One of us wanted X because it’s memorable and allows certain amount of artistic interpretation when we start looking at design cues and distinctive brand assets and that sort of thing. And we also wanted to find something that didn’t mean your mother is a table in Swahili or something. Right. Something that was totally abstract.
So after lots of humming it out, lots of suggestions, didn’t hit the spot. We settled on Kixila. Oh, obviously we had to. One of the other criteria was we needed to find the Del Reyna was available.
Freddy D
00:02:45.790 – 00:02:48.430
In today’s world, that’s really important and challenging.
Gee Ranasinha
00:02:48.670 – 00:03:00.990
That’s really important. And we wanted a.com because you know.com’s where it’s at, isn’t it?
At the end today, if you’re settling For a non tld that’s not a dot com, then you wish you had a dot com.
Freddy D
00:03:01.230 – 00:03:43.350
Yeah, I totally agree. I remember years ago I would spend hours on a marker board trying to come up with names for companies that I’ve owned in the past.
I came up with phonetic spelling and a multitude of different tricks and approaches. Sometimes it would take more than just hours, it would take a few days because then you’d look at it. It still wasn’t right.
Regrettably, I didn’t keep some of those domain names. They’re probably worth some money today, but going backwards. So tell us a little bit about your backstory. How did you get started in marketing?
And before we started recording we talked about the good old AOL days for dial up Internet. You and I go back a long way in this space.
Gee Ranasinha
00:03:45.750 – 00:08:31.760
I actually started in production to be an advertising photographer way back in the days of film. This was before digital image capture. I was primarily a studio photographer using 4 by 5 and 8 by 10 sheet film cameras. That’s where I started.
After some time we were pretty successful. We at the end there were about four of us and we were turning over, you know, eight figure revenue. I mean it was pretty good for a while.
Then I got drafted into getting involved with digital image capture right at the very leading edge, working with some very innovative and forward thinking organizations who were very knowledgeable but didn’t have the photographic chops to actually understand some important criteria from a photography aspect would influence a buying decision from their products. So I was more like an advisor consultant for those guys, which we did for a while.
Then I made another jump to a distribution company which as well as selling these professional grade digital image capture systems which in the day you’d be looking at about 50 grand just for the digital back which slotted onto your conventional camera. And this was in the days when 50 grand was a lot of money.
Some of the other products in this company’s portfolio was a software product which was again pretty innovative. There wasn’t really something to compare it with. And so it got me into software from the pre media printing and publishing areas.
So once an image had been captured either with film or digitally to understand the process of what happened to that image up until it got to print, but then became other types of media channels which then got me to the point where I got headhunted to be CMO of a software company, which I did for seven years. Clients were people like Airbus, Marvel, ikea, some pretty big names. After that we grew the company pretty well.
The Business was in the right place at the right time for growth. It still was a small company. So I realized I was treading water for the last year or two while I was there. So I needed to make a change.
As a cmo, you’re always entertaining marketing agencies to give pitches for the contract. But I was shocked that no matter who we got in, the agencies were very interested in all the tactical stuff, all the execution based stuff. Right.
You know, websites, videos, events, brochures, all that stuff.
But they weren’t really looking very deeply from a strategic standpoint about how to align the needs of the marketing department to fulfill the needs of the business as a whole. They weren’t taking any real fiduciary responsibility over what they were putting together.
So they’d come up with these fantastical plans and if they didn’t hit the target, they’d say, okay, fair enough, let’s wipe the whiteboard down and start again. I thought that was a bit mad, really. It’s a bit mental.
As you’ll remember, there was a number of elements of coming together which sort of formed like a perfect storm. Right. Broadband Internet became affordable for non techies, civilians if you like.
The iPhone had just come out heralding what smartphones ended up doing for us and we were just starting to leverage the power of the Internet to influence our day to day lives. It wasn’t something that was locked away in a lab somewhere.
The thing is that at the time, the businesses that were taking advantage of what the Internet could be were obviously the big guys with the deeper pockets and seemingly endless resources.
Freddy D
00:08:31.760 – 00:09:16.010
Yeah, I mean I remember doing online banking in a 90s. Before the late 90s, I was in charge of global sales and marketing for a software company in Arizona.
