How Small Brands Can Leverage Billboards Like Big Brands

Larry Roberts [00:00:09]:

Hey, what's happening, everybody? I'm Larry Roberts.

Sara Lohse [00:00:11]:

And I'm Sara Lohse. And this is Branded, your comprehensive guide to creative branding.

Larry Roberts [00:00:16]:

And on this episode of the podcast, we've got someone with us today that's going to be talking about full funnel marketing. I don't think we've had an episode yet talking about funnels, so I think this is going to be super insightful for helping us build our brand. His name is RJ Schultz, and he is the CEO of Blip, an advertising technology company that enables marketers to run digital billboard ads as easy as online ads. He previously worked at Amazon, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Pentagon. And he holds an MBA from Duke University, so can't wait to talk to him. Rj, thank you so much for joining us.

RJ Schultz [00:00:50]:

Thanks for having me. Great to be here.

Larry Roberts [00:00:52]:

So let's start off by asking, what is full funnel marketing?

RJ Schultz [00:00:56]:

Full funnel marketing, I mean, as easy as it sounds using the full funnel, right, we, we need to remember that marketing, full stop is just creating demand. It is creating demand for the product or the service that you are selling or offering. And people need to be developed, they need to be conditioned, they need to be ready to choose you. That doesn't happen after just seeing an ad or laughing at an ad or anything like that. They need to be conditioned. And that's what a full funnel helps us.

Sara Lohse [00:01:25]:

Do we hear a lot like top of funnel or this is a bottom of funnel effort. This is a top of funnel effort. What does that mean? What constitutes something being top of funnel? Is there specific strategies, specific tactics? And then what is happening as we go down to the bottom?

RJ Schultz [00:01:46]:

Okay, so top of funnel, just to answer your question, as simple as possible, think awareness, getting your name out there, middle of funnel, building trust, bottom of funnel, converting. And so the question for us marketers is how do we most effectively develop people along this path from becoming aware, from unaware, to starting to trust us, to then being ready to choose us. And that's what full funnel marketing is. And if the question for us marketers is how do we do that most cost effectively? The answer is to point different advertising mediums at the customer during appropriate spots along that customer journey. So right back to your question. Advertising mediums that focus on awareness at first, and once they're aware of who you are and they see you in an authoritative, confident way, what can we point at them in the middle of the funnel to start building trust and familiarity? And this is socials and content and white papers and things like that. And then once we have this relationship and they've seen us 6, 7, 10 times, they've started to know something about us, they've started to feel things about us. Now, in the bottom of the funnel, what advertising mediums can we point at them to help them convert? Click on some call to action and that's, you know, your standard paid ads, Google, Meta, LinkedIn, things like that.

Larry Roberts [00:03:04]:

So, so help me understand, how do billboards come into play? There being the COO of billboards, it seems like your interest would be in the billboard space, but a lot of what we're talking about here doesn't sound very billboard driven.

RJ Schultz [00:03:17]:

Yeah. So we, what we are here for is to make sure that marketers create demand in the most cost effective way possible. And that's not billboards. Right. I want to say unequivocally, turning on billboards, using billboards is not going to bring people into your store. It is not going to send people to your, your, your website. But here's a question for anyone listening and I'll pause after asking it so you have a chance to think, think and answer it in your car or wherever you are. But like, if I were to say, what does a chick fil a billboard say? You could probably answer that.

RJ Schultz [00:03:50]:

I'm curious. Eat more chicken. Right? Eat more chicken. That is the quintessential billboard awareness campaign. So billboards definitely have their place in this. But eat more chicken is not driving someone to a website. Eat more chicken is not a QR code that they're clicking and eat more chicken seeds. The idea, it grows the authoritative awareness, it grows the trust, the familiarity.

RJ Schultz [00:04:13]:

Familiarity. Sometimes it makes us laugh. And that stuff layered on top of the calls to action and the socials and the interaction, that's what converts us the most effectively. Let me cite a really interesting study done by McDonald's with respect to where billboards fit into this. And again saying it's not billboards that did this, it's the combination of the two. So McDonald's launched a menu item, this was a few years ago and I'll send you the case study if you're interested in a PDF. But McDonald's launched a new menu item or resurge new menu item, whatever it was, was in five cities. And these were DMAs like Oklahoma City, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, cities like that.

