Outsmarting Brand Behemoths with Dustin Artz

Dustin Artz: And I'm trying to see how many secrets we can go into here, because it's not by accident that we do the things we do, right?

Chris Hill: Welcome to We Built This Brand, the podcast where we talk to the creators and collaborators behind brands and provide you with practical insights that you can use to grow your own business.

Today, we're talking with Dustin Artz, one of the co founders of Familiar Creatures. They're a Richmond, Virginia based ad agency. And they've worked on campaigns with the likes of Duke's Mayo, Crunch Fitness, just, just to name a few. And they've done some really fun creative work over the years.

And on top of that, they've got a really cool brand. I can't wait to share it with you all. And in this episode, we dive into that. We talk about the brand that they've built, the brand they created, and we talk about the brands that they help support. So this is a very wide ranging conversation. I had a lot of fun talking with Dustin and can't wait to share it with you.

So without further ado, here's my conversation with Dustin Artz, one of the co-founders at Familiar Creatures.

Alrighty. Well, welcome back to We Built This Brand, and today I am joined by Dustin Artz from Familiar Creatures. Dustin, thank you for coming on the show.

Dustin Artz: Hey, thanks for having me.

Chris Hill: Absolutely. Glad to have you here.

So, what I typically like to start off with is just learning a little bit more about you, your background, and how your business got its start.

So I see you're the co founder of Familiar Creatures. And beyond that, I just love some background. Where'd you, where'd you get started in the industry?

Dustin Artz: So I'd say my advertising journey started in college. I felt like a bit of a black sheep. I had to apply to a business school and it was great, but I just wasn't passionate about it.

I ended up enrolling in some promotions courses and there was an advertising federation competition that I joined and I was the creative on the team. And I was like, yes, this is what I want to do. I found myself late nights preferring to do advertising work and, and creative concepting and things rather than going home.

So it, it kind of unlocked me there. From there, I went to Brandcenter in Richmond. I had no idea it existed, even though I was in Charlottesville, uh, an hour away. And I decided to work a year at an ad agency and sort of build a portfolio and apply. So that was back in. Early 2000s, not to date myself too hard, but that's when I started.

And from there kind of worked in big agencies, east and west coast, on big brands. Pepsi, Lexus, Travelocity, Sony, Geico back on at the Martin agency in Richmond, and that's where I met my partner, Justin, I'm Dustin, he's Justin. It's always a good icebreaker for new clients because we're the Ustins. It's always just like, it makes people laugh.

And I think our whole vibe is very approachable. We're not trying to like intimidate with our creative brilliance or anything like that. So,

Chris Hill: [laughs]

Dustin Artz: so that's, uh, I met my partner Justin while working on Geico. Um, this, the story of Familiar Creatures starting, if you're interested in that.

Chris Hill: Yeah. I'd love to. Yeah.

Please tell me more about Familiar Creatures. Now you've, you've built this up. And so you met Justin, you got Justin and Dustin, and you start or decide to start Familiar Creatures. You've been working at these big companies. Was it just burnout and wanting to do something different? Like, what was it that inspired you to go that direction?

Dustin Artz: It's a great question. We both are very, we just love doing what we do. And sometimes, man, the burnout thing hits close to home because industry is rife with that. But it was more, I would say it was more just a serendipity of one little thing happening and then another little thing. I had worked at a lot of big agencies.

I had left the Martin Agency and then I worked at a place called Arts and Letters. And I decided to take a break from that and freelance. And at the time, I have two brothers and my younger brother owns a little design agency in Charlottesville. And he used to draw the packaging for Devil's Backbone, which is a craft brewery.

Chris Hill: So, so side, side note on Devil's Backbone, that's, that's crazy because for my, for my old podcast, Our Humble Beer podcast, we actually interviewed Devil's Backbone right after they got acquired and all that crazy stuff. So I have some connections there.

Dustin Artz: Oh, that's incredible. I kind of remember that. Honestly, it's like six years ago now, but I, I sort of, or even more.

So anyway, yeah. So my brother drew all the packaging, Anheuser Busch, AB InBev, acquires Devil's Backbone. And my brother's basically like, look. They're going to triple bid this. There's, they're going to go after Chicago and New York agencies. And at the time, my brother had two people in his shop and he's great at what he does, but you know, just not the same rigor as these big places.

So he sort of enlisted me and I was freelancing at the time. And so I put together sort of a ragtag group of freelancers. I did the strategy. I kind of led the creative, put together a big, presentation, and then we won it over all these big agencies. They basically said, you blew us away. You put the other ones to shame.

For me, it was very, I'm not trying to brag, but it gave me some confidence that, Hey, maybe I could do this at a, at a. personal level and on my own. And so after that, I kind of led a packaging refresh and redesign for all of Devil's Backbone packaging, which is in my wheelhouse because I'm an art director.

And then my brother took over that design initiative, but I quickly realized, hey, they need marketing for the year. And not only does Devil's Backbone, but a lot of these other craft breweries that AB InBev owns might need it. So that was the initial, um, Pitch to Justin to join me. We had always worked really well together on, you know, as creatives, you get in a room with lots of different people and it's always art director and a writer.