I redid their web page because it was horrible in Microsoft front page. And that started a side gig for me because the resellers said hey, who did the website? I said I did.
And it got me a little side gig of doing some websites for the distributors. Back then it was still cowboy days for lack of a better way of wording it, but an accurate way.
Nobody was really leveraging it to where you were talking about before of really not just marketing pieces, but putting it together as a complete strategy for a business.
Gee Ranasinha
00:09:18.490 – 00:10:55.870
I first felt that small to medium sized businesses were at a disadvantage and I thought there was an opportunity for a marketing resource aimed specifically at at small to medium sized businesses and startups that could help them leverage the power of online engagements. We did due diligence and couldn’t find a marketing agency that took that kind of approach.
So January 2008 I resigned my comfortable corporate job with all its trappings like international travel and company BMW and expense accounts and all that sort of stuff. And we launched 2008, which as you’ll recall was probably not the best time to start a marketing agency, any business.
Not the best business decision I’ve ever made, but with not a small amount of luck. And the supporters fantastic clients, we weathered the storm of the post boom recession.
Years later here We’ve grown to 19 people in nine countries, helped over 400 clients, marketing strategies, branding, design, websites, most importantly get it from a Behavioral Science aspect.
So what our differentiation, if you like, is that we apply behavioral science thinking into a lot of the strategic and tactical execution to focus on the emotional resonance of our messaging, to optimize to our ideal customer profile, our icp. And that’s us.
Freddy D
00:10:57.150 – 00:11:45.230
Interesting story. You know what a broad background you bring to the equation from all the different roles you’ve participated in to where you are today.
You’re really hitting a point that when leveraging behavioral science into marketing, people buy emotionally but they justify it logically. What you’re doing with the messaging is helping pull people in.
The fact that you started in 2008 and had clients that I believed in you and came on board, those are what I would call superfans die hard business advocates that champion your brand and promote it everywhere. Super fans is a cooler name than brand advocates and that’s what carried you through, propelled you to the next level.
Look at where you are 17 years later.
Gee Ranasinha
00:11:47.880 – 00:13:29.460
I think it’s an easier narrative to accept, especially if you’re a business owner, a founder CEO type business owner. Sweeping generalization here. But we have to make sweeping generalizations to make sense of anything.
Many founder CEOs have an inherent I don’t know if distrust is the right word, but certainly they are wary of of marketing as a core competency for use within the business because of what they have heard of marketing. Maybe they’ve had their fingers burnt in the past, but also as marketers, we often don’t do ourselves favors.
We choose to articulate what we do and how we’re effective by using words and phrases which don’t really align with people who are not within the marketing world. Marketing 101 is know your audience and adapt your message accordingly.
I don’t think we do that very well because to simplify things to the point where we believe the magic, the skill competence of our industry is obfuscated to people who are not working within that industry. So we choose to complicate befuddle. And I don’t think that does anybody any good.
Freddy D
00:13:30.180 – 00:15:02.720
I can relate. One of the things I did when I took the manufacturing product, I’ve used a little bit of a different approach.
And that was back then, late 90s, there was no real Internet online stuff, so it was a lot of magazines. So I went out and flew out to editors that were looking for content for their publications and would demonstrate and talk about how this knowledge.
I still have the brochures and stuff of the product. But we coined the term machining intelligence back in the late 90s.
It was a relational database for milling machines and wire edms in the manufacturing space. We got these editors to start writing articles on how this type of technology was transformative.
And so I ended up getting a third party that was in the space targeting their audience to write an article, which gave me credibility and gave our product credibility. And that’s how I grew that particular product. And to bring that up because of the things you’re talking about. Yes, you’re absolutely correct.
We had talked to different marketing agencies and none of them were really understanding what we were trying to do. I came up with an idea talking to some people, and I’m still friends with one of the marketing guys that we collaborated on.
We came up with the machine intelligence name and said, hey, start going to publications and start getting them to endorse the product. And that completely changed the game because we were talking to the audience through a third party that was giving us credibility.
