Trent Marsh (00:00):

The consumer of 2025 is infinitely more difficult tomarket to because we're marketed to all the time. So now it's noise. Brandedcontent has gotten popular because the general perception of branded content isthat's a way to break through the noise, but this kind of goes back to themarketer's trap. If I know deer season's coming up in three months and I need apair of binoculars, when I flip open Deer and Deer Hunting magazine and see anad for a pair of binoculars, am I going to stop and look? Yes, interruptionmarketing still works, but it should work in conjunction with Branded Lead, acampaign as a hook for branded marketing. I think campaigns are just higher inthe hierarchy and branded content falls underneath as a way to activate thosecampaigns. On this podcast, we go behind the scenes

Cole Heilborn (00:51):

With industry experts as they break down what it takes toproduce creative work that works. If you're seeking insights from some of thesharpest minds of the industry, this is your guidebook to producing creativework that actually delivers. Welcome to the Back Country Marketing Podcast.Today I'm sitting down with Trent Marsh. He is the marketing director at RitonOptics. Trent, good to see you.

Trent Marsh (01:10):

Good to see you,

Cole Heilborn (01:11):

Trent. I'm excited to have you on the show today. We'vegot a fun, well, actually a variety of topics we're going to kind of bouncearound through and talk about. We were originally connected because I put out apost on LinkedIn and I was like, Hey guys, theoretically what would happen ifbrands stopped producing campaigns and just produced branded content? And thecomment section there were there's some opinions and it led to some goodconversations. And Trent, you and I got connected through that and we startedtalking about this idea of branded content versus campaigns and combining them,and we eventually realized like, oh, Trent's got a lot. You got a lot of goodideas. We should bring you on the show and talk more. So we're going to talkabout that idea, branded content and campaigns, when to use one versus theother, and then we're going to talk about a variety of other different thingsand kind of hot takes that you've got about the industry. So I'll stop talking.Trent, I'd love if you could introduce yourself.

Trent Marsh (02:04):

Yeah, so again, I'm the marketing director at RitonOptics. I've been in the marketing side of this space now for about 15 years.Been in the optic space before, been in the trail camera space before and thenalso for about the last decade, done a lot of content creation as well. I dosome freelance stuff for titles like Deer and Deer Hunting and Concealed CarryMagazine Hunting and Tactical Retailer, some of the industry side stuff too. Sojust a little bit of everything on all sides of the industry. So I've gotdifferent opinions for all parts of it.

Cole Heilborn (02:38):

Well, let's dig into the first opinion. So the first thingthat you talked about and you mentioned was what you called the Marketers Trap,and you mentioned a couple specific things that I'd love for you to expand on.One, this idea of as someone in the marketing department, are you thinkingabout your own consumption habits and behaviors, and then are you using that tohelp inform your own marketing plans? Second thing that you talked about wasthe trend of when marketing folks move to different positions or move betweendifferent companies, they often bring the same ensemble of contractors

Trent Marsh (03:13):

With

Cole Heilborn (03:13):

Them for better or for worse. Tell me more about both ofthese points and why do you call this the marketers Trap?

Trent Marsh (03:19):

So the first one is really the main one. That idea of weall interact with marketing on a daily basis and there's a way that we interactwith it as a consumer of marketing, and then we show up at our nine to five andwe forget everything about the way that we interact with the marketing aroundus and go spend money in places that we ourselves would never actually interactwith marketing that way. The main one I put a pin in here recently is social.It's not that there's no value to social, but this idea of for as long as I'vebeen in the industry, people, well, prince's dying, prince's dead prince's onits way out. There's no value there. And then you say, okay, well great. Howmany Facebook ads are you clicking on? Well, I'm not clicking on any of those. Okay,but you go in and you put all of your budget in this bucket that you're tellingme to you as a consumer of this stuff has no value, but whether it is theattribution that can go to it that can't to some other channels or just thevanity metrics that come along, kind of daisy chaining.

(04:34):

Along with that, you end up throwing all your money tothis when virtually none of your purchasing pattern lines up with the channelthat you're doing. That was kind of the first place that I identified as thetrap. And then the second part of that is, and if we've worked in the industry,or I'm sure it's the same in other industries, but most of my adult life hasbeen spent in this one, you can pretty much look and see, okay, well so-and-sowent here. They're going to drag X, Y, and Z. They're going to bring thiscompany, they're going to bring this influencer, and they just have this group,this hoard of people that doesn't even matter if it's really a great fit forthis new product category. It's just these are the people I'm comfortable with.Even if they're not the a plus answer, rather than go out and find a betteranswer, I'm just going to keep working with the people that I'm comfortablewith.

