#293: How I Landed On Brand with Jimmy Fallon and Pitched National Campaigns
In spring 2025 I was invited to join On Brand with Jimmy Fallon as 1 of 10 creatives selected to pitch national campaigns to major brands on national TV. Since the episodes aired, my DMs have been full of the same questions: how did I get on the show, what was it really like, and what do I think of Jimmy Fallon?
This week on Making It In The Toy Industry, I’m taking you behind the scenes of my wild ride as a contestant on On Brand with Jimmy Fallon. Week after week I dreamed up campaigns, plane wrap designs, comedic commercials, and drink recipes, then pitched them to CEOs and CMOs of major brands. I was mentored by Bozoma Saint John and Jimmy Fallon, an experience that reshaped how I think about branding, marketing, and product launches.
Every week the stakes got higher. One challenge had me mapping an NYC pop-up; another had me writing and singing jingles on a deadline. I was on national TV at 24+ weeks pregnant, keeping my energy high and my creativity flowing while still speaking the language of big corporate brands. It was a branding bootcamp that pushed me past what I thought was possible while I was also building a tiny human and becoming a first time mom.
Tune into this podcast if you want all the BTS tea including:
The branding moves that helped me get cast (and how you can use them to stand out)
What it’s really like working with Jimmy Fallon and Bozoma Saint John
A new brand strategy I’m calling the Connect & Invest Loop that could change the way you launch and market forever
How toy creators and creative entrepreneurs can build buzz before a single product hits the shelf
If you are building a toy brand or a creative business, and want to grow your visibility this is your playbook.
Listen For These Important Moments
[00:01:25] - Learn how strategic visual branding, owning your lane, and consistent content helped me stand out to casting directors and how you can do the same.
[00:08:58] - Get the surprising lessons I learned from Jimmy Fallon and Bozoma Saint John about showing up, shifting gears, and being “too much” in corporate spaces.
[00:11:20] - Find out why separating your campaign concept from the activation is crucial and how it could strengthen your creative pitches or product launches.
[00:16:17] - This show unintentionally unlocked a brilliant marketing framework, perfect for brands navigating today's trust recession and attention-starved audiences.
[00:26:14] - Real-world examples of toy entrepreneurs involving their audience early, creating investment, loyalty, and funding success before the product hits shelves.
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This episode is brought to you by www.thetoycoach.com
Join the Disruptive Personal Brand Lab and start showing up like the expert you are.
Watch On Brand with Jimmy Fallon now on CNBC and Peacock.
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[00:00:00] You are listening to Making It in The Toy Industry, episode number 293.
[00:00:10] Welcome to Making It in The Toy Industry, a podcast for inventors, entrepreneurs, and makers like you. And now your host. Azhelle Wade. Hey there, toy people. Azhelle Wade here and welcome back to another episode of Making It In The Toy Industry. This is a weekly podcast brought to you by the toy coach.com. For today's episode, we are gonna talk about On Brand with Jimmy Fallon.
[00:00:35] If you don't know, this is a new reality competition show and I was on it as a contestant competing for these big marketing campaigns. I learned a ton on my time in this show, and one of the things I wanna unpack today is how this show format could reshape the way that brands launch products, build trust, and just create fans that buy from them.
[00:00:54] By the end of this episode, you will know how I think I got cast on this show, what you could copy, lessons that I learned from working with Jimmy and Bozoma and what I learned operating in a marketing agency inside of a big machine like that. Also, a simple framework that I've named the Connect and Invest brand loop.
[00:01:11] We will get into all of that. So if you're a coach, consultant, a speaker, or you build consumer products, there is gonna be something in this episode you are going to want to hear. Quick note, I do have the permission from the on-brand team to share my personal experience. I will not be sharing confidential production details.
[00:01:25] Cool. Okay. Let's get into it. So first up, how I got cast and what you can copy. Ever since the cast list first came out, my dms have been filled with people asking how I got cast on the show. Look. I have two answers. One is woowoo, one is practical. Let's start with the woowoo part first. Back in 2020, I redesigned this podcast to have my face on the cover of the podcast Art.
[00:01:50] Before that, The Toy Coach was a faceless brand and I shared this new art in a podcast Facebook group, and within 24 hours, I kid you not a TV producer, reached out to me. We became fast friends and we spent two years pitching show ideas with me as the host. We got close, but we never did close a deal. In that time, however, I got hooked on the idea of having my own show.
[00:02:10] My best friend Hiroko even illustrated me sitting in a director's chair on set of a toy show smiling, just beginning my day at like 6:00 AM and I kept saying yes to on-camera opportunities because I was manifesting this. You know, I showed up as myself as the toy coach on the history channels, toys that built America.
[00:02:28] A few times I've been on Access Daily with Mario and Kit and, and so much more then. Business kind of slowed around 2022 and media got a lot harder to land. I still wanted my own show, but the dream moved from like the forefront of my mind to like a simmer in the back of my mind. So the practical thing that actually happened for On-Brand in 2022, I was being considered for a show about YouTubers one problem.
[00:02:55] At the time, I didn't even have a YouTube channel, so I missed this big opportunity to be a part of this new show because I just never took. YouTube, seriously. So that near Miss pushed me to take YouTube seriously. So I took a course, I started posting regularly on the platform, and then later I chose to focus again on this podcast.
[00:03:13] So I stopped uploading as frequently to YouTube, but the channel was seated, my clips existed. I had a few successful videos on there. So my point of view was there. That ended up being how On Brand actually found me. So a casting director discovered me on YouTube and reached out because I had been contacted before from producers in the past of other shows.
[00:03:32] I replied instead of assuming it was spam, like I think I probably would've, I'd never experienced this before and honestly I did not think it would go anywhere for. Three years I'd been invited to pitch myself or join projects for potential TV shows, and they just didn't pan out. At the time, I didn't know Jimmy Fallon was involved.
[00:03:51] So I had no idea if this was a legitimate high budget show or not. But this time, you know, it did. It worked out. So that's all I really know about how I was found. And that is definitely a lesson that you can take from, but another important thing to think about is like, why did I stand out to them? What I can surmise is a few things.
[00:04:08] I mean. My look obviously is very memorable and it is very intentional. The color in my hair. It did start out as like a fun corporate rebellion when I was first leaving my full-time job, but it quickly became part of my brand. I actually used to have, uh, pink hair as part of the brand, but the pink hair didn't go with the brand colors I had chosen.
[00:04:27] So I like shifted to this purple, blue hair and then my brand name, the toy coach, it gives. Instant clarity and credibility about who I am and about my niche. My voice and my cadence are consistent and really clear. I've got these frameworks that further add to my brand, like the Make It Toic Catchphrase and my four Toic principles.
[00:04:47] So taken all together. I can only imagine that casting saw just kind of like this brand powerhouse, this identity that was easy to understand and would easily translate on tv. Uh, one that people could vibe with and get. Really fast. If you see a video of me and it's on mute or you're just like reading captions, you still get my vibe.
[00:05:07] You still get what I stand for. So I can only imagine that when they found my channel, my lane, and who I was and who I could be for them on that show was clear. So here's what I think you can copy, and again, I'm just surmising from what happened to me, but what I think you can copy is this, figure out a signature visual that you can repeat.
[00:05:28] Photos in thumbnails and in press. What is your graphic brand identity? It could be colors, it could be shapes, both preferably, and then two. Name a framework for yourself that you've got to have a process that you believe in, something that you repeat often. Maybe a motto that you live by that can become a framework.
[00:05:48] To be the larger umbrella over your brand. I initially came up with the four toic principles and then that led to make it to, and those things are really the main umbrella over my brand and it, they kind of guide the decisions that I make for my students and for myself, and it just makes it easier to keep things cohesive with that identity in mind.
[00:06:11] Then, gosh, post weekly. I mean, I post a podcast every week. I don't even do YouTube every week, but it is so important to show up on the media that you want to be discovered in regularly. I also believe that you should own your lane, whatever it is that you wanna do in life. If it's a certain type of.
[00:06:29] Client that you wanna attract, or if you wanna be on a show like The Real Housewives, you've gotta be really clear to discern that you would fit in that lane. So if you want a client who focuses on T Twin Girl products, like you have to visually look like you fit in that lane. So make sure that all of your copy around your profile and your website fits the lane that you want to land in.
