📰 The Solo Founder Newsletter #102

Burger King had another controversial ad on its hands with the buzzy launch of the moldy Whopper campaign last week. The brand still appears to be winning in some key areas with creative that uses a gross-out concept to promote the message of shifting to a more natural Whopper offering. The "Moldy Whopper" spot accumulated more than 1.7 million YouTube hits at press time following its Feb. 19 debut.

The ad scoring low in terms of driving desire isn't too surprising given the concept's central focus on rotting food. Leaning into an idea sure to stoke a gut-level reaction in many viewers helped boost the ad's ability to capture attention and communicate that Burger King is introducing a Whopper free of artificial preservatives, colors and flavors to its restaurants. More than 400 restaurants already offer the new Whopper, and Burger King plans to bring the item to all U.S. locations by the end of the year.

There are still some ways a mold-minded strategy could backfire, according to Ace Metrix. The firm suggested that Burger King would be wise to not place moldy Whopper ads too close to store locations to avoid putting off potential customers. Several anonymous survey respondents indicated the ad was too gross for its own good, even if it did succeed in conveying a message.

Burger King's effort was subversive in other respects, aligning with campaigns from the brand that are focused on disruption and taking swipes at fast-food competitors. Three percent of viewers surveyed by Ace Metrix made a direct connection to McDonald's despite Burger King never mentioning its chief rival in the campaign.

McDonald's has come under fire in years past for how its food doesn't appear to decompose as one would expect. The chain behind the Golden Arches has made a push for more natural offerings, including a fresh beef Quarter Pounder, in recent years. But some consumer skepticism lingers, and possibly provided an opportunity for Burger King to pounce.

This is a cheat sheet of the industry's most referenced, timeless (or soon-to-be timeless) ads

Marketing is an open-world game.

Every day, you need to choose your way forward:

Path 1: The Easy Road. You play it safe. You use traditional marketing strategies (e.g. paid ads, SEO, influencers, email marketing). You stick to what’s worked for you before, grinding the same marketing channels over and over.

Or,

Path 2: Tall Grass. Here, you try new things. You experiment with creative tactics, discover hidden channels, and encounter wild monsters opportunities. This path is more difficult and risky, but incredibly rewarding.

If you’re reading this—your choice is clear: You’re not afraid to step into the Tall Grass. Always on the hunt for new marketing ideas. I love you for that.

But here’s the problem. If you try to take the Tall Grass path in 2024, you'll find some bad advice on the internet:

Lots of guides recommend ideas that demand too much time, too much money, or are impossible to test quickly. Most of them are based on old case studies that are hard to replicate in the current landscape—like “Start a killer referral program like Dropbox” or “Copy the API trick that AirBNB did with Craigslist”.

Then there are those marketing influencers with little to no real-world experience, who are selling false dreams for likes (“Do this for 30 days and voila, you’ll have 1 million users”).

Bottom line? Finding good marketing ideas is very difficult.

… While it sounds impressive to grow revenue by $350k, it’s a little less exciting that I’m only walking away with $6k in profit. I don’t pay myself a salary, so $6k is the full amount I earned from the business in 2022. Still, I’m excited about these numbers and what they mean for 2023.

One of the major cost increases was electrical engineering. Throughout 2021, TinyPilot’s electrical engineering vendor was struggling to keep up with TinyPilot’s growth. In late 2021, I switched to a new vendor that fits our needs better, but they cost three times as much.

The ongoing chip shortage forced us into frequent redesigns, which bloated costs in engineering hours and raw materials. We were often in a race to redesign a circuit board before we ran out of our existing version, so we repeatedly paid a premium to expedite the process.

We finally escaped the redesign treadmill in September. I’m hopeful that our fourth quarter results will reflect the coming year. Our profit was $28.6k for the quarter, so if we average $9.5k per month in 2023, I’ll be happy.

TinyPilot got a new website When I launched TinyPilot in 2020, I told myself the website and logo were just placeholders. Then, things took off so quickly that I never had time to replace them.

In 2022, I finally hired a design agency to create a new logo and redesign the website.

I wrote previously about how frustrating and expensive it was working with the design agency, but I’m pleased with the result. My old website looked like a hobby project, and the new design looks like a real company. I suspect that at least a portion of my increased sales resulted from the new design.