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Transcript: The New Rules of Marketing and PR (EP77)

 

Intro (with music): Welcome to The Culture of Things podcast with Brendan Rogers. This is a podcast where we talk all things, culture, leadership and teamwork across business and sport.

Voiceover: To all of our loyal listeners, The Culture of Things podcast will now also have specific episodes produced for Youtube. To ensure you don’t miss out on this exclusive Youtube content, head on over to Youtube, click the subscribe button and hit the notification bell. Now, let’s get into the episode…

Brendan: My next guest is a man at the top of his game. David Meerman Scott is a master of sales & marketing. He’s a prolific writer and author. His latest book is the completely revised and updated 8th edition of The New Rules of Marketing & PR. This book series has sold over 450 thousand copies and has been translated into 29 different languages.

If you’re watching on YouTube, I’d love you to watch the whole interview. I also understand you may want to check out a specific part. If that’s the case, go to the chapters in the description below and choose the part you want to see.

During our conversation, David talks about some of the new rules of marketing, he shares the old rules, and goes deep into a number of his concepts like newsjacking, real time marketing and fandom, and how these concepts align with his passion for live music, and the Apollo Lunar Program. He shares why content is King, along with the importance of having your own 'home base' for your content.

David has a very successful blog. I asked him about a recent article he wrote on Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter. The blog's titled 'Attn Elon Musk: The right to free speech does not mean a right of AI algorithm amplification'. Make sure you stick around for later in the interview where David shares his thoughts on why he believes the Facebook algorithm is the most dangerous algorithm there is.

At the end, he also shares a book project he’s currently working on with Seth Godin, two of the greatest minds in sales and marketing collaborating together.

After the interview, I share my three key takeaways. Share your takeaways with me via email or you can put them in the YouTube comments. I hope you enjoy the interview. Let’s get into it.

Hello and welcome to The Culture of Things podcast. I'm your host, Brendan Rogers. Today, we are recording episode 77. Our guest today is a chap called David Meerman Scott. David, how are you mate?

David: Doing great, Brendan. How are you doing?

Brendan: Really well, mate. You're coming to us all the way from Boston, USA. How's life in Boston at the moment?

David: Boston, USA where it's finally warming up. My gosh. It's been a long, long, long winter, and I'm finally into my spring.

Brendan: Mate, that's good to hear. We're going the other way. Being in the southern hemisphere, we've had rain, cold, and all that sort of stuff. Jacket's on this morning. Mate, we want to dive straight into this.

You're an esteemed author, I guess, I would say master marketing. One of the things I just want to unpack, I said, to Mark off-camera, when I'm doing this research around, you're a pretty fascinating dude. You've had this starting in life in Japan as a Gaijin model, if you pronounce it correctly. I've never heard of that. This move from Gaijin model to master marketing, tell us a bit about that, mate, this journey of life you've been on.

David: My first job was on a bond trading desk in New York City. I was a terrible bond trader and I hated it. What I loved was the information behind the screens that the bond traders were using. I spent 15 years in the financial information business.

In 1987, I moved to Tokyo to start the Tokyo office of a US information company. While I was there, I was a part time model. Gaijin means foreigner. I was a part time model. Essentially, I specialized in the young businessman look.

It was super fun. I did it on my off time weekends and whatever. It was a great way to explore interesting aspects of Japan and Tokyo. I was in some television commercials. I was in operas, newspaper ads, and a couple of movies. It was super good fun.

Brendan: Mate, what was it that took you into the marketing side of things? Again, we'll reference the book a bit, but The New Rules of Marketing and PR. You've had version one right through to the current version eight, which has been recently released. What took you down that journey?

David: In the roles that I had in the financial information business, I worked for companies like Thomson Reuters and Dow Jones. I was doing marketing. I was a marketing person at financial information companies. Ten years in Tokyo and then I spent six years here in the US working for various companies.

I really understood the content. I really understood real time information. I really understood how people use news and information to make decisions because of the kinds of companies that I was working for. I also understood marketing, especially digital marketing, because that's what I was using to get people interested in my digital marketing information services with the companies that I was representing.

In 2002, I was sacked. I was fired, so I decided to go out on my own. I realized that I had a tremendous head start in what online marketing was shaping up to become. This is back in 2002, 20 years ago. I understood that marketing on the web is not about banner ads, which is what other people were talking about. But rather, it was about creating the best content, getting the best information out there.

