S3 E09 - Stacking Growth Live: Creative Teardown Edition | Dan Case - Creative Director @ Refine Labs

Welcome everybody. Good to see you all. Welcome. How are you doing?

I'm doing Cassie doing good, man. How are you? I'm doing well. I'm looking forward to this conversation.

Give a few minutes as people join. Why people join? Let's do some intros. Dan Case.

How are you doing, Dan? Welcome. Thank you. Great.

Thanks for having me. I'm pretty excited. Yeah. Intro.

I guess I'll introduce myself. I'm the creative director for affine labs. I've got about 17 years in the creative industry. I've done everything from design to advertising, broadcast, marketing, you name it.

I think at one time had to choose the paint color for a client's bathroom wall, which was always a fun assignment. Is that the highlight of your career? I'm sure it's still there. Every time they walk in, they're like, this paint color is amazing.

Thanks to me. Let's see. I spent maybe the last five years or so just leading teams. I've transitioned into creative direction and leadership.

Right now, I live from Grand Rapids, Michigan. We're living in the Patagonia region of Argentina. It's doing a year-long field trip, a crazy experiment with four kids. We thought, wait a minute.

Wait a minute, Dan, hold on. I didn't know this. You're in Argentina right now. You're there?

Right now. I'm there right now. It's only one hour different. It's one hour east, basically.

I can work the Eastern Time Zone. There's good internet here. I'm in Bar Loche, which is a tourist destination for the most part. There's solid infrastructure and everything you need.

Occasionally the power goes out, but that's about it. Yeah, so we do a lot of hiking mountains and seeing stuff, learning Spanish. That's awesome. How's your Spanish?

It's coming along. It's coming along slowly. When we moved here, I had no Spanish. Now I'm getting there.

A lot of people have food. English out there for the most part. Yeah, for the most part. There's probably their second language.

So I would say 75% of the people speak English. Cool. For those listening, if you didn't know, we're just here to interview Dan today. That's it.

I'm just kidding. That's amazing to it. Exactly. It's amazing to enjoy your time there.

I didn't throw it off by Carl sitting in a different room than I normally see him. I got to see Carl like five times a day. And this is the first time I've ever seen this set up. Yeah, this is my wife's set up.

So this is like a craft room. And that's where I'm at today. I got kicked out of my room because it's where the attic access is. And as I told you, Cassidy, I'll share with the rest of the group here that the Ferrera family is going through a hard time.

We need one of our HVAC units replaced. And that's happening today. So I'm like, oh, so it's hot. And I have to unfortunately cut a large check today.

So I've been better, Cassidy. I'm not going to lie to you. I may need some therapy later. Well, this is this hour's perfect for you.

We're going to listen to Dan do the latest creative breakdown on a company called Dashlane. So I'm looking forward to this as I hope all the rest of you are the way this works is Dan's going to pull up some slides and kind of walk through and we're going to have a dialogue around kind of what he sees and what he learns and looking at this company from a from a creative perspective. And what we'd love all of you to do is obviously pay attention, but to ask questions. Very informal.

So let's go through this. We want to have all the answers. We want to do this together. So as we go through this, you know, pull up their website, start taking a look yourself and let's get into a good dialogue here about how all the things that Dashlane is doing well and some of the ways that they can improve and hopefully you'll learn a few things along the way that you can take back to your own company.

So with that, Dan, I'm going to turn it over to you. Perfect. Does my screen show up nicely? The stack of growth.

Creative Teardown. I purposely did some design work and put creative tear down tear down tear down so it has the echo effect in your head like the radio station broadcast of old. Alright, really a designer there, Dan. That's amazing.

That's right. So Dashlane, this is the company that we're going to go over today. This is super interesting. Carl and I were talking earlier.

We're trying to figure out like, Hey, what, what companies like should we present? Let's look at some, some different options. And you know, Dashlane is one of those companies that lately they've been doing a lot of cool stuff. So sometimes it's like you could take a couple angles with this, right?

You could say, alright, what are some companies that are this doing nothing right and then we can like show them how to do things right? Or there's this, this avenue, which I kind of like, which is let's look at some things that this company is doing great. And that's a great way to learn. The other interesting thing with, with Dashlane, they seem to have a lot of money.

They seem to be spending it. So I'm sure that that must be really nice for them. I don't know. Not a lot of companies in that boat right now.

So we'll see. Here's some, just some overview basics. They actually, obviously a popular password management software solution. They help users secure and manage their passwords, personal data, payment information, that kind of thing across all kinds of platforms devices.

This was, this was the interesting thing. They're very, they have a B2C and B2B focus. You'll see that in their website. There's actually, there's like a toggle in different places where you can sort of switch the website up from like a B2B focus and B2C focus.

