8 David Ogilvy Learnings, The "Average Many", The Most Powerful Marketing In The World, Scooby Snacks....
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The Different Newsletter.
Musings for entrepreneurs, marketing leaders, and creators with a different mind.
(Sponsored by Bad Tuna Industries)
Special edition - posted on Friday to minimize readership.
🏴☠️
8 David Ogilvy Learnings
David Ogilvy is hailed as the "Father of Advertising". He’s one of my heroes.
Ogilvy revolutionized marketing with non-obvious, non-consensus (and right) insights, innovation and a focus on ads that produce revenue.
(And he had the swagger of James Bond after a few martini’s)
From Ogilvy 75:
We sell — or else
Big ideas are usually simple ideas
You cannot bore people into buying your product
We prefer the discipline of knowledge to the anarchy of ignorance
The most important word in the vocabulary of advertising is TEST
It is the inescapable duty of management to fire incompetent people
If each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants
Resist the temptation to write the kind of copy which wins awards. I am always gratified when I win an award, but most of the campaigns which produce results never win awards because they don’t draw attention to themselves
For more check out Ogilvy 75.
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The Most Powerful Marketing In the World: WOM
Word Of Mouth Is, Was, And Always Will Be, The Most Powerful Form Of Marketing
But, how many marketing plans have you seen focused on WOM? Most that I see don’t (even) mention it.
Agencies don’t make money with WOM, and it is was hard to measure in the native analog world.
But in the native digital world, WOM is very measurable.
And yet….
The marketing world is actually turning (further) away from driving WOM. Hustle porn star Gary VeeDee (a socially transmitted disease) tells people success is about getting attention.
The marketing strategy used by two year olds who want cookies.
You ever notice this 👇🏻 in front of a mattress store or a car dealer?
This is a clear sign of a CEO/CMO who’ve run out of ideas.
If you just want to get attention?
It’s easy.
Do this 👇🏻
In today’s here today, gone later today world, when one of the most famous people (John Cena) gets naked at the Oscars (one of the most famous events) it’s big news.
For a day.
For.
A.
Day.
Attention ≠ new category
Attention ≠ brand growth
Attention ≠ revenue
Attention ≠ success
Attention ≠ wining
Attention = Attention
I know a guy who was a high-profile, up-and-coming UFC fighter. He suffered a horrible knockout and was never able to stage a comeback.
One night, out for burgers and beers, a group of young fans came over and asked for selfies and autographs.
The fighter obliged. Once the fans were gone, he looked me in the eye and said, “Do you have any idea how much it sucks to be famous and poor!?”
An entire generation has been taught that attention for the sake of attention is valuable.
It is (fucking) not.
In the native digital world, nothing depreciates faster than attention.
“On to the next one,
On to the next one,
On to the next one…”
This “conventional wisdom” assumes the more people who hear your message, the more people will spread your message.
(Just is not true)
When this “strategy” fails, most marketing experts think the problem was “the creative” or the “ad buys” or any number of other traditional marketing levers.
When the real reason marketing fails is…..
What you say matters exponentially more, than how many times you say it.
Making Marketing’s job…
Put the right words (POV) in the right mouths (Supers) in the right places (Super-Geos).
The people who are most likely to want to talk about your product, service, platform, or idea (category) are people who are obsessed with that kind of thing.
They’re Superconsumers.
(Top 8-10% customers in any category)
And they’re not doing word-of-mouth marketing because some company hypnotized them into it. They’re talking about the product, and more importantly the category, because they heard the Point Of View, internalized it, tried it, experienced a transformation (outcome) of some kind, and are now over-the-moon excited to help other people experience the same transformation (outcome) they did.
But not all WOM marketing is the same.
So let’s walk through the different levels:
The 5 Levels Of Word-Of-Mouth Marketing
Level 1: If you want negative WOM, sell to the customer. This guarantees they won’t tell anyone about your product/service.
Level 2: If you want to open the door for WOM, create the perception that everyone else is buying. This is what happens when you see a restaurant that’s jam-packed with a line down the street. You just assume it’s good.
