Why some brands get fans and others only get customers #121

A very warm welcome to a new episode of Noll till 100. My name is Fedja Porobic and with me as usual is Fredrik Ankarsköld. New week, fresh start. How are you? I'm good. How about you?

I think we should get straight into today's topic. D-Congress is just around the corner, you might think. It isn't, of course; it's months away. But they fly by.

They fly by. This year it's around March 10 and 11. Tickets were released on November 5, and they had some evening networking event or a party for Svensk Handel when they released them. It keeps getting bigger. Now there's the advance release and the release of D-Congress tickets. You have Before D-Congress sometime in February, all this from Svensk Handel...

...and then you have the pre-event, then D-Congress and an afterparty that never ends. D-Congress has expanded as a concept throughout the year. What do you think about that? I'm also involved in filming their other events. You have Paytech Hub, retail media breakfasts and things like that. As a member, they're even free, I think. I can recommend visiting Svensk Handel and signing up for them.

Every now and then I get an invite to some breakfast. I know there was one on October 20. Unfortunately, I almost never have time to go to these.

But you can go, and you probably come away with a lot of smart ideas. This year's D-Congress theme is 'Powering Fandom.' By that I mean more and more is happening with AI...

...but that the future belongs to companies that are better at doing marketing authentically, for real. We talked a lot about authenticity two episodes ago.

Yes. At the last D-Congress, AI was a trend, I thought. When you walked around looking at which talks to go to...

...there were a lot of people writing 'without buzzwords.' 'AI without buzzwords.' Then it was like: now writing 'AI without buzzwords' has become a buzzword.

Recently it's been: 'How do you use AI for real?' So 'for real' has become what AI likes writing instead. I suppose the new models like writing 'for real' now.

Yes, perhaps. I don't know. I haven't really thought about it. But what I see more and more is that in a world of AI...

...the human element gets more space. Do you agree? I mean meeting people, physical contact, social engagement. The things you can't automate away. For example, I saw that [unclear in the source: Jonna] is opening 18 stores in October, admittedly pop-ups, on the same day all over Sweden. Physical stores are very hot. Above all, many D2C retailers who have traditionally only sold online are starting to wonder: should we open a store? Should we have a presence in physical retail?

How should we do that? It's a recurring theme people grapple with. But in a world where everything digital can be automated away to AI, what's really important to spend time on? What should we humans spend more time on than a year or so ago? More and more people are starting to talk about that at conferences, including me.

I'm not saying I'm better or worse. I even had a title at Techarenan: 'In a world of AI, authenticity is the marketing advantage.' I still stand by that today. Two episodes ago, we talked about how important authenticity in marketing is and whether AI can help make it feel authentic.

If you haven't listened to that episode, go back. We even break down what authentic means. We won't go into that now. But it was one of our best episodes recently. It's been shared incredibly widely, both on TikTok...

...and other social media, and lots of people have listened. But we have to touch on the theme that a lot of ecommerce retailers are sitting there struggling with...

We can automate a lot and will automate a lot. So what becomes the role of the people who remain? What should the CRM marketer keep working on? What should the developer do, as we discussed? If we have two or three developers on the team, what should they do? Data analysts who used to do data analysis at the company: today that's very easy, I'd say. There used to be entire buildings full of people doing manual bookkeeping that's now done digitally.

Exactly. A really big profession in the world was 'the human computer.' There were people who sat typing on a typewriter, sending things, faxing and talking to each other. They were literally assistants. Sometimes you had several assistants whose only job was that. Telephone operators too.

Exactly, they were telephone operators. They kept the world turning. Then everything was digitised. We've survived that wave. The difference now is that it's happening much faster.

Back then, it took much longer before a human computer was replaced by an actual computer. It might have taken ten or twenty years. Now it's happening incredibly much faster.

But I like this year's D-Congress theme, 'Powering Fandom': getting customers to become fans of brands instead of just flogging stuff. I've been a big advocate of that for many years. I'm very happy about how the thinking behind the scenes went ahead of this year's theme.

Okay, so let's think like this: what are four things companies do that don't create fans? We'll use it in reverse. What should you do to absolutely fail at creating fans? That was a good one.

What tips do you have? The easiest is to think through your entire digital experience but completely ignore what happens in the backend. You've outsourced the warehouse to a 3PL provider who throws the products into a brown box: of course they don't actually do that, but suppose they do. They tape it up with ugly tape and an ugly label on top. Maybe you have a logo on the tape...

...in the best of all worlds. Then it's sent to the customer. That's the first experience, the first touch with your product. You might say: 'We want to be environmentally friendly. That's why we don't have much printing...'

'...and have downgraded the box or package experience.' But you can be much better and environmentally friendly while still giving the customer a good first experience. The second thing, then...

The second also has a lot to do with the product side. Unboxing is one thing, but then it's about the product. You've thought through a lot about it, but perhaps not how it compares with other products in the bathroom cabinet, on the bookshelf or at home in the flat. Or rolled up, like a Twistboxes...

...next to you or under the bed. It's next to me now. You have to think about how the product sits, how it fits and where we'll store it. That place or position in the home is incredibly important.

