The Other EQ

Here’s a riddle for ya.

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Question: How long does it take a marketer to write a book manuscript?
Answer: Too long! (geddit? All kinds of puns in there)

In actuality, it’s taken me 5 months and 3 weeks.
(Not counting the years of wanting to and feeling imposter syndrome – about 4 years + the months of planning and drafting outlines before actually writing – about 6 more months)
So that’s a grand total of 5 years.

It’s taken this marketer 5 years to write a book 🙋‍♀️

But first.

Thanks for staying with me for 5 months and 3 weeks of learning about ‘The Other EQ’ – Entertainment Quotient and why it matters in your marketing.

Over the past 25 columns we have…

1. Explored 12 important lessons for entertaining in your marketing
2. Covered over 150 examples of content that cuts clutter and made people smile
3. We’ve dissected 10+ entertaining content plays, pulled by giants in B2C, that B2B can easily (and way more cheaply) pull off
4. Explored various literary tools for storytelling like metaphors, analogies, dark humour, and more
5. And we’ve looked at 5 frameworks for building a practice of showing up in the 2-dimensional world with more personality and authority

Truly, thank you for staying with me.
The open rates for this email column have averaged over a 40%.

Which is pretty dang good in 2021! 

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(Swift tangent: anything over 30 is very good; anything below 10 is very bad. Unsubscribe rates of over 4% should have you worrying. That’s email stats in a nutshell)

Why was I fanatical about an email marketing schedule 🤷‍♀️  

I kept a deadline (one more to add to our client deadlines and our own publishing schedule which is already prerry intense. I kept at it, every-Monday-for-25-weeks kinda kept at it!!
Why?
Because my book depended on it.

Here’s the back story of the book writing process

In October of 2020, we started to put together an end of year report. Each year instead of a ‘XX trends for the following year’ piece, we used to create a more detailed report on an aspect of marketing that would be most important to learn.

At the end of 2017, our report was about marketers using Kanban online as for agile project management.
At the end of 2018, our report was about the need to update your communication to a much more ‘woke’ world.
At the end of 2019, our report was about embracing podcasting, because the second podcasting gold rush was coming.

In 2020, true to form, we got started and the topic emerged as the need for less boring content if you had any hope at all of cutting the deep clutter. 

From it came the idea of ‘entertainment quotient’.

We started, as we advised EVERY SINGLE CLIENT EVER to do, by auditing what we had.
We ran through moments that stood out as being particularly entertaining from our roster of over 75 podcast episodes at the time (brag alert, we have 131 now!)
There were a lot.

Then our writers systematically combed through episodes to create an outline/brain dump of all the fun ideas.

By this point it became pretty clear that the subject at hand and the amount of pattern we’d uncovered in just our content and the content of our client portfolios that this body of work was WAY larger than a report.

Dare we really lean into this and make it a book, I asked.

And the answer was yes.

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It needed a lot more research for sure.
And it needed a clear narrative.
But most importantly, it needed testing.

1. Would people read it?
2. Would people keep reading the column beyond the first couple?
3. Will people engage/respond/offer feedback or even just validation?
4. Will a majority of those who read it, open more than 10 of the 25 columns I set out to write?
5. Will at least 1 person open their purse and put $10 into helping fund the self publishing of the book?

Those were the 5 questions I set out to answer.
Accountability is a strong motivator for me.
If I say I’ll do something every Monday for 25 weeks, there’s a good chance I will.
So that became my strategy.

I’d do my manuscript writing in public, I said.

25 columns (which you’ve read)
+
9 stream of consciousness narratives imagining the headspace of some of the coolest creators of our time that B2B can draw from (only in the book)
+
lots and lots of examples and visuals (this is even an audio visual book in so much as you want to veer down the rabbit hole)
+
frameworks, templates and resources

And I did.
I’m done!

Consistently showing up doth a manuscript make.

Next week I step away from my office to go organize the lot to ship off to be magicked into an actual real book. I’m taking 2 whole days away for it.
And hopefully we’ll still make the late November deadline for print.
I hope you will buy it when it come out! But more on that later.

So today my message for you is 2-fold!

1. Thank you. You should know you’re awesome if you opened this and read this far.
2. If you have a book on your mind, get it done by editing your current body of work, and committing to writing in public for 25 weeks – whatever that might look like for you. For me it was an email lead (it can also be something like Medium).

That’s it.

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May the week treat you kindly

Peace
Susan

Ps: from next week I’ll continue the Monday writing series with a back-to-basic coaching and framework series covering websites, writing, podcasting. It’ll be titled “Un-Pumpkin Spice” and run 3 months. Read on? It’ll be worth it. I promise.