It's, you know, and going through it, I think most companies that have that like dual focus struggle with the website and how to present to these different users. I have yet to see somebody do it right where it's like, oh, that's a great solution. So even in company like Dashlane that spends millions of dollars has like the same pain point, and you can almost feel it in their website. But so we're going to talk about that.

We're going to pull things apart a little bit. Hopefully you get a little bit of insight from us. And hopefully it's valuable to you. But at the end of the day, hopefully it's fun to, right?

Because if we're not having fun, then we're wasting our lunch hour, I guess. So anyway, let's, let's get into it. I wanted to talk about the branding first. I think probably this is not typically something we start with.

We probably start with like, hey, let's look at their email marketing. Let's look at their website and, you know, go into some of the tactics. But it's really worth noting kind of their branding because they've clearly spent some, some money on it and it's good. It shows, I've got a slide a little bit later that shows the sort of evolution.

They're old logo and their new one, obviously logo just being part of it. But they did this rebrand with, with Pentagram. Pentagram is probably the most famous design firm in the world. They're super good at what they do.

We started by Alan Fletcher, who was a prominent designer back in the 70s. And I think the name Pentagram is basically, they became five owners of the company or five partners. And so they called it Pentagram. But they've done a ton of notable logos, like Citibank, MasterCard, DC Comics, Tiffany and Company.

I mean, they like some of the best of the best logos and branding done by Pentagram. So they obviously Dashlane paid some money and use them. And it's great. So I love the way this, if you look at this as a logo set as a branding exercise, it's got great color.

Very feels really modern. The nice typography using the dash really makes total sense in the way. If you actually go to the Pentagram website, you can see like some of the other executions of their branding. But one of the cool things they did is they really took this dash and made it all kinds of things, like all kinds of backgrounds, all sorts of like 3D things that spin.

It's really cool, super memorable. They also did a TV commercial, something I want to share because it was actually the Super Bowl. So Super Bowl 2020, I think it was. And they clearly, you can tell this is a company they want people to use the actual thing.

They want people to switch. They want companies to switch. And they're putting money where it counts to really get people to switch. I mean, that Super Bowl had alone, probably the media spent, I don't know, six, seven million dollars, not cheap.

But the cool thing is, it's fun to see, you know, even in like the branding or in the advertising, how those conceptual moments work themselves out in different touch points. How does that concept work itself out in the paid advertising and, you know, different things that they're doing across the board? So, okay, so next slide should be a video. Play here.

Please, can we go back? I have money. I can pay you. Wait.

Is that what we're going? That place looks amazing. Yeah. Oh, I think I put a baby.

I don't know. Oh, it's criminals. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, the fish. Okay.

Miss Bigly. Miss Big. Miss B. Miss B.

Why are you dolphin trainer? Delphin trainer. I did want to be a dolphin trainer. Keep going back.

Alright, so obviously a fun spot. They spend good money on it and they did it right, right? But here's what's great about this spot is that it doesn't talk about the product. It doesn't talk about all the features.

It doesn't go into a whole lot about really what it does. It talks about the pain point. That's it. It just takes one pain that we've all felt it, right?

When you forget your password too many times and that moment of total defeat, they just, they just capitalize on that one little moment that is an emotional connection that we've all felt. And they just, they overemphasize it, right? They went into hyperbole mode. And that really works.

In fact, that's a great, you know, as I lead creatives, like this is one of the main levers that I often talk about and how to get people, how to get the teams that deliver better ideas and better creative is sometimes it just takes focus on it. Sometimes it just takes focusing, finding that one pain point and then just exploring it just a little further to where you get some into some hyperbole or you get into an area where you, where you start to really feel the emotion of what that feels like when you've been through that pain. So that and then of course the when he opens his mouth and it's like a series of the same shot over and over again, which is just weird and fun. And then the ending of a guy running mid air and the cool hook, all of it's great.

All of it works together. So I think there's a lot to learn as far as dash lanes advertising and obviously they did a great job with it. But you know that kind of stuff you can look, you can take an ad like that and really build it out and be like, all right, what's the same sort of pains that my customer goes through like what kind of what what ticks them off when they like are going through a process that we solve. And then how do we talk about that in interesting way so anyway, love that.

Yeah, when I want to jump in to something here that I think is important to point out and that is this isn't a Nike pointing out the pain or some consumer brand this is password security. And so, you know, often what I hear the B2B space is like, listen, we can't do anything fun and cool because we sell something boring or serious. I'm not sure you get any more boring and serious and like security passwords, but they've actually been able to level that up. So I think if yeah we're not all going to go off and spend money on a Super Bowl.

But I think your point of being able to focus on the pain and kind of bring it to life and make it human for the rest of your for your audience is a key one. Yeah, no more boring products. Yeah, there are no boring. Yeah, no boring products only boring people.

