Embrace the Marketing Mess
Blair shares what stuck in his mind about marketing success from listening to a recent podcast interview with Rory Sutherland on Liam Curley’s Undisputed Authority.
Links
“Embrace the Marketing Mess” article by Blair Enns for winwithoutpitching.com
Rory Sutherland podcast interview on Liam Curley’s Undisputed Authority
Transcript
David C. Baker: All right, Blair, today, I'm going to talk to you about embracing the marketing mess. This one is very different for me. It feels like I've been in the backroom for this because we both know Liam Curley. We got a chance to spend some time with him when we were doing a 2Bobs gathering in London last year. He had me on his podcast, he had you on the podcast, and then he had Rory Sutherland on the podcast.
Blair Enns: Whom we also saw in London on the same trip.
David: Oh, that's right. Yes, we had dinner with him. Afterwards, I said, "Hey, Liam, I just love your podcast. It's great, but here are some people you need on here." I introduced him to Nancy Duarte, Marty Neumeier, Anne Hanley, Dorie Clark, and Rory Sutherland, who I would not have known if it weren't for you. All those people, I think, are on the podcast. I'm just loving listening to it. You listened to a recent episode where he interviewed your friend Rory. That's what prompted this talk about embracing the marketing mess. I just loved reading this article you wrote.
Blair: Yes, I was doing the five-hour drive to the airport. I was going to Miami to speak at a conference, the Agency Hackers Conference, where Rory was also speaking. Then I was just looking for five hours' worth of podcasts. I saw Liam had some new podcasts. I saw Nancy Duarte was on there. I listened to that one, too. I listened to Rory's twice. I listened to it. I thought, "Oh, my God, this is so good. I feel like I'm pretty familiar with this content." I didn't tell him I'd wrote a post on it. I think the post dropped the day I saw him.
David: Is he going to be okay with it when he reads it?
Blair: Oh, yes. It's not like I'm throwing him under the bus or anything. I listened to it. Liam, first, he did these case studies, and then he turned them into a podcast. You've been a guest, and I've been a guest. He is so good at this. A, it's a really well-produced podcast. It's not like a typical podcast.
David: Like 2Bobs. It's like you and I rock up. [laughs]
Blair: What are we talking about? Okay, I open up my post. It's like, "Let's chit-chat about something we wrote."
David: He's done so much research.
Blair: I don't know how he does it.
David: This guy's actually prepared. It's called Undisputed Authority, for those of you that want to look it up.
Blair: Yes, Undisputed Authority. It is so good. Liam is so thorough in the research that he does, and he clips. He probably did this to you when he interviewed you. He said to me, "Okay, I've already done most of the work. I've read all your books, most of your posts, and I've listened to a bunch of podcasts that you've been on. I thought, how do you find the time to do that? Who puts that kind of preparation into a podcast?" Well, Liam does, and it sure showed in his interview with Rory.
He had done all this work, and he'd clipped all this other stuff from different podcasts, different sources. There's a lot of source material on Rory Sutherland. I've read his book multiple times. I've interviewed him. You and I had dinner with him. We trade emails from time to time. I'm pretty familiar with his work, but I was really blown away by how Liam had organized everything into some really tight organizing principles around the Rory Sutherland magic. I was just completely taken by it, and I started to write a small post, which turned into a lengthy post.
David: Before we go on, some people may have noticed something you said in passing. You had a five-hour drive to the airport. You either have a really shitty car, or you're a long way from the airport.
Blair: She's listening. She doesn't like to--
David: [chuckles] Yes, you live out in a village in BC, Canada. When you want to get to the airport, it takes a long time. When Liam interviews somebody, there's usually some theme. The theme that kept coming up as I was reading your article about that episode is that so much of it is accidental, but then there are certain principles that are really important. I think you put together three principles here, right? Let's just go through these, and I want to ask some questions along the way, too.
