What it Takes to Get to #1 on Amazon and the Secret Sauce for Startup Marketing

Speaker 1: 0:01

You're in the marketing world and you're looking for inspiration, or you're a business leader who wants to understand what good marketing looks like. You're busy. You don't have time to sit around listening to a rambling 3 hour podcast. We get it. This is the Remarkable Marketing Podcast, where we celebrate the marketing rock stars that deliver truly remarkable marketing, and you'll hear short interviews with marketing execs who share stories about the best marketing they've ever done, how it delivered a huge impact and how they overcame all the challenges to make it happen. If you aspire to be remarkable, you'll walk away with ideas on how to do truly epic marketing. Getting right to the content of what you need for busy professionals, this is the Remarkable. Marketing Podcast. Now your host, Eric Eden.

Speaker 3: 0:56

Welcome to the Remarkable Marketing Podcast. Today, our guest is Amy Zweigerman. She is a marketer with over 25 years of experience in media entertainment, being a fractional CMO and her own company, the Launchbox, which she'll talk to us a little bit about. Thanks for joining us today, amy.

Speaker 2: 1:16

Hi, thanks for having me.

Speaker 3: 1:18

I appreciate you making the time to share a story today with the audience. My understanding is you have a story for us. You worked with a lot of startups, you worked for some big companies in the media and entertainment industry and you have a story for us today about some awesome epic marketing.

Speaker 2: 1:36

Epic. Epic is challenging, but yeah. So I thought a little bit about my career and what I've done. The marketing or the project that I'm most proud of is ESPN Films, 30 for 30. So I was part of the home entertainment team at ESPN at that time and so we brought that to Blu-ray. We bought it to the market and it landed at number one on Amazon and it sold out relatively quickly. So I'm really proud of the work I did there for many reasons. But I have to start out by saying that I am not the creator of 30 for 30. There was a number of amazing people involved in that project. There's the people who concepted it, the people who produced it. I just got the benefit or the luck of being able to put it out on home video. So I'm really proud of that project because we did something different. We did something different for a network and we were able to see it through. The fruition and you guys will hear this as we go into some other questions around this, but I liken it to my joke is it's the hubris of youth. I didn't know I could fail and I believe so strongly in what I was doing that I pushed this project through and it was an absolutely amazing experience and an amazing result in terms of getting to that number one spot. We also were able to sell an exclusive to Best Buy all things that were unheard of coming from a cable sports network. It was me, coming in with a studio background and working on film releases, that was able to sort of tweak their thinking and tweak their model to get us to that level.

Speaker 3: 3:12

So what was the impact of this project?

Speaker 2: 3:15

So the big picture impact of this product is that ESPN, as you guys all know, is an incredibly popular and successful sports network. Their business is producing and broadcasting live sports, right. Additionally, they have content around that. They have news, they have docs, they have scripted series. So when I went in and they were working on this amazing project, these 30 documentaries by 30 filmmakers, I was like these are films, guys, these aren't just TV shows. How do we take that and apply the theatrical model to what you're doing here to get these films in front of more eyeballs? And ESPN thought was well, we speak for sports fans, we deliver sports fans, we are sports fans. So they weren't sure, they even cared. And my position was that, one, we can broaden the audience. Two, that audience will then come to the network to see these documentaries that may not have already been here and it's just making sure that everyone knew they were available and they were able to come to them. And what was unique about the project is it was concepted as 30 films by 30 filmmakers about moments in sports over the last three decades that were meaningful to them. So they brought to bear incredible directors that you would see at festival circuits and in theaters for big box office movies. So that's what was unique about this project that allowed me to sort of pave this path and create this new line of thinking inside ESPN.

Speaker 3: 4:48

And so, from the marketing you did, how many people got to see these movies, were they?

Speaker 2: 4:55

Oh gosh, I wish I knew the numbers. It was wow. So many people saw it on network, so many people bought it on home video. Right, we sold out. So what was unique for us and the different kind of stats I'll give you, is that we released it holiday. So I really wanted to have a gift guide campaign, which, in the marketing world, is like getting in those top 10 gifts for men lists and fortune and all those kind of magazines, and it wasn't something that ESPN was really used to doing. So my PR contact at the time was amazing and she went out and found an agency to do this for us. So we got placed in all these incredible gift guides for holiday, which then in turn led to, as soon as we released the title, selling out right and bumping to number one on Amazon. So that's it. It led to this incredible volume. Like getting to number one at Amazon in the holidays against all the theatrical movies is a big number. I just can't quite remember what it was at that point in time, but that was one of those things where I went. My work here is done Like I'll never be able to get it again.

