#H2HChat Why Brand Partnerships Are the Future of Marketing, Andrew Davis, Founder, Monumental Shift

Hello everybody, welcome to H2H Chat. See, I sang it this week. So, really excited to have a great guest on today, and so I'm going to introduce him in just a moment. Before I do that, I always like to say hello to Suzy, my co-host. Suzy, how are you doing in the fine area of New York?

Jersey. New York. We're the greater metropolitan area of New York. Okay, New York Times Magazine article came out calling Jersey City the 6th borough. So, you know, not—

Wow.

I know, I know. Not sure whether that's good because that means rents will increase or, you know, whatever. So mixed feelings there, but it still works. I am good.

So question.

Yes.

Have you ever had any other color or has it always been red?

I had 5 colors at one point.

Wow.

Yeah.

So what— do you have a favorite? Is red the favorite?

Red is— I like red because you can pretty much do any shade. So I can go all the way to like almost copperish and all the way to like an almost red violet. So I like that. I always thought kind of blue would look weird. You can't really get away with blue, but with red, people are like, cool hair, you know, and they're not like, oh my God, crazy lady, like, get away from me. So it works. It works. Keeps people guessing too.

Well, and it also is very easy to find you in an airport when I'm looking for you.

That has to be one of the best. Yeah. Yeah. What airport was that?

Which airport wasn't it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, so many airports.

So we are very excited today to welcome Andrew Davis. Andrew, how are you doing?

I'm great, how are you guys?

I'm doing well. You know, my mom's maiden name is Davis.

Good name. Now I'm gonna just start taking notes so I can answer those security questions when I'm trying to get into your bank account. Mom's maiden name, Davis, easy one.

Do you happen to have a favorite color, Bryan?

What was your first car?

Green and Mustang.

Take notes, everyone.

Well, we already learned a few weeks ago that BK had all of his passwords the exact same when we had a cybersecurity person on. But now he no longer does and they're highly encrypted and everything.

I haven't changed that yet.

The revelations.

So, Andrew, we are so excited to have you here. You have done so many cool things and we're just, as we were talking offline or online off live, we were having some fun talking about what you've been up to. But more, more than that, your, your career has been so fascinating that we— I almost, I almost wanted to like just stop and wait because I wanted you to describe it to everybody so that they could hear what you've been up to, including the Muppets and books and speaking bureaus and, and Green Underpants.

Yes.

So when you combine all those things together, you think Andrew Davis, that's what I think. What do you think?

I think that's definitely me. Green underpants for St. Patty's Day. I used to work for the Muppets. It was actually— I used to live in the New York City area right near Suzy. I used to live on the Upper East Side in Manhattan.

Nice!

Yeah, and I worked for the Muppets. Basically, my job was to be their production manager for the workshop where they built the puppets. It was essentially budgets and timelines for, you know, 20 Miss Piggy heads and Kermit the Frog and, you know, like Sesame Street characters. It was actually a really great experience, and it's actually where I learned a ton about marketing, because the Jim Henson Company and Sesame Street and Bear in the Big Blue House and Muppets from Space and Elmo in Grouchland, those are all amazing content vehicles that drive a huge amount of sales. I learned a ton there, and I forgot the other stuff we talked about. Oh, I wrote for Charles Kuralt. Wow. Which, if you're old enough to remember him, he's an amazing storyteller. And if you're not old enough, you should just like YouTube him later. I've written a couple of books. I wrote a book called Brandscaping, which we'll talk about today, and another one that just came out called Town Inc., which is all about kind of saving towns and cities across the United States. And it's been a lot of fun, been a really amazing journey. Oh, I built an agency. And then sold it in 2012. I forgot about that. It's been fun. I can't believe we packed so much in.

And that's only 5 minutes in.

That's right.

That's crazy. So tell us more about your green underpants. No, I'm kidding.

That's the most interesting stuff, actually.

So let's start all the way back. And I believe your career started in production, but then also into writing. Yeah. And I'm curious what— and we're going to— I want to eventually end up on both of your books.

Yeah,

sure. But what do you think made your career successful? What are some of the things in all the things that you just mentioned early on that helped you to become who you are now today?

So I think, like, I'll take it kind of step by step. I think when I first came out of college, I, you know, when I was a kid actually, I wanted to be an actor, and I was like, you know, I'm going to skip college, I'm going to go straight to LA, and I'm going to be the next Leonardo DiCaprio or whatever, whoever was on Growing Pains at the time. And I thought that was my career trajectory, and my parents said, you've got to go to college. I came up to Boston University, got a television and film degree, and decided actually in college, I realized I'm not that great of an actor, but I really enjoy being behind the scenes, and I do like the creative process, and I learned I learned from some really great people, and I started producing public affairs programming. So I actually produced a live call-in talk show every Sunday morning for, like, medical call-in talk show. And it was basically hypochondriacs calling in every Sunday morning to tell them about their problems. And the doctor on the set, like, you're not allowed to give medical advice on TV, so they just had to talk around the problem for an hour and then tell the person to go see a doctor. So it was amazing, amazing show.

That's funny.

But I actually learned a ton there. I learned about what it takes to actually have a conversation in the real world with someone that you don't know, write intros and outros. And then I produced a late-night talk show that was like a right-wing Republican host just yelling at the television. I learned a ton from him. And then I started producing for the Today Show at NBC. You know, there I really learned a ton about writing and asking questions pre-interviews, really finding the meat of a story, really understanding the emotional tug of someone's story and what makes it work. At the Jim Henson Company, I learned so much about marketing. Charles Kuralt told me everything I know about storytelling, and he was just a master at it and really challenged me to work hard. So I've learned a ton at all these opportunities, and I think today, like, you know, whether it's my writing or The people I like to interact with or speaking around the world. I think all of those things kind of combine and add up to something that I've really enjoyed and I'm passionate about.

