THOUGHTS
Jack-of-All-Trades Marketer… Thanks to ChatGPT
A couple months ago I launched a new website (insert smooth and subtle plug for SteveLerch.com here). A new site to focus exclusively on my hopefully burgeoning keynote speaking career.
If I could pick a word to describe my Squarespace skills, I’d pick the word “Meh.” I’m fine. I’m ok. I’m not winning any awards, but I know how to stumble my way through most of what I need to accomplish.
EXCEPT, when it comes to anything on the backend. Anything that requires the use of third party tools or custom code. Which unfortunately is what you need when you want to track form submissions on your fancy new speaker website. (Google Tag Manager has entered the chat).
I worked at Google for a decade. I never once logged into Google Tag Manager. So when I logged in the other day to try to setup tags, triggers, and variables for SteveLerch.com (shameless plug #2), I was very intimidated. No clue where to begin. In the olden days (like 2022), I probably would have gone through some GTM trainings/tutorials, maybe watched a couple YouTube videos. But in 2025, thanks to artificial intelligence, the world has become easier for all of us.
And yes, I know what you're thinking: "Another AI blog? Seriously?" Trust me, I get it. But there’s a reason everyone is talking about this stuff. Personally, I’ve been on the AI speaking circuit for the last year and a half, hitting everything from HR conferences to bowling alley conventions (yes, really). I've preached the AI gospel to rental industry folks and even the brilliant minds at NOAA.
While I continue to use AI to write content, create graphics, brainstorm ideas, plan vacations, and diagnose medical conditions, I believe it’s most valuable application is in showing me how to do something that I don’t know how to do.
So in the name of setting up GTM for SteveLerch.com, I logged into ChatGPT. Instead of looking up a generic guide to using Google Tag Manager, I have AI build me a custom step-by-step guide for exactly the thing I need. Not some premade tutorial that is “sort of related” to my needs. A custom guide made just for me.
I can tell AI exactly what I’m trying to accomplish. That I’ve never used GTM before and know ‘zilch’ about code. That my website is built in Squarespace Version 7.1. I can upload screenshots of the forms on SteveLerch.com and simply say “I want to track anytime someone clicks that ‘SUBMIT’ button.”
And poof, 10 seconds later, I’ve got my guide.
Ironically, where AI really impresses me, is when it gets things wrong. Walking through this tutorial, there were a couple spots where the instructions didn’t quite match what I was seeing in the GTM or Squarespace interface. A pretty frustrating occurrence when working with a traditional, static user guide. With AI, I just upload a screenshot and ask for an explanation.
There were times during the conversation (yes, I think of it as a conversation), where ChatGPT asked me to look at the code of my website. I know exactly 0 about code. It was asking me to look for specific phrases and labels around the website forms. Well I didn’t want to do that, because I immediately got confused and overwhelmed. So I copied and pasted all this gibberish into ChatGPT and I said “hey, why don’t you look for the phrases and labels instead.”
The process is so interactive, so customized, so well organized into steps, sub steps, and checkboxes.
I’d have been surprised at how well this all worked, had I not also used ChatGPT a few weeks ago when I was building X (Twitter) ad campaigns for the first time in several years and wanted a walkthrough of the options and the steps that specifically emphasized the changes in the platform since 2023. I knew that would work, because when I was building my Squarespace website (cough- SteveLerch.com -cough), I had Gemini build me a tutorial for using Squarespace Version 7.1, specifically for someone building a keynote speaking website, and again, specifically being able to talk through the evolution of Squarespace since I built my last website a few years ago.
I don’t know how many jobs AI is going to replace. I don’t know how many people and how many companies and how many industries it might put out of business one day. And I don’t know if that day is going to be in 2035 or this August. But to me, it feels like all those macro-economic trends are what they are. They’re inevitable. I can only control what I can control. And what I can control is being a better marketer, capable of doing more things, using more platforms, mastering more tools, and doing all of the above better and faster than I could do them before. And all of that is possible, and it’s possible today, by using AI.
Winning Viral Moments- How Any Marketer Can Leverage What's Trending
Let’s talk about Corn Kid…
You probably heard about Corn Kid last fall when a video called “CEO of Corn” was uploaded to the YouTube channel Recess Therapy. The video quickly racked up millions of views.
As did the Gregory Brothers’ songified version
The videos are adorable, funny, and absolutely will warm the chilliest of hearts. As someone who studies the digital world, I find this fascinating. But as a marketer, I’m fascinated by what happened in the weeks and months following the viral hit. I’m fascinated by the clever ways that brands, with limited effort and limited funds, took advantage of a unique and impossible to predict cultural moment.
