The Power of Differentiation: Win Hearts, Minds, and Market Share

Eric Eden: 1:01

All right, all right, all right. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Welcome to the podcast. We have a guest today who is Barry Labov. He is a two-time entrepreneur and he owns his own marketing firm. He is going to share with us today a story about some of the best marketing that he has ever done with his clients. Welcome to the show, Barry.

Barry Labov: 1:27

Hey, thank you, eric, I'm really excited to be with you today.

Eric Eden: 1:33

So let's jump right in. Tell us a great story about some of the best marketing you've ever done.

Barry Labov: 1:40

Well, I don't want to brag about it because it was not so much what I have done, but, in conjunction with my client that I'll share, we did some work that I'm very proud of. I think really made a difference and moved the needle, so to speak, and it fits what the focus of my company is, which everything I do is focused on one word. So I live a very simple life and the word is differentiation. So it's a 15-letter, six-syllable word, but it's one word. That's what I live by and that's what this story is all about. So a private equity company approached our company and said hey, we own a half-dozen ambulance brands, a half-dozen ambulance brands. And they said look, we're not satisfied with what's happening right now. We don't feel like we're getting the value out of what we've done. And the back story, eric, is that these were individual brands that were then bought over time and then, under one umbrella, coexisting. It's happened over time and this is, I think, interesting for your audience is that each of these ambulance brands had their own lane, they had their own personality or differentiation, but when they ended up being put into one big family over time and I don't mean that many years, I mean within three, four years, they became homogenized. Their branding looked alike, their offerings looked alike, their websites looked alike, everything looked the same. So, in essence, everybody, imagine, you had the high-end product, the one that's the aspirational brand, and it has a website and it has pricing and it has features that are almost identical to the low entry-level unit that was part of that family of ambulances. So the very wise client came to us and said look, can you help us? So what we did and anybody that hears this, if you want to adopt these ideas, please go right ahead. What we did is we did what we call brand re-engineering, and what that is is that's our proprietary approach to branding, where we do what many agencies do, but we do one or two steps nobody in the world does. So the first thing we did is, yeah, we went out and we talked to customers and we listened and we talked to people at the plants and we listened, and all this about each of the brands. But then we did our second step, which nobody does, to my knowledge, and if so, please email me at my websites and let me know who it is, and I'd love to talk to them. But we went to that second step, which is called technical immersion, and we went inside the plants themselves, the factories, at each of the ambulance companies, and we learned what they did. That was unique, and we learned what each of them did. That was a very, very rare technology, etc. Whatever, or design whatever. And we emerged from that technical immersion with some very, very interesting observations as to how each brand was offering different things that could be emphasized in their marketing and help them separate each other from the pack. So we went through that. We identified that the premium brand had several technical advantages. It had several software advantages, it had soundproofing advantages that the others didn't have, things such as that and we were able to identify and name them for that elite top brand. But then other products that were the lower level brands were able to be positioned in more of a I guess I would say a value proposition where it was okay, we may not have the latest technology or all the soundproofing or whatever, but it's a great value. So what happened, eric, was we were able to create a lane for each of these brands to swim in. The entry level brand did not offer everything that the top level brand did. Basically, if you have the Toyota, you can't offer everything Lexus has at a discount price. So the same kind of concept, and we went through each of those and we renamed the features and the benefits. We also came up with, in some cases, a change in their logos, because some of their logos all looked well, some of the logos looked almost identical to the others, so we gave them some of their unique attributes. And we did one more thing, and that is we went into their history, the history of each brand, and we made sure we honored what that history was about. So in some cases they were very, very focused on driver comfort for the ambulance. In some cases they wanted an emergency room environment inside the ambulance, so it was super bright, but we honored those differences. So, culminating, we then did something in our process that was very unique. Yes, we did the logos and the websites, but before it was launched to the world, we then held independent celebrations at each of the brand locations to help them celebrate first those people who were building the products, designing the products, putting the products together, putting in the wire, harnesses, the people who were behind the product. We gave them a celebration, something they could be proud of it. We invited them to get inside their own units to see what was so unique. We told them why all these wonderful features were there. We told them how we stood out among the others, including their sister brands, and we celebrated internally we call that internal branding, after all that we then launched it out to the dealers and to the world. So what we did there in essence was we identified the unique attributes of each of those brands so that they could stand on their own. The end result was that each of those brands saw market share increases. They also saw profit increases because in some cases they were able to charge fairly. They were not competing head to head with their brothers or sisters who were at a much lower level of equipment, but yet, at the same price, they were able to position themselves rightfully in that portfolio of brands. So that's what we did, and it added an amazing amount of value to that company.

