Ep 30 - Telling the Story: Finding True Connection to your Audience

VO: 00:00:07

Welcome to Aqua Talks, where marketing meets bold game changing ideas.

Join your hosts, Larry Aldrich and Maddie Dudley as they explore the art and science of cutting through the noise, capturing attention and fostering meaningful connections with your audience.

Whether you're a destination marketer, government contractor, or simply passionate about the transformative power of marketing, Aqua Talks offers engaging discussions, fresh insights and actionable strategies designed to inspire and inform.

Mady Dudley: 00:00:43

Hi and welcome back to Aqua Talks, the podcast for marketers. Whether you're just getting started in the marketing industry or you are a pro or an expert, my name is Maddie Dudley.

I am the public relations director for Aqua Marketing and Communic and this is a podcast brought to you by Brensys Technology llc. I'm joined by my co host, Larry Eldridge.

Larry Aldrich: 00:01:07

Hello, I'm Larry Aldrich, President CEO of Aqua Marketing Communications and Brensys Technology llc. Today we're joined with David Dees, our copywriter editor with Aqua Marketing and Brensys. How are you today? Dave, thanks for joining us.

Dave Deas: 00:01:23

Hey, it's great to, great to be here. Looking forward to sharing some insights and information with everybody and you can fire away. Let those questions roll.

Larry Aldrich: 00:01:37

Well, thanks for working with us, Dave. You do a lot of great work with a lot of your writing and your editing. So first let's just start off with. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

We know. Tell everyone else a little bit about yourself.

Dave Deas: 00:01:51

Sure. I'm Dave Dees. I'm a copywriter and brand storyteller.

Originally from New York City before relocating to Florida, I've been in the business about 15 years and before joining Brentz's, I created campaigns for General Motors and Denny's restaurants and Seagram Americas and the U.S. army and Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines and to name just a few. Earlier in my career I was working at one of the largest multicultural ad agencies in New York, chisholmingo Group.

And there I was helping brands connect authentically with diverse audiences through print, broadcast, outdoor and digital campaigns. And also beyond commercial advertising. I also enjoy mission driven storytelling.

I have experience working in the nonprofits nonprofit sector with United Way and as well as Christianicare, which is one of Delaware's largest healthcare systems, doing a lot of health related work for them. And, and that's basically about me about it. I my style of writing blends strategic clarity with human emotion.

And, and at the end of the day we want to get people to act. So I use those two things to kind of bring those two things together to make, to make, to move the needle as they say.

Mady Dudley: 00:03:18

Ye, I believe I mean, there's so much talk about AI in a lot of our episodes, too. A lot of people talk about AI as a trend, but there's this argument of it'll take marketers jobs, But I believe the opposite.

I think empathy and being human first is going to get us much far further. And you kind of express that with your sort of writing style.

Are there any other trends that you're seeing within the industry right now that you want to bring up?

Dave Deas: 00:03:53

Right. Yeah, AI definitely. I mean, it gives you variations and things, but I think at the end of the day, you have to have that human connection and.

And you only get that by talking to people and interacting with people. I. I did a campaign once for Christiana Care. It was a cancer awareness campaign.

And I spoke with a lot of the cancer patients and people like that that went through their whole cancer program actually to get. To get well. And one of the people I spoke with said cancer, a woman, African American woman. She spoke and she said, cancer picked the wrong diva.

And she had this. That was a great line. And I created a whole kind of campaign, just, cancer pick the wrong diva. It was her attitude.

You're not going to get that from AI. You're not going to get that.

Mady Dudley: 00:04:45

I love that.

Dave Deas: 00:04:46

No one's going to give you that. You have to get. You really. You have to stay in touch with human emotion and people.

One thing, when I was at working at the Multicultural Agency in New York, the owner, Sam Chisholm, who's one of the pioneers of multicultural advertising, he used to say to you have to. To reach the head, you have to touch the heart. And that was sort of the theme of the entire agency.

And we used to find these authentic little pieces and things or things people say or how they phrase things to. To wrap a campaign around so that you can resonate with an audience, whether it's African American or Latin or. Or general market, you need that.