The popular corn video was posted in August of 2022, and before the month was over, Chipotle had filmed and posted a short video with Tariq excited to add corn to his Chipotle order. To be honest, the video isn’t that special or funny (especially compared to the original video and the songified version). It looks low budget. The filming looks low tech. The scripts are pretty basic. But all that said, it was Chipotle’s most popular social post of the year.
A fantastic example of a brand letting the power and attention of a cultural moment do all the heavy lifting. An example of how sometimes, timing and quick reactions are the most important elements to successful marketing.
And it’s not just big brands and consumer facing marketers who can leverage something like Corn Kid. Which brings us to the South Dakota Department of Agriculture. If you’re like me, you might not have known that South Dakota is one of the nation’s top producers of corn. Well in early September, a few weeks after the original video was posted, South Dakota’s governor named Tariq the official “Corn-bassador” of South Dakota.
What does a Corn-bassador do? Beats me… What’s the benefit to South Dakota’s agriculture industry? Well that’s awfully hard to quantify as an outside observer, but I think the answer to that question is evident when we answer two other questions- how did I know that Tariq was the official Corn-bassador of South Dakota and how did I know South Dakota was a major corn producer? I know because I read about…
I read about it in this article from the Washington Post
And again here on NPR.org
And then again on Yahoo Finance
Not to mention this article from People.com
Or when it was covered by The Hill
Just about every major media outlet and every major morning show now only talked about Tariq, but specifically talked about South Dakota and their connection to corn. Not a bad round of PR for the South Dakota Department of Agriculture, who I’m guessing doesn’t usually get a lot of coverage from the Steve Harvey Morning Show.
I’ve spoken about this and written about this before, and I’ll speak about it and write about it again. Being proactive (predicting the next big trend/meme/fad) is essentially impossible. It’s a fool's errand. But paying close attention to what people are paying attention to is easy. Catching a trend in real time is easy. Reacting with a cheap Tik Tok video or by making up a fake ambassador title is easy. And the impact can be huge.
Interested in more stories like this? Check out SteveLerch.com to learn more about Steve’s keynote speeches and contact Steve about working with your team, company, or event.
Brainstorming- The Ultimate Team Sport
If your company or team doesn’t look at brainstorming as a team sport, you’re probably doing it wrong. And it drives me crazy how rarely I see true, collaborative brainstorming sessions.
When I worked at Google, I’d regularly attend planning meetings where the client would present some sort of creative brief to their digital ad agency, their TV buyers, their PR firm, and to us Googlers. They’d present and we’d all ask some basic questions. Then we’d scurry out of the meeting to tackle our individual challenge.
We’d get back to our cushy Google office, maybe gather around a white board, and start throwing ideas at the wall like partially cooked pasta (you know that thing where pasta is supposed to stick to the wall when it’s cooked?) to see what stuck.
After a day, week, or month we’d reconvene and present our brilliant, well constructed, fully-baked ideas. Client says yes or no. Maybe we make some money. All good.
But you know what I’m wondering when I’m sitting there listening to all these fully-baked ideas from all these various vendors with diverse backgrounds and unique areas of expertise? I’m wondering what the half-baked ideas looked like. I’m wondering what random rejected ideas never reached the stage of being fully-formed. I’m wondering about the pasta that didn’t stick to the wall.
Why do the “bad” ideas matter? Well let me answer my question with another question. Have you ever played Mad Gab?
Mad Gab is a game where the playing card has a seemingly random series of words that when you sound out in a certain way, it actually sounds like a known word or phrase. We used to play it at family reunions when we were kids, and I highly recommend it. The game generally consists of your team shouting (progressively louder) a bunch of nonsensical syllables, with different points of emphasis, hoping to stumble across the actual phrase.
I was always pretty good at Mad Gab. Sometimes I could just look at the card and the phrase would pop into my head. Other times, the answer I was searching for would only reveal itself if I listened carefully to the crazy nonsense my teammates were yelling. It was their wrong answers, their “bad” ideas, their not yet fully formed phrases that got me the right answer.
The same works for brainstorming new ideas with your colleagues. You’d be amazed how often one silly little comment might lead to someone else’s brilliant breakthrough. And I know it’s not always easy. I’ve worked with plenty of teammates over the years who would feel “uncomfortable” being asked to brainstorm out loud, with others. It can be intimidating. It can be unnerving. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing.
The best brainstorming sessions I’ve seen, including the innovation workshops that I facilitate, all involve lots of voices sharing lots of ideas. We usually start our brainstorming sessions with four very simple rules:
Some ideas might be impossible, impractical, or just not a good fit. That’s ok. In brainstorming sessions, bad ideas are better than no ideas.
When doing collaborative brainstorming, everyone in the room should act and feel like equals. Don’t worry about job titles or years of experience. It’s just a bunch of brains in a room.