Eric Eden: 9:12

So I love this story. It sounds like it's a trifecta of differentiation mixed with branding, and I love the technical immersion being the third aspect of it, which is really doing the product marketing work. That's pretty hard to do in a lot of cases of not just the labeling but describing the story. And I also really like the step of celebrating it with each of the brands, so that that sounds a lot more exciting than educating them on it, the internal branding of it, the celebration. It's a lot easier for people to get excited about it than say let us educate you. That sounds like brainwashing. I love the approach.

Barry Labov: 10:06

Well, eric, there's two things for your audience that I think are really interesting, and you nailed it and thank you for the way that you described what we just discussed here. But number one, on the technical immersion we believe your brand lives inside your product All right. So whether it's a Harley Davidson or whether it's an ambulance, it doesn't matter, your brand lives inside that product. You are doing things, you are devising things, you have devised technology, et cetera. That's valuable and so often when we go through a manufacturing plant with our technical team we actually send a special team in. They're like the SWAT team of technical thinking we find some very, very amazing features, attributes and technologies and processes that the company itself, our client, hasn't really paid attention to because they're so close to it. It's not because they don't think it's important, they do it every day but they're too close. They don't realize that this seven step process for quality, it's really valuable. They don't realize that, as an example, that this one feature could save lives and that nobody else has it. They're too close to it, eric. So we identify and it's very motivating to the engineers and the manufacturing people because they're going my gosh. Somebody loves my baby, somebody sees beauty in my child that I created. So that's really important. The other thing you said and again I think this is so critical for the audience when we work with a client and we go through our brand re-engineering, we require them to launch the brand. As you said, celebrate the brand first with the employees. And it's not just feel good, everybody, it's not, it's smart. Think how hard it is to retain employees. Think how hard it is to hire people in my gosh. Think how hard it is to keep high quality performance inside. Let's say a plant, a manufacturing plant, as an example, and it can be a service company, all right. Well, guess what? If people don't understand what they're making and what they're assembling has a value or a significance, then guess what. They don't have a value, they don't have a significance. And guess what. They're not gonna do that good of a job and guess what they won't stay. You know, I worked with a person. I talked to a person at one of the ambulance factory locations and I said what do you do? And this is an example everybody. He said well, I plug in wire harnesses. I said, oh, what else? He goes? Eh, I'll tighten the bolt once in a while. I said okay and he said but I'm gonna leave. I'm gonna leave for 25 cents more an hour and go down the street to a marshmallow factory. So I said wow. I said okay, so let's think about this. So this is what celebration's about. I said every one of those ambulances that you build that you plug in those wire harnesses into lasts about 10 years and during those 10 years, every year there are 4,000 ambulance accidents out there because people are driving into them as they're going through intersections et cetera. So I mean they have to be built well and I said there are 100,000 people in each one of those ambulances during those 10 years. Now you go, what is that? Well, that's the driver, that's two or three EMTs, that's the patient and sometimes the patient's family. That's 100,000 people in 10 years that are saved or protected by your ambulance. So the young guy listened to that and he said you know, I never thought I was in the life-saving business. Maybe I am, and what I'm sharing, eric, is there's a value to what he's doing and everybody that's running a business and there's an entrepreneur and business person out there. Think about it. I bet you he will make sure those wire harnesses that he's plugging in will be plugged in perfectly. I bet he'll tighten those bolts, but I also bet he will stop the line if something is not right, because he's in the life-saving business. And I would also say he'll probably stay there and be easier to retain now that he knows he has a meaning. So that's the value and that's why the title of my book is called the Power of Differenciation. But that's the power of it, because you not only can increase market share when you differentiate, but you can win the hearts and minds of your employees, your dealers, your suppliers.

