A Newsletter on Marketing (and Life) #001

Hello there 👋

Welcome to the first edition of a Newsletter on Marketing. I’m Jordan, a marketing strategist from Green Bay, Wisconsin. I used to write a daily email on marketing, then I started a podcast, and now I’m merging the two into one.

The goal of this newsletter is to help you make progress in HOW you think about marketing by sharing the insights of the guests I interview on A Podcast on Marketing. Along with a few quotes and a personal (micro) essay.

Please enjoy and email me any feedback to improve.

If this isn’t what you want, please scroll to the bottom and unsubscribe while we’re on good terms 😊 (I couldn’t figure out how to link it here, sorry 👎)

Education + in-person activations + first principles

(Time to read: 1:53 minutes)

This week’s guest is Sara Pion. I first learned about her when she was a growth marketer at Drift. Now she works as Head of Web Experience at Dandy.

Regardless of her wisdom, she’s a wonderful human, and I would encourage you to connect after reading. Enjoy these insights from our conversation over a year ago (listen to the conversation here):

Insight 1: Education is a core piece of marketing.

Sarah suggested that the primary purpose of marketing is education rather than attention. She believes that marketing should focus on teaching the target audience about the product and its value. "I think at its core, it's education."

She also emphasized the importance of communicating effectively with the target audience and understanding their needs.

"Marketing is about teaching your market/target customer (and internal team) why the product matters.”

By focusing on education and understanding the target audience, you can create more effective marketing strategies and campaigns.

Insight 2: In-person activations and offline marketing tactics can have a significant impact on brand awareness and affinity.

Sarah shared her fascination with offline activations and guerrilla marketing tactics. She believes these methods can be highly effective in generating brand awareness and affinity.

"I'm obsessed with offline activations and in-person sort of guerrilla marketing tactics. I think that they're just so amazing for awareness and also brand affinity for a brand that you really enjoy."

Using the example of a dating app called Thursday, she explained how their in-person activations and unique marketing strategies helped them stand out from their competitors.

“They run these cool subway and bus ads that say it's not embarrassing to say that you met your significant other on Thursday. It is embarrassing to say that you met on Tinder, hinge, bumble, whatever." 

By engaging with their target audience in different ways, these marketing tactics can create lasting impressions and drive brand affinity.

Insight 3: Good marketing is about focusing on first principles.

Good marketing is not about being flashy or innovative for the sake of being innovative. Instead, it's about being consistent, understanding the target audience, and working within the core principles of marketing.

"I think good marketing is just doing a few simple things really well. And those are like the fundamentals of marketing and they haven't changed."

Sarah believes that marketers should focus on the basics of marketing and adapt them to the current market and audience.

"Applying those real and true principles to the market and the world as it is today. And that's not always doing the flashiest thing and making sure that you are always up with the trends because then you're trendy, but you're not classic."

The goal is to be classic. By relying on the first principles of marketing, you can avoid needing to be trendy and create better marketing. Maybe even classic marketing.

Three quotes. Three books.

“When marketers make values the central message rather than other attributes associated with a brand, the cost of not ‘walking the talk’ can be significant.” 

– Kimberly A. Whitler, Professor, author, and marketing strategy expert

“{When making decisions} you should try to achieve the judgment process that would produce the best judgment over an ensemble of similar cases.”

– Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, Cass R. Sunstein

“One can only face in others what one can 
face in oneself. On this confrontation depends the measure of wisdom and compassion”

– James Baldwin (1924-1987), an American writer

Links to the three books quoted above:

• Positioning For Advantage by Kimberly A. Whitler

• Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein

• Nobody Knows My Name by James Baldwin

Personal (micro) Essay

(Time to read: 2:35 minutes)

Have you ever found yourself stuck?

It's the reason I was let go from my previous job.
It's why I had over ten unreleased podcast episodes.
It's why I took so long to get this newsletter going.

I used to write a daily newsletter, but I stopped/got stuck.

When I use the word stuck, I refer to the frozen state we find ourselves in when trying to do something meaningful. It's akin to writer's block.

One opposite manifestation of being stuck is reckless action—movement without purpose.

For some, this can work wonders. For others, like myself, I struggle to flourish in an environment of chaotic action toward a future I can't see (or disagree with).

So how can we achieve flow, the opposite of reckless action? The first step is getting unstuck.

Let me share a few things I've done to work through being stuck. While these won't get you unstuck instantly, they will make the stuck seasons more bearable.

Thing #1: Invite Sir Stuck to your table.

You're eating dinner and notice a dark figure standing in the corner.

You're terrified and slightly uncomfortable because it won't leave when you ask. It doesn't respond to your mortal commands.

You can do a few things at this point: complain that the shadow figure is there, panic and freak out, or invite "it" to the table.

The only productive thing to do when stuck is to pull out a chair and invite it to your table. See it clearly for what it is and stop being afraid of it.

While this won't make it leave, the time being stuck is more bearable.

Thing #2: Spend time thinking (ironically).

While counterintuitive, sometimes, thinking deeply is the best thing to do.

You may have gotten to this place because you were overthinking (i.e., paralysis analysis), but taking rash action won't do much. It'll give you a dopamine hit as you feel "momentum," but it's likely unfruitful in the long term.

Rather than run from the feeling of being stuck by jumping head-first into action, create a strategy or plan for how you will get unstuck.

For my podcast, I thought about why I wasn’t shipping it. The answer was video editing, which then led me to my plan of outsourcing video editing.

Only by thinking was I able to see a way out of being stuck.

Thing #3: Execute your plan.

While I've skirted past this, the undeniable truth is that action is the only path forward.

Without action, you'll have a kick-ass plan but remain stuck. If the goal is to get unstuck, we must eventually take action.

With your plan in hand, it's time to attack it in digestible actions.

For my podcast, it involved hiring someone to edit my episodes.

For my newsletter, that looked like writing the outline and writing the intro.

Without execution, it's nearly impossible to get unstuck.

Thing #3.5: Sustain your action.

More bad news: Even with action, you could still feel stuck.

That's why Thing #1 is so important. You can't fear it.

You must befriend it and learn its idiosyncratic behavior. If you can't tell me how Sir Stuck likes his coffee, you need to be closer.

Ultimately, the key to getting unstuck is a cycle of consistent execution paired with contemplation. You will likely remain stuck without either of the two (thinking and action).

A common theme throughout my newsletter will be the interweaving of contemplation and action. You must understand the how, the why, and then the what.

Jumping straight to the what (i.e., action) will leave you unable to make better decisions in the future.

And in marketing (and life), the quality of our decision-making is heavily correlated to the flourishing we experience.

Better decisions = greater flourishing (I/e., joy, happiness, peace).

I hope to explore that more here with you.

May you go in peace and progress.