129 Generational Marketing - Robyn Bonaquist Sep 7 2022

Greg Bray: [00:00:00] Hello everybody, and welcome to today's episode of The Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine,

Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Weitzel with OutHouse.

Greg Bray: And we're excited today to welcome to the show Robyn Bonaquist. Robyn is the founder and CEO of B-Squared Advertising. Welcome, Robyn. Thanks for joining us today.

Robyn Bonaquist: Thanks so much for having me.

Greg Bray: Well, Robyn, we always want to start out by helping people get to know you better. So, why don't you just give us that brief introduction? Help us learn about you.

Robyn Bonaquist: So, I am a [00:01:00] 40-plus-year resident of Naples, Florida. Moved here right out of college and started my career down here. First in the newspaper business, and then eventually moved into advertising. My company B-Squared has been in operation, we're in our 21st year here now. Always based in Naples, but doing work throughout the state, as well as several international projects

Kevin Weitzel: That's awesome. So, I've got two questions. One, squared? What are we squaring? What is the B and how much more exponentially powerful should it actually be?

Robyn Bonaquist: Well, it's funny. I get more questions about the name of my company, I think than anything. I formed this company with a partner way back when in 2001. He had a company called Burl and Associates. His first name was Burl. So, when we formed this company, he said, well, why don't we call it, Burl and Bonaquist Advertising, and I said, sounds like a law firm. Seeing that my husband's a lawyer, I said, can we not be a little bit more [00:02:00] creative than that? Thus B-Squared was born. B for Burl and B for Bonaquist.

Kevin Weitzel: Got it. I got it. So, let me ask you this. There's one thing that we always get nailed right at the beginning of this interview to just get it out of the way. We need to know something non-business related about you, something personal, that people will only learn about you on our podcast. What say you, Robyn?

Robyn Bonaquist: I have five children. Three biological children and I adopted my husband's two children. So, we are one shy of the Brady Bunch in the Bonaquist family.

Kevin Weitzel: Nice. Do you wanna adopt a 51-year-old?

Robyn Bonaquist: I think I'm good right now, Kevin?

Kevin Weitzel: Oh. Okay. Just checking.

Greg Bray: I didn't know you were, you were looking for a new family, Kevin. I didn't.

Kevin Weitzel: You know, not really, but you know, hey, if they've got a cool place with a nice swimming pool and you know, adjacent to some tennis or something, I don't know. I'd go. I'd go.

Robyn Bonaquist: Yeah, we do have a nice swimming pool and we do live in a country club community. So, feel free to visit.

Kevin Weitzel: What? All right. So, I'll tell you what? You don't have to formally adopt me. You can foster me for just a few vacation [00:03:00] months.

Robyn Bonaquist: Okay. Well, I'll tell you what? You could even catch a ride with my son who lives in Scottsdale next time he's coming out.

Kevin Weitzel: All right.

Greg Bray: Robyn, I do have to let you know, I think this is the first time Kevin's made that offer to be adopted. At least, at least that I'm aware of on the podcast. So, consider yourself special.

Robyn Bonaquist: Yes, I do.

Greg Bray: Well, Robyn, tell us just a little bit more about B-Squared and the kinds of services you guys are offering and, and who you're working with.

Robyn Bonaquist: So, we're considered a full-service agency. So, we do everything that falls under the umbrella of advertising and marketing for our clients. Be it on the digital side of things, traditional media in terms of print, and broadcast media. We do design work. We do everything except very high-end photography and very high-end videography. We will art direct that, but when we're doing really high-end shoots, we always outsource that work.

We have a small, but mighty staff. There are nine of us [00:04:00] full-time, myself included, and I've got one employee who has been here since virtually I opened my doors. So, I feel very fortunate that by and large, my people stay with me for a long time, and I think that's why we've been as successful as we are cause we have a cohesive shop.