And you see how you vibe and you see if you like the same things. And usually your best partners are the ones you can be like, "Ah, yeah, I'm not sure. I've seen that a million times. What about this? What about this?" And you can just be yourself. You don't have to like tread water and be like, "That's a great idea, but what if we...," you know, so we were just able to be direct with each other.

We like the same things. We share similar interests, and we could get to stuff so fast, which when you have a million projects, when you can just knock out like, okay, that's three concepts in 20 minutes, okay, we're good. And knowing that they're at the right level. So I enlisted him, and long story short, we put together a marketing plan for Devil's Backbone, made a lot of work for them, and I could go into it, but it's basically gave them a strategic and creative platform that allowed them to sort of level up and play with the big boys.

Sort of the ethos of our agency is taking challenger brands that aren't the market leaders and leveling them up to a place where they are. We say we outsmart brand behemoths or familiar creatures. We outsmart brand behemoths and sort of our name is a play on that if you wanted to ask about it, I guess. [laughs]

Chris Hill: I was going to ask about it. So that's, that's a, that's another great one. That, that I'm glad you brought up because I think it's, I think it's interesting the branding of Familiar Creatures and how you've like, it's just, it's, it's a fun brand. Like you've got a mascot for it already. Like I'm, I'm digging the mascot stuff.

That's a whole other side conversation. I don't want to get into here, but like I've, I've made some, I've done a lot with them.

Dustin Artz: We can get you a tubby plushie for Duke's mayo, if you want.

Chris Hill: Oh, sure.

Dustin Artz: Justin and I did a lot of Gecko ads. So I've worked with the Gecko. I've worked with the Travelocity Gnome. I've worked with, what else?

Hmm. I don't know. I've just, I've, I've dabbled in, in different mascots and there's a certain way you, you have to do them. We realized at the time that a lot of these. Up and coming agencies were very too cool for school. They're, they're all trying, they're cool, but they're trying to be like, be seen as cool or very like, we will intimidate you with our creative brilliance.

Whereas really we see the industry as a bunch of marketing people who are sometimes understaffed, they're under tremendous pressure and they need a partner who is approachable, who gets them and listens and works with them. So our angle was as opposed to look like we're hot shit. I don't know if I'm allowed to curse, but just like be, be approachable. We also noticed that for an industry that prides itself on branding, a lot of the brands are terrible. Like they're just the last names of, of a guy. And then they, they put them with other last names of other men. And it's just like, is this the brand? And then when you look at their positioning, it's all variations of, "We do upper funnel awareness work," which is like, I don't want to throw shade on them, but it's all just like, "We get attention!" Which is like, yeah, that's the category. That's, that's the category. You, you said the category. So for us, it was become a cool brand that someone would want to wear on a t-shirt.

And then stand for something. So Familiar Creatures means, "familiar" is we are familiar with like A-level brands. We are familiar with brand behemoths. We've worked on the biggest brands out there. And then the "creatures" part is we like to think we run circles around them. Like a crafty brand of creatures.

And we just liked how approachable and cozy it was, and it's like, we're on your side. We're, we're collaborative. So that's sort of the genesis of the name.

Chris Hill: I like it. And I like the little, um, the monster mascot that you have on your home page when you show up, and he's a little bit of elements of all the familiar creatures you might know.

Got some horns, some fur, big feet. It's got scales on his tummy. Like it's

Dustin Artz: [laughs]

Chris Hill: just, it's cool. It's fun.

Dustin Artz: Well, thanks. We are, we are undergoing a rebrand refresh, which is taking forever. But in the original logo, I kind of drew that a silhouette of the creature. And we are trying to refresh it every few years to keep it up to date.

But we like it approachable, a little mischievous, a little, I don't know, friendly.

Chris Hill: Yeah, it definitely hits those vibes.

Dustin Artz: Okay.

Chris Hill: [laughs]

So what is the business model for Familiar Creatures? Um, I noticed somewhere you mentioned you all are a fractional AOR. I think that means agency of record, AOR, right?

Dustin Artz: Yeah. So we used to lean into that positioning for, you know, the first five, six years.

We are transitioning now to what I was saying about arts outsmarting brand behemoths. At the time when we started and we were little, we noticed a rise of the fractional CMO. We noticed a lot of in-housing. And so we really thought that clients needed a partner that was like an extension of their own team and borrowing from the fractional CMO who kind of comes in, he's hired to do a job.

He sets up the marketing department. He sets you up the first couple of years and then he can be on his way. without billing you forever. That's sort of where we started because what we kept hearing was that agencies don't listen. They're expensive. They rope you into these long year long contracts. Then they try and up the hours on you all the time.

And it just felt very daunting. And we were like, well, let's just get a foot in the door. With the fractional concept, like I said, I think that was great for the time. We've evolved past that now to where most of our clients are year round retainer. And we do still follow a lot of the same principles, like being an extension of their team, being collaborative, but I think we, now, after Duke's and Crunch, which are sort of our biggest clients, um, and most well known clients, we really are leaning into the challenger brand space. And so that's where We Outsmart Brand Behemoths comes in.