(05:29):

And it's just the other side of the same coin here. Thefirst one is, I hate this, but I'm going to spend money on this because I cansee where it goes or whatever the case may be. And the other is, well, this ismy blankie, this is what makes me feel warm and fuzzy, so I'm just going tostick with this regardless of whether or not they're the right people in theright place at the right time, they make me feel good, we're going to chargeforward for better or worse, this is how going to roll. And I think they bothend up being a trap that we see people fall into.

Cole Heilborn (06:03):

Yeah, why is it a trap? Why is it a problem?

Trent Marsh (06:07):

Because if you're not taking a look at everythingobjectively, you're not doing the best job that you can do. You're notpresenting the best array on the first part. If you're just putting money inthings that you can justify, even you don't believe that they work, work thatyou don't believe in is never going to be as good as work that you do. That'sthe first part and the second part, if you're just blindly, I know that I canwork with this person so I'm going to drag them along. If you're not looking atit objectively and saying, okay, but what we're selling isn't really thisniche, they might still be great for expanding markets or something like that,but we see blinders go on way too often where it's just, nah, nope. This iswhat I'm comfortable with, this is what I want to do. And then they miss somuch because they're caught up in this worked where I was last time, so this iswhat we're going to do, and it's a fine line between I know what I'm doingbecause I've done it before and here's what it looks like and I'm going to keepalways working with only the same people and only the same contractors, andthere's no way to grow and expand this, and it leads to a real myopic approachto both sides of the equation. You end up missing so much.

Cole Heilborn (07:37):

Okay, I want to expand more on this first point of notevaluating your own consumption habits and then applying that to your job. So Ifeel like I could see that being true. I also feel like though, havinginterviewed a lot of folks who do a lot of marketing in the outdoor industry, Ialmost sometimes think that we rely too much on our own personal behaviors andopinions and we don't take a more sophisticated or scientific method or b, alevel approach to how we market. So talk to me about, there's kind of twoextremes to this obviously, but do you see that as well?

Trent Marsh (08:18):

Yeah, there are marketers who definitely fall on both endsof that extreme and that if there is something that keeps me awake as amarketer and for people who don't work in marketing on a daily basis to try toexplain to them what the hard part is. So much of what we do can't be measuredas much as we want to say that you can never survey every purchaser of yourproduct, every user of your product, at some point it's going to come down toanecdote because for years I've said that especially in this industry, socialmedia gave all of the information to marketing averse leadership that they everwanted because whether or not the data is complete and tells the whole story,it doesn't matter. It's the same idea with affiliate. Well, it's this lastclick attribution model. Well, they clicked on this and they came to ourwebsite, who clicked on our magazine ad?

(09:24):

Well, nobody. But did they only click on your social adbecause they've been seeing your print ad for three or four years and they havecomfort with that. As much as we may want to say, there's a way to get to apoint to say, well, we can attribute that and we can put together a model thataccounts for, no, you can't. Some of it, sure, but the hard and fast reality isthere is no hard and fast reality. It is interpretation of here are the logsthat are on the fire, some of them are wet, some of them are bone dry, whichones are burning at the end of the day, they all end up burning, but which onescatches faster? Which one burns best? All of that is up to interpretation andit's tough to isolate those things. That's where some folks go and I'llself-identify. I'll point the thumb here. I absolutely go more by feel, but atthis point it is working with working with and building four different brandsover the course of 15 years knowing what you see work over time rather thanjust, well, what worked in the last three months?

Cole Heilborn (10:39):

I've heard it said that measuring brand is measuring love,

Trent Marsh (10:45):

Which

Cole Heilborn (10:45):

I think, well, I love that explanation. It makes so muchsense.

Trent Marsh (10:52):

Well, they go hand in hand because at the end of the day,what you're trying to build with your brand is affinity, and that's what loveis. So how can I create, even if you aren't a user of my brand, and even if younever want to be a user of my brand, I still want to present my brand to you ina way that you think enough of it that you don't speak ill of it, and that's asmuch the game we play as anything. You don't need everyone to be an acolyte ifyou don't have any detractors. Neutral is not always a bad place to

Cole Heilborn (11:32):

Be.

Trent Marsh (11:34):

So I hadn't heard that specific example, but I like itbecause it is it's hand in glove for what you're trying to do.

Cole Heilborn (11:43):

So let's come back to this balancing data and anecdotes.You started out by saying digital gave leadership all the information or ammothat they need to kill branding. Yeah. So is that just kind of a hot take? Doyou see that permeating throughout?

Trent Marsh (12:03):

Oh yeah. That is 15 years of conversations with leadershipsaying, we think we don't think this is working. We think this is, why can't Isee X when I can see Y? Like I said, right now, the place where you're seeingit and not even necessarily with leadership, but a lot of you can tell a lotabout where a specific marketing channel is in its life cycle based on who'strying to sell you the management of that channel and what that looks andsounds like. And right now you see it a lot with affiliate where people aresaying, you don't need to bother with all this brand building. That's notsomething you need to do. We can do all of this on the back of affiliate and a10% commission and just go out and seed some product and get some visibilityout there. And it's not that affiliate isn't a viable channel, but I had allbut a knockdown drag out at an industry event not that long ago of peopleessentially saying that you don't need to be doing all of this.

