Ground Control, to Major Brand

Last month in the town of Port Isabel, Texas they had a bit of a problem.

SpaceX had just test launched Starship Rocket, with the most powerful engine they’d built to date.

SpaceX expected the event to go down in history.

It did.

But not for the reason they were hoping it would.

The rockets engines ignited and a massive cloud of debris and thousands of basketball sized chunks of concrete were blown in all directions.

One of the chunks damaged the rocket causing it to explode moments after lift-off.

The good news is the rocket was unmanned.

The bad news was that for nearby Port Isabel it meant being blanketed in a gritty layer of sand, dirt and concrete.

It all happened because SpaceX, in its rush to launch, had not engineered the launch pad with a trench system to divert the rocket’s energy away from directly impacting the ground.

Months before, NASA had told SpaceX that their launch pad design could mean disaster.

But SpaceX ignored them.

So the launch pad got blown to smithereens destroying the rocket, and leaving Port Isabel buried under the remains of SpaceX’s crater of failure.

In my agency work, I’ve seen a number of brand launches follow a similar story line.

The client (SpaceX) is in a rush. The branding agency (NASA) recommends a proven approach. The client ignores it.

The launchpad (the brand) gets pulverized and the customer target (Port Isabel) gets covered in a lot of crud.

You usually refrain from telling your clients outright that ignoring your branding recommendations could mean disaster.

You might not tell them you’re the rocket scientist in your role as launch partner.

But when it comes down to it, you are.

And it’s your job to act like it.

Advocate for what’s right to create a successful launch.

And if you’re ignored, it might be a good idea to take a few steps back.

Put On Your Squirrel Suit

Have you ever seen those people who jump off cliffs in squirrel suits?

A squirrel suit (or ‘wingsuit’ as Wikipedia calls them) is basically a big onesie that has fabric panels sewn between the legs and between the arms and torso.

When you jump off a cliff, if you hold your body just right, you can achieve a sort of gliding flight, as opposed to just, well…free falling.

The first guy to try using a squirrel suit was a 33 year-old Parisian tailor named Franz Reichelt, who in 1912 jumped off the Eiffel Tower to test his invention.

Witnesses say he stared over the edge for quite some time before jumping.

It didn’t end well for Franz, but that’s beside the point.

It got me wondering about these more modern day squirrel suit flying people.

My big question is: “How do you practice this?”

That is, before jumping off a cliff.

I’m sure there is some way. A wind tunnel, doing it with a parachute, maybe.

But the real answer is…

You don’t. One day you just jump.

Eventually you just have to decide that this is the day you’re going to jump off the cliff.

Joey Cofone, the author of “The Laws of Creativity” once said, “Jumping off cliffs is the only way to grow.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Additionally, I’d have to add this: It’s also the only way to find out if you can fly.

Just last week, Lauren Williams, a member of the Brand Design Masters Facebook group from Australia had been staring at the edge of her personal cliff and thinking about it for quite some time.

“…literally months.” Lauren told me.

She made the fortunate mistake of posting a comment in the group about her hesitation and fear of starting to post content.

I say “mistake” because of course, I seized upon it and challenged her to post something by the end of the day…ok, it was a little encouraging push closer to the edge.

But that’s my job, right?

I told her I was going to check up on her about it, too.

And guess what happened? 

She put on her squirrel suit and did it. She jumped.

The most amazing thing about her first flight was that her first post was about…wait for it….being terrified about posting!

Honest, authentic, funny (I mean, come’on there’s a cat and a cucumber involved…) and IMHO totally brilliant for a first post.

If you’re curious about the cat and the cucumber, here’s the post. Maybe you can follow her to give her a little encouragement. 

The other Facebook group members cheered and congratulated her for leaping.

And flying.

Today I went back on her Instagram profile and there’s a 2nd post up there now!

This time it’s a beautiful reel of her portfolio and her services. A higher cliff. A more ambitious flight.

So, if you’ve been anxious, procrastinating, and staring over the edge of your personal cliff for quite some time.

Don’t think about the jumping part.

Think about the flying part.

And put on your squirrel suit.