Right. That is such a key point that their point products the fact is, all it takes is not being boring. I think a lot of times in our intro slides to new customers or pitch decks. We've been talking about not being boring, which sounds a little harsh, but it's like it's true people.

There is a reward if you can entertain people just to touch and that really grabs their attention. I used to have a creative director that would say, you know, when you pitched a good ad to him or good idea, he would say, yeah, that's the kind of idea that like sticks to the roof of my mind, which is sort of a funny way to say like. Oh, yeah, like that's something something clicked in there that I'm going to remember, you know, but some takeaways here. Obviously the advertising is memorable.

The music is great. The new logo in branding the new logo, you know, you could tell it's formatted for a new generation of kind of web design and how we how we use logos in today's environment. Very recognizable colors are great. Here's the example down below of the old logo to the new, obviously a pretty big shift there.

Yeah, you might have asked a few questions here that I'll be going through my mind as I hear you. One is, how do you, as a designer, why does this resonate meaning from the outside? I'm like, yeah, the logo looks better, but you point out a bunch of things around the flexibility, the design and the branding gives to you as a creator. Can you unpack that a little bit?

Like, what are you looking for when you think about a system here, a brand system or design system that it may want to keep in mind as they go down this path. Yep. So when you're employing design, you end up having some choices to make. You can find a really good photo, find a nice line, put it on the website, put it on your thing, find some nice colors and put them together and make them look good.

And that's fine. That will, most people can do that. Most people will do that. But to take things to the next level, you have to take elements from the brand that are like inherent in their branding and then you have to pull them out and sprinkle them throughout the work.

So that the, when the viewer sees that thing that you just made, they're not feeling like, oh, this could be anybody or this could be this person. Maybe I'm confusing it with a competitor. They instantly recognize that and they see that it's uniquely that company. And so that is memorable that sticks to them.

So that's really what you're looking for with design. That's really what you're looking for with most visual communication. And when you have a system like what they did with the Ashlane that allows you to take elements, pull them out and then play with them in different ways and sprinkle them throughout the creative, throughout the communication. That just, that starts to sing a song that starts to really make things come together.

So, you know, using the dashes, making it a pattern, using the colors in a unique way, using the typography in a way that's not just laid out flat. It's, it's scattered. It's sort of like its own approach, right? But it's all in the branding.

It's all inherent. Does that answer your answer? Yeah. So it's kind of like you're looking for extensibility, I guess, of the brand obviously consistency and flexibility.

And I think you put out something else here. They're obviously looking at this going to be a kind of digital first brand strategy. And so they want to make sure that the font and the style and that flexibility is kind of plays out across like digital elements. I assume, if I'm saying that correctly.

That's, that's, yeah, that's absolutely true. Yeah. How do you, how do you make it flexible enough to play through all kinds of digital elements? And, you know, there was a day, I remember when we used to do a ton of print and advertising and it was like, you saw, because of that you saw certain things, you saw a lot of like, Sarah type fonts, you saw a lot of, you know, things that really played well to print.

Now we've come to a point where you have to, everything has to play really well to digital. So the design has to shift to be able to work well. Yeah. So, so I got a question.

This was probably a little tougher. What was the conversation like in Dashlane? And I'm going to ask you to kind of project to do a rebranding. And I think in a reason, I'm asking that is kind of one that company is probably already successful.

Why they, how do they come to the conclusion to spend all this money to do something different? But also, I want this to kind of permeate the way that they want to do it. So I want this to kind of permeate to folks who are earlier in early stage companies. Like when you, when and how do you decide to do this?

Because it is a big effort. It may not always be a big effort in terms of spend, but it's a big effort for the company. You got to change a lot of things. You got a lot of people bought in, everybody's got opinion, etc.

It's a tough process to go through. How do you determine that? Yeah, that's that's an excellent question. And I think, I think you have to look at things when there is an element of just consumer approach.

I think you can obviously listen to consumers and listen to what, what the audience is saying. But a little bit of it has to be. You have to say is what we're doing working. Is it does it look like, if we want to be the best, let's say they're like, we want to be the best.

The main password protection company that there is, we want to be the best one. Do we look like the best? Do we do we is our approach? Does it feel like it's the best?

Is our all our touch points? Are they like, are they the best or not? And if not, then we need to figure out how to change it to make it that way. And I think I think it's asking those sorts of questions and then really drilling down and like trying, it's hard because you have to take yourself out of the seat of, okay, this is something that like this is the brand that is us and it's what I know is us and it's been us for years, you know, you have to take yourself out of that and say what, what could be better.

As far as when to do that, that's a tough one. I think maybe you always have to be asking that. So, and as far as when you pull the trigger, that's a tough one. I don't know.