Sure, we Swedes are quite good at geeking out about product design and brand, as you might call it. But right now I see a flood of products popping up left and right where people haven't thought everything through.

What does it look like when they haven't thought it through? I spoke to a group recently: a group, it's two guys, who run a supplement company where they've made...

...gummies from different supplements, like creatine, magnesium and similar things. Gummies, to make them easy to take for people who don't feel they can be bothered taking supplements in the morning as tablets or...

Of all the gummies I've looked at so far, I haven't seen any that only contain... I know. Unfortunately, that's how it is. In my world, I think like this: sugar can create inflammation in the body. If you take a supplement whose main ingredient, now I'm not saying these have it, but several of them, is sugar, and even when they say sugar-free there's some other alternative...

A sugar alternative, right? Sugar substitute. Then the question is: is it better? Do the disadvantages outweigh the benefits? It contains nutrients meant to help against inflammation, and then you take something containing a load of sugar.

Isn't it better just to skip it, then? No, I see it as a complement for people who already eat sweets. Most people don't live like you and me, Fredrik. Most have their Friday treats and go into town for a caffe latte and a bun. Most people around us live an ordinary, quote-unquote, life. They're bombarded with advertising about how tasty various ultra-processed products are...

...and let that guide their everyday life to some extent. If you're in that group, which most people are, and all respect for having a busy everyday life, it's not that strange to have a gummy that's a sweet. It's really a disguised sweet, but you also get something positive from it. You get your daily dose of creatine if you take three or four gummies instead of three or four of some other type of sweet.

Then I think of authenticity, which we talked about earlier. In my world, if you sold it as sweets... I saw someone write: 'These are sweets that also contain protein.'

Then I'm like: fine, you're selling it as sweets. You're not selling it as vitamins. But many of these sell it as vitamins.

It's sweets in disguise. Then I mean: is that authentic? I agree. At the product level, it's far from authentic. It's almost fraud if you go in and say it's an incredibly good product.

If you look at the nutritional content, meaning how much of the nutrients you consume there... Now I'm not saying they're all like that. There are surely good ones; I just haven't seen them so far. The tip is...

...if you're considering gummies, put them into your AI and ask: 'What are the advantages and disadvantages?' There's an incredible amount, partly in the manufacturing process. Making creatine stable in a gummy is quite difficult, because by definition a gummy uses a lot of water. Creatine... We don't need to get into health geekery on this podcast, but it's difficult. Anyway...

The fundamental question was what you can do wrong. I think loads of brands are popping up around us that are selling. These are obviously selling several hundred thousand a month, millions a year, to people in Sweden.

There's an underlying need for the product: sweets with some kind of booster. Fine. I have nothing against how people choose to direct or live their lives. But I look at the brand overall and say: 'This looks like dropshipping from AliExpress.' Not even that.

Shein has done a better job of disguising theirs. That was a funny rating. A bad rating. I've pointed it out to them, and they say: 'It's not important. What matters is that we're selling. We can change the brand sometime down the road.' I disagree, if we think back to D-Congress and 'Powering Fandom'...

We need to get into the fans here. It's one thing to flog products and quite another to build a brand along the way. First, you need a good underlying product you can stand behind. If you have that, you want to build the brand as you grow. Suddenly a competitor comes along who does that and overtakes you, if you haven't built anything. In the American SaaS world, it's called a moat, a ditch around your brand. Something tangible, so it isn't as easy to jump to the next brand. After all, switching is easy.

People's loyalty is lower than ever and very fleeting. I really want Swedish entrepreneurs starting brands in 2026, 2027 and beyond to think about that from the start. Have the brand built into the product. Have the repeat purchase built into the box, into the experience. Not just into emails automatically generated by a chatbot or AI in the background, as is now done for companies of that size.

CRM is still a real job for companies with revenue above 100 million. There are people out there still writing emails. But we're not far from AI taking it over completely. Really.

When you asked the question: yes, loads of brands are popping up. This was just one example of a brand where the guys are incredibly driven. I can see them going far if they do certain things right here and now and don't think: 'We'll sort that out in the future.' If you keep putting everything off, what are you ultimately building?

You've only flogged products. That's not worth much. What's the next tip? The first tip is good packaging, that first unboxing experience. The product, yes, so it doesn't feel second-rate in context. This product itself was reasonably okay, but it's the whole experience with the site. First the ads feel very pushy, then you get to the site, which feels very... That's the third tip then, because I'd split product and site into two. Yes, it could be. The ads mustn't overpromise. Selling to a customer once is easy.

But if it's a subscription, or if you expect a repeat purchase, you need to build that in from the beginning. Be brutally honest in the ad. Don't make it standard practice to go beyond the limits and do anything for that first purchase. If you've overpromised and underdelivered, you get poor ratings and customer relationships. You won't get ambassadors who talk and spread the word. We know Meta takes the easiest customers first.

TikTok takes the easiest customers first. Once you've exhausted the easiest customers, those who want to try the product early on, reaching the next audience is much more expensive. If the next audience costs much more and you did a poor job at the start, your CAC, customer acquisition cost, will spiral. That makes it impossible to run a profitable company down the road. You have to build the company right from the start, because more and more competitors are coming, including for these gummy companies. They might have been new a year or two ago, when there weren't many alternatives. Now there's a flood of them. Some influencer who co-founded Caia started one, I think...