Eric Eden: 15:11

That's great. People want to feel like they're a part of something. They want to feel like what they're doing has meaning beyond a paycheck, and if you can't deliver that, then people do just go do something else for a very small amount of money in some cases. So that's an amazing thing. And so what was hard about doing this? You make it sound kind of easy, was it easy? What was hard about it?

Barry Labov: 15:40

It wasn't easy. It wasn't easy at all. In the beginning. Some of the people at the umbrella company the company had all of the brands underneath it were opposed to doing that because it was stepping on some turf, some of their turf. But we had a great leader there at the time and he just stepped up and he says I don't care if people have their feathers ruffled, we need to make sure that we're doing the right thing. And in some cases we met with people who at first Eric, I have to say they were kind of humoring us. It's like yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll let you into the factory. Yeah, yeah, go see if you can find anything. But they started to drink the Kool-Aid and I mean that in the positive way, because they're actually something of value we're doing here. So in many of the cases one thing again for your audience to think about where we would face some of the headwinds when we come in, we're dealing with, in many cases, really good people who are wearing a bunch of hats at a company and they, in the case of this situation, they're trying to sell a product that has become homogenized, at least in its marketing approach, and it's so tough for them and they can't lower their price enough and they can't make enough promises to go sell the darn thing. And now here comes these people coming in and they're gonna go through our facility and talk to our people. I mean, what are? I don't even have time for this. So, yes, there was some of that, but we, I'd say we, won the day. The concept of let's go look at what makes you unique really did make a difference for this company.

Eric Eden: 17:30

That's great, and how would the company describe in broad terms what the impact of this was for them? You said they got more sales. We don't need exact numbers, but was it meaningful impact?

Barry Labov: 17:49

I would say the company number one saw increase in the stock value, so that's important. They saw record backlog of products, which is great. But as we all know out there it's not that great if it's a backlog. I mean I'd rather not have a huge backlog if there are supply issues, but they had the biggest backlog in the history of the company. Morale statistically because they'll do surveys morale jumped up significantly. So I think those are some really great features of doing this type of a program.

Eric Eden: 18:30

That's great. So you have a new book coming out. The Power of Differentiation is the title, I believe.

Barry Labov: 18:42

Yes, it's the Power of Differentiation. The subtitle is Win Hearts, mines and Market Share, and it's going to come out on Simon and Schuster Distribution. Eric, you mentioned early on Anybody who would like to speak with me, trade emails and or sign up to consider buying the book as a gift or just look at it as a preorder. Please go to the site. You can easily sign up there and just mention remarkable marketing and we'll make sure we take great care of you too.

Eric Eden: 19:20

All right. Thanks for that and thank you for sharing this great story for all the listeners. Please share this story with your friends. It really helps when we get the word out about these great stories Rate, review and subscribe. That helps us bring on great guests. Thank you so much for being with us today and telling this great story. We appreciate it.

Barry Labov: 19:45

Eric, I'm a big fan and I think what you do is you're focusing on positive success stories that are actionable, and that's what I love about your show. It's actionable. It's not somebody pontificating about how great they are. Here's how we did it. This is what happened. These are the nuts and bolts, and to me, it makes it a very accessible broadcast for people that want to learn, so I think it's great.

Eric Eden: 20:12

Thank you very much.