w/ Molly Pittman, Smart Marketer
Step into the rebellious side of marketing with this episode of The Unofficial Shopify Podcast. Molly Pittman from Smart Marketer joins to rip up the rulebook on conventional advertising. We dive into the creation of "Goodsellas," a grassroots, "Goodfellas"-inspired commercial that flips traditional marketing on its head. Their conversation reveals the intricacies of creating a commercial that’s not just a spoof, but a smart, cost-effective marketing strategy. This episode is more than just a behind-the-scenes glimpse; it’s an invitation to reconsider the power and potential of creative thinking in the digital marketplace, challenging listeners to think differently about the intersection of commerce, culture, and creativity.
Kurt Elster
Today on the unofficial Shopify Podcast, I want to share an experience with you that was rather unusual for me, uh probably probably unusual for you too. I recorded a Facebook ad with Ezra Firestone. Okay, that alone does not sound wild, but when Ezra Firestone does it. It it can get a little wild. He had 30 people, I believe, cast and crew in New York, people flying out from all over the country. To film a good fella's spoof parody that would be used as a Facebook ad. So Facebook ads uh We we need the thumbstoppers, we need the hook. People are jaded. They've got just glorious colors from social media going into their eyeballs, and it's up to you to put the right set of colors together to get them to stop scrolling for a second. and maybe making a parody of a movie they love, and really putting in maximum effort, whole assing it, is the trick to do it It just it uh a wonderful experience. And so while we're there, uh after we recorded that day, you know, we're we're still uh high on our achievement. We I sat down with Molly Pittman uh who works with Ezra at Smart Marketer um and we we discussed why someone might do this. You got do that and your other line. We got Molly Meatball over here. Hey, cause you did that thing for me, I'll give you 10% off. Come on Your ad budget's gotta be big and ju I think we go with that. That's why alright. We're cracking ourselves up with we're so funny. Why? What are we doing?
Molly Pittman
Well Kurt, we've had a big day here in uh upstate New York and we filmed a commercial.
Kurt Elster
Well all right, when you say commercial, this was like shot on iPhones. What did we do here? No, we had a pretty intense
Molly Pittman
full-fledged shoot, like a professional video shoot.
Kurt Elster
I noticed there was well how many people were involved?
Molly Pittman
Probably about 30. I would say like 10 were smart marketers, Zippify people. 20 were friends of friends that uh you know uh came to to help and we had professional video gear. We were in a bar. Like 9 a. m. smelled like college.
Kurt Elster
Like we rented it. We had not just appeared.
Molly Pittman
No, no. They they knew we were coming. We rented out a bar for a couple of days to do this shoot. We had props uh some of them in which you actually uh hand cut a lot a lot of crafting went into these props. I did produce some props. Yes, we got some meatballs from Subway. There were yeah, prop meatballs. Pasta was made the night before.
Kurt Elster
So clearly there is a there was a lot of fur. There's a uh particular stereotype of Italian Americans that's occurring here. What what was the theme to this commercial shoot?
Molly Pittman
Okay, so today we did something we love to do at Smart Marketer, which is create movie spoof ads. We put these on YouTube, we put these on Facebook, Instagram, we run them as paid ads. This is probably the seventh or eighth time that we've done this. And this was a spoof off of Goodfellas. now known as good sellers. And the goal was to entertain people, make them laugh. Um and also tell them about our smart e-commerce product, which you are also a a part of that.
Kurt Elster
Uh and I think I think they need to watch it though. Surely they need to watch it. I think it it probably works. You know, as it as an audio adventure, but if you've seen goodfellas and you wanna do this thing justice, check the link in the show notes. This thing is just Phenomenal. I'm thrilled to have been a part of it.
Molly Pittman
Yeah, let you gotta see Kurt as a bartender, guys. If you listen to this show, you've really gotta see Kurt and his element. You thought he was a good podcast host? Wait until he's part of your commercial.
Kurt Elster
It turns out yeah, all of I've been training for a ridiculous bit acting part as a bartender. Complete with gold chains, which I kept. I took my prop gold chains home.
Molly Pittman
You you looked like a used car salesman. Nothing against that.