Was it Vanessa Lindblad? Now, I shouldn't butcher the brand or the name. I haven't looked at the product, but I've seen they've started a gummy company. I'm sure it does very well initially, because they get a boost from lots of PR and Vanessa being behind it.

Then you have to make the most of that. But I know they've built a much stronger brand from the start. The product itself might be worse. I don't know whether it's better or worse. As I said, I don't take that kind of product. But it's also sweets in disguise.

I have my opinions here, but as I said: put it into AI. You can also give your AI a role: 'You're a functional medicine doctor...'

'...what are the pros and cons of this?' Really, that applies to most supplements, because it's the same thing so many times. In the studio now, I have supplements standing here that I take with lunch.

Yes. I've had people who work with supplements come by and say: 'You should try mine. It's much cheaper and contains far more nutrients.' Then I take their ingredient list and the one I have and compare them. Then I can immediately see: 'Yes, but you might have a cheaper form that isn't bioavailable, so my gut can't absorb it.'

It's very common to spike them; it's called ingredient spiking in supplement form, just so you can put things on the label without lying. Technically you're not lying. You can use magnesium citrate, which is much cheaper than magnesium bisglycinate.

But it's less bioavailable, making it harder for the body to absorb. It has other benefits in the body, so it's not completely worthless. There are different degrees of spiking. I won't go into it, but be aware it happens. I think this whole industry is so damn unprofessional, because there are so many unserious operators.

So many of the ingredients come from China. Nothing against Chinese iPhone manufacturers, but when it comes to how products are grown and the ingredients, especially natural ones, they originate in the soil. Chinese farming compared with Swedish farming: there's a difference.

It's like night and day. It just makes me sad. I was especially sad when I read the other week that Arla is shutting down 28 organic farms, because they see demand for organic production declining. They've tried marketing it, but it basically doesn't work, so keeping the farms isn't profitable for them. How can that be true? Something is broken. More people than ever are talking about what they put into their bodies and thinking about it. Suddenly Arla is choosing to shut down 28 farms? I haven't been able to get organic cottage cheese for over six months, because it hasn't been on the shelves. Completely impossible.

It was out of stock for a while. I'm starting to think it must be related to this: there's greater demand for low-fat cottage cheese, protein cottage cheese and different flavoured varieties, but no demand for organic cottage cheese. How can that be?

That's why we also recommend [unclear in the source: gårens]. I love them, by the way. I got my new delivery a week or so ago. [unclear in the source: Gordens] and Mylla Mat are two of the absolute best sites for eating real food. In particular, [unclear in the source: gårdens] has selected farms they know are regenerative. The step after organic farming: regenerative or circular farming, where animal husbandry is at an even higher level. It's not just about how they spray the plants or the soil...

I think that's incredibly good to support. Every time you buy food, it's like casting a vote. Indirectly, we use our money to steer how the economy develops. If we buy more of that type of product, there will be more people wanting to do better...

...and able to afford to do it too. And able to afford it. Would you say [unclear in the source: går ens] and Mylla have succeeded with fandom, then? What have they done right?

I don't actually know. I'm not that familiar with what happens behind the scenes, so I have no idea. But if we return to the tips? Well, I think Jens at Mylla is bloody good on social media. He's a farmer himself.

He founded the company and saw that the path we farmers are taking is broken. He's trying to fix it by bringing farmers together and letting them sell directly through a marketplace to the end consumer, without middlemen. That way they can charge a fair price for the product, which enables them to have better products.

Often in life, you get what you pay for. There's usually a basic cost and a markup. If the basic cost is really low, it's not that unreasonable... When Rusta's leaflet arrived, I thought: 'Okay, 25 glow sticks for ten kronor.' Those ten kronor include two kronor of VAT, 25 percent VAT.

It also has to include shipping and some kind of packaging. I know what that costs: a couple of kronor even at very high volumes. It has to be shipped halfway around the world. It's probably a Chinese product. So what's in those 25 glow sticks for ten kronor? Somewhere, Rusta has to make money too. They haven't brought them in for Halloween just for fun...

...thinking they'll lose money on them to make money on something else. Often they want to be profitable on most things they sell. That's where I usually ask: you get what you pay for. But we humans have become so lazy about checking it.

Above all, it's about the food we put into our bodies. Of course producing real food costs money. That goes without saying. If we pay very little, perhaps we're paying little in money today, but with our health going forward. That's usually how it is. I have a saying: pay the farmer today or the doctor tomorrow.

That was good. I also like the expression: 'Don't ask why one is so expensive. Ask how the other can be so cheap.' Yes, a hundred percent. Then there are always excessive prices too, but I don't feel that's as common in food.

Back to the tips. Packaging is one thing, the product another, and the website another. These are things that create fans, but also things AI could do. Certain parts, yes.

AI can design a website and work on product and packaging design. Absolutely. So when you talk about the human element, what are we defining as human?

It's really the human touch behind it all. It doesn't need to be a human producing it. It's like asking whether a person has to stand there making every product by hand for it to feel authentic or real. No, the product can be made with machines.