So if I were to take all of that and distill it down to one thing, I think I heard storytelling as kind of one of the key themes there, and I'm curious what is it that you learned about storytelling that makes storytelling jump off the page, that makes it like the coolest way to tell a story? What's the best way to do

that? So there's one thing that I learned from Charles Kuralt that you've got to do if you want to tell a great story, and you have got to build suspense. You have to build suspense, okay? Basically, he used to quote William Archer all the time. What was that?

I think that was suspenseful.

That was my suspense sound. Oh, that was horrible.

That was— I was hoping it was going to come across as a different sound. Sorry.

Keep trying. There's got to be a better one. All right.

No?

Almost.

All right, keep going.

So he, you know, essentially William Archer used to say, that drama is anticipation mingled with uncertainty. That's it. And if you want to create drama, if you want to— I don't care if it's a case study. Look, if you have to write the most boring case study for the most boring product in the world, build suspense. Don't tell me how it ends, really draw me through. And, you know, people ask me all the time, how long should my blog post be? You can write a 10,000-word blog post, and if you build suspense, people will make it through. And Charles Kuralt was a genius at that. In the marketing world, I don't think we do enough of building suspense. Just think about building suspense.

Wow, okay, so now give me an example of something that you did, whether it's one of your books or something you worked on where you had to build suspense and it worked out.

Yeah, so I'll give you a marketing story. So have you seen Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, either of you? Have you seen Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead?

No.

It's a documentary on Netflix, so anyone out there, add it to your queue. And essentially, there's a company called Breville that makes juicers, you know, like you stuff an apple or an orange in the juicer and then out comes some juice. And they wanted to increase demand for juicers in the marketplace. They wanted to sell more juicers, and they basically decided to make a 90-minute documentary film about juicing. But it's It's not, hey, juicing's good for you. It's a drama where you build suspense. You follow one guy who went across the United States juicing his way back to health. He meets a guy, a trucker in the middle of a truck stop who's essentially got very sick, and together they juice their way back to health. The whole movie is designed to build suspense. You want to know who's going to die first, basically, if you're watching the movie. That's the kind of suspense they built. I'm going to ruin the ending for you. It's worth watching for anyone out there that's interested in marketing or business, but essentially both of them juiced their way back to health. What ended up happening is people— it's not a— you never even hear the name Breville. You see a box once in the movie where you can see the Breville juicer in the box, but essentially they built suspense for 90 minutes. It was one of the most viewed documentaries on Netflix in 2012 when it came out. It is still every week that 50,000 people put it in their queue to watch it.

Wow.

Sales for juicers have exploded, and when it came out in July of 2012, they ran out of juicers worldwide. It was a phenomenon, and they just released a sequel in 2015— 2016. Wait, no, January 2015, and did the same thing.

I'm gonna have to go watch that. What— that's— Netflix is awesome.

It's amazing.

It sucks, it's so awesome because I just spent the whole weekend watching Daredevil and—

Daredevil is great.

Oh my gosh.

So good.

Binge watching is killing me.

It is an amazing tool and you know, in the past I made a documentary film called Roadside Ambition, the amazing true story of Of one small town with 2 huge balls in 1999. And look, let me tell you, this is— if I've made any mistakes in my career, this is a good one. So in 2001, we were trying to sell the documentary and we wanted to take it to Sundance. And, you know, we had entered a bunch of film festivals and we went to a couple of them, but the movie was a really great movie. It was a kind of a comedy, you know, It was really funny. And this company out of the blue calls us, and they're called Netflix, and they said they wanted to license the movie for $60,000 and stream it on their service. And I was like, what the hell is Netflix? And like, do these guys even have $60,000? And so we passed. We passed on streaming the movie with Netflix. And so— exactly. Wow. Yeah, exactly. But let me tell you, yeah, do you have that sound effect? Hey,

I

think mine was better. Sorry, guys. Mine was better.

Yeah, that's it. That's how I felt. But I did— you know what happened though? Because I wanted to figure out who they are, I signed up for Netflix and I ended up being one of the first 10,000 people to ever join Netflix and I felt I'm still— they send you an email every year on your anniversary thanking you for being one of the first 10,000 customers of Netflix. So I'm very proud of that, but pretty embarrassed that I passed up the licensing deal.

Oh man, well, it's kind of like being nominated though for an Emmy, so that's good.

That's true, it's just like that.

So, okay, so let's— so You've told us about where you started, how you learned storytelling, how documentaries are made, what not to do, and then moving into your marketing career, tell me a little bit about that.

So I was working at the Jim Henson Company, you've got to go back in time, do you have a back in time sound effect?

I don't, but I'll just— How about this?

There, that was good, that's good. So it was 1999 and there were all these startups that were getting tons of cash to do really weird stuff, and a bunch of my friends started leaving television and they started working at startups doing marketing, and none of them knew what marketing is, but they were making like 4 times as much as me. And I went out for beers one night with these guys and they said, look, you gotta leave TV, you're not making enough money, you just come, you do whatever you're doing in TV and you go to marketing. So I I got a job, I was living in New York at the time, I got a job in Boston at a startup called ThinkMart, and I showed up and just started trying to get people to buy the product that we were selling at ThinkMart, and I thought the people that I was working for were idiots. I ended up working for a company called Sallie Mae, which if you ever had a college loan you might remember those guys, they're also idiots. Their marketing team was not, I thought, not very smart. So I teamed up with a journalist.

I always thought it was one person, Sally Mae.

She is so cute. Sally Mae is—

She was working her butt off trying to get everyone

loans. That's right. It was not a fun place to work, I'll be honest. I got frustrated with the job. I teamed up with my friend Jim Costco, who was a journalist, a really talented journalist and great storyteller, and we decided to tell stories for brands that told really bad stories. And our first client at Tipping Point Labs, the agency we founded was Putnam Investments, a giant investment firm, which we walked in, we didn't know anything about building a business, we had no idea what we were doing. We decided we'd just talk to them like they were humans. And, you know, we went into a meeting, we said, look, you guys just don't tell good stories, let us tell better stories for you. They said, sure, we'd love to tell better stories. It was a very short meeting, then they actually asked us, Bryan, What do you usually bill on, a retainer or is it project basis? And Jim and I had no idea at the time what a retainer was. We were like, we will get back to you, let us write a proposal up. So we built an agency essentially on this simple idea that we could tell great stories that increase demand for the products and services you sell. instead of increase awareness, and we sold the agency in 2012, and then I went on the road kind of teaching people what I learned, you know, marketing for other brands. It was really, really fun. It's been great.

So that then escalated into some books, and so let's talk about both of your books now in order of publication date. Yes. So Brandscaping.

Yes, I brought it just in case Bryan always asks tough questions. I've tuned into the HJA show.

So on page 113, line 6, it talks about what?

Hold on, I'm looking. So brandscaping is actually a pretty simple concept. The idea is that you can partner with other people to get access to the audience you want instead of using traditional methods like buying advertising and using the media. What we learned actually at the agency, at Tipping Point, was that if we just asked one simple question, all you have to do is start asking yourself, who has your next customer as their current customer, right? Mm-hmm. Who has your next customer as their current customer? You start finding all these great partnership opportunities for you to partner to help that other person, that other brand build their business, even though it ends up helping build yours. So it's a really mutually beneficial approach and it's all focused on generating content that both brands can be a part of, and both brands will see an increase in demand. So that's brandscaping.

Wow. So then, but I have a— obviously that leads to a lot of different questions. What then? Okay, they have your customer, and that makes you mad. They're holding your customer back from you. Hostage. And so now what?

Yeah, so think of it like this. So let me give you a good easy example. So let's take Converse, alright. Converse sells shoes, you know Chuck Taylors, right. Converse realized that every time like Lil Wayne was on People magazine wearing Chuck Taylors, they would see a bump in sales, right, or Justin Bieber, bump in sales. So their traditional approach would be to buy access to Justin Bieber to wear Converse, right, or Lil Wayne, or go to the media, you know, and send a bunch of shoes to every star on the planet. Well, Converse instead realized that what if we built a relationship with the next Justin Bieber? What if we found we helped foster musicians around the world? So what they did was they built studios. The CMO at the time was named Jeff Cottrell, and his idea was Let's build some music studios. They built one in Brooklyn, by the way, Suzy, right across from you. Right. And they built a studio called Rubber Tracks. You should go check it out online, Rubber Tracks. And they didn't know anything about making music. These guys make shoes. So what they did was they partnered with Guitar Center. Guitar Center has, you know, 5, 6, 7 million people on their email database, all musicians who wish they had access to a great studio. And what Guitar Center did was outfit the whole studio with all the gear, and what did Converse do? They built the studio. They manned the studio with a full-time engineer and they gave away the days. You can sign up right now at 17 studios across the world called Rubber Tracks to record for free with a professional engineer at any Rubber Tracks studio, brought to you by Converse and Guitar Center. And every week, it's amazing, every week they create content, they will profile the bands, they will share the music, both of them with each of their audiences, which is a total of like 40 million different people on their social channels, and all of a sudden both brands are intertwined. And people who never thought about wearing Converse are now exposed to Converse and Rubber Tracks, and people who are exposed to Converse and love their shoes are now exposed to the next music, the next big thing from bands they've never heard of. That is a perfect brandscape, and both have seen sales rise.

Wow. Fascinating. So that is the opposite, obviously, of Trump.

Yes, yes, Trump doesn't partner well. Like, there's a good lesson in that. Like, there are some people that you should just not attempt to partner with.

So he's a different type of scraping.

Yeah.

So All right, so then let's get into your next book, which is totally fascinating, Departure. It's like, you know, I love your career path. It's like this, and then you went to Town Inc. And so how does that even happen? Well, first of all, tell us about Town Inc.

So Town Inc., the subtitle is essentially Grow Your Business Save Your Town, Leave Your Legacy. And here's what happened, Bryan. I mean, you know, you're on the road a lot. When you're out speaking all over the world, one day you're in a town or a city that just seems to be booming and vibrant and everybody's out and the economy looks good. And the next day you get on a plane, the next day, 5 hours away, you're in a town that's the opposite, like all boarded up, you can't figure out what's going on. And I kept seeing this over the course of the last 3 years and I started to wonder what's the difference between the towns that are booming and the towns that are bust. I thought that I would find some cool economic development initiative or some grant that the government gave. No, it turns out the only difference between the 2 towns is essentially one town has staked their claim, so like Warsaw, Indiana is the orthopedic capital of the world, and it's a bunch of businesses that actually got together and said, we're going to be the orthopedic capital of the world. And they create this emotional appeal that attracts people from all over the world to come visit and stay and live in these weird communities that have made a claim. So what I did was did some research and really wrote about how to market your business more than the business you do. You market the place you do it and what it can— what an amazing effect it can have on your business and the economy and everything. It's really been such a fun journey.