(13:08):

And one of the use cases that they gave was a brand thathas been one of the most ardent advertisers in print over the last two and ahalf decades. Their brand awareness is through the roof, and then you come inat the tail end with some affiliate campaign. I bet you converted. Well, thatmakes all, of course you did. All the groundwork had been laid for you to dothat. Same with social. If you are a Pinnacle brand and someone sees if you aretalking to your audience properly and you're targeting them properly, you knowhow to talk to them. Getting them to click is not hard. But if your new kid onthe block that doesn't have any history, it's exactly the opposite. Thatdoesn't mean that your marketing and your branding isn't working, you justdon't have the credibility or the life cycle with the consumer for that to beas actionable.

(14:05):

So like with affiliate, my whole buzzword around it hasbeen that affiliate marketing is a mechanism by which you leverage existingawareness, not create new. If you have awareness, that's a great channel foryou, keep it in front of people. Hammer, hammer, hammer, hammer, hammer. Keepit in front of people, but if you're new, two brands that I don't necessarilywork with, if you are scree, for example, make a really nice camo product, notnearly as well known as Sitka, if you're an affiliate, you make money off thepeople that click links. You can only share so many links before yourcredibility's gone. So when you sit down and look at it, I can share Sitka linkand everybody's going to know about it, everybody's going to be interested andmore the often than not, my audience is going to respond positively to thatmarketing.

(15:02):

Then you take a brand like scree that's newer, not as wellknown, not as defined. If you're the affiliate, which link are you going toshare? The one that's more likely to get you paid or the one that you have toexplain to your consumer. That's digital in a nutshell. You can explain some ofthat, but in the short term, if all you're doing is social, you're not going tohave any metrics that back anything up. You have to create touch pointsanywhere. There can't be a room in which you aren't taking up some of theoxygen because it's too easy to be missed in so many of these channels. So evenif you can't have as big of a presence as some of these others, you have to atleast look like you're pretending in enough of those places so that when salesguys are on the road, well, I don't see you on tv.

(15:55):

Well, I don't see you in print. Why am I not seeing youhere? We can all look and know the places that we need to be to hit that levelof critical mass essentially, that you are visible enough that then any ofthose other individual channels carry more weight. Good marketing isomnichannel. It's not we're going to own digital. That's fine. You own digital.I will take all of that print oxygen that you just gave up and I'll buy it.Well, we're just going to go TV and influencers, cool. I'm going to own you onsocial if you're not a little bit of everywhere, which budgets are tough, butthat's what we get paid for is finding the right balance, finding the right ROIto make it look like good marketing always looks like you're doing way morethan you actually are. That's the balance is how do I put the money into thebuckets where spending five grand looks like 20?

(16:59):

How can I spend 50 grand and make it look like a hundred?That's the tough part, but when leadership just wants to see, well, we got 500people on the website last week because of this social ad ads, how many peopleon the website did that ad and Guns magazine bring in the answer unless youstand on your website, which you can't do with a clicker that says, where didyou see us that made you want to come do this? And there was a reallyinteresting case study when I was in college. It was for a jewelry store in NewJersey. They did this as a marketing survey. Where did you hear about us? And10% of respondents said television and 15 said radio, and so it was this wholemismatch. The only advertising they had ever done was in a local newspaper.That was it.

(17:54):

Not 10 years ago we did. No, they had only ever advertisedin the local newspaper. The consumer didn't even know where they heard aboutthem, but they did it consistently enough that over time they just became partof that community. To some extent that matters, but that just means that yourtouchpoint have to matter more. That anecdote was from the fifties, so youdidn't have social you, there was so much more you didn't have so matteredmore, but that just means now with all of the options that you have, every oneof them carries more weight because if you're not there, you have a competitorthat's there. Do you want them to own that space or do you want to take up anybit of that that you can from them?

Cole Heilborn (18:43):

Do they carry more weight or is there less weight becausethere's more channels to choose from?

Trent Marsh (18:50):

I think you could argue it both ways. I really think youcould argue it both ways because you could say, well, there are, if you layingit out, depending on how you look at it, seven to 12 ish channels that you needto talk to people in, you could say, well, if I'm not in two or three, itdoesn't matter because I'm hitting all of these others, but it almost has to beevaluated on a category by category and competitor basis because if yourcompetitors are also leaving those spaces open, then those matter less, but ifyou're getting absolutely owned in one of those, where does it rank in thehierarchy and what it's a sliding scale on all axis to determine exactly whatthat looks like.