I focused on writing, speaking, and advising companies on how to make great websites. Soon thereafter, I dug deep into social media. I started my blog in 2005, which was super early. Then when social media like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and so on started, I jumped on those pretty quickly.

The New Rules of Marketing and PR, the first edition, came out in 2007 and instantly hit the Business Week bestseller list. It was on that list for six months. It sold tons and tons of copies. At this point, I'm now in the eighth edition. We've sold something like 450,000 copies in English. It's in 29 other languages from Albanian to Vietnamese.

Even though there are new additions along the way, the same ideas are absolutely applicable. I tell people it's The New Rules of Marketing and PR. They want to know what the old rules are. The old rules were really simple.

Prior to being able to market on the web, you had only three ways to generate attention. (1) You can generate attention by buying attention, buying advertising. (2) You can generate attention by bugging people one at a time, which is called sales. You can generate attention by trying to convince members of the media to write or broadcast about you.

I'm not saying any of these old rules are wrong, but most of the people I speak with say that they don't work so well anymore. The new rules are, you create amazing content and you push that content out onto the web in real time using social media, online marketing, websites, and so on.

Brendan: Just going back to the start of your getting fired and then deciding to go into your own thing, there's a lot of discipline, there's a lot of focus required to get your business up and running. You're very, very successful in what you do. Was there anything at the start of that journey that looking back, you felt that was the one or two things that really started to drive your business, your personal brand, and your view out in the marketplace?

David: Absolutely, there was. It's really simple. When I started my business in 2002, I realized very early that my ideas about how to do marketing on the web, my ideas about how marketing is fundamentally changing from basically advertising or paying for attention to creating the great information that will allow us to be able to market our products and services effectively on our own was completely and utterly changing.

I had to have the discipline, as you call it, to be able to know that these ideas in my mind were working. To me, what was super important about this, and I recommend this to everyone who's considering writing a book, starting a business, are the patterns in the universe that you're seeing are unique and different.

In my case, absolutely, they were. The patterns in the universe I was seeing were so obvious to me, and nobody else was talking about it. Those patterns were that marketing has fundamentally changed. It's no longer about this idea of buying attention by paying money to be on other people's platforms. But instead, it was all about how to publish interesting content.

I had to have the conviction that I was right in that because most people in the world, especially people with vested interests in the advertising industry and the marketing industry, did not want this idea to happen. They were resistant. Many other people were fearful. Something new is always scary. People were fearful about these new ideas.

I really had to be forceful in my convictions about what I thought was right. Also, I didn't want to work for a company again. I worked for companies for 15 years. I did not want to go back to being an employee of a company. I really wanted to do my own thing. It was important for me to do the hard work to get my ideas out into the marketplace.

Brendan: Thankfully for the world, you did decide to do your own thing. You've certainly made an impact. I want to just touch on some of those patterns that you talk about. If you look back at version one of The New Rules of Marketing and PR through to version eight, are there some consistent patterns that have been happening over this journey of rewriting or reviewing the book in the different versions over the last 15 years? What stands out for you?

David: There's no question that the strategies have remained the same over 15 years. Over 15 years, The New Rules of Marketing and PR, publishing great content, doing it yourself, having a wonderful website, being active on social media, being consistent about real-time communications, all of these things, 100%, are still applicable. The strategies have not changed.

What has changed over the eight editions of the book is that I'm constantly adding new stories into the book. Examples of success. I really love talking about real life examples. On my left here, I have a surfboard. It comes from Grain Surfboards. It's an important story in the book, why? Because Grain Surfboards is a pioneer in creating wooden surfboards.

They don't spend a penny on marketing. Everything they do is pushing themselves out there on their website, on their Instagram feed, and on other social media. That's helped to create the most important and largest wooden surfboard company in the world.

Another thing that's really interesting is they use a boat-building technique. That boat-building technique is really unique. On their website, they share with their customers exactly how to make a board. In fact, they'll even sell you the plans to do it themselves.

This idea of sharing valuable information is an important part of The New Rules of Marketing and PR. So many organizations don't share about their organization and what they do. Instead, what they do is try to hide information. The second thing that's really important about each of the new editions of The New Rules of Marketing and PR are the ideas around new ways to get the information out there, new social networks.

