Bootstrapped Branding

As the founder of a full-service marketing agency, FIFTEEN, Zack Schneider has decades of experience helping companies large and small distinguish themselves, build brand awareness, and tell impactful stories. We sat down with Zack to get an agency’s-eye view of startup marketing, with a focus on the earliest stages of ideation. How can founders differentiate themselves even before they begin developing a product? What tools and strategies can underfunded entrepreneurs use to bootstrap a marketing function? And what does “brand” really mean at the end of the day?

ASV:  To start, could you talk a bit about Fifteen’s origins, and how you came to work with startups as both an advisor and investor?  

Zack Schneider: Fifteen was founded 15 years ago, timely as it is, by myself and my partner, Greg Neundorfer. I started my first agency when I was about 19 and exited it at 26, at which point I went to an agency called Crowley Webb and Associates, which is still here today - an incredible agency. They made me Director of New Business Development, and after a couple of years I thought, If I'm going to work this hard for someone else, making them a ton of money, I might as well go back to doing it myself.

Greg and I had some relationships in New York that helped us get started. There was a marketing director at Estée Lauder who was kind enough to say, “Yeah, if you have some ideas, bring them to me; I'll be here on Monday.” We decided to pitch her the idea of doing a co-branded campaign with Macy's, where Macy's would pick up half the media and Estée Lauder would pick up half the media, and we would offer gifts with purchase within banner ads, and then drive them direct into store for redemption. It was very trackable at the time, and we knocked it out of the park.  

So that's how we started. We ended up doing the same thing in cities all over and expanding that media significantly over the next few years. Meanwhile, we were growing a team, landing additional clients like New York Philharmonic, Dearfoam Slippers, and a couple of tablet companies out of Toronto. Eventually, we turned our efforts back to Buffalo and built a more robust team of services here. We started investing into startups around that time, building a portfolio that allowed us to help cash-strapped companies by offering advertising and marketing services in exchange for equities.  

Can you talk about working with a SaaS company that made a substantive leap forward in brand awareness or marketing efforts during your time together?  

Look at ACV Auctions here in Buffalo. We were in the room with them when they were coming up with the concepts and ideas. Joe Neiman, Dan Magnuszewski, Jack Greco, and myself were sitting around a table. Joe and Dan had built a prototype of how to disrupt the car auction model and bring a digital experience to it. It was a big enough marketplace and a big enough opportunity, they just needed to get people to try it.  

It wouldn't have worked without all of them. They had Joe, who had the vision of I think we could build this really cool technology, combined with Dan, who could actually build it, and Jack, who could go out and help him raise money and get it funded. It was the perfect storm, and the coolest part was they were in a super antiquated space. We went out to raise money and people would be like, “What’s a startup?” And you’d think, Oh, man, this is going to be tough.  

But they leaned into it and they started to get traction. They were able to take over a large share of that marketplace very quickly, and it came from being true to who they were, staying on the task, constantly reinventing themselves, sticking to their tribe. They knew who their audience was, who they were trying to speak to, and they created a better, more effective experience for everyone, solving a problem that a lot of people didn't even know existed, because there had been no alternative. 

What are some strategies for bootstrapping startup marketing that entrepreneurs who are just starting out can leverage?  

One great option is leveraging schools and college-degree programs and things along those lines, finding kids who are really hungry and eager to gain experience. With them, you have to be very clear about what you're looking for, and in order to execute well, you need to offer a lot more mentorship than you would a typical hire. If you are an entrepreneur and you are the lead visionary of the company, try to find a No. 2 or someone else within your org structure to oversee that aspect of it. Put your investment into a marketing director, and then leverage outside resources for the production capabilities.   

Have you seen the value of production value itself changing, now that LLMs are able to produce a simulacrum of an actual studio setting and there’s a growing preference for eight-bit art and/or homemade, user-generated content?  

Yeah, we all have, with the TikToks and those sorts of things. But even in that space, you're finding that a strategy behind the content is way more important than the level of production that is coming out of it. Granted, production value still has to clear a certain threshold. You have to know how to use camera moves, you have to know how to edit, you have to know general lighting aspects. A lot of the influencers out there still have a production team working to make it look like they didn't even do it. 

As much as AI is there to help, I think AI is going to be more disruptive of larger cinematic productions where you're doing huge shoots. Now you can just put it into a prompt and get that couple of seconds of footage that you need, as opposed to going and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for those few seconds. 

Hence Tyler Perry canceling his $800 million studio expansion.   

Exactly. That's where it's going to be super disruptive. I don't think it will be as disruptive for most brand storytelling, which is about getting to the essence and unique identifier of who you are as a company. What are your morals? What are you championing? Why am I rooting for you? What's your story? Are you an underdog? What is it that gives you that humanistic character that makes me want to follow and be part of that?  

None of that is going anywhere. I think storytelling for brands is way more important than it ever has been. And that really does still require a little bit higher level of production, but not cinematic, studio-level production. Most everything you need, you can buy from B&H Photo. But before you do that, you need a strategy, and you need to understand how to tell your story correctly.   

Say you're talking to a founder who has never thought about that kind of strategy before. What are some of the questions you might ask to help them figure it out?  

When did you start down this road? How old were you? When did you have the epiphany? What were the things in your life that impacted you? What are the biggest challenges that you had to overcome? When did you just feel like you had to give up? When did you pivot? What was the challenge that made you say, “Holy crap, this is what I need to be doing for the rest of my life”? 

As an entrepreneur, you're going down a road that is just the most challenging possible endeavor that you can ever do in your life. It's full of uncertainty. You have to give 100 percent of yourself, and a lot of what you're doing is going to go on the back burner. If you don't have a passion and a story or can't get that out, you should probably reconsider what you're doing. 

Do you have any sources of marketing wisdom that you return to frequently? 

I read a great book recently, 10x Is Easier Than 2x, which is about the process of reinventing yourself at every stage: constantly taking 80 percent of the things that got you to where you are but are now holding you back, and letting all of it go. I think it takes a long time for entrepreneurs, depending on the type of startup, to really learn who they are. They have to be willing to reinvent themselves and focus on the 20 percent that's going to catapult them to the next level. As a company, you have to do that too. Your founders and your C-suite and everyone who got you to one stage may not be the people that you need to get you to the next stage. 

You want to be constantly improving. I think that's the key, right? If you're going after an award, you want to be Most Improved. Stay focused on what it is you're trying to achieve. The process of doing that is way scarier and harder than it seems. All those clients and all those consumers that helped you reach that one point might be what's holding you back from getting to the next point of your growth. It takes real insight and kind of a scary epiphany to be willing to let go of 80 percent of the people who got you to where you are in order to proceed forward to the next evolution of where you’re going as a company.