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Tapping Into the Relevant: Sammy Stephens “Just like a Mini-Mall.”

“It’s About Damn Time…”

If you’re paying attention to anything on social media, the instant you read the above words, you knew (and possibly heard in your head) the remaining lyrics to the famous Lizzo song.

Why?

Because music is powerful, and as Adrienne mentions in today’s episode, if you can put something to music people will remember it. That notion is exactly what today’s co-host, Trent Ranburger of Trent’s Bedding, was banking on. He took the wildly popular song by Sammy Stephens, “Just Like a Mini Mall“, replaced the lyrics to fit his commercial and has gotten over 12 million YouTube views promoting his mattress store.

What can you do with this information? Social media reels, tiktoks, and other short form video platforms have made it easier than ever to make videos and put them together with trending sounds. Tap into what’s relevant when planning your marketing content. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel to make an impact.

Need More Marketing Ideas?

Check out why you need a social media crisis plan in place.

FULL TRANSCRIPTION

Mark Kinsley 

Like how did a single store mattress retailer in Bowling Green Kentucky get a viral internet sensation to come to his store and recreate a song that now has more than 12 million YouTube views? Trick ranneberger is back to co host the fam marketing show starts right now furniture appliances mattress, filmed on news

Adrienne Woods 

welcome to the fam Marketing Show. Welcome back guys. This is your show for all your strategies, tips and ideas to help retailers and brands grow their furniture appliance and mattress business. Welcome back. Trent mark is always good to see you. I have a trivia question for you guys. If you’re ready for it.

Mark Kinsley 

Let’s do this.

Adrienne Woods 

Let’s do it. Okay, what was the first ever state in the United States

Mark Kinsley 

state number one state numero uno? Ah,

Adrienne Woods 

the very first the one that like set the track so I’m not going to tell you right now but if you as you’re listening to this if you have a guess go on to fam dot news right now you can just hit the Texas button. You can do it right from your screen, your smartphone, whatever you want to do, text our podium number with your guests and then hang on. In like 14 and a half minutes we will reveal what was the first state admitted to the United States.

Mark Kinsley 

Number one, Trent I know you’re your wheels are turning. Trent is a history guy. So I know that he really wants to get this correct. The last time Trent was on the show, he nailed the trivia question which was what’s the largest planet in the solar system? And I remember this, this has been a while back but you said Jupiter. And that was it. That’s the giant. That’s the giant so we’ll see if Trent get this gets this one. Right. Trent, thank you so much for coming back to co host with us here on the fan Marketing Show. You’re one of my favourite marketers in the entire industry. I love your creativity. I love the way you think about things. And I love how much you pay attention. You pay attention to the world around you. And you tap into that which is relevant and connect your audience and the people in your community to something broader and something beyond the community but somehow you figure out a way to dovetail it in and you did that whenever Sammy Stevens years ago came out with that crazy song just like a mini mall so first of all, go home a couple bars so we all remember what that song was.

Trent Ranburger 

It was a living room. No room. Oh, yeah, we got it. It’s just like it’s just like Amelie more meaningful turn it into a voice pillow pillows megaphones into mattress read, I’ve actually done food. The first one was was my my daughter and I back probably two years ago, I guess. It was it was literally it was a complete spoof of the mini mall. Tammy Stevens, YouTube sensation viral video.

Mark Kinsley 

It’s just like, mattress store mattress store right.

Adrienne Woods 

If you can put something to music people can remember it. I once heard a statistic that by the time you turn 18 You will know over 1800 songs that you never intended to learn the lyrics to.

Trent Ranburger 

Wow, I’m glad people yell at Windows Robin down the road. The rattle. Like it’s stuck. I mean, people are like, Oh my god, I hate you. But that’s awesome. And it just gets stuck. And it’s that that goes back to branding marketing. And you know, my thing is, I’ve always wanted people to when you think of mattress in Bowling Green, Kentucky, you think friend but anytime you think mattress, think print betting. And that just helps keep building that foundation and memory in people’s heads. So

Mark Kinsley 

So take us into the story. So Sammy Stephens comes out with this hilarious video. And the song that he produced just because he was trying to promote his mini mall that had all these different things. And so he he had a background in radio and he’s just got this this amazing face with these really animated eyes. And he’s in this tan suit. And he’s jumping around just like a mini model just like me. And people just thought it was hilarious. And he made it on some national television programmes. And so after that happened in kind of while it was happening, you decide I’m going to spoof it. I’m going to speak with Sammy Stevens things I’m going to tap into that which is relevant and spoof it so to connect the dots with from the spoof, until Sammy actually came to your store in Bowling Green, Kentucky after he was internet famous. Paint that picture for us.

Trent Ranburger 

Good. Well, I’ll first start off by saying I can’t carry a tune in a bucket. Don’t hear the beat in the tone. So it was very difficult for the folks to produce this with me singing it. But no, I just I wrote it to a mattress store to Moscow. And, again, be different be crazy. You know, a white guy rapping. Yeah, I’m not Eminem, you know, people love because it shows my humility, you know, I’m not afraid to be, you know, whatever. But it, it blew up locally, locally for Moscow or like it, you know, just crazy. I mean, to the point where family guy actually had a little TV comedy family got a cartoon, as he had sent me Stevens, in one of their episodes, right with the minimal. Locally, people came to me were like, did you know, Family Guy spoof your video? And I’m like, no, no, no, no, that’s not my video. That was Sammy like, so this year, I was like, oh, might want to get a handle on this one. I got in touch with the original guy. And he was like, I love what you’re doing. I’m actually going, I think he was going through a hockey game, somewhere up north, somebody paid him to come and do whatever, but he’s like, I’m coming through your town. I’m gonna stop and see you. And we made a media day have it like we hit radio stations, I had my production company there. And it just so happened to speak to a lot of college classes at Western in their business and marketing department. And at the time, the depending on the size of the class, a lot of times they would field trip to my store for their class. And it just so I mean, literally so happened that day, the class was scheduled to be in my store. So we shot a video with with the WKU students in my store. And Sammy called them their new mattress choir or something. I mean, it was just it was crazy. But there again, I don’t even have a box to think in. Just let it whatever, don’t be afraid to do anything. You know, it works. And that’s just life is just like a mattress store. Hey

Adrienne Woods 

Google this now and listen, watch this famous video, we’ll

Trent Ranburger 

have a full on one minute, professional video. I mean, it’s not a Springsteen phone, video quality. But, uh, you know,

Mark Kinsley 

that’s, yeah, we’ll save springs and foam for a different podcast on a different day. But there’s all kinds of marketing lessons within that. So let’s break it down. One of the things I love to do on the shows come up with like, number one, highlight creativity within the mattress appliance and furniture space, what are the creative things people are doing, and then dissect that so that we have some actionable takeaways. So one of the top takeaways for me is tap into that, which is irrelevant, Sammy Stevens was irrelevant. You did your own spoof. So you hitched your waggon to something people already paying attention to. So tap into that, which is irrelevant. The other principle I think, here within that I really love is this idea of getting more mileage out of ideas. So you didn’t just do the minimal spoof, push that into the community and the people loved it and started yelling out truck windows out yet, just like a magic store. You went further with it by getting Sammy Stevens to actually come there. And then who knows what some some of the other surround sound type events and initiatives you did war. But you really took that one idea, and you got lots and lots of mileage out of it. I always tell people, we’re talking about marketing from a content standpoint, I’m even just the show right here. We take this show, and we have hot takes from it. So we continue to promote this show on social media in the coming weeks with little snackable bites, nice snippets. And then we put the entire show on Instagram and LinkedIn and Facebook. And we put everything out in our email newsletter. So you can grab that AFAM dot news and it’s a weekly newsletter. And then we send it out personally to people and then you you’re on here and you send it out to people, you know? So we took one idea and we maximised it sounds like you do that a lot. And that’s something that you live by.

Trent Ranburger 

I do and you back in the day, you know, back when I was raised, you know, social media was was new, so to speak, but I’ve been on this for years. Like I wasn’t a business networking group for years, and I would because Facebook was fairly limited. But I was like guys look just like you just said, If we all tag each other, you know, every Tuesday when we meet, we’re going to grow and grow and grow. I couldn’t get them on board. Fast forward to today 100% You know, the more tags and shares and the people you can get involved I mean your friends friends friends will see it hopefully so I guess Mark I agree completely. But I will also say It’s hard to get a lot of business owners comfortable and understanding that concept of that’s how it can work. And it’s what would you hard a lot of times,

Mark Kinsley 

what would you say to that sceptical business owner? If you’re talking just directly to them right now?