Blair: Yes, and I've been thinking about our own marketing a lot lately. Then, obviously, most of our clients are in the marketing business in some form or another. I've read the canon of literature and all the good marketing books, so I feel like I know what marketing is. I know good marketing from bad marketing. This point that Rory has made many times, I didn't really hear it, I guess, until Liam had him make the point on this podcast, is that marketing success is fat-tailed.
He told the story. I don't remember if he told me this or it was on another podcast of his. He remembered the moment when he was having dinner with his friend, Nassim Taleb, the statistician and philosopher, I guess you would call him. He refers to himself as a flâneur, one who wanders. Taleb made the comment to him that marketing is fat-tailed. If you think of a classic bell curve shape of distribution of anything, so this would be the distribution of marketing success.
A thin-tailed bell curve is what most of us are used to where the curve just tails off down to zero or the bottom. Fat tails, the tails don't hit the bottom of the graph. What does that mean? It means that a small number of random outliers can actually have a really big effect on the average. What Taleb meant by this, and what Rory means by this, marketing success is fat-tailed, is you think it's logical, and marketing success happens through a steady increment of small successes. The reality is you should see your marketing as a series of experiments.
It's more like a hit-maker model, like a studio model or a VC model, where 9 out of 10 investments aren't going to work. The 10th one is going to work big time. That's how you should think about marketing. That insight that marketing success is fat-tailed and it's often accidental and even illogical just is a great reminder to all of us that marketing planning is important. At the end of the day, we are better off viewing our own marketing and the marketing that we might do for our clients as a series of experiments, most of which will fail, and we need to be comfortable with the fact that most of them will fail.
David: I would say we don't have a problem starting all those experiments. We have a problem stopping them in time.
Blair: Oh, great point.
David: We're not comfortable just saying, "Oh, I don't think that's working." Even if mathematically, you're not sure that's the case. You just follow your instinct and say, "Oh, no problem. Okay, we tried that. What's next?" One of the things that we talked about in an earlier episode, I should have looked this up, and I didn't, was about how both you and I were recommending that people do lots of things and see what works.
Then later, we both came to the point, it's like, "Okay, once you find what works, then simplify and dive in." Is it true that there's a time-based thing here at work where you do experiment a lot. When you do find something that works, you should simplify and stick with that, or do you think you should just keep experimenting with marketing?
Blair: Oh, that's a really good question. I don't know the answer. I suspect it's a little of both. You find something that works, you pour gasoline on it, right? Can you just light this up? Can you 10x this? Can you 100x this? Depending on what the thing is, maybe you got lucky in a campaign with the creative, and maybe that has a shelf life. It does its job, and then it burns out. I'm thinking of the Shreddies commercial. Do you remember about 10 years ago, Shreddies introduced a new diamond-shaped Shreddies?
David: No.
Blair: Where they basically took the square and they turned it, rotated it a little bit, so it was shape of a diamond. It was a tongue-in-cheek ad campaign introducing new diamonds. Nothing had changed. They just changed the orientation of the Shreddy, and sales were at 20%. I don't remember the exact number, but it was not 3% or 4%. It was a significant bump. Now, that bump from that creative campaign, it's only going to last so long. Do you keep pushing diamond-shaped Shreddies? No, you go in search of the next weird, completely illogical experiment that the finance people would look at and say, "You are crazy. There's no way we're doing that."
David: I think that's the problem with marketing is that we have clients who kill things. You go to an in-house agency, and the marketing people stand out because they're the ones that have got to have a Mac, and the IT department is like, "Oh, God, they got to have something different." They don't follow the dress code. Then marketing, it's simultaneously knowing the best practices, and then figuring out which ones to break, because for marketing to really work, you have to stand out from the crowd, but you can't stand out from the crowd by not knowing best practices.
You have to pick and choose which ones you're going to violate, and then quickly kill an experiment if it doesn't work. We've also talked about how early firms need to be generalists to keep trying different things, and then they'll land on something that's a tighter focus, and then that might even change over time. I don't know. It was just so interesting to hear somebody as smart as Rory Sutherland talk about the accidental nature of marketing. It's really refreshing.
