YouSaid · the spoken record

Ken Block

lines on the record: 122
first: 2019-01-31
most recent: 2019-01-31
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah, thank you. I really enjoyed actually talking about this stuff. And especially in a format where hopefully people will listen and actually take some of the lessons and knowledge that I have and hopefully apply it to their own experiences and hopefully better themselves.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To do all this, and it was fun for us to take this experience of making these viral videos and then tell that whole story and show it how it all comes to life. So yeah, if whoever's, you know, listening to this, go check out Jim Connaten and the Jim Connolly files and all that's produced by our small company called Hoonigan that you can find easily online. And if you're into cars, they make all sorts of crazy and different content that covers various car builds around the world and doing funny stuff with cars and doing very serious things with cars. So it's a great and fun brand that we have and it's been grown a lot because we've been able to do very creative and fun projects.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're showing people what we do, how we do it, to make these viral videos that have become a big part of everybody's life nowadays. And we've really pulled back the curtain to show what it takes to do this stuff. And that was a lot of fun to do. But different than a lot of other documentary series, at the end, you actually get a prize. You actually get to see the end result of what we did. Unlike the Clinton affair documentary, you know what the end result is. It's a cool way that they actually told that documentary and I really enjoyed it. But at the end, yeah, he gets impeached, but then he doesn't get impeached. He did a bunch of bad stuff. We all know about it. It was a cool story. But our documentary series actually was a cool twist on all that at the end, you actually get to see what we spent two years making, you know, which I think was really cool and innovative on Amazon's part to hire us.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, Jim Con of 10, the 10th installment of this video series just came out recently. It's on YouTube. And the Jim Conophiles, which is the documentary series that Amazon had us create around what I do with making these Jimkana videos and racing and all that stuff, that's on Amazon Prime right now. Both of them are very good. It's weird that we've made a documentary about me and what I do, but I think it's very cool. And, you know, the documentary genre out there has become very popular. It's something I really enjoy. So for us to make one was really cool and fun. And it's a bit different than what else you see out there because”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, there's a lot of shit out there in the world that we got to deal with, but let's do things in a better way. Let's do things in a fun and creative way. Why not? Why be stuck with the mundane and be set with the bullshit? Like, I want to be creative. I want to be fun. I want to do things the best way I possibly can. And I want to be proud of whatever I do. Everything in life comes to like, you know, from the simplest thing to the biggest thing. I want to be proud of what it is and stake my claim that that's mine and that's how I do it.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, the funny thing is, I say that because I feel like social media is just in the internet's made it so that you're not talking to people anymore. It's so easy to be rude. You know, and that's one thing I really impart, you know, in my kids, that like, you got to look at people in their face and make a statement. You know, you greet someone, you look them in the eye, you know, you cheers them. You don't look away when your glass is hitting the other glass. You look them in the eye, you know? And I just feel like the human nature of us as beings on this earth, we got to treat everybody in a good and fair way. And that if we all did that, the planet would be a lot better. But, you know, so that's a basic, very basic thing. But on top of that, though, I think we're here, you know, we're not here for a long time, but let's have a good time. Let's be innovative. Let's be creative. Let's have fun.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it amazes me how many people don't realize that if you're going to be a successful, functioning human, that you've got to eat well, you've got to take care of yourself, you've got to be in good physical condition. Your mental abilities to actually coincide with your physical abilities. And if you put crap into yourself, you're going to get a crap output. I'm a firm believer in. Good exercise, you know, there's a you got to take care of yourself really well physically to really expect a high output mentally.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was really key to me. But as far as really winding down, I mean, I have three semi-young kids. My oldest is 12. So, you know, we spend every night doing something with the kids and then putting them to bed. And then my wife and I hang out doing whatever, drink glass of wine, hopefully not too late, and have a mellow evening and go to bed. So it's not everything specific besides trying not to look at electronics too late at night.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, wow, that's a tough one. Try not to look at social media for about a half hour before. You know what? As I get older, the messed up thing about getting older is it seems like sleep gets harder. Just really sleep. My mom's like 85, and it's really hard for her to sleep. I feel like the actual best sleep ritual is actually working. Out really hard during the day in some form or another, like your body actually physically feeling tired going to sleep and then getting a good recovery by a very good deep sleep.