Cole Heilborn (19:39):

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Something I've heard on this podcastmany times in the last year or so, and I don't know if it's just optimisticthinking, but people like to put paid and brand on either side and theydescribe it as a pendulum. The pendulum swings between where our brands placingtheir emphasis and some people are speculating that the pendulum is swingingback towards brand. Now, some of these folks are in classic outdoor, so ski,hike, climb, mountaineering. What's your take in the hunt and firearm side? Doyou have a point of view on that?

Trent Marsh (20:17):

I think it's been on brand for quite some time. I wouldsay the pendulum has been more on the brand side for probably the last decade.Paid never went away. That's the only thing that pendulum never goes to ahundred, right? It kind of stays in that middle 30% that you're working on, butI think brand has been pretty heavy. I think it's probably sliding more backtowards paid, and I think a lot of that is because of this. Even talking toother people in the industry, there's a very blurry line between influencersand affiliate and because affiliate is kind of the buzzword right now, there'sa lot of time and effort being devoted to affiliate, which I would considerthat a paid category where I think a lot of brands have been doing the brandthing and realize that finding an audience is really difficult unless you areone of those heritage brands that have on the leading edge of social media, wasable to go out and pick up a hundred thousand Facebook followers or 250,000 onInstagram just by nature of being the brand that you are.

(21:43):

If you're not one of those brands, I'm investing $15,000in this super slick cool brand video that got 250 likes or views on YouTube.Building that audience is really hard and I think we've seen enough leadershiplook at it and say, yeah, this all looks really good, but how much marketingcould we have gone out and bought to actually build brand visibility andawareness for what it cost us to do this hunting series or produce this podcastor whatever the case may be. So I actually think we're sliding away from brandand more back to paid and we're seeing the value of, sure, it makes me feelgood and it looks good for the brand to go out and create these shiny things,but at the end of the day, I need an audience and if the audience for my shinythings is 2000 people a month, that's the open rate on a single third partylist for some of these better lists. Our resources are better marshaled,especially in the buying environment that we're in right now with the economy,the way that it is coming. We're in Trump Slump 2.0 and just overall saleswhere they're at, the way that the landscape has changed from 20 years ago, Ithink everybody is just vying for as many eyeballs as possible, even if they'rerepetitive, even if they're eyeballs they already had. I think we're seeingthat swing back to paid.

Cole Heilborn (23:25):

Interesting. You talk about finding an audience, and Ilove that you brought this up because this is something that our company makesa lot of branded content, like branded films and that type of stuff, and one ofthe things we always talk about before we get started is like, okay, it's greatto want to do this, but do you actually have that wants to receive this? Whoare we talking to specifically,

(23:51):

And like you said, finding an audience is so difficult. Ittakes time, but this feels like a big opportunity if you have the runway andthe patience to do it and finding an audience. I mean this is a result, this ispart of the brand building process is finding who your audience is but is nownot an opportunity to try and find that audience and really identify who theyare and not just be like, oh, our audience is every single Turkey hunter inAmerica, but we're going to get, I don't know what the parameters are to findit

Trent Marsh (24:26):

And it's not easy to put a parameter on it because it'sthat same sliding scale for which channels are important. If I would saythere's just right off the top, I don't have it, I'd say there's probably threethings that you kind of have to just right off the top of my head, you got totick these boxes first before you can say that it's worthwhile first. I thinkdoing a lot of branded content, if you're not already a brand within a definedidentity is kind of playing chess in the dark because well said, you might be,let's say you can find an audience, but you're not a brand that has thisdefined identity. There's not enough context around it for your audience toknow how authentic it is.

(25:21):

It seems counterintuitive, but so many of these branded,like the hunt videos for example, they come off as inauthentic because there'sno anchor to anything. It's just, okay, well my audience wants to see hunting,so we're going to give 'em hunting content. Sure, I sell hunting product, butif that's not defined enough with the audience, then that matters. The otherone that's a big part of this, and I think this is actually probably where themost brands trip, there are so many great personalities out there anymore thathave a following. If your anchor to the content is the brand that ringsincredibly hollow, people don't care about a bear hunt. They care about someonethat they are interested in going on a bear hunt. There are personalities thatI would sit and listen to 'em read the phone book, not because what they'redoing is interesting, but because that person is someone that I'm invested in.

(26:27):

Most of these brands don't have someone that's fullyin-house to be able to anchor this stuff around that it matters for the brand.You might have an influencer that has enough of an audience that you can builda brand piece around one of your influencers or one of the people that you'reworking with, but then that's their story. Then it's not a brand X story, it'sa story about Hunter Joe Smith because I like Hunter Joe Smith, so those arethe first two and then the third one, which is a harsh reality for all of us.If you don't have the budget to make it be authentic and quality. It's kind oflike going back to 2015 and the whole idea of you're better off not having aFacebook page than having a bad Facebook page.

