Online marketers can learn a LOT from direct response TV (DRTV) ads. 

• The power of an irresistible offer.
• The art and science of a problem-solution ad.
• The appeal of a “magic product demonstration.”

To name a few!

This episode features Jordan Pine, a seasoned DRTV veteran who has also had success in the online marketing space. I wanted to pick his brain on how to be successful with DRTV. I’m convinced that some of the lessons he knows and that other DRTV pros know can be leveraged by online marketers. Recording this episode was an absolute BLAST! We went a full hour, and I could have easily continued for another couple. It was fun and insightful! Here’s a look at what we cover:

• The “Divine 7” for choosing the right product to advertise.
• The 10 TNT (Tried-and-True) elements of DRTV.
• Why the Ginsu Knife commercial belongs in the DRTV Hall of Fame.
• The “problem scale” and how to use it to analyze a product and the strength of a problem/solution opening. 
• Gluing people to ceilings, running over flashlights with tanks, and other “torture test” product demos.
• Lessons from the Godfathers of marketing like Claud Hopkins, Rosser Reeves, Joe Sugarman, and more.

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Mentioned In This Episode:

• Jordan Pine (LinkedIn)
• SciMark(Website)
• The SciMark Report
• Paragon Products (Website)
• 10 Tried & True Techniques For Commercials
• Brett Curry (LinkedIn)
• Brett Curry (Twitter)

Transcript:

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce. And I'm not exaggerating when I say I really couldn't be more excited about today's show because if you've listened for a while, I'm a self-proclaimed marketing junkie. I've always liked ads, I've always liked TV ads, and specifically I've always liked infomercials. Yes, that's correct. I've always loved infomercials and DRTV ads. And so today I have a legend in the space. Joining me on the show, Jordan Pine Jordan Pie. Jordan Pine is SciMark's founder and president, also the co-founder of Paragon Products, and he's a blogger. He's a student of DRTV. He's been running campaigns forever. He's one of the masterminds behind the wildly successful tack light tack glasses. I think there's a tack lantern tack, all kinds of stuff. And also some microwave cookers, which have done phenomenally well. He's a trusted name. Everyone wants to talk to him if they're looking at DRTV. And I think there's a lot we can learn from DRTV. One thing that I've said over and over again is YouTube is actually very similar to DRTV, so we're going to get into that as we we dive into the podcast. So with that, Jordan, welcome to the show. Thanks for taking the time and how you doing?

Jordan:

Well, thank you for that amazing introduction. I'm going to have you do all my introductions in future.

Brett:

Thanks for having.

It's a fun gig and yeah, man, what an amazing career. What an amazing background it was. I knew we were going to be friends when you'd reached out to talk about YouTube with me. And I just mentioned the Ginsu Knife commercial, right? Because it's one of the earliest commercials. I remember watching the Ginsu Knife commercial as a kid and thinking one, this is awesome. I got to talk my parents into buying it, which they did. And then two, who makes these? It's fun. Who makes these ads? But as we talked about it, you immediately fired me a YouTube link to the original, original, because I think I probably, I must have seen the ads in the late eighties or nineties, but this was from 1978, which was awesome. Yeah,

Jordan:

Great campaign. Great. And a very iconic, memorable opening with the hand can be used a knife, but it doesn't work so well in a tomato. That opening is probably the, if there's going to be a DRTV Hall of Fame, it'll definitely be, it's

Brett:

Got to be one of the just so engaged. You have to basically have to watch that when it says in Japan, the hand can be used like a knife. It's got this great voice and he chops through the wood, but then does not work on a tomato. So it's fantastic. So give us your background a little bit. So I've talked about some of your successes, but how did you get into the DRTV world?

Jordan:

Yeah, it's great. Sideways, I guess I would say I've had three careers, four, if you count a brief stint as a private eye, yes. But first I was a soldier. I joined the Army at high school and I served four years active duty and four years reserve. All in peace time as it turned out. Thank you for service, there weren't any major. Oh yeah. Yes, I will accept that. But there's a lot of guys that have done multiple tours now that have done way more than me. I was lucky enough, from my mother's perspective at least, to not be sent to any major wars or spent any time in war zones, down peace, years of the nineties. But after that, I was a journalist. I went to college on the GI Bill and I got a degree in journalism from Rutgers University. And I was a working journalist for several years, a business journalist.

And then I got into digital marketing and I had a friend that I had met in the National Guard that was the reserves that I served in, that was recruited right out of college into one of the top as seen on TV companies. And later on, he said, a few years later, he said, the brother of the CEO of my company, former company, and he's looking for a marketing director, would you be interested? He'd always told me how crazy the industry was. And I was like, yeah, sure, I'll meet with him. And pretty much the rest is history. I got recruited by him as a director of marketing and then eventually spent five years there, became VP of marketing. But I really love the industry from day one. My current business partner and best friend, the one that brought me into the industry, bill Corliss. He used to always tell me these stories and they were larger than life stories. And then I joined and it was every bit as crazy and fun and full of characters as he had said it would be. And sharks, of course. Yes. His epic advice to me when I first started was always remember, these are the kind of people that will stab you in the back and then ask for their knife back.

Brett:

So descriptive and somewhat terrifying as well. Yeah. Did you, let's just talk about this for a minute cause I've got a perspective here too. What do you like about, so yes, there's some larger than life characters and the products are fun, but what is it about this combination that makes you love DRTV? Just for a side note, we started talking about this. For those who don't know, Dr. RTV stands for direct response. So instead of ads that are aimed at branding and positioning and driving response, at some point, direct response ads are designed to get someone to, in the early days, pick up the phone or mail order or something or visit a site and make a purchase. And so Dr. Direct response, but yeah, or what is it about the combination of things that you like so well?

Jordan:

Yeah, so direct data you're talking about there is really what appealed to me. Just you can get immediate feedback on whether something is working or not and that that's mean besides all the crazy characters. And this industry comes out of Boardwalk, so there's a lot of interesting selling techniques going on. But what I really liked about it from a marketer standpoint is you can immediately see if, and it's really fast too, in our industry, within a couple weeks, you can know whether this creative idea, whether this product idea that you had actually resonates with consumers or not using cable television testing. So I always like that. I always making the phones ring these days, making the servers light up, however you want to phrase that, you know, can actually immediately see the impact of your decisions, of your marketing strategy, of your creative. And you really can't beat it.

