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Theresa Goodall [00:00:00]:

If we don’t have assets, then it’s really important that we get the story right. And that’s something that you should do regardless. But what’s a story we want to tell about this product or this unit? What’s the lifestyle? Who’s the buyer for this? Getting really clear on that internally and then starting to seed that to the market is what we lean into. And then we can get creative visually with how that plays out.

 

Joe Mills [00:00:28]:

Welcome to The Inventory, the show designed to give OEMs and dealers like you actionable insight on channel marketing. From co-op programs to product portfolio design. We’ll arm you with the information you need to excel to enter new markets successfully, to build lasting OEM dealer relationships, and ultimately to move more inventory. Let’s get started. Hey, everyone. On this episode, we are joined by Theresa Goodall. She is an Associate Creative Director here at Element Three. And we are going to discuss what are the key components of creative that you need to account for to have a successful product launch.

 

Joe Mills [00:01:00]:

Hope you enjoy. Theresa, thanks so much for coming on. I’m excited to talk to you about how creative asset development and planning plugs into the product launch conversation. Today we talked with Cade about really the performance side of product launch and I’d love to hear from you to kick us off. Like, where do people make mistakes in preparing from a creative asset perspective, preparing for their product launch? What do you see happens often from.

 

Theresa Goodall [00:01:27]:

The OEM standpoint, people get really hung up on. Not hung up. You should spend a lot of time on it. But people put all of their attention into the launch itself and the couple days, the week, the month after it. And then don’t plan for pivoting that into product marketing and then pivoting that into incorporating this new product into your brand, into your lineup. And so it’s hard when you have this big thing that you’re really excited about and you want to introduce to the world and you are planning on making a big splash and you do make a big splash to look beyond that and do more, because it is more work in the short term to plan for what the next year looks like versus the first month of a new product being out there. So that’s a thing we see a lot of.

 

Joe Mills [00:02:19]:

Do you see it happen on the other side of it too? Like, oh, I could see this being the case. I’m an OEM. Let’s just say I’m an RV manufacturer and I have a new product coming out. Well, my product’s not even built yet, so I don’t have photos to take of a new product. I don’t have the ability to even make assets that I could talk about this upcoming product launch with. So do you see it on the first side of this too, or is that a problem that really can’t be solved?

 

Theresa Goodall [00:02:44]:

Oh, absolutely, we see that. And it’s for, like you gave the example of the products not built yet. Sometimes, like, a launch will get moved around, and sometimes it’ll go to market quicker actually than you expected. And you want to do something to help with sales or maybe like, make a little bit of a splash, but then haven’t planned for it. And so then you need to kind of make a plan on the fly. We definitely see that.

 

Joe Mills [00:03:10]:

What do you do if you don’t have the actual unit yet, but you need to start drumming up demand for a unit that’s coming out in six months?

 

Theresa Goodall [00:03:18]:

Oh, we use what we have, like blueprints before, which is not ideal, and then also gets into the, like, squishy gray area of, like, how much do we want to show? What can we show if we don’t have assets, then it’s really important that we get the story right. And that’s something that you should do regardless. But what’s a story we want to tell about this product or this unit? What’s the lifestyle? Who’s the buyer for this? Getting really clear on that internally and then starting to seed that to the market is what we lean into. And then we can get creative visually with how that plays out.

 

Joe Mills [00:03:56]:

Cool. So I think what I’m hearing you say, there’s, hey, like, in the buildup, what we normally would do if, if we had a unit to take photographs of and do videos with and like, create assets with, we’d be doing, let’s say, 50% story and 50% visual expression of it, actual asset development. But if we lack those, wht we do is we just lean really heavy in story to get people excited about what’s coming on the storytelling front. And then when we finally get assets, the ability to create assets, we can go and start working on that end of it as well.