RJ Schultz [00:04:53]:

And for six weeks they ran Facebook advertising for this menu item in all five of those cities. And for the same six weeks they ran billboards on top of the Facebook in four of the five cities. And those four cities outperformed in sales, the control city by 729%. Like, wow. Billboards plus Facebook at the same time outperformed by 729% in sales. And so the question is, like, why? And I'm super interested in that. You know, you mentioned the DIA and the Pentagon, Department of Defense. You know, that was a previous life.

RJ Schultz [00:05:26]:

I was an interrogator with the Department of Defense, and we learned a lot about psychology and the good kind of manipulation and motivation and how people were doing things and why they were doing things and what you could do or say to get them to do certain things. And I thought, well, once I go to business school and transition into the private sector, I'll never deal with that stuff again. I was wrong. It's every day, right? Marketing is creating demand. It's understanding motivation, understanding behavior, and understanding what we can do to stoke certain behaviors and things like that. And so the. The efficacy of the billboards and the Facebook together and the McDonald's study, it comes absolutely down to the psychology of survival, which is super interesting to me, right? Think about getting served an ad on your phone. I don't know, whatever you're doing on your phone, playing chess, scrolling social media, hiding in the closet, what have you.

RJ Schultz [00:06:14]:

You're not in shop mode. And that thing comes and you're like, I don't just like, swipe away as quickly as possible or just straight up ignore if you can. But if you're driving down the road and you're confronted by a digital billboard for eight seconds, like, that's an eternity. And that little pause is only two seconds, right? You are forced to psychologically ingest colors, logos, maybe a word or two. Even if you're checked out, right? You're subconsciously ingesting these things the next time that surfaces on your phone. This is a psychology of survival that happens at the subconscious level. Your psych is saying, like, hey, we recognize this color, this logo, this word. Do we need to dwell an extra second to see if it's a benefit or a threat? Because the psychology of survival says I have to react to this.

RJ Schultz [00:06:59]:

I recognize that. I've seen it before. Is it a benefit or a threat? And the answer is yes, I need to dwell an extra second to figure that out. And that's why the combination of billboards at the top of the funnel, Facebook at the bottom, did so well in that McDonald's study. So long answer to the short question, like, where do billboards fit? It's there, it's at the top. Making everything beneath it in the trust Building and the calls to action more effective.

Larry Roberts [00:07:23]:

And I think too, though, at the same time, your average brand probably couldn't leverage that. You know, we're talking about Chick Fil A, we're talking about McDonald's. These are massive global brands. So I mean, if you're a small business owner or even a small to mid sized business owner, even that approach still isn't going to be necessarily effective for you. And I think that's where a lot of people may misinterpret the whole funnel concept. You know, they don't know what steps to put it in and they don't understand they have to already have a position themselves within their industry before they can start taking that level of funnel approach. Does that make sense?

RJ Schultz [00:07:59]:

So I'm assuming that you're coming from a place of like, hey, there's some cost prohibitive barriers to entry to even get on billboards. Chick Fil A can do it, McDonald's can do it because they've got deep advertising pockets. But like, what about us corner stores? What about us local businesses?

Larry Roberts [00:08:14]:

Well, it's not so much, let me jump in there. It's not so much about cost prohibitive, it's brand awareness prohibitive. Because if people don't already know the brand, having a billboard and on top of Facebook ads, is that still going to be just as effective? I mean, the two case studies that we cited here are again, massive, massive brands. So mom and pop tile shop over here, they, and that wasn't supposed to rhyme, but they probably could, couldn't take this, this, this same approach with the same level of effectiveness, could they?

RJ Schultz [00:08:41]:

Yeah, they can it. They're starting way, they're starting way further up, you know, the start of the road. Because when I see a Chick Fil a billboard, I already know who they are. I've already had amazing experiences with them. Chicken sandwiches mixed with Polynesian sauce, Chick Fil A sauce together with a fry on the side. Like, I'm already at all that stuff. So a new brand has an opportunity to start building that type of brand, building that type of trust. And they can do it in one of two ways.