And it was also in the beginning, when I started in the industry, it was the only type of advertising that actually made money. Now that isn't the case, but when we started, we would make money in direct sales off of TV and forget about paying for your advertising. You're making a profit for the first six months, and then you go to retail and you've got all this advertising behind you and suddenly it blows out at retail. So it was a beautiful, beautiful model. It still is in many ways, but especially in the early days that I started, it was a very beautiful model because like I said, all your advertising is making you money. And in addition to fueling your eventual retail sales,

Brett:

Yeah, would you just wild. So making money on the front end and then, yeah, I know you really can explode when you hit the retail store shelves and then you have all those ads kind of fueling the growth. I know for me, I, I've just always loved the art of a good ad and especially the psychology of selling. And you talk about some of the greatest pitch people on Dr TV spots or infomercials, like Boardwalk Pitch people. And there's just something about this, the psychology, the art and science of that as well, that that's super interesting to me. What are the phrases that's causes someone to lean in? What are the phrases that cause someone to almost feel like they have to purchase? And so I love the psychology of it, love the art of it. And then there's nothing like the rush of when people start responding.

When I was in college, I worked for a radio station and I was involved with this live broadcast one time, and this was early on, I'll never forget this. This was early on when I realized I may maybe kind of hooked on marketing. So we did a live broadcast for a jewelry store and I was kind of involved. I got to get on air a couple times and whatnot. But people started flocking to this jewelry store and they were selling stuff and the owner was happy. And I was like, this is pretty fun. This is pretty exciting. There's some real juice going on here. So yeah, when you see a campaign that's working, it's still super exciting to me. So

Jordan:

Yeah, it's like that excitement. That's why I love the industry. So you go into the CEO's office and you have the report and you have all these phone orders and all these web orders and you're like, we got to hit use a metric, a metric, a KPI called Cost per Order. It's like CPA, but yep, cpo. And the CPO is so low and we just have a party, pop the champagne. It's so exciting to see your work immediately. Yeah. Give you those results.

Brett:

That's amazing. It's amazing. Cool. So we talked about Ginsu Knives is one of the all time greats, the Hall of Fame. It's definitely in Canton for sure. And then mentioned Tack light and the spinoffs then of that and some of the microwave cookers that you've been involved with. But what are a few of your all-time favorite DRTV campaigns and why?

Jordan:

Yeah, it's a good question. I'm really a big fan of anything by again, the pitchman that started the business. So Ron Pope Billy Mays. My two favorite commercials of all time are both Billy May's commercials. The first one would be Oxyclean, the original Oxyclean commercial that he did. And really it's because the technique, of course, is as flawless and it had had one of the best magic demos of all time. A magic demo in our trade magic demonstration is sort of what it sounds like. It's a demonstration that's so good. It's almost like a magic trick, although it's not. And he had this giant tank of dye and he drops the scoop of Oxy cleanin and the red dye tank turns clear. So if you Google that or go on YouTube and find that commercial and just watch it, it's really a clinic and great Dr selling.

And so that's probably my favorite commercial of all time with Billy MAs, the late great Billy MAs. And the second one would be a commercial called Mighty Putty. Mighty Putty was like a putty that dried cured so that it would bond things together. And again, another Billy MA's commercial and that probably had those commercials, had some of the best torture test demos as we called it, where they pull a tractor trailer or they lift a bus, they pull a plane later on. Those kind of, again, magic demonstrations, which I love because at the end of the day, it's a little bit of a PT Barnum style business. It's a Barnum technique. And if you can really get what we call wow factor or wow going in a commercial, it can really cover, really cover over a multitude of sins. But it can also really just kick you into the next level in terms of getting buzz and driving sales.

So I love the old pitchman, I love all of Billy Mays's work. I mentioned Ron Pope. Ron Pope was one of the guys who started the industry. So any of his infomercials, Showtime Rotisserie said it and forget it. And in the modern era, the guys that really worked with Billy and did a lot of the great classic commercials like John Miller and Peter Hutton from Hutton Miller, those are the guys behind the scenes, the creative geniuses that do a lot of the commercials. You even see today all the mighty putty stuff and stuff like that. So those are the guys that are my, no, their work is at the top of my list for sure.

Brett:

Yeah, Billy Mayman, like the Michael Jordan of T rtv, he's just one of the greatest. And Ron Pope, I've heard his name forever so I know he's a legend as well. And there's something about that magic demo or the torture test. I love that. I never heard that phrase. And we, I've called it over the top demo as well, where you've got, it's good to show the product in actual use. This is specifically what I'm going to use it for because people need to be told and there needs to be that suggestion of, hey, you can fix your pots with it and you fix this and that and whatnot. But then, yeah, then you see the magic demo and now you're like, man, I got to get this nothing. This, it creates that real emotional draw. I still remember, you probably remember this ad too, this wasn't exactly DRTV cause it was short form TV commercial, but it was more direct response. It was for super glue where two guys walk into a room carrying a dude and they glue him to the ceiling and it's like this ad was not cut and they put glue on his shoes and stick him to the ceiling. And I'm like, man, that's amazing. He got it. My super glue.

Jordan:

So I think the original version was a beam. He was dangling the hard hat from a beam. From a beam, I don't know off a building, but if you go, yeah, that was the original super glue demo. They glue the helmet to an I-beam or whatever and he was hanging off of a beam. Yeah.

Brett:

And I assume that's legit. Were those real demos or do you know?

Jordan:

Yeah, I don't know about that one. I'm sure they were with many different safety. As someone who's done 150 plus of these commercials, there are things that you do. We have safety things in place that might be off camera. I don't know if he was hanging off the Empire State Building. That would

Brett:

Probably be,

Jordan:

Yeah, you would never get permission or insurance for something like that. Sure, sure. Hang your actor off of a, but yes, there, they're always real demos, maybe off camera. Like I said, there's some safety features. There might be, hopefully there's a cord connected to the guy's ankle and Casey Falls or something.

Brett:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. That's awesome.

Jordan:

But wait, what you were saying, sorry to cut you up, what you were saying in the balance between demonstrating the product in real life, all the everyday uses like Mighty Pie is a great example. You know, can stick a mailbox on, you can you know can do this, you can do that, you can plug a leak, but then they have that, what I call it is the knot that you would, but you could pull a tractor trailer with it. Yeah, yeah. So it is a balance. You have to make sure you get enough of those everyday demos as well as that magic demo that kind of really proves the point.

Brett:

Not that you would, but you could. I love that. I love that you could. Yeah. Let's break down what are some of the successful elements? Cause I think that there are lots of lessons here and we're going to talk about how to tie this into digital marketing kind of as we go here. But what are some of the elements of a successful Dr. RTV campaign?

Jordan:

Okay, great. So when I started, I studied all the old masters and in the current greats as well. And I read their books, I interviewed them if possible. And of course I worked with them. You heard

Brett:

Some of your, just quickly, who are some of your favorites of kind of the old time greats?