(27:23):

You don't want to create an opportunity for your brandedcontent to become a meme. That's worst case scenario if it just ends up beingcringe. I do not subscribe to the all publicity is good public, no, there'slots of bad publicity. That is bad publicity and that to me, that's one of 'em,and I honestly think you might have an influencer that goes and catches acharge for poaching or baiting or whatever. I actually think that's easier tosay, look, I didn't know they were doing that. We've cut ties with them, we'removing on, but if you do something legitimately cringe from a brand standpoint,I think that stays with the brand longer because looking inauthentic, nottelling a good story, looking like you're trying to do something cheap, whetheryou like it or not, that now becomes part of the word cloud for your brand andbecause it was brand content, it wasn't third party influencer, Hey, we foundout that guy's kind of a bag. We can get away from him. Nope, you just tiedthat anvil around the brand's neck and you have to live with that until peopleforget and the internet doesn't let people forget.

Cole Heilborn (28:44):

Yeah. Do you follow Huckberry at all?

Trent Marsh (28:47):

No,

Cole Heilborn (28:48):

So they do an excellent job producing branded content onYouTube. To your point about personality and people, they have two to three,maybe four individuals who are really kind of the face of the brand, right?There's the CMO who was on their show a while ago, Ben O'Meara, he's one of thepersonalities of the YouTube channel. They do an excellent series called Dirt,which we had the director of the show on our podcast, Kate West and the host ofthat show. He's a charismatic guy with personality and he is the name. He isthe face of this particular show that they produce. I couldn't agree more. Ilove what you're saying here, identity, personality and then the budget to doit right and to do it well. It seems like though finding that personality,that's very difficult to do. You've seen this with some outdoor brands wherebig outdoor brands will bring on a personality to be the face of a series andthen something happens. I don't know if the creator is like, oh, I'm notgetting paid enough. I'm going to leave, or if they get too big for theirbritches or if they're like, Hey, actually why do I need this brand? Because Iam the face of this. I could just start my own channel and just start. I'veseen this happen a couple times. How could a brand go about finding apersonality and then not losing that personality down the road? Is that evenpossible or is that just a risk that you have to accept?

Trent Marsh (30:18):

That's the risk. You can buffer it, but it's always goingto be a risk. You can either lean into the fact that we're just going to gothird party and bring in someone that has the audience to help boost it, and ifthis gets sideways, just live with that fact. You can do it that way. I thinkthat is the higher floor, lower ceiling, that's the blanky model, right? Let'sfind someone we have a relationship with. They might not be perfect, but it'sgood enough and we are not trying to create something out of whole cloth. In aperfect world, you're able to find someone that's a core integral part of yourteam that has a personality that you have enough runway with to be able to A,this is where that first bullet of you have to be a brand big enough that youcan get enough eyeballs to let the brand create the personality, but I think ifwe look at it from a what's more likely to be stable relationship with thirdparty influencer, even if it's someone who have a history with or our marketingassistant just happens to kill it on camera and be good at this and he could behere for 1530, retire here in 40 years, which one of these is more likely togive us long-term stability and then you can allow that persona to kind of groworganically through it, infinitely more difficult because most brands in thisspace are way smaller than the average bear looking from the outside thinksthese companies are.

(32:04):

You think there's 200 people that work at this brand andit's like 15 people just hustle in their tails off for one of those people tonow have to become the standard bearer of content that's not easy or fast, thatis highly time consuming and a whole other problem that you have to navigatearound, but you talk about the higher ceiling, but then conversely the lowerfloor too, that can absolutely fall on its face

Cole Heilborn (32:33):

With all of these components that are all ingredients to aconcoction that is required in order for branded content to be successful.Having the audience, having the identity, having the personality, having theresources and time and patience to pull all this off. Despite all of that, ifyou can do it, is it worth the, is the upside worth it?

Trent Marsh (32:55):

Well, a thousand percent. I mean just yes, emphatically,and even if you can't do it perfectly, I still think there's value there.There's still value there. There's no one way to do branded content. If you'rekind what we were, that last little example we were giving was very much in thevideo. It really revolved around essentially creating a brand televisionseries. Branded content is a hydra. You can do branded content all kinds ofways. Just because you don't have the personality or the budget to create atrue category leading vlog series doesn't mean that you don't have someone thatcan generate written content that's killer or fantastic, even if it's justlifestyle photos for your Instagram feed. That's all branded content. That'snot necessarily back to how we originally started this conversation of thedichotomy between long-term branded content versus individual campaigns. Noneof that stuff would really fall in the campaign bucket, but it's also not whatpeople think.