RJ Schultz [00:09:09]:

You can spend 14 to $18 a CPM on Facebook and get your ad in front of people as many times as you have money to pay to pay. Or you can run the psychological approach the same way that Chick fil A or McDonald's do and say like, you know what, I'm going to make those Facebook impressions even more effective for building the brand, not just converting because they're going to have already seen me in the sky on a board. And that's really what we're working with. Right. So if a brand new brand, which they do come to us all the time, this is what we recommend. You think about a three month Runway. If you're trying to get your name out there. Right.

RJ Schultz [00:09:46]:

In 3 month, 6 month, 9, 12. We just do the same thing in quarter chunks. You think about, just assume no one knows who you are. And so you've got to find the most cost effective way to start the awareness process. And that's billboards at 4 to $5 CPM curious for each of you and maybe answer this question on behalf of the listeners. How much do you think it is? How much do you think people are paying to get their advertisement for 8 seconds to blip on a digital billboard? Like in LA on the 405 or Salt Lake City on high 15? How much are they paying for that?

Larry Roberts [00:10:22]:

Are we talking about. Yeah, per month?

RJ Schultz [00:10:25]:

I mean I like just for.

Larry Roberts [00:10:27]:

I have, I haven't priced billboards in probably 15 years since I own my swimming pool company. So I don't really even, I don't have a clue where, especially from a digital perspective.

RJ Schultz [00:10:37]:

Okay. When, when I was looking at Blip and they asked me this question, I said $45,000 and they're like, yeah, you're right. In, in there. I'm, I'm, I'm curious. Would you, would you have a, would you have a guess at what people are paying for just an eight second blip to get in front of five?

Sara Lohse [00:10:52]:

One single time?

RJ Schultz [00:10:53]:

Yeah, one single time.

Larry Roberts [00:10:54]:

Eight seconds in LA.

RJ Schultz [00:10:56]:

In LA.

Larry Roberts [00:10:57]:

I don't know, 100 grand.

RJ Schultz [00:10:58]:

100 grand. What would you say?

Sara Lohse [00:11:01]:

Like five.

RJ Schultz [00:11:04]:

Okay. Eight cents. We're doing it for eight cents at blip. Okay. That's the same Yankee Stadium.

Sara Lohse [00:11:11]:

We were close.

RJ Schultz [00:11:12]:

Yeah.

Larry Roberts [00:11:13]:

I would not be in the Showcase Showdown.

RJ Schultz [00:11:14]:

I mean my mind was blown. Right. In Times Square. You can send your ad to Times square boards for 15 seconds and that costs $20. But only because the board owners are like, I know what I have. I'm not going to let it go for a dollar or 8 cents. And so they put a floor there and that's their prerogative because they own the board.

Larry Roberts [00:11:30]:

But there still has to be a minimum buy, am I right? I mean, you know, they're.

RJ Schultz [00:11:33]:

But maybe it'd be helpful to give a 60 second overview to the listeners of what blip is. And it's, it's easiest understood. Easiest understood using Uber as a proxy. Uber. We're all familiar with, right. Uber is a piece of technology that sits in a two sided marketplace between car owners, car riders. Uber does not own cars. Uber does not ride cars.

RJ Schultz [00:11:53]:

Right. They just connect the two on their open exchange. You guys see all these things happening?

Larry Roberts [00:11:57]:

Yeah, we're like, that's the second.

Sara Lohse [00:11:59]:

Every time you like do thumbs up you get fireworks.

RJ Schultz [00:12:02]:

Yeah, like the technology is excited about this too. So Uber just connects car owners, car riders. Uber does not own, Uber does not ride. Just connect the two. Blip is exactly the same. We sit between board owners, billboard owners and people who want to advertise. We don't own any billboards. We don't advertise.

RJ Schultz [00:12:20]:

We just connect the two through an open exchange. So just like you would call Uber at the airport to get a ride home for $50 instead of $50,000 to buy a car, you could come to Blip to send your ad to Times Square for one day, a week, a month, whatever you want instead of a year long contract for multi millions of dollars. So it is the Uber style marketplace of billboards. And for that reason we're able to send people's ads to other people's billboards for 8 and 10 cents a flip. Now granted, you know, there are some grandmas out there in, you know, middle western Iowa who are really proud of their high school graduates and they'll put their face up there for eight seconds and they'll pay a dime. That happens all the time. And it's heartwarming and it's, dude, don't.