Yeah, I've always found, and kind of playing this back, I've gone through this several times at companies, often it being my idea for better words. And one thing I noticed in doing that is either at a major inflection point in the company's direction where you need to kind of, for lack of better, grow up or present yourself in a different way. And or I've gone to the companies where the brand didn't reflect the culture and the personality of the company. And so the people that drive the direction, the vision of the company was one thing I observed inside the company.

And then the way we portrayed ourselves externally didn't match. And to me, that was a problem because we couldn't demonstrate a level of authenticity about who we were and kind of how we see the future. If like the design and the brand element of that did not allow us to give us the room to do that. If that makes any sense.

So part internal in terms of like, does this really reset represent who we are today versus maybe who we were when we started the company 20 years ago. And to look for kind of a major inflection and kind of the direction of the company and kind of reassess. We need to take a brand in a different direction because we're going in a different direction as a company, kind of just two checkpoints. I have one thing I'll add their Cassidy to that.

I think those are two great checkpoints. And again, as a salesperson talking about when you should do a rebrand, right? So brain assault moment here everyone. But I do talk to a lot of marketing teams, obviously, all day long selling refined labs.

And I think another thing to consider is maturity of the current marketing, right? I wouldn't like probably initiate a big rebrand if we're not like winning on other like directly attributable channels, right? If we're still like figuring out how to make Google search work and LinkedIn work and our maturity of our marketing strategy is still like sputtering or struggling. Brand is not a silver bullet.

It probably harm you to go through this transformation at the wrong time and you're kind of like marketing strategies maturity. If you look at like big rebrands that I admire like Dashlane or like Clary, right recently went through a big one, they were winning already. Like their marketing engine was humming and then they were like rebrand is like doubling down this like elevation from a really strong foundation that they already built. So that's kind of like a third marker that I would think of.

If I was, you know, a marketing team, I think the timing matters as well as far as again, maturity of your marketing org. If you have a bunch of things to do and like again, LinkedIn isn't working or should we do a rebrand? I'm like, you should figure out the basics first and have the foundation and then use a rebrand later on as like an elevation point. So anyways, those are my thoughts from a peanut gallery.

Oh, that's pretty good for a sales guy. See, I told you, man, I know some stuff here and there, you know, like re blogs, you know, I'm listening to when you and Sydney and Dan talks on learning something here. I think it's because you're sitting in your wife's chair. I don't think you ever came up with this in your mother's inspiration to be in this room with like the past pink wall.

So you're crafting in between, in between meanings. That's right. You bring up a good point though. One, I mean, we won't go on this too much farther, but for a rebrand to happen as leadership, you have to have clarity on where you want to take the brand and what you want it to be absolute clarity that has to be otherwise you're going to walk into it.

And it's just going to be a lot of opinions and it's going to get real messy. But when you have clarity on where you want to go and what kind of company you want to be. And we're heading that makes everything easier. All right, let's keep going.

Let's look at the website. So website's kind of interesting. I think they spent a lot of money on the branding and advertising the website. I don't know.

I can't really tell they spent too much. Here's the thing. This is the homepage. And you can see right here.

They're what I was talking about earlier for your business. This is clearly B2C and then for you being. I'm sorry for you being B2C. And I found this experience to be a little clunky when I when you click on for you, it actually goes not to another page that explains things which I would expect actually goes to a little chrome.

I don't know, add on or whatever they call those extension, which to me felt like a little bit of a jump. It was a little strange. When I look at the site, you know, there's some obviously some good things are doing. It's nice to have this 2.5 billion credentials.

All these, all these stars, all these stats, you know, makes it feel pretty trustworthy. The as far as a design goes, it's okay. It's a little to me. This is pretty generic.

I feel like any company could have this kind of outline view of a couple of devices and you know, they're what they're showing within them. I'm not that special. It doesn't really make me want to use the product. I'm not like, holy cow, I got to switch my password manager because this looks sweet.

I'm sort of like, all right, probably just the same as what I have. Dan, I wonder why you're touching on something, right? And this is something that I'll bring up during when we look at their social ads, but Dashlane does a really good job talking about themselves and why us and they still have a why change conversation. They don't really explain to me why I should change either from like last pass to Dashlane or from no passwords and all of my passwords being Harry Potter 123.

I really like compelled me to be like, hey, why should I change? I think another question I wanted to ask you about this kind of like header area on the website is hero images. I wonder why they opted to, why would a design team opt to not use product screenshots and opt to just create like these images and maybe they're like sort of reflective of the product, you know, but I don't know if that's a good opportunity to show us the product, you know, and they chose not to do that. I wonder why products ugly.

I don't know, right? Maybe if it doesn't look very good. And so they have to do this, but I don't know if you have any thoughts there. My guess is, again, I know it's, you know, from my design background, I would do that if the product's ugly, you know, if it doesn't really shine well.

