Damn Good Brands – Details, episodes & analysis

Welcome to DAMN GOOD BRANDS. Today, we're diving into the world of real estate with Julie Newdow and Mark Landisman. With over 30 years of experience in the industry, Julie and Mark are ranked in the top 1% of America's real estate broker teams by the Wall Street Journal.

In this episode, Julie and Mark share their insights on professional growth in the real estate industry and the impact of the recession on the market. They also discuss how trust is the key to maintaining client retention and share details about their success mindsets, emphasizing the importance of working hard to make the lives of others better. Their inspiring conversation left me feeling fired up and motivated. 

So, if you're in the tri-state area and looking for your dream home, we encourage you to contact the Newdow-Landisman team. With their vast experience and commitment to excellence, you'll be in good hands. Check out their website at www.compass.com/agents/newdow-landisman or simply Google "Newdow Landisman."

Thanks for listening.

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Produced by Simpler Media

Michelle Park is the Chief Marketing Officer for Territory Foods, a female-led fresh food platform that offers a new take on the food preparation and distribution industry with chef-prepared fresh food delivered locally. 

Territory offers personalized menus with a chef's touch and can cater to paleo, vegan, pescetarian, any diet you name, they can do it and do it deliciously. As a customer of Territory I can attest to the fact that their food is fantastic - I kinda enjoy cooking but can never get around to doing it, so Territory is a real game changer because it gives you chef-caliber delicious meals that follow your diet and are delivered right to your door. 

Michelle has a varied and fascinating job history that includes major positions across major CPG companies like Procter and Gamble, as well as leadership positions at multiple startups and venture capital firms. This was a great conversation about career trajectory as Michelle's did not follow a typical path by any means, but her experience across startups and major companies shaped her professional development to be extremely well-rounded and suited for leadership. 

Really enjoyed this conversation and hope you do too. Without further ado, here is Territory Foods CMO, Michelle Park. 

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Produced by Simpler Media

Here are some of the main takeaways from our visit with Benton Crane, CEO of Provo, Utah-based Harmon Brothers

• The most effective creative collaboration starts in a vacuum. Benton said that, in every Harmon Brothers project, four writers are tasked with writing four separate initial scripts. No exchanging notes, no bouncing ideas off one another. Then, the client is called in for a reading of each script. Until this moment, no higher-up in the agency has seen or weighed in on any of them. This may seem like a huge risk, but the clients love it because it allows them to get involved in the raw creative process, resulting in a superior final product that is closer to what they want.
• Test EVERYTHING. Every Harmon Brothers campaign undergoes an insane amount of testing - for instance, in the conceptualization stage, the initial script is read to 10 semi-disinterested people. During the reading, their facial reactions are captured on video. A scorecard referred to as a "laugh graph" correlates the reactions to each part of the script in order to gauge whether it's a hit or not.
• Learn from Pixar and Create a Brain Trust. Harmon Brothers operates a Pixar-style creative brain trust that exists in part to identify weaknesses in the scripts, storyboards, and shoots. Benton said this group never overrides the agency’s quintet of creative directors but do offer constructive feedback for them to ponder and utilize (or not). This concept was borrowed from Pixar who operates similarly. You can learn more by reading Ed Catmull’s pinnacle book, CREATIVITY INC. 
• Learn REAL Storytelling Structures like Joseph Cambell’s Hero’s Journey. Benton spoke about how humans are hard-wired to pay lasting attention to stories featuring a protagonist on a quest. He said the hero’s journey formula is a solid-gold framework to approach ad-writing with because no other archetypal structure makes as deep of an emotional connection with audiences. However, in Harmon Brothers ads, the viewers are positioned as the hero INSTEAD of the product. Instead, the product is the ‘sword that slays the dragon’ or the bridge stands between them and the prize—typically a happier life. 

 Thank you for listening to Damn Good Brands, don’t forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen!

Key Links

Benton Crane LinkedIn page

Harmon Brothers website

From Poop To Gold: The Marketing Magic of Harmon Brothers by Chris Jones

Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull

Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen by Donald Miller

Squatty Potty ad

Poo-Pourri ad

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Produced by Simpler Media

Our guest today is Greg Galant. He is one of the minds behind the Shorty Awards, which is a highly popular digital awards ceremony that showcases groundbreaking short-form digital and social media content across all major platforms.

Key Links for Greg

• Website for Shorty Awards
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• Greg’s LinkedIn page
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• Muck Rack website
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• Facebook News Feed Eradicator 
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• The book that Greg recommends: High Output Management by Andrew Grove

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In this episode, Greg shares how the origins and early days of Twitter and other early platforms necessitated the rise of the Shorty Awards and his career in the field.