Larry Roberts [00:13:06]:

Think for a second I'm not sitting here thinking I'm putting my face in downtown Dallas just to take the picture.

RJ Schultz [00:13:11]:

So you go take a selfie in front of it and it's, it's fantastic. But if you are, you know, like the question you ask, how do we, can we as an SMB, like actually grow a brand if you're trying to do that? Depending on the DMA and all you. Salt Lake City, because that's where we were founded and we have a big network of boards there. You need to think about spending between 2 and $4,000 a month on out of home on billboards. And I could pull up a campaign. I looked at it this morning. We had spent nineteen hundred dollars in the last thirteen days and the ad had been seen by 622,000 people. And so it's, it's that kind of saturation that you're trying to get in the market so that when you start coupling it with social media posts and other types of content, and podcasts, people are making these cognitive connections like, oh, I've seen them.

RJ Schultz [00:14:02]:

Oh, I laughed at their billboard. Oh, you know what I mean? And that will expedite the process of building trust and familiarity. So absolutely, SMBs can do this and they absolutely should.

Sara Lohse [00:14:10]:

I just had a thought. So, like, Larry and I, in a couple months we're going to have a booth at the Small Business Expo in Dallas. And is this something that, like, if we were to pay for some time on a billboard near that event so people see it before they get to the event, is that something that would be like a useful strategy for something like a trade show?

RJ Schultz [00:14:37]:

Yeah. Let me tell you two stories. This has nothing to do with the McDonald's and the chick Fil A. So this is way more pertinent. And it's absolutely what you just asked. Last week we were in Vegas for the Multi Unit Franchise Conference, mufc and one of our account managers.

Larry Roberts [00:14:51]:

Good job.

RJ Schultz [00:14:52]:

Yeah. One of our account managers, he had connected with somebody, I'll leave their name, you know, out. He had connected with someone and they had really good banter going back and forth about marketing and advertising and getting together and going to dinner and things like that. So he figured out when she was flying in and he put her and her business and his face and his business on a billboard together and said, we'll be at the conference, come see us. And she responded with a selfie in front of it. She said, I stopped my Uber driver and I had, I got out and I took a selfie with my thing, or I had him take a picture of me with the thing. And then, well, I was actually at the conference, sitting at the booth. We had four people come by and be like, hey, you're the dude that was on the billboard when I got off the plane.

RJ Schultz [00:15:35]:

And like, yeah, it works. Another thing, the second story is one of the most surprising use cases. And it doesn't seem surprising because it seems like, duh, but we didn't anticipate this. Rappers Fat Joe Congregate West. Like, rappers will buy up boards a month in advance in their tour spots and their tour stops just saturate the place to drive last minute ticket sales in conjunction with the social media they're running. Right? So absolutely, you've got a conference. Buy up all the space around that conference so people see you when you.

Sara Lohse [00:16:07]:

When you like pick the billboard, you, you have the ad that you want. You've said like, you could go take a picture in front of it. Or she, she took a picture in front of the one that had her picture on it. How do you know when it's going to be there? Because if you only have eight seconds.

Larry Roberts [00:16:19]:

Good question.

Sara Lohse [00:16:20]:

Like, how do you time that?

RJ Schultz [00:16:21]:

So every board.

Sara Lohse [00:16:22]:

Can you connect it to your GPS in your car? Be like, run this ad when this. This car gets here.

RJ Schultz [00:16:28]:

So not necessarily as James Bondi, as you just said, but, like, you can do that in effect. So because the platform is think of like Google Maps, you go onto Google Maps and you sign on a blip and it'll show your freeway. And then we have, like, dots where these boards are. There's the locator pins. Well, you can hover over the pin and it'll bring up all this data. Like, this is how many people pass it. This is what it looks like. This is the pixels.

RJ Schultz [00:16:51]:

This is the size.

Sara Lohse [00:16:52]:

This.