Seriously folks you need to put a panel on it 💍  

The single easiest way to get people to go from apathetic scrolling to STOP and listen (or read or watch) is to make information entertaining. 

The single easiest way to be entertaining is to make a topic a conversation between a few people.

Who doesn’t like to join what looks like a fun convo?

It’s  what we like to call a panel.
(I mean, that’s what it’s ACTUALLY called. But we like to call it that too 😁)

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As soon as you take a conversation out of one-person-talking-to-another-person, a degree of formality is dropped; in its place, a degree of additional energy is gained in the conversation.

And all sorts of sweet, sweet magic will come into play. 

That’s one of the simplest ways to pick up how entertaining (or at the very least, un-boring) your content is.

That’s why some of the best events in the world showcase ideas using Fireside Chats.
They have specific lunchtime panels where  industry leaders chat amongst themselves and take questions. 

So, it’s no secret.
SORELY lacks in practice though!

The pandemic had content creation in different formats (regardless of your budget) MUCH easier.
And I don’t think that shift has quite sunk in for many small marketing teams.

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Those of you who follow along on our social channels will know that we often like to quote/ draw analogies from ONE PARTICULAR PANEL.
Think of them like our Panel Spirit Animal.
The View – the talk show on daytime TV, for the longest time; and they have just about returned with a new season. 

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We covered in our weekly marketing news round up at the end of last week that they have now announced that they will have a new podcast called Behind the table. 

It’ll have past co-hosts of the show, and they will talk about some of the most controversial moments with a glimpse into behind the scenes stuff. Their highs and their lows.

People love 👏 that 👏  sh!t 👏

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This excites us more than you know.

WE cannot scream loudly enough, from our podcasting soapbox, on the value of panels (clearly 🙄).
And when the ultimate panel embraces podcasts, to REPURPOSE content!
It’s like you made our (potentially slightly sad) world come to life.
Why?

Because,
we produce panel podcasts for people.
The goal is bringing together experts, breaking down silos, and really giving audiences what they need in an easy talk-show-style panel.  

What can you learn from the Behind The Table podcast? 

This is quite a pivotal piece of marketing news that we’re labouring over and over again. 

Being ‘fun’ in the 2D world is a superpower.
Worth cultivating.

The way that you find out what makes you fun is to show up in conversations. Through those conversations you discover that teaching and communicating your expertise doesn’t always have to be stiff and formal.
Getting people to warm up to you is WAY easier when you lighten up the mood.

And we maintain that it’s super easy to show up and shine as your best self, when you have a few people to riff off.

The women on The View are spectacularly good because they come together and voice different perspectives.
The way in which that panel is populated is deeply intentional.
Intended to stretch thinking, mesh different ideologies, demographics, and concepts. 

Here’s your task for the week

Think about putting a panel on it. 

1. If you have a podcast (brand or personal brand), and you, like many, are doing episodes, which are one-on-one interviews or individual teaching, an easy way to take it to the next level is to consider adding panels.
   1. A panel is basically anything that is 3 guests or more. So, yourself as the host, and 2-3 guests would be a good little sweet spot.
   2.  You want to allow some consistency and cadence to it. Think about it like a column in a publication where you know something special is going to  be published once a month (if it’s weekly), or if it’s a daily thing, then perhaps once a week, on Sundays. Channel the Sunday Times version of your podcast.
   3. Putting a panel together takes a little bit of time and effort. It sometimes takes a lot of scheduling back and forth among multiple stakeholders. But it’s so deeply worth it for a few reasons that I’ve broken it down in previous places. Read this on the 12 formats of podcasting you should consider. Or listen to this on the key benefits of panel podcasts. 

 

1. So, if you don’t have a podcast? Then, here’s a play. Go and pitch a few people with consistent and well-distributed podcasts with a panel idea. 
   1. Say ‘Hey X, I’d love to come and chat about (insert topic here – example ‘the marketing context of intellectual property’) While I’m happy to chat about just that angle, might I suggest a panel of 3 (insert names here – example XX, Intellectual property lawyer, and YY, financial business owner and podcaster with some experience in the trenches’). I’d be happy to set up an intro if that might be of interest. Regardless, have a wonderful week. I quite enjoy listening to your podcast. (details here, for example – ‘Episode XX on the detailed breakdown of ‘why cryptocurrency’ kept me company as I biked last weekend! Bice work.’) Best, ZZ
   2. Don’t wait for someone to call for a panel and then ask to join it. Be proactive. Hosts love that.
   3. This will cut clutter on the podcast guest pitch front. Instead of pitching yourself as an independent guest you’ll get props for proactivity and innovative thinking on formats. 
2. And if you are not comfortable with any of this, and you have never guested at all on any podcasts, or spoken on any panels virtually, don’t despair. We have a play for you as well. Start somewhere. 
   1. Think about sending out a note to 1 or 2 people in your business circles that run a podcast. Put a little note together something like this: Hey X, I really enjoyed listening to your podcast. (details here, for example – ‘Episode XX on the detailed breakdown of ‘why cryptocurrency’ kept me company as I biked last weekend!’). I’d love to come and chat about (insert topic here – example ‘the marketing context of intellectual property’) on your podcast. I wonder if that might be of interest to your audience? Regardless, have a wonderful week. Look forward to more of your insightful episodes. Best, ZZ’ 