When I was writing the first edition back in 2005 and 2006, it eventually came out mid-2007. Twitter didn't exist and Facebook was only for students. The first edition came out, and all of a sudden, Twitter is out there. It's starting to become popular. People reached out to me and said, David, love your book, but why didn't you write about Twitter? I'm like, oh, my God, it didn't exist when I was writing.

Over the years, new social networks have come on. Instagram, a new social network, Snapchat. TikTok has come in to being able to be used. At the same time, some newer social networks then disappeared.

In one edition, I think it might have been the second or third edition, I added information about Google+, the social network that was created by Google. But it doesn't exist now, so in the sixth or seventh edition, I wrote it out. Constantly changing. What are the new tools for this new eighth edition?

I wrote a bit about TikTok because that's risen in popularity. I also wrote about social audio, things like Clubhouse, which have become popular in some marketplaces. Constantly changing up based on what are the new tools that can be used. As well, in the eighth edition, I also spent a lot of time talking about artificial intelligence as it's being used in marketing and public relations. That was a brand new chapter back in the seventh edition and a very much updated chapter in the eighth edition.

Brendan: I just want to go back to the surfboard. I know I've read some of that story in some of the blogs you've done about it and the experience you had. I've seen various podcasts that you've been involved in and been interviewed on, tons and tons actually.

There's a variety of backgrounds. I know you're massive on authenticity in who you are and what you do talking about photography, authentic photos, and stuff. Why did you choose this background today, the surfboard in the background?

David: I've got a couple of things in the background. If you go to the wider shot, I've also got a Grateful Dead logo on my other shoulder. Beyond the surfboard, I also have a model of the Apollo Saturn V rocket. I just think it's kind of cool to have things that are important to me.

I've written for more than 10 years about the idea of fandom. I wrote a book called Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead, a band that's built an incredible following over more than 50 years. They're still going strong based on building passionate fans. Grain Surfboards have built passionate fans, even the Apollo Lunar program. I'm a huge fan of the Apollo Lunar program.

These are some things that are fascinating to me because they're not only things that I'm passionate about, but there are organizations—the Grateful Dead, Grain Surfboards, NASA—that have really done a great job with the ideas of The New Rules of Marketing and PR and the ideas of building fans of their business.

You think about Grain Surfboards, you ask the question. They've just done such a good job of drawing me in. I originally found them because I was reading one of my surfing magazines and there was a brief article about wooden surfboards. I'm like, wow, that's interesting. I care deeply about the environment.

I read about how surfboards made in the usual way using a big hunk of Styrofoam are not good for the environment, yet Grain Surfboards, wooden surfboards, and other manufacturers are great for the environment. I simply did a search on Google for wooden surfboards. I saw Grain in the top of the search results, reached out, pushed the button, checked them out. I found I could buy a surfboard, but more interestingly, I could actually make my own surfboard.

They happened to be located just an hour from where I live. I went up over four days to build my own surfboard. Over that period of time, I became a fan. Many people become a fan even if they don't go physically to their shop through social media, particularly through Instagram.

I think that in every case, I really enjoy showcasing examples of success. It's one thing for me to talk about ways to do marketing, and I do. But it's also super interesting to talk about examples of organizations that have done great marketing. Grain Surfboards is just one of those.

Brendan: One of the things I take from that is, when I look at a lot of the work you've done and talking about surfboards, and I understand you've got a pretty reasonable collection around the Apollo Lunar program, your home Museum, and then your fascination with Grateful Dead, your type of thinking across marketing is not industry specific, isn't it? This can apply across any industry that a leader or a business owner is involved in.

David: Oh, 100%. Yeah, no question about it. The ideas that I talked about work unbelievably well, for all kinds of organizations. We've got a rock band, we've got a surfboard company, we've got a US government agency, NASA. NASA has over 50 million followers on their Instagram feed.

I wrote a book called Marketing the Moon about how NASA marketed the idea of going to the moon to the American public more than 50 years ago. Because the American public wasn't behind NASA going to the moon, the American Congress would never have supported spending the money that it took to get there. It was something like 2% of our national budget over the course of an entire decade. It was a lot of money, billions and billions of dollars, 1960s dollars to get there. That marketing was really, really important.

I talk about professional services firms. There's a new story in The New Rules of Marketing and PR, the eighth edition, of a lawyer. He's based in Toronto, Canada. During the beginning of the pandemic—his name is Russell Alexander—he recognized that in his area of expertise in the law, which is family law, there are lots of questions about what it means for the pandemic.