[00:06:50] And last tip I have for you is just. Put your portfolio public, your awards, your accomplishments, your wins. People need to know who you are at your best and that will allow them to offer you so many more opportunities. And I mean, I'm not even just thinking about TV though. A lot of my accolades and awards were the reason that I probably got on stages, like toys that Built America like Access Daily.
[00:07:13] But you never know what opportunities those things are gonna open up. So you have to talk about your wins. Often and assume no one heard about them before and just frequently repeat them. Now if you do want some help defining like a brand, look for yourself, maybe naming your signature framework, getting a simple system that books you more work with that.
[00:07:31] Look, I am doing this with a few people in a one-on-one service call Disruptive Brand Lab. So just head over to the toy coach.com and you'll see a button to email me right at the top where it says like, build my brand. Just sign up there and I will be in touch. All right, let's keep going. Lessons that I learned from Jimmy and.
[00:07:52] At On Brand agency. Okay. First, Jimmy is exactly as positive and energetic in real life as he appears on screen. He's so smart, he's funny, he's professional, but okay, unexpectedly. He's actually got this serious side to him, so like between takes, I would watch him flip from just full on comedian, like body comedian, verbal comedian to like.
[00:08:14] Serious producer in seconds, he would be guiding in his earpiece, taking direction, giving direction, and then like snap back instantly into his like comedic self when we were rolling. Seeing that in real time gave me so much pride in. My own ability to shift gears and it made me realize how important that skill is.
[00:08:34] Like one moment you could be having like a huge laugh, but when needed you need to be able to change it up and like get a dance routine together with 20 minutes left on the clock, like in our Captain Morgan episode, it is a real skill and watching someone else do it made me realize how much of a skill it is and it's not just me.
[00:08:51] Like everybody was commenting on it. Like all the cast were like, oh wow. Is Jimmy in charge? It was so fun. It was so fun to see that side. So from Boz. Okay, my number one lesson from Boz is this as big and bright of personalities as we are, not everybody can handle the shine. So there are still scenarios.
[00:09:12] Where we have to tone it down and I mean, that's something that I experienced in practice very, very often when I worked full-time in corporate. But having moved to be an entrepreneur five years ago, I think little by little I'd kind of been less and less constricted and constrained by that corporate mentality to the point where when I'm pitching to these big brands, I very much did not have the.
[00:09:37] Mindset of like, oh, let me filter this through their corporate lens. It was very much me bringing big, bold show energy of what I normally am and what I normally have, and I definitely wish that I had just filtered it a little bit more through that like corporate lens and just toned down like some areas to give them exactly what they want.
[00:10:00] I really think that could have made a difference in some of my pitches to help me get a win. Those were the lessons learned from my amazing bosses at the on-brand agency. But I wanna talk about lessons I learned like working at this marketing agency and pitching to these huge brands. I have a chaotic creative process and I think it's in the best possible way.
[00:10:21] So if you imagine like one of those crime boards with like photos everywhere and red string, just connecting all the clues that is like. How my brain thinks. That's how my mind comes up with ideas. They're kind of all over the place and then I figure out a way to connect them. But what I realized is in the speed of how we had to come up with ideas for the show or for the clients, I wish that I had found the time to separate creating the campaign like slogan and name from the other thing that we were creating, whether it was an activation or merge or commercial concept and practice pitching.
[00:10:55] The campaign out loud and seeing if it would inspire the activation and vice versa. Like, you know, we're all in the same room. There's not like space to really just out loud say these things. But what I found is while pitching and while watching back the episodes, my own campaigns and my own visuals and my own words are sparking new ideas now of better activations and better campaign slogans.
[00:11:21] Based on my activations that I would've had, had I been able to take the time to record myself and listen to my own pitches back, that would've been a huge, huge help to get my mind to make sure that those two pieces were. Connected. I think I had some issues where oftentimes those, the campaign and the activation would both be very good, but maybe not connected enough, and if they were a little bit more connected, they could have been stronger.