Machines are a tool. In the same way, AI is a tool for us humans to use to produce the material, the website or whatever we want to do. But the creativity and final finish of the product after lots of tweaks back and forth are usually...

...with the human. It's about making the most of the tools we have to be competitive in the market we operate in. What sometimes used to cost millions to develop, you can now do for next to nothing and two evenings with Claude, or now OpenAI.

Exactly. By the way, did you see Gemini's release of their new model? I have Gemini, but what does the new model do better? Now I've forgotten the name too, something starting with A. First came Claude's [unclear in the source: Fable 5.1], then Astra came and they said 'Welcome to AI.' Then comes [unclear in the source: 6.1 med son]...

Is it Gemini [unclear in the source: for Argon]? [unclear in the source: Oregon]. Exactly. Then Gemini came recently, about two weeks ago. It wasn't quite live in Sweden. [unclear in the source: 3.8 live extended thinking]. It's brutal in all the tests. It beats...

...in logic tests, deep research and many of the mathematical, logical tests, even OpenAI's latest model, which had been the best on the market before that. I used Gemini more before, but not as much recently. I'll evaluate it in the stack.

I can't say I've done that, because the models keep replacing one another. We've reached a level where even the latest model is too good. I don't need it. I can do 99 percent of my work with ChatGPT Sol, usually Sol Max. Not even Sol Ultra. I choose Sol Max because my usage lasts much longer that way. I can build sites and apps without problems and let it control the computer. A large part of what I do on the computer will be controlled by AI. I don't need the latest version. We've reached a level where perhaps it isn't the latest model that makes you more productive or gets you to produce something...

...more impressive and better. The human issue is still that we ourselves are the bottleneck. Now it isn't the surrounding technology. One model is a bit better or much better at one thing or another, but now we're the bottleneck.

Our creativity sets the limits. How do we bring that back to building more ambassadors? I have a strong tip. I've done it for ten years, ever since I worked with a company called Zoo.se. I stepped into their customer service for an entire day and discovered a wealth of small opportunities to simplify things.

I thought: why has no one dealt with this? When I sat down and actually looked at customer service. If you hire a customer service representative, the job is usually to resolve the ticket.

It usually isn't to resolve the root cause of why the ticket arose. I think many companies still get that wrong. If lots of people return a certain product, you accept the return, create return labels, communicate with the customer and resolve the case...

...but you haven't resolved the root cause of the product getting lots of returns. Get to the bottom of why. Are we overpromising in the ads? Is something wrong with the product page? Is it too big or too small?

Does the image give the wrong impression of the product? Then you get lots of returns. I usually sit down and call the best customers. I take a list of customers who have been customers the longest, ordered most often or have the highest order value. Then I have a longlist of 100 customers I call out of the blue. 'Hi, it's Fedja. I'm calling from Zoo.se,' I used to say that day I was there. Now I call: 'Hi, it's Fedja. I'm calling from Twistboxes. Are you happy with your box? Is there anything else we could have done? What did you think of the user experience? What opportunities for improvement can you suggest for us?'

On the day you spend in customer service and actually pick up the phone to customers, you'll discover how many problems you're sitting on. I usually warn about that too. Sometimes I talk to entrepreneurs who say: 'No one's complaining.' Then I usually say: 'That doesn't mean people aren't unhappy with certain things.'

Or that they're happy but don't express themselves. 'We've received loads of reviews. It's very clear.' No, people often write what they want you to read. Sometimes you've offered an incentive: you get 50 kronor off your next order or something...

Then I find some people complain online, but not everyone. I think the average person is just silent. The great majority are silent. Then there are always the trolls and the very negative people.

Sometimes people don't care about your brand. There's no... We're talking about 'Powering Fandom.' Sure, a large bunch of people will want a shared space to hang out and share similar interests. Are we city dwellers who like backpacking at weekends? We hang out on certain forums and Twistboxes makes that possible for us. Fine, then we'll hang out together if Twistboxes facilitates it and creates a community. Or if we really love cleaning products and sharing cleaning tips, if that's our favourite thing. Fine, if Såpa facilitates that, there'll be a group of people who enjoy hanging out on our forum.

We humans are herd animals. We're drawn to each other and enjoy hanging out in groups. We like looking at one another and seeing what the other person does better than me. That way we develop in parallel, and at the same time the socialising is quite lovely. There's nothing wrong with this year's theme; I think it's excellent. More people should embrace it and build it into the product, marketing, site, product experience, repeat purchase and everywhere. Really think it through consistently...

...because it's still a major competitive advantage. Can you do it with AI? Sure, you can do parts. You absolutely won't be able to do everything without having a human...

A lot can't be done without you having familiarised yourself with the problem. Pick up the phone. You can't do that with AI right now. Well, sure, there is AI that does it, but it won't ask the same follow-up questions you have about the product.

You have the real passion. You founded the product and know exactly that little seam that's wrong. AI can read about it but won't really understand the context.