When two parents who are divorced and one person wants to visit their child, the other parent says, no, you can't. Because of COVID, I'm not going to let the child go to your house. How do you deal with that? Russell Alexander created, for Canada, amazing resource content on his website, the COVID-19 and Divorce Information Center.

It turns out that just by creating this content on his website, he generated a ton of interest from potential customers, potential clients who found that information and were educated about divorce law during the pandemic. He then was quoted multiple times in newspapers, magazines, television, radio shows as an expert in this topic.

When he told me, David, this idea is fabulous. My business is growing so fast. He told me he had to hire five new lawyers as a way of being able to service all of the new clients that came in to him. We've got professional services from like a lawyer, a rock band, a US government agency, a surfboard company.

Another example, a business-to-business company. I love HubSpot. I happen to be an advisor to HubSpot, have been since the beginning back in 2007. I joined their advisory board. They're my poster child for a fabulous example of an organization using these ideas to build a great, great business-to-business marketing, customer service, and sales software company based on this type of marketing.

HubSpot has a great YouTube channel. They have something called HubSpot Academy which is a series of free courses that they provide for people. They've got a blog with millions of followers. They have online virtual events that have tens of thousands of people attend them.

They now have over 140,000 customers, and they're expected to do well more than a billion dollars in revenue this year from a standing start of zero when they started to implement these ideas 15 years ago with my help. All kinds of different organizations can succeed with these ideas.

Brendan: I guess if we talk about organic marketing, which is not something you're referring to, it strikes me that that's a bit of a lazy type of marketing versus what you're telling and the stories that have come out. There's a bit of work involved in that.

One of the things that comes up quite a lot with some of the people I talk to, and more so the smaller business owners, I haven't got time for that, what would you say to these people? What's that mindset they need to change because there is so much proof in the pudding, as you said? The stories that if you just put in some effort and work ethic, some discipline to do these things, it can make a massive difference to your business and where you want to go. What would be your advice to these people?

David: I think the way you phrased the question, there's a couple of things at play here. First of all, I would say, what are your goals? Is the current way that you're generating attention to your business allowing you to achieve your goals?

If somebody who's running a company or someone who's in the marketing department of a large organization says, yeah, I need to grow by this amount, well, great. Are the traditional programs that you're running now helping you? If they are, that's wonderful. You don't have to do these ideas.

If spending money on magazine ads and television ads helps you to achieve your results that you're looking for and helps you achieve your goals, wonderful. You don't need to buy the book. You don't need to implement these ideas. You don't need to change the way that you're doing your marketing. However, the vast majority of people tell me again and again and again that the old rules of marketing don't work.

I'm not saying and I never, ever have said that people have to use these ideas, that people have to be on social media, that you have to have a website, that you must if you're in the business-to-business space, be on LinkedIn. If you're selling a consumer brand, you should be on Instagram. I've never really said that. I've said more that, hey, if you want to control your own destiny, if you want to achieve the results that you're looking for, if you want to grow your business, if you want to build fans, then this is the best way to do it.

One, it's free. Yes, it takes time, I get that, but it can be totally free or nearly free to do this. Hey, how's it working for you now? Whatever you're doing, if it's working great, cool. You don't need to change. I don't want you to change. Keep doing what you're doing. If it's not working so well or if you just want to experience even more growth, build even more fans, generate more attention for your business, this is the approach for you.

Brendan: David, there are so many platforms out there, whether that's your own platform or whether that's another company's platform, Twitter, all these things. What's your advice on that? Do people need to be across all of these platforms?

David: Absolutely not because there are thousands of platforms. There's no way that anybody can be on all the platforms. What I always suggest is there are three things to consider that are really important. First thing is, where are your potential customers? Depending on the demographics of your potential customers, that will help to inform which platform makes sense for your business.

For example, if you're a business-to-business company, you're reaching professionals who work at larger organizations, you probably wanted to focus something on LinkedIn. If you're selling a consumer product, something that has a visual appeal, clothing, for example, you probably want to think about being on Instagram. That's the first thing, where are your potential customers?

The second thing is no way should you try to spread yourself too thin by being on too many platforms. I think it's always better to focus on being on just a few platforms where you can focus rather than trying to spread yourself too thin.

