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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Spotify Launches Greenroom, Apple Podcast Subscriptions Go Worldwide, More States Adopting NIL Laws

Happy Monday! Hope you have a wonderfully productive week planned! Here’s a few marketing and business stories that caught my eye over the last few days:

 

Spotify has launched its social audio competitor, Greenroom. I haven’t tried out Greenroom yet, but have noticed it’s getting some positive publicity on social media. Two big differences between Greenroom and other social audio apps is that room hosts can turn on Live Chat on Greenroom, and they can also request audio of a room after the session ends.  This audio can then be taken and used as a podcast episode, for instance.  I do wonder how this will be integrated with the standalone Spotify app, as it seems a natural to use Greenroom as a way for fans of music artists to create rooms to discuss their passion for a particular artist on Greenroom.  For instance, if a user listens to three songs in a row by Foster the People, Spotify could put up a popup inviting users to check out rooms created in Greenroom by fans of that band. And let’s be honest, that dark green color scheme is sick, especially compared to the bland whiteness of the Clubhouse app.

 

Apple’s Podcast Subscriptions are now live worldwide in more than 170 countries.  Subscriptions give podcast subscribers access to additional material, as well as early access to upcoming episodes in some cases.  Apple will get a 30% cut of the revenue from podcast hosts in year one.

 

This is another story that’s just going to take on a life of its own in the coming months and years.  NIL (Name, Image and Likeness) laws are set to go into effect in several more states on July 1st.  These include big-time college football states like Alabama, Florida, Georgia and Texas. NIL laws give college athletes much more freedom to work with brands directly and take on sponsorships.  You will be seeing a LOT more brand-oriented content from college athletes, the type of content you really wouldn’t see previously until athletes had exhausted their college eligibility.  Kristi has been all over this story for months and her site has all the info on what NIL laws will mean for brands and college athletes.

 

That’s all for this week! Hope you have a wonderful week, and try to stay cool, Summer is here!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: eSports Has Gone Mainstream

Happy Monday, y’all! So I wanted to talk about one story only this Monday, but it’s a biggie.

For the past few years, eSports has been a growing phenomenon, fueled by the massive popularity of streaming site Twitch. I’ve written constantly about Twitch in particular, and how the streamers AKA ‘content creators’ are doing some amazing marketing and building impressive online communities.

For years, Twitch held almost a deathgrip on the streaming industry. It was the one and only powerhouse, in fact it seemed as if people had more loyalty toward the Twitch platform than the streamers themselves. This was quite apparent in 2019 when Microsoft’s would-be Twitch competiror Mixer signed away two of Twitch’s biggest streamers, Ninja and Shroud, to an exclusive deal.

It was a watershed moment for the streaming industry, and for the first time, Twitch would be tested for dominance in the streaming space.

How did it go? Less than a year later, Mixer folded and Ninja and Shroud both returned to Twitch.

So Twitch’s place at the top of the streaming space was cemented. Or was it?

When covid lockdowns took place early last year, it suddenly meant that a lot of us were spending a lot more time at home. One of the big winners was the streaming community. Growth hit another level, there was so much hunger for streamed video game content that sites such as YouTube and even Facebook began to benefit.

Then last June, DrDisrespect, one of the most popular streamers on Twitch, was suddenly banned. And still to this day, no one really knows why. Doc eventually settled on moving to YouTube, and in August had his first stream on Youtube.

Doc’s first stream on YouTube peaked at half a million concurrent viewers, shattering the amount of viewers he ever saw on a single Twitch stream.  Suddenly, YouTube Gaming wasn’t an afterthought, and the site’s foray into streaming continues to grow rapidly. Doc’s banning from Twitch may have indirectly catapulted streaming to a whole new level.

 

eSports Goes Mainstream

Last Thursday, this happened:

I’ve written about NickMercs here before, but he is rapidly growing in popularity and could soon become the most popular streamer in the world. His being featured on the cover of the new Sports Illustrated is testament to his growing popularity, but also the insane growth of the streaming community as a whole.

eSports and streaming is about to become VERY VERY big. There’s several reasons for this.