Gee Ranasinha
00:15:05.200 – 00:15:08.000
It was content marketing before they had a name for it.
Freddy D
00:15:09.120 – 00:15:09.600
Yes.
Gee Ranasinha
00:15:10.560 – 00:15:38.650
Yeah, absolutely. It’s a very basic, solid, foundational channel of communication.
It’s always better to have other people extolling the virtues of your brand than it is for you, whether that’s customers, the industry. You’re automatically more likely to trust someone who’s perceived as being unbiased.
Freddy D
00:15:39.130 – 00:15:39.530
Right.
Gee Ranasinha
00:15:40.010 – 00:15:42.090
We don’t believe what brands tell us anymore.
Freddy D
00:15:42.330 – 00:15:42.730
Right.
Gee Ranasinha
00:15:42.730 – 00:19:37.400
I don’t think we ever did. In the old days, we didn’t have enough information to debase some of these claims, and now we do.
And I think that’s another reason why so many businesses are floundering at the moment.
Because they don’t have any more tools in their box and they don’t know how to attract and convey the right kind of information tailored to the particular target or buyer in a way that comes across as being real, authentic, genuine, truly informational, educational, maybe even entertaining along the way, who knows? But something that cuts through and that’s the essential part. That’s what so much of marketing is missing today.
The memorability, the ability for it to be remembered.
What we’ve done over the last 20 years, which has accelerated over the last 10, 15 years, is we’ve used technology and software to scale and automate the production of our marketing.
Along the way, we’ve exorcised much of the creativity of the campaigns out of it to the point where we’ve got something efficient, low cost, but ineffective. If you look at this year, globally marketing and advertising industry is set to spend $1.6 trillion, the highest ever.
We’re spending more and more on marketing and advertising and getting lower and lower results. Even though we’ve got all this marketing technology and tags, customer audience profiles and AI and goodness knows whatever else we’ve got done.
So how can that be? The reason is because emotional component of any memorable message is either hidden or not there at all. Look at your own experience.
If you look at two pieces of marketing from two different businesses who are competitors, especially in the online space, but not solely digital. If you cover that the logo of each one, the actual content could be interchangeable between those two brands, I would totally agree.
And that’s because if you’re a buyer and you’re looking for distinctiveness and some kind of differentiation so you can remember the particular brand at the point of purchase, don’t forget 99% of the messaging you see is going to people that aren’t ready to buy at that exact moment in time that they’re seeing your messaging. Right. So we have to rely on being remarkable.
Now, by remarkable about don’t mean wow, remarkable in literal sense, to be remarked upon, to create a narrative in the brain of the potential buyer so that when they are in markets looking to buy, we are one of that limited selection of vendors they think of when they’re looking to buy, which is all marketing can ever do. So you can think of it as SEO for your brain.
Freddy D
00:19:37.400 – 00:19:38.040
Yep.
Gee Ranasinha
00:19:38.040 – 00:19:43.300
Okay. It’s just trying to put that in the head of the potential buyer.
Freddy D
00:19:44.260 – 00:21:09.020
Well, let me go further than that. And that’s where I talk about the creation of superfans.
Because having been both in sales and marketing for decades, the transaction and the sale really happen after the paperwork because that’s really the experience. You know, marketing is to attract and get the person in there. But once they’re in, that’s when they really become a customer.
The sale is all the back end stuff, the onboarding, the utilization of the product or service to software and really transforming. I really believe that’s what propelled my success on a global scale.
My whole ecosystem of customers, contractors, suppliers, distributors and complementary businesses were what I call fans. They were promoting me, they were talking me up. And when you get that momentum going, that’s how you really differentiate yourself in today’s world.
It’s blending back old school ways of good old word of mouth. Today, when we go to a restaurant, we pull up our smartphones, look at the reviews, what are people saying about it? That’s how it’s all done today.
Beyond what you guys are doing to target the ideal audience, you got to get that audience to champion you, to help propel it to the next level.
Gee Ranasinha
00:21:11.660 – 00:22:09.940
Which I think only really happens after they’ve had an experience with your brand. Right. Because then they can talk, then they can talk from a position of experience. Because what you’re talking about is branding. Right. Branding is.