The third thing, which is super important, is every organization, every person needs a home base on the internet. They need a website. They need a blog. They need a combination of a website or a blog because you don't want to put yourself exclusively at the mercy of a social networking site.

Imagine if you had focused exclusively on Google+, it's gone. If you had focused on another social network called Vine, which is a short form video platform that was super popular, it's gone. Or if you focus on some of the big platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram and that's all you're doing, if they change the algorithms or change the way that they do business, which they frequently do, you can all of a sudden have big problems in your business.

For example, with Facebook, many people were achieving great success with Facebook in the early days. But then Facebook started to charge money for advertising and they changed their algorithm to make it much harder to generate attention unless you spent money with them. Always super important to make sure that you have a home base on the internet. Typically, that means a website.

Brendan: David, you also mentioned TikTok a little while back. Where does TikTok sit in your mind in the future of marketing?

David: It's just another platform. It's a popular platform, but it's just another platform. What you need to focus on, number one, where are your customers? If your customers are on TikTok, you should be on TikTok. The second thing to be thinking about is, do you like working on that particular platform?

This is another important aspect to be thinking about. TikTok is short form video. Typically, the demographic that's most using TikTok is quite young. If you're reaching people who are quite young, you should probably be thinking about getting on to TikTok, but it's a short form video.

If video is something that you either currently like to do or that you might like to try, great, jump on it and see if you can make a go of it. But some people don't want to do video, and that's fine. Other people like to write, like to share photographs, create charts and graphs, or want to do a podcast like we're doing right now, Brendan. Different ways of creating content are all good. Part of the consideration to think about is what do you like to do.

Brendan: Just on what I like to do, I want to swing back to something I found on your website again through the research. You've got three, what to me seems like David Meerman Scott's values, passion, connection, and intensity. Can you talk to those a little bit to give people a flavor of how you come up with those, how they apply to you, and what you're doing and what you've been doing?

David: Passion is super important. When I was doing my research for a book called Fanocracy that I wrote with my daughter which came out in 2020, one of the things we learned, which was so surprising to us, is the importance of passion.

Passion is infectious. Passion is a super, super important aspect of all business. When you're passionate about something, then that passion is infectious. For me, I only want to do the things that I'm passionate about. That includes the way that I choose to earn the money to support my family.

I'm passionate about sharing ideas about how to grow a business. I'm passionate about speaking all over the world about these ideas. I'm passionate about writing the books, doing interviews with people like you, Brendan, of doing the things that will get these ideas out there because I think they're really, really important. What were the other two that we were going to talk about because I can never remember the order and so on?

Brendan: Before I go to the second and third, another thing you're very passionate about, you've mentioned Grateful Dead and then your background as well, but can you tell me the current number of live music events you've been to?

David: I don't have the exact number in front of me because I've seen a few shows in the last couple of weeks, but it's around 860.

Brendan: Please, for our audience, how do you keep track of these things, David?

David: I have a spreadsheet that I keep track of the number of live music shows I've been to in my lifetime starting when I was 15 years old. I lived outside of New York City and I started to see shows with my friends. We take the train into New York City as teenagers and go to places like Madison Square Garden to see shows.

Some epic, epic shows I've seen Led Zeppelin at Madison Square Garden. I saw Bob Marley's last concert in Pittsburgh when I was 19 years old. I'm the only person known to have taken photographs at Bob Marley's last concert. My first Grateful Dead show I was 17 years old. All the way up to this past week, I'm constantly, constantly going to live music shows.

Originally, prior to Microsoft even existing, I kept my hard copy ticket stubs. I put them all into a box. I was able to remember most, not all, because some ticket stubs I lost, but most of the shows that I saw.

When Microsoft Excel came out, spreadsheet and then continually kept it up over the years. I'm up over 860 or something. This coming weekend, I will add to it significantly because I'm going to a music festival called Boston Calling. Probably, we'll see six or eight bands each of three days. I'll add, perhaps, 18, 20, or 25 new bands to the list.

Brendan: Mate, that's fascinating. Do you ever do any analysis on the spreadsheet in your past concerts?

David: Not really. I probably could, but not really. How many times have I seen a certain band? I can check it out, but it's really just for my own benefit. I say, geez, when did I see The Who? How many times have I seen Jack White or whatever?

