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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Reddit’s Banger IPO, X Launches Articles, Liquid Death’s CoFounder on Innovation

Happy Monday, y’all! Hope everyone is having a great early Spring and are ready for a productive week ahead. Here’s a few business, marketing and digital stories that caught my eye recently:

 

Reddit had its long-anticipated IPO last week, and it went surprisingly well! Shares ended its debut day up almost 50% over the IPO price.  I just checked and RDDT is currently at $50.58 on early trading, so it’s looking to be up again today. It will be interesting to see how Reddit does long-term, the same concerns over moderation and censorship that have plagued other social platforms are present at Reddit. So far the company is doing quite well in public trading, it will be interesting to see if that’s still the case 6 and 12 months from now.

Twitter/X has finally launched Articles. Elon has long promised that he would give Twitter users a way to write long-form articles similar to blog posts on the platform, now it’s live.  The catch (there seems to always be one these days with Twitter) is that it’s only available to Premium+ subscribers. I have all of 5 minutes checking out Articles, but it seems like this functionality could only benefit a creator who is primarily using Twitter as a communication hub and who doesn’t have an established blog or website. Twitter’s play is they want creators to post articles on its platform instead of having creators like me post a link on the Twitter platform and then link to here. Twitter doesn’t want you leaving its platform to come to my blog, they want me to publish this on Twitter, and keep the traffic on Twitter.

 

Liquid Death is a wonderful example of how creative branding and communications still packs a ton of impact. I’m currently enjoying this wonderful podcast with Liquid Death co-founder Mike Cessario where he discusses his branding philosophy, and how to think differently to disrupt markets when you have no money and no visibility. Lotta useful branding nuggets in this one, you will want to dive right in.

 

So that’s it for this week’s edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute. Look for a new post on loyalty programs on Weds, and a very special Bible Study post on Easter on Sunday.

I hope you have a wonderful and productive week, see you on Weds!

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Marketing and Movies: The Book of Eli

web3 rabbit hole

One of the driving forces in our lives is to find our purpose. Our ‘higher calling’, or something that motivates us to get up in the morning and do something. We all have a longing to be a part of something bigger than ourselves. It gives our lives meaning, comfort, and hope. These themes along with faith, perseverance and love are explored in the wonderful movie The Book of Eli.

Disclaimer: This post contains spoilers about the movie The Book of Eli. If you have not watched The Book of Eli, please do so before reading this post. It’s wonderful and well worth your time.  You can read the other posts in the Marketing and Movies series here.

The Book of Eli centers on a man named Eli (played by Denzel Washington). Eli lives in a post-apocalyptic world. At first, we know very little about Eli, the world he is living in, or his purpose. As the movie progresses, we learn from Eli that sometime before the movie is set, nuclear war happened, and in order to survive, people like Eli went underground to avoid radiation contamination. The planet was devastated, and the majority of earth was turned into a wasteland. Clean water for drinking and bathing is now a prized commodity, one that Eli, along with everyone else in the movie is desperately seeking.

Eli’s purpose in the movie is revealed to us gently. At first, we are simply told that Eli has the single-minded purpose of going west. Later, we learn that Eli has in his possession a King James Bible. Eli enters a town and while there, the owner of the town, Carnegie, discovers this fact as well, and asks Eli to give him the Bible. Eli refuses, and Carnegie instructs his henchmen to kill Eli.

A huge gunfight ensues, that sees Carnegie’s henchmen shoot Eli multiple times, but the bullets inexplicably miss Eli, or seem to be deflected off him. At the same time, Eli seems to have almost supernatural precision in his shooting, killing the entire gang in just a few shots. Eli leaves the gang in the streets, and continues out of town.

Outside of town, a girl from the town named Solara meets up with Eli. Solara is the daughter of Carnegie’s mistress, Claudia.  Eli tells her to go back to her mom, his journey is too dangerous for her. She says she will take Eli to find water if she can go with him. Eli never agrees, but follows Solara to a nearby spring. Eli gets all the water he can carry, then locks Solara in the spring. He reminds her that his journey is too dangerous for her, and leaves her.

Solara later escapes the spring, but instead of going back to her town, she continues after Eli. As she is traveling, she comes across a woman screaming for help. She goes to help the woman, but as soon as the woman sees that Solara is also a woman, she panics and begs her to leave immediately. Solara does not, and a group of bikers come out and attack Solara. Just as they are about to subdue Solara, Eli finds them and kills the group before they could assault Solara. Now Eli has no choice but to let Solara join him on his journey.

They continue west, and the next night they rest at a long abandoned nuclear plant. There, Eli explains more about the Bible. He says that one day he heard the voice of God in his head. God told him to go to a spot, and that he would find the Bible there. God told Eli to take the Bible, and to ‘go west’. Eli explains that God told him that He would protect him on his journey. It turns out, this is the last Bible in existence, but Eli still doesn’t know why he is taking it ‘out west’, just that God told him to, and that’s enough for him. Solara is stunned that Eli would do all this for a book, and would ‘go west’ based on simple faith.