RJ Schultz [00:16:52]:

You select that board in your campaign, and that's the board you're sending your ad to. You can select as many as you want and rotate. But if we selected that board right by the airport, we know it's going to be playing there. And then every digital board has eight slots. So there are only as. They're only eight slots that rotate. So your ad will show every 64 seconds for eight seconds. And so if you see it, you just drive over to it and you wait 64 seconds, it's going to come up again.

RJ Schultz [00:17:17]:

So there's.

Sara Lohse [00:17:19]:

That makes a lot more sense.

RJ Schultz [00:17:21]:

Yeah. Another way that we're using it. And since we have the time, all the filters in my brain are like, don't tell the story. Here we go.

Larry Roberts [00:17:30]:

Tell the story. Tell the story. We tell them all on the show.

RJ Schultz [00:17:32]:

There are two companies and they are competitors, and they share an industrial parking lot in Utah. Okay, they are. They share industrial parking lot. So they are hundreds of yards from one another, both of their headquarters, and they're both franchise companies for the exact same service. Okay, well, one former bliponaut went to this company, a. And was their marketer. So he turned right around and was like, hey, let's advertise out of home. And they've been crushing it.

RJ Schultz [00:17:59]:

They've been growing. You definitely. Well, maybe not. Depending on where you're from. You might have heard of them. They're in the pickleball space. I'll say. And so they're just rocking and rolling.

RJ Schultz [00:18:12]:

They're growing. Part of the growth trajectory allows him a different job. So he leaves the marketing position and elevates his position somewhere in the company. And his replacement comes in, and the first thing he says is, stop Blip. I hate blip. I hate out of home. I hate billboards. It's antiquated, it's unsexy.

RJ Schultz [00:18:27]:

It doesn't work. We're not wasting money there. And so he's putting all their money into bottom of funnel stuff, which is going to work for the next couple of months because they've built a trust and brand and authority, but as soon as they try and go somewhere else, he's going to be fighting that ROI battle on the bottom of funnel story for another day. Anyway, he cuts us off and they say, what do we want to do about that? We want to talk to him. I'm like, no, get me on the phone with the CEO of their competitor just across the parking lot. So I call him and I say, merry Christmas. We're going to spend $5,000 a month for the next three to four months on you. Send me an advertisement you want to play.

RJ Schultz [00:19:02]:

So we go to the Tool, just like you were asking. I picked. I found out where that new marketer that cut us off. I found out where he lives and his office. And we bought the board right at his freeway entrance and right out the window of his office. And I like, when I'm looking at the tool, sometimes two and three of those eight slots are, are taken by his competitor. So all day he's just looking at these advertisements of his competitor after he said, billboards don't work. And so we.

Sara Lohse [00:19:30]:

This is the kind of petty that I am here for.

RJ Schultz [00:19:33]:

Yeah, this. I'm proud of this petty.

Sara Lohse [00:19:35]:

And so I am proud of you.

Larry Roberts [00:19:37]:

Yeah.

RJ Schultz [00:19:38]:

And so listen to this. The. The capstone of this whole story is that apparently some stuff was going on in company A. They brought in the new person. They stopped spend. Well, they also fired their cmo. Just let him go. He calls up and he's like, I got a question.

RJ Schultz [00:19:55]:

Right around the same time we had all this turmoil and we fired all of our partners. I started seeing our competitor right outside the office and every time I got on the freeway. Is that you guys? And I said, yeah, it's us. And he goes, I love it. We have definitely seen that as a company. And I'm like, yeah, take note, dude. So there is so much you can do with an Uber style marketplace for digital billboards. Like you can get your name out there in so many creative ways and people do see it.

RJ Schultz [00:20:25]:

You know what I mean?

Sara Lohse [00:20:27]:

No. When I like, I always look at billboards and I honestly always look at them because I'm judging them. Because I worked as an ad copywriter for years. And I know it's its own monster trying to write good billboards. It's not easy to do and I always judge how well companies do it. But half of the billboards. It is half of the billboards that I see are the ones that say, does advertising work? It just does call us. It's advertising the billboard itself.

Sara Lohse [00:20:59]:

Is that because, like, billboards aren't being bought the way that they used to be, or are those just because they are the stagnant ones that they literally go up with like a paint roller and put them up and they should be replaced with digital?