I know the first time I saw The Rolling Stones was in Australia, where was the venue? I happen to remember, it was the Sydney Cricket Ground. I don't know if I remember the year right now, but I probably could go back to the spreadsheet to remind myself what year I saw The Rolling Stones at the Sydney Cricket Ground.

Brendan: Mate, that's a lot of passion shown into live music and a lot of events to go to. Maybe a difficult question with so many experiences. Is there something that, off the top of mind, just sticks out as the most memorable for you in that 800+ experiences?

David: At this point, of the concert experiences that I've done, I would probably have to say being the only person to have photographed Bob Marley's last concert was amazing because I was only 19 years old. It was a four-hour drive from our university to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We were properly getting prepared as one does before a Bob Marley concert. It's a wonder I could even focus the camera.

I had never before or since taken a professional camera to a rock show. I borrowed the yearbook photographer's camera to bring with me to the show. I'd never done anything like that before. I don't know if it was the universe speaking to me that I had to bring the camera.

When Bob Marley died—and this is pre-internet, of course—it was learned that his last concert was the concert I went to. There was no known photograph of that concert and I have a whole roll of photographs. Those pictures were used for about five minutes in the Marley documentary by Kevin McDonald. One of those photographs is now hanging in the lobby of the Stanley Theatre.

I spoke with the director of the Stanley Theatre about a couple of months ago who said the Bob Marley concert on September 23rd, 1980 was the most important concert in that venue's entire history. That goes back to the late 1800s. How cool is it to just be the person who was able to capture that moment in history and to be able to have done that without even knowing what I captured at the time was going to be so important.

Brendan: Yeah, absolutely. That's fascinating. It sounds like you can add paparazzi to your list of accomplishments as well, mate.

David: Yeah, maybe we could do that. Absolutely.

Brendan: The second one was connection, but before going back to that, maybe a bit of a leading question because I've listened to lots of stuff with you around the Grateful Dead. All of these experiences again, okay, multiple bands seen, but Grateful Dead, they've stood out to you. They're your number one from what I understand, they're your most favorite band. Why is that the case?

David: Just a couple of reasons. I've seen them about, I think, 85 times now. It's what I remember the last count of how many times I've seen the Grateful Dead.

Firstly, I feel like they're my tribe of people. When I was doing the research for the book that became Fanocracy, the idea of fandom, what I learned is that every human is hardwired to want to be part of a tribe of like-minded people. That's how we feel safe, secure, and comfortable.

The Grateful Dead is where my tribe is. I like fellow Grateful Dead fans. We think alike, we act alike. That's super important. Of course, I love the music, too. That's a big part of it. The shows are unique in the sense of the way that the people are also a part of the show. The Grateful Dead never does the same show twice. The setlist always changes. The way they do each song always changes. You never know what's coming. It's not predictable.

Some nights they have an off night, some nights, they're unbelievable and transcendent. If you go to two Rolling Stone concerts or most bands in a row, they might change one or two songs, but it's basically the same show night after night, after night. Not true with the Grateful Dead.

I started to focus on their marketing about 20 years ago. I started to think about some of the things that they do that's different. I wrote this book about them called Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead.

For example, the Grateful Dead became one of the only bands to allow fans to record their concerts. You could bring professional-level recording gear to the shows. They allowed you to make recordings of the show, and still do, which was a remarkable thing. No other band allowed that.

It turns out that was fabulous marketing because all their shows are different. They never play the same setlist twice. They're always playing each song differently than they did the last time they played it. Because of that, people then start to collect these concert recordings. Many times, it was the first way that somebody like me was exposed to the band.

In my case, when I was a young teenager, I used to hear Grateful Dead music coming from the neighbor across the street. It's like, wow, that's really great. What's that? Of course, I want to experience it for myself, so it turns out it is great marketing. It's a huge combination of all of those things, which is why I'm so passionate about that band.

Brendan: It sounds like they were doing and practicing a lot of the David Meerman Scott thinking before you've even written about it.

David: I like to say there was a social network before Mark Zuckerberg was even born, which is absolutely true because the people who are collecting and trading the tapes, that was a social network before the internet. It's super cool what they were able to create around this idea of creating a tribe of like-minded people and creating the content that would allow them to be part of a network that shares that content very much like a social network is today.

Brendan: Yeah, absolutely. Great link back. Mate, you also mentioned Twitter before. I'd like to ask about that because, again, you're pretty active on Twitter. You got a really great following. You wrote recently a short time back, just in regards to the Elon Musk sort of take over Twitter and I guess the pros and cons of that. Where does Twitter sit in the future of what Mr. Musk may do with Twitter or not? What's your thinking there?

David: Firstly, what's super important, and a lot of people don't really think about or realize, Twitter is for the elites in every category in the world, so politicians, government officials, business leaders, entertainment figures, musicians, academics, writers. It doesn't matter. In every field, the people who matter are on Twitter. It's really important as a place where you can find out what important people are thinking right now.

It's very important as a place that you can participate in what's happening at this instant. It's a real-time social network. A lot of people dismiss Twitter because maybe they don't have as many people who use it as some of the other networks like Facebook. But I believe it to be super important just because it's so popular with people who are at the top of their game. If you want to interact with people at the top of their game, that's super cool.

I've had some amazing interactions on Twitter. I asked President Obama a question and he answered it on Twitter. It's crazy, he was the president at the time. It was an amazing thing. There's no way a mere mortal like me could ask the president of the United States a question other than through a tool like Twitter. That's an important aspect of it.

I do think, however, that in general, the social media algorithms, especially the Facebook algorithm, have started to become dangerous. In fact, I think the Facebook algorithm is the most dangerous technology ever invented because it's incredibly polarizing. It pushes people into pockets where conspiracy theories and danger lurks because Facebook knows that when you're angry, you spend more time on Facebook.

They try to serve up content to those who are susceptible to that anger because then they stay on Facebook longer. When they stay on Facebook longer, Facebook can sell more advertising. I think that algorithm is incredibly dangerous.

I fear an Elon Musk takeover of Twitter. As we're doing this recording, Elon Musk is in the process of possibly buying Twitter. He's made an offer, the Twitter board has accepted it. Elon Musk has talked about the idea of Twitter and free speech. But I think the problem is not free speech because free speech is very different from free social media amplification.

I believe that it's possible to have free speech, but I think that social media amplification is a very, very, very different thing. No one has the right that something they say on a social network will be amplified to millions or hundreds of millions of people. For Musk to say that his argument around social networks and Donald Trump has made the same argument is people are taking away the right to free speech by not allowing people to say something on Twitter, or not allowing them to say something on another social network, I think is dead wrong.

I wrote a blog post that became super popular. The headline was more or less Attention Elon Musk: The Right to Free Speech Does Not Equal to the Right to Social Media Amplification. I think that's an important concept when it comes to social media, an important concept for marketers to be thinking about as well because those social media algorithms are really, really important for people to understand.

Brendan: Mate, thanks for sharing those thoughts. With the blog and how you've jumped I guess on the back of that, you've used the term and you'd be asked this question probably a thousand or billion times around newsjacking. Is that an example of David Meerman Scott's newsjacking on top of what was happening with Twitter and what's working through there? Can you explain that? Is that yes or no? And if so, can you explain to our listeners what is this term newsjacking and how they can use it?

David: Yeah, newsjacking is a term that I pioneered, a concept I pioneered. It's the idea of following a news cycle because every news cycle always breaks in the same way. Following a news cycle.

If you are an expert in an area and a new story is breaking, if you very quickly push out a piece of content—it could be a blog post, a tweet with a hashtag, a video, or something—at the moment that people are interested in it, you're changing the dynamic of the way information is used on the web because most of the time, when marketers create content, we push it out on our time, when we're ready. Oh, I just finished my blog posts. I'll push it out.

Newsjacking is pushing out content when the marketplace is ready. That Elon Musk blog post that I wrote 100% was newsjacking because I've been following Musk and Twitter and that whole dynamic, and then I wrote the blog post when it became quite clear that the Twitter board was going to accept Elon Musk's offer for Twitter.

That started to happen over the weekend. Then on Monday morning, USA time, your time, Australia that evening, they were talking about it looked like the board was going to accept the offer that day.

I started writing my blog post at 6:00 AM. 9:00 AM roughly I pushed it out. Again, that headline was Attention Elon Musk: The Right to Free Speech Does Not Equal to the Right to Social Media Amplification. It was the perfect moment when the marketplace was interested in what this whole Elon Musk's Twitter purchase thing might mean.

All of a sudden, me, a marketing expert around social media and marketing pushed out a blog post and it had a ton of attention. I had outreach from some reporters from magazines, newspapers, and so on who wanted to write about that topic. People pointed to it and got way more attention than I normally get for any of my blog posts just because of the timing aspect of it.