Jordan:

Yeah, sure. So the old time greats, you got las got Albert Lasker and Kennedy, which was a cohort of his Claude Hopkins. Claude Hopkins wrote book a hundred years ago. Scientific Advertising. Yes, scientific Advertising, which was the inspiration for the name of my consulting company. Mark, you got John Caps. Yep. Tested advertising methods. Yep.

Brett:

So good. Yeah,

Jordan:

Of course you got the madman guys, you got David Ogilvie, Ross Reeves, personal favorite Mad Man. They might have even based Don Draper on him.

Brett:

Oh, on Ross Reeves.

Jordan:

On Ross Reeves, yeah. And he was a great kind of cranky guy. He had some great quotes that I could share with you from that era. And then you have Al ik, he's one of the early assing on TV guys. I mentioned Rom Pope, Joe Sugarman. Joe Sugarman was a print guy, d r print guy. But he wrote so many books that are super valuable.

Brett:

Yeah, I love his book Triggers. So it's triggers, it's a really fast read. It's like every chapter's two or three pages. Super fun. It's one I highly recommend you grab it on Amazon. So it's a great

Jordan:

Read. Actually behind me you can't see it. But behind me I, I'm a book collector so I have a library of, I mean it's only like, what was it, 30 or 40 books. But it's all the key books that have been done by all the Dr. Masters. So

Brett:

Nice. Yeah,

Jordan:

I have his books in there, Sugarman for sure.

Brett:

I bought Triggers, my son is doing sales just, he's only 20, but he definitely stole my Triggers books. I got to buy a new one. But I was glad. A lot of wisdom use that education for sure. So cool. So I catch you off, we kind of went on a rabbit trail there talking about some of breaks. Yeah. But you're talking about elements of success. You want to interview some of these guys. So who all did you interview? Just curious about that.

Jordan:

And I didn't finish my whole list, but the, and the more modern era, the Kani brothers, aj, Andy and his brother Chuck. I worked for Andy and I've worked, I've partnered with AJ since then. But in those days he was the, they're brothers and they all have three different companies and they're big force and on tv. So just working for the one brother and studying under the other brother got a chance to interview them. I interviewed Billy Mays, I interviewed Ropo P Met Ropo P interviewed him. So anybody that I had access to or that was still living, a lot of the guys I mentioned earlier are not living anymore. But the guys that were still living at that time, I worked with them. I interviewed them and I compiled these lists. That was kind of how I started as a journalist. I'm a journalist coming into, I had some marketing experience, but on the digital side, early digital too, we're talking about, so you're a Google guy, remember when I was just a colored banner across the top of the Totally course I was a bear ball and search engine, but their first ads were cu Yeah.

So we actually were one, a small company that I worked for in New Jersey. We were one of the first people to advertise in the tri-state area on that banner. And we used to have the Google team come in and talk to us about advertising at that time. So that's my digital marketing experience was way before the.com bubble burst basically. And my company survived because it was self-funded and it wasn't venture backed, but it was one of the few at that time. And I went through that period. But anyway, so I come in as a journalist and I don't really know much about as on TV at all infomercials. So this is what I did. I interviewed people, I took notes, I made lists, and I eventually condensed these lists down. There's a saying in DR that it's a success and probably applies or comes from other industries as well. Success is 80% product and 20% creative. So I set out to understand what the product criteria were that these guys were looking for and what the selling techniques were in their creative approach. And I ended up with, in the end I had the Divine seven and t n t,

Brett:

The Divine seven and t n T. Okay. Did you explain? Yes.

Jordan:

So the Divine seven is seven key product criteria, particularly for as seen on TV products. And t and t stands for tried and true. It's 10 tried and true tech selling techniques for Asen on TV commercials. And I'd, I'd be happy to go through those. Do you want You want to go through 'em?

Brett:

Do it man. Let's do it. Yeah. And we probably won't be able to key in on all of them in much detail, but let's go through it for sure.

Jordan:

Okay, so the Divine seven number one is unique and that's really about perception. So it has to be perceived to be new and different, right? Number two is mass market. Our ideal would be one per person, which obviously you can sometimes get there with sunglasses. You could say my market size is one per person. You could have multiple people in house that wear my sunglasses, but usually it's about one per household. That's how we look at it. Yeah. At least one household. One can be in every household in America. Problem solving.

Brett:

If you feel like that's true of the total addressable market, that's when you've got a mass market. Enough offer. Got

Jordan:

It. Yes. Well also, and this is something that's important to understand, what we do is we test cable television networks, big ones, Fox News and big news channels, stuff like that, as well as it's a moving list based on rates. But when we air a commercial, it's airing, airing everywhere. It's not local, not a regional air, it's a national air. So if you don't have an item that appeals to the entire nation or every household in the nation, then you're really just wasting money. So you're

Brett:

Wasting exposure. It's not very targeted spend.

Jordan:

Right. Got it. And then number three is problem solving. I always describe this as a the problem scale. I call it one to 10. One is an itch, 10 is a heart attack. Seven, you want to be a seven or higher on the problem scale in order to really grab people and sell to them. That's very important. I'll have a lot of people say, and actually you can critique bed as say on TV commercials this way, when they have that opening hate when this happens to you and you're like, no,

Brett:

Not really. That's really not

Jordan:

Very painful. It's probably not strong. Yeah, yeah.

Brett:

Got it. So it's got to be,

Jordan:

Do a minor inconvenience.

Brett:

So it's not a heart attack, but it's certainly not just a little itch, it's a like a

Jordan:

Seven, it's a like a seven or better. That was my, that's a sweet spot. Obviously not an exact science priced, right? That's just common sense. And in our business we operate on impulse purchase. So it varies by item, but typically with the consumer products that we do, that's why we're 19 99, 14 99. And we used to be $10, buy one, get one, because those are impulse purchases. We used to say, you're easy to take a $10 bill out of your pocket. It's harder to take a 50 out. And obviously these numbers have moved around a little bit. Now it's 29 99 is a common price point. But when I started it was 10 14 99, 19 99. And the idea was, you know, don't have to think too much about spending that amount of money. Once you get into more money now

Brett:

It's like you need to think about it, you feel like you need to talk to your spouse or somebody about it, then you just don't do it. Right. But if it's, yeah, 15 bucks, 20 bucks, 30 bucks, you just do it in the spur of the moment.