 

That’s it. That’s the task.
Get on 1 panel.
If you do, drop me a note. I can’t wait to see if this inspires you.
Podcasting is an easy place to make a speaking break. Try this.

Ps: I wanted to labour a point that we (at c+p digital) put a particular effort into drawing from the news of the day on a regular basis to illustrate our advice and facilitate a better understanding of the marketing strategies that can work.

As a relatively tiny digital marketing firm, it costs us fair amount of resources in tracking the news, creating the space for senior minds to editorialize it, and making that perspective available with speed, witty commentary, and actionable lessons. 

The reason we do that is because there’s plenty of inspiration to be gained from it.
It’s the same reason many of us make time to read business headlines.
That attitude doesn’t always trickle down to marketing.
We hope to fix that. Even if only just a tiny bit.

The way in which content is changing…
the way in which marketing formats are evolving…
It’s lightning paced!

This is not something that you can get a book to read about in 24 months from now.
This change is happening NOW.
And, we invest in this because being a part of that change, and breaking it down for mainstream use makes us truly happy (and gives us excellent email open and click rates!)

Thank you for being here for it 😍💌
We see you. We appreciate you 💫

Get on a panel.
Let your social self in-real-life shine through on a podcast.
It’s life-changingly easy to do.

I promise.

Attention online has become REALLY hard to get, and keep 🚽

Post-pandemic, we kinda sorta need to ditch the “old ways of marketing”. (ie: FOMO/free lead-magnet/email sequence/spray and pray with ads)

The amount of online clutter that has developed over the course of 18 months, in a pandemic, is mind-boggling. For context, we are at a point in history when 20%+ of the workforce may continue to work remotely for a majority of the workweek which would translate to profound impact on urban economies, and consumer habits according to this McKinsey Global Institute, What’s next for remote work? report

There are a limited number of avenues that you can use to guarantee positive, effective visibility 😭

While there’s nuance to everything, here is a universal truth.
Those who understand the value of deploying entertaining content are seeing quick wins.

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I’m seeing strategies and tactics being employed in a business-to-business context that are wonderfully reminiscent of the way in which bloggers – lifestyle bloggers, food bloggers, health bloggers – have done it for a very long time!

And I love it.

Listen, we all respect experience and love to learn from it. 

Here are some things that we can learn from the advanced and extensive experience of “bloggers”, who are really the OG practitioners of wonderfully executed content plays.

Of valuable, and monetized content engines and Infrastructure.

4 specific learnings that can Blogger-ize B2B content to make it less boring

Blogger Lesson 1: Always tell a story

Let’s start this out nice and light.

The biggest thing that you can learn from bloggers is the value of a good story.

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And, you know, in the interest of a little storytelling, let’s skip back to about 2008, to the case of the over-indexed food storyteller, AKA the food blogger.
That was around the time that the phenomenon of telling a story about the background of a recipe became practice.
How it was developed,
What the blogger in question was inspired by

The crowds went wild!
Then everyone started doing it because, “why not?”

Sure, I can tell you how to make a cake by saying

“take two eggs, one cup of milk, blah blah blah…”

Or I could get all up in immersive experience like

“I fully discovered the power of vanilla at 4 am on a Tahitian beach… “

So, clearly, after a few years of doing this and everyone jumping with both feet onto this bandwagon, that system started to get a little bit old.

People started to complain.
Because. Too much of a good thing.

Bloggers were getting far too self-indulgent, they said.
There was too much storytelling.
You had to scroll for miles and miles before you actually found a recipe!

At which point, obviously the wonderful technological innovators of the world came to the rescue. 

A plugin was developed.
(Of which there are multiple right now)

You had a button up top, which says “Skip to recipe”.

Regardless, storytelling is a powerful, powerful tool. 

While the blogger world overdid it, we are FAR from that point in the business writing world.

Storytelling is singularly the best way in which you can inject a little bit of ease-of-reading into a piece of content.

A wonderful way to bring a little bit of pleasure into someone’s day.