Prioritize quantity of ideas over quality of ideas. You can polish and refine them later.
Speak up. The worst thing you can do in brainstorming is to walk out of the room with an idea still in your head.
To a lot of people and a lot of companies, “brainstorming” feels like a very general and ambiguous concept. It feels like something that happens in the background. Concepts like “the shower principle” make us feel like brainstorming works best when it’s unscheduled and informal. But brainstorming is too important of a tool to take for granted. It’s too valuable to not give it the time and space and effort that it deserves. And the challenges you’re solving and the ideas you’re searching for are too big and too impactful to think you can solve them on your own.
Or as Mad Gab might put it: All Weighs Brines Torn Two Gather
Interested in more stories like this? Check out SteveLerch.com to learn more about Steve’s keynote speeches and contact Steve about working with your team, company, or event.
How to Not Go Viral
There is no exact science to going viral. There are tips. There are strategies. There are best practices. But no matter how much you follow them, there is nothing close to a guarantee.
But there is however a recipe to not going viral. An exact playbook that can help you avoid even the chance of one of your videos suddenly transcending the normal reach of your audiences. A path to dodging the millions or tens of millions of views that some content captures. It’s strange to me that so many companies, companies that would kill for a breakout viral piece of content, stick to this path like bubble gum to a shag carpet.
For those of you looking to walk this path of non-virality, and for those looking to avoid it, here are the four decisions that brands consciously and subconsciously make that stunt the growth potential of their content:
1. Limit the Quantity of Content You Share
If you’ll allow me to mix metaphors, going viral usually requires you to not put all your eggs in one basket, to cast a wide net, to throw a bunch of stuff at the wall and see what sticks. Remember Keyboard Cat? Of course you remember Keyboard Cat. That YouTube Channel launched 17 videos over the summer of 2007. To this day, most of those videos have only a few hundred or a few thousand views. Keyboard Cat has 64 million.
How about What Does The Fox Say? Couldn’t get that weirdly awesome song out of your head for a while? That was the 85th video that Ylvis had posted to their YouTube channel. We tend to think of these crazy viral sensations as totally out of the blue, flash in the pan, overnight success stories, but most aren’t. The path to viral success is paved with all the videos that didn’t go viral.
2. Only Post Super High Quality Content
If you’re still treating YouTube or TikTok or Instagram the same way you would treat a Super Bowl Ad, then congratulations, you’re probably on the path to not going viral. Your social media videos don’t need to be in 4K, they don’t need to be directed by Steven Spielberg, they don’t need fancy actors, and they don’t need big production budgets.
Some of the earliest YouTube sensations were filmed with bad lighting, crappy cameras, and little to no planning. Remember The Evolution of Dance? Charlie Bit My Finger? David After Dentist?
YouTube has certainly changed a lot in the last 15 years, with way more professional content and serious production companies getting involved. But at it’s core, YouTube is still random people sharing random bits of their lives. Most YouTube viewers are equally, if not more comfortable watching something filmed on an iPhone or a GoPro than something filmed in a professional movie studio.
Don’t get me wrong, the Super Bowl stuff is great too, but if that’s all your posting, you’ve got too narrow a scope. You never know what will take off and what won’t, so the more types of content, the more styles, the more looks and feels you can create, the better.
3. Focus Only on Your Brand and Your Message
One way to really help yourself avoid going viral is to force your creative and your message to do all the heavy lifting. To drive all the views. It would be a tremendous undertaking to make a truly compelling ad that drives millions of views that is strictly focused on that widget your selling.
Alternatively, you can let other factors do some of the heavy lifting for you. I wrote an article a year ago (Reactive Marketing- From Pepsi Milk to Peloton) about a YouTube creator called Badlands Chugs. Badlands Chugs capitalized on uniquely captivating cultural moments to create more interest in his content. In other words, find the thing that everyone is talking about already, the meme that’s trending, the TikTok dance everyone is doing, the news story everyone is sharing. Find that thing that is already driving eyeballs and put it to work for your content.
Being culturally relevant and timely is a path to virality. Staying in your lane and keeping your head down on your brand and product is the path toward irrelevance.
4. Play It Safe
Perhaps nothing is a better deterrent to virality than playing it safe. Creating content that makes every single person at your company feel comfortable. Content that every single person approves of.
So many brands fear failure and scrutiny to such a degree that they’ll never go outside of the box. They don’t want to try to be funny, because what if people don’t think it’s funny. They’ll never try to be exciting, because what if people find it boring. They’ll never try to be weird, because what if some people don’t like things that are weird.