First, as eSports gets mainstream exposure, businesses are going to realize these streamers are the ideal influencers that they want to connect with.  They have huge audiences but, they also have, due to the chat and interactive functionality of streaming sites, the ability to better connect with their audiences. Streamers with millions of followers still have the ability to single out and even chat with individual followers live in a way that they really can’t do on other social media platforms. It’s a massive advantage from a community-building aspect. When companies figure this out, billions are gonna flow toward sponsorship deals.  Yes, I said BILLIONS.

Second, athletes are beginning to jump into streaming, which will only accelerate mainstream coverage and adoption. The above SI cover features 6 members of the eSports organization FaZe Clan. Two of them are Bronny James, the son of LeBron James, and another is Kyler Murray, former Heisman Trophy winner and current starting QB for the Arizona Cardinals. Soon we will begin to see more celebrities adopting eSports as well, and that will only lead to more eyeballs, and more growth.

Finally, eSports isn’t really political like other major sports have become. eSports simply focuses on the games and the community of fans and streamers that love them. In recent years, major sports leagues like the NBA, NFL and MLB have increasingly taken political stances, and audiences have repeatedly said they don’t want politics mixed with their sports. This means more people will be checking out eSports, especially the highly desirable 18-34 age demographic.

 

So I wanted to do a full post on eSports today. If you work in marketing, please do yourself a favor and invest some time with a few popular streamers and see how they market themselves, and how they build their community of fans.  Some of my favorites include NickMercs, DrDisrespect, CourageJD and TimTheTatMan. You can learn so much about marketing and especially connecting with millennials by watching their streams.

Streaming and eSports will have a big year in 2021. Let’s come back to this in 2022 and see if I was right!

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These Three Products Forever Changed Music, and You’ve Never Heard of Them

One of the most important areas of marketing, and really all communication, is how good marketing communications focus on the customer, moreso than the business. The key to creating effective marketing and content is to create messages that have relevance for the customer. Check out this picture of Times Square in NYC:

Times Square is the mecca of flashy advertising and marketing messages. They are everywhere!

But look closely at the people in that photo, because they are all doing the very same thing.

Do you see it? Every one of them is completely ignoring all those marketing messages! The marketing that’s all around them is completely irrelevant to them, so they ignore it.

For your marketing to be effective, if has to create relevance for the customer. Today I want to talk about two companies that did this well, and two that didn’t. And when the smoke cleared, one company had created a device that reshaped the music industry forever.

The Birth of the Internet, and Digital Music

The mid to late 1990s saw the mainstream adoption of two world-changing technologies. The first was the internet. By the late 1990s, thanks to online services such as AOL and Compuserve, most of the US had internet access. Around the same time, the MP3 file format began to take form as a way to quickly and easily transfer music files online, or store them offline via a computer’s hard drive, or a CD. Music file-sharing sites such as Napster and Limewire became quite popular during the late 90s.

The combination of the emergence of internet access and digital audio files marked a huge disruption to how people acquired, shared and stored music. Increasingly, people were converting music from the CD format, to MP3 files and storing that music digitally on their computers. As people became more used to playing music digitally on their computers, this created a market for…portable digital music players!

Meet the World’s First MP3 Player, and You’ve Never Heard of It

In 1998, the MP Man, Model F10 was released to the world, becoming the first MP3 player on the market. It came in two versions, one held 32MB of MP3 files, the ‘deluxe’ version held 64MB, or roughly the equivalent of one album.

Later in 1998, another MP3 player hit the market, and you likely haven’t heard of it either.  It was the Rio PMP300 from Diamond. And it would only hold 32MB of MP3 files, or roughly eight 3-minute songs you might hear on the radio.

It could be argued that technically, the PMP300 was the inferior product to the MP Man F10. After all, the PMP300 only came in a 32MB version, where the MP Man F10 offered 32MB and 64MB versons.

Yet, the PMP300 had two things going for it. The first was its price, it was roughly half the price of the MP Man.

But what made the PMP300 far more successful than the MP Man was its marketing and positioning. Whenever a new product with new technology comes to market, the company has the responsibility to careful explain to the customer what the product is, what it does, and why the customer should buy it.

The packaging for the MP Man F10 proudly advertises that it is ‘The World’s First MP3 Player In Your Pocket’.

The packaging for the Rio PMP300 states that it offers ‘Internet Music In the Palm Of Your Hand’.