Jordan:

And if you're seen an on TV section in a Walmart or whatever it, it's always in an impulse area of the store. So a checkout or does it end cap. So you're on your way and you're like, oh, okay, grab that. Don't got to think too much about it. Throw it in my bag, throw it in my cart and move on. So that's what price right means it's just an impulse price, not a considered purchase. And that's really about price to value. You can have a TV that's impulse price. The loss leaders, you see sometimes they used to do $99 flat screens or whatever. Hey, this is about price to value, but ultimately the idea is take it out of considered purchase. I got to think about it and move it into a, I'm excited, I'll just drop the money and buy it.

Brett:

Got it. Love it. So number five.

Jordan:

Number five is easily explained. We have longer than most because as on TV is what we call short form is a two minute commercial. Obviously most commercials are 30 seconds, but that doesn't change or less, that doesn't change. The consumer's been trained, viewer's been trained to have about a 32nd attention span. So if your product isn't easily easy to explain, you're not going to get it done in that time. You're not going to sell them. People come to me with what I call Swiss Army products that does seven things. I'm just like, this is not for us. No way. I can explain those seven things in 30 seconds or less. And I really have to communicate what it is, what does, why it's different in that short period of time. And this'll be more common sense now to people who are dealing with TikTok and right. YouTube and things like that because we know the tension spans are short. But again, when I started and I first compiled this list and refined, it was insightful. People had longer attention spans back then.

Brett:

Kind of sad but true. Yes. So yeah, usually the DR tv, the short form Dr. TV commercials are two minutes or whatever. Yes. But are you using a rule of thumb? I want to be able to explain everything though. Problem, solution, feature, benefit, demonstration, 30 seconds. Because then you're reiterating it just for the rest of the time. Yes. Type of thing.

Jordan:

Yeah, you're reiterating it. We spend the rest of the, well last 30 seconds of the commercial is going to be building an offer. We'll get to that when we talk about the t and t, but building an offer and all those things that will sound familiar to people. So the last 30 is gone, the first 30, you really have to establish the problem, make yourself the solution and convince, tell people what it is, what it does, why it's different. And that first 30 and then the middle of the commercial is usually reserved for credibility boosters. Again, we'll talk about this in the t and t list, but Got it. Yeah. Credibility boosters, establishing value. That crazy magic demo. That's one of the biggest challenges. Okay, I want to do, I want to emulate Billy Maze, I want to emulate Hutton Miller. They have the first ones to do these kind of things in a big way.

So how do I do that now? How am I going to explain, I'm going to lift a bus with Mighty put, obviously I'm not doing that one, but a version of something like that in 60 seconds. Okay, there's a bus, there's Mighty. So that middle part of the commercial, if you're doing something big and grand, a Barnum move, then you're going to need the middle of the commercial for that. And then of course it becomes even more challenging because we do run sixties, a double 30. So now you have to cut that down. So really you got to be thinking, and again, this is going to sound less cutting edge than it might have sounded a few years ago, but you really got to be thinking about condensing your message into the shortest time possible so that at least you get the sale down and then you can do all these layering on top things to make it more exciting and convincing.

Brett:

Totally, totally makes sense. So what it is, what does what it solves, problem, solution, demonstration, all that in the first 30 or or potentially less. Awesome. So then number six,

Jordan:

Number six is age appropriate. So what that means is it's just a play on words and DR tends to skew older, middle-aged and above. So I established that because people would try to do tween products, or especially these days, young kids aren't even watching younger people even watching tv. Correct. So you know, got to make sure that the demographics of cable television or broadcast television are right for your product.

Brett:

So generally you're thinking forties and over or Boomer and older. What it's,

Jordan:

It's moved down. It used to be, I used to say 65 plus because that again, that's a sweet spot because our 50 plus boomers and above, because that was really the sweet spot. The bulk of buyers off of TV were that age group. But then things have evolved and I, when I started, I remember this clearly, I think web sales were 5% of total. It was like 95% phone sales and no, I'm sorry, 90% phone sales, maybe 5% web and 5% or more, a little bit more was mail. Mail-in send your checker money order to this address now. And we did that for years. It diminished in a diminished, but it was still a significant percentage of our sales. And the websites were mall websites. I dunno if remember those. It was like you go there and it's tons of products. We didn't even have our own webpa domains. It was kind of like a proto Amazon that we just drove them straight to our product

Brett:

Page. I think I'll just mail it in. I could call get online, I just want to mail it. That's so funny. Or even the mall websites are awesome too. So skews older, but it has shifted down a little bit, you would say?

Jordan:

Yeah. Now I'd say it's 35 plus or even 30 plus. I wouldn't do teens, I wouldn't do teens. I probably wouldn't do 20 somethings. I wouldn't do anything. Maybe it depends on what your goals are, but to get direct response, yeah, you're not going to get that. Yes.

Brett:

Yep. Makes sense.

Jordan:

Cool. And then the last one is of the divine seven was credible or believable, although that can be a pretty low bar if you have enough. Wow. And other factors going for you. But sometimes we look at quite a few products that people just aren't going to believe it. So if you look at it, and I know what you're saying, I remember an example would be someone brought a cardboard square, it was reflective somehow and their whole pitch was like you put a potato on it and it just grows. So if you put this in your vegetable drawer somehow it'll just, things will grow and stay fresh. And I looked at it and that science, I don't

Brett:

Think science works that way. I'm not a botanist, but I don't think it works.

Jordan:

And I just had to say, even if they had research and I'm like, well even if the, I'm not a scientist and I'm not going to critique your study, but it's just people aren't going to believe it. Take this cardboard square, put it in your refrigerator and magically all your produces is going to stay fresh. I didn't believe it. But then again, there's a famous product called Green Bags, infamous, famous, I mean it still sells today. That actually does work. And when you look at it the first time you'd say, ah, I don't know, putting my vegetables in a bag keeps them fresh. It actually works. There's some science behind why it works. So like I said, credibility is a good criteria to keep in mind, but you'd be surprised sometimes how low the bar could be as long as you do the other things. And obviously customer satisfaction, et cetera.

Brett:

Got it. And that's where I think some of the magic demos you talked about, you see it and maybe you wonder a little bit, but you also kind of believe your eyes. You believe what you're seeing, something like a magic piece of cardboard that grows produce or something. It's like I don't too much, I'm sort of seeing it. But so yeah, that totally makes sense. So the Divine Seven, that was worth the money to tune into the podcast right there. Divine Seven, divine. Love it. But we're not done folks. But wait, yes, there's more. But wait, there's more. There's so much. Alright, so let's talk about T. The, you said 10 T and T, 10 of the tried and true. Yeah,

Jordan:

Well the Divine Seven, just one last thing on that. Yeah, so later on I, I've refined that and rejiggered it a little bit on my website. I think I have eight criteria now. One that I added later that I think is important I mentioned earlier is wow. So sometimes if you have a really amazing demonstration, a really magic demonstration you can get by with not having some of the other Divine Seven and also Divine Seven are not like required. They're not hard and fast. They're basically, if you want to have the best odds of success, you'll hit all seven of those plus Wow. And then you have a pretty strong idea that you're going to have something successful. Of course you don't know until you actually put it in front of consumers and find out. So we use these criteria to this day and I, I've been consulting with Major the big Gas on TV companies for years as well. And they use these criteria just as a gut check, a way to sort of separate items. Then of course is a whole process of validating and finding out if you're actually correct. But it, they're good heuristic for separating the wheat from the chaff to start.