Eli and Solara continue west, but Carnegie also continues to track them. Eventually, Carnegie finds Eli and Solara, and takes the Bible from Eli, and then shoots him. Carnegie kidnaps Solara, then heads back to his town with Solara.

Along the way back to his town, Solara is able to attack the driver of the truck that’s carrying her, and she takes over the vehicle and heads back toward the house where Eli was shot. Carnegie’s driver tells him that they have just enough gas to make it back to his town, so Carnegie decides to let Solara go.

Carnegie returns to his town, and gives the Bible to the engineer to open.  The Bible has a large gold lock on it. At the same time, Solara returns to the house where Eli was shot, and finds that he’s gone. Solara starts driving past the house, and after some time she encounters Eli walking down the road. She asks him where he is going and he says “West. Gotta go west”. So Solara continues to drive Eli west. Eventually, they come to the Golden Gate bridge. The bridge’s middle section is destroyed, so they start rowing a boat across the water and eventually come to Alcatraz Prison.

Back in town, Carnegie has opened the Bible, only to discover that he cannot read it. There’s a good reason why he can’t. And in the process, he also discovers something amazing about Eli:

Eli and Solara enter the prison facility, and the person running it informs them that they have a vast library and a printing press. Eli informs the man that he has a copy of the King James Bible. Then Eli proceeds to dictate the entire Bible to the man, as he meticulously records his every word. Once the process is finished, the printing press can then begin to print copies of the King James Bible, for the first time since they were destroyed during the nuclear war. This was Eli’s mission from God.

The movie implies that Eli died soon after his copy of the Bible was transcribed. Eli quotes 2 Timothy 4:7, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”

The Book of Eli and the Secret of Great Marketing

For almost two decades I have consulted companies on their marketing strategies. One of the core teachings I try to stress to clients is that you aren’t marketing a product, you are marketing how your product fits into my life. Your goal as a marketer should be to make sure I understand the impact that your product will have on my life.

Because at the end of the day, our material possessions aren’t what drive us and give us happiness. It’s something bigger than that. It’s our experiences, our accomplishments.

It’s the life we live.

Throughout the movie, we watch as Solara reacts to understanding what Eli is doing, and why he is doing it. At first she experiences disbelief, and views Eli’s trek out west as being ridiculous. But later as she learns more about what Eli is doing, and witnesses firsthand his dedication to his journey, her disbelief gives way to awe, and finally to admiration.

At one point early on in the movie, Solara laments that her town is corrupt and people are being hurt, as an appeal to Eli for him to leave his mission and stay in the town and help them. Eli simply responds “Then change it” and continues west.

The movie ends with Solara paying her respects to Eli at his gravesite. She then turns on his music player, picks up his weapon, and begins her own journey, back to her town. Eli had a mission from God to perform, and in performing that mission, he also inspired Solara to find her own calling, her own mission.

Your calling as a marketer is to lead your customers to live better, more fulfilling lives. Selling products is a byproduct of that, not the goal. The marketing goal is to market how your product fits into the lives of your customers, how it makes their lives better and more meaningful.

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Twitter Begins Charging Users to Tweet, NICKMERCS’ Massive Kick Deal, B2B Marketing Growth Slows

Happy Fall, y’all! We are just 8 days from Halloween and this is my favorite time of the year! The days are warm but crisp and the nights are cool but not yet cold. Here’s some business stories that have caught my eye over the last week:

 

It just feels like the long. slow march toward irrelevance is underway for Twitter/X. Elon seems determined to turn X into a pay to play platform. Since taking over, he’s been introducing numerous ways to charge users for services that were formerly free.  First there was Twitter Blue. Now, he’s begun hinting that users will eventually have to pay to tweet. In fact, such a program is currently being trialed in select countries. New users in New Zealand and the Philippines are being charged $1 a year to tweet. The name of the program is called ‘Not a Bot’ and Elon’s spin is that this will help fight the proliferation of bots on the platform.  The same justification he gave for Twitter Blue, limiting daily tweets, etc. The reality is, bots are just as big of a problem as they ever were.  This is about Elon introducing the idea of paying for Twitter. It’s incrementalism, once the idea has become accepted that core services now will cost something, then he can over time raise the price as much as he wants. I may have more thoughts on this tomorrow, I want to mull this over, but it seems like Twitter is entering that long, slow death spiral.

 

If you’ve read this blog for the last few years, you know I am a big fan of NICKMERCS. He just signed a $10 Million, one year deal with Kick, a Twitch rival. Perhaps the most amazing thing about this deal is that it’s apparently NOT exclusive! Nick will still be streaming on both Twitch AND Kick. Nick is one of the most popular streamers in the world, and he is a masterclass in building and leveraging a community. Nick started streaming in 2010, with an audience of zero. On one of his streams I watched, he mentioned that when he was first starting he would go to a local gas station and buy $20 Amazon gift cards to give away to subscribers during his stream. And his parents were NOT happy with his initial decision to become a full-time streamer. So he went from zero to being one of the wealthiest streamers on the planet, in under 15 years. And a big part of that was due to him creating and SUPPORTING his community of fans. He has given away hundreds of thousands of dollars (maybe more?) to his fans over the years. He loves the people that love him.  Well done, Nick, now how long before that first Nick/Doc/Timmy stream???