(34:18):

When you say branded content, explain to me what you thinkthat means. Most people are going to say, well, it's a video series or it's apodcast or something like that. That's all super personality focused. If youdon't have a personality, there's 10 other ways to do branded content that canhelp create that authenticity and that visibility around your brand that givesyou the edge over the people that aren't doing it. There's no reason to not dothose things while you're looking for the a answer somewhere else. You canstill do mid-level branded content to improve website SEO and to make you looklike the brand is aware of the problems that the consumer has and is activelytrying to make their life easier. Even if it's not directly with the widget orthe product that I sell, can I get a guest blog written by someone that'ssolving a problem that we know people are looking for the answers for thatstill has value. There's no reason to punt on all branded content because youcan't do the coolest slickest version of it.

Cole Heilborn (35:26):

Well, and to that point, so let's say you have theaudience, you have the identity, you have the personality, and you have thebudget. That's just the starting point. You don't even know what you'recreating and so to your point, you could use all of these other forms ofbranded content to basically be doing r and d, testing out ideas, writing abouttopics, seeing what's getting engagement, seeing. These are all data pointsthat you can then use to if and when you so desire, you then pull the triggeron that big branded video podcast, video vlog series, whatever it is, it'ssocial listening through branded content.

Trent Marsh (36:05):

Well, and a lot of it's internal listening too becausethere are brands that do branded content as a vanity mechanism. The leadershipthat wants this done, I don't care if it generates a sale or a lead. I want tosee our brand do this and I just want to be able to point to this at a boardmeeting or at the annual meeting, whatever the case may be. They just want tobe able to point to it and say, this is a thing that we did and that's fine.That's

Cole Heilborn (36:34):

How much of the work that's being done. How much do youthink it's solely out of vanity and not out of strategy? 20%. That's more thanI thought.

Trent Marsh (36:44):

I think probably 20%. I think it would take some sodiumpentathol to get that to there's, there's admitted vanity and then there'svanity by omission. I don't think a lot of places are coming out and saying, weare doing this as vanity, but it doesn't take at some point when you market for15 years as the effect that marketing has on you is a little bit different. Youcan look at some campaigns and you can look at branded content and you can kindof tell, okay, is this part of a larger arc that they're trying to build or isthis just somebody that could okay the budget or authorize the budget said, Iwant X thing that looks like this. Go do it. It's kind of the old George Carlinline. You don't need a formal conspiracy. When interests converge, you don't allhave to sit in the boardroom and go, we're making a vanity video. If you have avideographer on staff that just wants to make everything look slick and youhave a marketing director that's like, I want some big, you can just kind ofland in vanity without necessarily admitting it, if that makes sense.

(38:07):

That's kind of where I get that 20% number. I thinkthere's a lot of it that's just kind of vanity by default.

Cole Heilborn (38:12):

Gotcha. Okay. Let's move on and talk about campaigns andbranded content. When should you use one versus the other? How do they workwell together and to, I'd love for you to answer my original LinkedIn questionhypothetically, what would happen if a brand only produces branded content?

Trent Marsh (38:32):

That was the initial LinkedIn post, and I'll kick off thewhole discussion the same way I answered that. I don't know why we're havingthe discussion as a dichotomy because it shouldn't be one or the other becauseyour branded content should supplement your campaigns and vice versa. I kind ofmentioned it earlier, good marketing is omnichannel. It's also omni platform.It's also omni strategy. You can't just say, we are going to market towhitetail hunters on Facebook from August to September and expect to have asuccessful brand. That's not going to work, but a lot of this is actuallyeasier specifically in the shoot hunt world because so much of what we do isseasonal. It's not toilet paper and it's not number two pencils and it's notdry erase markers that you just need 'em on a Tuesday in June. If I'm a deerhunter in Indiana, my season opened yesterday and I can look at that date andfor anyone marketing to me, they all know his season starts October 1st.

(39:48):

We have to have everything that we need. We got to have itwrapped up by October 1st. Okay, great. We need to lead his purchasingdecisions by 90 to 120 days. What does that look like and build from there.That's the beginning of your campaign. You should run on that larger campaignin general, and there's going to be smaller spike campaigns throughout, but theconsumer of 2025 is infinitely more difficult to market to than they were 20,30, 50, 75 years ago because we're marketed to all the time, so now it's noise.Branded content has gotten popular because the general perception of brandedcontent is that's a way to break through the noise, to beat the bannerblindness and give someone something that is air quote authentic and to airquote genuine that they'll pay attention to this when they wouldn't payattention to it if it was an email newsletter or a banner or an interruptioncommercial or full page ad in a magazine.