And because of the value of a metaphor or an analogy or a tale or an experience in facilitating audience understanding, it will always remain relevant.

Blogger Lesson 2: Capitalize on email

The second point that I want to touch on; again, nice and easy. Bloggers deeply understand the value of email.

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Many bloggers, including the very visual ones, do tend to publish in the “blog” format (duh!).

It would be under a tab, in the old days, that simply said “Blog”
Maybe there would be some sort of landing page, that was pretty.
Or in the very evolved cases, of which there are many, a really well-organized website that’s full of content that answers people’s pain-points on the subject.

Essentially, the core format was text + image,
(Obviously there were layers – videos, not so much podcasting, but many people are now starting to use that too.)

The immediate, and obvious, thing to do with that was to take the blog to email.

So many of my favourite bloggers, who I’ve kept on my tightly-curated list, way after I left the blogger world years ago, I continue to read, purely because of how well they handle their emails.

In practice, at the very least, you can take the exact same content on a blog or a podcast or video into your email system and send it out.

That said, there’s room for a little bit of improvement from there.

Consider giving it a copy edit to make sure it continues to work in an email format.

The best performing emails for us, and much of our roster of clients, do tend to be long-form text emails, which are broken up with a bit of imagery. Whether that’s graphs and charts on the more serious end of the scale, or gifs and memes, (like this email, or a number of clients, regardless of how serious the subject matter. Pro tip: works particularly well in finance, legal and healthcare)

Think about investing in emails like bloggers do.

Often we see people trying to create “a newsletter” separately.
And trying to create articles for their website separately.

Hold still a minute and this terribly obvious aha moment will happen when you’ll smack yourself in the figurative forehead and say “why aren’t these the same thing FFS???”.

What if I’m worried about duplication?

Here’s what you need to know.

It doesn’t matter.

Inadequate distribution of content is your number one problem. It’s everyone’s number one problem. We create far more than we distribute.

Not even a 10th of the people that you’re targeting are seeing your messaging. So the honest truth is no one will notice.

If that feels hard to accept, then know this. Those who do notice are usually impressed at your constancy and discipline.

And even if that feels inadequate know that you can bring in the nuance by:

1. highlighting different details.
2. breaking facts down.
3. spotlighting one key finding

 There are many ways to handle it, but really thinking about maximizing email is a way that B2B can steal from bloggers who have done this well for decades!

Blogger Lesson 3: Invest in visual content

Beauty is something that bloggers do particularly well. Specifically, they have learned to do this on the cheap.

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First, technology is a wonderful thing, you will find that most bloggers will have a decent production suite.

Whether it’s for photographing things or for shooting video or, making sure that the environment that they are in is well lit.

You will find that many bloggers, either have a personal ability to write, which I think is kind of non-negotiable in today’s world for all marketers. They invest in learning and in external people – both paid and collaborations.

In 2020, when your common-or-garden variety of silicon valley bro popped around, flashing the eggplant pic of the day, entirely unsolicited lists of their equipment for their ‘pandemic production studio’, bloggers smiled secretly. Any blogger worth their salt had had a “video wall”, a decent camera, and some hacks that made your head spin for achieving better lighting.

They truly are worth studying and modelling.

Do NOT use this advice as an excuse to “rebrand” or “create a sub brand” Instead, stay within the boundaries of whatever brand you’ve established at this point and think about these three key areas.

1. Theme. Always theme content around key messaging. Theming is your friend, even if the theme is something terribly obvious. For us, we work heavily with the theme of our podcast The 4 am Report. Everything we do has some sort of a sleep theme associated with it. So for example if one of us has to send out a little present to someone, instead of going through 1000 possibilities, we pick one of a few sleep themed gifts we’ve pre-approved and systematized. It really does simplify and cut efforts. It gives you that opportunity to take things far with your visuals. Even if from a budget perspective, your theme only allows you to do stock photos, that’s fine. Find a visual vocabulary, a series of analogies, and stay within those. Even if you’re broke AF and all you can do are free GIFs, pick a pop-culture universe or two and stay there. For example, I do tend to favour a clever Schitt’s Creek meme. Because I’m a writer, and Canadian, and love to channel powerful icons of inclusion to make my points. Enter David Rose.
2. Palette. I think it’s really helpful if you’ve already got a brand palette. Your colours, your fonts etc. your, This is where you want to use it! Make sure that you have lots of intelligent options. In the old days, you had a brand guideline so that you could paint a billboard once a year, or put out an ad once a quarter in the right colours. Today, you’re using that sort of brand palette like SEVERAL TIMES A DAY. Make sure you have options.
3. Structure. Fully understand what your distribution focus is and make sure you have the right orientations to make messaging on various platforms look good. If like us, you perhaps use email, blog posts in different formats, and LinkedIn that requires vastly different nitty gritties of sizing. White you mustn’t get terribly derailed, do you want to aim for the right orientations: vertical, horizontal, square – that sort of thing. We often see people (us included) put out something in a square format for something that needs a rectangle, and you just see the bust of the person with their head cut-off. When that happens, you’ve done your content some serious injustice!