My client base is varied. Although, I will say honestly that probably 85% of what we do is in the real estate and development arena. Back in the day when I first started in advertising in the mid-eighties, the company that I worked for then was very heavily invested in real estate and development advertising, and so I kind of learned the ropes through them. So, when I opened up my own company, it was just a natural niche for us.

We developed a good reputation as that reputation grew and prospered, and I love the industry, I figured why recreate the wheel. Now, when I say most of our work is in real [00:05:00] estate and development, we do not limit ourselves. We've done work in hospitality, in tourism, in education, medical, finance, you name it, but I would say most people that know us, know us for the work we do in real estate and development.

Kevin Weitzel: If a company came to you that just did T-squares and carpenter squares, would you work with them, or would be too confusing because of all the squares? No, I'm just kidding. Stupid, stupid question.

Robyn Bonaquist: Well, you know, it might be a little much at five o'clock on a Friday to,

Kevin Weitzel: Oh. Okay.

Robyn Bonaquist: To take in, but we'd try our best.

Greg Bray: The good news, Robyn, is we're only going downhill from here. I mean, that's just. Kevin's on a special place today. I can tell. Well, Robyn, one of the reasons that I'm excited to have you today is you've done some presenting recently at the Southeast Building Conference about generational marketing.

This is a topic that a lot of builders are kind of trying to figure out or understand better. There's always these [00:06:00] nuances and differences, and so I really am excited to pick your brain a little bit about that topic and understand some of the things that you've been learning and why you wanted to share that. I guess maybe as a start, why don't we define that term generational marketing, at least the way that you use it and view it?

Robyn Bonaquist: So, I've been doing this, Greg, this particular talk, if you will, for oh, gosh, I bet it's been close to 15 years. So, as you can imagine, it's morphed over that time. When I started out, I started out talking primarily about baby boomers, and to a lesser degree, members of the silent generation, cause that's really, you know, what we were looking at.

Now, we've got a handful of generations and they've all got their own little nuances and ways that you need to speak to them and message to them. So, my talk has evolved to now include gen Z, millennials, gen Xers, you name it.

Greg Bray: So then, how do you kind of define [00:07:00] these generations? We've heard the words, or the names I think, but sometimes, I don't know, I'm not always clear on where the lines are between them or what those definitions are. Any quick ways to easily remember that and keep them straight?

Robyn Bonaquist: So it's, and it's strange that you would ask that because you can find all different definitions when you Google these generations. Like for instance, gen Z, they say that they were born in the late nineties to early two thousands. Well, that's not much of a definition, and that today they're, you know, 21, 22 years old. Then if you progress on down the line, the next generation is millennials. Now, they do have defined years for them. Those are the folks that are born 81 to 1996, and then after that, the gen Xers are 65 to 1980.

Kevin Weitzel: Boom. That's straight gravy train right there. Some of the finest human beings on the planet, Robyn.

Robyn Bonaquist: Let me guess, Kevin. That's where you fall.

Kevin Weitzel: I just might, I could possibly be in there.

Robyn Bonaquist: And then the baby [00:08:00] boomers, that's the one that everybody's most familiar with, especially in the real estate and development arena. That's who they're primarily talking to these days, are those that are born in the 1950s to 1964, and then the silent generation, or the greatest generation as truly defined, are the ones that were born 28 to 45. So, they're the ones that lived through the depression, and unfortunately, their numbers are waning. So, that's who I address in my talks.

Greg Bray: Alright. So, that's a lot to keep track of when we're just talking about it without slides and visuals and things. So, hopefully, everybody's kind of following along at home. Robyn, when you think about that then, what are some of the things that from a marketing perspective matter from understanding or studying generational differences? Why do we even care about this?

Robyn Bonaquist: Well, because if you think about it and this makes sense. The things that motivate a baby boomer, aren't going to necessarily motivate a millennial. So, the [00:09:00] more time you spend getting to know each of the generations, if you're an ad agency like we are, the better you're going to be at communicating with them.