See the difference?  The packaging for the MP Man F10 tells you WHAT the product is.  The packaging for the Rio PMP300 tells you WHY you want it!

Do you want an MP3 player in your pocket, or do you want internet music in the palm of your hand?

Both devices offered the same technology and convenience. The difference is the marketing for the F10 focused on the product, while the marketing for the PMP300 focused on the customer.

Sales for the PMP300 are thought to have been 10-20 times that of the MP Man F10, making the Rio PMP300 the world’s first commercially successful MP3 player.

Focusing on the customer matters.

The Battle of the Digital Music Players; Round Two

Curiously, we saw this battle for supremacy in the digital music market play out again a few years later. The MP Man and Rio PMP300 both had serious storage limitations. Over time, as consumers became more familiar with digital music and ‘ripping’ and ‘burning’ CDs and working with MP3 files, they needed more storage for their devices.

In 2000, Creative Labs offered its Nomad Jukebox portable digital player to the market. Its main advantage was its massive upgrade in storage over previous offerings. The Nomad Jukebox boasted 6GB of storage, a huge jump over the 32MB that the MP Man and PMP300 offered.  Essentially, the market was going from seeing digital players that stored 8 songs, to players that stored 8,000 songs!

A year later, Apple unveiled the first iPod. Yet it only had 5GB of storage, compared Creative’s Nomad Jukebox which had 6GB.

Over the following years, Creative would expand its offerings of digital music players. Its Zen line would win several prestigious awards for product design.

Yet, the player from Apple ended up being the big winner in the digital music player market, not the Creative offerings.

What happened?

Again, let’s go back to how each product was positioned. I did an image search and I’m looking at the box for one of Creative’s Zen music players. The box has an endless list of features the player offers, and in three languages! Battery life. Storage amount. All the technical information your audiophile heart could desire, even letting you know that playback happens at 98dB. As a bonus, it even touts that the Zen uses Firewire technology to transfer files much faster than USB. The irony is, the Firewire technology was invented by….Apple!

So how did the iPod position itself to counter the technical appeal of the Zen?

1000 Songs In Your Pocket.

That’s it. No endless list of features, no technical, product-focused jargon.  If you want 1000 songs in your pocket, then buy an iPod.

The irony is, the Zen offered you MORE than 1000 songs in your pocket, but they didn’t focus on that. Instead, the Zen’s packaging focused on a lot of technical features that likely resonated with the product team at Creative, but in the end they didn’t mean much to their customers.

But Apple’s positioning of ‘1000 songs in your pocket’ was a clear benefit that was dead simple for customers to see the value in.

Focusing on the customer matters.

 

Note from Mack: This post recently appeared as an issue of my Backstage Pass newsletter. If you would like to have content like this delivered to your inbox each Friday, then signup below! 

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Stack Overflow’s Huge Pricetag, Shorts Expanding, Twitter Trying out Subscriptions

Happy Monday, y’all! Hope you are ready for an amazing week! We have a pretty massive lead story so let’s jump right into this week’s Monday’s Marketing Minute:

 

This could end up  being the most significant acquisition in the tech space this year. Stack Overflow is a Q&A site that caters to programmers. It has developed a massive community over the years, and is known as the go-to site for any current or aspiring programmer to get answers to their technical questions. And it was just acquired for $1.8 BILLION.  That pricetag is massive, and it will hopefully start a trend of companies either acquiring or building their own community sites for users and customers. Yes, such sites are a long play, but once they get rolling, it’s such a competitive advantage.

 

YouTube’s wildly popular Shorts feature is expanding into more countries. Shorts, much like Reels from Instagram, are competitors to Tik-Tok, and both are gaining traction. We could see something similar play out in lesser form over the coming months as the popularity of social audio migrates from Clubhouse to other sites like Twitter and LinkedIn.

 

Twitter is beginning to follow through on its strategy of offering subscription services for users.  The first is focused on weather. For $10 a month, you can get the following:

  • Ability to ask a team of meteorologists unlimited questions and they promise to answer
  • Members-only weekly newsletter
  • Early access to podcasts

Twitter also says they will hold Spaces during periods of potentially harmful weather. Honestly, I’m struggling to see how the $10 price tag is justified for this. For instance, I can get pretty much all this information for free from following James Spann on Twitter.  Maybe $5 a month would be more plausible, but if people start paying $10 a month for subscriptions, they are gonna expect an experience above and beyond what they can get on Twitter now, for free.