Build That Wall

The Newhouse Wildlife Rescue in Massachusetts had a video go viral last week.

The video features Nibi, a resident rescued beaver who recently got a new beaver roommate, Ziibi. It seems that Nibi and Ziibi didn’t immediately hit it off.

In fact, Nibi hated Ziibi’s guts.

So the Newhouse staff decided to separate them for a while to cool things off and took Ziibi out of the room they had been sharing and put her outside in an attached enclosure.

As soon as Ziibi was outside, Nibi couldn’t stand still.

Let me set the scene: The internal enclosure is room with a tiled floor with cages, food bowls and toys to keep the beavers occupied. They also keep a bunch of sticks laying around, because...beavers like sticks.

Nibi immediately started gathering every stick she could find and started to build a dam in the doorway to keep Ziibi out.

One by one she’d pick up a stick and flip flap her little beaver feet across the tile floor and start stacking them upon the doorway.

She had to build it. Now.

It wasn’t perfect.

It wasn’t pretty.

Maybe it wouldn’t even work.

But she had to start because this was her chance to carve out her territory.

Teddy Roosevelt once said, “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

When we have a troublesome new competitor or business challenge, we often hesitate, doubting whether we have exactly the right answer.

We weigh whether we are in exactly the right place in time to work on it.

We might spend hours pondering the decisions we have to make or the resources that we might need.

We’ll take an inordinate amount of time designing what will be the perfect solution.

But to carve out your territory, you just have to start.

You do what you can.

With what you have.

Where you are.

It’s not going to be perfect.

Or pretty.

Hell, it might not even work.

But starting is better than standing still.

How Short-form Content Is Taking Over the World

Let me ask you a question:

Why are you reading this?

Probably because you’re interested in content marketing, but also my guess is…because it’s short.

Well, short-er as far as blog articles are concerned. 

I mean it’s certainly not a 5000 word keyword-packed bloatware piece that’s going to require your entire lunch hour to consume.

You wanted some fast, actionable, bite-sized pieces of information to make your business better, to get your marketing mojo pumped up again, something you could use to help your clients.

Let’s call it ‘snackable content’.

What else is snackable? Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, 5-minute podcast episodes.

It seems like short-form content is taking over the world these days.

The 800lb. Gorilla

So, why is this happening?

The bigger sociological trend influencing short-form content is that we are all strapped for time. Folks want their content delivered like they were running out to the 7-11 for milk. A quick in and out.

But the bigger influence is that there happens to be a new 800lb. gorilla in the room that everyone is freaking out about.

TikTok

TikTok recently became the most heavily trafficked website in the world. They now get more traffic than the Google’s search engine. A stat that is blowing a whole lot of people’s minds.

And everyone wants a piece of TikTok’s viewership pie.

YouTube is trying to compete with YouTube Shorts. Instagram has Reels. There’s also Snapchat Spotlight, Triller, Byte, Hippo Video, and others jockeying for position.

Instagram has started leaning so heavily into promoting ‘Reels’ that they’ve begun taking ‘regular old’ images users are posting and are turning them into reels – without the person who posted it even knowing it’s happening.

Adam Mosseri, CEO of Instagram, recently posted a reel acknowledging that many O.G. Instagrammers are pretty upset about what is happening to the platform. So much so that he decided he needed to respond to their concerns in a post, explaining how “Instagram is still committed to its account holders who mainly focus on posting images.”

Personally, my ears perked up when he used the word “still”. 

In my experience, tech leaders have a tendency to say they are ‘“still” committed to something just before it goes away.

Time will tell.

On the audio front, many podcasts are experimenting with short-form podcasts that are 5-8 minutes in length. 

With short-form audio, as a listener, it’s easy to slip from one episode to the next when episodes are so bite-sized. You get to hear more topics with less fiddling with your podcast app interface. 

Much to marketers glee you also happen to get exposed to more ads and sponsored endorsements in a shorter amount of time.

Faster Pussycat
Our collective attention span has decreased to the extent that people are even getting impatient with the long-form content they’re consuming. 