Blogger Lesson 4: Constantly educate

By far the best for last.

The biggest and best thing that we can learn from bloggers is how to consistently educate. Bloggers masterfully package expertise into masterclasses (way before LinkedIn & co. found it) and bootcamps (hardcore discipline anyone?), short courses for development, and masterminds.

Many bloggers deployed these free or minimally charged.

I’m really pleased to see this starting to translate into the B2B world. Wonderful!

Because the curse of knowledge is real. What is obvious to you is NOT obvious to everyone. So teach!

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Let’s all start taking away the idea of “the course” and using it in different places:

1. use it in your orientations
2. use it in your process education
3. use it in your certification requirements

Courses can become a powerful tool for your customer success teams and account management teams to have assets in one place and cut repetitive work.

So there you go! Your four key lust-worthy learnings from bloggers.

These are worth applying.
Take away one, and do it consistently.
Give yourself a 12 week challenge. That should give you a decent runway for some qualitative measurement if not feel-good attribution.

Entertaining content goes beyond “funny haha” into light, easy, user-friendly, and truly a pleasure to consume.

That’s the quickest way to cut clutter in an oversaturated landscape.
Kinda like if you’re the guy with the hand-written sign in Times Square.
That sign better be f^cking clever to stand out.

Peace
Susan

Kevin Parent was up with his newborn.

It was Superbowl Sunday.
The night every marketer and communicator watches closely to see who sacrificed the most dollars at the altar of brand-building.

The game had ended a short while ago, and the revelry was underway on Twitter among the people that cared about sports, AND the people that cared about marketing to sports fans.

Kevin and his team were not done with the fun for the night, however. They had one more play planned. And because he was awake anyway, he decided he’d be the one to kick it off.

He did it.
He sent the tweet.

And the now iconic character, Bruce, who the Twitterverse rode in to save, because of his most relatable mistake of hitting publish on something that had very important information missing.

As soon as Kevin put the Tweet out, people noticed. Kevin began to interact and engage with all those making comments. 

He was having fun!
He found himself laughing out loud. (Not the kind you type in your chat, the real kind.)
The kind that could wake a freshly-back-asleep newborn.
Which would have been a whole issue unto itself.

Kevin knew this would go well. He and his team had planned for this.
But even he couldn’t not have predicted what was about to happen.

Hint: Canadian marketing treasure and all-round funny-man Ryan Reynolds got involved. And now ‘Bruce’ is coded into a province level public health BOT for Covid-19 information.

How does that happen?
How does one municipal public health account garner behemoth level exposure and engagement.

(Flash back to the Thursday before the Superbowl) 

Ottawa Public Health (OPH) sent out five posts with different embedded health messages that Thursday. You know, healthy eating, balancing alcohol with water, only being in-person with the members of your household during lockdown – that sort of thing. 

Your standard day of health messaging for Kevin Parent, head of social, at OPH.

For some seasonal fun, Kevin and his team put a little Super Bowl theming into their batch. 

(For those reading this who are unfamiliar with these heroes of health communication, know that OPH is up there with the best when it comes to incorporating humour into deeply unsexy subjects such as Covid-19. So when they put Superbowl theming into things, they set out to do it while not taking themselves too seriously, and really getting noticed.)

We’re a municipal government account, we are not cool, thought Kevin. We are not that cool brand that people are going to be looking to interact with on the subject of the Superbowl. 

So, the first of the five posts said, “this weekend is Super Bowl Sunday, assuming one team scores more points than the other team, that team will likely win.”

Another said, “if you’re watching the sports match, and you prefer to watch the sporting match…”

An overall tone that made it clear to anyone reading “we are not football people” is what Kevin was going for. OPH was mocking themselves a bit, employing some good, old-fashioned self-deprecation.

The Bruce tweet was a continuation of this series.

Bruce was born because Kevin was convinced there had to be a way to bait up some engagement. As the owner of a deeply scientific, verging on boring, social media profile, he was always looking for ways to draw engagement out and get people talking to them.

A couple of months before the Bruce Tweet, OPH had a sexual health tweet. It contained the words “Chapter 68”.
This was a bait, because the obvious joke was 69. 

Kevin and his team knew that people in the health communication space who knew of them would instantly engage and start replying, saying, “Why wasn’t it 69?”