You need that. But I remember when that woman said, you, cancer picked the wrong diva. I said, oh, my God. And no. And you have to.

You're listening for things like that to pick up on those types of things. AI will never give you that.

Larry Aldrich: 00:05:41

Even with AI, I still think it's about how you use it. Know how to use it.

Dave Deas: 00:05:45

Right.

Larry Aldrich: 00:05:46

When you use it. And whatever topic you're using it for or technology, you have to have an expert in that field managing the prompts and edits.

Dave Deas: 00:05:58

Sure. Exactly. And you have to interact with it also and push it.

It's almost like I'm a. I Feel like I'm a, a creative director when I'm working with it because it's like, okay, I got a team of copywriters out here, AI and they're going to be feeding me all of this stuff and you have to interact with it at that level. And how about. That's the way I do it. I can. How about try like this. I like what you did here, but what about this? What? Why don't we try this?

Why don't we use a rhyme?

Why don't we use something and you try to interact with it almost like you're talking to people and that's what they want us to do actually I think is interact with robots in the future and going to, and this is the way it's going to be. You have to, the more polite you are to it, it reacts, it responds better than just giving it commands and things like that.

So all of that is part of the process.

Mady Dudley: 00:06:45

You have to really hone in more on your editorial skills at that point then and really being like a creative director of the storytelling. So that's really cool. Some of the. Oh, sorry. Did you have something to say to that?

Dave Deas: 00:07:00

Well, as far as another thing with, as far as technology goes, QR codes also is a big thing I think also. And that helps, I think just getting a bigger message out there and, and I think that's an important part of advertising as well now.

Just dropping QR codes, whether it's in a brochure or, or an ad or billboard or it kind of creates this seamless cross channel experience and it's, and it's interactive and engaging and people can get more information. You can get them to your website and get, and get information out there, right?

Mady Dudley: 00:07:34

Yeah, I love that. So you have worked with some really big brands as you mentioned. One that stands out though is Royal Caribbean.

Tell us a little bit about Royal Caribbean's destination. Wow. And what you had to do with it.

Dave Deas: 00:07:49

Right. Yeah. Royal Caribbean. I worked, started working with them at an agency up in New York before joining them in Florida.

And I worked on a broad range of projects with them, from brochures to broadcast.

You know, when you think of a cruise line, they're, they're not only reaching out to people taking a vacation there, there's a whole, there's trade shows that they want on board the ship. They want people to book trade shows, they want people to book weddings on board the ship.

So you have all these different things going on, business to business as well as business to consumer.

And I was Writing of brochures in or hitting all those different sectors for whether broadcast, it was digital campaigns, emails, even a simple reminder not to not throw garbage off the side of the ship. Messaging non stop. So you go into this business thinking you're doing all this fancy television and all this stuff.

We need a message to people not to throw garbage off the ship. Okay. It's important, it's important that that's all part of the whole ecological.

And keeping everyone, keeping the oceans free of garbage and everything. So people have to be reminded of just simple things like that.

So that, that's, that's, that that was but one thing great about working on a cruise, working for a cruise line. You get to work in so many different industries.

It exposes you to casinos, restaurants, water parks, beverages, wine and spirits and hotel operations and shore excursions, theater. So you, you're marketing all of that stuff, all of those different sectors. Shore excursions alone.

I wrote hundreds of shore excursions scripts because people, of course, when you get to all these destinations, whether it be in the Mediterranean or in the Caribbean and, and Asia, all over the, all over the world, Middle east, there are, there are all these different shore excursions people can take. So you, you're constantly running those type of videos in the cabins on board the ship so people know exactly what's happening in the next port call.

And you want to keep those fresh and exciting and interesting also and compelling. So you're always coming up with ideas and things that you know.

Larry Aldrich: 00:10:21

So with all of that diversity and different writing that you've been doing for all of these different industries, and I still bring one that you haven't done yet with branches and the federal government. So you've been working with acwa, doing great there.

Now you're learning and seeing some federal work, some federal writing, some federal projects with the VA that we work with.

And now you're looking at different types of health care and veteran healthcare, all the different federal agencies and all the different projects and missions that they have. It's almost like opening a whole new world working with those other, in all those other industries.