[00:11:48] Specifically, I think about my marshals one, when I look back on that episode where it says like, fashion is your force field. I'm like literally like yelling at myself on the screen, like, why did I not do a force field activation? I'm like, I can see it now. I could see walls. Cut out superhero poses, lit for photos, turning like the shoppers into heroes once they're wearing their marshals clothing.
[00:12:09] I mean, I had the force field concept, but the way that I initially thought to bring it to life was way too complicated and borderline dangerous as an activation. And in trying to make it work, I turned it into something experiential, like the tunnel was a cool concept, but I could have paired down. I just, I think I was so busy trying to fix the first idea and like, how do I make this first idea work that I, that I didn't give myself space to have a new idea?
[00:12:37] And a way to do that would've been to just look at my art and think about my art and redo my pitch in my head all the time. And, oh man, I regret that. I don't know if that would've made a difference, but I would've just felt good about it. You know, all these things, like all the pitches that didn't go through, like I still feel good about them.
[00:12:52] What's interesting is ironically, I teach brainstorming to my students all the time. I teach toy math and the four to principles as tools for brainstorming better toy ideas. So generating ideas for me isn't the issue, but what I haven't trained on is speed on command. I have a friend, Jeremy Posner in the industry who runs Creative Sprints to do that, and I'm like, maybe I need to join some creative sprints.
[00:13:13] I mean, granted, I was pregnant while filming the brain fog. Was real, but next time I just wish I had like guardrails to backfill gaps like that. Like you know, you never know. I mean, I was pregnant, I knew that was gonna happen, but you never know. Like you could feel not well one day, but you still need to bring your A game.
[00:13:29] So you've gotta have like guardrails that you can put in place in case you're having an off day. So the agency takeaway that I'm keeping separate your campaign from the other pieces that go with a campaign. Like don't try to solve both problems at once. And if you think you have solved both problems at once, pretend you didn't solve one and hyperfocus on the other and see what it inspires, not the other way around.
[00:13:52] Okay, let's remove our agency goggles. Now the meat and potatoes, the real reason I wanted to do this episode, ugh, the revolutionizing of reality tv, in my opinion, is the creation of this connect and invest brand loop. So I'm calling it the connect and Invest brand loop. Because of this, people are watching products get debated and developed in real time for these brands, and then they see them show up in the real world right after.
[00:14:21] That process creates investment before a product launches. It adds story to the product without having to create a new mascot or like a new lore behind the brand. And it is stronger than just a really well done product description. It's stronger than a really great campaign tagline. It's what they call the IKEA effect at scale, and the IKEA effect is, is how a consumer values something more when they've been a part of creating it.
[00:14:48] You also see with this show, the process adds a relatable and connectable face behind the products that are developed. So you as a viewer don't go and say, oh, I wanna go get the new Duncan box. You say, oh, I wanna go get the box that Ryan from Nashville designed for Duncan. It feels almost like you know Ryan because of the format of reality TV, and now you can buy something that he designed.
[00:15:11] It's brilliant in that way. And why is this? So different from the way that marketing's been moving due to social media, and that's because in social media, the playbook has evolved to actually hide ads inside of entertainment. There is this couple that I love and I follow them. Alexandra Madison and her husband John.
[00:15:30] Whenever ads come up on their feed, you never know It's an ad at first and then like you're 45 seconds in and all of a sudden you realize you've been watching an ad, but it just felt like a comedy skit, right? Like that's the golden. Goose of social media advertising these days, hiding ads inside entertainment.
[00:15:47] The goal is then for people to almost not realize they're watching an ad until the ad's over. Now, the trouble is the return on that ad is only gonna be as strong as the relationship a viewer feels with the creator who is selling the thing. If there's no relationship, the camouflage isn't gonna help much.
[00:16:03] They're not gonna watch even the 10 seconds to be engaged in that hidden ad. On Brand with Jimmy Fallon. Advertising is the entertainment, the making of the ad is the show, the ad and the message all in one, it's not disguised, it is direct and it's honest. And really in this time where AI is so prevalent.
[00:16:23] Everyone in my industry, in toys and marketing are talking about how we are headed to a trust recession. So in a trust recession. Pulling back the curtain in advertising and marketing can actually be the path to a higher return because you let people see the process, the standards, the people, and the choices behind it.
