Welcome to issue #002 of the new, improved Mike’s Marketing Lab. Halloween is in just a few short days, so in keeping with the spirit of the spookiest time of year, I’m dedicating this issue to a few things (marketing and otherwise) that fire me up during the most frightening time of the year. Grab your favorite candy and settle in!
My Marketing Nightmare
I started my career at a weird time in business history. My life leading up to that point had been dotted by the rise of DTC brands like Warby Parker, Away, Harry’s, and a litany of other sans-serif-font-wielding “disrupters” of the CPG category. These brands were cooler than a snowman in a blizzard and I lapped it all up. I wanted it all. To buy the Harry’s shave kit in my Bonobos pants then pack it in my Away suitcase for a business trip to pitch investors on my idea for a category-disrupting CPG brand. Then, before I could realize this silly dream, I got my graduate degree from Babson College, entered the workforce and the DTC music began to stop.
The culprit (and my marketing Freddy Krueger) was the mattress company Casper. The irony of a mattress company named after a ghost is not lost on me. Anyway, this DTC darling was filing to go public meaning their financials were finally out in the open for all to see. The results were enough to make Stephen King squirm.
On every mattress sold, Casper was losing $3491. Cue the Halloween theme music.
When I read this, I just couldn’t wrap my head around why anyone would continue to operate a business where you lost money (bad) on every product sold (good). It’s like letting Michael Myers into your house and showing him your collection of freshly sharpened knives. Don’t be surprised when things go poorly.
You never want to be upside down on your unit economics. It’s a silent killer for your business. You’re supposed to celebrate every sale and feel just a touch of relief. But, in Casper’s case, every sale came with an IOU redeemable for more work to make up for the more than $300 loss.
It felt like marketing malpractice and scared the heck out of me. The image of the shark from Jaws came to mind. How it would linger under the surface before sneaking up on unsuspecting swimmers before devouring them whole. A business that lost money on each sale was no better off than an Amity Island swimmer at lunch time. Never in my career would I ever want to be responsible for such a thing.
So, I made a promise to myself to be hyper-vigilant about unit economics going forward. Every widget out the door was going to generate cash. It sounds incredibly obvious to write, of course. Making money on your products should always be the default case, but there is gravity in acknowledging the self-evident.
In many ways, it’s similar to checking under your bed for the boogeyman and seeing nothing but a pile of clothes. By calling out your fears, you work against them and prevent them from creeping their way into your life and business ever again.
Lab Notes: Don’t Do These Things
Horror movies are full of moments where characters do the exact opposite of the smart thing and promptly meet their end. They dive headfirst into the shark-infested water. They pick up the hitchhiker that looks an awful lot like the escaped inmate. They warmly welcome the vampire-looking entity knocking on their front door.
What follows are a few things that I’ve learned and observed in my own work that will keep you from making the marketing equivalent of those untimely mistakes.
1. Squeezing too many things into one message.
If you want to get something across, the best rule of thumb is one thing to one message. If you want to communicate multiple things, that’s awesome. But if you’re going to do that, break it up into multiple messages. Otherwise, one topic, one message. Simple as that.
2. Chasing the next shiny thing
New things are tempting. Shiny object syndrome is real. It’s like hearing the sound in the basement when the power is out. You think to yourself, “Gee, I wonder what’s down there! I bet it’s definitely not the axe murderer who broke out of the maximum security prison this morning.”
I’m going to tell you right now: Don’t go down there. Ignore the sound coming from the basement. Avoid the siren song of shiny objects. Focus, focus, focus. It will help you as a marketer, and if you ever are in a situation where the power is out and the axe murderer is on the loose, it just might save your life too.
3. Not knowing your history or studying the greats.
Remember all the scary movies where they say, “Man, that house down the street, it’s haunted, and everyone who’s lived there in the past has died a terrible death.” And then the protagonist proceeds to move in and (spoiler alert) meet a grisly demise.
Studying the greats of our field is how you actually heed those warnings and learn from the mistakes of marketers past: David Ogilvy, Albert Lasker, Claude Hopkins, I could go on and on. There are more than 100 years of marketing lineage for us to study. We need to study the greats in our field, and we need to know the history of our field, so that we don’t make those same mistakes. The greats have given us all the reasons why not to move into the scary haunted house down the street. All we need to do is listen.
AI Corner: Check Yourself
One of the constant reminders I get from my dad is “Don’t be afraid to state the obvious, there is power in stating the obvious.” Now, setting aside how meta an obvious statement about stating the obvious is, there is a whole lot of wisdom in that reminder and it gives me the perfect segue to state the obvious in this week’s AI Corner.
We must always check ourselves, our work, and our incentives when it comes to the responses AI provides to us.
This is our silver bullet against potentially sycophantic AI models. At every step, it is imperative to question your own assumptions, interrogate your own work for holes, and then ruthlessly attack those weaknesses with the help of the model.
If we passively allow the model to think for us or blindly accept the response it gives us, then we’re destined to create a whole bunch of slop, let our critical thinking ability atrophy, and follow the words of a tool that will tell you exactly what you want to hear.
AI is an exceptional tool, but it is just that. You wouldn’t build a house with only a hammer.
Black Friday Tip of the Week: The Price Slasher
Halloween is all about slasher flicks. Black Friday is all about slashing prices. In my experience running Black Friday campaigns, nothing gets potential customers going like a big, Michael Myers-sized slash through the old price. It is truly the international sign of savings.
So, as you begin to work on your Black Friday campaigns and think about how to display your prices, consider going full Friday the 13th on your prices. It is sure to be a hit.
Get Moving: Intervals
Nothing fills me with more dread than seeing an interval run pop up on my Runna app. These are my own personal Pennywise the dancing clown. However, much like Pennywise can be defeated simply by courage, interval runs can only be defeated by doing them. And that’s doubly true if you bring friends into the mix to help.
So, here’s one of my favorites to get you moving with me so we can all fight back against the nemesis that is the interval run.
Warm up with a light jog for 5 minutes.
Sprint for 30 seconds.
Walk for 1 min.
Repeat 7 more times for 8 total reps.
Cool down with a 5-minute light jog.
See you out there!
-Mike
Source: https://www.profgalloway.com/casperhaps/