 

The economy is hitting B2B Marketing spending as it is all areas of our lives right now. Projected spending on B2B marketing data in 2023 will be almost half what it was the last two years. Spending growth is forecast to see a marginal improvement in 2024, before increasing solidly in 2025.

 

So that’s it for this week’s edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute. I hope you have an amazing week, look for a new post tomorrow and another on Thursday. Oh and likely a post on the Bible over the weekend. Have a wonderful and productive week!

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What is Your Product’s ‘Job to Be Done’?

job to be done Whenever I talk with clients about positioning a new or even existing product or service, I stress the need for there to be a clear benefit to the customer, that the customer can clearly understand. The customer needs to understand how a product or service will fit into their lives, and immediately make a positive impact.

Some would argue, that the ease of collecting data about modern customers can actually make it more difficult to correctly identify the value that a product can create for a customer. Sometimes, customers simply buy a product for reasons that are their own, that really aren’t easily uncovered by simply looking at data or demographics.

Let me give you a couple of examples:

1 – I never chew gum UNLESS I am about to board a plane for a flight. If I am at an airport, one of the last purchases I will make will be to run into a gift shop or Hudson News and grab a pack of chewing gum. I want the gum because chewing the gum as the plane is taking off and climbing helps lower the chance of my ears popping! So I never need chewing gum UNLESS I am about to board a plane, then it’s a purchase I always make.

2 – I am currently playing a war game on my iPhone. The game includes chat functionality, and in playing the game, you can chat with other players and get to know them. I was talking to a player recently who said they enjoyed playing this game. They went on to explain that one of their parents had just died, and they were having to deal with the stress and worry associated with a parent’s death. They added that playing the game gave them a very welcome distraction that helped them get their mind off their real world issues.

 

I recently came across a wonderful article in the Harvard Business Review that explains this concept as buying a product for it’s Job to Be Done. For me, chewing gum bought at the airport has a job to do: Keep my ears from popping during takeoff. For my friend, playing the phone game had a job to do: Provide escape from their real world problems.

Here’s an example from the article: A consultant was hired by a Detroit building company to increase sales of its condominiums. The condos were positioned to retired couples that were looking to downsize from a larger home to a smaller condo. The units were given features designed to appeal to downsizers, and they even consulted focus groups to uncover any additional features they might have missed.

But sales were disappointing. The units generated prospective buyer visits, but struggled to close the deal. There was a bottleneck, something holding back the prospective buyer from becoming an actual one.

So the consultant decided to switch gears, and went back and started interviewing the people that had bought the units. The interviews were designed to help drill down on what prompted the person to commit to the purchase.

It turns out, it was the dining room table. Or rather, what the dining room table represented for the prospective buyer; Moving on from a home they loved, to a new condominium that had none of the attached memories.

As the article explains:

But as Moesta sat at his own dining room table with his family over Christmas, he suddenly understood. Every birthday was spent around that table. Every holiday. Homework was spread out on it. The table represented family.

What was stopping buyers from making the decision to move, he hypothesized, was not a feature that the construction company had failed to offer but rather the anxiety that came with giving up something that had profound meaning. The decision to buy a six-figure condo, it turned out, often hinged on a family member’s willingness to take custody of a clunky piece of used furniture.

This helped the company understand the Job to Be Done of its condos. It wasn’t about giving them a new place to live, it was about moving their lives into a new phase. The dining room table represented family, tradition, history. So the building company changed its offerings around the condos to reflect a better understanding of what was holding prospective buyers back from becoming actual buyers. They expanded the dining area to give more room to accommodate a larger dining room table. The company also added storage facilities to help buyers have a place to store items until it could decide what could be kept and what needed to be given away.

All of this goes back to simply understanding the customer. And with the ‘job to be done’ line of thinking, you are also thinking about ways to incorporate unpredictability into the lives of your customers. Every day, your customers are receiving unexpected good and bad news. In both cases, behavior patterns, either in the short or long-term, will immediately change.  They will suddenly need new products for new reasons to fulfill new ‘jobs’ for them.

Think back to the last two years and the impact that the covid pandemic has had on the world. If you will remember, one of the constant themes I have stressed here is considering how the pandemic would change the purchasing behavior of your customers. Some of the changes are big and easy to predict, such as a shift toward takeout from restaurants over dining in person. But other changes are harder to detect. But you need to be able to account of the possibility of changes and the resulting shift in purchasing behavior.

Here again is the link to the HBR review article detailing the theory of ‘job to be done’.

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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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Cadbury Wants You to Stop Buying Its Chocolate

Cadbury chocolateTen years ago, Patagonia made waves by taking out a full page ad in the New York Times for Black Friday, asking that we not buy Patagonia products. The brand was asking customers to instead only buy garments when their current clothing had broken down and outlived its usefulness.

Ironically, the ad helped spark a massive 33% increase in sales for Patagonia in 2012. The ad connected with customers because it showed that Patagonia was staying true to the brand’s values and not just looking to make a buck on the biggest shopping day of the year.