Level 3: If you want to spark WOM, help the customer realize the benefit your product/service solves is the opposite of what they thought was possible. In other words, “wanna hear something weird” WOM is incredibly effective at piercing through the noise.
Level 4: If you want WOM to catch fire and spread, help the customer understand how this thing will transform their life. Educate them on the bigger mission. What does their life look like after using this product/service? What does the world look like if tons of people start using this product/service?
Level 5: And if you want WOM to spread like crazy, help the customer make money. When the product/service is awesome, and it allows them to transform and live a different future, AND there is economic value, WOM spirals out of control.
This Faberge TV ad from back in the day, might be the most legendary old-school WOM driving ad.
But WOM doesn’t do you any good if random people all over the world are talking about you & your category.
What you really want is a small group of people, who live inside a (Digital or Analog) Super-Geo.
They should be evangelizing your category such that other people in this Super-Geo can’t go anywhere without hearing about it. This gives you the illusion of being “everywhere.” As a result, “the right words” keep coming out of “the right mouths,” and revenue begins to accelerate exponentially as the result of proximity.
Super-Geos are portals to new dimensions—and when you find one, you suddenly “live in the future.”
A Super-Geo is a specific place (Analog or Digital) where a group of Superconsumers is together:
Geographically (Chicago or a suburb east of Atlanta, etc.)
Digitally (a Discord channel, a Facebook group, a gaming chat room, etc.)
Affinity (a neighborhood that is predominantly Catholic, Jewish, or Hindu. Or a spot where all the local surfers, artists, or bankers hang out.)
Vocationally (a club, a fraternity or sorority, a shared specialized school, etc.)
These are areas of extreme demand density.
This is how a tiny zip code, on a relative basis, becomes exponentially more profitable than anywhere else you serve customers. Or how a single Facebook Group, Discord channel, or email newsletter partnership can yield 50x more ROI than any other marketing channel.
What you’re doing (whether you realize it or not) is tapping into a Super-Geo full of your Superconsumers—who buy more, at higher prices, more often—and bring more people to the category and your brand.
This becomes a virtuous circle, creating WOM at scale. 🚀
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The "Average Many"
The "average many" (most people in business) spend their careers making "small bets". The "legendary few" make big bets. Create big value. And make a big difference.
We recently had
on Follow Your Different.He made one of the biggest bets in Amazon history 👇🏻👀 .
To learn how you can make big bets & win.
And check out John’s new Book “Big Bet Leadership”.
🏴☠️
Shalom my Pirate friend,
👊🏴☠️🙏
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Copyright Category Pirates, LLC
#NeverAgainIsNow
The “legal” warnings.
(and the Scooby Snacks 🐶)
All newsletters contain nuts 🐿
This product is a solution to a problem that most people don’t have.
There are (random) strategically placed spelling, grammar and formatting mistakes in this newsletter.
If you think 89 year old Elvis lives on an island with 106 year old JFK, 98 year old Marylyn Monroe and 35 year old Taylor Swift, where they are creating a compound of secret new humans, who are immune to chemtrails and free of GMOs, then consider these strategic mistakes part of a secret code that unlocks Federal Government servers in Bumsquat Youdaho to the files that prove the The Statue of Limitations was created by Aliens.
If you’re not a Elvis lives on an island person, the errors herein exist because Lochhead is lazy… and wants to write in an unfettered, real(ish) time way and an editor would slow the roll.
Plus he’s to lazy (and stupid) to download Grammarly. Because that would require filling in forms, his mothers maiden name and countless other hee-haw creating irritants.
Please.
Pretty please.
With whiskey on top.
Subscribe here to keep getting Different.
The creator of this Different Newsletter:
-can’t find his pants
-does not possess a GED
-is friendly with Mary Jane
-was thrown out of school at 18
-has been fired more times than he can count
-possess multiple learning differences superpowers
... this is the part of Different, that is like the very end of a movie...
….where some directors throw in silly crap-o-lla..
…simply for their own entertainment…
…assuming no people (or very few) are still in the theatre…
So I’ll just assume that you’ve either already stopped reading… or will stop here.
Because I can guarantee what follows is (mostly) a complete waste of your very valuable time.