I bet. And because he travels so much, it makes Total sense. So how does that— does it apply to every business?

Yes, I was just trying to think if there's a business it doesn't apply to. So here's the cautionary, like the disclaimer, if you live in a city of under, let's say, 600,000 or less, it's a lot easier for you to do this than if you live in a bigger city. But if you live in a big city, it's not about branding the city, the place you do business, like Boston, you know, you can't take it over and be the whatever, but like I'm in Charlestown right now and Charlestown could be the boat building capital of the world very easily. There's a couple of shops here that build boats, no one markets it that way, and you end up attracting a whole supply chain of people including marketers, the creative economy shows up because they all want to be at an epicenter where something interesting is going on. I just got off the phone with some guys from Dayton, Ohio and they read the book and every week I'll speak to anyone for a half hour if they've read the book, any of my books, You know, I'll try to help them out if they just email me or tweet me. And these guys said, I read your book, I want to chat about Dayton, Ohio. And these guys wanted to brand it as the aerospace— no, the— I'm going to screw it up, sorry guys. The aerospace, I think, R&D capital of the world. And I was like, man, that sounds far-fetched. But then they told me the story, like it's really important, these communities have a great story. And in the story they built suspense, just like I told you in the very beginning. you've got to have essentially a great origin story. And they built this beautiful origin story of the fact that in Dayton, the Wright brothers actually had their first bike shop in Dayton, Ohio. Dayton is the headquarters for Wright-Patterson, which is a huge Air Force base, and all of the biggest airline companies in the world have a research and development presence in Dayton as a result of that history and heritage. And so they're going out to brand it based on this book, and I'm so happy to see it make an impact.

Wow.

Like that, like actually change people's lives. Yeah, it's been really fun.

That's cool. So, I mean, I want to— this may be a hard one to answer, and so you can tell me that, you know, not today, we're not going to talk about that. But what would you do with Silicon Valley? I mean, it's so massively branded and maybe even— I mean, this is just my opinion, but misbranded. And nobody even knows where Silicon Valley is in our little Bay Area group. And so it's kind of like, you know, everyone claims to be in Silicon Valley, but, you know, there's no silicon anymore.

There isn't. That's right. Can we

talk about that for a second?

I think they've all moved to upstate New York, actually. There's like the semiconductor capital of the world is like Albany now.

That's why we strategically placed Suzy there.

I'm ready, guys. I'm going to seize the market.

That's right.

You know what I mean? What would you do with a— is that something that you feel comfortable talking about?

Yeah, of course. Of course. This is actually a really great topic. One of the problems with Silicon Valley is no one actually knows where it is. Like Silicon Valley is, I don't know, somewhere near San Francisco, that's what everybody thinks. The problem is it started out as very niche but never grew out of the niche. And the best economies that I've seen have grown bigger and bigger, but they've changed their claim as it's grown. So let me give you a good example, let me think of a good one that grew bigger, like This is a made-up one, but just to illustrate the point, like if you're the onion capital of the world, like that's a great claim to start with, right? You might have more onions per capita than anyone else in the world. Great. But what you end up doing if you build this right is you turn the onion capital of the world into like the onion soup capital of the world, which then turns into the soup capital of the world, which then turns into the canned goods capital of the world. And Silicon Valley never evolved. So it's been stuck in this one kind of known entity and it's never updated. The opportunity is for one business, I don't care how small you are, to stake a piece of Silicon Valley. So you can pick any of the little towns that are around Silicon Valley that are generically the area of Silicon Valley and brand it as the, I don't know, the human-to-human capital of the world. You could do that. And all of a sudden people start wondering what is that Why are they there? You've got to have a good origin story, a reason that you're there. And you know, you can very quickly actually, within 2 years, you can rebrand a place and see the economic impact, not just on you but on the economy.

This is such a fascinating topic because it really does affect business and life and everything, not just in Silicon Valley but outside of it. What, who, who would be responsible for that? If no one knows where Silicon Valley is, who is a trusted advisor and a— not the mayor, I can tell you that.

So here's what's amazing. In the book, I essentially went to 50 cities and towns trying to figure out which ones were booming and which ones were busting and why. And in the towns that were unbelievably successful, they were booming beyond belief. belief, the city had nothing to do with the economic development there. Right. It was one business visionary, one, that changed the entire economy by saying essentially, I don't care what you guys are up to, I don't need a committee, but I'm going to market the place I do business more than the business I do. So I'll give you the best example. I went to this little town essentially in the middle of nowhere, just north of St. Louis, Missouri called Hamilton, Missouri. Missouri is a town of 500 people and 5 years ago it was dead. It was bankrupt essentially. One woman who owned a quilt shop there, her name is Jenny Doan, she had a quilt shop that was open like Wednesdays from 2 to 4, it was like one of those weird stores that didn't really have hours. She decided she was going to actually build the economy around quick quilting. And Jenny Doan took her store, the Missouri Star Quilt Company, and started doing one video tutorial on YouTube every single Thursday. Okay, just taught people how to quick quilt and she said, I have a store in Hamilton, Missouri, if you ever want to come by and meet me or buy my stuff, come on by. This was in 2010. By 2012, she had grown her business to a $30 million a year business. By 2015, she was the largest employer, not in the town, in the county, and she owned 17 buildings in the downtown area. Hamilton, Missouri is the quick quilting capital of the world and 50,000 people a year fly to St. Louis and drive to Hamilton, Missouri to stay at her hotel called the Sew and Stay. They eat at her restaurants that she's built. She has one bar, by the way, Bryan, you'll love this. She has one bar that's just for the men who are dragged there by their wives. Wow. Yes! And the whole town, if you go to the town's website, Hamilton, Missouri's website, they talk about the fact that JCPenney was born there. There's no mention of her. That's how separate it is from the visionary and the city's economic development initiatives. So if you want to make a difference, you have to have a great origin story and you have to be a visionary who's willing to market the place you do business more than the business you do, and it will come back to you tenfold.