It worked for Patagonia in 2011, and it might work for Cadbury in 2021. Cadbury, which started as street shop in the UK almost 200 years ago, is going back to its roots. Cadbury is encouraging customers NOT to buy their chocolate from Cadbury, but to instead purchase their chocolate from local chocolatiers in the UK. Several such businesses have been forced to close already in the UK due to covid restrictions, so Cadbury is hoping to aid the ones that are left.

The brand has partnered with 6 chocolatiers in the UK to give away free chocolate gifts from these retailers. If you are in the UK, go to this site and sign up for your free gift.

Delish has the scoop on the brand’s efforts.

“We are proud to be supporting local chocolatiers across the UK. As a nation, we’ve always been lucky to have a thriving chocolate scene, full of variety and creativity; and at Cadbury, we of course understand what it’s like to start out as a small independent chocolate shop. So, we wanted to take the opportunity to support our fellow chocolatiers and ask the nation to do the same. After all, it’s all for the love of chocolate!”

 

It will be interesting to see how this impacts sales for both Cadbury, and the 6 chocolatiers the brand is partnering with.  I suspect all parties involved will see a boost in sales, at least from the UK.

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The Real Reason Why the Mona Lisa is So Popular Will Surprise You

Have you ever really considered WHY The Mona Lisa is the most famous artwork in the world? A strong argument could be made that it’s not even DaVinci’s most impressive painting, I would consider The Last Supper to be a far superior work. Also, consider the works of his peers like Michelangelo’s The Sistine Chapel ceiling or his David sculpture.

I mean…The Mona Lisa is nice and all, but the best ever???  I just don’t see it.

And until 1911, the art world agreed with me. Critics in Paris acknowledged The Mona Lisa as a masterpiece of Renaissance art, but it was hardly known outside of France. In fact by August of 1911, no one outside the art world really knew of or about the painting.

All that was about to change, overnight.

On the morning of August 21, 1911, three Italian men walked out of the Louvre without so much as a notice. Which is odd, because they were carrying with them over 200 pounds of wood and glass, covered in a blanket.  The three men boarded a train and left the city at approximately 8 am in the morning.

They had just stolen The Mona Lisa.  In broad daylight.

And just like that, they were gone. A clean getaway. In fact, no one at the Louvre even noticed the painting had been stolen until 28 hours later!

In a weird quirk of fate, it turns out that the bare spot in the gallery where The Mona Lisa had hung stood bare for 28 hours. And even when the painting was discovered missing, it wasn’t assumed to have been stolen. At the time, the paintings in the Louvre were being photographed. The photographic technology at the time was primitive, so the only way to get a decent photograph of each work was to remove it from the gallery and take it to the roof where better lighting was available.

So 28 hours later, when an artist who was painting in the Louvre finally noticed the empty spot, he brought it to the attention of security. The artist assumed the painting was being photographed on the roof, and asked the security guard to check with the photographers and see when it would be returned.

That’s when the Louvre discovered that the photographers didn’t have it, and that it had been stolen.

This is the point in our story where things begin to get interesting. Media in France and then the world picked up on the heist. Again, at the time, The Mona Lisa wasn’t even the most famous painting in its own gallery, much less in the Louvre. But everyone loves a good scandal, and the French letting 3 men steal from the Louvre in broad daylight had all the makings of one. As media coverage intensified, conspiracy theories about the thieves began to emerge. One popular theory was that American business tycoon JP Morgan had commissioned thieves to steal the painting. Contemporary artist Pablo Picasso was actually considered a suspect in the theft, and was questioned.

A week later, the Louvre reopened and a mob of people flocked to the museum to see a bare spot on the wall where a week earlier, The Mona Lisa had hung. The same painting that none of them cared to see, but now all of them were willing to fight through a mob to see the space where the painting had hung.

Aren’t humans silly creatures sometimes?

Meanwhile, what seemed like a perfect getaway for the three Italian thieves, was quickly falling apart. Their intent had been to take the painting and quickly sell it for a nice profit. But the media coverage of the theft made it almost impossible to sell the painting. The thieves stored it in Paris, until 28 months later, when they attempted to sell it to an art dealer in Italy. The dealer verified it was The Mona Lisa, and contacted the police, who arrested the thieves.

The Mona Lisa was returned to the Louvre, and a mob of people again flocked there to see the return of the painting that was now viewed as being the most famous in the world.

Isn’t that interesting? The fame and notoriety of the painting really has nothing to do with the art itself, but rather with a theft over 100 years ago.  Just think, if those thieves had stolen another unknown painting and left The Mona Lisa there, we might today consider that unknown painting to be the greatest piece of art in the world.

There’s a lesson in that for your content. Take a topic that’s boring, and marry it to something interesting, and the boring topic becomes more interesting to your audience. We’ve all seen posts that compare something in business to a hit movie or book. Such as ‘Five Marketing Lessons Everyone Can Learn From Star Wars’, or ‘Ten Business Lessons You Can Steal From Watching Moneyball’. Such posts that connect the business and entertainment worlds are quite common among content creators. Hell I once wrote a post about social media monitoring lessons you could learn from Jason Bourne!