 

So that’s it for this edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute! Hope you have an amazing day and week!

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Here’s the 1% of Your Customer Base You Should Grow

In 2005, Alabama football started the season with an unexpectedly strong showing. The Tide, coming off a 6-win season in 2004, jumped out to a 4-0 start and #16 ranking heading into an October 1st matchup against #5 Florida. The game was in Tuscaloosa, and the excitement was palpable. Adding to the intensity, was the fact that all week heading into the game, the fact that Alabama had never beaten a Top 5 opponent in Tuscaloosa was repeated endlessly.

As you might expect, ticket prices for the game were through the roof, but I decided to go to the game just to be on campus and soak in the experience.  Due to traffic I got to the stadium a few minutes into the game. Outside the stadium there were multiple televisions set up so fans could watch the game. The game was being broadcast on CBS, and I began to circle the stadium heading toward the nearest television so I could watch the game.

The game was in the first few minutes of the first quarter. As I was walking, I could hear the roar of the crowd, it was very loud. A play started, and I then heard what almost sounded like a gasp from the entire crowd then what can only be called an explosion of sound. The sudden roaring of the crowd was so loud, that I could literally FEEL the audio waves coming from the stadium as I walked outside it.

This is what was happening inside the stadium at that moment (volume UP):

 

In 2018, Twitch streamers Nickmercs and Aydan were competing in a Fortnite tournament, and one of the perks was that if the team could eliminate a certain number of players in a specific time they could collect a $30,000 prize bonus.

As the duo got closer to winning the Make It Rain bonus, they were having trouble concentrating because debris from the ceiling kept falling on them as they was playing.

The crowd’s roar was so loud as Nickmercs and Aydan kept eliminating players that the ceiling was vibrating, and it was causing debris to fall down on the players.

 

We all start at zero

I’ve always been completely enamored with how entities and personalities in music, entertainment and sports/esports can create fans that are as passionate as the fans you see in the above two clips. One of the reasons why I wrote Think Like a Rock Star was to help companies understand how these fans are created, so those businesses can also create passionate fans.

One of the biggest misconceptions businesses have about creating fans is the belief that fans just ‘happen’ for people and companies in certain industries like sports, music, and entertainment.

Nickmercs is one of the streamers in the above video.  He’s also one of the hottest streamers in the world right now, and a few weeks ago he had over 400,000 viewers for one stream.

But recently, he tweeted out a reminder that in 2014, he was celebrating the fact that he had hit 170 viewers on a stream:

And he was excited about having 170 viewers, because he started with 0. All Twitch streamers do.

All businesses start with 0 happy customers. We ALL start at 0.

Reverse-engineering the Roar

Another huge misconception businesses have is that they can’t create fans like Alabama football does, or like Taylor Swift does or like Nickmercs does.

Let’s go back to the first example in this post of the Alabama football game. It’s easy for your business to look at that and think, “We could never have fans like that!”

Are you SURE about that?

Let’s break down that example. How many people are there that would claim to be Alabama football fans?  I have no earthly idea and it would be almost impossible to measure. For the purposes of this post, let’s say there are 10 Million people who self-identify as being Alabama fans.

The above Alabama-Florida game had roughly 80,000 people in attendance. Let’s say there were another 20,000 fans outside the stadium and in the area.  So for the purposes of this post, there were 100,000 Alabama fans who were passionate enough about the Crimson Tide to come to Tuscaloosa to see that game.

100,000 is 1% of 10 Million. So that means that only 1% of Alabama football fans were passionate enough about the Crimson Tide to come to Tuscaloosa on October 1st, 2005, to see them play.

So all the passion and electricity you saw in that video above, that wasn’t Alabama football fans.  That was the 1% of Alabama football fans who are the MOST PASSIONATE about the Crimson Tide.

Think about your business. How many customers do you have?

Let’s say your VP of Marketing wants to create a conference just for your customers.

Could you get enough customers to attend to make the event viable?  Maybe not.

But do you think you could get 1% of your customers to attend?  Yeah, that’s a possibility.