In this talk that I did, we actually talked about the attention span of especially the younger generations. It's crazy when you think about it. Like, gen Zers are said to have an 18-second attention span, and keep in mind, those are the 20-something year-olds. Millennials have a 12-second attention span. So, I mean, how do you get your messaging across to somebody in 12 seconds or less?

Greg Bray: Is it kind of a challenge though, I'm just gonna kind of be a little bit of a devil's advocate, even though that's usually Kevin's job. Can we really take an entire group across 15 to 20 years and put a label on them, like everybody has a 12-second attention span? Is that really fair to do, or how do we kind of balance that?

Robyn Bonaquist: No, but there's a book. I think the guy's name was [00:10:00] Moser who wrote a book on advertising years and years and years ago, and his philosophy was that in order to communicate to many, you have to communicate effectively to one. He called it your lightning rod target audience, and if you could pick out one person to speak to that might generally, and the word of course generally is important here, represent your target audience who would that be?

He gave a classic example of Jif peanut butter. They decided, when they were doing one of their campaigns early on, that their lightning rod target market was a mom who had school-aged children, and was likely in this day and age, you know, back in the fifties and sixties, a stay at home mom, and thus was born the tagline, choosy mothers choose Jif and it was wildly successful. Let's face it, moms are not the only people that are buying Jif peanut butter, but that's [00:11:00] who they honed in on, and it just proved to be crazy-successful for them.

Greg Bray: And I remember that phrase. That's still stuck in my head. You said that and I went, oh yeah, I know that.

Robyn Bonaquist: When you talk about all these generalities with these different audiences, there's always going to be exceptions to the rule. It makes your job as a marketer a lot easier if you can narrow your focus, cause you're not going to please everybody all the time.

Greg Bray: So, other than attention spans, are there other key differences that help with marketing to understand between some of these generations?

Robyn Bonaquist: Well again, and this is kind of a no-brainer, as the generations get younger, the focus is on social media 110%. While baby boomers use social media, they use it not as much for news gathering and fact-finding, but more as a way to keep up with their grandkids and what's going on in their lives socially. The younger generations use social media for [00:12:00] everything. They get all their news there. They get a lot of their education there. So, that's where your focus has got to lie with those generations. Now, that said, they're still opening emails and reading emails. They're still watching TV, although nowadays they're streaming it. So, your commercials are kind of like money out the window, but If I were advising somebody of where to spend the majority of their dollars, it would be on targeted social media platforms.

Greg Bray: Are there any, I guess we'll call them myths, out there or things that maybe are common assumptions about, well, millennials only like this, or boomers only like that, that are actually not true, that cross those different generations, and maybe they've just kind of become ingrained in our thinking that we need to be careful of?

Robyn Bonaquist: None are immediately coming to mind to me, but there are things to keep in the foreground of your thought process when you're advertising to these folks. Like for instance, there's a statistic that says [00:13:00] 44% of millennials are willing to promote products on social media in exchange for rewards. A baby boomer would never think about that in a nanosecond. Millennials are very in tune with influencers and even some of the younger generations are in tune with influencers cause in their mind, if you are on social media and you've got a huge following, then what you're saying is golden, and you are somebody that people should pay attention to.

Greg Bray: This is Greg from Blue Tangerine, and I just wanted to tell you how excited we are about our upcoming event, The Home Builder Digital Marketing Summit. It's coming up September 21st and 22nd in Phoenix, Arizona. Now, this is an event that you do not want to miss. We're gonna be talking about websites, SEO, analytics reports, how to use social media influencers more, how to improve your online reviews, how to really do everything you need to do to start selling homes online.

Again, The Home Builder Digital Marketing [00:14:00] Summit on September 21st and 22nd in Phoenix, Arizona. Go to buildermarketingsummit.com. Click register. Please be sure to join us at The Home Builder Digital Marketing Summit.

