How Guerrilla Marketing Evens the Marketing Playing Field with Stephen Monaco

All right, we are just about there. The thing about going live is there's always a couple-second delay.

Sure, latency.

Just about there. The thing about going live is there's— see, and you also get to hear yourself 2 times. How wonderful is that? I'm gonna just share this into the group and we are gonna be ready to go. Here we go, here we go, here we go. So Courtney, how are you doing today?

I'm doing great. How are you doing today?

Doing fantastic. Tell me about your, uh, your week. You having a great week? You excited for the, the week ahead?

I'm really excited for the week ahead. We, uh, had a great weekend and we're coming up on a long weekend. But I'm more shocked that it's, uh, gonna be September on Friday. So that's crazy.

Yes, yes, the summer is almost over. We had a week— uh, sorry, we had almost a month off of HHA Chat, and I do have to say I missed it so much. Um, but we're gonna, we're gonna have some fun because we've, we've just started it back up again here, what, a week ago? And, uh, now we're back in our second week of the new season. Um, and we're here with Steven Monaco.

Round 2 with Steven Monaco.

Round 2. And see, he's— he is on video. This is extra bonus points for all of us because we've made that happen. Couldn't be more excited. See that? Take your notes. And action. So exciting to be here, um, especially with such a wonderful person. We've had such a great time here off camera in just the green room for the last half an hour. getting to catch up with and talk with Stephen. And it's just been really nice to get to know you over the years. Here, I'm gonna talk about you like you're not really there, but— We all know he's sitting there waiting for his turn to talk. And before I do give him that time, 'cause you're gonna hear a lot of great stuff over the next hour, I wanna give a proper introduction to him just so that you know who he is. He is a really forward-thinking marketing strategist and consultant. Who serves as a fractional CMO. So we're going to talk about that a little bit to small, small and mid-sized companies. Yeah, it's, it's kind of like timeshares. You can, you can get portions of him, right? Monaco has— Monaco— Steven has over 25 years of executive-level experience and is internationally recognized as a digital marketing pioneer for being one of the first to engage consumers directly via online communities. So that's kind of interesting. We're going to talk about that a little bit. That is the title. We're actually talking about that a lot. How Guerrilla Marketing Evens the Marketing Playing Field. There's a lot to discuss in guerrilla marketing, especially these days. Everything has changed. The whole playing field has changed. Now, just so you know, this isn't just some guy we pulled off the street. He is totally credible from this standpoint. He helped us start a company With his creative marketing prowess and guerrilla marketing tactics, driving force behind the world's best-selling PC data communication software of all time, the global brand Procom, which had over 70% market share. Stephen defined company strategies and successfully led his company DataStorm Tech from a raw startup through 40 consecutive quarters of profitable growth. Say that 10 times. Profitable growth of $50 million in annual revenue. Through its acquisition for $71 million by its publicly traded company, which was then purchased by Symantec. Now, the reason I bring that up is because it was built and sold through guerrilla marketing tactics. That's the important part. This wasn't just a company that actually leveraged social media. Well, that wasn't around back then. He had to actually use his marketing prowess to make that happen. And we're going to talk about that as well. Now, he has a lot of other credentials that I could go on and on and on about. Like the one I'll mention is being the global top 100 chief marketing officers to follow on Twitter.

Wow.

And again, the list goes on. He's done incredible things like working for Warner Brothers Television. Courtney's jealous now. International TV Distribution Burbank and Creative Communications Group in Dallas. And again, the list goes on. So Stephen, thank you so much. Really honored to have you here to talk about this. I think it's a really important topic. Just a really quick shout out to some of the people that have joined us here. We have Theresa Ann, we have Mitch Jackson, we have Patricia, we have Dee O'Leary, we have Samantha Kelly all the way over in Ireland. I believe it's Ireland. And I always, I always want to say one of the UK companies— countries, but Ireland is its own country. So, and we have all kinds of other people that are joining us. Thank you. Welcome, everybody. And welcome, Stephen. How are you doing today?

I'm doing great. Thank you so much, Bryan and Courtney, for having me on. I'm honored

Well, we're honored to have you here, and I am hoping that you can tell everybody just a little bit about this one really, really, really the core concept behind guerrilla marketing. Just for those people who don't maybe understand the concept or they are just hearing it for the first time, what is guerrilla marketing in your— what's like a nice summary of that?