Then how is your business different from Alabama football or NickMercs or Taylor Swift when it comes to creating passionate customers that love you?

It isn’t. The difference is, Alabama football and NickMercs and Taylor Swift do a better job of ENGAGING their fans than your business does.

 

Excitement breeds excitement

Let’s say your business has 1,000 customers. 1% of 1,000 is 10. So you have about 10 customers that absolutely love your business.

Who are those customers? You should know who they are, their names, what they do. Your business should be in constant contact with them. Your business should empower those 1% of your customers to tell others about your business.

Let your most passionate customers be your best salespeople. Let them sing your praises to others. They are already doing this (because they love you), your business just needs to be smart enough to give them better tools to do what they are already doing.

That will lead to more customers for your business. And once your current customers see how you are engaging with, embracing and empowering your 1%, it will make them want to join that 1%.

What if your business could grow its customer base by 10% a year, and increase its 1% of customers that love you by another percentage point every year?

So start out with 1,000 customers and 10 customers who love you.

The next year, you have 1,100 customers and 20 customers who love you.

The third year, you have 1,210 customers and 30 customers who love you.

The fourth year, you have 1,331 customers and 52 customers who love you.

The fifth year, you have 1,462 customers and 73 customers who love you.

 

So in just 5 years, your customer base could grow by almost 50%, and the number of customers who love you could increase over sevenfold.

Think of the impact that amount of growth could have on your business. And it’s not just growth, it’s cumulative growth, fueled by engaging just 1% of your customers, and letting them spread their passion for your business to others.

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How I Overcame Imposter Syndrome

imposter syndromeImposter Syndrome is generally accepted to be the feeling that you either don’t deserve the accolades you have received, or you doubt your skills and abilities. It’s something I’ve dealt with for years, to varying degrees.  And the reality is, social media makes this problem a LOT worse.

I fell into consulting and speaking by accident in 2006. In 2005, I was in between jobs, and I began blogging on one of my passions, marketing. This was in the days before YouTube, Twitter and Instagram. So it was much easier to make a name for yourself.

In early 2006, I began to get writing requests, and started making a decent side income via content creation. Soon, I started getting speaking requests, and decided to go into consulting full time.

From the jump, I worried that I wasn’t as ‘qualified’ as my peers. Many of who had extensive corporate experience before going into consulting, or maybe they had their own agency. I was just some guy from Alabama with a marketing blog.

Over time, I got a bit more business, but it was a struggle. Living in rural Alabama, my pool of potential clients was pretty much limited to online only. Which meant I needed to really promote myself and what I could offer clients.

Most people hate self-promotion, and I am definitely in this camp. Plus, being an introvert, it was even worse. For the first couple of years, business went in spurts.  I would have a great 6 months then almost nothing for 3 months, then it would start up again. The inconsistent work only made it easier to doubt myself.

And social media was no help, every time I would check Facebook, peers were sharing photos of how they were speaking at this event, or doing work with this brand. Additionally, I hated the idea of asking for help. And I wasn’t even talking about help in the form of work, I didn’t even want to ask friends for advice. I felt like that would be burdening them and completely unfair.

I was frustrated beyond belief. I had an upcoming trip to Texas for some client work. and two of my best friends in consulting lived in the area. I trusted them, so I decided while I was on the trip, I would talk to both of them and ask for their advice on why I was struggling.

What they told me took me by complete surprise.  The first friend told me that if it wasn’t for their spouse having a full-time income, that they wouldn’t have made it. They told me the first few years they got almost no business from their consulting, and the spouse had to provide almost all of the income. I had no idea!

When I talked to the second friend, I specifically asked about the ups and downs in workflow. They told me that was pretty normal for consulting. “You learn to manage the cycles’, they told me.  My friend said they knew from experience that they would be very busy about 6 months out of the year, and the other 6 months would be slower. During the slower times, they had learned to work on their own business.

It was so eye-opening to hear from peers I trusted that they too had to deal with many of the same issues I was facing. And it was a huge help in dealing with Imposter Syndrome.

If you are struggling and dealing with self-confidence issues or Imposter Syndrome, here’s what I’ve learned that’s helped me:

  • Stop comparing yourself to others, learn to benchmark against yourself. It’s completely unfair to compare yourself against others, because you have an incomplete picture of what they are doing, the resources they have, and their actual accomplishments. Social media is designed to show the highlights, not the lowlights. You know your ups and downs, but for most everyone else, you only see the ‘ups’.  As long as you are doing your best to improve, that’s all that counts.
  • Accept that some promotion is necessary. People can’t hire you if they don’t know that you are available. Years ago I spoke at an event that a dear friend ran. A week after the event, I got a call from her, she said an attendee had approached her and said he needed to hire a consultant to design a digital strategy for his company. My dear friend, who I had known for years asked me ‘Is that the type of work you do?’  I was floored! If even my close friends weren’t sure what type of work I did, then I definitely had a self-promotion problem. I still do to this day, but I’m learning to accept that some self-promotion is necessary.
  • BTW, about self-promotion; I know self-promotion can be especially hard for introverts, and women. If self-promotion truly makes you uncomfortable, focus on promoting the work you do and how it benefits clients, rather than yourself and your accomplishments. This approach will at least make it easier for potential clients to understand what you do and how you can help them. You can make this easier by promoting how you help clients succeed, rather than ‘tooting your own horn’.
  • Find a core group of trusted peers/friends, and lean on them for advice and support. Having friends I can bounce ideas off of is invaluable. Treasure those professional friends who will help and support you, and make sure you return the favor tenfold.  It’s one of the best personal and professional investments you can make.

 

But perhaps the greatest business and really life lesson I have learned is to keep going. Many religions around the world have a similar parable involving followers asking for strength to deal with life’s problems. Instead of receiving strength, we often receive more obstacles. But as we overcome these obstacles, we become stronger.

Keep going, keep getting stronger.

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: 31% of Adults ‘Constantly Online’, Pinterest & Twitch Continue to Grow

Happy Monday! Hope you are having a wonderful week as we close in on Memorial Day and the unofficial start of Summer! Here’s a few marketing and digital stories that caught my eye:

 

Interesting insights into which groups of US adults spend nearly every waking moment online. Amazingly, 31% of all adults say they are ‘almost constantly’ online. The highest percentage came for adults aged 18-29, with a whopping 48% of this group saying they are almost constantly online. The lowest number came for adults aged 65+, with only 8% of this group claiming to be always online.

 

Twitch continues to post insane growth, and most marketers continue to miss it.  Just look at this chart of the number of monthly hours of streams watched since 2018.

Twitch growth

Want more stats on Twitch?

  • Last month was a record for Twitch with over 2.2 BILLION hours of content watched, and Twitch is on pace to beat that number this month
  • Last month was a record for Twitch with over 3.1 MILLION concurrent viewers. And yes, Twitch is on pace to beat that number this month as well.
  • In 2018, there were 560 Billion minutes of content viewed on Twitch.  There’s already been 620 Billion minutes consumed in 2021.

Twitch continues to be one of the best ways to reach a millennial audience. Besides that, if you are simply a marketer that wants to get a masterclass in how to build community and be better at marketing, watch how the top Twitch streamers connect with their followers. Anyone wanting to connect with customers under 30 should be paying attention to Twitch.

 

Pinterest is another social site that just continues to grow, whether or not marketers notice. The site just announced that it is now serving over 5 BILLION searches a month.  For reference, Pinterest reported 2 Billion searches in 2016.  So the volume of on-site searches has increased by 150% in 5 years. As I mentioned in last Monday’s Marketing Minute, Pinterest is poised to enter the livestreaming game as well. Along with Twitch, it continues to be a social site that all marketers should be aware of.

 

So that’s all I’ve got for this Monday, another big content week on tap here, see you tomorrow!

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It’s Not About ‘The Hustle’, it’s About Having Something Worth Hustling For

the hustle is bullshit
Over the last 10 years or so, workers have been told that they need to work harder, or hustle.  In fact, Hustle Culture has been prized at many companies.

The idea is, the harder you work, the more you care. Working more hours makes you a better employee, or business owner.

Of course, it’s complete bullshit.

I’m an introvert. In general, introverts are highly organized, and thrive in a highly structured environment. We are very strategic thinkers, it’s why those of us that go into consulting, for instance, often flourish, because we can create strategies and bring order to chaos for our clients.