That part is invaluable for entrepreneurs. I usually tell every company I've invested in: sit in customer service for an entire day. Pick up the phone, even once a month, at least once a quarter. Do the work; it's not that hard. Stand in your warehouse, whether it's a 3PL or your own warehouse. Pack your own stuff and see how it feels for a warehouse worker to pack the products. Then you can help optimise it. There might be things that reduce the return rate by ten percent. Hint: there almost always are. You only see those quick fixes when you actually do the work. Pär Svärdson at Apotea sometimes goes into the warehouse once a week and...

...just hangs out there. Bloody great. I know it gives him perspective to optimise the warehouse going forward. The person you've hired to pack the products won't have that thinking time or distance from the company to see the whole picture, the 360-degree helicopter view, to see what should be optimised on that little packing table. I know Joel Löwenberg also usually, every year...

...asks his staff: 'Give me everything.' Precisely because you think it comes to you in everyday work, but it doesn't always. You can find out quite a lot if you just ask for the shit.

That's quite a good idea. Schedule calendar time when you ask for... That was a good idea of his. Schedule time titled 'Give me the...' Is that right? Joel probably listens. Good idea, Joel.

Joel, you can name-drop if that's true. I don't know. You can tag us. Anyway, moving on. We have the ad of the week, which has become a listener favourite, I'd say. Almost a viewer favourite, because suddenly we're also seeing a shift from Spotify to YouTube, or from Spotify to digital.

More and more people are watching our video podcast. I think that's fun, because we've invested in video equipment that it would be a shame for no one to use.

You get more out of it. You learn more and get more immersed. I understand wanting to listen to the podcast while walking in the woods or commuting. But you get more from it if you watch. For this week's episode, we've found two new ads...

...that we'll look at and then dissect. I actually haven't seen them; I know Fredrik found them. Now we'll go through what they do well, what they could do better, and then give them a rating.

I also want to add: I was filming at one of Svensk Handel's events. They talked about two trends happening right now. One is people buying dumbphones, phones with barely a screen that you can only make calls on. Fine...

Part of the experience is getting out into the forest. There are companies promoting physical activities out in nature. The other trend is people going all in and living in the digital world. That confused the audience a little: 'What do you mean? How can both trends be happening at the same time?'

Some distance themselves while others embrace it. It also depends on what kind of customer you want as a fan. If you try to offer a forest experience to someone who wants to live digitally, perhaps it won't work. But...

...or it might work especially well. We don't know. Perhaps it's what they need. I just wanted to mention that those are two major power trends. You see it around you simply by looking at your own thoughts on smartphones, school and how you want your children to be educated. But now let's look at the ad and comment on our thinking.

You can follow along. I hope you can see the ad below. The first is from Eight Sleep, by the looks of it. I've followed them but don't have their product myself. It's a smart mattress based on a kind of... I was about to say a ventilator. Is it some sort of AC?

There's sort of water in the mattress. I don't know. There's some way of cooling and heating different sides of the mattress. Maybe you're there with your partner, who wants it warmer, while you want it a little cooler. We know you sleep better in a slightly cooler room.

It contributes to that. The idea is for you to sleep better and wake up less often. Many people testify that it actually works. But let's not give too much away. The idea is to watch the ad and have an experience.

Right. We've selected an image ad as an example. Shall we start with that? Go ahead. Okay. Finnish is difficult, isn't it? Or what is it? Is it French?

It looks like French. Perhaps we should filter by language at the top left. There, choose the US then. Sweden. No, Sweden. Choose...

They have no active ads in Sweden. Doesn't Eight Sleep sell in Sweden? What a shame. Yes, they sell to Sweden, but have no active ads here. Okay. Perhaps they have English ads.

We'll take the first one that appears, August 7. If you read the text: 'Pod 5 transforms any bed into an intelligent, adaptive environment, automatically adjusting temperature, elevation and sound to maximize sleep performance and optimize health.' That's a lot of praise in that short piece of copy.

Above all, my immediate feeling is that it's very much from the inside out. Not so much 'What problem are we solving for you, dear customer?' but more that Pod 5 transforms. We're speaking as a company: we help you with X, Y and Z. That ad could be rewritten in another form. Now it's a lot of praise, but what does the product do for the customer, rather than what features does it have? 'Do you struggle to fall asleep because the room is too hot?'

You see it in the video itself: 'With the Pod, snoring relief.' Again, inside out. Outside in would have been: 'Do you have a problem with a snoring...?'

Then there's the question: some health-related things aren't always allowed to be written on Facebook. I know that used to be the case. This is one of them.

It's like I can't write: 'Do you feel...?' No. Particularly with weight loss and that kind of product, Meta cracks down very consistently.

'Snoring relief that works.' Then at the bottom it says... You can see an asterisk. 'Snoring relief that works while you sleep,' asterisk. You don't know what they're actually disclaiming.

No, exactly. It's a very provocative ad, I'd say. They're pushing the boundaries of what you're allowed and not allowed to say under Swedish marketing law, but also American law.

But I know they're scrutinised very closely. They've probably squeezed through the eye of the needle with the copy. It's aggressive copy; you have to give them that. Let's play the video.

Yes. The video is sort of like a GIF. It feels like a GIF you could easily make with Claude today. An animated video that you throw on...

What does it even say? 'Reduced snoring.' You reduce snoring by up to 45 percent, I'd say. Then there's some fine print that's so small. I wonder if that's the disclaimer.