It might sound scary, but sometimes you just need to accept the fact that not every video is gonna work. Not every video is going to be a success. Not every video is going to get you a congratulations from your CEO. That’s the beauty of digital content. When something doesn’t work, you post something else. Believe it or not, the digital world is a forgiving and fast moving place. If you want to go viral, you’ll have to take risks. And if you take risks, you’re going to fail… A lot. But I promise if you get that one video that drives 5 million views, the 15 you posted that got 200 views are going to feel like distant distant memories.
Interested in more stories like this? Check out SteveLerch.com to learn more about Steve’s keynote speeches and contact Steve about working with your team, company, or event.
Customers- The infinite free ideas we mostly ignore
Every team I’ve been on has lamented over their unfulfilled desire for more headcount.
Every CEO I’ve worked with wished their teams would come up with more fresh ideas.
Every CFO I’ve talked to has wanted their teams to find ways to do things cheaper.
Well in the words of every infomercial pitch-person ever, “There’s gotta be a better way!”
Good news. There is. Every business has access to the minds of dozens or hundreds or thousands of loyal and enthusiastic customers. Some of whom love your brand and would do anything to be a part of it. Some of whom hate your products and would love nothing more than to explain how to make it better.
Some who are marketers, some who are artists, some who are engineers, some who are brilliant, and some who are total weirdos.
And now more than ever, in the age of self-expression and over-sharing, where everyone’s creating and posting content, brand can tap into the ideas of customers. Let’s look at three examples:
Amazon
In 1997, Jeff Bezos wrote an email to 1,000 Amazon customers. The founder of the world’s top online bookstore, that recently started selling music, wanted to know what they should sell next. There was a theme to the responses, exemplified by one customer who wrote “windshield wiper blades, because right now I need new windshield wiper blades.”
The theme was that “the thing” didn’t really matter. It was about moments of need. Amazon could and should sell anything. It probably took 10 minutes to craft the email and maybe a couple hours to read all the responses. And now Jeff Bezos has Scrooge McDuck swimming-in-gold-money.
GoPro
Now let’s talk about User Generated Content, or UGC. UGC is even more relevant these days as everyone I know (and everyone I see when I walk down the street), it’s fervently taking pictures of themselves and their surroundings to share with the world.
But more than a decade ago, companies like GoPro really stood about by activating their customer base to create waves and waves of content. Content that propelled their small company into one of the most influential brands on platforms like YouTube. If your first reaction is to say “well of course that’s easy for a camera company,” then please explain to me why the dozens of video camera companies that came before GoPro didn’t accomplish this feat.
GoPro accomplished this by being intentional about their desire to leverage their customers. They constantly asked for content. They hired people to curate and edit that content. They made it a part of who they are as a brand.
And last, but now least, my old friends at Google. Google spends about as much on advertising as any brand in the world, and for my slightly biased money, they’re among the very best at crafting compelling creatives. If you don’t believe me, check out the ads Parisian Love and Google Chrome: Jess Time.
But sometimes all the marketers and all the ad agencies in the world can’t give you the same natural, organic perspective as the people buying and using your products. Which is why Google ran a program called Demo Slam.
Where, you guessed it, they asked customers to tell the stories of their products. There are some wonderful examples from the Demo Slam project, but perhaps my favorite was from The Paul Brothers. This was a video they created back in 2010 at a time when consumers were very hesitantly starting to test out Google’s new voice search features. A time before Alexa and Siri and Ok Google. The Paul Brother’s showed the world just how incredibly well voice search can work, by playing the game “Fluffy Bunny” with a bag of marshmallows.
So how do you do it? How do you tap into customers and sift through the nonsense to find the golden nuggets of great ideas? Well that’s for you to figure out! But as is the case with any cultural shift at any business, it starts with intent and noise.
Decide that you care about customer ideas. Commit to the fact that there is value to be had. Once you’ve convinced yourself, get loud about the concept. Make sure your teams know it and make sure your leaders know it. From there, it’s up to you to choose a vehicle for communication, a target to aim for, and a system to put it all together.
If you want, start small and easy. All Jeff Bezos did was send out an email and read the responses. Try posting on Instagram that you want to see examples of customers using your products. Post on Facebook that you're looking for feedback on your latest product. It may be easier said than done, but at the same time, it’s not rocket science when you’re getting free ideas from people you don’t have to hire.
Interested in more stories like this? Check out SteveLerch.com to learn more about Steve’s keynote speeches and contact Steve about working with your team, company, or event.
If I hear one more thing about marketing to millennials...
I, Steven Charles Lerch, am a millennial.
And I get it. I’m crazy desirable to marketers. I’m like the girl at the bar playing hard to get. I’m complicated. I’m hard to talk too. But once you win me over, you’re getting decades and decades of that sweet sweet lifetime value.