RJ Schultz [00:21:13]:

Yeah.

Sara Lohse [00:21:13]:

I was like, four questions in one.

RJ Schultz [00:21:14]:

There's that one for sure. There's some static. And there's also. There's been a big wave over the last few years of people converting their statics to digitals. And so a billboard owner, like, think of billboards, maybe this is novel too. It was to me. Like think of billboards as a rental property. Like we buy a townhome and then cash flow it because it's like, oh, it's good for my retirement.

RJ Schultz [00:21:34]:

My cash flow people do have billboards too. They buy a billboard and they're cash flowing that Right. And so when they have the opportunity to upgrade their cash flowing asset and they say, oh man, you know, Jim's feed store has been paying me 500amonth for this vinyl advertisement. If I converted that to Digital, I get eight people paying me maybe 2,000amonth or something. And so they convert and then they don't know what to do. So they hire a salesperson and that salesperson goes out and tries to find eight people who are willing to take an eighth of that board on contract. And it never, it never fills up. So on average, across the country, so we connect with like 3,800 digitals across the country and on average 25% of them are unsold.

RJ Schultz [00:22:14]:

So you see this advertise here, you know your name here, whatever. The whole blip business model was to go to those guys and say, hey, your asset is not paying you out at 100%. So let's integrate our software with yours. And anytime you have an open slot, we'll just funnel demand from our marketplace and fill it. So it's called filling remnant space. And so the advertisements you see are people who are just like, no, I'm not doing 8 cents a flip. I'm going to sell this. And they're not, they're not selling the slot.

Larry Roberts [00:22:42]:

That's insane. And it speaks to the evolution of marketing in all honesty, you know, I think, I think a lot of the small business owners, they're still stuck in that old school mindset. I mean, I was still stuck in the old school mindset of, yeah, it'd be cool to have a billboard, but I figured that digital billboards are way out of the price range of the vast majority of small business owners. But something like what you've done here is, it's, it's. I don't know, I don't want to say revolutionary, but it sounds revolutionary.

RJ Schultz [00:23:09]:

Yeah, absolutely revolutionary. I mean, it is revolutionizing access to out of home advertising for sure. And somewhere where Blip has just failed, I mean, we suck at this, is getting our story and our name out there. We're a 50 million dollar a year company. You've never even heard of us. Right? Like, we do exactly what you wish you could do for your business. You've never even heard of us. That's our fault.

RJ Schultz [00:23:31]:

And that's why we're starting to play, you know, in the podcast space and starting to. I mean, we've grown with zero marketers on our team. We're a marketing company with zero marketers. We have ad writers because like you mentioned, some of these billboards are horrendous. People will want to come onto the platform. And I definitely should say this to all the listeners who are thinking, you know what, I'm going to try this. What you're going to want to do is use every square inch of that billboard and put your URL and QR code and make sure they all are handles. Don't do it like seven words max.

RJ Schultz [00:24:02]:

Remember, eat more chicken. Like that's what you're trying to do. Definitely put number one.

Sara Lohse [00:24:07]:

Would be three words.

RJ Schultz [00:24:08]:

Yeah, number one. Right. Definitely put all that information in your content and your socials and be very, very strategic and humorous and relatable and all that stuff. The purpose of the billboard is to just deepen the hook that they feel when they see your content. Right. The billboard is just a duplicative effort. It's a multiplier.

Sara Lohse [00:24:31]:

But make it clear what brand it is, because I also see so many where I'm like, oh, that's cool. Who are you?

RJ Schultz [00:24:39]:

Exactly. Good, good point. You know, best practice would be just to think about at least a third of the billboard with logo and name at least, and then 2/3 of the billboard with whatever message you have. And sometimes your message does carry the name and that's fine too. So this is just something to think about. But people need to stop for a second and know who they're looking at. And that's really all you're trying to accomplish with the billboard. Stop for a second.

RJ Schultz [00:25:04]:

Know who they're looking at. That's it.

Sara Lohse [00:25:06]:

I will say.

Larry Roberts [00:25:07]:

Interesting.

Sara Lohse [00:25:08]:

God.

RJ Schultz [00:25:08]:

Go ahead.

Sara Lohse [00:25:09]:

No, no, I was just going to say we can't talk about billboards without just acknowledging Bucky's.

RJ Schultz [00:25:15]:

Bucky's.

Sara Lohse [00:25:16]:

I don't know if. I don't know if you're in Texas.

RJ Schultz [00:25:17]:

Yeah, I'm in Oklahoma, actually.

Sara Lohse [00:25:19]:

Okay. Well.

Larry Roberts [00:25:20]:

Okay. All right.

Sara Lohse [00:25:21]:

Yeah, close enough. Y'all might. Y'all probably have Buc EE's. We've got Buckies all over. They have the best billboard advertising I've ever seen in my life. It is every 17ft when you're driving between Austin and Dallas. It's basically like, okay, it is in 427ft on your left. But they have the funniest little catchphrases.

Sara Lohse [00:25:44]:

I think Cracker Barrel is a close second.

RJ Schultz [00:25:47]:

But think about what they're doing with you. Right? We write a billboard ad and we're like, I want them to know everything about us. But what Buc ee's is doing is they're having a conversation with you. Hey, we're in 17 exits. Oh, yeah. Hey, we're in 12 exits. Oh, I must have gone five miles. You know, like, they are having a conversation.

Sara Lohse [00:26:04]:

You're also making.

Larry Roberts [00:26:05]:

You nailed it. Because when I make that trip between Dallas and Austin to go see Sarah and I'm going back to Dallas, it doesn't matter what direction I'm going in. Bucky's tells me how close I am to her crib or how close I am to my crib. I. That's exact. Those billboards tell me. They give me that little sigh of relief because, you know, it's about a three and a half hour drive. And I'm like, oh, God.

Larry Roberts [00:26:23]:

Oh, Bucky's in 50 miles. Okay, cool. I'm almost there. Yeah.

RJ Schultz [00:26:27]:

Yeah. And what. That's a perfect display of pop a funnel. Like, what we're supposed to be doing as marketers. Like, who is our icp? Who are we talking to? Bucky's has obviously done a good job of saying, like, everyone definitely could have fun at a Buc EE's. But we're not talking to everyone. We're talking to people who are driving to a destination and thinking about destination type stuff. You know what I mean? And all their billboards have a conversation with that particular Persona.

RJ Schultz [00:26:51]:

They're brilliant. They're brilliant.

Larry Roberts [00:26:53]:

There's another one here in Dallas. That I see quite a bit. And it's, it's. I hate somebody.com. it's a. And I kept seeing it. I hate John Doe. I'm just gonna say John Doe for whatever.

Larry Roberts [00:27:03]:

And I'm like, who did this dude piss off? Right? And. But then I get, I, I finally.

Sara Lohse [00:27:09]:

That got national attention. I think it's local, but I've heard of it. I heard of. I heard of it a while ago and my people were talking.

RJ Schultz [00:27:16]:

Yes, yes. Brilliant.

Larry Roberts [00:27:19]:

Yeah. I was like, holy, this is next level insane. Because I kept seeing them like, all right, so this is, this is something. This is something. And I finally had to go to the website. I was like, oh, my God. I would have never guessed.

Sara Lohse [00:27:29]:

You know, it's almost like anti marketing or like demarketing.

RJ Schultz [00:27:33]:

Yeah, yeah.

Sara Lohse [00:27:33]:

And like, that's my favorite kind because it's just so clever and so like reverse psychology. But things do that a lot, especially with, like, Yelp reviews. Like, they will put up their. Their most negative Yelp review. Like, worst burger that Todd from Tennessee ever had. And I'm just like, okay, well, now I want to see how bad it is. And like, even if they're saying it's bad instead of good, it makes you curious because, like, it's brilliant. It just has that power.

Sara Lohse [00:27:59]:

It's so good.

RJ Schultz [00:28:00]:

Liquid death. I saw this. I'm not sure how, I'm not sure how recent it is, but they got an up and coming country singer to sing. Like, all the lyrics of the song that they wrote are their worst reviews. It is.

Larry Roberts [00:28:13]:

Oh, that's amazing.

RJ Schultz [00:28:14]:

That's amazing. So good.

