gonna spend any money. And that was really refreshing, you know, not great to hear as a service provider, but you, I kind of appreciated that is to say, yeah, just you're doing nothing. Spend that money now in different ways and then come back when you're ready, you know?

Jeff Swystun: I think what's changed in marketing in my over two decades, of course, speed, you know, speed has been the biggest thing. And you know, we used to report quarterly and we'd look at a pro, you know, a budget or a plan annually, and I had a real wake-up call about six, seven years ago. I was working with like now the leading performance marketing and advertising company in the US just knocking the lights out in, in both revenue.

It's stayed independent. Everyone's tried to buy it. I happen to be there. So they're performance marketing, you know, they're working with hotel companies, the Expedias, Amazons, and where everything is that moment, and I happen to be there on Black Friday and Cyber Monday in their office. And in their office, which is beautiful.

They have the ability to almost expand it twice its size because on that particular shopping weekend, given all their clients, They have individuals from client organizations coming in, sitting side by side with their folks and monitoring the data, right? Because that, you know, 72-hour plus shopping cycle right there.

I don't know what that's constituting for a lot of revenue of some of these companies. But, you know, four days could be 12% of the year. You know, like it's absolutely incredible what's packed into those four days. So I just watched the speed of standpoint. There's a lot being lost in the speed of marketing now.

You know, we're, we're attracted to shiny new toys. We've got a ai, I laugh and, and you know, everyone goes this, kill this business and do this business. Well, 10. You know, and, and companies got had reams of information. The visual is paper, but of course, it was all digital. And what did they do with it?

Nothing. They were inundated with data and they didn't know how to use it. So, you know, shiny new toys are great. I love new channels. I love the ability to play plug and play, but at the end of the day, you gotta have something compelling, interesting, and relevant to say.

Steve Goldhaber: Yep, I like that. Let's jump on case study number three.

This is another big tech platform. Who wanted to increase some awareness levels, and make sure that they were perceived as a thought leader. So take it away.

Jeff Swystun: Yeah, and, and you know, once again, it's I'm sure your audience is brilliant enough to probably have guessed these pieces of bread and, you know, the first and third cases here with the service company being the meat in the middle.

But our third case, yeah. Big technology company already super established, you know, basically its name, you know, was in the dictionary. And yet it needed help. And I, I, I really enjoyed that. I remember being asked to come down to its New York office, which was kind of the secondary headquarters for it, and they had the most amazing commissary.

I was so happy with it. They could have paid me just for meals. It. Of course a youthful organization. I'm older now. I was slightly younger then, but I'm speaking to a young woman in her early twenties who's got an amazingly important portfolio for the company. So here I am looking at her and going, wow. I, I, I, I wasn't even given the responsibility to deliver coffee to the boardroom at your age.

And, and you've got this significant position and accountability. And what it was, was they wanted to bolster their thought leadership program. And so, you know, they had been known for, you know basically popularizing one piece of technology that revolutionized the world, but they were branching out and they wanted to be known beyond that one capability.

So they had one actual print magazine at the time, and this wasn't too long ago, so I was surprised that they were putting it out in print. It was a thought leadership piece, and they were, due to their credibility, able to attract, you know, the Harvard professors, the top CEOs at, at major companies to be, you know, providing articles or interviews.

And really what we did was we put together an entire thought leadership program, not just this one pillar that was quite strong, but was too much, was resting on it, and it was sort of cratering as a result. So, you know, we built global content not only by their services, products, and offers. We built it by country because there's a cultural difference, obviously.

Yep. And of course, by subject. So I felt like I was building the Library of Congress at, at the end of this because we had this amazing matrix graphic and it had, you know, frequency, audience, geography, subject. A big one, author, you know, 'cause so much these days with stuff out there, I've railed against this for years as a writer as well, that when you go on, you know, who's the cred, what's the credibility of the source, you know, and, and people writing comments without using their proper names and all that.

So anyway, I'm off tangent, but we had this incredible basket of power because their brand was so strong, their relationship, so strong. We were building content that I would say, The aggregate was way better than Harvard Business Review Wired fast company combined it, it was just astounding. It's faltered along the way because quite frankly they haven't needed to keep the investment up.

They just, yeah, they do so well on the balance sheet that this is, this would be, this is more a nice to have than a need to have.

Steve Goldhaber: You, you set on a project like this to increase awareness, like is it as simple as, They've done some benchmarking and they say, here's where we're at and you know, in six months, nine months from now we're gonna do another readout.

Like what are the success metrics that you're set up, to follow?

Jeff Swystun: Yeah. So you know what, this was not just a vanity project in my mind. There were some real tangible metrics to it. There was a performance marketing component to it that if compelling content attracted a person, an individual, or an individual representing a.