Brendan: Mate, I know we've got to be very careful on time for you today. We haven't got a lot of time left. I think it'd be remiss of us not to get your views. I know you've written extensively in the eighth edition of The New Rules of Marketing and PR. AI and Machine Learning. What's that landscape look like in your view moving into the future? What do people need to be aware of? How can they utilize AI and machine learning for the benefit of their business?

David: We've already talked about some of the negative aspects, so I won't go over that again. The algorithms can be very dangerous and you need to understand how the algorithms work. However, there are some positive aspects of AI. I think that I use artificial intelligence for some very specific purposes.

I use a service called lately.ai. What they are great for is taking long form content and using AI technology, breaking it into short form content. I, for example, will take an entire blog post and drop it into the lately.ai engine. What it will do is create short form text content tweets for me.

I drop in one blog post. Depending on how long it is, I might get 10, 15, or 20 tweets that are generated through the AI engine. I am able to take a look at those tweets, edit them as appropriate, and then schedule them to go out over time. It's transformed the way I do business.

When you're thinking about AI, make sure (1) you understand the dangers of artificial intelligence, (2) look for ways that you might be able to use artificial intelligence for what you're doing right now to make that easier. Lately is a great example because I used to just go in and manually look for tweets within blog posts. Now, that's all done for me automatically.

Brendan: That sounds like a fantastic tool, David, that I might have to look into myself. Thanks very much for sharing that. Mate, I will get to my final question, but I just want to give another play. I've got edition five of your book. I know you've written three more, so at version eight.

I bought that last night. I really look forward to reading it. There's some unbelievable stuff in that in what I've already scanned and the knowledge you have around the space you're living in. I want to understand what or who has had the greatest impact on this leading marketing space for you.

David: The person that I have followed for a very long time is Seth Godin—a great marketer, a great blogger, and a terrific human being. I'm actually working on a project with him right now called The Carbon Almanac, which will be coming out in a couple of months, a new book. He's somebody I've been following and respect very deeply.

Brendan: Mate, thank you very much for sharing that. I want to say thank you very much for spending time with us today, sharing some of your innermost thoughts. We'll certainly plug the book. We'll put all this stuff in our show notes. I look forward to bringing this together. Mate, very nice to meet you. Thank you very much for coming on and being a guest on The Culture of Things podcast.

David: My pleasure, Brendan. Thanks very much for having me on.

Brendan: Thank you, mate.

Buying, reading and understanding David’s new book, The New Rules of Marketing & PR - 8th Edition, is one of the best investments you can make. Once you have, the next best investment is 'taking action' and implementing the strategies that best align with you and how you want to move forward as a leader in your business.

As David says, content is king. If you aren’t creating it, you’ll never be seen as a leader in your field. These were my 3 key takeaways from my conversation with David. My first key takeaway: Leaders think and understand quickly. They use 'real time' information to their advantage. They think about it, understand it, and then use it to make decisions. This allows them to be current, to move quickly, and be agile. Allowing them to get the best information out there and to create great content To think and understand quickly is a powerful attribute of great leaders.

My second key takeaway: Leaders are passionate about everything they do. They spend the majority of their time doing things that give them energy. If you’re spending large amounts of your time on things that drain your energy, stop doing them! You have a choice! The best leaders know that people see your passion, they also know that people see your lack of passion. That’s why they focus their time on things they’re passionate about

My third key takeaway: Leaders focus on high value activities. This is why I think the best leaders are often leading their own business. Those that succeed, succeed because they make a conscious decision every day to focus on long term growth strategies. If you want to control your destiny, grow your business, and gain more customers, you have to be a leader who is focused on doing high value activities.

So in summary, my three key takeaways were: Leaders think and understand quickly, leaders are passionate about everything they do, and leaders focus on high value activities.

If you want to talk culture, leadership, or teamwork, or have any questions or feedback about the episode, contact me at thecultureofthings.com or via our socials. Thanks for joining me. And remember, the best outcome is on the other side of a genuine conversation.

 

Outtro (music): Thank you for listening to The Culture of Things podcast with Brendan Rogers. Please visit thecultureofleadership.com to access the show notes. If you love The Culture of Things podcast, please subscribe, rate and give a review on Apple podcasts and remember a healthy culture is your competitive advantage.