I think this is Jeff Bezos who said, branding is what people say when you’re not in the room. Right, right.
Branding is very important, especially industries where competitors are very closely aligned and it’s difficult to separate the features, advantages of benefits of one vendor from another. What scores above anything else is perception of brand.
It helps elevate a business away from having to differentiate by a metric that the customer can understand outside of what the competition are doing, which often is price based.
Freddy D
00:22:10.020 – 00:22:10.340
Right.
Gee Ranasinha
00:22:10.340 – 00:22:20.260
And as we know, once you start differentiating yourself on price, that’s only going one direction and that, that’s a race that you do not want to win.
Freddy D
00:22:20.420 – 00:22:41.590
Yeah.
Because when I was selling manufacturing software and other technologies that I sold, I would get referred by a superfan to somebody else and pricing was no longer part of the conversation. They’d say, Jack says, I need to get this. What’s it cost? How fast can you get it? Here? That was the end of the deal. That was it.
The transaction was done because of that.
Gee Ranasinha
00:22:41.590 – 00:23:19.530
The testimonials. Yeah. The testimony has spoken for them.
The uncertainty of navigating through an industry where you may not be familiar with the key players has been removed because you’ve been able to get to a point of reference through a referral and having that trust. Because before people would buy from you, they need to know of you. Right, right.
So by having that reputation, by having that referral, it’s put you to the top of the list. Now it’s up to you to stay at the top of the list.
Freddy D
00:23:19.530 – 00:23:20.650
And so other conversations.
Gee Ranasinha
00:23:23.450 – 00:24:01.990
But you know, attention is. Nowadays attention’s not the issue. I don’t think attention’s the issue. It’s easy to make a big noise and get eyeballs. That’s not the problem.
The problem is coming up with a piece of communication that informs, entertains, educates, whatever it needs to do with a message that can then inspire action. And you need to have those three elements in place for any marketing to be what we’d call effective. And much of it isn’t.
You have something, please, that grabs the attention.
Freddy D
00:24:01.990 – 00:24:03.510
Restate for our listeners.
Gee Ranasinha
00:24:03.510 – 00:25:19.140
Capturing somebody’s attention, the communication, the actual message of the reason why you’re attracting their attention, and then the action you want them to take as a result.
Unless those three elements are spelled out very, very clearly, the chances of that particular piece of marketing being very effective is going to be very low. Much of what we see with marketing today is taking one, possibly two, but not three of those elements together. I said attention’s easy.
Okay, getting eyeballs is easy. But saying something that is memorable has an emotional as well as a logical pragmatic component to it.
To be able to form those memory structures in the brain is far too rare. Look at the way the human mind works is reliant upon emotion to secure strong memory structures.
You look at any memorable event in your life at snapshots.
Freddy D
00:25:19.220 – 00:25:24.020
I look at it as I call it snapshots. You got snapshots of things that you happen in memories.
Gee Ranasinha
00:25:25.110 – 00:26:38.740
And all of those memories, I’d wager the strongest memories that you’ve had in your life thus far have been underpinned by an emotional reaction. Happiness, maybe sadness, maybe anger, maybe grief, maybe whatever. It’s underpinned by a very strong emotion.
Look how sometimes you can be walking down the street or in a strange place and you suddenly get a smell which instantly transforms you back 10, 20, 50 years in the past. It evokes a very strong emotional reaction. Right, because that’s how memory structures are formed. Yes, you need information.
You need pragmatism, logic, and rationality. But it’s nothing without having an emotional reaction to underpin all of that. Otherwise, it is easily forgotten. And we’re not doing that anymore.
And this is the reason why so much of our marketing is failing to hit its target. And we’re blaming the tools rather than the people who simply aren’t doing their jobs.
Freddy D
00:26:38.820 – 00:26:39.820
I would agree with that.
Gee Ranasinha
00:26:39.820 – 00:27:13.560
The reason why they’re not doing their jobs is because they don’t know how to do their jobs. Because people conflate marketing with promotion.
They think marketing is ads and videos and podcasts and websites and stress balls and events and Brochures. Right. Which is all tactical. It’s all promotional stuff.