YouTube notes that viewers often skip ahead many times during a long-form video. The platform recently introduced ‘chapters’ functionality to try to address this fact, so people could self-navigate, or curate longer-form content to reduce the time it takes to consume it.

YouTube viewers are also increasingly watching long-form videos at faster playback speeds. YouTube says 1.5x speed is the most common, with 2x coming in a close second. 

Now, for content creators and marketers the tidal shift to ‘snackable content’ has some benefits. It takes less time to create it, so you can create more and post more often. 

Because you are posting more frequently, your chances of getting a brand impression are higher – even though that impression might not be as deep.

Also, short form content feels more shareable, so your chances of consumer-amplified exposure are higher, too. 

Most importantly, you’re showing your audience that you value their time, that you are paying attention to how they want to have value delivered to them.

It Needs a Spark

One important consideration to bear in mind when creating this sort of content is something you might not have spent too much time thinking about. 

That’s ‘entertainment value’.

This is another notable side-effect of the TikTok phenomenon.

With short-form content, because your time communicating to the viewer is shorter, your content has to have a bit of ’spark’ to it. It has to have some energy. Maybe even a bit of fun.

Mainly because it could very well be bookended with a video showing the latest internet dance challenge and another one of a skateboard kick-flip fail.

That’s because the algorithms that are deciding what videos to serve up to you are still in the toddler-stuffing-Cheerios-into-the-dogs-nose phase of development. In fact a few of them, Instagram most notably, are pretty broken. 

Now, all this is not to propose that long-form content is going away. It’s not. There are some ideas and topics that you just can’t do justice to in short-form content.

Rest assured, the 5,000 word, SEO keyword packed, heavily referenced and backlinked blog post still has its place in the world.

Turning Tides

But when the tides change like this in the world of content and business, it’s best to be paying close attention. 

It’s never a bad idea to pause, re-evaluate your analytics and adjust your marketing efforts to be sure you’re still hitting the targets you’ve laid out, both for engagement and conversions.

The data in HubSpot’s 2022 video marketing report speaks for itself:

     •  Short-form video ranks #1 for lead generation and engagement

     •  Marketers will invest in short-form video more in 2022 than any other format

     •  85% of marketers say short-form videos are the most effective format on social media

With these stats in mind, if you aren’t actively experimenting with the creation of some type of ’snackable content’, you’re very possibly missing the biggest wave in social media since the invention of the Tweet.

Succeed in the Creative Economy - Verhaal Brand Design

Check out this great profile that Go Solo did on us on Substack via SubKit.

HERE’S THE ARTICLE

If you want to know more about Go Solo and SubKit:

GO SOLO on SubKit

Instagram: @subkit

LinkedIn: @subkit

Twitter: @wearesubkit

The Marketing Miracle Diet

I’ve always been a tall person.

But for most of my life I was also pretty thin and could eat just about anything I wanted. It never affected me much.

My wife, Beth hated me for it.

But then, I hit middle age.

Slowly the proverbial ‘spare tire’ made an appearance. The progression was sneaky, a pound here, a pound there.

I just hadn’t been paying attention.

At 6’3” I’d always hovered around 185 lbs. But I realized somehow I had ballooned up to 225. None of my pants fit. Something had to be done.

So I asked Beth what I should do. She suggested that maybe I start counting calories.

Calories mattered? Who knew!

So I said to myself what any techie middle aged guy would say: “There’s gotta be an app for that!”

I found an app where you enter in everything you eat and it totals the calories so you can control your intake.

To tell you that I had no idea at all how many calories were in food would be an understatement.

Did you know a Hostess Apple pie, (which up until then qualified as ‘health food’ as far as I was concerned) has over 500 calories? That’s 1/4 of what my TOTAL daily intake was supposed to be!

So I counted. I paid attention. I tracked my numbers and put in the work.

And guess what? In just a few months I lost 40 pounds and got back down to 185.

So what does losing weight have to do with branding and marketing?

Maybe you have been using the same marketing tactics for years.

Running the same ads. The same copy. The same platforms.

Your results slip a little, a couple fewer leads each month,a little less engagement. Nothing dramatic.

Just a slow leak of branding effectiveness.