Okay, let's make something that makes it work and makes it communicate with the product does. There's a trade off though. As soon as you do that, it starts feeling generic. It starts feeling like, oh, this must be, I don't know, maybe it makes it like stock vectors and it's just sort of put together.

It's, you know, it's not very memorable. So that's my assumption. I don't know, actually. We got a good chat going here.

Rachel makes a great point. It seems like all they've done, all they've taken from the rebrand is a logo. It feels like a different brand. Where's the application of that incredible color palette?

Where's the application? Oh my goodness. Such a great point. And you think we've got back to that spot, an emotional response, right?

So here you have totally the opposite, whether this is like very technical and cold informational security first. Like I'm getting no like emotional tugs here. It's very much like the other side of things. So I think that's a good point.

Like even just like those elements of the rebrand that feel really fresh and rich and, you know, interesting. Just lost, you know, not like they get really technical, right? Like they lose me, especially on the B2C side, maybe like an director of IT gets it, right? But like when you're talking to your B2C customers, which is difficult when you have B2C now you're following them through the same website, like what messaging do you lean towards?

But like our zero knowledge patented encryption means not even we can see your passwords. Like I don't even know what really like that means, right? Zero knowledge patented encryption. It's like, okay, not even we can see your passwords.

I didn't even know that that was a thing. Like why I would assume that the company like stored the passwords, I guess not. So that's cool. I don't know, right?

There's this huge gap in education that I still need and Dashlane just like hits me with technicals. I think most a lot of you to be a company is I see this quite often is we tend to come up with cool phrases like zero knowledge patented encryption. But when most people are looking for like a new password manager, they're not sitting down and be like, all right, Google show me the ones that have zero knowledge password patented encryption. Most people just don't talk that way.

They don't think that way. And so I think there's an element there of like maybe going a little too far into their own heads. And that happens all the time. I don't like this message.

It doesn't. I mean, clearly doesn't work for a consumer, but I'm skeptical this works for a IT manager. Well, and look, I use LastPass. LastPass actually says the same thing.

So they also claim to be a zero knowledge patented encryption that they don't see your password. So even if you're comparing options and you're really trying to like run through a fine tooth comb, it's actually not a differentiator. A lot of them now claim zero knowledge patented encryption. So, maybe that never been breached, but I'm not sure like password password company is getting breached all the time.

I don't know. Anyway, I would think that's table stakes, right? They just don't get breached security. It would be like the main thing you need, right?

All right. So this was the second section down from their page. And this is where it kind of fell off the wheels for me. I think there's a lot here too much websites are great for obviously you want to inform your consumer.

You want to make sure that they know like what is it you do very clearly very concisely. But when it all is on one little section, it's just it's just too much very noisy, hard to adjust. Yeah, Carl totally and visually. So even just the visuals, there's just there's just a lot going on.

This could be simplified. One of my biggest pet peeves is when a company says something like simple password management across all devices and the pages massively complex. Dude, if you're going to say you're simple, everything's got to feel simple from a brand. Like if that's a brand pillar, then make this thing really simple.

Yeah, it just feels like it's words on a page just as a disaster. I mean, I love the branding, but like, more than ever, what site is like website? Yeah, if I'm if I'm in charge of looking for a new password protection place or if I'm even just a consumer looking for it and I go to this section, like, you just made my day worse and I just don't need that. My brain now hurts and I just I'm closing it out.

So, yeah, it's tough. Yeah, Carl says something else earlier too. I keep coming back to like, why am I not I'm seeing all these vague conceptual designs of the product over and over as a theme as a design team. Yeah.

I don't know. Show me the product. What's going on here? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

They're maybe hiding something. Again, maybe the product just hasn't caught up again. Another thing I go back to like my just like why change sort of mental model. If I'm up, especially B to C or if it's 2023, like if you're not using a password manager, you're not convinced that you need one, right?

Like so I need to be educated that I need one and there's just none of that like why do I need dark web monitoring? You know, like why do I need a password in form? There's just there's just like there's a big skip to step, right? And I think it harms them both here and also in their advertising.

One of the things I tell clients often is that in marketing and advertising, all you're really doing is you're just an Uber driver for thinking. You want to take the consumer or the person that's looking at this stuff. You want to take them from where they were to where you want them to be. And that's it.

You're just you're just an Uber driver with your messaging, with your website. That's all you're trying to do. And I think like when you look at this, it's like they're trying to do it, but it's you're taking so many turns and there's just there's traffic. I don't like the smell of the car.

There's just too much. I'm getting out, you know, so I'll stuff to think about. Oh, yeah. More.

I'm just going to go through this a little bit. This one looks a little cleaner. There's some things on there pricing. It feels pretty straightforward.