Greg talks about a wide array of topics including how powerful a work-from-home office dynamic can be, the importance of actively listening to customers and fans, the most effective initiatives for social good, influencer marketing, ways to stay productive despite constant social media bombardment, and much more.

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In This Episode:

• The origin story of the Shorty Awards and Muck Rack.
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• The largest shifts in social media according to Greg.
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• How social good has taken over social media in popularity.
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• How to properly approach social good as a brand.
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• The unique workplace culture of Greg’s companies.
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• The benefits of a work-from-home company.
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• On influencer-driven marketing: the good, the bad, and the ugly.
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• Tools that Greg uses to minimize time wasted on social media and increased productivity.

Key Takeaways From This Episode of the Damn Good Brands Podcast

• Greg thinks that one of the largest changes in social media since he first started in the field is just the sheer amount of platforms that are out there now. Sure, social media is still volatile, and platforms fold, but the digital infrastructure is much vaster.
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• When talking about the exciting things that brands are doing differently now on social media, Greg says that user-generated content is much more prevalent. This means that many brands are actively listening to customers or fans and creating a bottom-up experience instead of the isolated and contrived top-down dynamic of years prior.
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• The best campaigns for social good come from a deep understanding of whatever initiative for social good is being showcased. Many companies build strong social good campaigns by actively listening to the community it serves and addressing any disconnect between conception and execution of any drive for social good.
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• Influencers are the new athletes for marketing products. Just like Michael Jordan used to drive Nike shoe sales, so too influencers are marketing products in a similar way using their social media clout instead.
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• Many businesses need to remind themselves that their work with influencers needs to incorporate the unique personality and creativity of the...

In this podcast, we talk about the startup founder’s journey from idea to major funding and all the trials, tribulations, and iterations in between, including quintessential books, tools, and mindsets for launching a successful startup. We also get into the state of the world of digital ad buying and why it was so ripe for Instigator's disruption.

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Produced by Simpler Media

Claire Graves is Managing Director of The Webby Awards; the prestigious annual event that awards excellence on the Internet. The Webby’s are presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a judging body composed of over two thousand industry experts and technology innovators.

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Produced by Simpler Media

Christine Cattano is the Global Head of VR & Executive Producer at Framestore where she’s front and center in the development of VR/AR content. Christine has produced and launched a series of award-winning VR experiences including:

• HBO's Game of Thrones "Ascend the Wall"
• Paramount's Interstellar
• Marvel's Avengers
• Merrell's "Trailscape"
• Volvo's "Volvo Reality"
• Marriott Hotels "The Teleporter" and "VR Postcards"

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Produced by Simpler Media

Chris Kooluris is a creative media specialist and disruptive marketer. Chris has worked across many major brands including Budweiser, Dove, Tropicana, General Motors, NFL, Smirnoff, Microsoft, Macy’s, and Nestle. His unique approach to PR effortlessly blends pop culture relevance with humor and well-executed stunts that delight demographics and thrill clients. His work history involves such celebrities as Axl Rose, Meghan Fox, Donna Summers, and many more.

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Produced by Simpler Media

Jeremy Reid is the founder and CEO of PINCHme.com - the leading digital hub for CPG manufacturers to acquire new customers and increase sales through targeted and data-driven sampling. Since launching in 2012, PINCHme’s community has grown to over 8 million members with $35 billion in collective spending power on consumer products and has powered sampling campaigns for multiple Fortune 400 CPG companies, including Kraft, Proctor & Gamble, Unilever, Kellog's, Reckitt Benckiser and Nestle to name a few.

The origin of PinchMe started with the observation that CPG sampling programs were inefficient and ineffective, a problem that Jeremy sought to fix by building an entire business around an innovative and data-centric sampling platform. In this interview, Jeremy gets into his overall entrepreneurial origin story and how he overcame multiple obstacles in launching his company only to turn it into a major success story on today's episode of Damn Good Brands. 

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Produced by Simpler Media

Joshua Ostrovsky is an entrepreneur, social media influencer, author, and plus-size model. 

Having started his career as an Instagram humor influencer under the name The Fat Jewish, Josh went on to be a co-founder of Swish Beverages, which launched White Girl Rosé in 2015 followed by the Babe family of sparkling canned wines. In 2019, Anheuser-Busch acquired Swish Beverages, marking the brewer's largest wine investment to date. 

In this wide-ranging conversation, Josh and I talked about his humble origins, entrepreneurship, the founding of Babe beverages, and his super exciting new venture. Guys, this episode is a treat, Josh is not only incredibly hilarious but surprisingly inspiring. 

That being said, I will issue a disclaimer that this is definitely more of an R-Rated - episode so if bad language or crude jokes offend you even a little bit, you might want to stop listening now because there's QUITE A BIT OF IT. You've been warned. 

Now without further ado, here is The Fat Jewish himself, Mr. Josh Ostrovsky.