We write these posts because they work! Marrying the boring topic to the interesting one, if done correctly, makes the boring topic more interesting to your audience.

Additionally, we love stories. The Mona Lisa was a mostly overlooked Renaissance painting UNTIL it was stolen. The theft of The Mona Lisa gave it a scandalous backstory that interested people. Think about it, before the painting was stolen, it was unknown outside a few French art collectors. After it was stolen, it became the most famous painting in the world. The theft gave The Mona Lisa an interesting story, and that made the painting more interesting as a result.

BONUS: Want to really make your content more interesting? Tell a story with your content, and make your customer the HERO of that story! One of the best examples I’ve ever seen of doing this correctly is this long-form Pantene commercial from Thailand. It’s amazing.

Note from Mack: This post is actually an issue of my Backstage Pass newsletter that goes out every Friday morning. Want to subscribe so you get this Friday’s issue? Click on the form below and subscribe now.  See you this Friday!

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How to Be a Better Marketer

Marketers, as a profession, are one of the least-trusted groups around. They are the guy at the party that everyone dreads seeing. You are with your friends having a perfectly delightful conversation, then here comes the marketer. He steers the conversation to himself, and brags incessantly about his accomplishments. When someone in your group attempts to change the subject to something more interesting, he immediately dismisses the introduced topic, and moves the focus back where it belongs. On him.

This is how most people view the average marketer. And often, this illustration isn’t that absurd. Yet, most marketers aren’t bad people, they simply fall prey to human nature far too easily.

The reality is, we all act in our own best interests. Period. Yet, good marketers understand how to make human nature work for them, and not against them. They understand that in order to reach their desired goals, they have to also provide equal or greater value to someone else.

 

TLDR: How to Be a Better Marketer

  • Respect your customers, market to them as you would your friends and family.
  • Your marketing communications should focus on and create value for your customers.
  • If your marketing isn’t relevant to your audience, then it will be ignored.
  • Understand who your customer is before you market to them.
  • Don’t sell your product, sell what your product allows the customer to do.

 

Why are marketers so distrusted?

Let’s back up for a minute and talk about how one brand figured out how to be better marketers. As with most good stories, alcohol is involved.

Bill Samuels Sr founded Maker’s Mark in 1953. Senior was the epitome of a craftsman. He loved crafting bourbon and prided himself on his ability to do so. His son, Bill Samuels Jr, took over as President of Maker’s Mark in the 1970s with one clear directive from his dad: “Don’t screw up the whisky.”

Father and son were diametrically opposed when it came to the topic of marketing. Junior was a showman. He loved marketing and appreciated the power of promotion and sales.

His father absolutely hated marketing and distrusted most marketers just as much as the rest of us do. Senior hated marketing so much so that often when junior would attempt to have a marketing discussion with his father, Bill Samuels Sr would simply stand up and walk out of the meeting.

So Bill Samuels Jr was at an impasse. He knew that Maker’s Mark needed to do SOME marketing in order to grow, but he also knew that his father would simply continue to shoot down any attempts the son made at adding marketing communications to the mix.

Finally, Bill Samuels Jr decided that it would probably be a good idea to better understand why his father was so opposed to marketing. The son figured that if he understood why his father didn’t want to invest in marketing, then maybe he could come up with a compromise that would be palatable to his father. Bascially, Bill Samuels Jr was marketing the idea of investing in marketing, to his father. So his father was his customer, and the son was learning how to better understand his objections to marketing, so he could factor that into his efforts. Which is what all good marketers do.

Bill Samuels Sr didn’t view the people who bought his bourbon as being customers, he viewed them as being friends and family. And he viewed marketing as selling, and in his mind, you didn’t sell to your friends and family.

So this prompted Bill Samuels Jr to completely shift his mindset toward who the Maker’s Mark customer was, and in turn, how to communicate with them. Samuels Jr went back to his father and said they would define the Maker’s Mark customer as being someone who they would like to invite over to their house for drinks. Bill Samuels Sr signed off on this, and Jr got to work on building a marketing strategy based on communicating with friends and family, instead of selling to strangers.

As an aside, this shift in marketing strategy opened the door for Maker’s Mark to launch one of the most successful brand ambassador programs of all time. In the early 1980s, Maker’s Mark was the recipient of some wonderful exposure in national publications like The Wall Street Journal. That surge of PR catapulted demand for the brand’s products, which actually created a massive distribution problem for Maker’s Mark. Prior to this, Maker’s Mark was essentially a regional, Kentucky brand, and its distribution channels were regional as well. But thanks to the exposure in the WSJ and other publications, there was suddenly national demand for a brand that not only didn’t have the distribution channels to handle a national supply, but the product itself took years to make.

