Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / GEMS: Marketing a "Taboo" Subject with Dame's Alexandra Fine

Transcript

GEMS: Marketing a "Taboo" Subject with Dame's Alexandra Fine · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:08
  I want to switch a little bit to marketing because I know that you have obviously had a lot of challenges in this space. It's typically one of those categories that falls under the umbrella of taboo, which is wild. But I feel like you've probably got some real gems in how you got the word out in the beginning, how you were spreading the message. Obviously, you had the Kickstarter campaign, but following that, those next few years,
• 0:35
  And I want to talk about it because I read an article you were saying somewhere online that you were accustomed to coming up with creative solutions when capital wasn't readily available to you. And I want to understand what are some of those creative solutions you were doing over the years? God, I said it that well. Like that was a quote where I'm like, no, I thought I said it.
• 0:57
  less eloquently. But I think just like if you make great product, like that's really important, say something powerful. Say something like if you're marketing, you can really have a conversation that prickles people's ears, that gets people interested in wanting to have a conversation back with you. I think that's really important.
• 1:25
  I think it's important in the same vein there, things that are gonna get press's attention.
• 1:32
  which is kind of, that's twofold, but you can get press attention. You don't need, that's earned media. Earned media is so powerful. There's free ways of getting people to talk about your brand by, you know, like for us, like our challenges, we just try to turn that into our opportunities again. So as much as we could. Do you have an example?
• 1:56
  Yeah, like the MTA campaign or when Facebook shut down our ads, we try and get journalists to talk about our initiatives there and the challenges we're having because then we're getting the advertising.
• 2:12
  And I think in both of those instances, they really spark a fascinating conversation around why is this a taboo? Like how the taboo gets created in the first place. I think it took me a second. I don't love complaining. And sometimes those things felt like I was complaining, but they are my...
• 2:31
  real experiences with platforms preventing me from growing my business. And they also are preventing my business from realizing its mission of honoring sexual pleasure and helping consumers and people honor their sexual pleasure as a key part of their well-being. But if we're not allowed to hold space for those conversations, we're going to
• 2:55
  then like what we're implicitly telling people that their sexual pleasure isn't important. And that all of these other things are like, you know, for example, in the MTA, like where we couldn't run ads, like, you know, there were ads for breast augmentation. That's apparently important. There's ads for erectile dysfunction medication, which is, they're both important. Everything is important and valid. And those are, it's a real need that consumers have. Yeah.
• 3:18
  But so are sex toys. And we should be allowed to advertise as long as we're not making people feel aroused on the subway. I see no reason why we can't advertise. In fact, I think my whole mission at Dame is also to help people understand the importance of having public conversations around sex. So this way...
• 3:42
  We can have clearer boundaries around what is okay and what is not okay. I think that what we're doing is helping stop people masturbating on the subway, not encouraging it. You know, I've experienced that here in New York and it's awful. It's an awful experience.
• 4:00
  You've just announced this crazy news, crazy win for you guys. But basically to backtrack for anyone who is listening in and doesn't know what the MTA is, which was me before, you know, I looked it up. MTA is the New York Metropolitan Transport Authority, I think it stands for. And basically it's the subway. And you as a company sued them some year. You sued them at some point.
• 4:27
  And can you explain like the context of that process? Like how much does it cost to sue the MTA, by the way? Are you allowed to talk about how much the legal fees for this? I think I am. I'm never like, there's definitely things I'm not supposed to talk about, but like, I'm really bad at not talking about things. I really feel like just like in sex, like honest open conversations about money are so important. So yeah.
• 4:54
  Yeah, we went to go run ads. They said we could run ads and they decided that we couldn't say that no sexually oriented business could run ads. But clearly there were lots of other sexually oriented businesses that were running ads. So getting clearer on what that meant, it really impacted the business. Like we had plans for it and I tried to get some press around it. We got some press, but ultimately I decided like a lawsuit would be in our best interest
• 5:23
  in that it would hopefully make real change. It would hopefully allow us to advertise and that it would help push forward an important conversation that would hopefully get us earned the media. So like, it seems in alignment. I found a lawyer and I think the whole lawsuit, I want to say, coughed like $300,000.
• 5:48
  There's a lot of money. I can't tell you about the settlement, but I can tell you that, like, for me, the experience was worth it. And, like, brand equity, you know, I think it was one of the most powerful marketing campaigns.
• 6:03
  It's a really sticky story. And it's weird because like very few people start a company to sue people, right? Like, does that feel like it's going to push us forward in the direction of whatever we're trying to grow at date? It really took me a while to like sit with that thought before I was like, no, I'm going to spend money, some of which are like investors' dollars.
• 6:26
  investors were kind of like, you're going to do what? You want to get into a lawsuit? That sounds like a distraction. That sounds like going to be a big money suck. But it...
• 6:38
  I think like acknowledging the ways that it could impact us negatively helped us just plan for that. I just made sure that I wasn't giving a lot of time to the lawsuit. Only was involved in things that were really important. I tried to, you know, bring it into the narrative of what we do at Dame often. And yeah, I think it was a solid decision.
• 7:03
  That's just so wild and so amazing. Obviously, congratulations. Go you. What a triumph in the business, but also in the landscape, because of course, this, you know, opens the way for so much to come.
• 7:21
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• 7:45
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• 8:08
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