Kurt Elster
I felt like one too. Gil's gotta make a sale. Uh the so this I mean this took two days, a ton of prep work. If surely this cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Molly Pittman
We did it on a budget, like we're getting good. We own a lot of the camera equipment. Okay. The bar was not that expensive People flow in flew in, so there's some cost there. Like there was some cost, but it's probably not what you would think. Like I would say we probably spent like 10 to 15k.
Kurt Elster
And the you know it if if I had to guess I would have gone with thirty. Yeah, no we didn't. Yeah. Okay. Cause it you know, seeing the finished result really impressive. I was like this had to have cost more. Um what that still you said you're using this for Facebook ads?
Molly Pittman
Mm-hmm.
Kurt Elster
You spent 10 to 15,000 making a Facebook ad? Just one. You're a maniac. Hey, it works. What what has possessed you to do that? How how do those unit economics make sense?
Molly Pittman
Well, I think it's something that's naturally fun for our team. You know, Ezra and Josh, who also works with Smart Marketer, uh Ezra and Josh work together almost every day. They're both very creative and funny and kind of uh came up with this idea back in the day to do the ad father uh which was uh obviously a godfather spoof. We did one off of Forrest Gump. We had Back to the Future of Pay Dads. It was me with uh DeLorean knockoff. There's the big Lebowski. So The this is a theme for us and it allows us to well again, it's something the team likes to do, right? Like these are fun projects which I think in this industry sometimes things can feel a a little bit dull sometimes. A little corporate. Yeah, that's why we like to do it because the team likes to do it. Like Kevin was directing, Ruben wrote the script, like everybody plays their part. So I think it brings fun energy and then I think I know that the market feels that. You know, sure it costs ten to fifteen thousand, but If we sell, you know, 10 smart e-commerce courses from it, we'll make our money back, which we definitely will. Um so these are assets that make us way more money. uh than uh than you would think, right, because we're always running traffic to them or at least when we're during a launch of that product Um, but it's also how we make the market feel. You know, our market can be kind of boring, especially when it comes to ads, right? And um the these are assets that at events or when I'm on podcasts, people are like, huh. I saw you in that Pack to Future ad. Uh and it's it's so different.
Kurt Elster
So all right, what I'm hearing here is find the fun for the resources and assets you have. So like within your team, there was this common theme. Kind of everybody enjoyed this idea and they enjoy making these spoof commercials. And so you're just running with it and they're getting increasingly elaborate because you're getting better at it. Mm-hmm. The it are you gonna hit a limit at some point, or are these just gonna keep getting crazier until you're like producing your own Avengers movies?
Molly Pittman
I don't know. I mean, I never would have thought we would be here having this discussion. I I never would have thought I would have been Molly Meepball today.
Kurt Elster
I think one of the other things I'm hearing is uh zig when they zag, you're like, look, all the other material in the space. That's different. Is
Molly Pittman
Boring. It's not stuffy. And as you guys heard, it was all e-commerce jokes. So it's creative and it makes the market laugh because it's something what when do you hear? Digital marketing jokes.
Kurt Elster
If you hear it, you see it and you get it and you laugh, you now connect with it. And you know it's for you. You identify with it. Okay. I like that. Is this a repeatable process for other brands?
Molly Pittman
Not necessarily. It could be. But it's not something you could force. Like this isn't something that you're like, hey team, we have a new project. Like we're gonna do this. This is something that naturally, okay, you have people on the team that are really creative that maybe like to act or they want to write scripts. That's where a lot of this came from. Kevin and Ruben are awesome copywriters. They were looking for fun projects among the email flows and landing pages and your typical marketing projects. And you know, Josh and Ezra kind of had been making jokes about uh whatever these foos were going to be, and this creativity came together and then it was like, wow, let's actually make this happen. So Yeah, I think it could be repeatable, uh, but it would need to be your own flavor because it has to be authentic. Authenticity's word. Yeah, and it's not just uh yeah, it it's not just a project, right? It it can't be forced. So I think it would look different for every company, but I think every company, sure, there is some sort of creative expression that that could, you know, come about.
Kurt Elster
So then you know, the ad really does nothing to pitch the particular product right up until the end, then hey, the CTA is um what a lead magnet.