To me, guerrilla marketing is using nontraditional or somewhat unorthodox strategies and tactics to level the playing field so that small companies, startup companies, can go head-to-head with huge corporations and conglomerates and literally level the playing field and attack them head-on or from the, you know, flank them from the side. But to get in and get your product or service traction, get brand advocates, get sales Just, you know, if you don't have a lot of money and you're a startup or early-stage company, guerrilla tactics work and strategies work extremely well against those huge other type of gorilla, the 800-pound gorilla companies that might intimidate you. You using guerrilla tactics, you can go after those companies and make real inroads and have success.

Yeah, well, the best part about guerrilla marketing that I absolutely love is the fact that it's low-cost, high-impact, and in order to do that, you have to be thinking super strategically. So, you know, I would love— we were talking before we started here about the sort of psychology of guerrilla marketing, and I would love to hear You know, having out-strategized your competition, like not just any competition, like the M-word, Microsoft competition. Give us a little bit of insight into the strategy behind guerrilla marketing.

Okay, I'm happy to. Well, first I should preface this by saying Courtney and Bryan well know me. I'm a very gentle soul. Kind of a big teddy bear type of guy. I am not a warmonger type of person, but I did read a lot of military strategy books and like The Art of War in the early stages of ProCom's coming to market and literally used those strategies and tactics almost verbatim. You know, if you think about warfare and think of business being, or competition being your enemy and wanting to take the high ground and that type of thing and chip away at their position, you know, in their castles and with moats around it and stuff like that. If you think about like the movie The Patriot about the American Revolution, the way the British wanted to fight, which was a gentlemanly kind of way on the battlefield and the way that our patriots fought was very different. I mean, they hid behind trees, they popped up out of fields and stuff and picked off the officers to cause chaos amongst the ranks and stuff. I mean, that's what I think of when I think of guerrilla stuff. So we're not actually killing people. We're trying to beat our competition and we're trying to make inroads into the market and position our product and get it in front of as many people as possible. And an important point here is that to get it in front of many people as possible, to get the feedback from the market about what they want, what they don't want, what they like, what they don't like, what they value. If you know what, if you know what people value and are looking for in a product or service and really listen to them, and I mean listen, not feigning listening while you're waiting to talk, but listen, then your odds of having a product that is Embraced and adopted rapidly go up, you know, exponentially rather than if you just come up with, okay, I've got the next best mousetrap, I think, or we believe that internally drinking our own Kool-Aid. If you, you know, part of marketing is part of marketing's responsibility is voice a customer, and you need to have excellent contact with the with. Customers and pre-customer people who are thinking about being customers so that, again, so that you can understand what it is they value and what they're looking for so that you can put those offerings or build those things into the offering so that they will embrace your offering rather than just, you know, throw something against the wall to see if it sticks.

I like that term pre-customer instead of prospects. That's a little bit more assumptive close.

Well, I wasn't thinking along the lines of presumptive, you know, or assumptive close. I was thinking about the types of calls that companies get, or nowadays, you know, on social, the questions people ask. I mean, they're evaluating your product. So rather than think of them as like, well, you're not a customer, you know, what's your registered— what's your serial number? Are you registered? You know, what— that kind of stuff. The mindset that these are pre-sales calls that people are evaluating and, and seriously considering making a purchase. They're past the awareness stage.

Mm-hmm.

So they're evaluating. So they're— I mean, they are prospects, but they're also hot prospects. So, um, the idea of ignoring them or saying, well, you're not a paying customer, sorry, I think is ridiculous. Because if you can answer their questions to see if it is a fit for them, Then, you know, they may become— they feel, you know, they very well may become customers.

Yeah. So, all right. So listening is a brand's superpower. And can you help us understand, at least maybe from your story or a story that you've observed, how does listening parlay itself into guerrilla marketing tactics? Or campaigns, or—