Brett:

Love it. And I love the Divine Seven is actually eight. That's fantastic.

Jordan:

The Divine Eight, right? The grade eight, I don't know, I got to grade

Brett:

Eight. Yeah, it just works. I don't know. Yeah, divine Seven's pretty special. So I will link to your blog posts also that be in the show notes so folks can check that out. Cool. So T and t, let's talk about that.

Jordan:

Okay, so t and t, you're basically breaking down the elements of a successful on TV commercial number one is start with the problem solution opening. It ties right into problem solving as a criteria for products. So you start by articulating a problem. This is the classic black and white or desaturated scene. You've seen an infomercials, oh no, are you tired of blah blah, blah. That's the classic scene. But starting with the problem solution is opening is hard and fast. I

Brett:

Love the Flex Seal commercials that are relatively, I mean that's not too old, but the opening scene there is a leaky roof and this guy with a pretty thick New Jersey accent's like this will cost thousands, these repairs will cost thousands of dollars or whatever. And then he gets into his pitch. That's a pretty good one. Yeah,

Jordan:

Phil's done an amazing job with the Flex Seal line. He blew it up into a whole business and that that's classic VR as well. So yes, you, they're actually super cuts on YouTube that you can find of it's, I have a favorite, maybe I can give it to you to put in the show notes, but it's like a super cut of all these problem scenes. Nice. And it's just hilarious when you put 'em all together. It's like this person has the worst, they ever fall down the stairs and they're gar garbage bag breaks and their roof is leaking and it just goes on and on. And so start with the problem solution opening. I, I've actually done a lot of, again, it's a very measurable type of marketing. So I've done a lot of AB testing with more aspirational openings or not having a problem solution opening. And every time hands down the problem opening is what wins.

Brett:

And a lot of that ties back to it. It's more motivational. We're more motivated to avoid pain then to seek pleasure. And so it makes sense. Yeah, if we got a problem, we want to solve it. So yeah, it makes sense that that's going to be usually the strongest opening.

Jordan:

So that's one. Number two, showcase unique features and benefits. So any good webpage or Amazon page has a list of features and benefits. So we just showcase those particular things. Again, this part of the commercial, these kind of go in order by the way. So this part of the commercial is about establishing what it is, what does, why it's different. So you showcase that and then tied into that as number three, which is demonstrate or demo the product repeatedly, which includes that magic demo in tech light we had the magic demo of this is supposed to be a super tough military durable flashlight. So of course we'd run it over with a Humvee, we freeze it in a block of ice and it still works. We do all these crazy military tough demos,

Brett:

Which both of those are really memorable. Seeing it in the block of ice and someone chips weigh the ice so you can, until it's actually ice and then the Humvee, that was better than just a van or something, right? It's going to be

Jordan:

Military how had to be a Humvee,

Brett:

Right? It's perfect

Jordan:

How to be a Humvee and then explain how the product works. It's a little mundane, but here's how it works. Here's part of a commercial's important, who does a really good job outside of Dr is Dyson. So Dyson's really selling you on there. Yes. Their sophisticated vortex technology inside of there, which is why you're going to spend three times as much. Exactly. You normally spend that in a vacuum. So they use that to great effect. Number five, prove value by comparing and contrasting. So when you think about this, I always think of the most iconic side. It's usually a side by side demonstration. You can also do before and afters of course. Number one in terms of comparing contrasting before your roof was leaking after your roof is no longer leaking or weight loss, you see the guy with the gut and then the guy doesn't have the gut anymore. So that's before. And afters is a classic example of that. But this a second one in terms of contrasting bounty, the quicker picker upper to this day, they do that split screen scene where they both go over a regular paper towel and the bounty goes over the same spill and there's a smear and left behind liquid on the negative side and on the product X side and on their side it gets the whole thing. So that is that drill

Brett:

I think brilliant immediately communicates the difference and it just lands, it works.

Jordan:

And then we have number six is established credibility with testimonials. So we don't always use testimonials. Sometimes we use celebrity endorsements. Basically this boils down to, you mentioned psychology earlier, I'm a student of social psychology, particularly Robert Cini. Yeah, I love it. And he has a concept called social proof. So we, especially in longer form, which is the half hour infomercials, they use a lot of social proof, a lot of people telling you how great the product is an incredible way. So that builds that sale for them.

Brett:

And the other interesting thing about social proof, we use this a lot for YouTube or any kind of digital ads. Video ads is especially user-generated content, but testimonials are pretty engaging as well if they're done the right way and I know how to craft the right testimonial or edit the right testimonial, but they tell a story and stories are very engaging. So it provides that social proof gives you confidence that it's going to work and it's also pretty engaging and helps draw somebody in. It's interesting, I remember going through a period of time when I had some clients tell me like, ah, testimonials, it's old school try. But I think everybody's over that. They know, no, this works, it's going to work forever. That's like saying good offers. So like old school. Okay, so anyway,

Jordan:

Yeah, I've heard that so many times in so many different ways. There's so many things that everything that I'm saying and everything that I will tell people is tested, tried and true means it's been tested and before me, I mean billions of dollars have been proven these things out. So I always kind of have to laugh when people are say, oh I'm not, I'm going to do that. Yeah,

Brett:

I don't want to do that. That's not my brand, it's not my style. I'm like, oh, okay,

Jordan:

It's great, but we know it works. Do you want sales or

Brett:

Yeah,

Jordan:

Exactly. Anyway, so yeah, where were we? Chaldini social proof. Yes, very important. Raise an answer. Obvious questions and objections. So we mentioned Sugarman earlier, this is basically Sugarman one of, I mean Sugarman has many things, but one of the things that jumped out of me enough to put it into my, he's

Brett:

Also Sugarman's the guy, but I don't know if we mentioned before. So Ruth book triggers, which you recommend, but he is also the guy behind glue blockers. That was one of his big successes. Love the blue

Jordan:

