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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!

 

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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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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Clubhouse Arrives on Android, FB’s Group Accelerator Program, Gen Z Likes Influencers

Happy Monday, y’all! Some big social media tech news this week as we are already in the middle of May. Summer is around the corner!

 

The wait is finally over for Android users, Clubhouse is here. It looks like it’s being rolled out to US users first, with the rest of the world getting it soon. This may actually get me back on Clubhouse. An influx of new users will bring new perspectives and it will be interesting to see how this impacts the quality and type of rooms, as well as the overall experience. Plus, it will be curious to see how this impacts download numbers.  I suspect this won’t have the impact it would have if this had been launched for Android a couple of months ago when Clubhouse was white hot. The buzz has cooled considerably toward Clubhouse, so this could give them another shot in the arm, or be much ado about nothing. We’ll find out soon enough.

 

Following Clubhouse’s lead, Facebook is putting more support behind its accelerator program for groups. From Facebook: “Selected community leaders will spend five months learning from experts, coaches and a customized curriculum so they can organize and strengthen their community to work better together. Participants will then spend three months executing their initiatives. They will collaborate with advocates and leaders in the community space and work with the Facebook team to bring their ideas to life.” Selected admins will receive training and mentorship, funding, and access to new products and features before they go live.

 

I’m a bit surprised that millennials aren’t following more influencers on social media. This study found that 28% of 16-23 year olds follow at least one influencer on social media, and 23% of 24-37 year olds do. The same report found that the main reasons we use social media are: “keeping in touch with family and friends (50%), filling spare time (37%) and reading news stories (36%).”

 

So that’s it for another Monday’s Marketing Minute. Another big content week on tap here, posts every day through Friday.  Hope you have a wonderful week, thanks so much for reading!