Episode · 2026-01-30
Bryan Johnson vs. AG1
Bryan Johnson vs. AG1 | Why Women Don't Like Your Ads | Eric Bandholz + Max Grantham Join (1.29.26)
Rundown
Eric Bandholz from Beard Brand discusses marketing strategies, including different approaches for selling to men versus women, their barber shop experience, and organic influencer partnerships. The hosts debate crisis management regarding Bryan Johnson's criticism of AG1, explore pricing models for email agencies versus revenue attribution, and highlight the brand value of physical retail experiences.
Takes from this episode
Marketing to women requires different messaging than men because women don't need agitation about their appearance—they already self-critique daily.
As mentioned above, they're already staring in the mirror and twisting the knife every morning... Do they need intense agitation? Probably not.
Discovering influencers organically through customer tracking and post-purchase surveys is more effective than outbound influencer marketing tools.
We noticed in our post-purchase surveys that he was driving a fair amount of new customers... we looked in the survey and he's actually driving customers to us. We should reach out and see about doing something more solid together.
Physical retail experiences like barber shops create unique, compelling brand value that customers can associate with and visit.
I think there's real added value for having a physical experience that people can walk into and associate with your brand. To me, it's very compelling.
Revenue-share pricing models only make sense when the vendor directly influences conversion across multiple touchpoints; otherwise fixed retainers are more appropriate.
Fixed retainer versus percentage of revenue has a lot to do with where the revenue generation comes from... when attribution is involved, how much of a farce it is, it's actually astounding.
When facing criticism from influencers with limited reach on social media, the best response is often to do nothing since most customers won't see it.
Most of the time in these kind of situations, I recommend doing absolutely nothing because you know how many people saw Brian's tweet?... most of the people in the world aren't on X.