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, called Vitality Mix. And so I drink that every morning and that lasts me till 11 or 12 o'clock every day. And I get a great workout in. I get a lot of work done. And that to me is one of those little life hacks that people have come up with. It's kind of an unusual thing. But man, if you can get on, it really works”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I find that I actually work the best and work out the best in the morning, but I hate spending the time to make breakfast or digest that breakfast. I want caffeine in me as fast as possible and I want to be able to work as much as possible in the morning and work out. So I found that just drinking coffee and eating a light breakfast worked really well. But nowadays I drink basically like a bulletproof coffee like coffee with butter and MCT oil in it but then with on it makes a very good mix that goes into it with flaxseed Chia seed that sort of thing.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's something that they made for when they held the Olympics in Finland a long time ago. They're like, we need an official drink. It's like gin and grapefruit juice. And it comes in a can. It's amazing. It's amazing summer drink. But then year round, I actually really like good sipping tequila, like Claus Azul. Something like that, just over some ice, just amazing.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My favorite alcoholic drink. I have two of them right now. In the summer, it's called a long drink. It's the official drink of Finland”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Damn it, we tried. We really like this guy, but he just didn't perform. We got to move on, you know, and that's just the way it is. But those are little lessons, the bigger lessons really are the larger business things that for me as a marketing guy, you know, we really did try to hire much smarter people than us in those areas. But when it came down to it, we still had to make the decisions. We still had to say, no, this is the right way to go. We got to let this guy go. He doesn't get what we're trying to do or there's other people that just didn't have the same integrity that we did. And, you know, weren't acting in the same light that we were and didn't represent us the right way. You got to go too, you know? And those are hard decisions. I mean, shit, I made a lot of those decisions when I was in my late 20s and early 30s, you know? It's when I still drank a lot. It's just a different mentality, you know, than I have today.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I know I'm sorry that those aren't very specific, but for a company like what we had, there were plenty of times that we hired athletes and they didn't work out. Or we made a particular shoe and like the consumer just didn't want that, you know, but at those times too, you're not relying on one. You have 50 products. One may fail. Okay, we still have these others succeeding. Or we have 15 athletes. We hire a new one. Oh, he didn't work out.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Directives that you think they are. And those are the times that you make the adjustments, that you really dig down and learn what you need to learn to direct the company the way that you need to. And those times are some of the most uncomfortable that I've ever had sitting in a room full of attorneys in suits and I'm sitting there in a pair of DC skate shoes and a t-shirt, you know, and having to make these decisions that are way to me would have been way beyond my experience level. But I dug down in, we researched, we read, we worked hard to find the The knowledge that we needed to succeed and those are the times that we learned ourselves the most from.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would say One part of time with DC growing was, you know, when you reach a certain level and things start to flatten out, you know, and there was a point in time with D.C. that the guy running Was doing things what we eventually found out wasn't exactly the most approved way by the IRS. And then he wasn't treating the IRS officials very well. And at the same time, we're struggling as a company. And it really was a hard lesson for us to learn of what it really takes to run a company through the tough times. And those are the times that you learn the most from. The easy times when things are all up and up and you can't do anything wrong, you actually don't learn that much from those times. It's when you have your failures that certain products just aren't working or maybe the market you're in turns left and you're still going right, you know, or the business practices that you have going on behind the scenes that you think are, you know, all on the up and up. Maybe people aren't doing things exactly what to the job.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, dirt bike. Dirt bike and snowboarding They seem very strong now, and just this process of not rapping and doing this pad work keeps them even stronger.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's only because I didn't place my foot where I should have on the pad. That's my own mistake. But other than that, it doesn't really bother me whatsoever. And even because I do need some wrist strength and forearm strength, I actually work with a lighter glove. It's not a real MMA glove. It has padded fingers and all that, but it's a very, it's a much lighter glove and I don't actually wrap my wrists. So it actually keeps my wrists in my forearms and actually very strong. So I don't have, I've broken both my wrists before.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, because of the, you know, just Doing pad work and a little bit of sparring, it isn't that bad. Even I did a bunch of kicks this morning and it hurts the top of my foot.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because you're having to predict where the ball's going, having to turn, rotate, move, react. Like, I really love that training to make me quick, to be in the car. And I just had to give it up.