Those baiting situations were not unfamiliar to Kevin.

So, Bruce followed in that rich tradition.

The original iteration of the tweet didn’t have a name in it. Just “(insert winning team name here)”. 

Kevin decided they had to give “the intern who forgot the winning team” a name for no other reason than to humanize the person.
“You had one job, Bruce!” was the emotion he was hoping to elicit in the masses.

The name Bruce came because they needed something short, to support character limits. And they needed something plain-sounding. 

“And somehow something about the name Bruce was easy to get mad at”, Kevin thought to himself.

People spread the Bruce Tweet like wild-fire. 

It garnered likes and replies along the way. One of Kevin’s favorites was the person that said, “Bruce is either a really deep sh!t. Or, Ottawa Public Health is about to say ‘Now that you’re all here, we’re asking you to stay away from people.’” 

All that was left for Kevin to do was to legitimately just copy the tail end of this person’s tweet!

So Kevin hit reply to him directly about two minutes later saying, “now that you’re all here, wear a mask, and stay away from people!”

People love interaction. 

A massive part of OPH’s social media strategy is something that is often overlooked by brands – getting in there, and engaging with people. 

You know, social! 

Completely unlike the days-of-yore-approach of crafting an amazing message, sending it out and washing your hands of it before you move on and declare it didn’t work. For OPH, the process doesn’t even START until the message goes out. 

Once it goes out, they are on a mission to get people interacting with them, and having conversations in the comments and replies.

This real-time interaction is what makes audiences trust you, and render them likely to interact with you more. 

It was 1am when Kevin went back to bed on Monday morning. 

He remembered because his newborn woke up again and had a bottle before Kevin finally closed his eyes happily, thinking “that’s it for the night. I spent a good, good couple of hours, just just answering everybody. That was a lot of fun!”

———————

Ps: That is the opening chapter of my FIRST book: The Other EQ: Brand Entertainment quotient – how to find it, keep it, and use it. 

If you’ve read and enjoy this column, “The Other EQ” on how to be a lot less boring in marketing, please consider helping me pay for the publishing of the book.

Yes! I’ve been writing in one form or another for 20+ years and finally summoned up the nerve to write a BOOK. 

It will be ready in the fall, and I will send a copy to everyone who contributes, regardless of amount. Please note that I chose Patreon for the creator platform to raise these funds. It’s been set up as a monthly $10 fee, if you sign up, you can cancel at any time including after your first month. Any amount you choose is appreciated!).

 

I’ve been rewatching Game of Thrones 👑 Yes, all of it.
And it got me thinking about newsjacking.

In the HBO fantasy saga’s 8th and final season in 2019, there was a major boo-boo in episode 4, titled “The Last of the Starks”. 

In front of Emilia Clarke, the actor who plays Daenerys Targaryen, during a victory party, nestled amongst the flagons and chalices, was a coffee cup. What eagle-eyed fans spotted, and declared to be Starbucks.

It sparked jokes.
Oh, it sparked jokes!

“Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, the First of Her Name, Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Protector of the Seven Kingdoms, the Mother of Dragons, the Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, the Unburnt, the Breaker of Chains, and Drinker of Pumpkin Spice” – said one Twitter user (Ira Madison III (@ira) May 6, 2019)

Source: https://www.945bayfm.com/starbucks-is-raking-in-the-dough-over-got-gaffe/

Starbucks appeared to be late to the party, jumping on the train on the afternoon after the episode aired, appropriately flagging a drink fortuitously named ‘Dragon Drink’ (it’s unconnected to the series)

Theories abounded that Starbucks would’ve been genius (and likely in an expensive lawsuit) to have engineered this sort of thing. That turned out to be conspiracy theories for the most part. Starbucks did however gain from the GoT blooper. Reportedly up to $2.3 billion in free advertising from the gaffe. Perhaps the best part of it all is that the offending cup in question wasn’t even a Starbucks cup! (It’s since been established the cup was from a small local coffee shop).

“PR subscriptions service Critical Mention, tallied 10,627 mentions of Starbucks and ‘Game of Thrones’ online and on TV and radio around the world.

Social media analytics and monitoring platform Talkwalker counted more than 193,000 mentions within 48 hours that cited both Starbucks and “Game of Thrones,” or a variation of the series’ hashtag, on Twitter, in social forums, blogs and news sites.”

How to approach newsjacking if you’re NOT Starbucks

So you’re not Starbucks.  You’re a small business team barely finding the time to stay afloat. Is there still a piece of the pie for you?