The problem that introverts have with the ‘just hustle’ mentality is that we need a reason WHY we are hustling. Telling us that we are supposed to work hard, and not giving us a reason WHY we are working hard, is completely deflating. Remember, introverts thrive off order, reason, logic.

When we are told to hustle, we will ask ‘Well why are we hustling?’  If we are told ‘Because that’s how we know you care’, then we check out. Hustling for the sake of hustling is completely meaningless to us.

You can tell an introvert that they need to work hard or hustle every day this week, 10 hours a day. Without a clear understanding of WHY the hustle is necessary and for what outcome, we will mentally check out.

On the other hand, if you tell an introvert that they need to work 10-12 hours every day this week, and lay out the exact project they will be working on, and a clear explanation of why all that time is necessary to complete the elements of that project, we are all in.

Tell me what I need to do, why I need to do it, and I can work all day. I have no problem with the hustle.

But tell me to hustle, without giving me a reason why the hustle is warranted, and I could care less.

Hustling for the sake of hustling is how you burn out yourself and your employees.

 

Define why the Hustle is necessary

If you want to motivate someone to work harder, help them understand why the hard work is necessary.

When I was in college, I worked night shift at a warehouse, driving a forklift. This warehouse had a day shift and night shift. The night shift’s job was to set up product for the day shift to use to complete orders. The night shift understood that if we did a better job of getting the product staged properly, that the day shift would be more productive, and we would actually have less work to do the following day.

We understood that sometimes we would need to do a bit extra work, we would need to hustle harder. But we also understood why the hustle was necessary, and what the positive result would be if we did hustle.

A couple years later, I was at the same job. By now we had moved to a different location and had new management. It was the week after Christmas, and night shift was told all week that we would only work from 4pm-8pm on New Year’s Eve. Normally, we worked a 6-8 hour shift. We were told we would come in, do some light clean up work, and go home early. Day shift was told they would be leaving early as well.

We arrived for our shift on New Year’s Eve, and it was a complete disaster. Day shift was still working, and wasn’t anywhere close to being done. We were told they would probably have to work our shift with us, but we would still leave at 8pm as planned.

A couple hours into our shift, we got an update; Day shift was probably going to be staying till around 10pm, and we would have to stay till 10pm as well. Upon hearing this news, some of the workers on day shift began to clock out and go home. Which meant we were further behind on work. So the night shift had to start finishing orders for the day shift.

At this point, no one was clear on why we were having to work so hard. Both shifts had been told they would get to leave early on New Year’s Eve, now it appeared that both shifts would actually have to work overtime. Obviously, something had changed to necessitate the extra work, but we weren’t told what had happened. Most of the day shift ended up working for 12 hours, and my night shift actually worked till 6am on New Year’s Day…a 14-hour shift, when we were told all week we would be working 4 hours. What made matters worse, was all during the day and night, we were told that we could leave in a few more hours. Then when a few more hours arrived, we were told it would be a few more hours. Workers were told to keep working hard, but never given a reason for the hard work. And all this was being required on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.

We were told to hustle, but never given a reason why the hustle was necessary. And the amount of hustle required kept changing, to reach a goal that no one understood. Such a working environment is toxic, it leads to less productive employees, and higher job turnover.

 

Being consistent is far more important than hustling

One of the biggest keys to success in digital and content creation is consistency. It’s honestly something I struggle with mightily. I talked before about how introverts need structure and order. Do this, and this happens. Introverts need to know that if they put in this work, that THIS will be the result.

The problem is, it’s difficult to apply this cause and effect structure to content creation. I can’t tell you how many posts I will need to write to see my traffic increase 50% from where it is right now. Maybe it will take a thousand posts, maybe it will take only one. All I know for sure is that by consistently creating content here, I am INCREASINGLY my chances of seeing my traffic increase.

That’s not very precise. But unfortunately, that’s about the best we can go on. For instance, I started creating regular, consistent content on this blog starting September of last year. Prior to then, my writing schedule was pretty unorganized, I would typically write whenever I had a topic I wanted to talk about and the time to write. But starting September 1st, or 8 months ago, I decided to commit to writing every week.

Since that time, my traffic has increased by about 50%. If I can keep writing consistently, the odds are I can increase traffic by another 50% in the same amount of time, if not sooner.