Click and zoom in; it'd be interesting to see. It's so low-resolution. 'Cannot be guaranteed.' Yes, that's it. But it's so small you're not really meant to...

No, you'll never have read it. Sorry, but this feels like deception on a high level, fucking hell. It says 'Snoring relief cannot be guaranteed.' In big bold type it says 'Snoring relief that works automatically while you sleep,' and then in the fine print: 'Snoring relief cannot be guaranteed.'

Let's take the next ad. It feels as American as it gets. It's a paid partnership. The Tech Badger. He's a well-known influencer who does reviews. 'Half the size with higher performance. #ad. Meet the brand-new Pod 6 by Eight Sleep. Here's the headline: Smaller hub.' Again, inside out.

Starting from the product and what we're making better about it. It's aimed at people who know Pod 5, meaning the cooling unit on Pod 5, was twice as big. They've very recently launched Pod 6, where the size is considerably smaller...

...which is better; it doesn't take up space. 'Eight Sleep's latest release, the Pod, which, alongside some serious upgrades, is starting at its lowest price ever. Here's what's changed. Firstly, the Pod has been shrunk. It's half the size of its predecessor, so it will fit under your bed, out of sight. Secondly, the thermal engine, which heats or cools the water it pumps into the cover, has been redesigned to be 20% faster, meaning that when you experience chills or hot flushes, it stabilizes your temperature quicker, leading to deeper, more restful sleep. The number of health sensors inside the cover has been increased by nine times, meaning that heart-rate readings are now 99% as accurate as using medical-grade equipment. And the stats you get inside the app, like your predicted age and HRV, are incredibly accurate. Finally, you can now get a double-bed cover...'

'...which only has the thermal-regulating tech on one side, which makes it cheaper if you sleep alone. You can save $200 with this code, and I've linked it in my bio.' This is a typical organic video where a well-known influencer finds a product and walks through what it does. The editing is incredibly good.

Something happens every second in the ad, so you don't really realise you're being sold something until the end. The ad itself is a hundred times better than the copy. The copy was worthless, but the ad itself is excellent. He starts with 'Random tech finds.'

Then you're like: 'What has he found?' You get that curiosity loop. Then come the sound effects. The lighting is incredibly good because it catches the eye. So much happens that you want to watch. He starts turning it and it shrinks in size.

There are animations. You hear the sound of the heart. He reinforces what's happening while he talks, because it's a voiceover. He shows things at the same time as speaking. The b-roll is very good and on point. When he's sitting there in his underwear looking as if there's an [unclear in the Swedish source: syrmask], you hear the heart rate, and then he says '99% as accurate as medical-grade equipment.' I have no idea whether they have evidence for their claims...

...but it's incredibly good, right? I've heard it's supposed to have very good sleep tracking. We have various other tools, but if you don't have them...

...it's still very good. Probably good even if you do have them. I don't know. But I get a bit worried when there's water in the bed, it changes temperatures and there are additional Wi-Fi connections in the bedroom. That's a lot of tech moving into the bedroom. For that reason, I've chosen to pass. It has nothing to do with the money or not believing the product works. I think it works. I sleep pretty well because I take care of the rest of my life.

The ad itself is bloody brilliant. It's an influencer at a high level. Okay, did the actual ad do anything badly? No. If anything, I'd want to examine whether it overpromises results.

You're really being sold the dream in the ad. If it doesn't live up to the hype he creates in a very short time...

...you'll have a negative experience of the brand as a whole. But I don't think so. I find it hard to see it overpromising. I think it delivers what he says, but I don't know. The reviews I've watched on YouTube, because I looked at this very one there, are...

Snoring, but he doesn't mention that. No, exactly, he doesn't mention snoring. But when I look at reviews about snoring and the tests being done...

Even if a YouTuber invites over a friend who snores a lot and lets him sleep in it for one night, that isn't enough data. If you have one or two nights... You need to sleep for quite a long time to determine whether it's temporarily bad or good sleep and things like that.

Yes. Otherwise, I've heard many people feel they sleep better when using it. But it isn't cheap. No, it costs a few tens of thousands of kronor. I don't know whether it was 20, 30 now...

Even 40. I think it was around [unclear in the source: 2000]. Plus you have a monthly subscription too. Really? Yes, they're smart. Let's take another one. They're good at charging, in other words. 'Sleep cool all night with the Pod.' But then I wonder... This feels like...

It's a picture of a bed highlighted in blue to indicate it's cool in the bed. Fine. 'The Pod adapts while you sleep.' It's been running since July, so it's the older model.

The old one. It looks good. But I don't know what I think of the ads. In this case, it's very much bottom-of-funnel static ads. You can tell it's very produced, and the fact it's been running a long time just shows: 'We don't need to update it that often.'

Here's another one: Unbox Therapy with Eight Sleep. That's a good influencer too. 'Get up to [unclear in the source: off] the new Eight Sleep Pod 6. Link in bio. Fits on any mattress, cools and heats each side, includes sleep and health tracking, vibration and thermal alarms, and a 30-night risk-free trial. Thanks to Eight Sleep for partnering on this video.'