Let's go to the takeaways. You know, security first, obviously that's a nice differentiation. I could see that working well within within the matrix of communications. It is the languages.

They do use consistent language, which is always always good. It's clear. It gets a little muddy when you add on too much of it, right? There's a lot of trustworthiness.

They've got the little icons and the stars. It's always good to establish like, hey, we're not just coming at you from somebody's basement. We're we're a real deal. Dark Web scan.

I didn't know what that was until I visited this site. So that was nice to get a little bit of learning of like, okay, like do I need a dark Web scan? I didn't know I did. I was sleeping fine and now I'm not like what's happening.

So there's some design pros. Obviously they do use hierarchy, white space, color, you know, the regular layout. This is a very standard layout. Actually, when I think about it, most of the lot of companies use this layout.

Dark Web doesn't equal dark social. Yeah. I think those are two different things. I'm not sure what the what comes up on the dark Web when you sign up for this company, but who knows.

So yeah, some interesting takeaways. I think we've had good conversation around it. Anything to add anything to close out this section. I think the same thing we all pointed out like this.

We thought we're looking at a after the brand review. We're looking at a company that had their shit together, right? Yeah. Yeah.

This company is I'm impressed and then we have the website and we're like, this is like a different company, as Rachel said. It's what happened here. Is that is that the second half of 2023 project or do we just we're just missing it. They ran out of money.

It's a $10 million spot. We need a budget this for yesterday for last year. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. They they looked at the rest of their budget and they're like, Oh, we've got just enough for a trip and dairy queen back. That's about it. So they did not touch their website.

All right. Okay. Let's let's go through the paid social. So this, this is one ad that I think we I first the first ad that I saw from them and I was like, yes, this is this is sweet.

This is really a great paid social ad. It's concept driven. It's a great line. It's a it's a great line.

It's a it's a memorable line. You know, like my old creative director would say it kind of sticks to the roof of your head and it and it's just very simple. Right. So one of the things that I that is the biggest challenge, especially for B2B companies is how do you go from your paid social being a headline that's good that talks about your product or says something visual that's nice that maybe a stock photo that illustrates the headline.

How do you go from like that matrix of regular stuff to this world of like a concept and idea something that is that feels different and those that that small difference, sometimes even a big difference. Really is what separates, I think, good advertising to great advertising and I think it all has to do with with the idea, the approach. Ideas are unique to the human experience robots can't do it. I can't do it.

I can come up with great lines, but only we can come up with as humans, great ideas that are rooted in some sort of emotion that are rooted in some sort of history that we have. This is where the gold is. And so I think this is a great example of having an idea concept and then having that play out in your advertising. It's also the hardest thing to do.

So these the rest of these ads, I can honestly say I don't think they employ that approach. It's almost like this was done by one agency and this was done by another, to be honest. There's some okay lines here. It's not terrible, but they're just they're not concept based.

They're not ideas. It's it's things that they have things that they do, but they're not showing something unique. Even the visuals. Pretty pretty lackluster, you know, and this key thing.

It's like that's that starts to be a cool idea, a key with the different things that unlocks. It starts to be a unique idea, but in execution, it's sort of jammed down there on the side and it's not quite perfect. It looks a little photoshopped, a little clunky. So like there's some notes here that's like, okay, that's something, but then they kind of missed it.

So a little bit of like creative direction, one of one, you know, you got to find the thing that what is the thing that you need to bring to the forefront and really shine and make it make it great. If you missed that kind of stuff, it just falls flat. So that's that's really something that always needs to be looked at. Hey, yeah, doesn't it feel like the team who did the website did these ads and then the branding agency did the last ad.

It just feels like what happened here. Yeah, it's a tale of two companies here. It's crazy. Yeah, exactly.

The tale of two vendors. Be careful. Yeah. All right.

So I guess you get what you pay for a paradigm. I don't know. You really know what they're doing. Hey, Dan, if you want to go back to the ads real quick.

I've got a comment. I mean, another thing that you'll notice from like a demand-jet perspective is they're all very legion oriented, right? It's like maybe try to stop your scroll. We're kind of maybe like not really taking these images super seriously, but like just try for free.

Try for free. Try for free. Sign up. Get Dashlane, right?

Start your free trial today. And again, I keep harping on this. Why change? Like if I'm on LinkedIn, I'm not probably not about to just like stop everything that I'm doing.

And go sign up for Dashlane. I'm scrolling. I'm enjoying, right? Maybe I'm getting angry by Cassidy's post because I don't like him, right?

Or I'm commenting or I'm doing this or I'm doing that. So educate me. Like why change? Intertain me.

Dashlane has no people in their advertising. You can see this on their Instagram too. Their Instagram is just full, just like static images, right? There's no people talking.