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the other thing is because of the physical side of it is I used to do, you know, I used to go out and run with my dogs. I used to play racquetball, but my ankle, my right ankle has gotten so damaged from skateboarding and snowboarding over the years. There's a lot of calcium buildup. They actually call it arthritis, but it just sounds like a very old person term to me. But it's actually from just all the impacts of skateboarding and snowboarding and then actually rolling my ankle from skateboarding that there's just a bunch of calcium built up around the joint itself. So I went to a doctor in San Diego, you know, that's worked on a bunch of different skateboarders and snowboarders. He's a very good doctor. And he's like, ah, I can fix that for you. It would be six months of pain and rehabilitation. He's like, do you make money playing racquetball? And I'm like, nope. He's like, he's like, then just quit doing that. So I had to quit playing rackball.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Two things. I don't ride dirt bikes anymore. It's so easy to get hurt on a dirt bike. I love dirt bike riding and it's just, unfortunately, you know, it's called hurt bike for a reason. Or the other thing is with that age comes a cage. But, you know, I absolutely love it. But, you know, the risk, you know, I used to ride a lot of tracks. I love track writing and big jumps, that sort of thing. But I've also been injured many times from it So I've quit doing that just because the risk, if I can't show up to one of the events that I'm paid to go race or go do demos at or whatever because I hurt myself on the dirt bike, well, it's just dumb. So I don't do that anymore.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Stuff like that that I really enjoy getting outdoors and doing. But the one thing that I really enjoy about sort of the outdoor stuff is keeping me sharp mentally, like downhill mountain biking, the quickness and reaction that you need on that stuff and the potential risk to injury and or death really keeps you sharp. So I enjoy getting out and doing that stuff as much as possible. But at the end of the day, like, for what I need, the reaction stuff, like kickboxing, really being physical in that sort of way is what I think helps benefit me the most when I get in the race car and go race. So I really enjoy those things that really keep me mentally sharp and hopefully keep me sort of young.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sort of physical outside activity as I possibly can from snowboarding with my kids to downhill mountain biking I hike a lot with my dogs in the winter I basically live right next to the Park City Mountain so I hike up into the mountains and snowboard back down I just love the cardio of it and it's a great way to get my dogs out and get them exercise and I take my snowboard because it's extra weight on me and then instead of walking back down in the snow which is just not fun at all to me and there's no physical benefit to walking down I can snowboard back down and be at my house in five minutes so it's”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I hate the gym, but I realize it's a tool that I have to use. So I'm in the gym three or four times a week doing stuff like I did an hour of kickboxing today with a very good trainer. I also have a regular physical strength trainer. I have some tears in my left shoulder. So I'm actually using a very good trainer right now that specializes in shoulder rehabilitation. So he's actually been able to take me from not being able to do a push-up for two years to actually functioning really quite normally. So I spent probably about four hours a week in the gym doing everything from, you know, high output intervals to basic weight training. And on top of that, I try and get out and do as much.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so the world has gotten so much more direct, so much more, I would say, complicated and complicated in a way that your brand messaging and your voice needs to be very thought through, very well put together and done multiple times a day, which is much more difficult than when I started.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If a bigger company says, hey, we want to grow into this category, how can we do that? How can we hire the right athlete? That's where an agency like WMG can really help maximize that in a much bigger way nowadays. And most all of them are doing that. A lot of these agencies have really realized, hey, we need to be full service. Like, this is a big world now. And social media has made things much more dynamic than in the past. You know, because when I started DC, it was like, oh, we need to make one skateboard out a month. We need one message. Shit, nowadays you need... Mini messages just for Instagram”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because, like an agency like WMG and my agent Steve, somebody can call and say, this is what we want to accomplish. These are the people we want to connect with. And not only can the agent determine what athlete is right for what they're trying to achieve, they can then help them write the campaign and actually get the connections directly with those consumers, not only with the company's social media, but with the athlete's social media because we're able to target things through Facebook and Instagram. And, you know, and obviously make the right messaging with the videos, photos, or whatever to really reach what someone's trying to market towards. So that's why I say it's a very difficult question and it is genuinely different when you talk about a really small company, someone with varying experience and very little money compared to like”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, but I would say if you're a very small startup without much budget and you don't really know where you're going, that could be very difficult. But if you are a bigger company that has money that kind of understands the business and what they're trying to do, it makes a lot more sense. In an agency like WMG that represents me, they also help companies with marketing with actually making videos, commercials, social media posts, all that stuff. So they're actually a full service agency because back in the day you would have your ad agency over here on the left, you'd have your agents over here on the right. And nowadays that stuff's getting much more all in one.