Molly Pittman
Yeah, which we've gotten better at because the mistake that we made in the past with these is we would mostly call out products that are only available our mentorships like train my traffic person or train my email specialist. once or twice a year, so then we can only use them once or twice a year, which they're still profitable assets, but we're getting better at okay, let's let's make the call to action something that uh is evergreen that we can run all the time. And would work to cold traffic because we don't necessarily in the information space want to go directly for a pitch of the product like you would with a physical product.
Kurt Elster
And so you're gonna use this for is this evergreen? This one's just gonna run continuous.
Molly Pittman
Yeah. The lead magnet, which is the e-commerce growth map, which we'll put in the show notes. That's something we're running ads to at all times. So it's a really high converting funnel for us.
Kurt Elster
Okay. And so it's worthwhile given, you know, end result is high OV high AOV purchase and Top of funnel is lead magnet, and then we need this really f splashy high production in joke the culturally relevant, authentic thing that is absolutely different from everything else in that space.
Molly Pittman
Mm-hmm. And we don't need it, but we think it's pretty funny. It is pretty funny. And these shoots are so fun and it's different from shooting courses or meeting up at an event. Like it's a great way to bond and show our personalities too, because I think that's a big reason. people come to Smart Marketer. Lots of people have marketing information, but, you know, we all have different flavors. It's not too dissimilar from the Harman brothers or what you see with a lot of e commerce companies with these highly produced kind of funny humor based ads, it's just we are actually the ones that are acting it out and making it happen.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, those really those high highly polished high production straight up commercials. Yeah, people will pay up to like half a million dollars for those. Yeah, it's not you know, I've been familiar with a few of those productions and they're hit or miss if they worked. Right. And they still cost six figures. Right and our ours is very low budget. Yeah, and so relative to that, but like it still has the look. 'Cause you still shot on a really extraordinary camera setup. But I noticed like a lot of it it was rentals and you didn't have to purchase the equipment. Yeah.
Molly Pittman
Some of it you own. Yeah, we own a lot of it and we purchase the things that are unique to that chute. Um, but again, leaning on the strengths of our team. Like we have a great video team. Anthony's been with Smart Marketer for 10 years now. I mean, he is top dog, you know. He knows his stuff. We have Ruben, an amazing copywriter that writes these scripts and enjoys it. We have Kevin who's producing it and leading it and has experience in these types of shoots. And then we're all just kind of weird and funny and w willing to play the part.
Kurt Elster
And Alright, so the f the first this is number seven. When did they get did the budget go up? Was it gradual or was it like all right let's just go for it?
Molly Pittman
And that's a guess, by the way. I don't really I think there's like seven to twelve maybe. Because also Zip Zippify produces these, which I don't really have anything to do with. I just get to watch them. Um I don't really know exactly when the budget, probably when we did Back to the Future and we had the DeLorean because that was an investment. I think we rented it from a guy in Rhode Island. Yeah I've yet to But we needed that.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, that's the the critical piece there.
Molly Pittman
Yeah.
Kurt Elster
But surely renting somebody's DeLorean for a shoot. Not cheap. No. Did you drive the DeLorean?
Molly Pittman
I did not. No, I don't think we were allowed to drive it. Oh. So it was in a garage, very back to the future themed. Josh was the scientist. There's a fog machine going. And the car is just sitting there, and I get in the car and press the buttons and it was pretty fun. We got a link to that one too.
Kurt Elster
Yeah.
Molly Pittman
But you'll see how different that one was, for example, versus um this one. And the reason goodsellers is maybe a little more expensive or whatever you want to call it. is also the amount of people involved, right? So the travel and there were a lot of us where Back to the Future, I think there were just three of us in that one. So that's another way to simplify it. Like you'll see Zipify's Big Lebowski ad. That only has three people in it and they've shot it in the back of a car, Ezra's car in his driveway. I mean there's virtually no cost to that at all. No one traveled there. It was only people that lived near Ezra. Virtually no cost. So there are ways, if you are creative. to do this for almost nothing.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, you have a phone and you can try and recreate the shots from the movie. The script is probably the hard part.
Molly Pittman
I think you should rent a nice camera if you can. That would be the expense because I think it does give it this You get that cinematic look. Yeah.
Kurt Elster
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Molly Pittman
But yeah, you could do it on your phone. But it's more about what how can I connect with my audience? You know, how can I make them laugh? That is something that we miss in today's uh social ads, right? Most of them are logical or emotion or, you know, there's there's another hook used. It's kind of hard to do humor.