Does that make it feel a little less intimidating for you to go into a whole new genre of, of writing and, and editing and, and seeing words, content. Excuse me.

Dave Deas: 00:11:16

Not at all. Because at the end of the day we're just trying, I'm just trying to communicate with people and I love the challenge of doing that.

Whether it's with a, a veteran, you know, trying to get health care or get benefits or something like that or, or, or Someone trying to book a cruise and, and for their family. I mean, the challenge is, is. Is in.

It's more in the creativity of coming up with a way to reach those folks and bring them into what we want to get them to take action at the end of the day. So that, that to me, has always been the challenge.

Larry Aldrich: 00:11:48

Yeah.

Dave Deas: 00:11:49

And, and, and it's very competitive. I know in New York, we used to.

When I was working on Seagram Americas, which had Crown Royal and all these different alcoholic beverages, Canadian whiskey and stuff. They partner and I, the booze brothers, because we used to do all of these. And, and we.

There would be three teams of people working on just one Christmas ad for Crown Royal, and we would be doing that all summer. Just one Christmas that would be running on out of home. And this is all these things. And it was.

The budgets are insane on all that stuff, but they have three creative teams, plus the creative, a creative director and his assist to be working on. Working on that same thing as well. So you're competing. I love the competition. I love that.

Getting into that whole competitive thing, that's what's always kind of going through my head. Even when I'm working on and not competing at that level, I don't care.

I'm still trying to get the best work out there because that's sort of my background in training. And, and, and, and you just kill it out there and get people to take action.

Mady Dudley: 00:12:59

Yeah, absolutely. So what advice do you have for copywriters getting started?

Dave Deas: 00:13:07

You know, you write long, write a lot, and then you cut it down and. And then you cut again. You want to keep things as tight and concise as possible because, you know, I know in New York, everything was just.

There's so many messages coming at you all day. And when you're in that environment, you have to be quick, bold, call to actions, have to be tight and everything.

So you're competing, and that's the way it is even on the Internet and, And everywhere now. So. And on your cell phone, all of that stuff is coming at you. So you got to be tight, quick.

When I used to do billboards, they used to say, you have to. They were only 11 words. I think was the maximum you can put on a billboard, on a highway, and, and you.

And you would have to kind of boil down the entire. Whatever you're saying into 11 words. I think today it's even faster now with the Internet and cell phone everything, it's.

It's probably five or six words, and that's all you get. And you got to make that those words hot and, and, and get people excited with those.

I would also tell people copyright to understand who the target audience is. That's the first thing I look at whenever I take on a project. Who is this target audience? I think the best brands know who their audience is.

Royal Caribbean definitely knew who their audience was, how much money they earned a year, what they, how they define the vacation and just all of that information. The more you know about your audience, the more you can fine tune and, and, and, and create advertising that connects with people.

So if you, the surveys, you have to do surveys and get information like that to the creative team so that we can look at things like that. Because all of that, you know, we're not in this just to create ad. Beautiful ads and fun copy and all this kind of stuff. Stuff has to work.

At the end of the day, clients will find another agency that's gonna, that's gonna get people to call the phone number, click on the button, click, learn more. All of that, that's the goal. At the end of the day, no one's doing that.

And when you just have all these beautiful ads that even award winning ads don't necessarily always click with the population.

And I mean we were doing stuff with I believe, well, Pensacola and all these different Florida destinations and we were reaching out to people in Alabama for instance. So Alabama is going to be different than Florida. It's going to be different than New York.

It's, you know, if you're gonna billboard on a, on a highway in Alabama, you better kind of get to know who Alabama is and what they value and which that they like and that appeals to them and their lingo or whatever. So do a deep, you have to do constantly do deep dives into.

And that's what keeps advertising interesting and fun I think is you're always learning the cultures the United States is.

Everybody speaks English, but it's, it's, it's like, it's almost like Europe with all these different colors and different and different ways people use the English language and, and their backgrounds if they grew up in rural parts of the United States and compared to cities, I mean it's a whole different. When you start driving across the United States, it's a whole basket of different target audiences out there.