Trent Ranburger 

What would I say to do it, you’ve got to start doing it. Now. If you don’t, you will be left behind. You’ve got to and I mean, I’m a firm believer of don’t do what your competition is doing. No, this is something that you gotta do, you know, social media, internet, it’s not going away. This is not a fad. This isn’t tight roll jeans, this is something that stay and they’re, you know, now you have more clutter to cut through. So you have to be even more different and creative. So it’s, it’s it’s not a teachable thing sometimes. But it is a learnable thing is it folks will listen, that makes sense.

Mark Kinsley 

Yeah, it does. You know, one of the things we talked about? No, go ahead. Yeah, one of the things we talked about in our book come back to bed was, there are two concepts. One is, you do need to figure out who you’re going to be. And make sure that that is authentic to your, to your culture, the culture of your, of your store, your brand, or your community. And so once you figure that out, though, you need to really tap into the cage method, community answers giving or experiences and you know, for example, you are really big into your community. So you use creativity, your creativity within your community. Guys, like Jeff Shire, the educator, he’s really big on answers. So he’s an educator. So he uses his creativity through the vehicle of answers. Some people are into giving some people are into creating experiences we’ve talked about on the show the experiences you’ve created with mattress chucking, but then when you when you really want to get into the brass tacks of actually how you bring creativity forth, we have this method called the hatch method. And the biggest piece of that is, hold a brainstorm at crazy, take a nap, choose your ideas, and then hand off to a creative team. That’s the hatch method. But the brainstorming piece is so critical. And I think what happens in a brainstorm a lot of times is people start selecting ideas and shutting ideas down. That is not the place to do that. To bring forth that creativity. I always encourage people make sure that brainstorms are Yes. And so you build on each other’s ideas, and you’re going for volume of ideas, then you’re going to literally step away, have a good night of sleep, because there’s a superpower there within that you connect ideas you otherwise can’t consciously access, then you come back to it. But keep that brainstorm super pure. And I know that you do that. Because I’ve seen I’ve seen pictures of your yellow pads full of crazy ideas.

Trent Ranburger 

About I’ve got a bot. And that’s something you brainstorming. Yes, I call it spaghetti thoughts. You know, when when you’re when you’re in a brainstorming session, right? I call it spaghetti felt like cooking spaghetti. You throw spaghetti on the wall? To know if it’s done. Right? If it sticks, you know, it’s not the other word. It is done. Whatever the case may be. I don’t I’ve never thrown spaghetti on the wall. But and I’ve said this for years of spaghetti sauce in a meeting.

Adrienne Woods 

I have thrown it out. I’m like, what are people talking about? I’ve tossed it.

Trent Ranburger 

But yeah, that’s my thing is every thought is a spaghetti thought. Throw it out there. Because it might not be the perfect thing. But Adrian, you might hear something in that thought that I sent out that you you run on and then you say something, I mean, it just grows. So don’t ever keep the defaults here. Put them out and that’s back to my yellow paper in my notepad. I have ADHD literally diagnosed, so I have to write it all down. Because if I don’t leave my friends like I just write down a spaghetti code. I may not use that idea. I may say it as somebody else’s like oh if you do this you can do that. This just builds

Mark Kinsley 

and that’s that’s when you know you have something that’s really special once you get start starts getting wacky in the brainstorm you know you’re getting to a place that is on the other side of obvious and you have to get to the other side of obvious because that’s where the genius lies. Trent It’s been great having you on the show. We’re about to wrap it up. Adrian give us our trivia question and we’re going to tell people how they can get connected to us. Okay, guys, what

Adrienne Woods 

was the first state admitted to the United States? What was the first one ever? What do you write down Trent? What’s your answer? Mark?

Mark Kinsley 

Rhode Island.

Answers Delaware. Oh, Delaware, Delaware. Yeah, guys. Well, hey,

Mark Kinsley 

thanks to everybody that texted us on our On our podium number head over to fam dot news in the bottom right you can text us and hey, do you have a marketing tip that’s worked for you or topic you want us to tackle, go over there and do Textus Be sure to subscribe on Apple podcasts or Spotify and never miss an idea that can make you just like Trent ranneberger and join us each week as we bring you more fam marketing magic,

Adrienne Woods 

magic.

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