Based on a clear call to action, and I was really firm in making sure each piece of content had that, you know, that then if we could follow the customer journey to see whether or not they were engaging with this giant technology company's other services, then this was a sales tool. You know, this was absolutely a sales tool and we see it in professional services all the time.

I'm an advocate of case studies and we know it's so difficult to ring a case study out of a client 'cause they're loathed to give the consultancy or the agency proper due if their revenue goes up 9% or a product spikes or for a few months. But a case study, any piece of intellectual property in a thought leadership program, you know, it's not being written for ego's sake.

It's being written to drive traffic and, and, and drive revenue. What was so cool about this one is in its time when it was driving traffic, we began thinking about extra offers. So in this case, this big tech company built a product totally free. Two of these were totally free, grow my store. So, you know, you're attracted in by, a piece of content out to lift sales on Cyber Monday, you know, could have been the piece.

Who knows? So you go in and then of course you're providing links to other pieces of the, of your ecosystem that you want people to go. And there was grow my store. So it was a really neat tool. You just entered the u r L of your business, it analyzed your retail site, gave an overall score of efficacy and efficiency, and offered a detailed, fairly detailed, this is, you know, really before AI took off insights and recommendations to help strengthen the business.

So, Not only are they getting great content, but they're also getting a tool that they can react to and, and scoring their business that they wouldn't be getting on, a regular basis. Another one they built because they saw the traffic that was coming in was this insights finder. So it was a way for small business to medium business, oh, it could be a large business to gather intent-based insights of their audience under, you know, uncover search trends, unlock new ways to reach them.

And they had great cases to share. Warrior used it, I remember, and had a hundred percent growth in one product line, year over year, using the insights out of this free tool.

Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. Fascinating. I always love it. Marketing and content. We think of the written words or visuals of executions, and I just love the utility.

Just give someone a really powerful tool and that that is just golden. I, I always admired the companies that do that. All right, we're gonna close out the third case study. I should have a book closing sound effect added in production, but, We're closing out the book, and we're gonna get to know more about you.

So tell me about your first job in marketing.

Jeff Swystun: What were you doing? You know, it's kind of funny when you think about it, when you've prepped me for this and you said, let's talk about your first job in marketing. I was going, should I go back to when I was 12 and I was a tennis court attendant?

Steve Goldhaber: And you Yes, please. I need to hear this story.

Jeff Swystun: No, you know, it, it is funny when you think back to the jobs that have, that have influenced you. You know, one that I'm going to raise that I draw on all the time myself. Two friends, we became partners in, we, we won the rights to I'm Canadian, so we had this provincial park in my home province of Manitoba that could attract in the summer months, 50,000 people a day to its beautiful white sand beaches.

And we somehow, as guys in our early twenties, did not know what the heck we were doing. We won the lease on a 300-seat restaurant Bar Beach concessions a store and some other little properties. You know, the ability to put hotdog carts and keys areas, and we were just out of our limit right from the get-go.

But we ran it for several years, so got better progressively with each year. And I was sort of the, I was both the marketing guy and the accounting guy. Being an accounting guy was complete for me. But the marketing was, Absolutely astounding, but what it taught me, and I, I swear to you, Steve, I still, you know, harken back.

It taught me about staffing, and about resourcing staff. On, let's say for July, we celebrate July one. You Americans celebrate July 4th, but it's basically the same weekend. We just had it, and it would be a long weekend for Canadians and we would bring in a ton of food. Obviously, in anticipation, we'd be we, we'd be looking at the weather like farmers, but we would never be able to guess it.

We would staff up. So things like that. The fundamentals of business were ingrained in me in this because, you know, sometimes we're chucking out $5,000 worth of hotdog, you know, 20, 30 years ago we were having to send staff home and seeing the disappointing looks on their faces because there was either bad weather just or not enough business.

All of those things. And then we got good, you know, the, the summer months are short in Canada overall. We found ways to make it every day almost. We built it so it was like an amusement park that there was something going on every day. And that was my marketing spin. You know, you just can't expect people to show up.

If they build it, you know, they will come. No, no, no. You constantly have to be offering some cool things to be doing. So, I remember Sunday nights we turned into almost the best bar night because we themed it and we had a band in the 300-seat restaurant lounge and just, you know, experimented. And I think that's a neat hook.

Marketing I've said many times, I've said it in my book, is a furious plagiarism. And that's true 'cause we steal best practices, from other marketers and companies. It's also a huge experiment and we have to somehow find a license room budget, the will to blow up the laboratory from time to time.

And you know, in my youthful naivete, I blew up the lab, you know, tons of times. Yep. And sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. I just find so much marketing now is me too. Follow the tech, the tech drives everything. You know, when was the last time you were wowed by, you know, a marketing campaign, an advertising campaign, or even, you know, a tangible customer experience?

Yeah, I can't really speak of the last time.

Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. I, I love, the story of how you got started and I love just keeping it simple and, you know, I always go back to maybe every couple of years I'll take my kid kids out. In an attempt to teach 'em about business or marketing, I go, let's do a lemonade stand.

Right? It's, it's the most simple, basic product that exists and you just are forced to answer all these questions that are so good. You know, what is it just lemonade? How is it made? What's the price? Where are we gonna distribute it? Like, it's all these fascinating questions. My favorite one is the pricing model that we played with one time, and.

We were reading some things online. 'cause I, you know, I was telling them, Hey, let's, let's research, you know this, we're not the first ones to do this. Let's see what's out there. And then there was this whole zero-price approach to lemonade stands, which was, you just say, you can pay whatever you think it's worth.

Right. So, that had been proven to get more money because inevitably a big hitter would come by. Yep. And just throw a five or a 10 at you for the 30-set glass of lemonade and you're, you know, So it was just fascinating to see the kids react to it. And, also obviously the excitement over when they start selling.

Jeff Swystun: You know, the, the big hitter, in one, you know, would inevitably be me. 'cause I, if I visit the lemonade, stands I've written on this, just a blog on it because I too find it fascinating. I. There's the hotdog parable story in 20 seconds, about a guy who was a super successful hotdog stand through the years, and set his son off to business school.

The the son comes back, applies all the business, schools learning, and ends up taking the stand into bankruptcy. 'cause he's hasn't he's, he's tried to keep it, you know, too complex and not thought about, you know, what made it successful in the first place. And I just love I really think it's the small flourishes and touches in business once again, regardless of B2C or B2B.

I remember a university prof in business teaching me the one thing a gas station should do to differentiate itself. Just have the cleanest washrooms around. Yep. That's gonna draw people in. Yeah. You know, it, it's an old, you know, piece of mother's milk or whatever, but I, I think it, it totally, totally works.

There's the regional chain Wawa, you know, that I experienced in Pennsylvania, that sort of area. People like, this must have the most brand recognition and loyalty because of cleanliness, merchandising, layout, and friendliness of staff. Then, you know, but the vast experiences we go into is, you know, flickering, fluorescent lights, chipped linoleum, a washroom.

You wouldn't send your worst enemy into, you know, all these sorts of things. And you just think, once again, back to the basics folks.

Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. You know, it's funny, the washroom story reminds me of McDonald's I, this is probably 20, 30 years ago, and I don't remember the, the c e o at the time, but he takes over.

Everyone's revealing like the big str, you know, strategic initiative. Is it a new, is it a new. Product launch, what? You know, what is it At his, at the annual meeting, he just reveals its washrooms. I am going, going to enable everyone with the products to clean and we're gonna have, you know, we're gonna put a sign inside, we're gonna show the customer when we actually cleaned it, right?

So you will have to sign off on this, whatever, three, five times a day. And you know, it was a strategic move to your point of, hey, if people on the road. Can associate, I have to go to the bathroom and Okay. Why not just go to McDonald's? I know it's really clean. I mean, I love those strategic decisions that would never come from a consultant or an agency.

'cause they're not sexy enough. Right. Right. But they're just, they just make sense. I love those things.

Jeff Swystun: It's so funny that, that some had that secret sauce and then lost it. You know, Howard Johnson's, you know, Sixties Burger Chef's revenue was more than KF C, Burger King, and McDonald's combined. They were the benchmark.

McDonald's just basically stole every meat device from them, and yet they, they went out of business and, and, you know, there's a lot of reasons for that acquisition, merger, et cetera. But no, I, I, I think these, these simple stories are absolutely fantastic and it's so much to do with the training of, of personnel too.

Once again, not constrained to B2C. B2B. When you think of the buyer journey of a prospect looking at, say, a chunk of technology from your, I'm with this on this project. They wanna be educated along the way as part of the purchase journey. You know these folks are tech buyers.

They're, they're detail oriented. But at the same token, these two soft or or technology offers that I'm attempting to represent in these go-to-market plans have to appeal to both the marketing buyer within the call the prospective client, and the technology buyer. And that's something we forget too, is we just sort of blast out our communications and think they're relevant at a grand scale.

And messaging has to be tailored.

Steve Goldhaber: All right, we're gonna play the love-hate game now. So this is a part, okay, two-part question. What do you love about marketing, in today's world?