So that's what I would tell new copywriters. Definitely know who your target audience is and be willing to learn and be curious.

Keep your mind open to learning about Indians, not just one big American people. It's a lot of different Cultures out there. Yes.

Mady Dudley: 00:16:49

Couldn't agree more.

Dave Deas: 00:16:51

And also that the br. When you, when you hand it, as far as giving a creative brief, make sure the client is on board with all of these things as well.

Otherwise you'll have a moving target. You know, you have to sometimes use nailed clients down and, and get them to agree to search, but nail down.

And that's what, that's one thing great that we do in Princess Aqua. We do. We, we get the clients involved, involved at the very early part of this whole process.

So that, and walk them through the whole what we're going to do to solve their problem. And, and, and once you have buy in at that level and everybody knows what we're doing, then we can start, you know, not wasting time.

Larry Aldrich: 00:17:37

Once you know your audience and understand your audience. Do you have a creative checklist for effective destination marketing?

Dave Deas: 00:17:46

I like to have like one clear idea, a single line.

Everyone can repeat, you know, coming up with a tagline or a headline or, you know, whether it rhymes, whether it's a fun line, whether it's, you know, it has to meet me. It has to match the tone of the brand, basically. And that's what I did with Royal Caribbean with Destination Wow.

When they, they own that word wow before I came to them and I just kind of turned it into a sort of a, a line. Destination wow. And, and, and, and basically what you were doing with that, you, you know, it all started with one insight.

Guests weren't buying a trip, they were buying a feeling. And wow is a feeling. Destination wow became extended, became like a global rallying cry. Simple.

Simple enough to work across 40 different countries and powerful enough to transform how the brand talked about itself. So you've got wow with the ice skating show. Wow. In the D and the specialty restaurants. Wow. With shore excursions, you got wow with family activities.

There were all these different wow. So I kind of came up with this whole. I kind of packaged it as Destination Wow. And yeah, that's how that, that's how that all occurred.

Which was really exciting because that turned into television, of course, and, and radio and you could use destination wow. And on so many different things.

Larry Aldrich: 00:19:15

Mm.

Mady Dudley: 00:19:16

So how do you take an idea, a big idea, and sell it to a cautious client?

Dave Deas: 00:19:22

Let's see.

You know, I like to have, I like to first after, you know, the audience and the goals of the client and what their problem is and how we're gonna solve it. I like to present three versions of an idea and I do that a lot of times. And that's What I do always work.

Tom, our creative director, who's an amazing creative director, I always send him a variety of thinking, not just one. And, and that thinking is going to be safe, it's going to be a little bit of a stretch, and then it's going to be bold.

And I learned that kind of a new book, I think I. A lot of the advertising, that's what our creative directors have always requested.

I want to see something safe because you don't even know who the client's going to be. Sometimes these people just want to pay their bills and go home and not really put a lot. So you have to, you have to have a SAF option, which is.

All right, this is expected. Okay. All right. Then you have to have something, a little push that pushes it out there a little bit more. And then you want to go bold, crazy.

And that's, and that's the, that's the fun.

I like to go out, out of the, out of the whole realm and push it, push it and see how far we can go just to create reaction because you got to create disturbance out here. There's a lot of people are coming up.

Like I said before, people are hitting you with so many different messages and everything that if you're going to be reserved and safe, sometimes you can get lost in the sauce. So it depends on the personality of the client also. But I like to have three different ideas going in.

One that's safe, one is a little more of a stretch, and one is bold.

Mady Dudley: 00:20:59

I love that. And then you can just combine them too, at a certain point.

Dave Deas: 00:21:03

Sure, sure. Sometimes they will go with something bold. Sometimes they'll go with something fun and humorous.

Also, I like to do visual, you know, quick visual mock ups just to. So that they can see it and, and sometimes.

And that's what I do with Tom, sometimes the creative director, I'll send him, you know, some of these things and I'll just create a quick little visual or something like that with the line and what it's doing and, and then they can show it to a client so a client can instantly get it. It's not the actual ad, but they can actually kind of, kind of put it all together when they see a visual with the line. And that helps also.