Nobody’s thinking about customer research and segmentation, targeting, positioning, and all of the stuff that happens. The nine tenths of the iceberg that are under the waterline that normal people don’t see.
Freddy D
00:27:13.720 – 00:27:14.120
Right.
Gee Ranasinha
00:27:14.200 – 00:27:16.600
As an output from marketing, nor would they.
Freddy D
00:27:16.600 – 00:27:17.280
No. Right.
Gee Ranasinha
00:27:17.280 – 00:27:18.640
There’s no reason for them to see it.
Freddy D
00:27:18.640 – 00:28:33.130
Let me share something that contributes to that. In 2009, I was helping a bathroom remodeler in Chicago with digital marketing and sales.
I never really sold construction before, but I owned apartment buildings in the past. Ended up getting a referral for a guy looking to get his kitchen remodel.
I’m bringing this up because it’s a story, and I created a vision for him of what his place would look like. And we talked about the kitchen, and then we start talking, well, if we do this, this is how the living room’s gonna look.
And if you’re gonna do this, this is gonna be the bathroom, and this is gonna be the bedroom. And all of a sudden, the thing that got him excited was he was looking at a whole different place. I ended up selling a $140,000 remodeling project.
I know how to sell, but the point was, I didn’t sell.
I got a story in his head, which is exactly what you’re really talking about is through digital marketing, I created a vision where he visualized something himself, and he ended up buying. I wasn’t selling anymore. What you’re doing is similar. You’re getting somebody to buy because they resonate with it emotionally.
Gee Ranasinha
00:28:35.690 – 00:28:47.050
What you’re doing is, is painting a picture where they have to fill in the dots themselves. And by doing that, it’s your idea anymore. It’s their idea.
Freddy D
00:28:47.290 – 00:29:03.600
So let’s talk about how you manage your team and all the different countries that you’re in. How do you work with all the multicultural challenges, beliefs, languages, and all that stuff?
Gee Ranasinha
00:29:07.280 – 00:31:07.880
The cultures aren’t actually very different. We’re 19 people in nine countries. Nine of us are in the U.S. the rest are in Europe, Japan, and I have two people in Australia.
And we’ve been in a distributed working environment since day one in 2008. It was a pretty bold move. And there weren’t many agencies setting themselves up in a remote working environment at the time. It was quite daring.
And we do find our way in terms of how best to communicate and also build culturally within the organization, since you don’t have those watercolor moments when you’re 20,000 miles away from each Other one thing we do is yearly kickoff meetings to non cultural aspect of the organization to get a bit crazy with people you’re working with every day. But you don’t see in real life. It’s not for everyone. And we’ve tried very hard on board certain people where this something that they embrace.
The level of self discipline required is very strong to be effective in the role. You have to have an entrepreneurial mindset about how you do your work every day. We tried lots of things.
There was one particular person I really wanted to work with. She was fantastic.
Adapting this new way of working was totally alien to one of the guys suggested a video chat open the entire organization bearing in mind that different people are working different hours. And it would be like that for a week. The video chat was on. You saw your peers.
Freddy D
00:31:08.840 – 00:31:09.320
Yeah.
Gee Ranasinha
00:31:09.720 – 00:31:49.210
Working or getting up, give me coffee, whatever as a proxy for being in a room together. And I think it helped her but ultimately it just wasn’t enough for her. Unfortunately she left. It’s not for everyone.
It also offers a certain amount of freedom. Especially when we’ve got a couple of software developers who they’re both in the US don’t work conventional US working hours.
They do some crazy working hours, but I don’t care. Right. We work in an agile methodology on sprints. We have deadlines and scopes.
Freddy D
00:31:49.210 – 00:31:51.730
You do what you got to do to get to where you got to get to.
Gee Ranasinha
00:31:51.730 – 00:31:57.490
And. And as long as it’s done when we say it’s going to be done, I don’t care how we get there.
Freddy D
00:31:57.490 – 00:31:58.010
Yep.
Gee Ranasinha
00:31:58.730 – 00:32:06.890
You want to start work at 4 in the morning and finish at 3. Go for it. You want to start at 3 in the afternoon and finish at 4 in the morning. Go for it. I don’t care. It doesn’t really matter.