Wow, I'm sensing a trend because I think that this will go— this will work for just about anything, it's not just towns.

Oh sure, yes.

This is everything in life.

Yes, this is, I mean, it turns out if you stop marketing your business and you just focus on helping humans, you can make a huge impact in the world.

And that's actually a double clap because of the comment you made and the— Oh, thanks. Right, that is fascinating. And so everyone out there, I'm going to pass the baton after this next question over to Suzy. Please, please definitely keep your questions coming. She's going to be taking your questions on #H2HChat. Just tweet her your question and make sure that you give us something really hard. I mean, we want Andrew to get so stumped. No, I'm kidding.

Don't stump me. Don't stump me.

Bring it. No, but definitely keep your questions coming about his books, his past, his future, anything that you want to ask. So just closing this part off, my question for you is what's next? What are you working on and what's coming up?

So let's see, so I've been speaking all around the world for the last 3 years and I started to realize that there are all these problems being just a speaker, that you're by yourself all the time. Bryan, you know how this is. You find yourself in hotel rooms wondering what to do. Yeah, it's very lonely. So I decided I'd actually try to bring together a series of marketing thought leaders and help each other build our businesses. So I just started doing that, building kind of a talent agency for marketing thought leaders. Jay Acunzo is kind of the first person I started partnering with. He's an amazing guy, @JayAcunzo if you're watching, and he just launched his podcast, which I've been helping him with, called Unthinkable today, which is all about walking the fine line between being creative and actually just creating stuff. And the first episode is really fun. It's all about whether quality and quantity are actually opposites. So it's actually really a fun episode. So that's been really good. And yeah, I think that's what's next, more of that.

Cool. Cool. Awesome, man. Do you think you'll write another book?

Yeah, definitely. I really enjoy writing. It's something, you know, for me it's like, what should I write next? Not should I write something next? I really love sharing ideas and stories that I've learned from amazing people all over the world. It's a phenomenal gift to be able to learn from these speakers. And, you know, I really do enjoy it. So there will be another one. How about you?

Not in the next 3 months.

Me neither. That's a good— I should clarify.

Maybe even 6. Okay, good. I can't— as you probably know, it is a— it is probably one of the hardest— like, I can't even say this because I've It probably will come out wrong, but it really is like having a child. Yeah. And when it happens and you're just so tired after a while that you're just like, I gotta wait until I have another child.

Yeah.

And you love your children, but you also want to beat them. And so then you're like, okay, I gotta wait because I'm gonna— it's too many children. And so anyway, that's my answer.

I like it. I like the long metaphor. I'll keep working on it.

So I'm gonna pass the baton over to Suzy. You are in awesome hands, and there are lots and lots of great people and questions coming at us, so I'm gonna jump back in here and there, but otherwise, have fun.

Thanks, Bill.

Yeah, cheers. Thank you.

Howdy.

Any good questions, or is it just us?

Just a few. No, we have some great stuff. Great stuff as usual coming in from our audience. Everyone out there, please, please, please keep tweeting them in. We have a good chunk of time, and this is your chance to ask amazing marketing strategists all of your thoughts. We've gotten very good response on the Muppets, by the way. I believe the general consensus is that we will have to do a follow-up called Muppets in Marketing.

Okay, I like it. I learned a lot of great lessons there.

I believe, BK, that the community has spoken and we will get in trouble if we don't move forward on this. All right, cool. I have a great question to kick off the time. My good friend Mike Haberman has joined us. Mike He works in the HR industry. He says, HR is supposed to be using branding. How can HR tell a compelling story? How can they use the concepts that you're discussing?

How can HR— can you repeat it? Sorry, I got really excited.

Yeah, absolutely.

Then I forgot the question.

I was like, oh, I can answer this. I was going to read it to you. It's a chat question. He says, HR is supposed to be using branding.

How

can HR tell a compelling story and use the concepts that you're discussing?

So he means like internally, like I'm marketing to my employees or to someone I'm trying to hire.

Yes.

Okay, great. So part of the problem with HR communication, especially at the enterprise level, is it ends up being easy to ignore, right? Like, here's another update on my 401 enrollment period, like this isn't great. So if you think about the story that they want to hear, if they want to see the impact, a lot of great storytelling is about show me, don't tell me. So stop trying to tell me stuff and start trying to show me stuff, and that will immediately change the lens with which you're working towards changing the way you communicate with the employees at the organization. So the other thing you can do is really think about, you know, just kind of think about it as if it were a speech instead of an email or a memo, you know. Like, think about what you would actually tell people to inspire them and then to tell them why they need to change and then get really practical, but then don't forget to reinspire them. You've really got to kind of think about the structure of the communication less than the communication. So that's where I'd start, I think. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

To look for the right stories.