Mady Dudley: 00:21:39

Wonderful. I think our last question for you is about a campaign that you have done recently or not even recently.

What is a campaign or project that you've worked on that you're very proud of or maybe something you've seen that you think is amazing.

Dave Deas: 00:21:55

Oh, wow. Well, let's see a recent one. Working with Brentis, we've worked on Pensacola International Airport.

They're going through this major terminal expansion at the airport and it's going to be a lot of construction. It's going to take a lot of time. And they were concerned.

They wanted to help travelers understand how temporary disruptions would lead to long term improvements. They wanted to build community confidence as they went through the, their, this major expansion.

And, and so I kind of came up with a line, a campaign theme growing with you for you and that got into portraying progress as a community benefit.

So the campaign and basically what we did, we transformed everyday travel moments into signs of progress from moving faster for between curb and gate with more gates, so new parking options and we got into new additional dining choices.

You know, we kind of focused on what the reward was going to be for this disruption and we, so we wanted to remind and emphasize the advantages of this expansion. Even though it's going to be very disruptive and everything. But look at, look, look where we're going in the future.

And last I heard the results were doing very well.

They increased their passengers go passenger growth going through Pensacola over other regional airlines in that area by over 100, by like 100,000 people in a year. So people pretty good. Yeah. So people, I think they got the mess and went From I think 3 million to 3.1 million people.

So people understood what they were doing.

And, and, and it built a lot of pride, community pride in that airport by doing that and showing the workers also and, and keeping everybody hopeful and happy going through that airport. And, and where we're gonna, where are they gonna go? The future. Future with the experiences and improved passenger experience and everything.

So that was great.

Mady Dudley: 00:24:10

And congratulations to our client, Pensacola International Airport.

Larry Aldrich: 00:24:15

Thank you for that.

Mady Dudley: 00:24:16

That they, they did reach record breaking passenger numbers as Dave mentioned. So congrats on being a part of that.

Dave Deas: 00:24:24

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Larry Aldrich: 00:24:26

Thank you for being a part of that.

Dave Deas: 00:24:27

Yeah, you're welcome. Growing with you for you. Yeah.

And, but again, when I, when I was concepting lines for that, for that project, I was, you know, again I was going into giving safe lines things a little more stretch, more fun and exciting and bold and everything. Again, it depends on the client and, and you like to give them a choice at the end of the day.

Mady Dudley: 00:24:51

Yeah.

Dave Deas: 00:24:52

So that everybody in that room feels comfortable buying into whatever line the, the company is going to. The client's going. Um, yeah. So yeah. And you, you just want to cover off on all of that.

So that's the line that they embraced, one of the three that I guess we had presented to them.

Mady Dudley: 00:25:14

So it's a great one and it's accurate.

Dave Deas: 00:25:17

Uhhuh. Right. Sure. And it can work on a billboard. Is quick and fast. Not a lot of words. Yeah.

Mady Dudley: 00:25:26

Does a lot with a little. Yeah, that's. That's what makes you so good at your job.

Dave Deas: 00:25:30

That's the goal.

Mady Dudley: 00:25:31

That's the goal. Wordsmith.

Dave Deas: 00:25:34

That's what I said. That's it. That's New York. Fast. Everything's got to be fast. I don't have time. Time's money.

Mady Dudley: 00:25:45

Yep. Well, this has been a lovely discussion, Dave.

Larry Aldrich: 00:25:49

Thanks for being with us.

Mady Dudley: 00:25:50

Thank you so much for joining the podcast today.

Larry Aldrich: 00:25:53

All right, thanks for everything you do with Aqua and Brensis.

Dave Deas: 00:25:56

All right, great, great, great to share some insights and some of my experience. So thank you for having me.

Mady Dudley: 00:26:02

If you would like to learn more about Dave Dees or Aqua, please go to aquatalks.com and look for this episode. We'll have some show notes in there and details about Dave and about us as a company. So go check us out there.

But in the meantime, we'll see you next time.

Larry Aldrich: 00:26:21

Thank you.

Mady Dudley: 00:26:21

Thank you.

VO: 00:26:27

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