(40:52):

That's why branded content got popular, but this kind ofgoes back to the marketer's trap. If I know dear season's coming up in threemonths and I need a pair of binoculars when I flip open deer and deer huntingmagazine and see an ad for a pair of binoculars, am I going to stop and look?Yes. That's why traditional advertising has worked for as long. Pompeii hassigns of barbers that they were doing that 2000 years ago, oh yeah, I need ahaircut. There's a sign for a barber. I'm going to go get it. Interruptionmarketing still works, but it should work in conjunction with branded becausesome people are always going to be harder to advertise to. Some people aregoing to stay outside of your traditional loops, but if your branded content isriding along on the same kind of cyclical and seasonal major campaign, then asyou do little individual campaigns, can a video or an article about whitetailhunting, does that become the anchor of an email newsletter that you're sendingout that also has a 15% coupon at the bottom to get somebody to buy something?

(42:10):

Do you lead with 15% off or do you lead with, here's thethree trees you're choosing for your tree stand that you need to stop doingtoday? I love negative headlines. Everybody clicks a negative headline. Theywant to tell you that you're wrong about the way that you tell them thatthey're wrong and they want to argue with you about you telling them thatthey're wrong, so lead a campaign as a hook for branded marketing, andespecially with when we go back to how many different channels there are. WhenI'm really full on campaign mode that has to hit print and YouTube and lineartelevision and podcast and linear radio, it has to hit all of these things atthe same time. It can't look and feel the same everywhere. Some places it mightbe a five second popup that says 15% off because it's whatever sale somewhereelse. It's going to be content driven somewhere else. It's going to be photodriven. There's all these different ways that you can activate on a campaign. Ithink campaigns are just higher in the hierarchy and branded content fallsunderneath as a way to activate those campaigns.

Cole Heilborn (43:27):

Gotcha. Okay. This is a question I've had for a long timenow. Look at creators, YouTube channels, people who run channels. Many of thesecreators, they reach a certain following and then they start to launch theirown product.

(43:44):

There's a channel that I follow, it's called a lockpicking lawyer, and he literally just picks locks and it's fascinating, and nowhe's got his own product line of lock picks this individual, he doesn't run acampaign when he launches a new product, right? He makes a video about it andwhatever he does, so I think this is where I start to wonder, effectively thesecreators are just producing branded content. Why can't brands just follow asimilar pattern? What are the differences? What are the nuances, and I am surethere's many, but when you look at the creator world, it's a very differentmodel than it is for the brand world. What's the lesson though that brandscould learn from creators around this model that they could steal from or learnfrom and apply to their own world with their own set of parameters?

Trent Marsh (44:32):

Authenticity, content for the sake of content hastremendous value. So much of what we see masquerading as branded content is acommercial that we don't want to call a commercial that is hyper productoriented. That ends up bastardizing the message of what they're really tryingto get through. What the focus should be on is the use case, is the experiencenot well, but you need SKU number 2, 7 85 1 dash B to go do this and make it.You would get way more return out of making it less about you and your productbecause in most instances, the influencers that matter and the content creatorsthat matter, they might be working product in, but they aren't a slave to theproduct because that feels very inauthentic. It gets very boring very quicklyto feel like you're being sold something that's not fun content. What the goodones do is here's really fun content and if you like this, here are the peoplethat support me or good work in of that content to work on. Just getting itseen in a very natural and cohesive way, not a 32nd breakdown and a 25 secondcut to a product sheet and a link to the site, and so much of the brandedcontent we see is really just, I wanted to make a commercial, but we knowthat's not going to work, so we're going to pretend that it's branded content,but it's an infomercial.

Cole Heilborn (46:19):

If you were to start, if were to start your own company, aproduct company in the hunt and firearm space, and if one of your keystrategies for growing and building this brand was to become a media companyessentially, what sort of media would you start producing? I'm just curious,what are untapped or unrealized stories or ideas that you think could beinteresting that because there's a million whitetail hunting series and podcastepisodes out there, what route might you go?

Trent Marsh (46:54):

Tell me if this is too much of an evasion of the question,but to me it matters more about the personalities that I can, I would be morefocused initially on finding someone that I thought the internet writ large cancare about because all the content is going to be exactly the same as everyoneelse's content. The content, it's narrow. When I first started writing in thisindustry, I had a magazine not pay me for an article that I wrote. They didn'tpay me for the that I wrote because 30% of it communicated. I used a story of ahunt to communicate a larger point around a product that I had done in anotherblog post that was about 80% shorter, and they said, well, you already didthis. I'm not going to pay you for this when you already did this. I said, oh,you don't pay for Turkey hunting content.

