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5 LAWS OF MARKETING IN 2024: CARRIE ROSE, STEVEN BARTLETT, ELON MUSK
5 Marketing lessons that are essential to know in 2024...
Niall Ratcliffe
October 20, 2024
In partnership with
Morning!
The rain is pouring, the dishwasher is rumbling, and I can hear murmurs of the washing machine turning in the other room.
Yep, that sounds like a Saturday in October.
Let’s get into today’s breakdown - here’s what you’re going to learn by reading this
My new favourite marketing “frame”.
A new (and easy) way to get great PR.
Plus, 3 more lessons I found this week.
Listen to the audio version HERE.
LISTEN TO THE AUDIO VERSION
BREAKING DOWN THE STRATEGY
There is a disgusting amount of free information out there nowadays. Yet most people let it slip by them.
I don’t want to be one of those people.
So, over the last few weeks, rather than studying the greatest marketers from 40 years ago, I spent my time studying marketers who are 5,10 or 20 steps ahead of me.
The likes of:
Carrie Rose
Steven Bartlett
And even Elon Musk too
(Although Musk may be 1000 steps ahead of me right now)
People who sat where I am not long ago and have excelled to the places I want to go.
These are people that brands like Amazon, Sony, Apple, and Coca-Cola bring in to consult on their marketing. Yet the craziest thing is…
They share a huge percentage of their knowledge online.
On podcasts.
In their own content.
Through interviews & articles.
If you look hard enough, you’ll stumble across a goldmine of modern-day marketing knowledge.
And it’s safe to say, I stumbled upon that marketing goldmine over the last few weeks. My notes app is overloaded with different lessons.
Here are the top 5 I wrote down:
Lesson 1: The Story Wrapper
PR has always been confusing for me. Some brands seem to constantly find themselves in all the publications, while other great brands sit on the sidelines.
I always told myself it was because they had the best connections or maybe they just paid journalists to feature them.
Then I stumbled across this episode of Carrie Rose on Ali Abdaal’s podcast.
Carrie said that getting PR has nothing to do with your network. It’s all about how you wrap your product in a story.
She said,
“Nobody cares about your company or product (no matter how big or popular it is) you have to find a way to make it relevant with a story.”
For example:
Back in 2023, “Privacy” was a major talking point with social media platforms getting sued for stealing users’ data.
So Carrie’s agency - Rise At Seven - put together a report that assessed how much data each social media platform takes from users. Then they attached that report to one of their tech clients and pushed it to the press.
The next minute their tech client was in all the major publications with the study.
No one cared about the tech client they had, but the privacy story + the report let them hijack all of that attention.
Lesson 2: Don’t Be Wallpaper
Walk into a new house, you’ll notice:
- The furniture.
- The kitchen.
- The carpet.
But what you won’t notice is the wallpaper.
It blends it and your brain blurs it out. You focus on all of the things that are different and not the plain old wallpaper on the walls.
The same goes when you use the same marketing approach as everyone else in your industry.
The same tone of voice.
The same campaigns.
The same message.
Your prospects just start to tune it out and ignore it.
This is what I’m starting to call “Marketing suicide” - it’s a lesson I recently learned from Steven Bartlett.
On an episode of Dragons Den, Steven says to a founder:
“You’re indifferent.
- You’re not offensive.
- You’re not emotional.
- You’re not controversial.
You’re wallpaper and if you’re wallpaper, no one is ever going to see you.”
For the last 3 years, I’ve talked about the importance of being different in your marketing and messaging - but this analogy from Steven is perfect.
No one notices the wallpaper.
And if your brand is wallpaper, nobody will notice you.
Lesson 3: Make It "Or” Not “And”
Arguably the most interesting concept I learned this week was the “Or vs. And” concept that I came across, again through Steven Bartlett.
In one of his vlogs, he’s helping a company he’s just invested in - Perfect Ted - with their branding.
At the time their cans just said “Matcha Sparking Energy”.
On the surface, it seems like cool packaging, but Steve hated it.
He said,
Right now you’re making yourselves an ‘And’ not an ‘Or’
I didn’t get it at first, but what Steven was saying was that they weren’t differentiating themselves from the other energy drinks in their category. It was just an energy drink and some Matcha - not a great selling point.
A few months later, the vlog shows Steven receiving the new Perfect Ted cans to his office with improved branding.
In big text, front and centre it says “Healthy Energy”.
Steven instantly calls the co-founders and says, “Great job guys, you’ve nailed it with the ‘Healthy Energy’ - it makes it an ‘Or’ not an ‘And’.”
Giving consumers a clear-cut decision. Do you want energy OR do you want healthy energy?
It’s beautiful differentiation and pits them against all energy drinks rather than being just another energy drink.
Lesson 4: The Best Marketing Often Doesn’t Look Like Marketing
Elon Musk seems pretty controversial at the minute.
But whether you like him or not, it’s safe to say he’s an incredible engineer, inventor, and entrepreneur.
Yet a lot of people forget that he’s also a fantastic marketer - he just does it in a very unorthodox way.
If you look at some of the viral Tesla headlines over the last few years you’ll see:
“Tesla release dancing humanoid robots”
“Tesla users find fart noise feature in cars”
“Tesla can now dance - new easter egg found”
These are all Tesla headlines in major publications.
On the surface, they all seem like “silly features,” but in reality, they are viral marketing campaigns in disguise.
Which is such a great lesson that often, the best marketing doesn’t look like marketing at all.
For Tesla, their customers are often tech-obsessed people who want a car that:
A) Is at the forefront of innovation
B) You can show off to your friends
So Tesla consistently goes viral in ways that resonate directly with their target audience.
At its core, marketing is about communicating who you are to the people you want to buy your products.
That’s exactly what Tesla does with these viral press campaigns through these crazy easter eggs and features.
Lesson 5: You Don’t Repeat Your Content Enough
Not to sound like a Steven Bartlett fanboy, but over the last few weeks, I’ve been studying his work a lot.
His vlogs do a fantastic job of showing what he and his team focus on behind the scenes.
How they plan campaigns.
How they send episodes viral.
How they’ve grown the podcast.
It’s all in there.
But one thing I find him talking about again and again is experiments.
They run 100s of experiments with every single podcast, video, or piece of content they put online.
Everyone knows they need to test stuff, the issue is, we often don’t repeat our content enough to run valid experiments.
For Steven, he releases 1 podcast every week. His team then:
Crop up the key moments.
Add captions & edit.
Share across socials.
But because they share the same style of content every week - they’re able to perfect it.
1 week they’ll add a progress bar.
↳ Then track the results.
Another week they’ll change caption colours.
↳ Then track the results.
Then they’ll mix up the backing track.
↳ Then track the results.
Every week the content gets slightly closer to perfect and the posts perform better and better.
Now Steven has millions of followers and generates 100s of millions of views every single week.
This wouldn’t be possible without posting a similar style of content week in and week out.
It’s the consistency that allows them to create perfection.
🌱 THE GREENHOUSE
Things I’ve saved this week that are worth seeing:
TL;DR
1/ The Story Wrapper
2/ Don’t Be Wallpaper
3/ Make It "Or” Not “And”
4/ Great Marketing Is Disguised
5/ Stick To One Content Style
In 3 years at uni learning marketing, I didn’t learn anything even close to as valuable as these 4 lessons - yet these were all learned for free.
I’m trying to spend the rest of 2024 stacking new marketing ideas & lessons, and it’s safe to say this was a great start.
Hopefully, you found it valuable too!
If you did, why not forward this breakdown to a friend?
Until next Sunday.
— Niall
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