Blair: When it comes to fame, and we'll talk about that in a minute, in talking about his own fame, Rory was asking him about his various inflection points, and almost every one of them he described as just accidental or random. On the illogical point, like this first principle of the three principles I learned from Rory from this podcast, the first principle is that marketing success is fat-tailed, often accidental, and even illogical.
What Rory says is, in marketing, most of the logical things have already been tried by somebody in the category. By that very definition, you should pursue illogical things. Because it's accidental, you should see it as a series of random experiments. Again, the problem is, clients and finance people and the left-brain people, you got to make a rational argument for doing random illogical things and actually wasting money. I think if you explain to whoever your finance-oriented audience is, that it is, no, it's more like a studio model or a hit-maker model or a venture capital model.
The idea is, we're looking to get-- you can't say lucky. We're going to try a bunch of different things. Our expectation is a whole bunch of them aren't going to work. Some are going to work, just a moderate amount, but we're not going to build this brand, this business, sell this product, whatever it is you're trying to do, through this steady building. It looks like steady building, but it's not. It's steady activity with these occasional big hits in there. Then, when you look at it over time, it looks like steady building, but it's not.
David: The way I'm going to leave this first point is that you need to learn the basics of marketing, and then you can feel free to violate them carefully. You don't just jump into violating without at least understanding the basics of marketing. That's how I'm going to combine these two. The first principle, without asking for your permission here, I'm just going to say, so the first principle is that marketing success is often fat-tailed, accidental, and even illogical. Now, the second principle is very unexpected as well, and it's this, that you must survive long enough to get lucky, because I guess these are tied together, right? If we're looking for accidents, then you still have to exist long enough until those accidents happen.
Blair: Yes, that applies to business, too. I've thought about this in my own business for years. There are times when you're growing, and you're optimistic, and you're thinking all these wonderful things. There are times when it's like flat, or even times of economic uncertainty. I remember the beginning of COVID, going from thinking, "I'm on top of the world," to, "Are we going out of business?"
That only lasted a few weeks, fortunately enough, but there are times when I think I would say the last couple of years, I know a lot of agencies were in survival mode. They even maintained profitability, but they did that with the top-line shrinking and by lowering their expenses as well. That's survival mode. There's a couple of ideas wrapped up in this idea of survival. The first rule is don't die, right? [laughs]
David: Yes, it's not hard to remember that one.
Blair: [laughs] Yes, so you don't embrace existential threat. There are times when your legitimate goal is to survive, and then you can get back to a place where you can fund experiments again. The first rule is don't die. Don't do anything that's existentially dangerous, that threatens your very existence. You could probably think of some marketing campaigns. I don't want to throw anybody under the bus, but you could probably think of some marketing campaigns where it's like, "Oh, that was so risky. It almost killed the brand."
David: Bud Light, anybody?
Blair: Bud Light, yes, almost killed the brand. That's close to an existential threat, and I'm sure nobody saw it as an existential threat at the moment. Well, maybe some did. I don't know. It would be really interesting to know what the conversations were that were going on behind the scenes at the time. Not taking sides of this issue, we're just observing that a brand was damaged by a marketing decision. I don't think they've regained the number one spot as the number one beer in America. I think Modelo still has it, don't they?
David: I don't know. I think they're regaining ground. They've hired people that more represent their audience, their drinkers. Here, we've been talking about a marketing campaign that is or is not an existential risk. What are the existential risks that agencies take? If they're at a certain point, they just need to exist. What are the existential risks they need to stay away from? I'm not talking about the campaigns they do for clients. What about for themselves? What are those existential risks?
Blair: Yes, it's a good question. I haven't thought about it in the marketing contest, but, obviously, an existential risk in marketing would be you basically bet the firm on a campaign or a strategy. We don't have very much money left to spend in marketing, but we're going to spend it all on this one thing and hope it pays off. I can't actually think of an example for you.