Chris Hill: Please, please tell me more about, so, so then, so then where you're at today with the brand behemoths.

I'm really curious about how you do, like, I mean, obviously you're probably not going to tell me all the secret sauce, but like, how, how are you approaching that, that challenger space, if you will? Like, that's a hard place to be kind of being the up and coming, because you have to find unique ways to get your foot in the door to get attention for things.

And they may not always have the budgets that some of the bigger brands do. So what's your approach?

Dustin Artz: It's a great question. I will say that, without giving away too much of the secret sauce, I can say sort of four things. The first is that we, we concentrate below agency thresholds. We, we realized there was a threshold for all the big holding company agencies that do the pitch cycle, and they all pitch against each other for these pieces of business.

We are just under that threshold. And to us, to Justin and I, those are more of the interesting, they're still household name brands, but they kind of stand for something. They're not so ubiquitous that it's just an awareness play of trying to get attention every six months with some TV. So we really love building brands from the ground up.

And a lot of those marketing teams really need help. One place we worked, I'm trying not to out the place or the brands, but these huge brands that you're like, they're global, yet they're still treated like they don't matter because it's like, "Oh, we can only afford three people on that for like a quarter of the year."

And these brands are massive. They're just not using the money as nimbly as a smaller independent shop would. So, I'd say the first thing is we play in a certain space of media thresholds. The second thing I'd say we charge by deliverables and not hours. And that's something that kind of came up that we saw at different holding company agencies that held them back, is that you're almost incentivized to take longer on projects.

Like, if you take, if you nail something in one week with like a team of three, you're almost penalized by the, that model, because you'd almost want to take a year, rebrief it a million times and put 20 people in there. Cause then you make more money.

That's, that's, that's. That's general. Obviously, there's a lot of constraints and I feel for the creative department and agencies is not as profitable as media. So there's, there's some real headwinds and things you're trying to achieve. But in general, when we started an agency, we didn't want to be rewarded for taking longer.

We would have rather made more work. So we charge by deliverables. Another area is we don't pitch. We kind of philosophically disagree with it. We've also spent many weekends, you know, as creatives, burnout on pitches that you never had a chance for in the first place, they end up being one team's freelancers against another team's freelancers, battling it out.

It's a big song and dance and. In general, we think it's a little unfair for your paying clients to be footing the bill for you to be pitching new work. It's, for us, it feels a little, I don't know, shades of gray. I don't want to be too harsh, but you can make these decisions when you're

Chris Hill: I totally, I totally understand where you're coming from because you don't, like, it's a lot of wheel spin to go through all that effort, all that time. And yeah, if you've got clients that are waiting on deliverables over here, like, I mean, they may not see it that way, but like you may feel it because you got to be responsible back to those people that you're working for on a day in day out basis. So.

Dustin Artz: It, I think I've seen a million thought pieces on this, but like just trying a project together to see if it works is probably more helpful than doing a four months pitch process.

There is. An element to me as someone who's been in the industry for two decades now, where I just look at other businesses, like from plumbers to accountants, to doctors, to lawyers, it's like, which of them is like, we'll do three months of free work and then they out compete each other. I would think less of those professions.

So I do think it has a undermining effect on the whole industry, which I don't like. That, that said, you know, people love it and people love winning, so.

Alright, and then the last area I would say is we try and have a work-life balance. I think this is, feels really like, "No duh," to other companies, but Justin and I have small kids and families.

And we always were, it felt like the victims of, you know, you got to work the weekend, you got to work the weekend. And it's like, why don't we just manage this better so that we didn't. And so we always, as a small group, you can't just burn out your people. They'll leave. So we try and be pretty good. So I'd say that those areas are a lot of our secret sauce without getting too into the weeds. Although, I don't know, pretty descriptive, I guess. I mean,

Chris Hill: I think, I think work life balance is important too, and especially in a creative agency because you, you have to have the space to come up with the ideas. And that space doesn't just happen by sitting down at a desk and staring at a computer screen for eight hours a day, like it's going to come to you in the shower, it's going to come to you at the gym, might come to you while you're out hiking in the wilderness, you know, like there, there are all these things that you can do that can help stimulate your brain.

Better than just being in one place.

Dustin Artz: Yeah. Lin, Lin Manuel Miranda, when he came up with the Hamilton concept, I think he had a tweet about it. He was like, I had taken, finally had taken time for myself. And that's when he came up with the best idea of his life, you know? So it's, it's like, I also had a, you can edit this out later because there's profanity, but I had a, um, a T a teacher at ad center.

He said, "You got to eat the sh-." Basically you have to bring in a lot of stimuli to make a lot of work. To, to have, to put concepts together and to vomit it out. [laughs]

Chris Hill: I get it.

Dustin Artz: Sorry if I'm too crass.