(47:51):

Then I said, what do you mean? I said, every Turkeyhunting article ever that runs in February of every year is quit calling somuch, quit moving around so much and go where the birds are. If I write thatfor you, are you going to pay me for that? Well, yeah. Okay. Then I don't know.What new can you say about Turkey hunting? What new can you say about So muchof it is just, it's maybe a different spin on it. It's maybe a different way totell it, but in so many of these instances, it has more to do with the voicethat's delivering the message than what is actually being said, so whether thatis, I've got a writer that I can work with that is killer at negative headlinesand writing those clickbait articles that do well in social that aren't trueclickbait.

(48:45):

There's good information there. It's just done with areally cool hook or someone that's just really good at delivering content onvideo a little bit differently. It would be more about the personality for methan it would the actual content, just because I think that's the next articlethat I read that I legit go, I've never had that thought or never spoken tosomeone that's like, they are one or two a year where I literally sit back inmy chair and go, okay, I hadn't thought of that. Quite like that. The vastmajority of it is just a different tone or a different take or a different hookto make it the same content land just a little bit

Cole Heilborn (49:31):

Different.

Trent Marsh (49:33):

Was that at all an answer to your question?

Cole Heilborn (49:35):

A hundred percent, and I think it's such a great reminderworth reiterating folks, if you're producing any sort of content, lead with thepersonality behind the content, how many ski videos that are labeled as brandedstorytelling, do you see where the athlete, sorry to say it, but the athletesaren't interesting. There's zero personality behind what you're producing andsure. The skiing is sick and the line is cool. I love that answer.

Trent Marsh (50:08):

Well, and it kind of goes like it's that branding is lovething. If you think about content in the same way I'm happily married, but if Ihad to start dating tomorrow, I could meet someone that has a good job and cantick all of these boxes. If they're not fun to be around, am I going to want tobe in a relationship with them? I hadn't ever heard it put that way, butthere's been a couple things as we've talked through like, okay, yeah, if wemake this about dating and relationships and that type of thing, okay, I seeit. I can see where that makes sense, and I think that falls into the samething. If you're not fun to be around, it doesn't matter. A lot of the otherstuff, it just, this isn't going to work. It's not you. It's me.

Cole Heilborn (51:00):

Yeah, so this is a really silly example, but on my deskhere, I've got a brochure for some metal roofing and I'm ordering some partsbecause installing some metal roofing on my house, and I just had the thought.I was like, there was only one person who I would listen to read this brochureabout metal roofing to me, and it might be Morgan Freeman or MatthewMcConaughey, but think about how solely because of their personality, theycould make something as stale as a brochure about metal roofing. Interesting,and maybe that there's enough said there. Just to sum up your point. Yeah.Personality. It's everything. Yeah. What haven't we talked about that you wantto leave folks with?

Trent Marsh (51:42):

I mean, I bagged on affiliate a little bit. Yeah, no, Icould literally talk about it for days. I mean, we hit on the big stuff weneeded to talk about. It was a fun conversation that we had initially in thatidea of branded content versus campaigns, and honestly, if you want me to sumup my marketing theology in one thing that I think more people need, if I couldget more marketers thinking this way, good marketing is omnichannel. It isabsolutely not. You'll never fail at marketing because you didn't put all ofyour eggs in one basket. There's a lot of ways to fail at marketing. It willnever be because you didn't put all your eggs in one basket. I've been doing,like I said, 15 years and literally from the day I sat down and started doingthis, I've had people tell me, print's dying.

(52:43):

Quit wasting your time on print. Don't invest in print.It's a dead outlet. There's no value there. I've got four brands in 15 years ofwhat passes for successful marketing that says otherwise that that's absolutelya valuable part of a marketing plan. The people that tell you that digital isthe only way to go and that's all you need and that's all you should be doingare just as wrong as the people telling you that the Internet's a fad and allyou should be doing is print and terrestrial radio. Those are the only thingsthat matter. They're both wrong. They're just wrong in different ways, but goodshould have a place in every room of the house.

Cole Heilborn (53:31):

Well said, Trent, where can folks find you if they want tocontinue the conversation?

Trent Marsh (53:37):

If they want to look for me, they can find me on prettymuch all the social platforms myself. Right on is all in all the socialplatforms myself. I try not to draw too much attention to myself, but some ofmy better conversations, obviously they know where to find you, and I'm acommon commenter in that comment section on the Backcountry Marketing podcastarea, and we can connect there. I always have thoughts that I'm willing toshare, so find me on LinkedIn and we can get into it over there.

Cole Heilborn (54:09):

Incredible. Well, Trent, thanks for the conversation. Ilove some of the topics and the ideas that you've shared today. You've given mea lot to think about. Trent, thanks again. It was great, great chatting. Iappreciate the conversation. I hope you have a great rest of your day. You too.Thanks. Bye. Thank you for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed it, pleaseconsider sharing it with a friend or leaving us a review on Apple, and rememberas you're working on that next piece of creative, the difference betweencreative that works and doesn't work often comes down to the hard questionsthat you ask while you're shaping it.

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