Sara Lohse [00:28:17]:

I think they stole that idea though, because someone on American Idol, the song that she auditioned with, was a compilation of all of the worst YouTube comments she got on her videos.

RJ Schultz [00:28:28]:

Oh, that's fantastic.

Sara Lohse [00:28:29]:

I don't know who she is, but it was genius and amazing and I think she made it pretty fun.

RJ Schultz [00:28:34]:

This level of pettiness I love.

Sara Lohse [00:28:38]:

We need more petty in marketing. I'm not going to lie. We need more.

Larry Roberts [00:28:42]:

It makes you stand out, man, in one way or another, you know? And, you know, it's kind of funny too, because I'm sitting here right now, as I sit here today, I have a meeting this afternoon with the lady that I was supposed to. I'm still supposed to, but I'm. I pretty well decided I'm not going to fly to New York next week to do some consulting with her to do a business analysis for an AI product that she wants. So I was going to do the business analysis and write the technical specs and potentially my company would, would develop it as well. But she had, I've never met her. I was a referral and she went to my website and she saw the red hat and she completely lost her mind and made all these negative assumptions and said all these horrific things and she literally looked at my brand and my brand was, was technically hijacked because of, you know, the political climate that we're in today. There's no political affiliation with my hat whatsoever. But she made all these assumptions of what I was and who I was and we had some communication back and forth and it was less than cordial from her side.

Larry Roberts [00:29:40]:

But I'm still, I was cordial as can be and I'm still being cordial. And I'm going to take that meeting this afternoon. But it's out of morbid curiosity more than anything. And you know, I, I, that says a lot from a marketing perspective as well. You know, you can. And I made the same assumption on I hate John Doe or whatever his name was. You know, it was a negative assumption on my part, but it drove me to go, hey, what's this all about? You know, why do people hate this cat? Yeah, so it's, it's interesting. It's interesting.

Larry Roberts [00:30:06]:

Even more so to experience it.

Sara Lohse [00:30:07]:

So if you do end up taking that client, we're gonna have to come back and edit that out.

Larry Roberts [00:30:12]:

I don't care. I don't, honestly, I don't care. I mean, I posted it all over social media. I didn't put names or anything like that, but I posted it all over LinkedIn and Facebook and all that.

RJ Schultz [00:30:23]:

I didn't think political. When you were saying that I was thinking, right, to like, gangs, I was like, okay, I, I, I, I, I've.

Larry Roberts [00:30:29]:

Heard that, you know, if it was the 90s and I was in LA, then, you know, I'm down with the bloods or whatever, but, but yeah, she instantly.

Sara Lohse [00:30:35]:

There is no gang affiliation to branded, I promise. Don't start a turf war.

Larry Roberts [00:30:42]:

Don't need no Drive Bys in the branded hood.

RJ Schultz [00:30:45]:

I'm going on media podcast right after this, so we'll see.

Larry Roberts [00:30:51]:

Are you really? No, no. Like, is there a blue hat? Damn it.

Sara Lohse [00:30:59]:

You cornered the market on hat color logos.

Larry Roberts [00:31:02]:

Hey, it's all gravy. So anyways, rj, this has been an amazing conversation, man. Where can people find out more about you and Blip and how they can leverage billboards at the top of their funnel and start really getting their brand and their name out there?

RJ Schultz [00:31:13]:

Yeah, great. Question. Three things. Blip media dot com. That's where you can go create an account and within five minutes send your ad to a billboard directly from your computer. Number two, we're on LinkedIn. My name is RJ Schultz. If you just type in RJ Blip will be the only one.

RJ Schultz [00:31:31]:

And then number three, I will send each of you via email a link that you can distribute to your listeners where if they do want to try it, if they come through this link and create an account, we can put an extra 25% spend into their account. So for example, if they prepay a thousand bucks, we'll give them $450 of advertising, so on, so forth. So yeah, those three ways.

Larry Roberts [00:31:53]:

Awesome, awesome. Really appreciate it. Well, hey everybody, if you've been listening to this episode and you got some value out of it, do us a favor, hit that subscribe button so we can continue to bring you these top of funnel episodes each and every week. And with that, I'm Larry Roberts.

Sara Lohse [00:32:07]:

I'm Sarah. Lets see and we'll talk to you next week.