And suddenly you realize your brand has gained 40 pounds and is eating Twinkies on the couch at 11:00am on a Thursday.

Analytics really matter? Who knew!

So what’s the solution?

You start paying attention. Start tracking your numbers. Put in the work by changing some behaviors.

...I wish I could say that there is an app for that.

But there isn’t.

One Man Brand

You may not know this, but I’m not just a design and branding guy. I’m also a musician.

I’ve been playing guitar and bass since I was a pre-teen and am now learning to actually read music and play piano.

I’ve done multi-track recording from the days of 4-track cassette machines to today, recording digitally with Logic Pro.

The cool thing about multi-track recording is that you can play all the instruments yourself and sound like a huge band.

Which leads me to a TikTok video I saw yesterday that completely blew my mind.

Maybe you’ve seen it too.

It shows a somewhat chubby guy (hey, I’m not shaming here, the dudes got his bare belly hangin’ out and you can’t not see it) who’s playing the guitar, while he’s playing the drums and singing all at the same time.

He’s actually hitting the drums with a drum stick and strumming chords with the same hand simultaneously.

He sounds like a full-on rock band that’s pretty much kickin’ ass and takin’ names.

But he’s also working really damn hard to do it.

What kicked on my branding brain though was a comment someone left on the video:

“Why doesn’t he just get a couple pals to help out? Can you image how much more awesome he would be?”

When we consultants, freelancers and entrepreneurs first start running our businesses, we need to keep expenses low and take huge pride in doing everything ourselves.

We try to be a one-person band. We do the branding, the marketing, deliver the products and services, we do the books, we do all the admin.

In the beginning, we can kick out the jams solo for the most part.

But eventually one day we realize it’s really damn hard to do it that way.

And then we ask ourselves: What if I got a couple pals to help out?

We have to figure out how to scale.

Because when we do that, we find out how much more awesome we can be.

So Hot Right Now

Hoy Fung Sriracha, also known as "Rooster Sauce”, is a billion dollar brand.

The sauce was first produced in the 1930’s by a woman named Thanom Chakkapak in the town of Si Racha in Thailand.

Sriracha started off as a condiment for pho and fried noodles, but it now is also eaten in soup, jams, cocktails, eggs, burgers and even lollipops.

Hell, Lay’s even puts it in potato chips.

Sriracha is one of the most recognizable hot sauce brands in the world.

It has very distinctive packaging. A simple clear squeeze bottle with a white rooster illustration showcasing bright red product inside and a green cap.

But the most remarkable thing about Sriracha isn’t its popularity.

It’s how it got that popular. 

It’s that Sriracha became a billion dollar brand without advertising.

Not one dollar spent on ads.

Instead, Hoy Fung relied entirely on word-of-mouth.

A word-of-mouth marketing strategy relies entirely on the quality of the product.

It relies on the brand delivering a remarkable customer experience every single time.

But it only works if your product is so damn good that everyone wants to tell their family and friends about it.

So good that people can’t not talk about it.

And Sriracha is that damn good.

And that’s what Hoy Fung did. 

They delivered a consistently exhilarating flavor experience for 90 years.

Of course, word-of-mouth has existed since the beginning of time.

But with the mass adoption of the internet and the social sharing technologies that have come with it, the power of word-of-mouth has become supercharged.

You might even say red hot. *sorry, couldn’t resist*

So if you want your customers to do your advertising for you.

You have to start with the product.

Make it that damn good.

So people can’t not talk about it.

And let the internet take it from there

The Sunny Side

What Do You Need?

I used to work near Union Square in San Francisco.

Within a couple blocks of the square are a half dozen large tourist hotels. The Marriott, The Westin, The Grand Hyatt. On my way into the office, I used to watch the tourists emerge from their hotels in shorts and t-shirts looking forward to the warm weather they expect in California.

The only problem is that half the year San Francisco is freezing. The fog rolls in and let’s just say it’s not shorts and t-shirt weather.

So the first thing thousands of tourists do is desperately search for where they can buy a sweatshirt.

They don’t have to look very far.