Freddy D
00:32:07.050 – 00:32:27.130
That’s the difference between a good leader and a bad leader. A good leader really believes in their team and empowers your team versus someone that dictates and says no. These are the hours.
This is what you got to do and this is how you get a report. You’re not leveraging your people that well. What you’re doing is really leveraging people because it’s really about the outcome.
Gee Ranasinha
00:32:29.530 – 00:32:31.740
By getting out of their way, isn’t it?
Freddy D
00:32:31.740 – 00:32:32.180
Yep.
Gee Ranasinha
00:32:32.180 – 00:32:38.380
Letting them do what they need to do and taking away anything that gets in their way.
Freddy D
00:32:39.180 – 00:32:39.900
That’s a leader.
Gee Ranasinha
00:32:39.980 – 00:34:05.839
That’s. That’s what my job is. Get them out of the way. We’ve had very, very low staff churn in 17 years. I think we lost two in 17 years.
These are people who I’ve known apart from three even before we started the agency. So these are people who I would trust with my business life. We had a working relationship at a certain point in time. That’s carried over.
That’s not the case for everyone, of course, but you very quickly know whether somebody’s going to be a good fit or not by working on a project. The environment and the remote. Working, yeah, Takes some getting used to.
But in terms of work ethic, attention to detail and communication and dealing with clients, there’s no book to read, there’s no training course to take. Okay. This is something that is implicit within the human being.
If you haven’t got it, then go off and flip burgers or follow your dream or do whatever you need to do. Those sorts of things can’t be taught.
I don’t think anybody in a marketing role can be as effective a marketer as they could otherwise be if they’ve never worked in sales. I don’t think you can do a good enough job unless you’ve worked in sales.
Freddy D
00:34:05.839 – 00:34:08.280
They’re intertwined now. They’re really intertwined.
Gee Ranasinha
00:34:08.520 – 00:34:36.060
Even working behind a bar or in a clothes store. Right. Doesn’t matter.
But I think until you can actually understand how the way you speak and present things can influence the outcome of a situation, I don’t think you can really apply the level of engagement that you could have otherwise applied potentially in a marketing environment.
Freddy D
00:34:36.700 – 00:34:43.110
Don’t think I agree with that. So as we come close to the end here, how can people find you?
Gee Ranasinha
00:34:45.590 – 00:35:19.280
Best place to find me, to be honest, is LinkedIn. That’s where I spend most of my time. There’s only one G run Ascena on LinkedIn, would you believe? Amazingly so. It’s quite easy to find me.
I post two or three times a week, one minute videos about the sorts of things that we’ve been talking about today or things that have wound me up that week or got me rattled, whatever. LinkedIn is probably the best way to get hold of me. Otherwise, the agency, Kexino, is K-E-Xino.com simple as that.
Freddy D
00:35:19.920 – 00:35:38.540
Absolutely have all the information. So, gee, it’s been a pleasure having you on the Business Superfans podcast. Great conversation.
I can tell we could probably spend hours on this subject because we both have a strong background in it and that makes it fun and engaging. Thank you so much for your time. We look forward to having you on the show.
Gee Ranasinha
00:35:38.540 – 00:35:41.620
It’s been a pleasure. Thank you.
Freddy D
00:35:41.620 – 00:35:42.100
Cheers.
Freddy D
00:35:43.860 – 00:36:38.830
Hey, super fans. Superstar Freddie D.
Here before we wrap, here’s your three A playbook power move to attract ideal clients, turn them into advocates, and accelerate your business success. Here’s the top insight from today’s episode. Your marketing doesn’t need more tech.
It needs more emotion, because only emotional renaissance makes your message unforgettable and inspired. So here’s your business growth action step.
Audit your last five marketing messages and rewrite each one to stir a specific emotion that your ideal client feels before they buy.
If today’s conversation sparked an idea for you, or you know of a fellow business leader who could benefit, share it with them, support the show with the donation, and grab the full breakdown in the show notes. Let’s accelerate together and start creating business superfans who champion your your brand.
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