I’d vehemently debate that there IS! David Meerman Scott quite literally wrote the book on Newsjacking. It’s called “Newsjacking: How to Inject your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage”

Here, he illustrates the sweet spot for newsjacking, which is between the time a piece of news breaks, and the time that the journalists ‘scramble for additional information’ to build more detailed analysis pieces.

Being that fast is NOT EASY.

Fear not, folks. Meerman-Scott has you covered in this uber-clear infographic 👇

Staying on top of the news

If you try to jump on all the bandwagons, you’ll tire, become basic, and likely fail. 

Set yourself some key topics that form the foundation of your newsjacking strategy. 

1. Link this back to your brand’s key messaging pillars (stick to no more than 3)
2. Pick a series of dates/milestones/events/hashtags that forms the basis of your following of news (look beyond the obvious like Mother’s Day or Valentine’s Day. Think more along the lines of “Earth Day” if you’re a car firm making efforts at planet friendly things. This will give your plan a skeleton and some training wheels to practice with.)
3. Master the segue – what is the connection between you, and the news you’re jacking? 

Like with learning to ride a bike, trust me, the training wheels will come off. You’ll get better at it, and venture further and further out of your comfort zone.

Newsjacking truly is a million dollar marketing strategy. Made MUCH MUCH easier with social media and listening tools. It’s worth mastering.

We at c+p digital are obsessed with the power of newsjacking and its applicability to almost anyone. Like Meerman-Scott says, news breaks every second, 24/7. There’s got to be something in there for everyone.

This very column, and the book I’m writing called The Other EQ: Brand Entertainment quotient – how to find it, keep it, and use it, was born from our podcast, and our 10-minute weekly talk show “Thirsty Thursday”. In the show we take a look at the week’s news at the intersection of marketing and entertainment. (That alone – using hashtags like #freebritney and multiple sporting, acting and inclusion hashtags – has increased our visibility on a channel like Instagram, from which traffic comes to our site. If you see our vanity metrics, they’re small, but our distribution is obviously solid because people are finding our content and consuming it.)

I began a practice of breaking down some of the coolest stories and interviews around the subject of making content less boring in marketing – et voila! A book was born.

Please consider helping me pay for the self-publishing of my book?

Yes! I’ve been writing for 20+ years, for myself and countless others, and finally summoned up the nerve to write a BOOK. It will be ready in the fall, and I will send a copy to everyone who contributes, regardless of amount. Please note that I chose Patreon for the creator platform to raise these funds. It’s been set up as a monthly $10 fee, if you sign up, you can cancel at anytime including after your first month. Any amount you choose is appreciated!). 

 

Support my self-publishing goal for $10

A picture is worth a thousand words.
And a good GIF is worth ten thousand.

I say that often.
And I’m a writer.

Compelling content has got to be more than words.

Some of the best artists and communicators of our time are not genius creatives only because of their skilled craftsmanship. They are genius creatives because of their spot-on observations about the human condition. And, usually, their ability to to inject emotion into the process. The emotions in question range; for the purposes of our narrative around the need for an ‘entertainment quotient’ in content, let’s focus on levity.

When I tell people to think about how they can use something other than words to convey sentiment, tone or emotion, the strongest resistance I hear is:
“Oh, I’m not creative. I can’t draw/paint/(insert your preference here; i’ve heard many)

Remember that the tool is secondary to the idea you’re trying to convey.

It can be words.
It can be wonderfully delivered with wit and wisdom in calls and meetings.
It can be stop motion graphics.
It can be a funny doodle.

I operate in the belief that I can’t draw.
(No, really, I’m quite dreadful.)

“I don’t know how to draw.” was certainly something that I thought about often. I’d refrain from even the most basic whiteboard scribbles in meetings when there were lots of people I didn’t know well.

I really worked on not letting that stop me and there was one thing in particular that created my shift.

My daughter Y (who’s 10  in 2021) wasn’t a fan of writing in her early years.
However, in most school systems, writing tends to be the default medium for communication, and somewhat non-negotiable.

In the first grade, the kids in her class had a physical agenda book they had to write notes in for parents on what was homework, what to bring in that week etc. All kids had to practice writing in their agendas. Y would  try, struggle with it, and not be able to finish it because she wasn’t good with the letters. 

So she tried to draw a little picture to let me know what it is that she needed to have done, or brought in, or whatever. Quite detailed little icons, like mittens or a cupcake. The teacher stopped her. Her rationale to Y was “This is writing time, you need to be writing this out.” 

Y stopped the drawing and would come home with half finished notes.
She’d be frustrated, because she couldn’t remember what she was supposed to do at the end of the day. And she truly is a front bencher who hates being called out in a class.
My husband and I’d be frustrated because we knew she’s going to get kept in for recess the next day and that’s just not how we wanted it to go. 