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But what a skateboard company pays to put a logo on someone's t-shirt nowadays, it really is something that is quite. Know a difficult answer to answer without an agent.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Nike is paying a similar person as me somewhere else. He would understand that and understand the value and then how they're using them. That's something that's a crazy world out there. But that is marketing and advertising, though. And there are very particular values that people pay. And certain athletes are quite different. Even as you've changed countries, my agent represents a basketball player that actually does a lot of marketing in China, you know, and there's a whole different set of values as to how he does that and how much time that takes and what that value and commitment is. So the question you're asking is it's not a simple you ask me how much that logo is worth on my car sitting over there. I can give you a rough idea.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, the CBMD that say, hey, we want this. And he's able to say, oh, well, the basic running value of that industry standard is this, you know? And so that's where I see agents as like a real important value to sort of this process of Making sure that the company's getting their value and that the athletes getting their value out of it also. So it really is like a difficult process. I actually don't deal with any of the companies that I work with really anymore on the negotiating side. Like my agent does all of it because I don't understand what”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, like I said, there's so many scenarios and so many options there that it really all depends. You know, if you're just trying to get someone to wear a pair of shoes to go do something from skateboarding to basketball, well, there's a certain value there. If you're trying to put a logo on a video that's going to get a million views, well, that's a whole different value. And in my case, there's companies like Monster that All they want was a big logo on the side of the car. They see the amount of exposure that can get and they put a certain value on that. So it's a really difficult one. I'm kind of amazed at the expertise and the understanding of value that say someone like my agent has because he has so many companies come to him from four.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That is a very vague and difficult question. It all depends on what your ultimate goal is. Is it just a logo exposure? Is it trying to move a particular product? Is it using the athlete for an advertising campaign? All those situations equal sort of different types of contracts, different types of pay levels. Know everything, uh.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Bringing in these guys and managing all the content in the look the right way that we know is going to hopefully be successful. According to three weeks of Jim Cona 10 being out there and 11 million views so far, apparently it's still successful. So we're pretty stoked about that.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like Jim Cona 10, he's a snowboarder, he doesn't know anything about cars, but he has a certain eye. His name's Pierre Wickberg. I've known him, I don't know, almost 20 years. He used to have a company called Robot Food, and they made snowboard films. And we hired him to make two films, Mountain Lab, Mountain Lab 1.5, about our research and developments facility that was my home here in Park City. But they were some of the most fun and creative movies because Pierre has such an eye for not only filming and making things look fun, but then editing it together with the right music and the right story in the right feel. So it's guys like him that help make our stuff look and feel a certain way. And, you know, and that's what continues to make our stuff successful because we keep attracting.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Skateboard photographers to go shoot these dirt bike guys, and they would shoot long lands and really show how big these guys were jumping. And then we'd buy a spread ad and run it in black and white. And Ricky'd be way up in the sky, you know, and you'd see the real distance 100 feet that he's jumping. And it would look dramatically different than everything else in the magazine. But that's how we stood out in the consumers love it, you know, because they're like, hey, you're showing the sport that we love in a more dramatic and beautiful way. And so we really had a huge success from those campaigns, like in Motocross, because we were just standing out and doing it different. But once again, delivering to the consumer what they wanted to see and doing it in a fun and unique way. So, you know, and we kind of carried that everywhere, including like random example, the director of photography that I use for.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Why you see our stuff so passionately done? Because we genuinely love this stuff. But back to that storytelling thing, you know, it was funny when we started a random example that pops into my head, we started making ads and doing a lot of marketing with Motocross guys back in the late 90s with DC. You know, we sponsored Jeff Emmegg and Ryan Hughes and Ricky Carmichael. And when we went into the magazines, we looked at everything and the motocross photographers shot really tight, you know, because the dirt bike sponsors wanted them, they wanted to show their logos on the bike, you know, and the bike manufacturers, they wanted the consumer to see their bike up close. So you just have all these photos of like a guy in the air and no reference to the ground and that sort of thing. Well, we kind of did the opposite. We hired.