Chris Hill: Oh, I think this is fine. This is totally fine. And I mean, it's, it's a good truth too, because like it does, it does take a lot to come up with a good idea. And I know when we've worked for our clients, like I've, I've had similar situations of like, Oh yeah, that I could tell you where those ideas came to me or how they came about.

And it's not always just sitting down and spitballing ideas. Like, yeah, there's so many different places.

Dustin Artz: I'm a strong believer in like your subconscious working through things, even when you're not paying attention. And usually I used to, as a creative, always want to do two things at once, because your brain might try and solve the one, but really you solved the other one.

So like, you always have, I think your brain is working for you. But to that point, that's what's so hard about a creative industry is an idea can come to you within two minutes, or it can come to you within two hours. And it's so hard to budget when you have a bar for like, that's not good enough. It does, as much as I'm talking about work-life balance, there are times when it's like, we need to, we don't just cut it off if the bar isn't upheld.

So it's tricky.

Chris Hill: Definitely is. And I will say, I mean, I think y'all have come up with some pretty creative work, the stuff that I've been able to experience and see online and even, I think, experience in person too, to some degree, you know, through television and media, and of course, like y'all work with Duke's, as you mentioned, and I love what y'all have been able to, to do with that.

I wasn't even aware of Duke's a few years ago. And then it feels like over time, I've, I've seen it more and more. I've tried it. I've just, I've found it to be a really good, mayo that I like. And so, yeah, for what it's worth, I mean, the marketing and branding has worked. And I guess with that said, like, I'd love to hear a couple of projects.

Obviously we'll start with Duke's, but like Duke's and maybe Crunch Fitness, like what are some projects you've worked on that you're really proud of? And if there are others, feel free to tell me, but let's, let's look at Duke's first, really curious about that.

Dustin Artz: Yeah, we love Duke's. Duke's is for us, allows us to really flex and show what Familiar Creatures is all about.

So Duke's Mayo is super beloved in the South. But it has really just a area of 12 states that really know it well, and we are on a march to kind of push into new frontiers across the country. And we have a new campaign that we just shot, actually a spot for it that is coming out around August. It's called Welcome to Duke's Country, and it's, it's going to be really fun, and make, it's going to turn some heads because it's, there's always this built in tension with Duke's when it's like, "Wait, a mayo company's doing this?" So it's, it's really fun to work on. It's sort of exemplifies what we do because they are outspent 40 or 50 to one by Hellman's. Hellman's is the market leader by far.

And Duke's is this little brand in the South that is a superior product. If you ask, you know, it was just ranked in Bon Appetit magazine. Even, uh, an editor there who loved and was diehard Hellman's. They did a blind taste test and he was like, this one's better. It was Duke's. It's because it doesn't have sugar in it.

It's because it's just egg yolks and it's just, it's got a tang to it. That is great. That aside, it's. It's like a storied brand that dates from World War One, 1917. It was, you know, woman owned and led and she made sandwiches and like, and gave them to troops in World War One. And so just like this fascinating story.

So we have this like entrepreneurial. Feisty spirit in this brand that we love. And I'm trying to see how many secrets we can go into here because it's not by accident that we do the things we do, right? Their team, they're owned by a company called Sour, which is owned by a private equity group. And that happened, you know, let's say six or seven years ago, and they brought on a new team and they had aggressive goals and they really put together an awesome team to maximize what this brand is all about.

And so the target market shifted from the traditional mayo audience, which was like old women who bake because they buy a lot of mayo. And then we shifted it to millennials. And specifically our target is more Southern minded millennials with some other psychographic stuff. So one of the nice things about being a challenger brand is you can really understand your audience and have the brand cater to them as opposed to you watch like Hellman's, and you watch a Super Bowl spot, and they have funny comedians or SNL people, but then you can just tell things were focus grouped to death with Unilever or they had to be like, "Oh, we have to get the, this demographic and this demographic and this and this and this."

And it just neutral, it like neuters everything down. Whereas like Duke's, we are loud and proud what we're about. We try and be bold and saucy is some of our behind the scenes language. But really every, we, we try and show up in a certain way. Okay. And a lot of this podcast is called We Built This Brand.

But a lot of the backstory with that is a typical holding company approach to this brand would have been to be like, make a 30 second spot and run it everywhere. And then take that slogan and just put it on banner ads and do programmatic. And I think our approach has been a lot more nuanced of fanning the flames of brand fanatics and ambassadors and making sort of activations for them, whether it's a tattoo event that we just gave away free tattoos and was covered by national press.

We've made events such as in the South, a tomato and mayo sandwich is like a thing. And we partnered with restaurants. We're now in, um, we started in Richmond and now this is year four, and we've slowly grown to six Southern cities that do a hot tomato summer event. So we ask restaurants to combine mayo and tomato into unique dishes.

And sometimes that's ice cream. Sometimes it's like tomato pies. It's super creative. And then we, Give away this award. It's like a, um, a baker holding a tomato. It's, it's cute. So we just, you know, we can, without having a holding company playbook, where is like, you have, you are the TV agency, you do the TV, here's the web, here's the web agency, here's the PR agency, here's the social agency.