Blockers. He was the first guy to do the blue blocking sunglasses. He had those great, that had a lot of social proof in it. There's a character that he found on a beach that did some dance moves and stuff. Very iconic. And that of course led to many variations. And to this day you can buy blue blocking sunglasses. They still sell. But yeah, so his thing was to, and this is selling 1 0 1, he just applied it to Dr Print, you know, sit down and you think about what I mean, any Amazon seller knows these things because there is a section on every page where you try to anticipate questions and give answers or people submit questions and you give answers. So his idea was to include that if you have, he said it in a funny way, he said, raise an answer, obvious questions and objections, but make sure you have a good answer. Yes,

Brett:

Yes, yes,

Jordan:

Totally. So don't raise it if you don't have a good answer, but to anticipate what people are going to say, like that's not real or whatever. So then you show them that it's real or that this can't possibly do X and then you think of a way to show that. So if you have a good answer, anticipate, again, that's just selling 1 0 1, but he applied it to Dr. Number eight, present a powerful offer at an incredible price. I mean that is what was it Sounds like it. It's become a bit mundane crossing out the higher price and putting the lower price. But Dr. Infomercial marketers kind of pioneered all this stuff.

Brett:

It still works and it still works online. And we've tested this quite a bit. And we have clients that will test this during holiday sales or whatever. Having that was priced, that's marked out. And then the current price, it's powerful. It's got that psychological effect of, hey, I want to buy this anyway and now you're giving me a little extra justification and a little extra logic that I can use to say, yeah, okay, I'm doing the right thing here. I'm making a smart choice to buy this. I'm saving money to buy this product. So that's fine. Yeah, still

Jordan:

Works. Save saving more money than I'm spending.

And of course along with that goes all the techniques. Some people don't use them anymore, they've fallen out of favor. They're a little bit manipulative. But sometimes if you can do supplies are limited and things like that, all the infomercial guys pioneered every technique you can think of. Supplies are limited. Act now. Act now. And you get a special discount reasons to, there's so many ways you can use this. One of the modern innovations that I've seen that I thought was pretty clever is obviously when you're at a commercial, some percentage of people, a growing percentage every day are going to go to Amazon and find your, they're going to skip your website, they're not going to call your number, they're not going to go to your website, they're going to go to Amazon, they're going to search. So they're going to find competitors. And you don't really want that ideally.

So we used to have this offer not available in stores, which was true cause you can get a bonus item or something only on TV that was incentive to call us and order direct. But now it's seen one of the top players saying, this offer only is not available on Amazon. The product on Amazon of course, because you'd be stupid not to have it there, but they have a special offer, a TV offer that you can only get by going to their website. So that's incentivizing come into my sales funnel and stay away from all those competitors and knockoffs and stuff that you're going to find when you go to.

Brett:

And I guess that that's even powerful even if you are selling your own product on Amazon. And we've seen this a lot by the way, quick side note, we help brands launch on Amazon, we do it all the time. And yeah, we found successful companies that are really good at running their own ads and driving traffic through Facebook or YouTube and they're generating this little business, little ecosystem on Amazon of people that are feeding off of their brand or off of their ads. And so then once we launch their brand on Amazon, then they can get those sales. But I'm guessing even if it's your listing, even if you're controlling Amazon, you still probably want to drive some traffic to your own funnel once you get the customer data and all that. But also you probably need to get some of that data pretty quickly to know that the campaign is working, right? Cause you need that feedback to know is the Dr TV campaign working and you need that more in real time than probably can get from Amazon.

Jordan:

Yeah, yeah. It's solving Amazon is I'm sure is a big challenge for everyone. It is. It's been a challenge for us as well as that's evolved to the numbers are crazy and of course I'm part of the problem because I love my Amazon Prime too. Totally. So I think everyone's trying to solve that. It's become a big part. Like I said when I started 5% web, still having mail-in orders. Now of course web is so dominant and Amazon's just eating all that. So phone is talk about phone, people are like what people call in and order. It seems so antiquated, but it still happens significantly enough that we would put phone numbers obviously still. But yeah, become everything became web and now everything's becoming Amazon.

Brett:

So what are those breakdowns now between phone, website and Amazon? Do you know? It probably varies but

Jordan:

Averaging the averages, I would say up to half of your direct sales we're going to come from Amazon or people are going to go to Amazon, maybe 40% I've heard. I don't have a good numbers, but I'm just, I mean this is take it with a grain of salt back of the envelope. And then I think phones probably got to be down to like 20%, but it's still significant. So it's still

Brett:

Significant.

Jordan:

And again, it would depend too on what you're selling. Obviously a lot of people are using hybrid model of DR where they're doing branding and they're driving to web and they're doing other things. E-commerce, the.com people are doing DR. Now performance driven marketing. So that wouldn't apply to them. But when we're talking about classic as on tv, I'd say maybe 20% phone, 30% your microsite, the rest Amazon, something like that. Yeah, I mean Amazon. Yeah, that makes sense. Amazon just eaten everything.

Brett:

Makes sense. Awesome. Yeah. So back to t and t. Were we ready for number nine?

Jordan:

T n t? Yes. Use it. It's dynamite. Yes. So you present a power powerful offer, an incredible price, and then you increase your perceived value with a value comparison. So you could pay a hundred dollars for this, but today you'll get this better product for only 1999. So we do a lot of comparisons. Sometimes it's just a matter of no, if we go back a few years, we used to zero in on a, this is going to sound really dated too, like catalog page. Yeah. We use webpages at some point where you zoom in on the price and you circle in red and it's like look how much this is. Well

Brett:

Even saw that you guys know tack light, right? I think you use Zoom into an Amazon listing and show it these are $59 but not tack light.

Jordan:

Yes. Seven or eight years ago when we shot that, yeah, that was still a, I mean I would use it today, but I don't know exactly how I would use it because I mean it's moving so fast, but back then it was still a good selling technique. And there's all these techniques by the way they evolve, but there's still the fundamentals. So fundamentals just a question of figuring out how to apply value comparing today, but especially if there's the first one to break price, and again I got to put the asterisks of Amazon is because now it's becoming much more common to find all different price points. But the fundamental technique is to find someone who's selling something for an expensive price and then be the first one to, to break the price. So we used to do that all the time. We would, whether it was on live shopping or even an infomercial going into to short form, we would break the price. It would be 60 and we'd bring it down to 1999, fortune point 99. So if you can break a price, you definitely want to call that out in your advertising, the first one to be at this crazy price.