Um, well, I can think about campaigns. I mean, something jumps to mind much more readily when I think about campaigns. Um, I mean, it's the same thing, not to be redundant, but to, to come up with advertising and marketing, be it, you know, print or collateral or digital, you know, nowadays digital something that resonates based on listening to what people want and what they don't want, what they value. I mean, value, that's the key thing in my mind, is if you can understand what people value, I mean, you're halfway there, you're more than halfway there. And if you— I don't want to belabor this, but it's important. If you are that in touch with people that are in your niche, that are customers, especially prospective customers, Then you have a feel for the market itself. And if you can keep your finger on the pulse of the market, then you can anticipate needs. And that way, you're based on listening, you can build products— I'm sorry, features and things into your product or services that you know are going to be embraced. So, so when it comes to campaigns and stuff, You were— I used to use that for like part of the creative instead of just going to a creative director and saying, you know, here's our product, yada yada. Talk in the terms that— talk to people in the terms that they are speaking, like speak their language, if that makes sense. And Sometimes we would do things like you, and it wasn't contrived. I mean, this was true. It's like you spoke or we listened. So those were those were pretty good hooks. Not in not in print so much, but in direct mail, like upgrade the upgrade. You know, you had new product rev, and you you mail your million plus customers with direct mail and. That was the hook, literally. I mean, this was, this was, you know, old school, long form, direct response copy type of things. I mean, that's the campaign that I'm thinking of. That was the hook. And again, it wasn't contrived. It was you spoke, we listened. Here are the features you asked for. Here's what's in the new version. You know, upgrade now for $39. Yeah,

well, you would think that listening seems like something that's super easy, but it's a skill that needs to be really exercised and honed. Like you said, really listening, not just waiting for the other person to stop talking.

I think so many people do that and companies do that, is that, you know, they have something in mind that they want to say and they've got that message that, you know, they worked on with their marketing team and their PR firm or whatever. And they've got that megaphone mentality still, even in this day and age, and they want to be heard when You know, the consumers don't want to hear everything a brand has to say. They want— they, the consumers, want to be heard.

Yeah.

And they want to be listened to. And it's hard to put into words how much value there is in recognizing people and literally like asking them to collaborate. Help us help you. Like, what do you want in this product? And, you know, it seems so commonsensical to me, and it kind of amazes me how many companies don't do that. Like, they— I don't know if it's their egos that get in the way or what, but they, you know, that sort of collaboration, asking customers and likely customers to help you shape your offering Is— I mean, it's just, it's kind of a no-brainer to me.

So I'm curious if you can give an example of a way that you have used or you've seen guerrilla marketing work in your career and work really well.

Well, the story about beating Microsoft as a very raw startup going against a company, you know, one of the largest companies in the world, certainly the largest software company at the time. They had a product, a data communication product, which had an excellent name, I believe, which was called Access.

Mm-hmm.

And a lot of people might scratch their head and go, wait, Access, that's their database program. And it seems like they've sort of scrubbed the internet and Wikipedia. I can find no instances That reference Access as a data communication product in '86, '87, up into the '90s. I'm serious. So they did a strategic withdrawal from that niche because they couldn't compete, no matter how much money they spent on ads and marketing and development funds and co-op with the distributors. They could not get the traction that we had, so they took that product. away, strategic withdrawal, put the name Access on a shelf, left it there for 5 or 6 years, then acquired a database company. I forgot the name of it. And that became— they gave the Access name to that product, had a standalone database product. And as you know, they folded it into their Office suite. But, you know, going after them in that That style that I referred to regarding like the movie The Patriot and American— we just, you know, they're so big and lumbering. Their ability to turn on a dime and react to what the market wanted, it's just not part of them. When you're a lumbering giant bound in red tape, you can't react rapidly like you need to, to present offerings to consumers that they'll embrace. So, you know, picking away at them was, was fun. I mean, it was really, it was really fun. And there was another company called DCA, which was part of a— they were a subsidiary of a big Fortune 500 company based in Atlanta. And they were the market leader and their product was called Crosstalk. And we used to do all sorts of guerrilla tactics against them too. And frankly, to demoralize— besides in the market to the competitor themselves, to demoralize them and get into, like we were talking about, Courtney, before we went live, the psychological aspect, or psyops as it's referred to in the military, getting into the heads of the employees and the executives there was something that we did. Often. And, you know, it's just like in battle, if you can break your enemy's will to fight, that helps you a lot. So we used to— can I give a specific example or two?

Yes, please.

Okay. So these weren't, again, these weren't in the marketplace proper. This was stuff that we did. I used to have t-shirts made. Blessed to be a very creative person and also have business acumen, which people used to say, gosh, how are you both? I was like, I don't know. When people talk about thinking outside the box, I remember in like my teen years, people said, you really think outside the box. And I understood in context what they meant. But at the same time, I'm going, what box? I mean, never occurred to me that your thoughts and ideas could be constrained in some sense. So Like, where's the box? I don't see it. Um, sorry folks, I might— I'm having a tough allergy day here, so I've not been hanging out

so much that it's making you weep. That's what it is.