It's like, we can be like, okay, this is what's needed. Let's do this and create it. And there's no red tape. So we are able to be super nimble. And my favorite examples of, of success with this brand are, you know, when we did that tattoo event, it like sold out. We had 75 tattoos to give away. And some people were like, nobody's ever going to do this.

Nobody's going to brand themselves with a logo. It got thousands of people signing up for it. We had press fly in from Vice. It was covered by Food and Wine, CNN, just like, it just was, it took off. And then Hellman's, Hellman's heard about it and tried to do their own tattoo event, and it just fell on its face.

And it was just like such an example of how does the company with so much money not able to listen and react? You know, it's just because there's too many people there. So we love that example. There's another thing you can see they're really threatened because Duke's has this Mayo Bowl where they're like, It's absurd.

We created this mascot Tubby for it. He's just a big jar and he's got these like big black Eugene Levy eyebrows. And he's a little, he's a little untinged and he was crowdsourced. His name is Tubby because that's what people chose. Anyway, it's like an outlandish, absurd college bowl, like embracing the absurdity of Mayo being a sponsor of football and then Hellman's you can tell is, is threatened because they are now partnering with, SEC schools like Alabama, because they're like, stop the bleeding.

Duke's is the fastest growing Mayo in the category, especially with millennials. So it's just like shows that rather than a silver bullet approach, these like smaller activations that build fanaticism really compound over time.

Chris Hill: And you, you brought up, you brought up the super, or not the Super Bowl, but the bowl games thing.

It feels like last year specifically, there was this trend. And I don't know if you all were in on this. Or if this was, this was intentional, but like.

Dustin Artz: Talking about the Pop Tarts.

Chris Hill: Yeah, the Pop Tarts, your, your mascot, like, was it, did, I mean, did, I don't, I'm not trying to say like this was a copycat thing, but it just, it felt really weird that everybody kind of had the same idea at once.

Dustin Artz: I do think people in the creative space are always looking for what's out there. It's like one of the first things you do and you, you, you audit. So I don't know, I don't want to take credit for that, but it does seem like the Pop Tart being sacrificed and eaten and things like that. I do think one, one baby step in absurdity kind of begets more.

Um, it's sort of, Justin and I learned it on Geico. It, it took a lot of innovation at the time for Geico. To do humor in a category that was largely somber and about trust. You could see all the MBAs saying, "this, this is about trust. People want trust. You have to be, you have to show that". And then Geico comes in and their CMO says, "This is not like a normal industry. People need this. We can at least entertain them with what we're doing." And then now you see all of them are trying to be funny from State Farm. Who's number one, but we saw just with massive, you know, obviously massive budgets, but with awareness, geico kind of rose up from being behind Allstate to being number two.

And it's, it was, I don't know, it made it kind of very formative moment for Justin and I to see the power of creativity with business results.

Chris Hill: Um, and of course y'all did a Mayo Combine as well, which

Dustin Artz: Oh, we did.

Chris Hill: Also amazing.

Dustin Artz: Thanks. Yeah. So they have some, it's so funny. Mayo is such a fun brand because Like I said, there's a built in tension of like, wait, what, what are you doing?

So we had a, for the, the combine, it was a lot like the NFL combine where people are proving their muster with the fastest 40 time or bench presses or whatever. But this was like, how far could you throw a jar of mayo and how, you know, just really silly mayo related activities. And then the winners were able to dump, uh, a big thing of mayo on the winning coach of the Mayo Bowl, which always gets a ton of press every year because it's ridiculous and just fun. I think it's to your point. I remember McDonald's had a mascot social takeover of Grimace, and he was a lot like Tubby, how he took over. And I'm just like, are these people copying or not?

I don't know, but it's kind of cool either way, just to be part of something fun. I do think, I think everybody would echo this, but since 2008 and the recession, the amount of humor out in the industry has just, it's like a lot of that combined with like data and even a lot of the new, I don't know, analytics schools and like trying to get advertising to a science has taken a lot of the joy and fun and humor out of things.

And I think there's just such an appetite for it, especially when you're in an industry, like mayo, where it's like, this is just, it's just a condiment. It's fun. I love this condiment. You are entertaining as opposed to sort of finger wagging. I think something a bigger holding company would do is say, we need a purpose.

We need a why. And so Hellman's does. We're all about eliminating food waste. And for me, as a consumer, it's like, do I want to have the, huge company that makes billions of dollars telling me what to do with my food? You know, like, I don't know? I'd rather, I'd rather buy the one that has a mayo, uh, a mascot running around. [laughs]

Chris Hill: That's right. They're just, they're just saying that cause you're dumping that, that big jar of mayo on, on the coach at the end of those games.

Dustin Artz: I know. I, I've always thought of that. Like it's very, very, uh, you know, yeah, you should use your food wisely. And then we're just like dumping it on a coach.

Chris Hill: [laughs] But that's, that's great.

That's great. Um,

Dustin Artz: Potato, pohtato.

Chris Hill: Exactly.