Kevin Weitzel: I find it interesting that there's so much crossover in the types of homes that millennials are looking for and active adult move-downs are looking for. You know, we had Michelle Smallwood on with Holiday Builders Florida, and she said they did an entire ad campaign focused on selling to millennials cause they wanted to just grab some of that market share, and they pre-sold and sold out the entire community in almost record time to almost exclusively boomers, to active adult, and it just blew my mind that they intentionally focused the ad campaign to millennials and that it didn't backfire cause they still sold out, but they didn't sell to their target audience. They sold to their typical audience, which is kind of funny.

Robyn Bonaquist: Well, it's funny because for the longest time, especially with the baby boomer market, they were all looking for these [00:15:00] big, expensive mega mansions cause that was a way to demonstrate to the world, hey, I'm successful. You know, look at me, look at my home. It's a representation of who I am, and that is changing. The last few years that's changed a lot all of a sudden, and whether it's because they're more environmentally conscious, or they're just tired of taking care of the big, beautiful home, and also because they're getting ready to retire, they're thinking about downsizing.

The millennials and the younger generations, they've either seen their parents live in these mega-mansions and they see the work and the upkeep that's involved in them, or they just know for a fact that's, hey, that's not me. That's not my lifestyle. I only need X number of square feet to live in. It doesn't have to be 5,000 square feet. Maybe two is good for me.

Kevin Weitzel: You literally just described me. I'm a gen Xer, but I'm also an old soul. I went from a four-bedroom, red brick home in a pretty prime neighborhood here in Phoenix, and I moved to a suburb into a townhouse in [00:16:00] Gilbert because I didn't want to deal with a yard maintenance. I didn't want to deal with any of that.

Guess what? When you live in a townhouse, they take care of all that stuff. I don't have to worry about it at all. That's the luxury of time because that's what I'm looking for is I want that scarcity of time to not be spent doing menial tasks. So, I went for a smaller square footage. I'm like a little under 1100 square feet, but it's just me and my girlfriend. That's all we need, and I love it.

Robyn Bonaquist: And the millennials, I mean, I know with my children, lawn maintenance, oh my gosh, what is that? I don't want to do that, and I really don't want to have to pay somebody if I don't have to. So, there's definitely some of that mindset for sure.

Kevin Weitzel: Well, who ran the marketing campaign that taught all of us Americans that we have to have these pretty green manicured lawns that aren't natural? They're not natural in almost everywhere on the globe, and yet we all fight for this.

Robyn Bonaquist: That would probably be uh, John Deere, Scott's Lawn Care. Yeah.

Kevin Weitzel: That's exactly right. Yeah.

Greg Bray: It is interesting sometimes where we don't realize some of these expectations have come because somebody was trying to sell us something a long time ago and they did a really good [00:17:00] job. They set it up. Right? I think one of the great classics is the whole diamond engagement ring actually came out of marketing campaigns, back in the day, and now it's just an expectation that's part of our culture and just totally don't realize that we got sold. Right?

Robyn Bonaquist: You know, it's funny, Greg, that when you say, you know, getting sold something, that is, like in the baby boomer generation, that's the antithesis of what they're searching for. They don't want to be sold on anything. They want you to convince them that the benefits of your product or service far outweigh anything that they're going to find elsewhere because once they buy into the benefit analysis portion of the buying process, then they're all in. But if you just come out to baby boomers with a really hard sell, nine times out of ten, it's going to turn them off.

Greg Bray: So, Robyn, when we are in our little creative moments, right, trying to work on our messaging and our campaigns, and how do we reach our market? [00:18:00] We've done this study. We've identified our lightning, what'd you call it?

Robyn Bonaquist: Lightning rod target market.

Greg Bray: Lightning rod target. Right? So, the choosy mom or whoever it's going to be, but then when we look at the ad, we look at it as us, right? I'm not the choosy mom. I'm not the millennial. I'm not the, and I'm looking at this ad going, eh, I don't feel it because it's, not connecting with me and it's not supposed to connect with me. So, how do we do that in our creative process and not get stuck just thinking the world thinks like me?

Robyn Bonaquist: Well, again, the more you know about your audience, the more helpful it's going to be. For instance, we know with the silent generation, which is the oldest generation that we're dealing with, they don't like really bright colors that collide with one another. They don't like collages in their imagery, and they obviously want the fonts that you're using in your printed materials to be big enough that they can read them.