Well, if we keep talking about, uh, marketing, I'm so passionate, but I will start like foaming at the mouth and stuff. But I just want our audience to know that I haven't been hanging with Cheech and Chong. I just— I'm— ragweed is high, uh, and I'm, I'm struggling with my voice and my Swollen eyes. Let me open those.

So you're human.

Okay, so, um, I am human and glad to be. Aren't you? Aren't you glad to be human as opposed to like an aardvark or something? So my example, uh, it wasn't really a tangent. I was just thinking about thinking outside the box. It's just something I, I do. So I had our in-house graphic artist make some t-shirts with the competitor's software box, their packaging smashed like it was laying flat and had a tire track running across it. And if you looked at the tread on the tire track very closely, it was the Procom logo, that tiny, tiny logos that made up the tread. And we would send the— we would mail the t-shirts to individual people. They weren't just, you know, sent willy-nilly, so to speak. We had the names of people and the t-shirts said stuff like ProCom kicks Crosstalk's sorry ass on the t-shirt. And

I

don't— do y'all remember, do y'all remember the days of COMDEX? I know I'm a dinosaur in the industry. Do you remember the trade show, the huge computer trade show COMDEX?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay, so COMDEX was in Vegas And then 6 months later, it would be in another city. They always rotated the other city 6 months later. One year it was in Atlanta, and that's where Crosstalk was based. So we sent a bunch of employees to that COMDEX, and in the middle of the night, they went to Crosstalk's headquarters, and they're all dressed in commando-style, you know, paramilitary attire. and we're like climbing on their building and stuff. Like, we have— we've taken over your building. And then sending photos to them of us on their, you know, on their turf was, was fun. And like I referred to, uh, prior to us going live, that, you know, in 2017, you know, that might be considered domestic terrorism, which it wasn't. We didn't do anything, um, You know, we didn't deface anything. There was no graffiti. We were just showing them like, we're on your castle walls, we're on the roof of your, your building. So were we trespassing? Yeah. Was it harmless? To us it was. To, you know, to what it did to their psyches, I, I don't know. I'm not a psychologist or a psychiatrist, but, um, it didn't bode well. It didn't bode well in their minds that we were literally on their turf.

And just to, just to pause for a quick second, anyone who is on right now watching with us, I see a bunch of people. Dee O'Leary, Patricia, Samantha, Jennifer Quinn, Mitch Jackson. There's a bunch more people here that I'm not seeing, but let's see, Aldo, Katarina, Christy. Hi, Christy. Anybody that wants to jump on and ask a question or even talk about your guerrilla marketing and how you've seen it work. Hey, Samantha, if you'd like to jump on video and actually share also your experience with Stephen or ask him a question, feel free to do so. Just hit yes, or I'd love to be— love to jump on video and I can invite you on there. Gosh, hang on, I need lipstick. Okay, let us know when you're ready and I will pull you on to video so you can You can join the conversation because we'd love to have more conversations, more people, more, more awesome conversation around this great topic. There's a lot of different ways. Um, uh, let's see, Teresa just asked, any ideas for a larger real estate brokerage that you've seen work, or any ideas around companies like that, uh, that can use, uh, guerrilla marketing tactics?

Hmm, nothing comes to mind regarding real— I've never worked in the real estate market.

So you're in luck, I have.

My wife's a realtor. Michelle's a very successful realtor.

Oh, cool.

But, um, I don't really get in— I don't really get involved in that stuff.

Yeah, no, I, I've, I've been in, um, actually I used to do marketing for real estate, uh, as a consultant. And, um, Christy's on here too. She's a— she's in the real estate business, um, so she may actually have some ideas for you, Teresa. Um, but One of the things that I know works really, really well is when you actually have— you arm each and every one of your salespeople with the right tools. And so oftentimes I see people not actually arming them with the right tools, the right way to build a landing page, the way to build all the stuff around the property or around the mortgage, and then able to actually teach them how to use social media. Most, most people don't know how to use social. So anyway, there's some, there's some ideas if you want more specific things. I mean, it's such a big question. I'm sure we could come up with even more specific ways. But so, Stephen, what— where do you see guerrilla marketing going?

That's a good question. There's so many platforms now that didn't exist before as far as You know, social media and stuff, there's a lot of ways to do guerrilla in that regard.

I don't— consider this, if the definition is the low cost, high impact, I would definitely say that social media is a great place that someone could run a crazy campaign. I think, I know, well, This is not to be self-serving, but it popped up on my feed with our whole 90 Days to Ellen thing, which ended about, you know, I think it was 3 years ago or something today-ish. But yeah, that's like, you know, almost anyone can come up with an idea for a campaign, and as long as you're consistent with it and you can enroll a lot of people behind you, those things can be really super impactful.

So true. I mean, I've been doing social so long, I guess I kind of forget about it as far as, you know, where things are going. But gosh, you can, you can make such impact. And the cost, you know, Courtney, the, just the textbook or dictionary definition that you mentioned of guerrilla, gosh, social really fits into that because it, you know, it doesn't cost much money at all. I mean, a Twitter account doesn't cost anything, but having the personnel on, you know, to do things in live or pseudo-live. You know, there's an expense there, but it's, it's a, it's an investment, you know. I mean, you need to be on social, you need to have a presence. To me, not being on social, the platforms that make sense to your brand depending on the, you know, what you're offering is, is almost like, you know, back in like '99 when you didn't have a website. Yeah. You'd hand someone your business card and they'd look at it and Say, you know, there's your cell number. It's like, where do you have a website? And the people would like sheepishly look down at their feet, kind of in shame. Like, no, we don't have a website yet. It's like, what?

Website shaming.

Yeah, you don't, you don't exist if you don't have a website. I mean, you have no, you have no internet presence. And I think the same is very much true today with social. I mean, you've got to have a presence, not necessarily every platform. And in fact, certainly not every platform. but the ones that, the ones that make sense for, for your niche.

Yeah.

Let's see, Dan, Dan, sorry, Mitch Jackson asked, I'm trying to see if we can get Samantha on as well. And Samantha, I just went ahead and invited you onto the show. So I

see Samantha, the one waiting for lipstick.

Yeah.

Yes, there she is.

I'm going to take the opportunity to put on some ChapStick. It's a human moment. There. Hi, Samantha.

Are we getting some sound? Samantha, go ahead and say something. Let me see if we got— got you here. Nope, not yet.

Not yet.

Oh, cool. Mitch, Mitch would pop on right after Samantha here. So we got another, another person lined up. There could be with an audio— it's not on the It's not on Crowdcast side. It looks like your audio is on here. Just make sure that you have the right microphone plugged in. Hi, Katarina. Good to see you. Let's see. So she's going to reconnect. And while she's reconnecting, I was just gonna— let's keep the conversation going with Stephen. We'll see as soon as her audio jumps on, we'll know it.

Sure.

So, uh, we— it's gonna become loud and clear. So, um, so Stephen, we— you were saying like the, the stuff that's coming with, um, the stuff that's coming with guerrilla marketing, I actually would love to entertain or put in the idea, um, that maybe things are cyclical, like bell-bottoms are back kind of thing, where, um—

Wouldn't that be fun?

Yeah, so I kind of— I've seen them and I've seen people wearing bell-bottoms, and I wonder too if direct mail isn't, um, you know, shouldn't be and isn't popular again. When you, when you look at how much mail we get in our mailbox, it's like almost nothing compared to what it used to be, right?

Right.

It used to be that you'd walk in with, you know, you'd walk in with so many different, uh, pieces. All right, we, we'll get you next time. Uh, Mitch, I'm gonna, I'm gonna pop you on here. we'd walk in with so much mail that it was, it was unbelievable, right? But now there's not, not nearly as much mail that we bring in. And yet nobody's really taking advantage of that, like sending people a piece of mail, especially like something handwritten. I mean, don't get me started on that. But, you know, do you think that— yeah, Jennifer Quinn, right? Bell-bottoms are back.

So they were too.

So, so do you think that traditional marketing, things like that, demand gen in actually targeting Your mailbox is something that we should be taking advantage of?