Um, so what about Crunch Fitness? I've noticed you've done some very clever stuff for them. Some I'd say rather surreal stuff for them too, with that moving, talking hand and some other stuff y'all have done. So tell me a little bit about them.

Dustin Artz: We are super proud of Crunch because of the results as well.

They started out as. They're in the retail, if you haven't heard of Crunch Fitness, they're in the retail gym space. A lot of their deals are like $9.99 a month. They compete with Planet Fitness, who like Hellman's, outspends them. And then there's like Equinox and there's Golds and then there's Crunch and then there's like a few others.

And it's all this kind of sea of sameness, although I will say Planet does a good job of having a good spirit. A lot of, a lot of these models are franchise driven. So they have franchises in Miami, they have franchises in Washington and Idaho. And. It really makes it hard to have a particular audience you're talking to.

So a lot of the work gets generic. And on top of that, sales overnight versus brand over time, they over index on the sales overnight. So it's like, we're going to get a ton of people in the door. If you just show that we have 60 pound dumbbells, show that we have 60, or I don't even know if that's right, but like 75 pounds, that's going to get people in the door, just show it.

And that will work, but it's to the detriment of like, why this one over this one, if this one's closer to my house. Why would I go down there? And you have to really stand for something and believe in something. So when you are a new agency and you don't rely on pitches to have a constant supply of, of new business leads, you have to kind of invent some.

So we started working with a local franch- Crunch franchise and made work for them. And we didn't know, but we were out of compliance. Cause you're not allowed to do that. You are not allowed to work with a single franchise instead of the national brand. And it put us in the attention of the national brand.

And they were like, "Number one, don't do that. Number two, how did you get that done? Because it's really good." And then that's how the relationship started. At the same time, we are nimble and we can make budgets go far, no matter what budget. As creatives, you have a special, when you know, a budget is 15 grand, a 50 grand to 150 grand to half a mil to a mil to two mil, like, you know, the production at each level.

And so you can tailor the creative to be like, this is the best creative we can get in this range. And I think we've done a good job of growing that pie with results over time with Crunch. We started out by doing more retail work and now we, just recently, it makes me think of We Built This Brand, but we always do these things called brand workshops with when we first start.

So a brand workshop has we do like five or six exercises and I don't want to go into all of them, but one of them is like the golden circle by Simon Sinek, which most marketing people know. Something like that. Finding out your why, why you exist outside of making money. And we have a bunch of exercises.

So we brought, you know, we do a ton of stakeholder interviews. We brought a bunch of Crunch at the time they had two CEOs and an experienced leader. We brought all these people together and we kind of did a brand workshop with them. We did a challenger brand archetypes with them, exercises, and really get out, like, what are you guys about?

Because their problem was, not that they didn't have a really good start and positioning, it's just that Planet sort of subsumed them. They, Crunch was first to be about no judgments, and Planet Fitness just kind of stole it from them because they didn't trademark it.

They both have hands in their logos. And so like, I remember in the beginning, I was just like. I just put in, this is a good way to see what people across the internet think, but I just put is "crunch" in like the search bar. And it was like the same as Planet Fitness owned by Planet Fitness. It was just like, they're very identical.

Right? And you need to, you need to stand for something else. And so we, what their marketing team is super savvy. Led by this guy named Chad and together really wanted to figure out, "Yes, we have a no judgments philosophy, but what is our purpose? What is our positioning? How are we going to stand?

um, which I could go into, but I won't, "how do you differentiate? How do you stand out?" And I think you said we had a, a talking logo, like a, a surreal logo singing. That was because that was like a, a brand awareness play. It was, their logos are, the logos are similar. How do we, how do we get Crunch into households?

And we made it a thing called Crunch Mode. We showed the gym, but we made the logo like sing. And it was just like, the unaided awareness shot up after that. Like they're, they're number two in the category now for unaided awareness, I think largely to that work, which was awesome. And then now it's, we are, we have a campaign called "Feel Good. Not Bad." which came out of a position that everyone deserves to feel good.

You have the golds of the world that are more for bodybuilders. You have the equinoxes who are more sort of like trying to be elite. Fitness people, you have other players, and then we just noticed, notice sort of some white space and some backstory with Crunch around owning, like everyone needs to feel good.

So this is where you come for that. And we have this silly campaign, which is "Feel Good. Not Bad." Which is so elementary that we love it. It's like. It's like advertising 101, like, "This good, this bad. This good, this bad." And so we are, uh, it's just working really well, and we're super proud of it. We've always thought, Justin and I, it's not, it's not enough to just be creative and to win awards because sometimes that's for the wrong audience.

Sometimes it's, there's a number of examples of things that win awards and the client gets fired the next year, and that to us is a fail. If you own a business and. You win some awards and everyone's like, "Hey, awesome job." It's like, not really because you lost your, your, your business pipeline.

Chris Hill: It's all about those Addies.

Dustin Artz: [laughs] I think it's award season right now too. So I don't want to.

