The Ben Mulroney Show - Tony Chapman and the oddest media campaign in years

Episode Date: June 23, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Tony Chapman If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://link.chtbl.com/bms Also, on youtube -- https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

That's right, the show is called Ben Mulrooney Show. I am the aptly named Ben Mulrooney and I thank you for joining us on this Monday. So a few years ago I met a great entrepreneur who became a great friend of mine named Aloka Housha. I now do a lot of work with his company called Trexity and it is poised for great things. And one of the things that resonated with me is just what a great man he is. I'm told being a great boss and a visionary for his business. And I introduced him to our next guest who had him as a guest on his podcast. And I listened to it just a few days ago and the focus of the conversation of so much of the conversation was about fatherhood and it was

just a brilliant, brilliant conversation. So I welcome to the show a father and grandfather in his own right, Tony Chapman. Tony, welcome to the show. Always a pleasure. Who do you have with you here? What's your name? Maxwell. Hello, Maxwell. It's a pleasure to have you here. Thank you for being here. I very much, may I say green is your color? I think you like green. Yeah. Makes your eyes pop, buddy.

Yeah. All right. So what's the plan with Maxwell today? Well, we're going to go to the aquarium. Yes. And we're going to go build sand castles later on in the beach. Oh, wow. And if I'm still standing, I'm going to try to probably go to sleep when he goes to sleep

at seven tonight. I like that. I like that very much. Well, I hope you guys have a great day, but not until we have a great conversation here. But it's great that you have a youngin with you right now, because the first topic that we were going to broach was this idea that skincare lines are trying to, I guess, expand their customer base by appealing to kids. Yeah. My niece Mia, who's literally just turned, become a teenager is obsessed

with Sephora and cosmetics and skincare and skincare treatment. And I was curious why at that age, TikTok. TikTok is a Trojan horse. Parents have got to really open their eyes to what the algorithms they're using, people's obsession with beauty, false beauty stereotypes. Very often you're seeing somebody that's being retouched and TikTok is what's creating this appetite and Sephora is doing a wonderful job

of bringing in consumers. But instead of 12 and 13 collecting Pokemon cards, she saves money. She comes and does chores at our house because she wants things like skin cream, nail polish, face masks. But you know, it's weird to me. I remember back in the day, I mean, just a few years ago, we started banning sugary cereals from promoting on television shows where they knew kids would be watching because it would

force the parents to go buy this sugary cereal. Feels kind of like it's in the same vein. It's not the same, but on the Venn diagrams between those two incidents, there is some overlap. Great insight, you know, it was called pester power in those days. And even in the stores, they would merchandise the cereal boxes that had all the free toys where the kid would be sitting in the grocery cart.

Literally going, I want that. And parents would be pestered to the point of getting it. So they banned a lot of that from television saying it's too young to be approaching kids, even the cartoons. But with TikTok, we don't have the same scrutiny with social media. And so the promises made and what they can offer you is really, I mean, for girls at young age to be so obsessed by their beauty is frightening, especially when it translates to spending so much money, as we know that more often than not, those creams promise a lot, but really deliver very little.

Yeah. And there is, as you said, the cost associated with it can be quite onerous. Let's talk about sort of a brand decision that was made, I guess it was earlier this year, where Jaguar almost seemingly, willingly cut itself off from its storied past of building these incredibly iconic cars and took an odd turn into androgyny. And a lot of people criticized the brand, almost like it was like a Bud Light moment that they had, except turns out that this moment that they had

that was ridiculed by so many translated into interest in the brand. Now I don't know if that means it translated into sales, but more people were aware of Jaguar after the fact. Well, you know, we've heard of spin doctors that spin mud into diamonds. This is the greatest spin I've ever read. First of all, the ad came out without any Jaguar on it.

They took their iconic growler off, which was everything to find the brand. It was as iconic as you could get. It was like a zippo lighter without the clicking top. And then they come out with this ad campaign. Well, they fired the CMO, they fired the agency, their sales are in a tank. They're cutting their profits. For them to say this created interest, it created interest, but it's like when you say any publicity is good publicity, I disagree with that because the interest they created on the brand to me, completely alienated. Everybody's the aspirational aspects of Jaguar.