So, even if I'm not a member of the silent [00:19:00] generation, if I'm keeping that in the back of my mind, I can be analyzing those ads, be it digital or otherwise, and make a decision like, yeah, this is going to work or no, it's not. Same thing with some of the younger generations. They place great emphasis on graphics and they love colors. So, the more colorful, the better with them cause it's that visual stimulation that they're looking for.

Kevin Weitzel: Does this mean that I'm just a weirdo? I love the jingles and I love the little catchphrases. You know, choosy moms choose Jif, but I always question, I don't really think those moms are all that choosy. It's just sugar-infused peanut butter. If they're truly choosy wouldn't they want them natural peanut butter?

Robyn Bonaquist: And you may find that true, Kevin, was some of the younger generations, they're a little more conscious about what we put in our bodies than perhaps like my mother was.

Kevin Weitzel: I mean, choosy mothers also preferred Virginia Slims over Lucky Strike cigarettes and both of them are bad for you. How choosy were they Robyn? How were [00:20:00] they?

Robyn Bonaquist: That's a really good point, and it's probably one of the reasons why Jif doesn't use choosy moms choose Jif anymore.

Kevin Weitzel: Yeah. Yeah.

Greg Bray: All right. So, selling houses. When we're trying to sell homes, we see a lot of builders that are actually doing product aimed at a variety of different buyer demographics. They don't always totally focus in on only one. Partly cause they don't want to get so focused that they lose out on a sale. So, is there a way that we can find overlaps in some of these, so I can put out a message that will connect both with millennials and with gen Xers? Or do I really need to have two different campaigns that I'm running to make those connections?

Robyn Bonaquist: Well, and of course digitally, it's a lot easier to do, because you can do AB testing, and you can have one digital campaign that attracts this audience and then you can have another digital campaign that attracts that audience. I think where it's most difficult is with print and even to a lesser degree, [00:21:00] television advertising.

I mean, television advertising, the production of a good television spot is expensive. So, you can't really afford to have one for baby boomers and then have one for millennials and then maybe have one for Gen Zers. So, the trick there in both print and television is to come up with the commonalities.

We know for a fact, everyone to some degree is motivated by emotion, whether it's fear or anger or happiness or joy. I mean, any one of those emotions. If you can tap into that, you can generally reach a wider audience. That's one thing that we always look for, how can we touch them emotionally? You can always reach somebody emotionally and then back up that emotional connection with the facts and figures that are ultimately going to make them cross the finish line, but the real issue is how do you get to them in the first place?

Greg Bray: Have you ever [00:22:00] seen some huge misses? Somebody brings you and hey, our stuff isn't working, Robyn. We've fired the other agency. Take a look at what they did. They were trying to get millennials and you're looking this going no millennial in their right mind will connect with this message. Any examples? You can leave out the names. We don't have to embarrass anybody.

Kevin Weitzel: Yeah. Like, choosy mothers choose arsenic. Any huge misses like that?

Robyn Bonaquist: We've been fortunate that some of the business that has come our way has come via another ad agency because they're just not hitting the mark, and what I usually find in that case is that the agency that's losing the account is losing it for one of a couple of reasons.

The biggest one is to your point, Greg, they're just missing the messaging mark altogether. I used to refer to it as creative for the sake of creative. Anybody can do that. Anybody can come up with cute taglines and well-written headlines and, you know, copy that kind of zings, but if it's not geared toward the [00:23:00] appropriate audience, then it'll miss the mark for sure. That's probably the number one reason why clients who have left another agency come to us have come to us.

Greg Bray: So, are there particular trends that you're watching or looking out for that you think are coming that we should all kind of be paying attention to?

Robyn Bonaquist: Well, I don't know if they're necessarily trends. I mean, everybody's infatuated with TikTok right now and where that's gonna go. I'm 64 years old. I am not a TikToker. My kids are on TikTok all the time and I'm sure my grandchildren will be on TikTok.