Speaker 3: 6:02

That's a result in itself. Is what you're saying? Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I assume, whatever the sales numbers were, whatever the viewership numbers were, if it was number one on Amazon, it was pretty good.

Speaker 2: 6:12

Yeah, exactly, and we went back to press immediately and we continued selling it and they're still making the series to the state, which is not a result of my home video efforts. However, they're still releasing the series on home video. You can still find this box set on home video and it's priced up. It's on eBay and Amazon is a reseller collectible. So that's also in the world of home video. That's a high bar, that's a Lord of the Rings, that's a cult classic that you just can't find anywhere.

Speaker 3: 6:45

And at the time you were probably taking somewhat of a chance on something like Blu-ray, right?

Speaker 2: 6:51

Yeah. So what was interesting about this project is our distributor at the time, which would have been the company putting out the movies for us that we worked with to replicate, create, then we can get them into retail. I didn't like the project. They were like documentaries they're not going to sell, we're going to pass. We don't want to do this. And so we had this unique challenge of 30 films, 30 stories. Each filmmaker was important in their own right, so wanting to do each film individually and doing the film series as a collective, because I felt in this scenario, like the holiday sell out that we had, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Right Together, it was this incredible offering and individually it appealed regionally or it appealed to specific sports fans or specific filmmaker fans, so it was a different sort of combination. So we had to find a distributor that was willing to do the singles and willing to do the box set and it was willing to see our vision. And I have to say, a lot of people disagreed with what I wanted to do and what we wanted to do, like I wasn't a solo entity there. So we had to have quite a few conversations and ended up with a small distributor out of Kentucky who is still a great contact and a great friend and a great person in my network to this day. So they bought into our vision and we agreed to hold hands and to do this project and see how it resulted. And at ESPN we put our money where our mouth was Like we covered the cost of replication to get as many units into market as we did because we felt it was going to go out. And I look back now and I can't believe I did that, like what I know now would scare me away from doing that. So that's why I say it's a little bit of the hubris of youth, the privilege of youth. Yes.

Speaker 3: 8:35

So are you saying that it was easy? It was easy to do it. What was hard about it?

Speaker 2: 8:39

It was really hard. It was convincing the people internally at the company. It was worth pursuing. It was finding a distributor who agreed with our vision that wanted to put it out. It was satisfying the needs of 30 filmmakers as well as the needs of sports fans as well as the needs of what I thought was a broader consumer market. So it was balancing all those things. And it was also incredibly challenging from a timeline perspective, because content that's produced for TV is finished usually relatively close to when it goes on air and contents that's produced for theaters or for home video is usually done three to six months out. So you have time to produce and develop. So we had to figure out a way to put things out quickly that at that time people weren't really doing. At that time you did have Amazon, you did have iTunes, you did have all of those things, but it wasn't a really common way of watching things. We also sold the films into Netflix as well as documentaries that we believe people would want to watch. That was back when Netflix was licensing a lot of content. It was before the big behemoth that they are today.

Speaker 3: 9:49

So what did you learn from that experience? That still translates really well into what people can do today. It seems like there's some core things there that you learned from doing that that people still like today.

Speaker 2: 10:01

Yeah for sure. For me, marketing is part art and part science. So the science is what you learn in school, it's the textbook, it's what you read about online. Here's how you do marketing XYZ standard tactics, standard strategies. The art is looking at what you're releasing and how to apply those strategies in a way that aligns with that product or service and connects with customers. So a lot of what we were doing is figuring out how to take the traditional model of releasing content on home video but applying it to a sports fan and a sports model in a way that was authentic to ESPN and authentic to documentaries, and it was a different slice at how people were putting out content like that at the time. So it was really about getting creative. And my thing with marketing is you need to feel really strongly about what you're doing. There is no right or wrong. There are so many ways to go to market, there are so many ways to connect with your customers, and they could all work. So what I think for me is I like to play devil's advocate and pick things apart and make sure that I feel really good about what I'm doing and that it's very authentic and in line, and then I go to market with that strategy and I think it's having that faith, that belief in what you're doing and having it feel like it's authentic that gives it the extra umps to connect with customers. So what I like to tell people is trust your instincts. It's not just about doing what everybody else does. It's about figuring out the right path and the right opportunities for your product and what you're trying to achieve.