Kurt Elster
Why do people Yeah, everybody avoids humor in 'cause it's difficult.
Molly Pittman
It takes creativity.
Kurt Elster
You think a lot of people aren't funny? Most men think they're funny.
Molly Pittman
Most people probably think they're funny. I think that humor is something you can't force. Back to kind of the beginning of the conversation. It just happens. It's like these jokes just develop into these movie spoofs. So I think when we're building most marketing campaigns, it's like there's a timeline, there's a this has gotta get done. And so infusing humor, I think it's even more than creativity. It's just there's not really a lot of space for for that to show up unless I don't know, that's very natural to you, I guess. But for us, that's why they're These aren't even on a timeline, right? It's not like we do two of these a year, or like we purposely don't put structure around it because it's not something we necessarily need to do. We benefit from it, but again, it has to just organically come together.
Kurt Elster
So when you you've got this library of ads, how often are you reusing them? Like what's the what's the life cycle on the other?
Molly Pittman
We're using we use all of them at different times uh during the year. So we're using some that are six years old. That's also what's good about this is that it's humor and it's not based off of digital marketing content. So it doesn't expire. Oh it doesn't date it. You're right.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, these are like 30 year old movies that you're spoofing.
Molly Pittman
And like I said, the only mistake we've made is specifically mentioning products, so that can that screws us up or that could date us. But the content, that's uh I mean, probably in fifteen years. Like, will we be talking about email marketing? I don't know, but Kurt, would you ever create one of these ads for your company?
Kurt Elster
I mean I would love to think I would and I could. I think if I really put if I put in the effort, I think for sure. With experience I you know maybe I get to closer to the level that you're produced of the stuff at. But I know that sounds like a challenge. Maybe I have to now. I think you should. I did have just a oh go ahead. I did have a ton of fun playing Carter Bandon Brandon. I mean you played him well.
Molly Pittman
You whipped that cigar box out with the ten percent off. I mean But if I walk through, you know, if you wanted to do this, kind of walking through the process, I think it first starts with the idea, which does take time. then that idea, whoever comes up with it, and it's usually two people or three people together building like good sellers that we just shot has been a joke or like an ongoing conversation for probably five years. So this is closing a a loop on that. So whoever in this scenario, it was mostly Ezra, Josh, and Ruben. They brainstorm, we all agree on the idea. And then that goes to the copywriter, in this case, which was Ruben, which made it even funnier, I think, because he was part of the creation of the idea. He writes his scripts. That goes back to Ezra and Josh. They change or add, you know, the jokes changed right up until they were delivered. Like the original script and what you guys see are
Kurt Elster
Yeah, I was there uh the day before the shoot when they were setting up and trying to figure everything out. And so I got to do well, A got to rehearse, but also got to see the process and you know figure out like the lines and the blocking. And yeah, a lot of it was just like im improving, trying stuff, suggesting things, just seeing if it didn't work. Like, oh it didn't work? Okay, let's try something else. Um figure as you go. Like you can't you gotta be flexible in that original plan. Yeah. 'Cause when you you know, best laid plan, like once you're in it is very different.
Molly Pittman
Yeah, I couldn't be there that day, so you also played Molly Meatballs.
Kurt Elster
I did get to uh come flying through a door a couple of times as you're standing. Though like we would We would skip to easier lines, so you know, as like placeholder. So I just like kick the door open and yell Molly Meatballs.
Molly Pittman
I'm impressed.
Kurt Elster
I made a video of that.
Molly Pittman
But yeah, after we agree on the script, knowing that it's going to change, then it more so does become a project in the company. So it's handed over to Christina, our project manager. She's working with Kevin, who's producing and really going to be live producing, and Ruben, who's, you know, helping to make sure everything looks uh in the way that he sees it in the script. And that's when we go into planning mode. So, you know, everything's booked, the dates are decided on, the travel's booked, the crafts are ordered to make our props, you know, whatever that we need, everything is then scheduled mostly by Christina. Um, and then, you know, sometime before the shoot, you know, this time a few days before the shoot, Ezra sent us all a video. Reading through the script, explaining how, you know, what the vision was, how the line should be read if possible, just explaining any details that were needed. And then we show up. You guys did the day before. I couldn't make it. I was uh at some meetings at Facebook. I kinda wish I was with you guys.