 

Theresa Goodall [00:04:26]:

Yeah. And it also depends what we figure out in the storytelling is how much we want to tease ahead of time, like what that timeline looks like. And the timeline could be anything from you tease it a couple days in advance, or you tease it a couple weeks in advance or maybe six weeks in advance. You need to make sure that you have the right things to tease out over that period of time, because you’ll create an information glutton people will get frustrated if they’re not receiving new information. So how many assets you have can inform how long you can tease it out and what the story is. And we’ve also done it where we’ll actually, if we have assets, but we want to tease it out over a long period of time. We’ve like covered up some, like created some mystery around it, like done visual things to make things look like in shadow or their ingredients or there’s like smoke in the background.

 

Joe Mills [00:05:23]:

Sure.

 

Theresa Goodall [00:05:24]:

Very dramatic design-y things that we can do. But to start to bring people along into the story and then slowly reveal it over time in the habit reveal.

 

Joe Mills [00:05:33]:

I took us down a different rabbit hole. But you started with the hey, we did a launch and now we forgot to. Or do you think to put it into the rest of our year and you brought up that’s more work but it’s worth it. What’s the way it’s done? Well, how does somebody think through, okay, I’ve, I’ve launched this product at a major trade show event or a major consumer event and now I’m ready to bring it into my marketing for the rest of the year and preferably extend it beyond there.

 

Theresa Goodall [00:05:56]:

Right.

 

Joe Mills [00:05:57]:

It’s just part of your full on marketing program. What’s the like planning process look like? How does somebody do that?

 

Theresa Goodall [00:06:02]:

Well, doing it well looks like planning for marketing the product when you’re developing the product itself. So for example, if we have a product launching in July of next year and the interior is still getting worked out and the design is still in flux, but we’re starting to craft the story now and we know that we’re going to get assets in the spring to start to be able to create something and then launch that over the summer. Run a campaign for three months or however long we have spent to support it and then we have this story and we know how the story fits into the larger brand, then that’s like that’s the ideal state.

 

Joe Mills [00:06:50]:

Sure. Okay. So it would be actually kind of similar to the way we think about marketing at a whole. Right. We think about business strategy, brand strategy, marketing tactic. I think you’re giving a similar rundown where it’s like full marketing program and story the brand stands for. Then we can think about, okay, this new product, how does that fit into the whole story and then how does it need to weave into marketing priorities, you know, post-launch or during launch and post-launch in that capacity.

 

Theresa Goodall [00:07:18]:

That’s right. And it’s tricky for a lot of reasons. One of the reasons Is that it requires marketing to be super aligned and in step with product development while a product is still being developed. And I think that’s a reason why it doesn’t happen a lot of the time. Because product is still in development. It’s harder to develop the story if the sales team is still figuring out, like, what’s the angle? Where are we going with this? It’s harder to bring marketing in. And so it does require a greater collaboration on all parties to get people on the same page to do it well in advance.

 

Joe Mills [00:07:50]:

Yeah. One of the things I’m feeling as somebody who doesn’t sit inside of the creative team is like, I hear a lot about creative assets for a launch. And immediately in my head, I’ve even heard myself do it in this episode is say, oh, yeah, photography and videography. It’s like where my head goes. If you had to have a little, like, playbook for product launch, and you were like, these are the creative assets that I want to have at a bare minimum, to feel good about moving a product into market. What are you. What are you making? What’s your top three or five things that you have to have?

 

Theresa Goodall [00:08:20]:

Yeah, I mean, photography and videography, specifically, it’s great to have lifestyle photography. Showing the product in the setting in which it would be used or be experienced, not just in the middle of a parking lot is ideal. Again, we always work with what we have, and it’s better to show something than show nothing. But as close as we can get to how are people going to experience this product is really great. And then that helps back up the story that we’re telling. Video gets better engagement. When we’re pushing something and we’re putting paid dollars behind it, it helps people experience it. We’ve done a lot of different tactics around what video can look like.

 

Theresa Goodall [00:09:06]:

And this can be anything from a studio shoot where it’s like, really clean backdrop. This can be part of that lifestyle shoot. If you’re getting photo, it can be more cost-effective to just get video at the same time. And then you have more assets to work from. Even stuff like partnering with influencers in your space. And there’s influencers for every space to do product walkthroughs, pull those out on their own YouTube channels. And we’ve had good results with live streams of product launches. So lifestyle photography, video, interior shots, that’s something that we are seeing really good results with, especially when we’re targeting buyers lower down on the funnel.

 

Theresa Goodall [00:09:51]:

In certain cases, we’ll lean into using like, the lifestyle exterior Imagery to really like grab people, get that like scroll-stopping visuals and draw people in when we’re doing brand awareness. And then once people become more educated about the product, about the unit, then they want to get more into the details and they want to experience what it’s going to be like to be in, in the product, in the product. And so that’s where interiors are really important or detail shots for whatever your product is.

 

Joe Mills [00:10:20]:

Yeah, I’m going to make an assumption here and tell me where it’s right and wrong. I could imagine if I was trying to create like a framework or a timeline here that I would think about lifestyle assets being in that pre-launch phase and during launch phase primarily that’s like much more important than deep inside of the product, product-specific shots. And then after it’s in the market and people like have moved along their journey of awareness, now they’re considering the product and how might I use this and where does it fit in my life? And now I’m at a spot where I’m actually evaluating purchasing. I want to get like the 360 view and the 3D walkthrough of a product and all these things. Is that a fair assumption to make?

 

Theresa Goodall [00:11:03]:

Yes. And I don’t know that we necessarily want to ever turn off or turn away from lifestyle exterior shots completely because you’re right in that as people get further down the buyer journey down the funnel, they want more detailed information, they want to be informed buyer going onto a dealer a lot. But we’re always going to want to be adding new people in to fill the funnel like as they move down. And so you’re right in that we want to add new things into the mix. But I don’t know that we would ever say. And there’s, there’s always exceptions to the role, but we never want to completely turn away from, we want to do this brand awareness thing, especially with a new product.

 

Joe Mills [00:11:46]:

Yeah, it’s less of like a black and white like oh, now we’re doing awareness, now we’re doing product level. It’s more of like maybe we only have this capability because we’re waiting on interiors to finish or whatever reason. And also people don’t know how to use it yet potentially. And then as the market becomes more knowledgeable, we can start to balance that out with more down-the-funnel types of assets, things like product shots really about the interior or like you brought up clean studio looks versus out in the mountains, out in the woods, out on the highway, whatever it is that your product does.

 

Theresa Goodall [00:12:16]:

Yeah, I think that’s exactly right. And there’s always levers in places that will lean in heavier depending on what’s going on in our marketing mix. Like do we have a lot of people who’ve just been sitting around not moving in the funnel for a while or do we just need to get people in there and get people engaging with that content? And I think it’s important to provide it to them so when they show up on a dealer lot, they know what to ask. When they know to ask for the brand, that helps the dealer out a lot. And people, our buyers are more informed than ever and it’s better for us to provide information to them than to ask someone who isn’t informed.

 

Joe Mills [00:12:55]:

Little bit off the cuff. Different question as we wrap here. How much do you as a creative like meet with and hear from and talk to the performance side of the house? Let’s say as you’re working through like the pre-launch, during launch and post-launch phases, are you, how much feedback are you getting on? Like this creative’s working, this one’s not. And then how does that change what you do in the next round?

 

Theresa Goodall [00:13:19]:

We talk a ton, like daily, multiple times a day. We’re collaborating on setting the strategy or I’m at least reacting to it. And I mean we’re in a, in the middle of a big campaign right now. That’s not a product launch. But for almost every single ads that that we’re doing, I’m talking to the paid side of the house about like we’re using these kind of images, we’re using this kind of message that relates to this part of the funnel. Right. And then like making sure we’re just like looking across the office at each other, being like we’re doing this. Yes.

 

Theresa Goodall [00:13:56]:

And then we go do it.

 

Joe Mills [00:13:57]:

Right on. Awesome. Well, thanks so much for sharing thoughts on asset development for products, product launches. Excuse me. And appreciate you coming on.

 

Theresa Goodall [00:14:04]:

Thanks for having me.

 

Joe Mills [00:14:06]:

Element Three is a full-service marketing agency that bridges the gap between OEMs and their dealers. For more insights on how to go-to-market well in the dealer model, head to elementthree.com.