I love that Super Bowl commercial because I'm like, man, you could repurpose that and get a couple personalities internally at your company. So like do some funny, like TikTok videos off of that same concept, right? And you just see like no people. It's just all against static images.

And nothing really, that's not really bad. Like images and nothing really, again, piques my interest as to like, why change? Why do I need stronger security? I'm pretty sure my security is fine right now.

Password manager has never been breached. Okay. I didn't like, I don't like this. I'm relevant to me, you know?

So it's all lead gen oriented. Everything here is oriented towards a person that's probably already like ready to go. There's nothing for the person that is not ready to go. That is not even considering changing their password or adopting a password manager.

Like where is the creative for those that which is like 90% of the market, right? Is in that bucket? There's no creative or anything towards capturing their imagination, attention or creating any preference for them to consider Dashlane. So yeah, yeah, I want to read Graham's question.

I think it's a really good one. The uniqueness of the value prop does fall flat. It's not easy to turn out copy like forget about forgetting passwords. So there's an argument for just learning leaning into a cool factor via design.

If you don't have a world that's a good copy to deploy. You said this yourself. This amazing line. Like, how do you create an environment that you get there?

And how do you keep staying there? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That's, I think that getting there is worth it. I mean that to me, like you, if you want to stop this role, if you want to be memorable, if you want to like do the things, that you want your demand gen and all your advertising programs to do, you have to work at it. You have to get, you know, high the right people, the right writers and just work at it because design is good. But I look at it really is, it has to be art plus copy and they have to work in a way that does something that makes it one thing.

You know, it makes it's own thing. So if you look at like, if you look at Apple, you know, they are not just great design. Yes, they've got great design. They've got great design on the web page, great design, they're advertising.

But their messaging is really what, I mean, at the end of the day, what pulls them apart and makes them very unique, makes them a company that everybody wants to be, everybody wants to do advertising like them, right? So I think, I think it's, yeah, it's not easy, like you said, Graham, but that's, I think it's worth it. That's where it's worth going for it. I will say one thing though, from experience, when you nail a line like this, you can use it over and over.

Like, oftentimes we look at these ads like this and there's like an exhaustion factor that we put into this. So we got to turn out mediocre stuff at a higher frequency than one great line. That one great line will just live. I guess I'd run that thing for over and over and over.

If it works. Right. Yeah. In fact, this line, I'm surprised that they're not using it that I haven't seen it in more of their advertising outdoor, that kind of thing.

Maybe I haven't, I haven't noticed. So yeah, some takeaways, concept driven always always stops the scroll, always works better. You know, a lot of their stuff, we've kind of picked it apart already. One more thing to note is, you know, when I look at some of these things, you have to have a clear hero in the ad.

This is something you see all the time. Image, copy, thing, there's always stuff in the ad. People want to put things in it. And there's no like one thing that stands out.

There's no hero. There's no one thing telling the story. That's, you know, in this case of the ad that we like here, the hero is the line. They didn't need to jam any weird keys with things and like the creative team knew this, they knew that they needed the hero and then a cool way to support that hero, right?

And that's really key. That's key in all your social media advertising. I want to get to this. How to elevate.

I forget time. I think we do. This is just a little bit broader, right? But it's like, okay, what this is like when you think about the programs you run the marketing, you run how do you take some of this learning and actually turn the corner to elevate your own, your own work, your own brand.

And like we've talked about push concept. The be at the end of the day, be brave and not boring. The ads that will stand out are the ones that are brave, the ones that are willing to take a little bit of a risk. And maybe do something that feels a little uncomfortable, that feels out there or feels really interesting or like doesn't feel super safe.

But the whole feed that everybody's going through, nobody's, nobody's hoping that they see an ad. They're not hoping that they see your ad. They're, they just want to read their things and get on with their lives. You to be able to stop them and actually like stop their scroll or get their attention.

You have to be pretty brave. You can't, you can't be in the backseat, you know, with some mediocre lines and just random images. It has to be brave. It can't be boring.

I know it's kind of a hard thing to do, but it's very true. I see all the time and I see when we push things with client, when clients that are willing to like push and go out there. I'm telling you that the numbers speak of them for themselves. Those are the clients that are doing the best.

Those are the clients that their, their engagement, their click through ratio, all that stuff is, is much higher. And at some point for me, I like this all day long and I see all these numbers from different clients, ones that want to play it safe, ones that want to be brave. And it's a no brainer. I'm like, these brave clients are killing it.

These super safe clients that really like think through every little detail and they have like, it's, it's not the numbers are different. So it's just an exercise of, you know, where do you, where do you want to take the person, the viewer and how do you get them there? You know, how do you, how do you stop the scroll? So that's a big one.