[00:16:42] And then that transparency can actually outperform the camouflage concept of ads and social media right now because the trust transverse from the individual contestant, the creative to the brand that they're creating for, and then attention that the viewer has is just deeper. Because viewers got to opt in to watching this process and caring about it.
[00:17:05] Authorship credit for this product that is created on the show stays with not just the creative you see on the show because that creative is seen as just an everyday person. So that authorship credit goes to the people and then that process itself becomes the story and the people are connected to the story because they feel that they authored it in some way.
[00:17:25] Uh, it's just. It's brilliant, but can transparency really outperform? Camouflage? I believe that it can. I think it's because of a few things. One, relationship transfer. When you meet the person shaping the work, the trust moves from that creator to the brand. So in the show, you're meeting knowing and liking.
[00:17:43] Contestants and as you gain no like and trust factor for the contestants, that shifts to the brand, to the attention density. So viewers are choosing to watch the whole story of the build because they're choosing to watch the whole story. They're watching longer and they're remembering more. They're not scrolling through and being distracted by other things.
[00:18:06] They are opting into finish to see the start and finish of a storyline and the process of seeing that storyline. Essentially includes an ad. I mean, so there's just attention, like what everyone is craving for the attention of the audience. As I said earlier, the credit of authorship. So products are attached to people in On Brand, not just companies.
[00:18:26] So these ideas aren't just seen as like Duncan's new campaign. It's seen as Bianca's new campaign. You're not just buying the box, you're buying the box that. Bianca designed, and the next best piece is, ugh, the story. Building a story without having to create a new mascot. Oftentimes I see a brand say, oh my gosh, like, what do we do with social?
[00:18:44] Do we need a new mascot? Do we need a du lingo owl? But with this format and on-brand with Jimmy Fallon. You can create story that connects with people without creating a mascot that has to live on with a brand forever. So you think back to the story of Azhelle announcing her pregnancy and the energy of that moment is infused in your mind with that brand.
[00:19:05] Whether or not that's the idea that was chosen, it doesn't matter because that feeling, that moment, that swell is now connected in your mind to the brand in which that happened with. I mean, it just works so well. It's so well instead of hiding an ad inside Entertainment On Brand with Jimmy Fallon makes the ad itself the entertainment, and that honesty pays brands back in attention, trust, and sales.
[00:19:30] Now there's also something to be said about frequency. There's this old adage that if you see a brand seven times, that's when you're gonna make a purchase. And we have to think about the amount of times that a brand is getting an impression on one person. Throughout the season of this show because a full season kind of functions like a focused marketing blitz for a limited set of brands and in a fragmented ad landscape where you're spending your ad dollars on social media and on Google Ads, and on Spotify and on Reddit, and on billboards and on subway ads, this.
[00:20:06] Show gives one focused home to capture the attention and drill repeatedly the name of your brand into the minds of the people that are attracted to this show. It's harder and harder these days to be a brand that remains top of mind and being top of mind is how you are the brand that gets purchased because you can't be.
[00:20:30] Everywhere. All at once. You have to do marketing that keeps your brand top of mind in someone's mind, so that when they want a coffee, they go to Dunking. When they wanna a massager, they go to Thera Body. And just what's brilliant about this being an entire season, and what I noticed is while I was watching this show, you know you're watching an episode about Southwest and when that episode goes on commercial, you're watching a commercial about Southwest, and then you go back to watching someone build a marketing campaign for Southwest.
[00:20:59] So you're engaged. Like you're building it and then you're watching it, like you're gonna buy it. And in future episodes, you know, we're in the Captain Morgan episode five episodes later, and I'm still seeing campaigns about Southwest in that episode. So what's really, it's just brilliant. I mean, the opportunity for this to be just an annual big marketing blitz campaign that.
[00:21:22] All brands know about and all brands are trying to get a piece of is. Um, I just think the opportunities are endless. And I also imagine, imagine being a brand new brand, launching on the On Brand with Jimmy Fallon show, coming to the agency and saying, Hey, we need a new logo. We need a launch campaign.