That reminds me of about 20 years ago when PETA was all the rage and they said, and they believed all publicity was good publicity. And they would compare the monkeys in cages to the slave trade by putting side by side pictures, forgetting how terribly racist that imagery was, or comparing, you know, animals in cages to people in the Holocaust. They're what people are talking about. But they're talking about you because you're morons, because you have lost the plot and you're forgetting the decency involved in the lack of decency in what you're doing. But yeah, not all publicity is good publicity. The problem we all face is attention's

the oxygen of endeavor. I can't persuade anybody to buy anything if I don't have your attention. And people go to these extreme lengths to get it. The stunts that they do. So Pete is a great example of it is they completely alienated so many people and created so much anger with it.

And that's so, yes, did I get attention? Yes. There were people talking about it. Is it all over Reddit? Yes. But did it move the needle the way you wanted it to? Yeah. And ultimately, brands have got to ask themselves, am I moving the needle where I want it to needle? Are you going to sing for me? Yeah.

We're having a radio conversation. What do you think? OK. He said, listen, I promise you, how old are you? Three. You're three years old. Can you know how old I am? Three and a half. I'm three and a half years old.

Did you know that? He thinks he's older, don't you? Maybe I'm a little bit older. Maybe just a little bit older. Okay. I'm a lot older. Okay. Okay.

Let's move on. You know, the Michelin star brand, it came to Toronto. I know it's gone to Montreal. I think it's gone to Vancouver now. It took a long time for it to come to Canada. A lot of people didn't like it. They thought it was going to, you know, it was going to cause a, a sort of chasm in, in, in, um, a Balkanization of, of restaurant, uh, being restaurants

in, in these cities. But I think it's a boon for tourism and that sort of thing. But even Michelin realized that they could improve their system by creating new levels of distinction within their brand. And now they've got sort of this idea of like high star Michelin cuisine for the everyman. Yeah. This is where I find when you have something special, like what Michelin stood for and had

scarcity and you go, when I get that star, that means something. It's material. It ranks me on the search board. It makes people come to the city to experience it. When you start diluting it, what happens is it loses its traction. Now I can understand the owners of Michelin going, we can make a bunch more money. We can get a much bigger audience. But I really am not a fan of when you have something, it was like Alexander Keese. I was working with, and they said, what would you do with Keese? I said, never change it. You had 19% of the draft.

Next thing it was Keith Light. And then there's Keith Sider. And when was the last time you heard of Alexander Keese? Yeah, no, I would push back on that because they're not, they're not handing out more stars. They are recognizing rather than just be the barometer for excellence on for the highest level, they recognize that there is excellence at different levels of the market. Not everybody can access that. So why wouldn't they still be that harbinger for what defines excellence at every

level of dining? To me that would be putting a Four Seasons label on a motel so you could say, well, you know, the Four Seasons is really for the elite. So we'll create a much lower valued property so that anybody could stay at a Four Seasons. But Hilton has a number of brands. But they're different brands. But this is a different brand. Like it's not the Stars. Yeah. You know, it's called called Bib Michelin or something like that. It still has Michelin in it. To me, personally, I would say when you have something so scarce and beautiful to it, never change it. Stay focused on it. I think what it is, it's an opportunity for them to expand their brand, get more dollars in. And I personally would go, should Michelin be

judging who makes the best hamburger or should be that someone like BlogTO? Yeah, maybe, but let's not forget, Michelin's a tire company, right? If they were able to turn themselves from a tire company into the sort of the tastemakers of the highest echelons, then surely anything's possible. Well, listen, you can do it. You've actually got the traction. You've got to do it. My advice to them would be within 10 years, you're going to go, oh, I saw another Michelin.

Oh, you've ranked all this as a hamburger. Is that the same as the restaurant? What's two star? Well, even adding the extra stars. I would have just stated, if you're a Michelin restaurant, you're going to have people lining up and auditioning to eat at your restaurant. But once again, when you get people involved

and you realize there's ways, different ways to monetize your restaurant. But once again, when you get people involved and you realize there's ways to different ways to monetize your brand, very often you create elasticity with it. I am a big fan of when you have something exclusive and scarce, you don't change it. Tony Chapman, the host of Chatter That Matters and so much more. Thank you so much, Maxwell. I remind you, we were just talking about the great places to eat in this city. You tell your grandfather to take you for street meat. It's called street meat. It's great delicious hot dogs. You will never regret it. Okay. Have a great time at the Aquarium, my friend. Thanks, Grandpa. We'll talk to you next week.