When you should throw a great marketing campaign in the trash

A couple weeks ago I met a woman at a bar who works in luxury marketing.

The more I learn about luxury marketing, the more I realize it has a zillion parallels to personal brands...

So I listened to her pretty closely.

Here's something interesting she told me:

"Everything we do, the brand comes first."

In other words, they can have the best idea for a marketing campaign to sell their perfumes.

They can have amazing copy and creatives.

But if it doesn't fit with how they position themselves, they will throw it in the trash instead of using it.

Everything they do has to fit their brand.

Why? Because people are buying them for their brand. 

Their brand is what lets them charge $100 for a vial of perfume that costs $2 to make.

Selling coaching can work the same way:

People are buying your personal brand...

So you have to build a personal brand, and then protect that personal brand at all costs.

-Theo

How to sell Christianity to eskimos

Imagine that you are a Christian missionary. Your job is to go to Alaska and convert the native people to Christianity.

When you're pitching your God to people back home, you might say something like, "You are the lamb of God."

But there are no lambs in Alaska. If you say "lamb" to an eskimo, he won't know what the hell you're talking about.

So when Christian missionaries went to Alaska, they didn't tell the eskimos "you are the lamb of God." Instead, they told them, "you are the seals of God."

They made the same point — but they did it in a way their audience could understand!

Christian missionaries do this wherever they go. They adapt their sales pitch for the local audience.

For example, when they converted the Vikings, they learned that the Vikings respected strength. In Viking culture, you were right or wrong based on whether you could win a fight.

So the Christian missionaries told them, "you know your God, Odin? Our God could kick his ass."

When you're selling anything to anyone, you have to speak in their terms.

-Theo

Kendrick Lamar

Kendrick Lamar wrote a song where he called Drake a pedophile. Then he sang it at the Super Bowl halftime show.

(You've probably heard about that by now.)

Here's a hot take: I think the whole thing was a publicity stunt.

Maybe Kendrick Lamar really does have a beef with Drake... but at the very least, he's playing it up for the cameras a little.

I was reading 50 Cent's book Hustle Harder, Hustle Smarter recently. There's a ton of fascinating business lessons in there. One of them was, "if someone won't be my friend, at least let them be my enemy."

This is why 50 Cent picked a fight with Oprah. After Oprah came out one time and said that Fifty was a bad role model for Black teenagers, Fifty started dissing Oprah every chance he got.

Oprah's friend asked Fifty why he was constantly talking crap about her — and he said, "if Oprah won't be my friend, at least let her be my enemy." The feud was good for him: he got publicity.

50 Cent also had a "beef" with Kanye West when both of them had albums dropping the same day. 

Originally their albums were scheduled to come out a week apart. Fifty's record company told him to move the release date back a month so they weren't going up against Kanye. Instead, Fifty called Kanye and they agreed to release their albums on the same day.

Then, they had a big public feud with one another, and both of them sold more records.

My understanding is, this is pretty common in the rap game.

So when I heard about the whole Kendrick Lamar/Drake thing, I immediately thought it was a marketing stunt.

If Kendrick Lamar going after Drake was a marketing stunt, it worked! The dude got to do the Super Bowl halftime show. 

Now, even pasty white guys who know nothing about rap (like yours truly) are writing about him.

That got me thinking. Can the whole "if they won't be my friend, at least let them be my enemy" mentality can work for coaches, too?

Maybe. 

A lot of brands already have some vague "enemy" who they rail against in their marketing. Coaches specifically will often throw shade at what "other coaches" teach, although they'll rarely call anybody out for it publicly.

But what if you did call somebody out publicly?

You can try it yourself, if you want. Pick someone in your industry — maybe someone who you think is scamming people or teaching something wrong, or maybe somebody who you think just makes an easy target — and call them out.

This tactic isn't for everyone. It can cheapen your brand. It can look petty. It can backfire in a million other ways, and I'm not recommending it to everyone.

It also only works if the person you're calling out is bigger than you. If Kendrick Lamar had written a diss track about some no-name rapper, it would have been great for that no-name rapper and bad for Kendrick Lamar. You have to punch above your weight class.

But if you feel like calling somebody out vibes with your personality, and you're down to take a risk — then call somebody out!