So I guess it’s no surprise that all you marketers can’t stop talking about me and my compatriots. You are as obsessed with us as we supposedly are with Netflix, avocado toast, and participation trophies. Every time I give a speech at a conference, there is someone on the agenda talking about marketing to millennials. The best messaging strategies. The best targeting strategies. The do’s and don’ts.
And to put it bluntly, I just don’t get it. I have never understood this obsession with focusing on these generational constructs. “Boomers do this. Gen X thinks this way. Millennials buy these.” At this point, I may sound like I’m living up to one of my millennial stereotypes (which you can hear about in every millennial themed conference speech ever), by not wanting to be put into a box. But that’s not the case. “Boxes” are good. “Boxes” are useful. We’re just trying so desperately to draw boxes around the wrong things.
A millennial, by most definitions, is someone born in the 80s or early 90s. In other words, as of today, a millennial is someone in their late 20s or 30s. From there, we assigned these people a whole host of characteristics:
Millennials are tech savvy and glued to their phones
Millennials are environmentally and socially conscious
Millennials care about the values of the brands they buy from
Millennials are more politically correct
Millennials don’t like being told what to do or being labeled
Millennials are disloyal to brands
Millennials are obsessed with social platforms and sharing
The list goes on and on. Google “Millennial Cliches” and you’ll be reading for hours. And for all I know, these things are generally accurate. Or at least these attributes more accurately describe millennials than other generations. So when it comes down to it, marketers target millennials because they identify a shared set of psychographics that are highly prevalent in this subset of their audience. You may even hear some “clever” marketers say that “millennial is a mindset, not an age.” Well first of all. No. And second of all, fine. Let’s say that it is. Then stop talking about, and stop building your strategy around age groups.
Demographic and age range based targeting should be considered horribly outdated technology for the vast majority of advertisers (with some exceptions for sure). If you target millennials because you believe they’re environmentally conscious, then 9 times out of 10 you’d be just as happy to target environmentally conscious people who are 42. If you target millennials because you think they love tacos, then you could probably also sell to a 53 year old who loves tacos.
Digital advertising platforms have gotten so efficient and effective at targeting consumers based on psychographics that we don’t need to rely on demographics anymore. It’s not difficult, it’s not expensive, and it’s not time consuming to identify and target your strategies around the characteristics that truly define your audiences.
Last time I checked, Google Analytics was free and there is an entire section called Audience with an entire subsection called Interests. In two minutes I could tell you if you’re customers prefer football to soccer, like dogs or cats, and a hundred other useful bits of psychographic data that are likely far more indicative of being a high potential target for your business than what age they are. Do yourself a favor. Navigate to that “Interests” report in Google Analytics, sort the page by some metric of quality (probably conversion rate if you are an ecommerce business), and try to find some patterns and some insights in that data. Then draw your boxes around those learnings.
Boxes can be useful and sometimes necessary to keep marketing plans in order. Especially if you allow your boxes to change over time, for people to pass between them, and for customers to exist in more than one box at once. You can draw them around new customers and returning customers. You can draw them around customers interested in one type of product or another. You can even attempt to draw them around types of people.
For me personally, you can put me in the box of people who eat too much candy or drink too much Mountain Dew. The box of people who are college graduates and buy too many Phillies hats. The box of people who love rec league sports, never miss a Marvel movie, and own a home. The box of people who love to vacation at the beach or the box of people who enjoy grilling. All of which, if you ask me, are more indicative of my past behaviors and more predictive of my future behaviors, than the fact that I’m 32.
Interested in more stories like this? Check out SteveLerch.com to learn more about Steve’s keynote speeches and contact Steve about working with your team, company, or event.
The Good, the Bad, and the Lazy: 5 Ad Agency Warning Signs
One of the things I’m most thankful for from nearly a decade at Google, was the opportunity to work with a massive and varied list of advertisers. I worked with small businesses run by families and Fortune 500 technology brands. I worked with major federal agencies of the US Government and globally recognized non-profits. I watched how hundreds of brands built and managed their marketing strategies and partnered with no less than a hundred different ad agencies.
And when it comes to ad agencies, I saw the good, the bad, the lazy, the incompetent, and the inspired. Unfortunately for most advertisers, on the surface, it’s incredibly hard to know what type of agency you have. Or more specifically, what type of team you have on your business. Because even at the greatest ad agency in the world, I promise you, there is a staggering degree of difference in quality from employee to employee and from team to team.
I encourage you to audit your agency constantly and to conduct formal agency reviews periodically, but for a quick cheat sheet, I’ve compiled five warning signs that may signal your ad agency partners are missing the mark:
1. The “I Bet We Could Win Awards for This” Agency
Impressions, clicks, conversions, and consideration lift are super boring… But they can also have a tangible impact on accomplishing the business goals of most advertisers.