Unique branding. I've talked about this. Infuse your brand. That's so key to infuse your brand because you want to be uniquely you right.

Push boundaries. I already talked about this. You know, you, you've got to stop them from the scroll. You know, I used to do a lot of like outdoor advertising and it's sort of what we do is sort of the same thing, right?

In the digital world, you have to say something really quickly, you know, and outdoor advertising people are flying through the road 70 miles per hour. What are you going to say that's going to like, that's going to make them remember that at that's a pretty tough thing to do? So you have to, you have to be precise. You have to be pretty clear.

You have to be brave. Otherwise, you know, you might just put your logo on and just say what you do. There's probably not, there's probably a format for that. But I think that's the biggest thing.

You know, you have to find those right elements that take things just a step farther. And I think a lot of it has to do with concept. I've got some, just some examples. These are some ones I pulled up a logos.

But if you look at this ad on, you know, at first, you're like, okay, it's a orangish ad. But what's what's fun about this is for a company that does COI tracking and we did this whole campaign about how they know that COI tracking is is dull and boring work and nobody wants to do it. But they love it. And so we just, we pointed out the truth that like that this thing that they do, COI tracking, that it's not fun, that it's boring.

You know, so if you think about like in advertising, what was the Hertz one, like we're number two, or was it some other at rent a car place anyway, nobody talks about Davis, Dan Davis is number two, number two, like 1970s or something. Everybody talks about their features, their product, the things that make them great. Nobody talks about like if it's an ugly product, nobody talks about that they're ugly, you know, if you're ugly, talk about that you say that you're ugly, like that's actually more interesting and people will remember it. So anyway, that's just a little learning, say the truth, tell the truth, even if it, if it sets you apart, right?

Use cultural references, reach major Tom, you know, it's space space guy kind of hear the song in the back here head a little bit or, you know, like this one that was for targeting conversations, this, moving into this white, bright idea. Use graphics that are scroll stopping, you know, that are interesting. You know, these are a couple that we've done recently, again, I've taken up the logos, but it's, you know, if you're just, almost in our examples that we've shown with the client, we're looking at, it's like, if you just put a random screen, screen grab and a headline, like, that might work, but you like to take it a step further, you really, it takes a lot of work, but it's worth it. It's going to be worth it in the end.

Because that's where the magic happens. And that's where people start to stop. So. Yeah, let me, yeah, I'm sorry, Roman has a good point.

A good question. Is there any rationalization on where does start being brave, especially me to be worldwide playing safe as a common rule? Like, where would you start, Dan? And you maybe you talked to some of these examples, like, and you used to have a case study.

Yeah. Yeah, I think, you know, if you're running an internal, let's say that you're running an internal team, I would start with communication with that with a team that's in charge of creating your, your marketing, your advertising, creating the ideas. And just asking the question, what would we do if, if we didn't have all this background information and all the things that we feel like we have to put in? What would we do if we just decided, let's be brave?

Let's, let's say something that is, that is unique or inherent only to us. Let's, like, what would we do? And I think if you just ask that question, it helps you start thinking in a different way. I, I've asked the question, the creative teams, in similar thought of like, all right, what would we do if we wanted to have fun?

Like, if we wanted to make this fun, like, this, this work is okay. But what if we wanted to have fun with it? What would it look like? Like, let's think about that.

And just asking the question can actually yield, you know, okay, well, maybe we would do this. And then you just start, you start rolling on it. Yeah, Roland, I'll give you my, I'll build on my dance and give you my, my thoughts. I would start with paid ads, if you're running them.

And the reason is because by not being, by being boring on paid media, you'll have the results will be there. They just be wasting money. So you might as well be provocative and see if you can land something that works. Now, the challenge is, and I've done this myself, we do that we see this with clients.

When you start seeing success, like snooze fast, then the question becomes, can I permeate that through everything else I do? And this is a challenge. It's like the reverse challenge of Dashline or it's Dashline on steroids, right? They started advertising with a Super Bowl ad and changing their branding and have not been able to permeate that through the rest of the company.

You're in the same situation here with lower risk. Try this if you're running paid media on LinkedIn or on social platform, be provocative, see if it resonates, see if it turns into pipeline and revenue. Then from there, you have to have a conversation of like, does this become our company in kind of position? And how do we translate that to other touch points?

Because you'll see a great snooze fast ad and you'll show up on the website. It's completely different. And that's the challenge for that company today. And we need to figure out overcoming it.

But that would start there because the risk is low because more likely nobody's looking at the ads the way they've been built today. Alright, that's a wrap. Thanks Dan. Appreciate it.

Rachel and everybody else. Thanks for participating. Love the questions and the dialogue. We find this valuable.

Let us know. Hit the end on the DM on LinkedIn and we'll be back next month and we'll be again. Thanks everybody.