Speaker 3: 11:45

So you have to have conviction and belief, yeah, and then you also have to be brave and be willing to do something different. Are those really the two main themes? You would say.

Speaker 2: 11:56

For sure and then also realize, with marketing, like I said, there's so many paths, there's so many options. If something's not working on this day and age, you can tweak it, you can adjust it, and the digital world, like nothing, is static, right. So I put out an ad and I decide, oh, I was wrong, I want to tweak that I can. Back then it was sort of like you have a print ad that you send to a magazine two months out and like that's it right. It goes out and you're done. But now there's so much fluidity. So again you have to have that conviction, passion, belief, faith, trust, instinct. But you can also play with things, so not to be scared.

Speaker 3: 12:37

Experimentation. So tell me a little bit about what you've been doing the last eight years or so with the launch box and working with startups. Is there anything you can share there that you see as a trend across startups really great marketing that they're doing.

Speaker 2: 12:51

Yeah. So to get to the great part, I have to talk about the challenge. Like the number one challenge I think most startups have is you come up with this idea, something that you think people will want, because you want it, and as human beings, we're intrinsically designed to think everybody is just like us. So this is solving a problem for me. It'll solve a problem for so many more people. So they don't go out and market test. They don't go out and figure out what their core differentiation is and what their core positioning is and who their core customer is. They don't take that moment, as they're starting their startup, to get all of that in line, which is what I do. I try to come in and help founders and startups figure out who they are, what they want to be, how they connect with customers, all of those things that make them unique and differentiated, so how to go to market. So it's all the things you do that are marketing related, before you start buying advertising. So I think that's one of the biggest challenges startups have is just jumping from A to B and then wondering why something doesn't connect. It's not always that it's not a product people would want. It may be that they're speaking to the wrong people or they just need to tweak something, and so people can tend to give up too quickly. So I think one of the best things that I see that startups are doing is embracing that model. There's a lot of new technology out there that's allowing people to do very robust, very killer beta testing, where you can literally engage customers to help you build your product, and that is the most amazing way to get something to market is to really get it started and then have people use it and give you constant feedback. It's fantastic, and I, for one, like anyone, comes to me with being my beta, and I say yes because I feel like it's of value to them as well as me to do that.

Speaker 3: 14:44

That's awesome, and you had mentioned to me that you have a resource that anyone listening could take a look at on your website as well.

Speaker 2: 14:52

Yeah, I have a custom marketing strategy service that I use with founders to help them cement their positioning and go to market strategy. It usually comes in a little bit after they've done the beta, they've gotten research, they know what they want to do and it helps to solidify their positioning and their branding and how they want to go to market. So I think it's a great way for most founders to get a good read on what they want to do and to prepare themselves for that launch strategy. And I'm getting ready to launch a couple of different ways, like you can engage with me to do it hands on with you, or I'm going to be offering a course so that you can do it on your own if you're so inclined. And it's all about my desire to make this information accessible and relatable for founders who may not have a marketing or business background.

Speaker 3: 15:40

That's great. Well, thank you for sharing this story with us today, amy. Very inspiring. Getting to number one on Amazon is quite a remarkable feat, and the learnings you shared around that were just great, so really appreciate you doing that today.

Speaker 1: 15:58

You've been listening to the Remarkable Marketing Podcast. Our passion is to bring you the marketing rock stars who share stories about the best marketing they've done, how it delivered and how they handled all the challenges that go along with it. And we do it all in 10 minutes. We only ask two things. First, visit the RemarkableMarketingio website for more great insights. Second, this podcast has been brought to you by the Next Generation Social Networking app, workverse. You can download and use the Workverse app for free to build your professional brand, become a paid expert advisor and discover the best business events to attend. Download the Workverse app today. See you next time on the Remarkable Marketing Podcast.