You know what’s not boring? Incorporating drones or 3D printers into your next advertising campaign. Using a cool celebrity and virtual reality. Having the most tweets during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. A new creative that is unprecedentedly shocking or uplifting or sad. These are the types of ideas that win awards for ad agencies, and for far too many ad agencies, that becomes the primarily goal.
Don’t get me wrong. Novel ideas can be incredibly impactful and so can new technologies. But the impact we’re aiming for should still be grounded in the lame, boring, unexciting thing you’re trying to do as a business. Like… You know… Selling stuff?
The next time your agency comes to you with something outside the box, make sure the target audience of their strategy is your consumers, and not other advertising industry professionals or the judges at the Clio Awards
2. The “We’re Recommending an X Increase in Budget….Because.” Agency
If you’ve ever worked at an ad agency or a media vendor (like my time at Google), you’ve undoubtedly sat in a room discussing how much money you think you can get your client to spend next year. And there’s nothing wrong with that. That the nature of the beast. Everyone has a target. Everyone has a quota. And from my experience, those numbers rarely do anything other than increase from year to year.
So as a client, don’t be surprised when your ad agency comes to you with a 2021 pitch that says you should spend X% more than you spent in 2020. But you should be suprised, or maybe disappointed or concerned, when they fail to offer relevant justification as to why.
10% more spend will get you 10% more impressions is weak. It shows your agency was lazy in their preparation and rudderless in their recommendation. There has to be a why. Because if 10% gets me 10% more, and more is good, why not 8%? Why not 13%? Why not 40%? Push them to tell you what the exact right investment is and why. It doesn’t mean you have to do it, but you should know where they stand and that they stand there for a reason.
3. The “Look How Many Line Items and Vendors We Use!” Agency
When evaluating your ad agency, it’s important to understand that many of them are in a constant state of defending their business and proving their value. Advancements in programmatic buying platforms, machine learning, and other technologies have helped to automate some of the functions traditionally performed by ad agencies. So there is always a risk of clients needing less support or moving things entirely in-house.
And I know first hand from my years at Google, that agencies also have to deal with vendors like Google, FaceBook, and many others who attempt to offer high spending advertisers the same council and support offered by ad agencies, except these vendors do it for free.
For some agencies, the best way to emphasize their value, is to build complicated media recommendations including a myriad of partners. In other words, if a client does all their media buying through Google, then a Google support team is a real threat to an agency. But if a client buys search Google and Bing and buys video from YouTube, Hulu, NBC.com, Roku and Tube Mogul, plus spot cable and broadcast television, then it’s very hard for the client to deal with seven support teams.
Going through a single vendor or a limited number of solutions is not necessarily the right answer for most advertisers. But keep in mind that when working with a smaller number of platforms you get more support, economies of scale, a more unified view of your customer, more consistent reporting, and on and on. So when your agency brings you a complicated media plan, make sure they have strong justifications for “why.” Do you truly need multiple platforms to cover your desired audience? Is there something uniquely valuable about each option? Is there something tangible that we’re testing and learning as we compare these platforms? Or are we complicating things for the sake of complicating things?
4. The “Here’s Why Deeper Attribution Doesn’t Work for You” Agency
Beyond direct response ecommerce, attribution is hard. I might go so far as to say that it’s super hard. And some companies and organizations have unique challenges that make it even harder.
However… If your ad agency spends more time explaining to you why they can’t measure anything related to sales or revenue than they spend working on intermediate solutions, you’ve got a problem.
I once worked with a major consumer gadget brand who sold product online and in big-box retail stores. They knew that the massive amount of online advertising they did would drive foot traffic to these stores, but since they couldn’t measure it, they ignored the in-store impact when evaluating their digital media. Eventually, we just said “Hey, why don’t you just guess what the in-store impact is and use that in your calculation? Just use your best educated guess based on whatever metrics we have available + common sense.”
Now that might sound crazy, but the truth we arrived at, was that the best educated guess, in all likelihood, would be closer to reality than just saying there was zero impact. Based off that realization, we did everything we could to improve that educated guess. It was still a guess. Still based off assumptions, but it was the most accurate data available at the time. Your agency should constantly be finding creative solutions to more accurately measure the impact of your media. If there’s a challenge, they should be showing you the detour around it. If there’s not an exact answer, they should be building you an educated guess and explaining how their models work.
If an agency is willing to settle for not knowing your impact, don’t settle for them.
5. The “Great Idea, That Makes Total Sense” Agency
In theory, this one probably shouldn’t need to be said, but in practice, it absolutely does. The average ad agency is too expensive to just be an instrument of implementing and optimizing the strategy they’re given. For what you’re paying, you have to demand original thought and extra brain power that your staff might not have enough of. In other words, beware any ad agency, or any partner really, who can’t stop confirming that everything you say is correct. Yes-men are nice, but they are not worth paying for.