Chris Hill: It probably is. Oh no, I can, I can do it all day. I'm a president of American Marketing Association for my local chapter. I'm still bitter. [laughs]

Dustin Artz: Um, but we, yeah, when you like own a business and you're looking at your like, your P& L over year over year, you're like, okay, yeah, we, you know, it's not just about what can we get away with, with as creatives, it is like, what is going to stand out based on what we can achieve.

Um, that will work over time and overnight. So...

Chris Hill: Cool. And it's neat when you see the reward for that success. I think that to your point, like building off award seasons or building off of the awards you get. I know product projects that I've been on that have won Addies that I go. "Cool, but we didn't keep the business," or "Cool, but it didn't bring them any business."

Like there's no ROI tied to what's going on. And therefore you don't really feel as rewarded by that as, at least in my opinion, as you do by the end result you provide to the client. So...

Dustin Artz: I do think the, one of the most rewarding things about as stressful as it can be over time, it does feel like, justin and I, and the larger Familiar Creatures agency, we are, we work for brands that we believe in.

And a lot of times when you work for a big holding company agency, It's, it's a lot of generalist mentality. Like we'll work for any, we'll work for anybody, you know, it'll be Walmart or we can do a brand that's completely different, that has completely different values, it doesn't matter, we're going to do it.

And I think you can kind of navigate a little more. But we really believe in our, our client success. And that's when we get the most excited is when things work. It's just, it's so rewarding to see, because as you said, Justin and I are creatives and sometimes you're so far down the pipeline. You have this big media agency making all these decisions, and then you have layers and layers of people.

And then when you're like the lowly creatives. You're like, "Hey, whatever happened to that thing? Is it working? Like what, what happened?" And you're not like really in on it. You don't even know. You just kind of like gave your, the last three months to it. And then it's just like, "Oh yeah, I think it's good? I don't know."

You know, it's weird. It's just like, they're so big. You just feel, you feel more invested. I think when you're a smaller shop.

Chris Hill: Yeah, no, I, I can, I can definitely understand that.

So looking down the road to the future of Familiar Creatures, what do you, what do you see on the horizon for the company, and what are you looking forward to?

Dustin Artz: It's so interesting, this question, because I heard this great speech, I think it was by Susan Creedle, and it was about how in the beginning of your career in advertising, you are, it's very, like, selfish. It's like, "I need to make this to make my path," and it's like, based on scarcity, "Like, don't take my ideas, it's my ideas."

And then later in your career, you have to like somehow flip the switch and be about abundance, and you have to give ideas to other people. You have to care about their success and not your own. You have to care about your clients and not your own. So it's interesting that question, you know, 20 years ago, it'd be like, "Oh, I'm going to make this cool thing for Duke's.

This like, we have this great spot coming out. It's going to be awesome, and who are going to go know how creative I am and stuff like that," which now is not, it's just fun to work on, but it's just one of many things I do. Like, creative is like 10 percent of my job now. It's really weird, but the business background is kicking in now with finance and accounting and all that stuff.

Chris Hill: Welcome to owning a business.

Dustin Artz: Yeah. No shit. [laughs]

Let's see. Uh,

Chris Hill: I feel that so much. I feel that so much. Anyways.

Dustin Artz: So now it's, yeah, I mean, you know, anyone who's, you kind of, I've heard you kind of have to be naive when you start a business because like, after you see it, you'd be like, "Oh my God, if somebody was like, you have to do all this stuff and whatever," you'd be like, "Okay, no way.

I'm just going to be the, just going to be kind of the cog in the machine. It seems pretty easy." [laughs]

Chris Hill: There have been days.

Dustin Artz: Yeah, no, I wouldn't. This is my best job. This is my favorite job across the board. It's just, it's so much fun every day. So I was going to say with the theme of abundance, it's more like where is Familiar Creatures headed?

Like we just hired two new creatives. So I'm excited about that. We just want a bank client. They're a regional bank called Chesapeake Bank, but there's such a sea of sameness in that category. That it's going to be really fun to do the Familiar Creatures thing with them and like really embrace what makes them special and unique, and they are so cool that it's, it's really fun. I'd never thought I'd say it about a bank client having worked on so many financial clients in the past, but it'll be really fun to bring that to life. But I think I'm most excited about new business opportunities and growth because we're finally really getting a name for ourselves and what we do.

I think we are a specific, we're very dialed in as a specialist for challenger brands for outsmarting the brand behemoths. And, and I think when you're a specialist like that, you start to have these brands coming to you as opposed to just being a generalist where you're like, yeah, we do everything. We get attention.

It's just so fun to see the possibilities. So I'd say that we have a lot of new business prospects on the horizon. And, you know, are getting more exposure, like, such as this, this podcast. Thank you for having me for kind of talking about what we do, we do, and then having now a track record where it's like, oh, this stuff is working, like your approach is working as opposed to the traditional templated approach.

Chris Hill: Yeah. I always ask, you know, I forgot to ask that question on, on, on this episode. But you kind of answered it right there. I always ask what that moment of validation is. And I think you just answered it right there. It's that, that moment of like, Oh, everything's working. The things that I'm telling people to do, they work.