Almost every store around Union Square has warm apparel for sale. CVS has a whole hoodie section right by the front door. So does Walgreens. Even Starbucks has sweatshirts.

Why? It’s because they know it’s good business to give people what they really need - right now. You can make good money selling hoodies even if that’s not what you usually sell.

Maybe you design logos. Maybe you’re a videographer or a 3D animator. And maybe business is a little thin right now because of CoVid-19.

So, ask yourself two questions: What do people really need to help their businesses - right now? And...Can I provide it to them?

Do they need a Facebook ad campaign? Some new blog posts to boost their SEO? A fresh email template for outreach to prospects?

Because you can make good money selling this things. Even if it’s not what you usually sell.

What's Your Perspective?

I try to feed my brain high-quality food. That is, great educational content on branding, marketing, design, entrepreneurship, strategy and process methodologies. But my brain also craves junk food sometimes.

So in moments of weakness I find myself scrolling sites like Bored Panda, KickAssFacts, or Listverse.

Imgur, a meme site, is probably the junkiest of my junk food sites. The viral image feed is incredibly eclectic. The next image could be a silly cat video or it could be something really inspiring.

I was cruising Imgur when an odd image caught my eye. It was a map of the world. But not like any map I’d seen before. It was a map of the world, but from a whale’s perspective.

All the oceans were connected into one big shape. The map ended where the water ended. Because as a whale, why would you even care what’s beyond the coast? The map covered only what’s important - to a whale.

Looking at that map I was struck with how limited our personal perspectives are. They are informed by our individual experiences or perceived boundaries. We make the mistake of thinking everyone sees things the way we do.

In our professional lives, when we design or communicate to a particular target market we may need to radically alter our approach. Transform the way we see things. Draw the customer journey map from a different perspective.

Try to see things like a whale.

Lead Magnets That Deliver: A Quick Guide To Growing Your Email List With Content

Email marketing is an undeniably powerful marketing tool. Studies show that “email is the third most influential source of information for B2B audiences, behind only colleague recommendations and industry-specific thought leaders,” according to Wordstream.com. In the B2C world, ”Consumers who purchase products through email spend 138% more than those that don’t receive email offers.” Wordstream reports that 77% of people prefer to get permission-based promotional messages via email (versus direct mail, text, phone, or social media). Connecting with your audience through email is preferable and effective. You cannot deny it.

The reason it is so effective is because people have given you permission to market to them, which is unheard of in any other marketing channel. Most marketing comes to you in the form of advertising; online, television, print or outdoor advertising, and you have no control over when or where the ads are served. The media channels choose that.

Email marketing is different because people have signed up to hear from you. They have entrusted you with their email address which is one of the highest forms of trust today. Sharing an email address says, “I trust you to give me information I need, and that you won’t pester me by contacting me too often or with news I don’t care about.”

The best thing about email marketing (or permission-based marketing) is that the customer is in control of the relationship. The customer can decide when to stop receiving your emails - they can break up with you if you don’t serve them well. They are in the driver’s seat, but they are also qualified, highly interested in what you are doing and very likely to listen to what you are saying. Think about how your business would dramatically change if you had 5,000 or more subscribers attentively listening to your every word. You’d be unstoppable.

But what if you don’t have a large email list or what if your list is not chock-full of engaged, ready-to-buy subscribers? How do you get people to sign up?

You ask people to “trade.” The item you trade for an email address is a bit of content called a lead magnet or an opt-in magnet, which can take many forms. It’s usually a digital file; it can be an ebook, checklist, guide, report, resource list, or even access to a quick video training course.

When a prospect clicks to download the lead magnet, they have to enter in an email address in exchange. It's a reciprocal agreement; they're getting something of value and you're getting something of value. So this even trade kicks off a relationship based on mutual trust.

One of the most common forms of lead magnets is an ebook. Ebooks are inexpensive to create because there is no physical production involved. All it takes is some time, energy and a bit of brain power to pull one together.

Ebooks don't have to be a monumental project. They could be a mini-ebook, a two or three-page pamphlet. As long as it is valuable to your viewers and visitors, it will make a great lead magnet.