Yeah, yeah. No, that's, that's a great, that's a great beginning. And there are so many great stories to tell. I had the pleasure of being at SHRM, which, you know, is the big HR conference, for the past couple years. And it's just always, it's not, it's off the beaten trail for me, but it's always so interesting to hear just all the different techniques. So that's awesome. I have a question from our good buddy JS Gilbert. Hey JS, so glad you can join us today.

Hey JS.

He says, a recent study by Havas Media says that in Europe and the US, people would not care if 92% of brands disappeared. He's curious as to what your response is to this statistic.

I think— okay, so first of all, JS, it's a great statistic and I think it's 100% true. I mean, we live in a world where you're multi-branded, right? Like, you know, in the old days you could define yourself by just a few brands that you really had a passion for and that, you know, had marketed to you in a way that they became part of the, you know, the kind of the brandscape that you live in. And I think today we interact with so many different brands, we see so many brands. I think I recently heard that it's 10 times as much today as it was 10 years ago. Wow. That's like escalating, it's like a hockey stick. Yeah. So, you know, I think they're absolutely right. There are very few brands I care about anyway, speaking from a personal experience, and I think the brands that are actually driven by a human interaction— Bryan's muted, so I don't think I get my applause— but I think like the brands that have a person who really does push the human element and that you can connect to as a person, that's That's the— those are the brands that I think start to stick out.

I hit it, I was muted.

Yes, oh, I got— alright, well you heard it then.

Yeah, yeah.

Sorry, keep going. So I think those are the brands that start to stand out, they're the brands that are driven by a person or have a personal attachment, and I think it's a great stat, it's really interesting.

Yeah, yeah, okay, so then this actually jumps I think makes an interesting segue into my question from my buddy Mark Babbitt. Mark, thank you so much for joining us today. Always great to see your smiling face. Mark does a lot of work on social good. He says, how do you convince an old-school dinosaur CEO to stop marketing their brand and focus on the social good? What I'm hearing from you in terms of the statistic with branding, it seems like that value add— I know for me, the brands that I care about, they have some sort of value add. So what are your thoughts?

No, I think that's very true. I think, look, if you were trying to convince a CEO, one old-school CEO that's just all about making money, I think you really do have to talk to them about the things they care about. And if you're going to convince them to change their ways, it's about looking at it from their perspective. I will tell you that when I was doing market research to try to figure out how to get the visionaries in every town that I wanted to target with my book to read my book, I asked the CEOs in town what was motivating them. And the last piece of my subtitle is Leave Your Legacy. Why? Because these guys are becoming— they're 55, they're 60, they realize that they've built up a great career, they've got lots of money, but there isn't a statue in the center of town for them. There isn't a building named after them that, and that they've got to make a big impact. So I appeal to— instead of telling them, hey, you can make a great impact on your economy, they don't really care about that. No offense to any CEOs out there. What they care about is getting their name on a statue and having a big building named after them. Yeah. So that's the legacy they want to leave, and that's why I appeal to that piece of their ego to actually get them to read the book and make an impact in their economy and do some good. So remember, you're always talking to a human. You have to get them inspired to actually change their ways by understanding, having empathy for them.

I love it. I love it. Stoke that ego.

That's right.

I love it. I love it. All right, so first of all, I want to say keep those questions coming in. We are now trending nationwide. Great job.

Yeah.

Great job, guys. I love all of you dearly. So Dennis Sullivan, thanks for joining us, Dennis, has a good question. He wants to know, do you have some tips on how to build suspense?

Yes, great question, Dennis. Oh, I love it.

Thank you, Dennis.

Yes, okay, so look, if you want to build suspense, you have to have the end in mind first. So you have to allude to what might happen At the end of this story. Remember at the very beginning of this chat, I was talking about that movie that Breville created essentially called Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead. At the beginning of the movie, you realize that the guy, Joe Cross, the star of the movie, has a rare skin disorder that almost no one else has. He's unbelievably unhealthy, and in a doctor's appointment, the doctor says, look, you've got to change your ways or you might die. Yeah. Okay, that's building suspense because that might happen in the end, right?

Yeah.

You've got to have the end in mind and I have to want to know what's going to happen, so that's the first one. You have to start with the end in mind. The second one is you've actually got to have some emotion attached to the story. It can't be just, you know, if you're telling a case study or if you're, you know, in the HR world trying to convince people to sign up for their 401 or submit their vacation days or their hours, you really have to understand what their perspective is and really understand what emotion you Yeah. And the third one is you've got to have empathy. I have to be able to empathize with those characters that you're telling the story about. And if I don't feel their pain, like back to Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, the movie is specifically about a 45-year-old guy because they wanted to inspire 45-year-old guys to go out and buy a juicer and get healthy. And they had to get inside that person's mind so that when I'm watching it, I want to know what happens It's to me, essentially. I see myself on the screen and I empathize with it, and that helps build suspense all the way through. I want to know how this ends because I see myself in the story. It's emotional, and at the beginning I had the end in mind, which is I feel vulnerable, I don't want to die. Really well-architected suspense, and it's just 3 simple things you can start to think about to get there on your own.

So then I have a personal follow-up question. Yeah. How do you decide, I'm assuming, right, you strategically pick the end. Yes. So they're looking to tell that. How, what goes into the process of strategically picking that ending?