Kurt Elster
We We did have fun. Yeah. It's a lot of standing around. It's also a lot of fun.
Molly Pittman
Yeah. Shoots are a lot of standing around. That's why I sound like I do right now.
Kurt Elster
Your I heard your Facebook event was pretty good.
Molly Pittman
It was super cool. It's like 200 marketers in a room.
Kurt Elster
Um all right, so we got the process here.
Molly Pittman
Yeah. And then it happens. We missed that part. So rehearse You guys figured a lot out the day before and then the day of, you know, we had hair and makeup. We got all dressed up. You had your chains on. I had my big gold earrings on. Um, and you know, w and most of you know this if you've done anything with video, but what you see that's probably two minutes long, I mean, that took Six hours or so?
Kurt Elster
So it would be probably eighteen takes on the Yeah, I think it was eighteen takes for that one scene and then that like the the closing scene. That's was like eight or ten takes on its own. But figure we started fit we were there by eight filming by ten like s starting to shoot by ten. And then by three cleaning up. It it is a lot. It's intense. Yeah.
Molly Pittman
Yeah, it went smoothly though. They haven't always gone that smooth.
Kurt Elster
And this was t you know it's one continuous shot. Yeah, it was a question like would that be possible? Could you get one continuous take? Because you know, nobody hears an it well, a few people have a little bit of acting experience. Most people with speaking roles weren't actors. The extras were just like, you know, somebody's neighbor. Yeah. Right?
Molly Pittman
Yeah, we're just marketers. I don't know that And then it you know it goes into post editing and then we all look at the different versions and agree on it and then we plan launching the campaign.
Kurt Elster
So I get that I like the process. It's fun. And your run me through the movies again.
Molly Pittman
Okay, these are the ones I can remember off the top of my head. Yeah. So we have Forrest Gump Big Lebowski, Back to the Future, Goodfellas, Good Sellas. Good sellers. I'm blanking on the other ones. They'll come back to me while we're talking. So those are all cultural touchstones. Mm-hmm. Which Also, uh, a weird nuance here is I have only seen probably twenty movies in my life. What? Yeah. People think I'm weird. I don't know. I do think you're weird. I am very weird. And so I actually don't have references for these movies. I watched them before, obviously, just to to get a feel. But What's funny is that I still find them entertaining. So I don't think you have to have actually watched the movie to I think you appreciate it a lot more if you have. Um, but that's something I wanted to point out. Like people find it funny a lot of times even if they don't have the reference.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, I guess I enjoyed the ad father and like everybody's familiar with it. I've never seen it. The Godfather. I forgot that.
Molly Pittman
Yeah. I've never seen it. Yeah, I mean, how can you not laugh at Ezra talking about a cannoli?
Kurt Elster
Um Goodfellas though that's like you a movie I've seen two dozen times. And so knowing like oh yeah, this looks like very much has the feel and the tone and like the movement. that that movie did, that added legitimacy to it, like just made it really fun. Um one of the th like before product launch, often advice is like, Hey, you you gotta validate this before you go build out this thing before you invest the money. Validate it, figure it out. Do you do any validation here or you're just that confident?
Molly Pittman
Well, we know that the thing we're gonna promote is something people want, right? Whatever the lead magnet or the pro whatever the call to action is. We know that's something people want. So I know that in the way of the offer, okay, that's been validated. We would never create one of these around something that we didn't know if it was gonna sell well. Um, but no, we don't know how the actual ad is gonna perform. But in our space, it's not like also this is not a B2C space where people are used to seeing humor and you know these uh more highly produced assets. So in the marketing space especially it just quote unquote hits differently as the cool kids would say. It's different. It's different. Yeah. Vibe check. It's different. Uh because most people are not putting this much effort into the rounds.
Kurt Elster
It's funny that like B2B marketers, advertising to marketers, they phone it in. They're like, look, you see through the smoking mirrors. I'm just not gonna bother.
Molly Pittman
Yeah, it's like selfie video in my car, you know?
Kurt Elster
Oh yeah that's when I think of marketer videos it's always the selfie video in the car.