If your ebook is not based on current news or events it will have a longer shelf life so it is best to focus on content that is “evergreen”. You can offer a single ebook for an extended period or create variety by rotating through multiple ebooks as you continue to develop more. Before you know it, you will have a valuable library of evergreen email list-growing content.

You don't necessarily have to produce original content specifically for your opt-in magnet. Think about how you can repurpose other content of yours and deliver it in a way that is helpful for your potential customers. If you have videos or podcasts piling up, transcribe them into written form and offer that as an opt-in magnet (rev.com is a terrific transcription service, as are descript.com and temi.com. YouTube offers a free transcription service for videos on its site). Even if the viewer has seen the video or heard the podcast you’ve transcribed, offering it up in a different form may be of true value to them.

If you write blog posts or articles you can offer those in a different format, expand on them, or bundle them together as an ebook for your lead magnet. Prospects may not have come across your writing where you originally posted it, so offering it in another format will expose them to that information and provide value that they wouldn't have otherwise received.

You can also include additional promotional information about your products or services in your lead magnets. An incentive to buy sooner, offering add-on services, or free shipping offers can be very effective in a lead magnet.

Key Elements of a Lead Magnet

Title Tells All

The title must be really enticing, motivating viewers to have to know more. Spend some time researching which titles tend to be successful in your industry and try to create something that will draw people's attention.

Present Your Best

After you’ve piqued their curiosity, you have to deliver the goods. Make sure that you're not disappointing your readers. Remember, they are giving you their email address, so you want to make sure you're delivering top-notch information to them.

To ensure you are delivering the best, make sure that your piece has:

●       A design that reflects your brand

●       High technical quality

●       High factual quality

●       Good structure, flow and is well-written, in your brand voice

●       A call-to-action, it can be subtle, but it should be in there

Hire a copywriter to help you write or refine your piece, or if you can’t afford that, enlist an editor to make sure your work is free of grammatical and spelling errors. At a minimum, run it through free grammar and spelling checking software like Grammarly or Hemmingway.

Be A Trusted Resource

Deliver value early in the piece and you will get the attention you deserve. Starting with a strong assertion makes people take notice. Don't spend 5 or 10 pages leading up to the “big idea.” Give them value early.

Promoting your Lead Magnet

One of the best ways to promote your lead magnet is on social media. Include links and teasers in your Twitter and Facebook and Instagram posts. Use Bitly or TinyURL to create a nondescript link to your downloadable content. It’s a great idea to put links in your email signature and rotate the magnet you’re offering, so virtually every person that you send an email to gets access to a piece of valuable content.

You can also promote your lead magnet through a pop-up on your website. Everyone hates pop-ups, (I hate pop-ups too) but they work really, really well. About 75% of my email sign-ups come through the pop-up on my website. You really can’t argue with that kind of efficacy.  

Lastly, ask people to help you promote your opt-in. Ask people to share the link to your content - you’ll find that people want to help and if they do, you should do the same for them. Use this opportunity to create a great network of content-sharing professionals.

Once you get started with leveraging lead magnets, you‘ll see how easy it is to attract qualified, interested leads to your email list. You’ll be delivering great value to your audience, which is a solid start to the relationship. As long as you respect their time and attention, you are fostering a mutually beneficial partnership that will build your business and cultivate a tribe of brand devotees.

The Gumball Rally

There’s a movie from the ’70s called The Gumball Rally where a wacky cast of characters participate in an automobile race from from the East coast to the West coast.

One character enlists the help of a professional Italian racer to drive his car. The first thing the Italian does when he gets in the car is to reach up and rip off the rear-view mirror and toss it aside. Shocked, the owner asks, “Why’d you do that?”

The Italian answers “When you are in a race, it doesn’t matter what’s behind you. What matters is what’s ahead.”

Last week one of my coaching clients was upset. His competition was copying him. They were stealing his ideas! What should he do?

I told him that it’s impossible to keep people from knocking you off. Consider it a compliment. You are the leader and they are on your heels. The only thing you can do is to keep coming up with great work. Better work. Innovate and push forward.

