Building a Brand at 125 mph
Plus personal financial fuckups & lessons learned
Ever been to a car race?
I never had, until this weekend—when my client sponsored an up-and-coming young driver at the Toyota GR Cup season opener in Sonoma, CA.
We created the Octopode brand as a new type of voice in financial & retirement planning—I don’t want to say “hip” or “with it” or “groovy”—but my client wanted to shuck the suit & tie for a more vernacular approach to financial literacy.
He’s a total nerd for all things financial, but his favorite specialty is Life Insurance Retirement Plans (LIRPs)—for tax-free retirement income not tied to the stock market (like a Roth IRA with no limits), plus a death benefit.
Sponsoring this race, he felt, would open the doors to a vibrant and well-connected community of ideal prospective clients—and juice our brand awareness as we start building out the website’s educational content.
We had no idea what to expect, going into this thing…and the amount we learned through the weekend can only be measured in magnitudes of infinity.
Don’t forget your earplugs
The first thing you notice, coming into this motorsports world, is that it’s incredibly loud.
Shrieking cars doing warmup laps around the “Carousel” corner of the track nearest the parking lot; a scattered horde of generators grumbling their steady sullen workload; announcers squawking from the grandstand speakers… all echoing out of this amphitheater valley, where the squiggly racetrack sits nestled in the hills at the edge of wine country.
Then you crest the hill from the parking lot and descend into the bustling festival atmosphere of the “Paddock”—an organized tetris board of food trucks, vendor booths, and custom double-decker tractor trailers with huge awnings unfurled from both top edges, stretched high over built-in struts…bivouac workshops lined with organized tools, where the team mechanics work tirelessly tweaking and fixing and keeping these cars in pristine precision shape.
Our branding stood out from the other white cars—especially the big purple octopus on the hood—but having seen the actual physics of the race now, I’m brimful with ideas for making the car really pop, when it’s time for a new wrap job.
The logo itself drew lots of admiration—and we plan to capitalize on that for the next race in Austin, with quality stickers and branded sunglasses and refillable waterbottles (with stickers already on), plus hats Ethan can sign.
We’ll also be ready next time with a booth full of event-specific strategies for drawing the Attention of passersby amid the noise…keeping their Interest and playing on their Desires, with specific Actions they can take to bring them in as leads.
Meanwhile we also enjoyed plenty of non-work activities as we soaked up the high-octane fervor of Toyota’s Raceway event—which like any good carnival, offered thrill rides and long lines in the rain:
Learning never stops
Coming into this event, our nascent client-acquisition strategy revolved around networking and building relationships with the business owners and wealthy enthusiasts who pack these outdoor arenas of speed and fast-twitch frenzy, for 45-min relentless sprints.
And we did enjoy a good deal of that, in some very important ways…
But after a weekend immersed in the culture and tumult, a new angle became clear—now that we understood the average age of these race car savants (many too young for a driver’s license) and the fans who lined up 300 deep for their autograph gauntlet—which inspired a slight pivot in our offerings and strategy.
More on our new “Financial Tutoring Youth Package” (or whatever compelling name I come up with) once we’ve developed the idea some…
But here’s one small example of the sort of youthful missteps Octopode’s new service will help prevent:
Hi, I’m Paul and I’m a financial dunce
Many years ago, I set up my Roth IRA on Vanguard’s convenient app. Since then I’ve maxed out annually whenever possible, but otherwise mostly ignored it…thinking I was doing pretty good, on the right track.
This weekend my client took one glance at my app dashboard and pointed out that it was set to 70% bonds for steady security—instead of weighed toward stocks for longterm growth.
“This would be the ideal setting for like a 60-year-old man,” he told me. “You’ve been making 4% growth instead of the S&P average 10%.”
Well shit.
I don’t even want to know how much that extra 6% would add up to now, after so many years…but I’d pay a LOT to go back and not make that incredibly costly mistake.
If only I had Octopode’s Youth Financial Intelligence Kit back then, to show me how to adjust my engine-choke appropriately to get the most out of the meager fuel I put in…
Anyway, here’s Ethan Goulart (and his Octopode car) in action: