Author: Show Runner

As my eldest son has been in university, he’s worked part-time at a sporting goods store. The section he works in is the category-leader in the store – as you can probably guess – it’s shoes.

Need to admit that I’m not that into shoes. 

I am fascinated by the conversations my son has with customers when it comes to shoes. They not only talk about the design features of a specific shoe. They also chat about the athletes who’ve worn it or collaborated with the  brand to design it. They bring up details about how that athlete signed with the shoe company, the battling that went on between that brand and other companies to win the athlete’s endorsement. 

Clearly when people buy shoes for exercising or training for something, they aren’t just going after ergonomics.   

This back-story on the brand’s struggles matters to them, as if they’ll only wear a brand that works as hard as they do in staying fit or competing in sports. 

This bond clearly applies to shoes, but it obviously reaches to many other types of brands too. 

It’s good for products to have a strong brand message and proof-points of their value, but the true winners are those that connect their story to the customers’ internal values, or that give the customer a transformational experience. 

Today I’m talking with someone who works with what he calls  ‘meaningful’  brands, producing their media creative in a way that resonates with buyers. Fittingly, the name of his London-based boutique agency is ‘Way’

My  guest is a public speaker, an ultra marathon-runner, podcaster, skydiver and minimalist.  In 2021, he released the book we’re talking about today: “Not Another Pair of Shoes”

Let’s talk with Alexander Novicov. 

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show

Seth Godin

Dyson

EpictetusAlexander’s link to obtain a Free Chapter of the book.

For several years running, noted marketing expert David Meerman Scott would access all the corporate press releases captured by major wire services. These covered product launches, major client signings and other moments when companies would talk about what distinguished them from their competitors. He posted his analysis of all this data and, without fail, almost all of them chose the same words to describe themselves. They made matters worse by, in David’s words, by “using gobbledygook-laden phrases that are so overused to have become meaningless”

We know we must try to embed our brand’s personality into our writing – my last episode featured an expert talking about that. But that’s not all we can do. 

We’ve got to change the way we talk about ourselves, to cut through people’s cynicism. If we’re ever going to be believed by our prospective buyers, we’ve got to own what customers say in reviews of our products or services, and make claims about ourselves that duly represent what they could experience by buying from us. 

Though noble, pulling this off sounds like a ton of work. But the premise of the book I’m covering today is that it’s doable, if you make it part of your normal marketing workflow.  The book which came out in 2022 is called,  “Prove It.“

It’s the second book by Melanie Deziel, whose first book was “The Content Fuel Framework” She is an award-winning speaker and content creator. She has worked at various media companies, including The New York Times and Time Inc. In addition to her professional experience, Melanie has also taught courses on content marketing and digital marketing at universities such as Fairleigh Dickinson, Syracuse, and the City University of New York. 

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show

One brand that proves it: Patagonia

Melanie’s Linkedin profile

Melanie’s Twitter profile

Book Contributor Phil Jones

Melanie’s agency, Storyfuel.co

Our guest says that marketing  has a problem. In his words, “I think there’s an over-reliance on people’s opinions at the expense of creating a vision and sticking with it.” and he claims this hurts our ability to build brands that get strong traction. Already a published author, he devoted his second book to this argument. The book’s title is his plea to marketers: “Stop Listening to the Customer: Try Hearing Your Brand Instead”

Adam Ferrier is the founder of Thinkerbell, an agency that creates ‘measured magic’, and was ranked 2021 number one Creative Agency in the world by industry publication BestAds – the first time awarded to an Australian agency. Leading Australian publication Mumbrella also lists Thinkerbell as Full Service, Creative, and PR 2021 Agency of the Year (the only time an agency has ever won all three titles in one year).

Adam is one of Australia’s leading consumer psychologists, a brand strategist and an authority on behavioural economics. He’s the author of The Advertising Effect: How to change behaviour (Oxford) and Stop Listening to the Customer: Try hearing your brand instead (Wiley). No stranger to the TV screen of Australia, Adam is a regular panelist on the Gruen Transfer, 7’s Sunrise, and 10’s The Project.

As the creator of the idea behind the WARC World Innovation prize (2013), and winner of the rare Cannes Gold Lion and Gold Effie double, Adam has won at all of the world’s major advertising shows. He created the successful board game The Analyst (translated into four languages), space; an unconference where ‘ideas meet influence’, and the social cause agency DOA (Decade of Action). Adam also co-hosts Black T-Shirts, a podcast that delivers XXL creativity for marketers.

An unstoppable force in the Australian advertising landscape, Adam’s hands delegate the keys to embrace evidence-based creativity – whether to buy, perform or change – through cognitive behavioural psychology, hardcore creativity and a deep understanding of behavioural economics.

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show

The ‘Share-a-Coke’ campaign

Yousuf Karsh

Adam’s Twitter  profile

Adam’s LinkedIn profileAdam’s Instagram profile

Books that look into these phenomena outside of the marketing realm:

• Dan Gilbert, “Stumbling on Happiness”

• Brene Brown, “Daring Greatly”

Regardless of when you’re hearing this, it’s safe to say that you’re running into content generated by AI. There is a lot of good brought by chat tools, but there’s one thing we want coming through in our content – that is to sound human. What engages people is content with personality, content that evokes a response. And that’s what today’s guest will break down for us.

When Alison Ver Halen found herself between jobs, her roommate’s dad, who was an attorney, offered to give her things to do around his office until she got back on her feet. One of the things he needed was someone to write blog posts for his law firm. He knew she had a strong writing background, so he offered her the gig, and she was more than happy to get paid to write.

After six months, he told her she had brought in $75,000 worth of business for his law firm, just from the blog posts she was writing for him.

After a while, she started writing for an associate of his, and then for some friends of hers. She did get another day job, but she kept writing on the side, and her client list kept growing until she knew she couldn’t do both any more, so she quit the day job to devote herself to writing full time, and she’s never looked back.She heads a Chicago-based agency called AV Writing services, in which she produces content for clients, with the help of her dog, Bobbi.

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show

Headline Analyzer 

Alison’s LinkedIn profile

Alison’s Twitter profile

Alison’s Instagram profile

Her book Content Marketing Made Easy

Alison’s Workbook to accompany Content Marketing Made Easy (ungated)