[00:21:38] And having that launch campaign happen within the show and then continue to have ads run throughout the show's season run. Since we have such a fragmented ad landscape recall is gonna beat a clever campaign nine times outta 10 and eight weeks of show moments and adjacent ads can keep your brand top of mind regularly enough until potentially a.
[00:22:01] They stay there and become a household name or until someone purchases because they're in the position or a point of their day to do so. So I want my last section that I talk about is how you can kind of copy this framework for yourself today. And what I realized as I was writing this piece is that it's already kind of happening.
[00:22:20] So a practice in the toy industry that has emerged over, I would say the past like. Five, seven years is to invite your potential customers on the journey of developing your toy. So what brands will do is create a Facebook group where they invite people to join and they will post like sketches of their product and first shot samples of their product, and second shot samples and color swatches.
[00:22:44] And not only will they share that, but they'll also invite the audience to vote on colorways names, you know, textures, price points, even. And while sometimes they're able to take the suggestions of the community, sometimes they simply can't. But it doesn't totally matter how much influence the community has in the end product, as long as they have had some influence in the end product.
[00:23:08] What I've seen in my own students doing this, Samantha, of Joey Dolls. Launched her doll line to be the world's most diverse Asian dolls. And for a long time, she and I had talked about if she should expand beyond Asian dolls. Like does that feel honest? Would she be operating with integrity? How would other cultures feel if she launched a doll in a culture that wasn't closely tied to her own?
[00:23:31] So Samantha actually just started serving her audience. Whenever she comes out with a new product, it's usually off of the back of a customer survey saying, which doll type should we come out with next? Should we do a boy doll next? Should we do a Vietnamese doll next? And she allows her audience to tell her that.
[00:23:49] What that does is that that compounds the IKEA effect. The idea that you put more value on something that you helped create. I have another student, Joanna, who launched her friend Forest line. With that line, she did the same thing. She originally wanted to completely flock this little six inch bear character that she created, which means she wanted to cover him in this fuzzy brown material.
[00:24:11] But the material cost and approval process was just taking too long and it was gonna be too expensive. So she surveyed her audience to see. How important is this flocking to you? They said it wasn't. She cut out the flocking, moved forward with the item, launched a Kickstarter. It was successful very quickly.
[00:24:26] Like she made that decision because she asked her community and her community was there to support her, presumably because they felt invested in the product that they had been influenced. So if you wanna apply this effect, if you're launching a new product, just think about ways that you can incorporate your existing audience in the development process of that product.
[00:24:43] And if you've already developed the product and you're thinking, oh no, Michelle, I've already made the product. What am I gonna do? See if you could incorporate them in the launch process in the marketing and advertising process. It's not too late. Okay, let's do a quick wrap up of today's episode. Today I shared with you how I think I was cast on on-Brand with Jimmy Fallon.
[00:25:01] What I learned working with Jimmy Boz and what I am now naming the Connect and Invest brand loop that is created by On-Brand with Jimmy Fallon and how you can use that in your own business. Now, if you want a brand that. It gets you booked on site that helps you sell while you're sleeping. I wanna encourage you to reach out to me to learn more about the Disruptive Brand Lab.
[00:25:23] I would love to help you find your distinct look, name your signature framework, and figure out your messaging so you can have a truly unforgettable brand. Now before we close out today's episode, I wanna share a review. We got about this podcast on Google. I'm gonna read this review from Charlie Hogan.
[00:25:40] Charlie says, five stars. I really enjoy listening to a gel's podcast. As a founder in the gift industry, I always take away valuable information from her episodes. You can almost feel the energy. From the conversations. Thanks for sharing those career experiences with us and continuing to make learning fun.
[00:25:56] Five stars, but I would give it more if that was an option. Thank you, Charlie. Really appreciate that and I love hearing that you can hear the energy in my interviews. We have a lot of fun with those. As always, thank you so much for spending the time with me today. I know your time is valuable and that there are a ton of podcasts out there, so it truly means the world to me that you tune into this one.
[00:26:16] Until next week, I'll see you later toy people. Thanks for listening to the Making It In The Toy Industry Podcast with Azhelle Wade. Head over to thetoycoach.com for more information, tips, and advice.
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