#47: On standing out, accessorizing naked men, investing more in sales, marketing hypocrisy, and changing norms.
OK, two weeks of conferences (five, to be exact) leaves a girl looking something like this:
Wonderful to see familiar faces, meet so many new ones, and collectively gather to once again commiserate and collaborate on this very strange profession we have all chosen for ourselves.
A quick, gentle reminder to my new subscribers (welcome!) that these emails may contain profanity, nonsense, and nudity - everything you'd expect from The World's Best Newsletter.
If you're looking for a copy of my slide deck from this past week at MarketingProfs, please reply here and I'll send it along.
Let's go - issue #47 contains:
Standing out in a sea of martech vendors
Naked men as accessories in an eye-opening campaign
Stop glorifying selflessness
Change behavior by changing the norm
2017 SaaS benchmark: You really should invest more in sales
This week in marketing hypocrisy: State Street + Fearless Girl
Pure poetry from the Bangor Police Department
1. Standing out in a sea of martech vendors
Walking down what I called the gauntlet of vendors at this week's MarTech Boston event was strangely comforting to someone who began their career managing sponsorships at countless marketing trade shows. It was, in a way, like coming home.
But, for the beleaguered attendee, the row of non-stop sponsors is a bit overwhelming. It was a real-life depiction of the current state of marketing technology.
For the vendors themselves, it was a reminder how difficult it is to stand out in a sea of competition. With ~7,000 other tools vying for the attention and wallet of the CMO, the challenge is greater than ever.
Zak Pines (AKA Moneyball Marketer) recaps the task at hand nicely in his post, "Standing Out in a Sea of Martech Vendors" and offers some winning, essential moves, including:
Find your movement
Take your own advice
Know your customers
and more. Read his perspective here.
2. Naked men as accessories in an eye-opening campaign
Jean Kilbourne must be laughing her ass off, somewhere.
Stop what you're doing and familiarize yourself with Jean's work, if you don't know her. She is a pioneering author, lecturer, and filmmaker who has been exposing the way ads depict women for decades (and is a personal hero of mine.)
This campaign from Suistudio promotes their fall campaign, featuring women impeccably dressed in tailored suits, blazers, and blouses, lounging around penthouse apartments. Like so many countless women have been for decades, naked men lay around as accessories to the product being sold, and completely flips the script in a provocative, NSFW kind of way. (See more here.)
I love it - yes of course it's objectifying men, yes of COURSE it's offensive, yes of COURSE it's meant to provoke. It's a brilliant way to open our eyes to this absurd advertising practice.
Campaigns can't change minds if they don't evoke some real emotion.
If you need a reminder of the plague of unnecessarily naked woman in advertising, watch this video.
And, kindly wake the f*ck up.
3. Stop glorifying selflessness
If you've known me for longer than a handshake at a conference, you know I'm overly familiar with burnout. I think every young professional and business leader is, especially in the world of startups.
When I began doing yoga a couple of years ago, the principle of self-compassion was the strongest lesson to stay with me. It held such high-contrast opposition to the glorified hustle we celebrate in startup culture.
The truth is, self-care and self-compassion are critical to our success, as they make us more whole.
Women are particularly burdened by this expectation that we must put others above all, to serve the "community" or the business. I was reminded of this sentiment in a recent article, "Glorifying Selflessness In Women Is A Way To Make Us Do All The Work" in with author Priya Alika Elias explores the choice to be selfless, and how that choice is often not afforded to women.
4. Change behavior by changing the norm
Stanford released new research that should be especially of interest to anyone seeking to change buyers' behavior. They found that a subtle shift in your messaging can make all the difference.
In a study, people ate less meat and conserved more water when they thought those behaviors reflected how society is changing.
What leads people to overturn a status quo? When they believe the rest of society is also changing.
Demonstrate the changing attitudes and behaviors of your customers' peers. Reinforce the comfort that your buyer is not alone in changing their behavior, but rather part of a "dynamic norm" - or, a changing definition of what's considered standard.
5. 2017 SaaS benchmark: You really should invest more in sales
My content crush on Openview Ventures continues with the release of their 2017 SaaS benchmarking figures. Some highlights:
You have a 0.1% chance of reaching $100M in 5 years - contrary to popular advice known as T2D3 that you should triple twice and then double three times, ultimately reaching $100M ARR about 5 years later.
Top SaaS companies see net negative churn, where the value of every new customer cohort increases over time. Make sure product, pricing, and sales incentives accommodate up-sell paths to allow for ongoing customer expansion.
You're likely wasting sales & marketing dollars - the biggest line item on a startup's balance sheet once a company hits $1M ARR. Too many companies underinvest in sales productivity, saddling them with huge costs without the ROI.
^^ You really should invest more in sales training.
6. This week in marketing hypocrisy: State Street + Fearless Girl
AdWeek: State Street, the company behind the Fearless Girl statue on Wall St, will pay $5 Million for underpaying women and minorities.
It's just the latest example of a company exploiting feminism in their marketing, while failing to practice what it preaches.
The article notes CMO Stephen Tisdalle recently acknowledging the inherent risks of the campaign, saying “Do we as an organization reflect the penultimate makeup and reflection in being a diverse organization? No. And that was a risk because a lot of the people felt the message might be diluted by a lot of cynical people saying, ‘Well who are you to talk about gender diversity when you’re not a perfect embodiment of it?'”
“What I would say to that is we had a foundation we could go back to to say why we did Fearless Girl, and no matter what anybody said, no matter what rocks were thrown, we could say, ‘You’re right, but this is the way we invest, this is the way the world needs to invest, this is a human moral value. How can you argue against it? We have to be doing better ourselves. She’s as much an inspiration to our organization as she is to the world.”
Call me cynical, but I think it's COMPLETELY irresponsible to take such a shallow stance on women's rights.
By accepting this hypocrisy as consumers and industry commentators, we are essentially telling companies, it's okay to give lip service to supporting women.
We are saying to them, "You know what, it's enough to talk about it. You don't need to make any changes internally."
By continuing to support these campaigns by sharing them or celebrating them, we are complacent with the fundamental injustice at hand - the underpayment of women and minorities for equal work within these organizations.
These companies have a clear choice to do more than ride the coattails of the feminist movement for their own PR and profit gains.
But, please, call me a cynic.
7. Quote of the Week: Pure poetry from the Bangor Police Department
Who would expect such beautiful sentiment from a police department Facebook page in Bangor, ME?
Thank you to my good friend Janice for posting this. See the live post here:
So, last week we were called over to the east side of Bangor to assess whether we could get a cat out of a tree.
Generally speaking, we don't do that. It should be noted that cats tend to come down out of trees when they make a decision to do so. Pleading with a cat to return to terra firma is done purely to please those standing around and looking up. It's a public relations move which makes people feel warm inside, but cats are cats.
On a sidenote-it is interesting to be standing in a group of people of all shapes and ages while each one of them individually emits their personal "cat-call." If it amuses me to hear the tongue-clicks, imitation meows, and "here kitty kitties," think about what the cat is thinking as it stares down realizing it is in total control.
A cat, conducting an orchestra of lunacy. Why would he come down with entertainment like that?
A little later, we were called back to the tree in order to coax a man down. He was about "60 to 80 feet up the tree" according to Officer Dustin Dow's report.
The man had walked by, heard the cat, and set out to climb the mighty Spruce. It was pitch black and Dow used his flashlight to guide the man down to the ground. They both left and the cat waited for his next victim.
It should be noted that the cat finally came down, probably out of pure boredom after the foot traffic in the area subsided and he could find no more victims to be lured into his devious little plan.
It's Friday. It probably feels like you have been stuck in a tree because it's been one of those weeks. Come on down.
The weather is stellar, Maine is a wonderful place to be on a weekend, and you probably have someone trying to coax you to do something interesting. Don't make them chase you. Being around good people doing interesting things is a superb refuge from the 24 hour news cycle.
Keep your hands to yourself, leave other people's things alone, and be kind to one another.
Call us if you need us. The men and women of the Bangor Police Department will be here.
All we have is each other.
As always, thank you for reading.
This newsletter grows every week because I have the best support group / therapy circle / fan club on the internet. You not only fuel my ego but you also help others discover the World's Best Newsletter.
Click here to share this newsletter on Twitter, and here to do it on LinkedIn.
All the best,
Katie
PPS: HONK! Festival is this weekend in Somerville! See you there?