David: How about not doing any marketing at all? That seems like an existential risk to me.
Blair: Yes, but that's an existential risk that's spread out over time.
David: [laughs]
Blair: It's the same thing, but it's different when you take action, and you actively embrace risk. I don't want to get into politics, but when the US government struck Iran, my first reaction was, "That's a high-risk decision." However you feel about it aside, just looking at it analytically, I thought, "Oh, that's a risky decision," but then the flip side of that is, "Well, Iran is a risk generally spread out over time that's getting worse and worse, so not taking action is as risky."
I'm not trying to defend anybody or knock anybody for this, but when you take action, you are embracing that risk in the moment.
David: Got it.
Blair: Doing nothing is diluting the risk and spreading it out over time. Making a decision to go do something, that requires some bravery or insanity, depending on your perspective, but it's embracing the risk. What's the equivalent for agency marketing? I can't think of any. I don't think agencies are guilty of taking existential risk when it comes to their own marketing. Again, like I said, when I think about this principle in my own business, it's just like the business needs to survive. Don't take any existential risk of any kind.
David: Yes, that's an interesting point we should talk about more at some point outside this podcast episode. Why do they try to talk clients into taking marketing risks, and they don't do it themselves very often? That's interesting.
Blair: Also, under the second point of surviving, I talk about Taleb's idea of barbell-shaped risk, which means you should do a high number of low-risk experiments, and you should do a small number of high-risk experiments, but not so high risk that any of them are existential. First of all, never take any existential risk. Avoid existential risk, but then, again, this is Taleb again. He says we should all probably take more risks in our lives. We should take a lot more, higher volume of low-risk activities, a low volume of high-risk activities, and nothing in the middle.
In the middle, there's this dead zone where the risk-return ratio doesn't really work out. It's like, I think we've talked about this before, in exercising, Zone 3, maybe a little bit of Zone 4. When you're in training for whatever your sport is, you want to stay out of Zone 3, largely stay out of Zone 4. It's known as the dead zone. You're exercising in Zone 2 and Zone 5, and you're avoiding the middle. That's the way we should think about risk as well.
David: Well, I just got back from a motorcycle trip, and I do also very dangerous things. I think I need to do a little bit less existential things. Maybe you could help me with that offline here.
Blair: [laughs] I can help you have a more boring life. Yes, I'm here for you.
David: The first principle is that marketing success is often fat-tailed, accidental, even illogical. I want to say something about this before we go on. I see these LinkedIn posts that confuse correlation and causation. They see some famous brand, and then they say, "This is why it was successful." It's like, "No." They tried lots of things, and this worked. Good luck emulating that.
Blair: Anytime anybody says this is the reason for anything, I always hear in my own mind, "This is a design-thinking thing, I think." There is never a reason. There are only ever reasons, plural.
David: Right. First principle, marketing success is often fat-tailed, accidental, even illogical. Second one is just avoid existential risk. Survive long enough to get lucky. The final one is that you should probably strive to become famous, which seems like a pretty obvious statement, but there are some interesting twists to this.
Blair: It seems obvious, but when you say it that directly, "You should become famous," this has never sat well with me. Part of me recognizes this is true, but then it's like, okay, when you say to yourself or others, "I want to become famous," it just seems so shallow. I just think of the Kardashians. I apologize to anybody who loves the Kardashians or knows why they love the Kardashians or why they're famous. I don't get it. I get that it seems shallow, but Rory made this point. He says, "When you're not famous, you have to find your customers, and when you're famous, they will find you."
David: I think there's a better way to say this, and I said it in a LinkedIn post recently that got a lot of people thinking. I said, really, it's a two-pronged thing. You want to be known and trusted. I think "known" is a better word than "famous."
Blair: Yes.
David: That took you a while to answer.
Blair: Well, I'm thinking about it.