Well, so this is a really good question. I think you want to know the, you want to, in the mind of your audience, you're trying to create a moment of inspiration, a moment where they all of a sudden do something they never expected to do. And if that's the case, you have to ask yourself what outcome will inspire them to do something right now. Yeah. So even when it comes down to getting that CEO who doesn't think he wants to change the world to change the world, you actually have to get him thinking about dying if you want him to get to thinking about leaving a legacy. And that's why you've got to really think about the moment of inspiration. What's going to inspire him to change his mind? Maybe you've got to take him on a walk through a graveyard and show him the dates on the— I don't know what it is, but all of a All of a sudden those things start to tap into his emotion and really elicit that feeling that's going to inspire him to actually act. So you really have got to not just think about the end of the story, but what action you want them to take afterwards, and that's the really powerful part of telling a great story that has suspense. And that's part of the process, is thinking through the action that is a result of the great story you're telling.

It sounds like there's a very strong psychological element.

Oh yeah, in fact Dr. Donald Kahn, who's a famous psychologist, he said, this is a great business lesson by the way guys, he said that reason leads to conclusion while emotion leads to action. So emotion leads to action while reason leads to conclusions. And one of our problems as communicators, I don't care who you are, if it's human to human, one of our issues is that we actually focus— We focus on the logic. We focus more and more on what we're communicating instead of the emotion behind it, and we go through a list of reasons or things that you should or should not do, why you should pick us or why you should change your mind, when in fact it's really simple. Just get them to feel something and you will actually inspire them to act. Create a moment of inspiration with great emotion and you will make a huge difference in this world.

So I have a question. From Sarah K. Walters, thanks so much for joining us, Sarah. So she wants to know, what are your tips for building your personal brand on social and digital? Obviously you've grown, you know, just as Bryan said, you're so multifaceted, right? How do you take this together? What would be some top tips?

So, oh man, I think to build a personal brand in the digital world in general, I think you want to start small. Okay, so I think you want to make an appointment with your audience, just like we've done, right? Like you guys do H2H Chat every Monday afternoon, that is an appointment with the audience. I now know when to tune into you, and it also keeps you accountable. You've got to actually show up on Monday at noon Pacific or 3 Eastern, or you're not holding yourself accountable. It's a really simple way to actually obligate to you creating something of value for your audience every single week or month or quarter, I don't even care what the appointment is, just make it. And the second thing you want to do is create content, create something that's valuable to that audience, that teaches that audience something new, that really does make their day better, their lives better, their business better through that content. And the way I want you to start is not like broadcasting it on Twitter or diving into LinkedIn, I just want you to email it to your existing audience. Most of us overemphasize the opportunity to get more people in the digital world when we haven't even served us the people we already own, our loyalty loop, the people who already love us and already respect us and already trust us for insight and advice. Look, if your audience, the people that already like you, don't think your insight is good enough, don't send it on LinkedIn. You're not adding any value on Twitter, so start there and let those people help you build to the next area. Someone will eventually say, man, you should share this on LinkedIn, you should write a post on LinkedIn, this is so good, the whole world should hear it. Right. you're ready to actually get the next step in your personal branding process. So look, make an appointment with the audience, show up, actually deliver some valuable insight that's going to make a big impact in their life, and start small. Think big, but start small, and start with the loyalty loop, the audience you've already got. I hope that answers your question.

Yeah, no, I think that's very clear. It sounds to me like community listening, identifying your community, listening to your community, getting I assume if you don't get that response after a certain amount of time, maybe you're not saying the right thing.

Yeah, exactly. One of the funny things is storytelling and personal brand building and business building, they're all the same. You have to empathize with the audience you're going after. If you don't understand what they are thinking about every day, you are not going to be one of those 7% of brands that actually stick in people's minds, like from Justin's stat earlier. You've got to really Excuse me, focus on empathizing with your audience. I have to understand how they feel, what they're worried about every morning when they wake up. I can't just shove crap in their face and hope they're going to consume it, and that's what too many people do.

Yeah, yeah.

Sorry. No worries.

Coughing is allowed. It's very, very human.

Okay, I should have muted it.

Yeah, so, you know, mute button, that's where you need it, like right there. So going back to your brandscaping idea or concept really, how do you decide that you found the right partner brand? What are you looking for? People are very freaked out about partnerships.

Yes, you want to just keep 3 things in mind to have a good partner. One, you both have to be looking at it as a long-term relationship. So don't think about it as a sponsorship, like we have an event and I want you to put up our sign. That's not what I'm talking about. You want a long-term relationship. This is a marriage. You're going to work together because you both have a valuable audience that will value what you're going to create. So it has to be long-term. 2, you have to have already tested the value of each other's If you go into it, let's say Bryan says, Andrew, will you email your whole email list, you know, and see if they like H2H chat? Let's say I do that, but my audience hates it, well, that's not going to help Bryan, and it's not a good idea for me to continue to do that, because my audience is going to hate it even more. So you want to make sure that you've already done some quick tests, and that both audiences are valuable to each other, and that they're actually interested in the stuff you're already sharing. And then number 3, I think you want to be honest and open about the goals you both have for the outcomes of each other's audiences. And if you can do those 3 things, you'll actually have a great partnership in mind because it's not short-term. You both already understand the value of each other's audience, and you actually are really ready to share the goals and the outcomes of both of your audiences and the relationship you're building.

So how do you demonstrate the value? of community? Say if you're mid-level, you're trying to sell your CEO on this idea, and you get it, it's like right there, but then again the whole ROI of a single tweet and all those different things. How do you get that? How do you measure?