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But it just cost you 10 grand instead of pulling out something out of your pocket, you know? So for me, it's always about the storytelling. It's always about, you know, connecting the content with what the consumer wants to see. And I think we're kind of lucky on my side that they create the guys behind me enjoy, we all enjoy kind of the same stuff. So we want to produce the content that we want to watch, if that makes sense. And I think that that's.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, there were all sorts of different campaigns that we did, you know, various different things in black and white. But for us, a lot of it was connecting with the consumer in a different way and in a way that they wanted information. And when I say that, I mean, even when you watch a simple video, you can capture something on an iPhone that as long as you capture the right essence of something that connects, that's way more important than hiring a guy that can hold a red camera, that may make it prettier.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it's a tough question, I feel like in general, like in marketing in society, in whatever, because today, like we were saying, t-shirts. Yeah, it's easy to purchase a t-shirt, but how do you build a brand essence? It's the same kind of with a lot of equipment nowadays. It used to be so hard for, you know, to get a really good photograph. Well, nowadays I can get a really good photograph of my phone. So it's not about necessarily the equipment nowadays. It's about the content. And I think that's really what made us successful back in the day was hiring the right photographers, artists, videographers, you know, all that stuff to produce the right content for all of our marketing, especially for DC.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The creativity that goes into it all through the process of production, everything, it is on some of the highest level there is that with people that we work with in Hollywood. And it's really cool to be able to do that and have directors like Neil Blumkamp email me and be like, dude, I want to direct one of your videos. And I'm like, I love District Knight. Yes, how can we get you involved? But it's just been a really fun wild ride and a really fun extension of not only my creativity as a marketing person, but also the creativity I love to do with the race car itself.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Budget restrictions, but you know that these have been big budget things. There's movies that have sold in Hollywood have smaller budgets than what we work with, you know, but it's very cool to do this process.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But luckily for what I've been doing, there's been a lot of success with this. And DC funded the first five videos. And I didn't have to deal with any of the budgets that there was always a marketing director that figured that into his budget. And we did, I think, five years worth of those videos with them. And then since then, my agent and Hoonigan have dealt with working with companies like Forza and Ford and Toyo to fund all these projects. And, you know, there's a cost to doing it, you know. And the more creative you are and the more extravagant you are, the more the cost is. But luckily, you know, we've had a great set of sponsors that really understand and see the value in this and have really kind of let us go wild and get these things done. The sky is not the limit. some very distinct”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The funny answer to that question is I ignore budgets. I get to focus on the creative stuff. You know, and that is the honest truth. I only deal with budgets when they seem to be overages. And most of that time is caused by me. Like, yes, we can use the Hollywood sign, but it's going to cost another day. Yeah, let's really do that.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's a part of the system and everything that's built into what we do with my agent is Travis' agent. And Travis is a longtime friend of mine. So it's such a great mix of friendships, creativity, and hardworking people that make this happen.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know like Bullet wasn't filmed in Akron, Ohio, it was San Francisco, you know, like jumping down those crazy streets and the bridges and everything. And that's what makes it so legendary In its essence, as San Francisco has a unique place for cars. When we got the permission to do that, like, oh man, it was really quite an honor and very cool to me that we were going to San Francisco to make this video, you know. And I'll tell you that I'm very lucky. I have an incredibly great crew around me of smart, very innovative and creative guys. And that's what helps me make these things too. When you watch that video, there's a ton of things in there that I do with the car, but I can't do that without the great race team behind me and the great creative team behind me too. It's a very big collaborative effort for us to do these things. And not only that, even my experience and connections in the industry, we have Travis Pastrana in there doing a wheelie that's part of one of the elements of the movie.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In that video, yeah, you know, and if you look back at that video, it's like San Francisco to me is one of the most unique driving cities in the world. And not only is it have some amazing driving situations like Russian Hill, some of the Twisty Streets, all the elevation changes, all that, but it's also been immortalized by movies like Bullet.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Commerce system, you know, and so Know, and there's a lot of jobs around that that are being produced too. Everything from our crew to the guys that there's certain streets that they don't want marks on. So, you know, we're having to pay local guys to come in to clean up marks, you know. So it really is kind of a wild process.”
2019-01-31 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #358: Ken Block — The Art of Marketing with a DC Shoes and Gymkhana Legend (500M+ views) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT