#63: You're Not Changing the World, One Big IWD Recap, Thursday Morning Test, and Ax vs Ask
Happy Saturday, friends.
My grandmother (well into her 90s like a CHAMP) is obsessed with vintage game shows. I'm talking Match Game reruns with Gene Rayburn, Password hosted by Allen Ludden, Hollywood Squares of course with Peter Marshall...
But her favorite is Family Feud... with my spirit animal Steve Harvey.
I'll be channelling Steve next week as I join the incredible Jon Burkhart to host a content marketing game show on Wednesday evening.
If you're in Boston, I'm looking for a few good people to join us for this low key but high-energy event (+ free drinks!)
Weds 3/14, 6:00 - 8:00pm, City Bar @ Westin Waterfront, Boston. Can you make it?
We need a few more folks to participate - come play the game show OR cheer on some of your Boston content colleagues! RSVP.
Did I mention free cocktails?
In this edition of the World's Best Newsletter:
1. One Big IWD Femvertising Recap
2. McDonald's Missed Opportunity
3. Moving past Bookmark Brand Campaigns
4. You're Not Changing the World
5. The Thursday morning test
6. History of the Stigma around "Ax" vs "Ask"
7. Quote of the Week
1. One Big IWD Femvertising Recap
Ladies! We've had quite the week. International Women's Day was Thursday.
Do you feel empowered? Celebrated?
Exploited?
All of the above?
Listen, International Women's Day has been celebrated internationally for 110 years (yes really that long), but only recently have corporations jumped on the bandwagon. The number of posts about IWD has grown 419% just on LinkedIn in the last two years alone.
(Charlotte Alter from Time Magazine calls it "Corporate Feminism Stunt Day")
Many more companies got involved by offerering promotions that donated proceeds to women's groups. Other campaigns this year included:
Jane Walker, a logo change for the sweet nectar that is Johnnie Walker
Upside-down McDonalds arches (see #2)
Barbie dolls based on women heroes
And many more
If you missed it, please see my scorecard to identify if a company is exploiting the buzz or truly doing the work to support women.
Bottom line on this day, and every IWD: If you're not gonna do the work to really support women, don't call attention to it in your marketing. It threatens what the entire freakin movement is trying to achieve in the first place.
2. McDonald's Missed Opportunity
In this short, must-watch video, the hilarious Melissa Ward of Target Marketing Magazine thoughtfully exposes a missed opportunity for McDonalds to INSTEAD highlight Patricia Williams, an inspiring entrepreneur and store franchisee who grew her own mini McD empire against quite a few odds.
But no, instead the campaign focused on flipping the arches at her store from M to W.
The W, of course, stands for "We Really Hope This is Enough to Get Us Some Press."
Thanks for the shoutout, here, Melissa! Watch more.
3. Moving past Bookmark Brand Campaigns
I blame the calendar for the rise of hollow femvertising.
Peter Maxwell articulated it nicely this week, saying:
"The idea of apportioning one part of the calendar to the celebration of women in fact serves the opposite purpose, defining a finite period of time to ‘deal’ with the issues at hand before returning to business as usual.
The thing about bookmarks is that they’re less a means of remembering something than they are a mechanism by which you can afford to forget it."
4. You're Not Changing the World
In this piece, David Heinemeier Hansson, who created Ruby on Rails and was the founder/CTO of Basecamp -- so, important, not a marketer -- calls BS on companies whose mission statements and marketing efforts try too hard to equate their impact to "changing the world."
I get it, I'm all about inspirational missions that buyers, team members, and the industry itself can get behind. It's how disruptors create and dominate markets, right?
The problem is that many of us have started to swing the pendulum too far towards absurdity.
As David says:
"I think more people in Silicon Valley would be better served by embracing the mundane."
The marketer in me loves this concept.
The way I interpret it, he's not saying "be mundane." That's a recipe for disaster. Rather, he's saying, embrace the mundane. Find what's interesting about it. Don't get so caught up in trying to get buyers excited that you fall off the edge of reality into that void where marketing becomes meaningless.
You're not changing the world.
5. The Thursday morning test
This interview on the B2B Lead Blog with Brent Adamson, advisor at Gartner, co-author of The Challenger Sale, was fascinating. He talks at length about the importance of empathy (a subject you KNOW is near and dear to my heart) and recommends the "Thursday morning test."
Good advice for B2B salespeople, and marketers looking to write content for the sales process, help their sales team with ABM, or really do any sales enablement:
"Sometimes it’s kind of scary. Sometimes it’s a little intimidating.
What we find is that the larger the buying group, the more individual stakeholders feel not only their credibility.
But in fact, their actual job could be on the line in advocating for a supplier, and that gets into the emotional side of empathy.
So, you think about it from a supplier’s perspective. “Well, why can’t they all just get on board? It’s like herding cats. I can’t get these people to align.”
Think about what it feels like. Think about that person sitting at their desk, I call this the Thursday Morning 9:00 Test.
It’s Thursday morning, 9:00, and you’ve got to do what? What are you going to do and how are you going to do it and how is that going to feel?
Now I’m thinking about buying your CRM solution. And it’s Thursday morning, 9:00. I’m thinking about how to get my company to buy that solution, which I really want:
I’ve got to go talk to someone in IT.
I’ve got to go talk to someone in procurement.
I’ve got to go talk to my CEO.
You know what, I feel kind of sick to my stomach. I don’t want to do that. That’s a pain in my neck.
So that becomes a hugely important part of empathy too:
What am I asking this senior decision maker, my contact person, to go do inside their own company?
What does that feel like?
And chances are pretty good it doesn’t feel very good. It’s hard work. It’s credibility. It’s business case-building.
They’re going to ask me questions.
All those questions your sales reps have all the time, what if they ask me questions I can’t answer?
What if they ask for data that I don’t know how to provide? You know what?
Your stakeholders you’re selling to have the exact same questions when they think about their own colleagues. What if my head of IT wants to have a business case? I don’t know where I’m going to get that.
Then he’s going to ask me a bunch of questions I don’t know the answer to. Look, I just want this bleeping bleep CRM system, but this is too hard – never mind."
6. History of the Stigma around "Ax" vs "Ask"
This is fascinating!!
Why are people who say “Ax” instead of “Ask” frequently stigmatized as unintelligent and unsophisticated? It actually has a long tradition in the English language that goes back over a thousand years.
Watch the video from MTV or read the article on Smithsonian.com
7. Quote of the Week
"Don't empower me. Pay me."
Cindy Gallop, advertising consultant, founder/former chair of Bartle Bogle Hegarty, and founder of IfWeRanTheWorld and MakeLoveNotPorn tweeted the mic-drop of all mic-drops this week.
Have an excellent weekend. See you Wednesday?
Katie Martell
Website | LinkedIn | Twitter
Share The World's Best Newsletter on Twitter, or LinkedIn. (Thanks!!)