Molly Pittman
Do these are people still doing that? I hope not, but I s I don't know. I still see it in my newsfeed, sadly. Like I wish it wasn't happening, but it is.
Kurt Elster
Years ago, I used to upload a weekly vo vlog in which I just monologue in my car for like twenty minutes on a topic. Do we have access to this? I'm pretty sure all that stuff's still up.
Molly Pittman
Can we link to that in the show notes?
Kurt Elster
Yeah, why not? I'll link to it in the show notes. I can't wait to listen. And that's how I was driving a manual car too. That's a lot of work. Was it really jerky Nah, it wasn't bad.
Molly Pittman
Wow, you've you're steady.
Kurt Elster
I mean if I would strap the phone to the I would just use two zip ties and I would just zip tie my phone to the um the sun visor. And then I would just drive around and like practice extemporary new speaking and then I didn't edit it. I just uploaded it like that. Just exported from the phone and uploaded. It was like noodled it. Anyway, that's how I got 3,000 subscribers on YouTube. I couldn't believe it.
Molly Pittman
That took some effort. I didn't expect you to say sip ties. I was imagining you driving with your just holding it in your hand Oh, but yeah, I I will again caveat that this is not for everybody, but no matter who you are, what type of business you have. I will encourage you to ha how can you bring some humor and true cre creativity into what you're doing? Because it you know Go the opposite direction of what other people are doing in your market. And that is going to show up way different for everyone depending on who they are and their team. So the takeaway here should not be, okay, I'm gonna hand this process to my team and tell them, hey, we're making movie spoofs now. No. Like smart marketer. That's gonna happen though.
Kurt Elster
Somebody's gonna sit and look we should make this. And they're like, are you serious? Yeah, we're gonna
Molly Pittman
We're gonna see movie spoofs more after this podcast episode probably.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, we should be so lucky.
Molly Pittman
I hope so. Go do it. And if look, if this is inspiring to you all and this sounds exciting and you have the resources Tear it up. There's nothing more fun that you could create in your business. Like this is the most fun thing we do.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, it did it is in part team building exercise, isn't it?
Molly Pittman
Yeah, and even if, you know, obviously we can't bring the whole team. I think we had ten people there that were either smart marketers, Zippy, or you, who is now, I guess, on the smart marketer. team and we have 50 other employees that didn't come but they get to participate in seeing the end result and thinking it's hilarious and reading the script and giving feedback So even if they're not present, it's still a it's a feel good. It's a we do this in my company. Nothing gets more comments for us on social media platforms than these ads because people think they're funny. They want to let us know. They want to give props that, you know, we went out of our way to create this. And that really helps from an ad perspective because we know more social proof sends positive indicators, CPMs lower. So it really is a great ad type too because of that social proof. Like I said, uh this I hear about this all the time. I'll see people at events or, you know, be talking to them in one of our courses and They remember it. You know, that they engage with us and that ad pops up. Um, and that's really cool. That's relationship building. I mean, that's truly marketing, in my opinion.
Kurt Elster
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Molly Pittman
It's so cringe. You will I've also been educated by Kurt the last few days on Gin Z slang. So cringe is one of them.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, my uh my teen sons who will tell you uh just about anything we do is like is try hard. That's a real, that's a brutal one. Try hard.
Molly Pittman
We were try hard today.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, we were we were trying very hard and that is cringe. There's like a 26-year-old listening to this and like just on the highway opening his car door and rolling out. Nope.
Molly Pittman
We're truly millennials in it, showing. Hey, no cap. But Kurt, what what was your takeaway as a participant?
Kurt Elster
It truly it embraced the cringe. It was like this I push myself way out of my comfort zone to do just an absurd character act, just an outrageous thing, for something that will be seen by thousands and thousands of people for years to come. I just like the worst Italian-American accent, the whole gold chains uh just ridiculous.
Molly Pittman
See, I would have never have thought it was out of your comfort zone. Like you were the most comfortable person. And why is this normal to me? That's what I'm realizing right now. I'm like, wow, yeah, that's that is what we did.