There will always be people who are trying to catch up to you. You can’t waste your time looking in the rear-view mirror.

What matters is what’s ahead.

Can You Feel?

Dominique Apollon is 45 years old. But he almost started crying as he put on his band-aid.

It wasn’t because his cut hurt really bad. Although it probably did. He was almost brought to tears because his bandage was brown. Because Dominique is brown, too.

After he pulled himself together, he took a picture of the bandage on his hand and posted it on Twitter. It got re-tweeted over 100k times and picked up by major media channels.

People really felt it.

Tru-Colour Bandages, the company that made the bandage that Dominique was wearing was started by a man who was discouraged when he couldn’t find a band-aid that matched his African American son’s skin tone. 

But the power of the Tru-Colour brand isn’t that it stops cuts from bleeding better than other bandages. Or that it sticks better and doesn't come off when it gets wet. 

The power is in how it makes people feel about themselves. As Dominique put it, “I really just felt like I belonged, like I was welcomed, like I was valued.”

What can you do to assure you are delivering a product, a service, or an experience with that kind of benefit?

Something people really feel.

Out of Orbit: A Brand Named Desire

My wife Beth loves Orbit cinnamon gum. Or I should say, she loved Orbit cinnamon gum. Because Orbit cinnamon has been discontinued.

Beth is unhappy about that. If you could heard her tell it, Orbit was the best cinnamon gum that had ever been invented.

To be truthful, Orbit cinnamon is available. It’s just not available in stores. You can still buy it online. On eBay. But it’s not $1.49 like it used to be. It costs $83.00. A pack. Or just under $6.00 a stick. And that’s for sticks that are 6 months past their “use by” date.

Scarcity is a strong motivator in triggering desire. Countless website sales pages use countdown timers. “Only 12 hours before the price goes up”. In-stock numbers work, too. “Only 2 left!” You can almost hear the mouses clicking.

Wrigley, the makers of Orbit, are missing out on every marketers dream. When the pent-up desire for your product has reached the level that a single stick of gum costs $6.00, you do two things. You tell the world the story about the lengths people are going to get the best cinnamon gum ever invented, the gum that only you make.

And then you start selling it again.

Come and Get It: A Tale of Customer Motivation

The Chuck Wagon dog food commercials are an iconic piece of 20th century TV. A scruffy Benji-like pup was constantly chasing down a miniature chuck wagon in the quest to get his dinner.

My cousin’s ad agency was shooting a commercial that called for a farm scene where the dog was to chase the wagon through a flock of chickens. There was only one problem. Dogs won’t run through a flock of chickens. Why?

Because dogs know that if you run through a bunch of chickens odds are good you’re gonna get bunch of pissed-off pecks for your trouble. In the first 15 takes, the dog ran around the chickens.

Finally, to get the shot, they had to build a ramp, push the dog down it and toss a couple chickens in from the sides. Neither the dog, nor the chickens were very happy about it.

The moral of the story is that even though you may have an idea how you want your customer to behave, you just can’t force them to go where they don’t want to go. You have to know their motivation. It’s not to please you. You exist to please them.

And pushing them down a ramp isn’t going to make anyone very happy.

You're Gonna Love It...or maybe not

Having lived in New York City and San Francisco, two of the restaurant capitals of America, I thought I’d tasted, or at least heard of, most of the foods that grace our country. But when I moved to Cincinnati, I was introduced to a culinary experience that I had no idea existed. Skyline Chili.

First of all, to call Skyline Chili “chili” is a stretch. What it is is a thin, bean-less, virtually meatless, chili-flavored sauce that is spooned over a wad of spaghetti or a hot dog and topped with a massive pile of shredded cheddar cheese. Cincinnatians love it. Skyline Chili restaurants are always packed. Friends said, “You have to try it! You’re gonna love it!”. 

Well I did, and I didn’t.

I thought Skyline Chili was gross. I thought it was a midwestern chili-esque Franken-food mistake that had somehow escaped the kitchen and was bent on terrorizing the populace.

But Skyline Chili taught me something. It taught me that you can succeed even if you aren’t universally loved. You can be weird. You can be different. But as long as you find your super-fans and give them that one thing they crave, you can endure. 