And this Scooby Snack section bizarrely switches from first to third person.
Without warning.
For no apparent reason.
And he randomly changes topics like drunk AC/DC album with AD/HD.
(How do you spell AC/DC Mark?)
Have you every notice everything is funnier with “o-rama” at the end.
Car-o-rama
Bowl-o-rama
Punk-o-rama
Dance-o-rama
AI-o-rama 😎
The legendary VCs are not finance geeks.
They are NOT in the money business.
Legendary VCs are in the "help founders build legendary businesses," business.
We had a
jam session today. Kat had the Zoom AI-carbadingulator running.Here’s how it summarized the discussion!
(Note the “Keywords”)
Oh… and we’re launching a Strategy Therapy Course soon. But I’m not supposed to say anything about it.
Because
wants us to keep it a secret for now.Thinking about thinking, is the most important kind of thinking.
Most people get taught what to think.
When people most need to learn how to think.
The more willing you are to accept the status quo, the less likely you'll be a legendary startup founder (or marketer).
Rudy Giuliani reading nursery rhymes on Cameo: ‘I’m a little teapot’
World’s oldest man, 111, says weekly fish and chips are key to his long life
Watch: Thief Disguises As Garbage Bag To Steal Package Off A Porch
NY inmates suing to watch solar eclipse after state orders prisons locked down
Legendary is a choice.
‘Prank gone wrong?’: Man acts on takoyaki store’s April Fools’ post, tattoos logo on forehead
Sharing this newsletter (broadly) makes you’re richer.
The greatest Facebook Group in the world: “Left Lane Prius”.
The stuff in this (experimental) newsletter that sounds nuts, ill-conceived &/or poorly written… I did that on my own.
(Probably after an IPA and a bourbon)
That said,
Most of the ideas, research, frameworks (and even big chunks of the writing) are as a direct result of (or completely lifted from) my partnership with Eddie Yoon & Katrina Kirsch 🏴☠️ (aka Category Pirates)
Subscribe to Category Pirates (our real newsletter) here.
Is this still going?
Why is he still writing?
Doesn’t he know this junk at the end destroys what little respect people had for him?
Someone should tell him.
Ya.
You tell him.
If you're not enjoying this (experimental) newsletter, you’re (safely) in the majority.
Everything is the way it is, because somebody changed the way it was.
“Fishing for a good time, starts with throwing in your line” - Tom Waits
"Sharing this newsletter (broadly) will elongate your life by as much as a decade." - US Surgeon General
There are a sum total of zero cover bands in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
The Future Belongs To Creators.
People who can create and monetize new Creative Capital (not knowledge workers)
Everything we value, we’ve been taught to value.
A couple were caught having sex in an EasyJet plane toilet and were met by police when they landed.
Mother gives birth in Ocean. Again.
New Category: What do you get when you cross rodeo with skiing? The wild and wacky skijoring
There will be repetitive content.
This is a feature. Not a bug.
This newsletter really ties the room together.
“I don’t feel tardy.” - David Lee Roth
“I've always done whatever I want and always been exactly who I am.” - Billie Eilish
Can you fucking believe you can pay “America’s Major” a few hundred bucks and he’ll read “I’m a little tea cup” for you?
“I’m a little teapot short and stout. Here’s my handle. Here’s my spout. When I get all steamed up, hear my shout, tip me over and pour me out,”
“I am a very special teapot. Yet it’s true,”
“Here an example of what I can do. I can turn my handle into a spout.
Tip me over and pour me out.”
If you want to make a living designing and dominating market categories or want a black belt in category design, you can check it out here. (the waiting list for the next cohort is open & building)
Anyone making business, or life decisions based on this content, should do some thinking about thinking.
This Different Newsletter may contain forward looking statements.
Objects in mirrors are objects in mirrors.
Hey, thanks for hanging out for the extra (silly) scooby snacks at the end...
….let's hang out again soon 😎🏴☠️🙏
Published by Category Pirates.
Sponsored By Bad Tuna Industries.
Makers of Bad Tuna Salad Dressing™
Those disclaimers at the end get me every time 😂😂😂