While the brand didn’t have a national distribution channel, it did have customers across the United States. More than that, it had customers that loved the brand. So Bill Samuels Jr. decided to embrace those happy customers, and empower them to market for the brand. Maker’s Mark began to mobilize its customers across the country to demand Maker’s Mark be shipped to their corner of the country. The efforts of its customers slowly expanded Maker’s Mark’s distribution from coast to coast. These efforts by Maker’s Mark to empower its customers to market for the brand would eventually be folded into an official brand ambassador program, which still lives on to this day. You can learn more about the program here.

Bill Samuels Sr. distrusted marketers for the same reason most of you do; He found the very idea offensive, as he felt that marketing was selling, and you don’t sell to friends and family. So Maker’s Mark focused on treating its customers as friends and family, and adjusted its marketing strategy accordingly. Bill Samuels Jr would later call it ‘marketing without fingerprints’.

The key takeaway? If you respect your customers, that changes how you sell to them.

 

The power of being second

Let’s go back to human nature for a minute. It is human nature to want to take care of ourselves first, and everyone else later. For instance, if there’s a shortage of a particular product, say gas, do you let everyone else fill up their tank first, then you go get your gas a week later?  Of course not, you will try to fill up your tank of gas today, and you assume everyone else will do the same. That doesn’t make you a bad person, it just makes you human. We all think of our wants and needs first, before others. Not all the time, but in general.

It’s no different for most marketers. Most marketers focus first on getting the sale, and pleasing the customer can come later. But smart marketers understand the power of pleasing the customer first, and how that will LEAD to sales.

In 2004, Sarah McLachlan released the single World on Fire. Her record label gave her $150,000 to create a music video to support the song. Just as she was preparing to begin filming the video, she came across a letter written by a volunteer with the group Engineers Without Borders. This letter detailed the work that the group was doing to help impoverished people around the world. Sarah was so moved by the work Engineers Without Borders was doing, that she decided to take all but $15 of the $150,000 her record label had given her to create a music video, and she instead donated it to 11 charitable organizations, including Engineers Without Borders.

Now, this was a very generous act on Sarah’s behalf, but her record label still wanted her to create a music video. So Sarah took the last $15 from her budget, and bought a video tape. She then, working with a few friends, created a very low-tech video for World on Fire.

But the video told an incredibly compelling story. What Sarah did with her video was explain to the viewer all the normal expenses associated with creating a music video, and how much each item normally costs. Then, Sarah detailed what the money was actually spend on, via her charitable donations. What resulted was, and absolutely amazing music video, created for just $15:

This video received a Grammy nomination for best music video, the only such nomination of Sarah’s 34-year career as a recording artist.

So let’s break this down: Sarah received $150k to record a music video for World on Fire. Instead, she donated almost all of that money to 11 charitable organizations around the world, impacting the lives of millions of people. And she still got to create a music video for World on Fire, which received a Grammy nomination.

All because Sarah didn’t use her video as a way to ‘sell’ her song, but instead she used it as a tool to help others, to advance causes she is passionate about, and to tell a compelling story. She got the sales she (and her label) wanted, but she got so much more than that.

The key takeaway? Good marketing isn’t about the person sending the message, it’s about the person who hears it. If you create a compelling marketing message, the sales will take care of itself.

 

The best marketing is invisible. The worst marketing BECOMES invisible. 


This is Times Square, in NYC. Look at this picture, but really it’s the same with any picture you see of Times Square.

You always see marketing and advertising messages everywhere. Flashing billboards, and blinking lights as far as the eye can see.

So. Much. Marketing.

Now look at the people. Every single person in this image has one thing in common. Can you spot it?

Every single person is totally ignoring every marketing message.

Everyone in this picture is completely ignoring these hundreds of marketing messages that are all around them. The reason why is because these messages lack relevance. If a marketing message is irrelevant to you, then it is worthless to you.

It becomes invisible to you.

Now let’s go back to the Maker’s Mark brand ambassador program for a minute. We’ve already talked about how long-running it is, and how successful it has been. In order to join the brand ambassador program, you have to apply. In other words, you have to raise your hand and offer to perform the duties that Maker’s Mark asks from its ambassadors. So when Maker’s Mark delivers marketing messages to you, those are marketing messages that you asked to receive. Those messages have relevance for you, so you don’t perceive them as being marketing.

Let’s be clear: If a marketing message has relevance for you, you don’t view it as being marketing.

On the other hand, if a marketing message has NO relevance for you, you ignore it.

The best marketing is invisible. Meaning you don’t SEE it as marketing. You see it as something that has relevance for you.

The worst marketing BECOMES invisible. Meaning, if the marketing message is totally irrelevant to you. then you totally ignore it. It BECOMES invisible to you.

We’ve trained ourselves to view marketing as something bad, as a distraction, an irritant. Actually, that’s not fair, we have simply been exposed to so much BAD marketing, that we tend to view ALL marketing as bad.

Good marketing is relevant to us. It creates value for us, and respects us. As a result, we don’t view it as marketing.

What happens when we don’t view a marketing message as being marketing? We open ourselves to LISTENING TO THAT MESSAGE.

Once a marketer has gained our attention, then they have a chance to convert us into a customer.

The key takeaway? If your marketing message is relevant to your audience, then that audience will listen to your message. If your marketing message is irrelevant to your audience, then that audience will ignore it.