Even if some people think it’s gross

Why I Am A Cow

In 1996 a creative director at Hallmark named Gordon MacKenzie published a book entitled “Orbiting the Giant Hairball”. It describes the necessary, but prickly relationship between corporations and the creatives who work for them. The creatives need the corporation so they can make a living, and the corporations need the designers to constantly produce beautiful, innovative products and ideas.

One part of the book I’ve always loved is when MacKenzie writes, “Designers are like cows”.

The idea is that if you constantly keep a cow in the barn and milk it, eventually the flow of milk will stop. For a cow to continue to produce it needs to get out of the barn and walk around in the pasture, feel the sunshine, eat grass, drink from a stream. From the outside, it may not look like a productive activity, but then you realize: this is where the milk is really being made.

The “24/7 entrepreneurial hustle” mentality has buried itself in the collective business consciousness over the last few years. But as we start the new year it will serve us to remember we aren’t machines. 

Every creative, every entrepreneur, every one of us needs time in the pasture.

The Hot Duck: A Tale of Brand Differentiation

The ducks in Central Park in New York City have a cushy gig. They paddle around, they look cute, they create a picturesque tableau in the pond. The females are speckled brown, the males have handsome green heads. People like them, they bring their kids to see them, they feed them breadcrumbs. The situation worked for everybody.

But then he showed up. He being a Mandarin Duck who just dropped in one day and threw the whole operation into a tizzy. New Yorkers, habitual nicknamers, started calling him the “Hot Duck”.

Why hot? Mandarin Ducks are an explosion of spectacular colors and swooping patterns of feathers formed into a shape of a duck. They’re breathtaking.

Suddenly, there were crowds of people at the duck pond. Throngs of tourists with huge zoom lenses. Suddenly all that people could see or talk about was: That. One. Duck.

On display at the duck pond was the perfect embodiment of Rule #1 in branding: Stand out from your competition. Like Tesla, Virgin, Uber, you have rise above the sea of sameness and make a bold statement. Ruffle feathers. Redefine how people see your category.

You have to be the Hot Duck.

No Brand Is An Island

If I could have just one book when stranded on a desert island it would be One Man’s Wilderness by Richard Proenneke. Richard was a salt-of-the-earth guy who in 1968 built a log cabin in the Alaskan Wilderness with nothing but hand tools.

He then proceeded to live in it, alone, for over 30 years. 

What captures my imagination his is resourcefulness, his independence, his appreciation for the things that nature gives us. Including winters where the temperature reached -40˚. Um...no thank you.

Richard didn’t need much. But once in a while his bush-pilot “Babe” Alsworth would fly in his mail or a sack of dried beans. Not even Richard Proenneke could go it entirely alone.

His story reminds me of how many entrepreneurs I know who have built their businesses with their bare hands. Many of them still trying to do everything themselves, wearing all the hats, from go-fer to brand strategist.

But there comes a time in the growth of any business when it pays to reach out. To have a partner fly in the right tools to help you survive the cold winters that can freeze even the hardiest enterprise in its tracks. 

It’s time to find your “Babe”.

Putting in the Reps

I had the pleasure of talking with Antonio Centeno last week in London. Antonio is the creator behind the “Real Men Real Style” YouTube channel. His most popular video, “How to Keep Your Shirt Tucked In ALL DAY” has 12 million views.

When Antonio started out with YouTube he was filming in his basement which had a dirt floor. He always wore a jacket and tie, but he didn’t wear dress shoes. He didn’t want to get them dirty. And because his early videos were shot from the waist up, a lot of the time he wasn’t even wearing pants.

Antonio filmed late at night, after work and after his young kids had gone to bed, so he could concentrate. He posted over 150 videos before he broke 10,000 subscribers. He compares that time period to lifting weights at the gym. He calls it “putting in the reps”.

With any type of content marketing, it can take a while to see results. But if you put in the reps, the results will come. Today, Real Men Real Style is a seven figure business with corporate sponsorship, a podcast, live conference events and over 2.1 million subscribers.

Because Antonio put in the reps.