But there is no guarantee that this will work. And for workers that thrive of a cause and effect method of working; I do this and this happens, that can be very frustrating.

 

Learn when to hustle

So this is what I’ve learned; Work consistently until you get consistent results. When you reach that point, THEN you can begin to hustle. Once you know what the result is from your work, then hustling to complete that work will give you the result faster. But until you know what work is necessary to create the result you want, hustling only burns you out. Hustle only works when you hustle to complete meaningful work. If your work has no meaning or known purpose, then hustling does nothing but burn you out.

It sounds cliche, but if you want your employees to work harder, give them something to work harder for. Help them understand why the hustle is necessary, and what they will achieve as a result. If you are working for yourself, apply the same principles. Use ‘the hustle’ as a tool to become more productive, not as a tool to virtue signal to others how you are ‘getting shit done’.

Reality check, most of us are too busy on our own work to notice your ‘hustle’. So stop trying to impress others, just focus on the work that needs to be done, and only hustle if the work calls for it.

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Old Spice Opens a Barbershop/Content Studio

Old Spice has officially opened its first retail location. It is a barbershop that doubles as a ‘content studio’ for the brand.

The barbershop will be fully functioning, and Old Spice is offering a residency program for celebrity barbers. Additionally, it will be a way for Old Spice to get direct feedback on products from both the barbers as well as customers, on site.

Additionally, the retail location will also serve as a ‘content studio’ for the brand. The location itself will have the pre-requisite ‘grammable’ features such as a reception desk in the form of a wooden boat. But the location will also offer customers 3D models of different haircut styles and assorted visuals.

Here’s the video ‘announcing’ the barbershop:

From the video description: “Getting a haircut from the Old Spice Barbershop will make you feel like you’re a handsome head in a glorious hair parade. At least that’s what we told ourselves to justify driving this giant handsome head of hair around Columbus to announce the opening of our new barbershop.”

It’s very kooky and goofy, but that’s in line with the Old Spice brand, so it will be curious to see how this is received.

As the country reopens, we will literally have a nation that’s been pent-up and is ready to get outside and try new things. This year will be a great chance for brands to take some risks with experiential marketing and see what works.

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: YouTube Shorts on Fire, Pinterest Enters Livestreaming, In-Person Events Coming Back

Happy Monday, y’all! Hope you are ready for another amazing week! Here’s some breaking marketing and digital stories that caught my eye…

 

 

YouTube’s Shorts videos are proving to be insanely popular both with viewers, and content creators.  As you can see below, they are already generating over 6B daily views, and YouTube is rolling out more options to pay creators. Compensation for content creators is going to be one of the major themes for 2021. We will soon reach a point where SMEs will start leaving companies because they can make more money as content creators. Let’s keep an eye on compensation for content creators and see what the landscape looks like by this Fall.

 

Pinterest is beginning to experiment with livestreaming for its users. Later this month, Pinterest will host live virtual events with some of its top content creators.  I think this idea could work.  First, the events will only be available through the Pinterest app, so I like that they are pushing users to the app.  The events themselves will be structured around helping Pinners get better at skills that tie into how they are already using Pinterest.  So the events will focus on things like cooking a better meal, or planning your next vacation, or home improvement project.  So the focus won’t be on Pinterest as much as why people are using Pinterest. I think that’s a smart play.

https://twitter.com/thekenyeung/status/1392935923394875392

 

Fall 2021 looks to be when we can expect to see in-person events begin to return. Almost half of ad executives plan to be back to attending in-person events in Q3 2021. We’re still about 6 months behind where I thought we would be with returning to in-person events.  I assumed there would be a few events this Spring, but then a big return in the Fall of this year.  It seems like the big return won’t come till Spring of 2022. Still, I expect to see a decent spike in the number of in-person events this Fall.  People are hungry to get back to in-person events, there’s simply no better learning environment.

 

So that’s what I’m reading this week! I will see you back here tomorrow, hope you have a wonderful week!

PS: Are you subscribed to the Backstage Pass? Every Friday I give you stories, tips and ideas on how you can engage your customers and convert them into passionate fans, who love your brand.  Want in?  Signup below, and I’ll see you on Friday!