This is a tough question. I know everybody gets it. I actually try to boil it down to the most simple ROI terms, which to me is the value of a subscriber. So for example, if somebody subscribes to my email list or even my LinkedIn updates or follows me on Twitter, I actually try to attach a dollar amount to my Twitter followers or to my LinkedIn updates, and I actually know that like every time I post something on LinkedIn, an article, not just, not an update actually, but I know that every person that follows me and reads one of those things is worth $90. to me. So it's a really easy way for me to prove revenue per subscriber or revenue per post, and that's the 2 ways that I've always gone after, you know, justifying the return on investment for my time and energy and investing in creating a community that's valuable. The other thing that that does is keeps you honest. Like, all of a sudden, let's say I get 100,000 followers on Twitter, but 75,000 of those are worthless, you'll see my revenue per follower drop to something minuscule, and I'll have a really hard time getting it up. Right. It helps you focus on quality versus quantity from a revenue standpoint, and those are the kinds of things that your senior executives actually care about. Is there value attached to these? If it's costing you more than $90 a follower or a friend to post something on LinkedIn, then you've got to fix that because maybe it's not working.

So you can balance it in terms of that, think about it in terms of a revenue equation.

Yeah.

I, I think so. I think Brian is Brian is nodding.

Brian nodded. Okay, good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I've heard that. I forget who. I, I heard that. That

no wrong one, wrong one. That one, that one.

I feel so sad now. Now I'm sad.

That one. That one.

Success!

This is such an emotional roller coaster.

Up and down and up and down. Alright, so we just have a few minutes left.

Okay, I'm done. I'm done.

I'm

done. I'm done.

Alright, we just have a few minutes left. What would be the biggest— if someone is interested in really thinking through how they can tell their narrative, how they can begin to utilize storytelling, these different things. I know you said, talked about Talking about origin stories, different aspects. What would you suggest someone do? So they end with the— they're done with the chat, what's their next step?

This is terrible, but I'm going to suggest you actually go read some great stories or watch some great stories. And don't just watch them or consume them, but analyze them. So the greatest storytellers I've ever met, including Charles Kurzgesagt, Right. Spend a lot of time reading and watching other programming and actually writing it down in outline format. So it's not like it's an innate ability, you actually have to practice this by looking at the way other people tell stories. So just do this, think about the fact that you're now interested in telling stories that actually build suspense, I don't care if you're watching a sitcom or you're watching something on Netflix, maybe you're watching Daredevil like Bryan and you're binge watching it, I want you to consciously think about how the episode is building suspense. I want you to look for it, and you'll start to see it and then be able to actually synthesize how it works and use it on your own. And you can do this, actually, the more conscious of it you are, the more successful you'll be. You can watch one episode of a sitcom, think about how they build suspense, write it out, draw it out, and then try to apply the kind of pacing they did to your next blog post, and I bet you'll be more successful than you were the day before. Or in telling a better story that actually builds suspense. So my advice to you after the chat is to go watch something. Tell your boss it's for work, but you've got— I've got to watch Daredevil, I'm really busy right now. And that you're learning to build suspense. It will make a big impact, I promise you, in the way you tell stories.

Is that— I really love that. I feel— man, forgive me Twitter audience, have pity if I get this wrong, but was it— I think it was Ben Franklin Was it Benjamin Franklin who taught himself to write books by copying books?

Oh, that might be.

I'm not positive.

As a scribe?

Yeah, yeah, or just wanting to understand the greats, so just writing it through, trying to think through everything. I'm pretty sure that was right, but I know that there was someone great like that, and I love that concept because it's all there, right?

It's all there. This is not new stuff, and it really does seem like an art. It's an art, but there's much more science behind it, and it's pretty easy if you just start dissecting it and looking for it yourself. And I mean, there are tons of great books on how to tell a great story, but I think it's easier than that. You already know what a great story is. You're just having trouble applying what you see and you've consumed and you understand to the work you're doing. But just consciously make that gap, you know, close that gap. Your partner, your wife or your husband is going to be annoyed when you're like, wait, No way. I think they're building suspense right here. I gotta pay attention.

Awesome, awesome. Well, thank you so much. This has been— No problem. This has been a fantastic chat. Thank you. You've been a great guest. Thank you guys.

Thanks, Suzy.

BK, over to you.

All right. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate you being on with us today, Andrew. Last question. This is the hardest question of Boom! Where can people find you?

Oh, you can find me on Twitter, it's the best way to find me. I'm @DrewDavis here. I'm pretty active, so if you need me, you can certainly get me there. You can find my speaking schedule at aka.drewdavis.com. So if you're— I always love to meet people when I'm on the road because it is lonely. So if you're in a city that I'm going to be in, please let me know, just reach out on Awesome,

man. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And we will— we have tweeted away at all your resources and links, but if anyone out there needs to get more, just, you know where to find us. Just tweet us. And other than that, we will see you next week. Suzy, do you have an update as to what's coming up next week?

We will be unveiling the name tomorrow on Twitter.

Okay, building suspense. That's exactly what I'm talking about right there.

And then tomorrow we'll tell you the last name on Wednesday.

I think it's very true. And then the Twitter handle on Thursday.

This is it, raising anticipation.

And ladies and gentlemen, on Friday, the unveil. Okay, so thank you guys so much, really appreciate it. We're out of time. We will see you again next Monday, noon Pacific Standard Time. Figure out the time if you're somewhere else, and we'll see you soon. Cheers!

3 PM Eastern. Bye guys, make it a good week.