 

The best marketing is spoken in the voice of your customer

Let’s say you are a diehard fan of the movie Inception. Your friend Tom hates the movie, and thinks it is completely overblown.

You are trying to convince Jim, who you don’t know, to watch Inception. But at the same time, Tom is going to give the argument for why Jim should NOT watch Inception. And it just so happens that Tom is also Jim’s cousin.

So who do you think will be able to persuade Jim to watch or not watch the movie Inception? You may say that Jim will listen to Tom, because Tom is his cousin and he trusts his opinion. You would  probably be correct. But at the same time, Tom knows and understands what types of movies Jim likes. Tom would explain to Jim that he doesn’t like movies like Inception, why he doesn’t like them, and Jim would probably ultimately agree and not see the movie.

In the end, the fact that Tom and Jim were cousins wasn’t the deciding factor for Jim.  It was the fact that Tom understands what type of movie Jim likes to watch. You don’t know what type of movie that Jim likes, so in explaining what you liked about the movie Inception, you were actually making the case to Jim for why he should NOT watch it.

Think of marketing as a tax that your brand has to pay because it doesn’t understand your customer.  If you know precisely who your customer is, and you understand them completely, then you know how to create marketing that appeals to them at every stage of the process from awareness to sale, and beyond. Your marketing costs are significantly lower because you are crafting perfect marketing communications that are relevant to your customers, that create value for them, and which resonate with them.

When you don’t know who your customer is, when you don’t understand your customer, then your marketing costs increase at an exorbitant rate.

The key takeaway? When you understand your customer, you can speak to their wants, needs and desires. You don’t market to them, you talk to them. And they listen.

 

The best marketing doesn’t focus on your product, it focuses on your customer

The most effective marketing doesn’t sell your product, it sells how your product fits into my life.

Watch this Red Bull commercial, and as you do, notice how much time is spent focused on the Red Bull energy drink:

The Red Bull can isn’t shown till the last 2 seconds of the commercial. The logo is shown a few times throughout, but the star of this commercial is clearly the extreme athletes that Red Bull sponsors and supports. Red Bull doesn’t market its product, it markets what happens after you drink it.

Don’t sell your product, sell the change that happens to your customer as a result of your product.

This is one of the most powerful marketing lessons you can learn. When someone isn’t familiar with your product, you sell the benefits of owning it. You sell the changes that owning this product will create for the owner.

Don’t sell me the product, sell what the product allows me to do.

Look at Nike’s iconic marketing campaigns. Just do it. The shoes and clothing is an afterthought, the focus is on the athletes and their accomplishments. Think of Apple’s marketing for the iPhone in recent years. The focus is more on what the iPhone allows you to do, the content it helps you create, moreso than the actual tool itself.

Notice how these examples of how to improve your marketing are focused on understanding your customer and marketing from the customer’s point of view. Customers don’t buy products, they buy solutions to problems, or improvements to their lives. If a particular product can consistently meet or exceed their expectations, then the customer will become loyal to that brand.

 

Your job as a marketer is to create fans.

In 2010 I attended the FIRE Sessions in Greenville, South Carolina. One of the speakers was Steve Knox, who at the time was the CEO of Proctor and Gamble’s Word of Mouth unit, Tremor. He said something that stopped me in my tracks:

“Victory in marketing doesn’t happen when you sell something, but when you cultivate advocates for your brand.”

Think about that quote and what it means. Who are advocates for your brand? They are the customers that LOVE your brand and who are advocating on its behalf. So they are not only buying your products, they are actively selling your brand to other customers.

How would your marketing change, if your goal was to cultivate advocates? To create customers that love you and who will advocate for you.

The amazing part is…you will still be creating sales. But you’ll also be creating so much more.

 

If you want to be a better marketer:

  • Respect your customers
  • Create value for your customers
  • Your marketing MUST be relevant to your customers, or it will be ignored
  • Understand your customers
  • Don’t market your product, market the positive changes in my life that your product will create for me
  • Don’t focus on sales with your marketing, focus on delighting your customers. If you create happy customers, the sales take care of themselves.

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: NBC Universal’s Marketing Bet on The Office, How Morning Brew Got a Million Readers

Happy Monday, y’all! Hope everyone had an amazing weekend. Last week was my birthday, so I decided to take Monday off, then on Tuesday I got a bit sick and decided to rest for a couple days and before I knew it, it was Friday and I’d lost the whole week here!  So sorry, I will try to make it up to you this week, starting today!

 

So NBC Universal is doing something interesting with its new streaming service and its hit series The Office. I found this story in The Hustle newsletter and unfortunately they didn’t tweet a link to it. NBC Universal is actually building out the service around one show; The Office.  They have a freemium plan that gives you access to the first two seasons of The Office. If you want more, you pay for it, and get all the seasons as well as additional ‘superfan’ content. It will be interesting to see if more streaming services move toward packages built around individual programs. I could see certain very popular shows having enough of a fanbase to add in bonus content, maybe access to Zoom calls with actors from the show, etc, and that being a standalone product. If this was done around shows that are in the catalog, this could really work well.  A package for Cheers fans, or Friends fans that includes Zoom ‘reunion’ calls with the actors, or something similar.  For your business, think about your more profitable product or service, and how that could potentially be a draw to attract new customers.