David: [laughs]
Blair: There's something I love about how uncomfortable the word makes me. Instead of avoiding it, I feel like I really should run towards it. I even said in this post, so I said, "The third principle is you should probably strive to become famous." I said, I put the modifier probably in there because I'm a little uncomfortable with it. Then, Rory says, "When you're not famous, you have to find your customers. When you're famous, they'll find you." Then I think, "I don't like having to find customers." [laughs]
David: He'll lower your standards, "Okay, I'll be famous."
Blair: I'm pretty happy with them finding me. That told me, "I myself need to embrace this, and I should probably strive to become famous."
David: Well, you are in a way.
Blair: Well, I think you and I are appropriately niche famous, and we both have good businesses and good lives because of it. It served both of us well. Neither of us has to work too hard on the marketing or lead generation front as a result of it. We both could work harder. We were talking about that before we hit record.
David: Speak for yourself, bud.
Blair: [laughs] We both could work harder, but neither of us are hustlers.
David: I think I am well-known and trusted by most people, not everybody, but that was not my goal ever. My goal was to provide value to people. Then, when I did become more well-known, I was surprised and grateful. Everything has been accidental. There was this small group in Sacramento that asked if I'd come speak to them, and I was like, "Really? Okay," and then I just poured my heart into doing it. Then, this guy in my neighborhood needed to write a column for USA Today, and he heard about me and said, "Hey, can I write about you?" I said, "Oh, yes, of course."
Then somebody, the managing editor of Fast Company, read an answer I typed into Quora one time and turned it into an article. I didn't ask for any of this stuff. To me, I think the right image is go into your business wanting to help people, and then be willing to play the basement bars late at night with not that many people there and a few hecklers, and just recognize if you do the right things, good things will generally happen. If they don't, fine, life isn't fair. I don't know. It's a weird approach to personal branding, but I like everything that Rory has said in here. It just makes sense to me, but it also surprises me that somebody who is really famous, like Rory admits all this stuff.
Blair: Admits about the accidental nature of it or the value of being famous?
David: The accidental nature of it. He's very humble about the whole thing. He admits. It's like, "No, I just was in the right place at the right time. I was doing the right things. Fortune smiled on me, and I used those opportunities to remain an interesting person to listen to," and he definitely is. It's really good. All right. Anything else we should add here, Blair?
Blair: One of the things that as I was writing the post, I realized the importance of a book. You and I have both written books. You recently did a one-day seminar for people on writing books. I'm doing a thing on it. It'll probably have passed by the time this comes out. Just the value of having a book, even if the book doesn't make you famous. I think Rory had his TED Talk before he had his book. Then he does his TED Talk, and then the publishers come to you.
It just occurred to me that whether the book leads to fame or is a byproduct of the fame, even in this video-first era, we still assign a certain vaunted level of expertise to those who do write books. The book isn't a promise that you're going to be seen as an expert or become famous. There are very few people other than actors, but there are very few famous professionals who don't have a book.
David: Yes. You just write it for yourself. It forces you to spend time, and good things will happen. It's an exercise, a discipline that you're spending time thinking about something on other people's behalf. It's just a wonderful thing to do. I wish more people would do it. Yes, I'm really with you on that. All right, so, Blair, give us the takeaway from this episode. Somebody just got in the car. They missed the first 25 minutes of this. They want to know, "Okay, what did I miss? What's the takeaway here?"
Blair: Marketing is messy. There are very few rules. Treat it as a series of accidents. Stay alive long enough for some of those accidents to pay off. Happy accidents are more likely if you become famous.
David: [laughs] You're quite the motivational speaker.
Blair: [laughs] I told you beforehand; I am working on that. I'm working on smiling from a stage. I haven't been able to do it yet, but I'm always smiling when I podcast. Maybe I should bring you with me. We should just podcast from the stage.
David: Yes, there we go. This has been a great month. Thank you, Blair.
Blair: Thanks, David.