Jeff Swystun: That it is that never-ending experiment, you know, and that it can always be done better. It can be super exciting, it can, that it ha takes every part of the cranium to develop the left and right parts of the cranium.

And you know that when it works, there's nothing better in the world. You know, when you see it work. How are you defining work, whether it's revenue awareness or all of the above? It's just exciting to see something take off in the marketplace.

Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. On the flip side, what drives you crazy? What do you hate about it?

Jeff Swystun: This overreliance on technology has certainly been a bugaboo for me. You know, I ask questions three very basic. Once again, no one's gonna go, oh wow, that guy's brilliant. Three basic questions of my clients, prospective clients, right outta the gate, you know, of course, the first one's around. What do you have that's unique or differentiated?

The thing about these three questions is they tree off into, you know, hundreds of questions. Then the next question is, audience based. Who wants or needs it? Why did you build this thing? Why did you, you know, think this thing was going to have any sort of traction? And then it's the third question that everyone is starting with these days, but is my third or 10th or one hundred question how do to be engaged?

See, Brands, clients, individuals, agencies, making the mistake of starting on that third question, oh, let's just have a, you know, a, a TikTok campaign that, that'll do it. And then you're, what are you saying though? What are, what's the, you know, where's the compelling evidence or the, the compelling reasons, so, To me, it, it really is, we're, we're been so overwhelmed with shiny new toys that we start with that conversation and that's what's ringing the creativity and the storytelling out of marketing.

Steve Goldhaber: Yep. I like that. Alright, final question. You've spent a good amount of time in marketing and you've inevitably kind of said, all right, I'm gonna go look back at my younger version of who I was. So whether you were running the beachfront resort or your, or your first. You know, W two job, what do you look back at and say, oh man, I was so confident back then, and looking back now, like I was such a silly, silly marketer back then.

What would you, you know, what would you tell your younger self?

Jeff Swystun: I think it would be focused on the human aspect. So I come from the consulting side. Focus on your team so that they're happy to deliver well. Focus on the client team so that they are receiving your very best. And I go, I'll go back to the, the, the resort, the, the 300 seat restaurant that we had.

There's that old restaurant or customer service adage that goes, you got to learn to smile before you can run with the tray. And what I see going on is that we are in this speedy environment where results, results, results. We're all trying to run with the tray and we're dropping the tray and we've forgotten how to smile.

And I, I think that is, is key to this. I would say to old Jeff or. Younger Jeff, if I was to go back, stick to the principles that made, you know, things successful, these very basic things, we talked about it. It's been a great thematic, Steve, throughout this, the seven principles that are in my book. The Hotdog stand.

The lemonade stand, my 300-seat restaurant, bar and lounge. I'll tell you, if you can't find an application from the lemonade stand to sell, you know, a. 200 million piece of technology implementation. There's something wrong because there are lessons between the two.

Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. Love it. All right. Well, I really enjoyed connecting with you today, Jeff.

We're gonna shut down the podcast early because of course you and I are going out and building our own respective lemonade stands. We'll, we'll set up two competitive companies. We've got a goal, maybe some seed capital, and we're gonna, we're gonna hope for some warm weather 'cause we all know that there's a correlation between warm weather and lemonade sales.

Jeff Swystun: And that rich guy coming by and dropping the $5 bill.

Steve Goldhaber: That's right. Probably today it's more about like profiling like nice cars that are, that are coming by, which, which block has the nicer car? The nicer car correlates to deeper pockets.

Jeff Swystun: That could be, you know, I, I saw a stand two years ago though, where these three young girls had, obviously their dad had either bought it online or built it, but the stand was so damn attractive that I, I had to go up and marvel at this little edifice of commerce that was giving them an education they'll draw on for the rest of their lives.

Steve Goldhaber: I could always see, a performance improvement company just for marketers where, you know, we do all these, these offsites with. The proverbial trust falls and the, you know, the outings. I would love to just say, you have a thousand dollars to go to Home Depot. You're selling lemonade and there's like, you know, three competing teams and you've got a day to do it.

Jeff Swystun: That would be interesting. I think that that's an excellent idea. I used to teach continuing courses at Price Waterhouse and I'd walk us to the nearest mall and say, go into each shop and give me what's working and what's not working. Right? Yeah. Rather than sitting in a classroom. Oh my God. Is anything more hands-on?

Even in colleges and universities, you know, we've gotta adopt a bit of the European apprentice programs for more hands-on learning. So, I'm with you. Let's do the lemonade stand for big business. 

Steve Goldhaber: Alright, everyone. Thanks, Jeff. And thank you to all the listeners for watching another episode, of the Interesting B2B marketers. Until next time, take care everyone. Bye-bye. 

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