Social media is obviously the medium that's evolving the fastest, and so staying on top of that is important. Social media is also the one that ebbs and flows too. I mean, look at what happened to My Space. I mean, that was going to be the platform that shook up the world and it was very short-lived until Facebook came in and just trampled them to death. That's the one I would look out for.

Print media. I don't know that [00:24:00] print is ever going to go away entirely, but it has certainly lost its luster in a lot of markets. I mean, our newspaper in Naples, Florida is now put together in Sarasota and printed in Jacksonville. So, we don't have a lot of local news. I actually started my career at the Naples Daily News, and when I started my career, it had, oh, my gosh, probably 12 sections on a Sunday and however many hundreds of pages, and now it's down to maybe three sections on a Sunday and maybe 40 pages, if you're lucky.

Greg Bray: So, Robyn, you mentioned TikTok, for example, and you even kind of admitted that you don't really get TikTok per se personally. I'm with you there. Right? I don't really understand it. So, how, as a business owner, say, we're builders and our agency says, hey, you need to run a TikTok campaign and we're going, I don't get it. Why would anybody do that? How do we get past that hesitancy? Again, just because it's not something [00:25:00] that we're personally familiar with.

Robyn Bonaquist: Well, that's why I hire young people because they can walk the walk and talk the talk. If you don't personally understand it, or even to a lesser degree, just use it frequently. I think you need to have people on your team that do do it, that do use it, and do understand it because they, in turn, can help you promote it to your client, and convince them why they need to do this.

I'm certainly not one that embraces every single digital platform out there, but obviously, there are ones that are better than others and are going to be around for a while. I think we would be remiss if we didn't make them a part of our marketing programs, especially as our audiences get younger and younger.

Greg Bray: Yeah. So, I guess one of the themes I'm feeling today is we've got generational differences in who we're reaching out to that we need to understand, but we've also got generational differences just within our teams and [00:26:00] within our mindsets of the people who are designing the outreach. We need to try to marry those together to make sure that we're getting the outreach ideas from those who understand who we're reaching out to,

Robyn Bonaquist: And I think that's how you keep everything fresh. If I were the one that was creating all of the content and all of the ads that come out of this shop, it would be pretty darn boring. I can do a good job with some stuff, but that's why I need a good team around me that sees things differently than I do, and they're younger than I am and they look at the world differently than I do. I think that's all important.

Greg Bray: Well, Robyn, um, we really appreciate the time that you spent with us today and the thoughts that you've shared. Do you have any last thoughts or advice that you wanted to leave with our audience today before we finish up?

Robyn Bonaquist: People always ask me, why should I hire an ad agency? I've got a web guy who can do my website and my daughter can do my Facebook page and this person can do that.

Kevin Weitzel: Oh, [00:27:00] just hurt my soul a little bit with that. When I hear that I'm like, oh man, you were planning to close your business. That's just...

Robyn Bonaquist: Yep, and that's what I always say. It's like every company, no matter what your size, no matter what you spend on advertising, needs a brand keeper. If you don't have a brand keeper, that one person in your shop that's responsible for everything that goes out the door, or like in the case of dealing with us, an advertising agency, your messaging is never going to be cohesive and you're going to be all over the place, and even the way that you're positioned graphically to the world is gonna look different from one medium to the next, because every art director is going to have a different slant on it. So, that would be my closing. If you do something, do this.

Greg Bray: The brand keeper. It's a new job title we're going to have to come up with there. All right. Well, thank you, Robyn, so much for sharing with us today. If somebody wants to connect with you and get in touch, what's the best way for them to reach out?

Robyn Bonaquist: Probably just email, and it's Robyn, R O B Y [00:28:00] N@b2ads.com.

Greg Bray: All right. Thank you again, and thank you everybody for listening to The Home Builder of Digital Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.

Kevin Weitzel: I'm Kevin Weitzel with OutHouse. Thank you.