Understanding Behavioral Science For Massive Marketing Success with Gee Ranasinha

Cosmos Dar (0:07)

Hello, my fellow Extraordinary Americans. I'm Cosmos Dar, and this is Extraordinary America.

What is Extraordinary America about? You see, American identity is about freedom, the opportunity for a better life, and the pursuit of happiness. However, most Americans are not free when it comes to the financial front. Most Americans are suffering from financial slavery due to loss of jobs, stagnant wages, inflation, and debt of all kinds. Wealth and income inequality runs rampant across America, and the middle classes all but disappear. So what is Extraordinary America about? Extraordinary America is about the abolition of financial slavery. It is about the financial freedom of the 99%.

It is about the nation of immigrants and descendants of immigrants awakening and unleashing the extraordinary within themselves and setting themselves free. The path to financial freedom is through entrepreneurship and investing on the light side. It is about financial education, not only when it comes to money in the monetary systems, but also regards to how to start a business, investing, especially when it comes to precious metals and real estate. In this podcast, I interview guests, many of whom came from humble beginnings to see how they did it and how they attained financial freedom in their own lives and how they did business. It is my hope that you will be inspired and you want to awaken extraordinary within yourselves and realize the American dream. Once again, welcome to Extraordinary America.

Cosmos Dar (1:28)

Let me show my bill of story, Americans. For today's guest, we have Gee Ranasinha. Gee has been in marketing since the days of dial-up internet and AOL CDs. Today he's the CEO of Kexino, a marketing agency and behavioral science practice for small to medium-sized businesses. Over the past 18 years, Kexino has helped over 400 startups and small businesses in around 20 countries grow awareness, reputation, trust and sales. A fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, Gee is also a visiting clinical professor at two business schools teaching marketing and behavioral science to final year MBA students for more than a decade. He's also an acclaimed international speaker, presenting at conferences and events throughout US and Europe. He's an extraordinary individual and I'm glad to have on the show.

Gee, thank you so much for taking the time to be here.

Gee Ranasinha (2:19)

Well, thank you very much for inviting me, Cosmos. I'm delighted to be invited.

Cosmos Dar (2:24)

Gee, can you tell me the audience a little bit more about yourself, your background and your story?

Gee Ranasinha (2:29)

Yeah, so sure. I don't know how far we want to go back, but the immediate history, I can tell you that for seven years, I was worldwide director of marketing for a software company. The company was serving blue chip clients such as TimeInk, IKEA, Nestlé, Airbus, Marvel Comics, those sorts of guys. So when I was CMO there, I often, as you can imagine, invited marketing agencies to come to pitch for our business. But I was amazed at how none of them would take any fiduciary responsibility for the marketing plans that they were proposing, okay? All of the agencies I spoke with were more interested in the tactical side of things, the execution side, you know, websites and ads and events and PR and all that sort of stuff. Nobody was asking me about the business result on which the marketing plan needed to deliver upon, okay? I thought that was a bit crazy.

So this is going back to 2007, and it dawned on me that there were a ton of startups and small businesses out there needing help with marketing from a business perspective, but designing and managing a marketing plan generating qualified leads ultimately produce a tangible commercial difference, right? So as you may remember, well I don't know if you remember, but certainly that sort of time, the internet was really beginning to affect our daily lives. You know, we had the advent of broadband which was affordable. You know, the iPhone had just come out and it was the big brands who were the ones taking advantage of the potential of the internet, right? Based on because they had created technical resources and of course deeper pockets. And small businesses or smaller businesses, anything smaller than Fortune 5000 companies, were getting left behind. So I thought that there was an opportunity for to have a marketing resource aimed at small businesses and startups that could help them leverage the power of online engagement.

So I looked around at the time to find a marketing agency that took that kind of approach. And I couldn't find one. So along with two other colleagues, we started our own.

So in January 2008, I resigned my comfortable corporate job, you know, with all the trappings that come with those sorts of roles, you know, international travel and company Bima and expense accounts and all of that sort of stuff. And we launched the agency. And like I said, that was in 2008 Seventeen plus years later, we're still here. We've grown now to 19 people in nine countries. Nine of us are in the US. The rest are in Europe, South Africa, two in Japan and two in Australia. And while we like to think that we're Europe-based, probably 80% of our businesses, our clients are based in the US. Oh, North America, based in North America.