Go ahead, press play. Here you can see they're running on all platforms. Good, absolutely right. Broad is always right. What do they have here? Unbox... That's the influencer. Quite funny that that's all it says as the call to action.

'Shop.' I think that's fine. Okay, you have a shop. Let's go. 'We've got the brand-new Eight Sleep Pod 6. It's the latest. It now fits under your bed frame, and it's the most affordable yet. Let's set it up. Definitely one of my favorite gadgets. I use it every night. I'm going to bed earlier than ever, and I'm loving it. Eight Sleep is keeping it moving with the latest generation. Look how much they've shrunk it. This is the old one. Here is the new one. Smaller and more streamlined, and it can fit under the bed.'

'Now, the way that you fill it, right here. Slide it back. Let me recap a little bit on Eight Sleep for you. Two sleepers, two separate temperatures. Huge difference in potential range, from 55 all the way up to 110 Fahrenheit. Other changes: actual tactile, physical buttons, plus and minus, that you can feel without actually looking. While you're sleeping, you can make micro-adjustments without needing to look at your phone screen, the blazing brightness of your phone screen to wake you up. The cover itself now has nine times more biometric sensors in order to deliver more data, more feedback, more accuracy.'

'Now, probably for me, the biggest benefit is not needing to wear any kind of fitness tracker to bed. Anyone who has an Apple Watch knows that you normally charge it when? When you're sleeping. Here's another thing. If you're heating and cooling the mattress itself, maybe you can save a little bit on the HVAC costs, because you don't need to bring the temperature either way down or way up in the room.'

'This is heating and cooling right at the body level, with a direct contact point. Through Autopilot, it's dynamically adjusting as the night goes on to give you what you need in advance of you knowing it. Also, now the lowest starting price that Eight Sleep has ever offered. If you're ready to upgrade your sleep game, head over to their website and use promo code Unbox Therapy to save 200 bucks.'

An ad one minute and 40 seconds long. What do we think? Slightly slower animations, a little more sluggish than the previous ad, which was much more TikTok-friendly. This is more...

There are more sound effects too. Much more. He also had lots of sound effects, with the money at the beginning. I don't think it's the sound effects. It's that the story takes longer to tell. He says roughly the same things as in the previous video, perhaps a little more...

...in three times as long. If you don't like his narration, you've scrolled on long ago. It's a good ad, but not good enough. You can see it's made in a studio. He's filmed it as clearly as possible, with the comparison between old and new. Without b-roll showing it's shrunk enormously: he actually shows it...

...for real. He also does a real unboxing. It's a real bed. I don't know. I like the ad; it isn't bad. By Swedish standards it would be a nine out of ten.

But by American standards, the competition is much tougher. CPM is much higher, so you pay much more for a thousand impressions. Then the previous ad is much better. If that was a nine out of ten, this would be 7.5 out of ten, still by American standards. In Sweden, this type of ad would be excellent. Especially the conviction and authority the person has. He speaks directly to the consumer very well. Even though it's inside out, it's more like a reporter talking about the company than the company talking about itself.

You trust a reporter much more. The feeling is outside in. Here it's an influencer, a partnership ad, but he feels very credible in the partnership. I can almost believe he uses it himself, because the conviction is excellent.

The ad as a whole is excellent. Which would I believe in more for the American market? The other one, the first video we watched. I'd believe in this one more for the Swedish market. I'd also have wanted him to introduce himself in an ad that's a minute and 40 seconds; that's a long ad. What qualifies him to talk about the product to people who don't know him? You can imagine the company wanting it as genuine and organic as possible in its brief. That's why he's recorded it exactly like his unsponsored videos where he breaks down a product. But here they'd have benefited much more if he also talked a little about his background. I think he has some credibility...

...as to why he's standing there making these product videos. He can say: 'I've made product videos or demos for five years and tested 10,000 tech gadgets.' That alone would have nailed it from 7.5 to 8.5.

Where would they put that? You don't want it in the intro. No, but immediately afterwards. If you start with the problem in the intro, why people should watch this...

Then you move into credibility. Then it fits brilliantly into the plot, and you can easily work it in. He starts very early with it being affordable. I think affordability comes at the end. I'm not interested... The difference between paying 30,000 or 35,000 for a product isn't as big as between 500 and 1,000. It's a huge leap from 500 to 1,000 kronor, even though the difference is only 500 kronor, compared with 30,000 to 35,000. Now I have no idea how much cheaper it became, but opening by saying it's much cheaper than before... I don't even know what it does.

Why is it important to me? It was about one percent, longevity and tech geeks, who knew about Eight Sleep initially and bought Pod 1, 2 and 3. When they launched Pod 5, it began reaching the mass media and the broad audience a little more...

...and now number six is really designed for mass adoption. They've made it so small it fits under the bed. That's a major barrier for many people bringing something into the bedroom: I don't want something very large taking up lots of space and making noise. I don't want it.