For many advertisers, the primary reason to utilize an ad agency, as opposed to an in-house operation, is because an ad agency naturally brings an outside perspective grounded in their work with dozens or hundreds of other clients. You need this outside perspective. You’re paying for this outside perspective. If your ad agency isn’t serving as a frequent contrarian or devil’s advocate, you’re not getting all that you’re paying for.
Interested in more stories like this? Check out SteveLerch.com to learn more about Steve’s keynote speeches and contact Steve about working with your team, company, or event.
Dear Marketers- Stop Trying to Be All the Things
Dear Marketers,
Stop trying to be all the things!
It’s been said that there is no marketing strategy better than simply having a great thing to sell. And as a marketer myself, I’ll reluctantly admit that there is a lot of truth in that idea.
For many of us, when we’re given the chance to promote a truly amazing product, we giddily look at the long list of amazing attributes and benefits we have to work with, and in our minds we try to mash it all together into some sort of “offer you can’t refuse.”
The result however, does not always do our product justice. Just as we are overflowing with “great ideas,” our message quickly becomes bloated.
Hey! Check out this widget! It’s…
...the best…
...the fastest…
...the cheapest…
...the newest…
...American made…
...GMO Free…
...top safety rated....
...guaranteed…
...cutting edge…
...made from 100% recycled material…
Huh? You lost me somewhere around the 8th claim. Now don’t get me wrong, these may all be true statements about your product and in the eyes of your customers, they may all be good things. But imagine for a second you’re on a blind date and you ask your date for three words that best describe them. Imagine your date says, “smart, kind, loyal.” Now imagine your date says, “well I’m smart. I’m kind. I’m loyal. People say I’m really funny and I’m also really athletic. I’m respectful, polite, generous, caring, and friendly. At work, I think people would say I’m ambitious and driven, but I’m also pretty laid back. Did I mention I love to travel and can speak 3 languages?”
Put aside the fact that the second date seems really arrogant and also that they totally failed to stay within the parameters of your question. The second person just gave you way more positives, so then why, several hours after the date, would you have a stronger pull toward the first person? It’s because only picking 3 words, as opposed to 50, makes those 3 words seem so much more significant, authentic, and important.
As marketers, we often have to remind ourselves that really, truly exemplifying one great thing, is often better than kinda, sorta, half-heartedly being 15 things. Take Geico as an example:
Is Geico the best possible insurance? I don’t know. Do they cover cars, boats, and houses? Yeah, I think, maybe. Do they offer great online support? Probably. That sounds right. Can 15 minutes save you 15% or more on car insurance? YOU’RE DAMN RIGHT IT CAN. For the most part, Geico has determined the one thing they want to be and they won’t push other messages at the expense of reminding people of that core point.
When Halo Top Ice Cream launched they tried a pretty simple approach to their packaging. Let’s be three things. Let’s be about protein, calories, and net carbs. Not that complicated of a message. But Halo Top was able to figure out that there was actually one key demand from their target audience. One key priority. Calories per carton. So Halo Top rebranded and decided to loudly be one primary thing. They launched brand new packaging for 2016.
With their original packaging, in 2015, Halo Top did $1.4M in sales. With their new packaging, in 2016, they did $44M in sales. In 2017, they did $350M in sales.
It’s hard to identify the one key attribute that can best lift your brand, and it’s hard to resist the urge to shout about every great thing you do and to pursue every possible consumer preference. But you’ve gotta fight that urge. Unlike today’s television news and modern politics, in advertising, it’s often the brands that won’t stop shouting that become the least memorable and the easiest to ignore.
Interested in more stories like this? Check out SteveLerch.com to learn more about Steve’s keynote speeches and contact Steve about working with your team, company, or event.
Innovation Lessons from a CEO and a Janitor: The Story of Flamin' Hot Cheetos
A struggling company...
A CEO asking for ideas...
A janitor takes his shot...
Sounds like a pretty good story right? Kind of has that Goodwill Hunting vibe. Now let’s add in the fact that the janitor was the son of poor Mexican immigrants, that he dropped out of school due to struggles learning to read and write in English, all while living with his parents and 8 siblings in a one room apartment. Now let’s raise the stakes a bit and point out that the company is a major national brand on the Fortune 100 list.
Now if that was a movie, it’d feel a little piled on. Right? Almost too much of a David v Goliath, Rocky Balboa type story of overcoming adversity. But that my friends is the true story of Richard Montanez.
Richard Montanez was hired as a janitor at a Frito-Lay factory in 1976. His future wife had to fill out the application due to his limited English skills.