Brett:

Love it, love it. So number 10, the grand finale of t and t

Jordan:

Number 10 is actually the title of one of the books that we mentioned. A guy named Aloff wrote a book called or Money Back. He's the guy who coined that phrase. And conceptually it's minimizing risk with a satisfaction guarantee. Again, something that might seem mundane, people don't give it as much thought as they should. And somebody who's a really conscientious marketer should think about ways to innovate in this space. How good can you make that guarantee? We used to, it was in the beginning it was as simple in the ally cuff days, simple as if you're not completely satisfied, we'll give you your money back, no questions asked. That was innovative at that time. And then it became we'll pay, I'm sure you've seen in some of the early web days, we'll pay you to return shipping. Yeah, we'll triple, we'll give you triple the money back.

I think it was Pope who'll used to do certain crazy. You'll lose money on that when people use your abuse you for your guarantee. And I looked at the numbers and it's like a small fraction, we'll actually fill it out and send it in. You had a couple hurdles to jump through and he was like, it's worth it for the ones that get through the process and go through all that trouble, it's just worth it to pay them double or whatever it is to have the power of that marketing. And Sugarman's, Sugarman was a fan of that as well. He would give these, I think he called it satisfaction, not satisfaction, total satisfaction guarantees or something like that. I don't remember the exact terminology, but his idea was like, this guarantee is so good that people will actually think you are getting ripped off. And that gives them the confidence to take that final step and close the sale.

Brett:

Which makes a lot of sense. And yeah, you mentioned free shipping both ways. I think Zappos was one of the early ones to do that online. Yes. And they realize that that's the biggest hurdle for someone to buy shoes online, is that it's not going to be the right size and returning, it's going to be a nightmare. It's going to cost a lot of money. So they invested actually marketing dollars into those returns. So free shipping both ways, no questions asked. We'll exchange it. Yeah.

Jordan:

Well what is Prime doing? Prime doing the same thing. You can just don't even put it in a box, just literally throw it through the window of your local ups and we'll take it back and give you a refund. They're making it as frictionless as possible. Totally. And that's the concept. Yeah,

Brett:

That's the concept. And that increases consumption and demand and sales enough to make it worth any of the hoops you have to jump through as a business or the added cost as a business. It if far outweighs that, so love that. Well man, that was gold. So you got the Divine seven actually with the grade eight and then 10 tried and true. So that's fantastic. So we're up against time a little bit, but I don't want to get this short cause it's been awesome. So just a couple more things that I want to chat about as we wrap up. You know said you could know it in as early as a couple weeks that this is working when, what do have to see to know that your DRTV campaign is working and talk just a little bit about the math behind DRTV. 

Jordan:

Yes. So usually in two weekends that's usually how we run weekend to weekend testing. We've erred on enough cable networks, major cable networks to get the so each, and again this is changing a little bit. Attribution as in everything is becoming a bit tricky, but I'll just talk about the general model when it was phone and web and things that you can key would've a different phone number in every commercial that ran every station. This is called keyed marketing, it comes to print as well. And then we would match up the server logs for the times that the, based on when the commercial aired, matched it up with the server logs to know what orders are coming from where. So we get pretty granular in that regard of we added on these 10 stations over the course of a week or two weekends. And most of the media is on the weekends that airs.

And then you know immediately get, you get daily reports, you get a weekly report and a few days after that you get a final report. We include some sales that trickle in, we call it drag. But looking at those numbers again, the key metric in as on TV is the cost per order cpo. So it's basically your ad spend divided by the orders that you got. It's similar to a cost per acquisition. And based on that number and based on experience, I have a little spreadsheet business model that factors in all the costs. We already know what number we're aiming for. Every campaign has a pre-calculated breakeven and obviously if you get below that breakeven, you're lower, the CPO the better and you're golden. So yeah, it's very fast. And we can also what's called buy manage. So that's what a direct response agency will do based on which stations are performing, which rotations, which is a certain time of day is performing. You can get pretty granular with that as well. Even down to the hour, they will buy the ones out that are not driving sales based on the data they have and they'll heavy up on the ones that are driving sales. Totally makes sense. So that's basically how it works in a nutshell. Do you have any more?

Brett:

No, it's perfect. Yeah, so it's your media buying at that point. You're optimizing just like we would do online. But then I know one of the questions that I have and that I'm sure others do as well, how does a product like Tack Light sell for 1495 and how do you make money? Because you're spending a lot on the CPOs, what are they, like a dollar. But for products like that, are you really relying on upsells and cross-sells things on the backend or talk about that a little bit.

Jordan:

And there's a science to that as well and some techniques that I've collected and applied over the years, of course it is upsells, your average sale is not Fortune 99. It could be back in the day. It could be as high as $60 off of a $10 initial offer. So there's a lot of things happening on the backend, things that that you really can't do as efficiently on Amazon. You can do on a web microsite and on the phone of course as well. And the biggest things are just this word deluxe that's worth listening to this podcast. People like Deluxe, if you apply this word deluxe to something for some psychological weird reason that nobody knows, but it's been proven over and over again, over a hundred years of direct selling people, people will order it. So we used to see strange things. I don't know 40% of customers will order a deluxe. Why? Wow. Because you called it deluxe?

Brett:

No, the deluxe. We all want the deluxe. Deluxe. We can tell our friends deluxe show, well when this is the deluxe, no big deal.

Jordan:

What does that mean? It can be a color even. Well this is in the copper gold color. Oh, okay. And people will go for it. So it's a very powerful word. We obviously try to deliver some extra value and make the product a deluxe product. So that was key. And we did that upfront. We'd always order ordered these things, by the way, in the order of most converting to the least converting based on all the history and knowledge that we had. So deluxe is first obviously multiples of the same thing that you ordered. For some reason people like to order two and three, especially if you give 'em an incentive. We used to see crazier things there. I had a producer friend called the Mooch Factor, and that even applies to the commercial by the way. So we used to offer a lot of bonus, little bonus items, throw away things that you get for free if you order now.

And then we started doing a lot of buy one get ones because for some reason it didn't matter what it was. You might say to yourself, why would anybody need two of these? But for some reason if you give them two, it stimulates the sale. So you can apply that on the back end as well. People who obviously bought one, they're more likely to buy two or three. You can make arguments. We have classic arguments like buy one for you and one for your family and one for your friends and one for your mom. So one for the house and one for the car is a classic as seen on TV arguments. So those two things alone drove most of the backend revenue or drive most of the backend revenue. And then little things like you can do a longer guarantee, like a war, longer warranties, which is familiar to people who have ever bought a vacuum cleaner at a department store back in the day or any electronic item at a Best Buy.

They're always, or even now on Amazon, they're trying to sell you guarantees and insurance all the time. Totally. So we would do a little bit of that accessories. It sort of trickled down to smaller and smaller percentages. A lot of times we load it up and then pair it back as we saw what people were responding to. Because you get all that data too. The phone center gives you all the data, the website obviously. And you can study that and say, okay, this is converting and this is not converting, swap things out. It's a very scientific endeavor in that regard. And that we keep iterating, we keep trying different offers on tv. We keep trying different things on the backend to maximize that average sale.