It looks ugly. Get rid of it. Now they've made it a little more suited to mass adoption, so I think opening with that is wrong. Tactile buttons are just a nice little feature, but I'd have expected them to exist. 'Oh, there are tactile buttons. You don't have to look at the screen in the middle of the night.' Okay, are you selling to people who have a Pod 5 or to people buying a Pod 6 for the first time? If you've invested 30,000–40,000 in a Pod 4 or 5, you probably won't upgrade to a Pod 6 just because there are tactile buttons on the side. You've put it on autopilot, and it adjusts the heat through the night anyway.

I still like that they mention the tactile buttons, precisely because you never know. We take so many things for granted. I know the same with...

...the new studio for Framtidens E-handel, because I'm moving to a new address. There are certain lights I'm replacing. Then they've only photographed a bulb. I want to be able to ask my AI: I want it flicker-free at this hertz level. It should fit this socket, this size and have this many lumens...

...because I want to create depth and dimension in the image. Then loads of lighting sites only write: 'Equivalent to 30 watts if it were halogen.' Equivalent to 30 watts? Okay, so I'm supposed to know how bright a 30-watt bulb is. Suddenly I need to sit there working out how many lumens. Do you understand what I mean? I get it.

Just write how many lumens it is, so I can take a screenshot and check with my own AI. Exactly. People aren't that stupid these days. You just want the information in your face.

They had product photos, so I had to click them and zoom in. The box was in the picture, so I had to zoom in on that and hope it was written somewhere. I've experienced that many times too.

That's what I mean. There are things you might take for granted, but I just want to know whether it has them. Yes, but perhaps that shouldn't be in the ad. I still think buttons on a mattress... I expect to be able to use the mattress. I don't know what it usually looks like.

If the whole USP is that you can control the heat and cold in the bed, I expect you can do that without picking up your phone in the middle of the night...

...and just blasting yourself. Apparently they hadn't thought their product through before, so you couldn't. Now suddenly it's a feature. I'm just like: what? I don't know whether it existed before. But I want to give a sleep tip that's much cheaper than buying one of those. One thing is that much of today's ventilation... For example, we live in a new build...

...but the ventilation is still too poor. When my partner and I sleep in the bedroom, if I close the balcony and the bedroom door... I have a CO2 meter, and then the CO2 levels get so high that... I can see it afterwards in the app and get warnings. One day I wasn't thinking, you just happen to close the door, and then I woke up with a headache.

A headache today. Then I could go back through the app history and see the levels had been so high. It was like: 'You'll probably have a headache today.' It could even predict it. That was quite a smart feature. Exactly, there are cheaper ways than buying a mattress for 30,000–40,000. I accept that too. It's definitely not for everyone, even though Eight Sleep wants to make it look that way. But my best sleep tip is actually to stop eating early in the day. The later you eat, the harder it is to go to bed and fall asleep, and the more times you wake during the night. Your stomach is working; that goes without saying. The recommended tip is that your last meal should be four to six hours before...

...bedtime. Can you manage that? An absolute minimum of three. Yes, absolutely. If you can manage that, you've come an incredibly long way in terms of whether you need an Eight Sleep or not. If you cheat on the basics, an Eight Sleep won't help much anyway.

You have to give it that too. There's a quick fix. Well, quick or not, perhaps not if you have to change your whole evening routine and you're used to a late-night sandwich. When I started changing things to eat earlier, it really was: how am I going to establish these routines?

Somewhere, you also want to have dinner with the family. I do too, but I still stop early enough to give the body room to recover after the food...

...process the food. When it's time to sleep, then you sleep. If I feel a little hungry, I skip it anyway, because by the time I wake up it'll have passed.

Another thing: some people say 'I don't eat breakfast' as if it were something good, but perhaps they're stuffing themselves with sweets or crisps in the evening.

Exactly. Or eating very late. It can be ordinary food, but very late, and that can lead to not eating breakfast. They say it's better to fast in the morning, but sometimes it can actually be better to eat breakfast if you want to shift some of your calorie intake earlier in the day.

I do that. My biggest meal is breakfast, by far. Bigger than dinner and lunch. I usually have a big breakfast, a medium-sized lunch and a light dinner.

The focus for dinner is really just light. It might be fish with broccoli, spinach or something simple. Or a chicken salad or something else. A lighter meal in the evening.

Preferably I avoid red meat, because the body takes longer to process it. If I'm having a nice steak, I'd rather have it for lunch...

...or breakfast. No, I'm only joking. My breakfast is quite uniform, fairly similar. Here's another tip: don't be afraid of red meat. If you are, I'd recommend looking at the research behind it and checking YouTube...

...because much of what's said isn't true. But this isn't going to become a health podcast yet. Perhaps soon. We're heading that way. We can have the Västerbottenssåpa podcast and the health podcast. All we'll do is podcast all day.

The Soap Podcast. Here come all the laundry tips. No, with that said, perhaps we should wrap up. We've covered an incredible amount about building community and making ads more authentic. We've broken down the Eight Sleep ad and discussed many elements that are fairly relevant now...

...during and after Q4. Many people are setting next year's budget. In the next episode, we'll talk more about budgets and forecasting, amplified with the help of AI.

So join us. If you've listened this far, I really hope you enjoy the podcast. Share it and send it to friends and colleagues, people who otherwise wouldn't have seen it in their feeds. Thanks for another episode. See you again next Thursday. Bye!

Bye! Yeah.