 

This tweet is a few months old, but I’m just now seeing it and it had such good lessons that I wanted to share. The Morning Brew is a wildly popular business newsletter that last August reached a milestone of having one million people open a single newsletter.  If I have 500 people open mine, I’m thrilled! There were many key takeaways from the article, but the two I noted were that they didn’t focus on number of subscribers, they focused on levels of engagement. Their goal was to get each subscriber to open that first email, with the thinking being that when they do, that greatly increases the chances of them being an engaged reader.  One thing they do that I think is genius (but really won’t work unless you have a huge list) is they send out 4 different subject lines for each newsletter to a small subsection of the list.  Then, they see which subject line led to the most opens, and pick that one to send out to the remainder of the list. Another smart thing is they promote the newsletter via other newsletters! The thinking was that people that like newsletters, will read multiple ones, so advertise where their attention already is, on reading another newsletter!  Check out the article for some great insights on building your own newsletter audience.  This is definitely a priority for me in 2021!

 

Finally, let’s wrap up with a share from the fantabulous Kelly Hungerford. You can never go wrong with Kelly! She points to a CoSchedule study that found that 32% of customers would leave a brand they claim to love after just one bad customer experience. Showing empathy for your customers via your content and interactions can go a long way toward keeping unhappy customers!

 

Thank you so much for reading, I will be back tomorrow with another post, and remember that tomorrow night on Twitter we will have #ContentCircus, starting at 7pm Central! Be safe and be careful this week!

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Money Can Buy You Happiness, If You Spend it On This

It’s an age old question; Can money REALLY buy you happiness?

Science has chimed in on this question with a definite answer; It depends.

According to scientific research, money CAN buy you happiness. But, and here’s the catch, that happiness can either be short-term or long-term, based on WHAT you spend your money on.

If you buy products, your happiness from that purchase tends to be short-term. Additionally, your happiness is typically at its highest levels at the moment of purchase. The amount of happiness that you get from a product purchase tends to degrade over time. When you are dealing with products that are frequently updated, such as a new version of the iPhone coming out every year, your happiness levels from your purchase can fall even faster.

So product purchases tend to bring you short-term happiness that fades quickly.

If you want long-term happiness, then scientific research shows that you should spend your money on experiences. For instance, travel. And your happiness from these experiences increases more, if you enjoy those experiences with other people.

Here’s why; Word of mouth. Think about it, your family goes on vacation and that creates memories that you will share for the rest of your lives. In recalling those trips, you continue to get happiness and joy from simply recalling with your family what happened.

I grew up in a rural area of Alabama that had no toy stores. As a child, my exposure to toys in a retail setting was one isle of boys toys and one isle of toys for girls in the local department store. But when I was 8 years old, my family took a trip to Gatlinburg, Tennessee. It was in December, so very cold, in fact I think it was snowing. My family and I were in an area with many small shops on both sides of the cobblestone street. I was walking around marveling at the shops when I saw it. A toy shop! I turned around and there was a huge store display of 12-inch Star Wars dolls! For the rest of my life, I will always remember seeing that gorgeous display on the other side of a frost-covered window.

I could not, for the life of me, remember a single product my family bought during that trip. But I will always remember the experience of being on that cobblestone street and seeing that display of Star Wars figures in that toy shop.

Product purchases bring short-term happiness that fades quickly. Long-term happiness comes from spending money on experiences.

So what does this mean for product marketers? If what you sell only provides short-term pleasure, how do you overcome that?

You focus your marketing, product design, sales and research on the EXPERIENCES that your product enables for the customer. You aren’t just selling a product, you are selling a product that allows the customer to engage in amazing experiences!

Here’s an example. When a financial planner talks to you about planning for retirement, what do they talk to you about?  A good deal of the conversation revolves around ‘what do you want retirement to look like?’ In other words, when do you want to retire, and what do you want to do WHEN you retire? The planner focuses on the life you want to live when you retire, then customizes a financial plan to help you achieve those goals. But when selling the services, a smart planner will focus on what good retirement planning today will mean to your financial future. She will talk to you about the experiences you will be able to have if you create a solid retirement plan today.

Look at Red Bull’s commercials and content. Red Bull sells energy drinks, but almost none of its marketing or content is focused on the products it sells. Instead, almost all of Red Bull’s content focuses on the experiences that its athletes are engaged in. The amazing stunts, tricks and accomplishments that make us ‘ohhh’ and ‘ahhh’! But the underlying message is clear: If you want to do amazing things like this, drink Red Bull.

 

So when you designing your product marketing, focus on the experiences that your product can create for your customers. Ask yourself “What does this product allow our customers to do that’s amazing? How does this product change the lives of our customers?” At first this might seem silly, but after a while, you will probably realize that your product can make a bigger impact on the lives of your customers than you realized

Now you need to make sure your customers realize that as well. Remember, the key is to create happiness for your customers that lasts for life.