Kurt Elster
The Yeah. And now I Cause once once it did it and embraced it and saw and like there's you know the um another guy there Josh who was like really really leaned into it hard from the moment we walked in there and he just looked like he was having so much fun. And when I saw that, I was like, all right, I need to match that guy. And that's not easy. And so once I like was c concentrated on doing a good job, I don't want to be the bottleneck in anyone's process. And if it's like you don't you don't want to be the bottleneck in a one shoot scene. And if it's like, all right, you gotta go hard on cringe to make this work. Deal. I'm in. And I did it. And it was it was all like the result worked That's my takeaway. Embrace the cringe if you want to make good marketing.
Molly Pittman
What did you think when we reached out to you about this and what did we even say?
Kurt Elster
It well, it was like, hey, it we're gonna shoot a commercial. It's a parody of the movie Goodfellas, it's called Good Cellas, and you'll get a character in it, uh, in a line, and you know, would you wanna do it? And I didn't ask any follow-up questions, just committed promptly, enthusiastically, because I had seen the other videos, because I had read the comments on them. I'm like, I wanted to see what other people think of this. I was curious and like, you know, it's you know, life cry emoji, you know, cry emoji, all that they but people loved it. It was very positive. And so it's like, all right, you know, they have it knowing that, like I I want to be a part of that, why not? And I'm glad I did.
Molly Pittman
Yo, we have to tell you where the meatballs came from. Oh, the meatballs. So the meatballs were obviously important to the story. And I didn't think about us actually having real meatballs there. Like my mind hadn't gone that far. And Reuben and Kevin went to Subway and requested meatballs or a meatball sub without the bread. Just the meatballs.
Kurt Elster
This poor guy used to work at Subway. He's trying to close. Yeah, it's like 8 30 at night. These two guys are like, hey, uh weird question. You got any meatballs? We just we just need only meatballs. And he's like, how many?
Molly Pittman
He gave them ten meatballs for free.
Kurt Elster
And then he went home that night and was like, these two guys came in and they did something weird with these meatballs.
Molly Pittman
I just needed ten meatballs. Also a caveat too here is we're upstate New York in a really small town. This isn't happening in like New York City or LA, which makes it a lot cheaper, but also people were very confused by
Kurt Elster
Oh yeah, we're just moving camera equipment out and a guy runs up and he's like the whole he like had the it was a 40-year-old man on a skateboard, which are that immediately I'm like, well that's odd. We're in his Irish pub. And he had kind of a a an innocence about him and he's like the whole town's talking about you're filming in there. What and he was like, what are you guys filming? Aw geez. It was a little odd. We're like, are we getting is this a hustle? Are we getting robbed?
Molly Pittman
They think that some huge corporate company is shooting this like crazy highly produced commercial.
Kurt Elster
In you know, McNulty's pub or whatever it was. And it's just us. And it's like, uh no, it's like an in joke for a few people. These guys are just real maniacs. I don't know, swing for the fences. It's like I saw what was possible today.
Molly Pittman
Let us know what you guys think. I'm inspired.
Kurt Elster
Yeah. Tap, swipe up, swipe right. You just click the link. Yeah. Paul at your phone until you get the episode notes up. Ask Siri. esque serie. And we'll include all that um links to all these things in the show notes because they're they're too funny. Um but Good Sellers. Good sellers is a commercial we filmed. Check it out. I hope it inspires you. Just do something creative, fun, different, something that maybe pushes your comfort zone a little bit. Because if your Facebook ads aren't working, uh maybe it's because you gotta gotta step up the game a little bit.
Molly Pittman
Yeah. Action step is just be open. Yeah, be open to. Yeah, push the comfort zone. Well, thank you. Molly meatballs. Thank you, Kurt. I will never forget your role here uh in this commercial and your bartending skills. I was a little underwhelmed, but uh y you you played the role confidently. You looked like you knew what you were doing. I mean, you were wiping down that bar.
Kurt Elster
I wiped down a counter.
Molly Pittman
Yeah, you really offered that ten percent, then I think fifteen percent discount.
Kurt Elster
Um I did really take advantage of the soda gun in between
Molly Pittman
You made a lot of suicides.
Kurt Elster
I did. I was like, all right, tonic water and Red Bull, let's go.
Molly Pittman
But when asked to make any real drink, that was
Kurt Elster
You know, I figured they hit that was not in the budget.
Molly Pittman
Or your skill set, which is we can't be good at everything. Thanks, y'all. Go make something cool.
Kurt Elster
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