Dustin Artz: They are, but you're always, the anxiety never goes away, Chris. [laughs] You have, once you start thinking you made it, you have, you, uh, that's when you drown. No,

Chris Hill: I am right there with you.

Dustin Artz: [laughs] You gotta keep, you gotta stay, uh, no, I, I heard, um, He was like PJ Pereira talk at a thing where he was like, he gave a metaphor.

Oh, like owning your own company is like, you're in a car, and you're driving really fast, and it's really foggy, but you can see three feet ahead of you. And you just gotta, you gotta keep it. You gotta keep going and just hoping. But, um, yeah, there's a lot of, I mean, there's a lot of luck involved too. You know, I don't want to discount that.

Like having the Duke's situation pop up at the right time. Having me freelancing when Devil's Backbone went into review. There's a lot of timing stuff that is kind of lucky. And so I think like just hard work, having a vision and sticking to it and then getting a little lucky, I think, helps

Chris Hill: Definitely, definitely.

Well, that's really cool.

As we wrap up, I always like to ask this question at the very end. What brand do you admire the most right now?

Dustin Artz: I think it's. Kind of a no brainer. I mean, as a challenger brand agency, I love Oatly. I just think that they are so, they can be so savage. Like the, this is, this isn't my answer by the way, but I love like, "It's like milk, but made for humans."

Like a little line like that, that is such a dig is to me, just love my subversive, like heart just goes, Ooh, that's amazing. But I would just say Liquid Death right now. Just reminds me of the kind of branding and advertising that got me into the industry that was like going into when you learn at like Brandcenter and when you're first starting as a creative.

You look, you're just like, we have to be invited in. We are a stranger disrupting someone. So you have to make things that they enjoy. And they, I love that they view themselves as an entertainment company who happens to sell water. There's certain people who just don't get it. That don't get the brand, that don't get the irony, they don't get the humor.

And I just love how out of simple branding, which is like the purity of what we do with water. I mean, I guess, yes, they have like a murder, like, don't kill the planet and, um, use cans as opposed to plastic bottles. There is that. But aside from that, it's like the equity is coming from the creativity. And now when you look at the company's valuation, I think as like an MBA, you'd be like, I don't understand.

I tell me why this water company is worth so much money, and I just love that. I just love that. I think it's, it's so great. And they also, Their creative process is very much modern. Whereas we used to be very precious about spending six months to a year to make like one piece of content. They're just like, they try and own the media cycle like every month, you know, it's like, what's the best thing that somebody is going to pass around and they view it as kind of disposable. Which

viewed the wrong way could be dismissive of our like precious ideas, but it's, it's how people view content these days. So they're just, they're very bold. They know who they are and I, I just love, I love them. I think they're great.

Chris Hill: Yeah, they are. They are really cool. I mean, right now they're trying to give away a jet, like a literal, like, you're going to get this jet.

We promise you'll get it. We'll even give you hangar space for it. I'm just like, that's amazing.

Dustin Artz: It's so good. It's so good. That's like, uh, I think Pepsi did that, but it was like, there's a "Pepsi, Where's My Jet?" Where a person, they didn't mean for someone to win the jet. And then, yeah. [laughs]

Chris Hill: Well, they, they, they, they referenced that in the ad.

They're like, no, no, no, we're not Pepsi. We're not doing that. We're, we're not giving away a Harrier, but.

Dustin Artz: That's so, yeah. [laughs]

Chris Hill: Yeah. It's, it's. It's wild. My only concern is that like, I don't know if within six months you could go from a novice pilot to actually being able to fly

Dustin Artz: No. No. No. No.

Chris Hill: A jet of that caliber. But who cares?

Dustin Artz: I think there has to be a waiver you have to sign for sure. Like, [laughs] if you damage yourself or any property, that's not on us. [laughs]

Chris Hill: That's right. That's right. We're Liquid Death, not Aviation Death.

Dustin Artz: Oh man, you're right. The death, the death. They actually cause a death. It's not going to be good branding forever. It's a, yeah, it's scary.

Chris Hill: They have a lot of, a lot of indemnification in there. I'm sure. [laughs] They talked to their lawyers a bunch before that. I bet the lawyers cost more than the airplane on that one.

But anyways, well, Dustin, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. Really enjoyed having you. Where can people connect with you?

Where can people connect with Familiar Creatures if they want to learn more?

Dustin Artz: So they can find me at, uh, familiarcreatures. com is our, is our site. We are on all the social channels. We have a good enough SEO game where if you just type in "familiar creatures" or "creatures advertising," it would probably pop up so you can find us there.

Yeah. But thank you. It's been really fun.

Chris Hill: Yeah. It's been a pleasure, Dustin. Thank you for coming on today.

Dustin Artz: Alright, thank you so much.

Chris Hill: Thanks for checking out this episode of We Built This Brand. Don't forget to like, follow, and subscribe to the podcast on your player of choice, and find out more about the podcast and dive into more details at WeBuiltThisBrand.com. Also, don't forget to give us a 5 star review, and share the podcast with at least 5 friends, so that we can continue to build this brand.