Peter F. Drucker with insight on the flatness of digital media:
In that online course you turn on at home, the course must provide the background, the context, the references.
We’re not all providing courses, but the digital media platforms are contextless surfaces.
Shopping for clothes in a store includes all kinds of baseline assumptions and expectations. We know what we’re there for.
Shopping for clothes online happens in the same space we work, communicate, and entertain ourselves. The only context is distraction.
You must provide the context and the message. Quickly.
Love this line from Just Creative’s most recent newsletter:
Clients do not buy processes. They buy futures.
Of course, clients means customers as well. This isn’t just a B2B thing.
No one just buys the thing, they buy what the thing will do for them.
The solution to a problem.
The realization of an aspiration.
The painkiller for their pain.
The actualization of a dream.
The outcome, not the process.
Sell the future state.
Real estate marketers, you listening?
staged homes sell for roughly 10% more and one week faster than comparable homes without furniture.
We find that furniture clarifies spatial use, while decor enhances emotional attachment, jointly driving the higher willingness-to-pay.
These findings demonstrate how visual cues impact high-stakes decisions
(emphasis mine)
Bridge each feature with the solution to the problem it solves SO THAT visitors understand what the feature means for their life without having to fill in the gap themselves.
How a brand is named, according to an anecdote from Ben Franklin…
A friend was planning a shop sign for a new hat-making business:
He composed it in these words, “John Thompson, hatter, makes and sells hats for ready money,” with a figure of a hat subjoined. But he thought he would submit it to his friends for their amendments. The first he showed it to thought the word “Hatter” tautologous, because followed by the words “makes hats,” which showed he was a hatter. It was struck out. The next observed that the word “makes” might as well be omitted, because his customers would not care who made the hats… He struck it out. A third said he thought the words “for ready money” were useless, as it was not the custom of the place to sell on credit. Everyone who purchased expected to pay. They were parted with; and the inscription now stood, “John Thompson sells hats.” “Sells hats!” says his next friend; “why, nobody will expect you to give them away. What then is the use of that word?” It was stricken out, and “hats” followed, the rather as there was one painted on the board. So his inscription was reduced ultimately to “John Thompson,” with the figure of a hat subjoined.
The old adage goes “every company is now a media company.”
The new approach is companies buying media companies, and OpenAI has joined the chat.
OpenAI has acquired popular tech industry talk show TBPN — Technology Business Programming Network — making this the AI giant’s first acquisition of a media company.
a daily live show that airs on YouTube and X for three hours, focusing on tech, business, AI, and defense.
The show has gained a cult following in Silicon Valley, a safe space where industry power players can speak candidly and be questioned by fellow insiders. The show has a reputation for being something of a Sports Center for the tech industry
Marketing 101 is to hang out where your audience already is.
Brands with bank accounts big enough want to own where their audience already hangs out.