There was so much stress over just that conditioning that writing is the only way to communicate. That turned out to be one challenging teacher in a sea of other wonderful educators we’ve encountered in the Toronto District School Board. But I remembered it, because it was a key experience that motivated me to stop blocking myself from drawing. Nobody cares. I’m not setting out to create fine art.

What I can do is write little words, and draw little icons.
I didn’t believe that was considered drawing. I prefer to call it doodles or scribbles.
I house printed words in basic shapes, like circles and squares, and draw lots of arrows, and when I put that together, it actually makes something which quite clearly communicates what I need to say.

That still didn’t get me to start publishing more though. I still defaulted to writing, refusing to decondition myself.
I’d think wistfully, of hundreds of things I would draw, if it could, that would’ve saved me hours of carefully crafting lines to have the same effect.
The grass was still greener on the artist’s side of the fence as far as I was concerned.

My efforts at Liz and Mollie-esque doodles were never seeing the light of day if I could help it.

What was a girl to do??
Well, a girl found herself 2 options.

(ps: bonus points for guessing which major book series turned HBO runaway hit I’m referencing in those two lines 👆I’m rewatching it in full, and the references and metaphors run rife.)

2 tools I use because I can’t draw

1. Canva
2. GIFs (the easiest is GIPHY, but there’s Tenor and others)

Those two help to really stretch how entertaining content can be when resources are thin on the ground. When I’m feeling the need for something other than words (which is VERY often even for a writer) or if I need a punch to an idea, or even if I’m plain lazy, I resort to these.

As far as I’m concerned, if we can figure out the 500 word way to say something, if we can figure out how to get on video and podcasts, then we can figure out how to use images and moving images as well.

Haha. A Venn diagram about Venn diagrams!

(See? I made that today because it was easier than trying to explain the existential angst that led me to the moment I started drawing circles of the same size on Canva, and overlapping them.)

Here are a couple of early examples where I played with the circle theme 👇

👆That was a fun little comment i enjoyed making about the tail end of the work week getting more and more hectic for most of us in remote working set ups. It was also an effort to imprint Thursday as it relates to us because 2 key content pieces we release each week drop on Thursday. 

1. The 4 am report podcast – on what keeps founders and marketers up att night
2. Thirsty Thursday – the weekly talk show that rounds up the headlines at the intersection of marketing and entertainment.

👆That one is me processing my own mental health and that of many others from the stories I hear as I chat with people. 

I’d love to give you stats like “These 2 got millions of views and went viral.”
They did not.

Here are some things that happened instead 👇

1. I started to make these doodles a lot more and share them in team briefings and client meetings. It was a way to visualize complex ideas and geet around long briefing forms.
2. I started to use them in proposals. People instantly recognize gaps and opportunities in this sort of format
3. We interviewed a guest on our podcast who spoke to the stress relieving benefits of doodling.
   1. That guest signed up to our email list and often replied  with thoughts or thanks on pieces that resonated with her.
   2. She eventually became a client of ours
4. We use the idea often to explain seemingly complex content frameworks like the Anchor Theory of content marketing 👇

In case you haven’t seen us harp on about it, here is the actual framework 👇

 

If you have time for nothing else, resort to GIFs

 

Do not dismiss GIFs and memes as frivolous.
They can be if used randomly.
A little theming and careful curation can take GIFs (which is basically ready to use, and encouraged by creators) into a powerful clutter cutting tool and something that can help provide relief in long form pieces.

Still doubtful and uncertain about the tackiness factors of multiple moving images from multiple cleators that would muddy up your brand?

Say hello (again) to Cole Schafer.  I mentioned him earlier in the series as a writer who uses design superbly to make words shine. 

This is his website home page, and that line of cohesive images you see are GIFs in a roaring-20s, swing-era style.

So remember, when being entertaining in content feels like a mammoth task, don’t despair.=

A picture is worth a thousand words.
And a GIF is worth 10 thousand words.

Lean into that. Give yourself permission to play, especially as a grown up 😁

Peace
Susan

Ps: if you’ve read and enjoy “The Other EQ” column on how to be a lot less boring in marketing, please consider helping me pay for the publishing of my FIRST book. It’s called The Other EQ: Brand Entertainment quotient – how to find it, keep it, and use it. 

Yes! I’ve been writing for 20+ years, for myself and countless others, and finally summoned up the never to write a BOOK. It will be ready in the fall, and I will send a copy to everyone who contributes, regardless of amount. Please note that I chose Patreon for the creator platform to raise these funds. It’s been set up as a monthly $10 fee, if you sign up, you can cancel at anytime including after your first month. Any amount you choose is appreciated!).

 

Support my self-publishing goal for $10