Brett:

And is there usually a certain magic number you're going for where maybe you're offering it for 1499 or 1999, but you're trying to get 50, 60 as the average order value?

Jordan:

So we have a thing that's similar to I guess ROAS we call it. And it may be if people have heard of it. Media efficiency ratio. Yeah, totally. Some call it ratio. So two to one was the gold standard and everyone was shooting for a two to one in terms of revenue to advertising spend. That was, as a general rule of thumb, that's what we were shooting for. And then of course got better than that three, four to one. If you got a four to one, you're popping champagne and

Brett:

Yeah, nuts. You're buying all the airtime you can possibly buy at that

Jordan:

Point by the world supply. My first boss in this industry, Andy Kuban, used to, when he got really excited and we had William Low CPOs, he would call up the agency and he would say, buy the World Supply of Media.

Brett:

So that's

Jordan:

That. Say, what do you

Brett:

Do it company wants to get, they're like, you got it. I will buy everything right now. So that's awesome. Jordan, this has been an absolute blast. This totally lived up to expectations. Super fun. I'm actually quite bummed that we need to wrap up here, but we are for sure running out time. So couple of quick things. Well first of all, just mention this as we Rapid fire, favorite projects you've worked on. And then I want to talk about how people can connect with you. Maybe they want to tip their toes in the DRTV or may just want to learn more. So we'll talk about that in a second. But Rapid Fire, favorite campaigns you've been involved with and why?

Jordan:

Yeah. So the first one is Nearest and dearest to my heart would be the finishing touch line of personal hair removals. It became Micro-Touch and a bunch of other products that eventually became flawless and is now with church and Dwight. It was a big sale in our business, but that was the first one I worked on. So those are the first campaigns that I worked on. So those are near and dear I, I've done a bunch of fun stuff with I, I've worked with Billy Mays, so anything I did with him was always fun. The, there's a, it's on YouTube now as well. There was a short-lived discovery show called Pitchman, which started Billy Mays and Anthony Sullivan. And I'm actually in one of those episodes. Nice. And I had done a deal my five of my 15 minutes of fame, I guess. So I worked on a few pods with him that we did the Magic Mesh years ago. Magic Mesh, which is a curtain, a mesh curtain. It's like a screen you can walk through and it closes is automatically behind you. That one's near and dear, because it was the first one I did with Fred Paddock and Paddock Productions out of Kansas City. Shout out to them the home of the Super Bowl Champs.

Brett:

Absolutely. Go Cheese man. I'm from KC originally. Huge cheese man.

Jordan:

Yeah. So that was the first project we did together. Became a big success and aired for many years. And then like all the attack light stuff that we've done, Nick Bolton, it's been great to work with. He's, he's a spokesman. It was all the fun stuff that we did. Fun pseudo military type stuff that we did over the years. It's been eight or nine years I think now that we've been shooting commercials for that and introducing new items. So all those have been great. Nick's great. The Paddock team, which did that as well is great. So I've had so much fun on all those commercials, thinking of new ways, new things to run it over with. We went to a tank park and you can actually drive a tank at somewhere in Missouri. And we went there and ran over a bunch of products with a giant tank and crushed a car. I think that's a picture on my website if you go over

Brett:

Where Missouri. Cause I'm in Missouri, I'm in Springfield, so I'm about two and a half hours

Jordan:

Southeast. No, it's not Missouri. Sorry, I misspoke. It's in either, it's in Minnesota. Minnesota, it's called a tank.com. You can probably just Google it and you'll find it, but you can actually go there and drive a tank. And we went there for the day and shot a bunch of really fun stuff. So thinking of, just imagine you're on your 26th or 27th tack commercial and you're like, okay, what could we possibly run this thing over with Now we've done everything. I've done a monster truck, I've done. So it, it's so much fun just trying to come up with these ideas.

Brett:

One, upping yourself on production, which is awesome. Yeah. Fantastic. So for those that say, Hey, I want to keep learning from Jordan, I want to check out some of his articles, some of his materials, where can they do that? And then what if they want to work with you, how can they get in touch with you that way?

Jordan:

Yeah, so I have the companies you mentioned, my consulting company's called SciMark, S C I M A R K. So if you just go to SciMark.com, you can find Humble

Brett:

About science and marketing. Easy to

Jordan:

Remember. Yeah. Yes, that that's Hopkins. Hopkins Scientific Advertising, which you mentioned, which you knew, which I was impressed by. Yeah, I've

Brett:

Got on the shelf in the office.

Jordan:

Yes. That was a very inspirational book for me. So when I named my consulting company, I named it after that. So scientific marketing, so cymar.com, it's got a bunch of stuff on everything you want to know to find out more about me and contact me. And then I write a weekly sub. Used to be a blog. I've been doing it since 2007. It's sort of inside baseball about this industry. It's called the SciMark Report, which you can find on CK and LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn so you can find all my contact stuff and websites and projects and everything. On LinkedIn. I have a YouTube channel, SciMark channel, which has all my commercials on it. If you care to peruse my collection. I think

Brett:

You got to. They're fantastic. And so if you enjoyed this podcast, you need to go to the YouTube channel and watch it and also get the CK as well. So Awesome. Great. Good stuff. And then did you mention Paragon?

Jordan:

Yeah, Paragon. So Paragon is, Paragon is my product company. We do our own products. We design, manufacturing and supply. I do the commercials. My partner Bill Corvis does all the China side development and logistics and managing the supply chain. So we partnered up later on after he brought me into the industry and I got some experience and he did his thing. We later on partnered up in this company called Paragon, where we like the tech, tech projects are actually our products. We've developed them, we do all of our own products now, but Nice. For many years. I just did consulting for other people and then I started doing my own commercials and my own projects. So most of the ones we talked about on my own products as well as commercials or our own, I should say. Sure. From Paragon. Yeah.

Brett:

Awesome. Well, Jordan, this has been an absolute blast. Looking forward to doing part two at some point, or maybe we can talk about how these things work on YouTube at some point. But just fabulous job. Super, super fun. And yeah, thanks for coming on.

Jordan:

Great. Thanks for having me. It was great talking to

Brett:

You. Absolutely. And as always, thank you for tuning in. We'd love to hear from you. What would you like to hear more of on the show? And if you love this episode, which I bet you did, share it with someone that you think might benefit from it. And hey, if you haven't done it already, we'd love that review on iTunes, helps other people discover the show. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

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