One day during his tenure as janitor, the Frito-Lay CEO, Roger Enrico, recorded a video for all employees. The video implored them to feel more like owners of the company and to take more responsibility for its successes and failures. So when Richard Montanez was struck with a brilliant idea, he knew just what to do. He called the CEO. The CEO of Frito-Lay. Because that’s what you do as a janitor when you have an idea. You call the CEO. Or at least that’s what you do when you are a confident and fearless janitor.
The CEO, to his immense credit, took the call and took this humble janitor extremely seriously. He told Richard to take two weeks to prepare a presentation for himself and the other executives. And Richard went off to invent a product that spoke to his Mexican heritage. It was inspired, mainly, by Mexican street corn seasoned with chili and lime.
To make his pitch more serious, (and this is one of those parts of the story that is almost too awesome to be true) he rented a book on marketing from the library and memorized some phrases with the help of his wife, doodled his own product design on some plastic bags, and bought a $3 tie to wear to the meeting.
He then stood in front of a group of executives at Frito-Lay and pitched the product that would go on to become Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. The most popular snack in America according to AdWeek, goPuff, and anyone with an Instagram. The snack that Katy Perry dressed up as for Halloween.
Richard Montanez is a truly inspirational figure and deserves all the success that comes his way. This is truly one of my all time favorite business stories. If you’re looking for life lessons on confidence and chasing your dreams, Richard is your guy.
But if you’re looking for lessons on leadership, please don’t lose sight of Roger Enrico. The CEO of a major company who raised his hand and basically said hey employees, I could use some help. And when a janitor called him on the phone, he took the call, took it seriously, got all his execs together, and recognized the great idea he was hearing. These are not small parts to this story.
If you want your company, your staff, your team to be innovative, start by encouraging them, empowering them, and listening to them. Great ideas can truly come from anywhere if you’re open minded enough to listen.
To hear more of Richard’s story, I recommend this one-on-one interview he gave with a local Tennessee radio station- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WadWS1JJeEo
Interested in more stories like this? Check out SteveLerch.com to learn more about Steve’s keynote speeches and contact Steve about working with your team, company, or event.
The We're Sorry We Suck Campaign
Imagine you could time travel back to September of 2009, just as the US is starting to rebound from the 2008 financial crisis. Even better, imagine you could do so with $1,000 to invest in any company you’d want. Maybe you’d choose Google? If so, your $1,000 would have turned into more than $6,000 within ten years. Maybe Apple is more up your alley. In that case a ten year investment would have gone from $1,000 to $15,000. If you were really smart, you’d pick Amazon, where $1,000 would have led to $29,000.
But if you would have known that Dominos was about to launch one of the most effective ad campaigns of all time, maybe you’d have chosen to invest in the beleaguered pizza chain. If you had, your $1,000 would turn into $47,000 in just ten years, as the Domino’s “We’re Sorry for Sucking” campaign drove Domino’s market share from 9% to over 15%.
In the early 2000s, Dominos was widely considered to be the worst tasting pizza chain in America. Consumer research indicated that people actually would prefer the taste of pizza when told it came from a generic brand as opposed to being told it was Dominos. Talk about needing to dig yourself out of a hole.
The “We’re Sorry for Sucking” campaign largely featured the CEO of Domino’s, speaking directly to camera, admitting the many flaws and shortcomings of not only their business and their products, but the pizza industry as a whole. He shared tweets of people blasting their service and held up pictures of Domino’s pizza that had been totally wrecked by careless delivery people. He even showed some of the tricks pizza brands, including Domino’s, use to make their food look unrealistically delicious in commercials.
And when he was done admitting to these faults, he promised that he would do better. He promised that Domino’s would do better. In the series of advertisements that followed he explained the changes they were making to fix the things that consumers didn’t like, and amazingly, people started to believe him. Domino’s had built credibility with their humility and transparency. What they did was clever, creative, and buzzworthy, but it was also authentic and honest.
But what inspires me most about the story of Domino’s resurgence isn’t so much the idea for the campaign (which was brilliant), it’s what they did once they had the idea. To put your CEO front and center. To call out your own products. To admit where you’ve taken short cuts. To admit where you’ve deceived customers. Talk about a gigantic risk.
Domino’s trusted their understanding of their current situation and went all in on the best solution they could come up with. The chips were stacked against them, but when the right hand came along, they weren’t afraid to go all in. I can’t tell you how many CMOs I’ve sat with over the years who had some grand idea, some brilliant new strategy, some report that illuminated some new solution, but they refused to do more than dip their toes into the water. For fear of failure or of firing they didn’t put their money where their mouth was. Domino’s did just that.
Interested in more stories like this? Check out SteveLerch.com to learn more about Steve’s keynote speeches and contact Steve about working with your team, company, or event.