Absolutely. I mean, without, without a doubt, without any hesitation. You know, our, our inboxes, as far as email is concerned, are so cluttered. There's so much junk mail, literally, and, and things that aren't relevant to us. In this day and age, what you can do with personalized direct mail is— I mean, direct mail is actually making a resurgence because we're We're happy to get something in the mail now that is not a bill, that is addressed to us and is relevant to something that we have shown an interest in. And that's— I don't want to say it's delightful, but it's a pleasant surprise. It's better than a bill. I don't know if you're familiar with— do y'all know Dan Kennedy or familiar with Dan Kennedy?

Maybe. Tell me a little bit more. Jog my memory.

Glazer Kennedy. He's a partner in Glazer Kennedy. He's a He goes back to— he's an old school— I mean, he's an elderly man. He goes back to old school direct mail, direct response mail, and was one of the main copywriters when— or the go-to copywriter when infomercials became a thing.

Hmm.

And oh my gosh, I mean, the success that he has had and that he teaches about this very thing about About getting a physical thing in the mail, especially if you use something kind of gimmicky or, you know, besides the letter, there's something in there. You know, he sends things, it depends on what the offer is, but he sends things like, you know, like a little plastic goldfish, a cookie, like a chocolate chip cookie, things like that that are like the hook. You know, they're the hook to— you know, whatever, like to the headline.

So you got to be careful about that though, because I had, uh, when we had our, our agency, I had what I called my fail ledge. And like anytime I would get something really cheesy or stupid in the mail, like a freebie— one time I got a, it was a can, an empty can of Spam, but in the mail it had gotten damaged and the, and the lid had started to come off. So not only was it crushed when I got it, I was like, are you trying to kill me with this like soup Yeah,

botulism in

the spleen. And then I also got an oar in the mail, like an actual-sized oar for a kayak. Now I remember getting it, I don't remember who sent it to me. It was like—

That's really interesting.

I remember one time we used to send out car wax, um, saying that, you know, everything needs polishing. Um, and

wait, let's be clear, we didn't—

this is in my last agency. And on the bottle, on the car wax label, it said flammable, can't be thrown out. And so they couldn't throw it out, and it had our brand on the label. So it was like they were stuck staring at our brand the whole day. So yeah, it worked. It really worked.

Those things really can work. And you think about the cost of It's like sending an oar or a paddle. I mean, that's an expensive piece. Um, I'm, I'm kind of surprised that you don't remember who it was unless you just weren't— I mean, they targeted you poorly. If you weren't a kayaker or into canoeing or whatever, you'd think that you'd have your, um, you know, you think you'd have your, your list more dialed in before you spent—

Something stupid like if you find yourself up a creek without a paddle

Yeah.

I can help you. And I was like, no.

Hey, hey Mitch, how are you doing? And let's double-check your audio to see if you're coming in okay.

I'm doing fantastic. Can you guys hear me okay?

Yep, we can hear you good.

It's good to see you guys, by the way.

Good to see you.

Great topic, Stephen. Love guerrilla marketing and, you know, the shock and awe packages. I think, I think they're really effective, especially if they're chocolate-covered strawberries. When I get those in, the oars, Courtney, I would not remember that either. You send me something to drink or something to eat, I'm gonna remember that and do business with you. I have a couple of questions if that's okay. Sure. And I posted one on Twitter, Stephen, but while I'd been watching, I had another follow-up. My first question had to do with live video, live streaming, and professionals, doctors, dentists, people like that. What's your favorite guerrilla marketing technique for live videos, whether it's on Periscope, Facebook Live, Maybe Instagram Live, have you seen something unique or unusual? And then I do have a follow-up question if you guys don't mind.

I think that Facebook Live is really an up-and-comer. You know, I think that it's pretty awesome. As far as unique or unusual—

Or that you'd recommend.

I mean, the people that I see do it and do it really well are professionals in the space. Like Joel Comm. And but I haven't seen anything. I haven't seen anything, you know, that had like a tremendous hook from people outside of the professionals that espouse, you know, live streaming.

I feel like the people who, even amateurs who want to even just take a, take a go at like a live event, You know, whether it's a concert or, you know, a trade show or whatever, I mean, that would be a great thing to do if no one is doing it, even if you're at like a stupid boring trade show and you're trying to even drive traffic to your booth, you know, what better way than to hop on to live video and give people even like a live product demo or interview some people that are coming by and ask them what their favorite thing at the event is. And that kind of led me to the real-time marketing question, which I feel like real-time marketing is absolutely a guerrilla tactic.

That's what I was going to ask about.

Oh, I read your mind,

Mitch. Well, it's not hard to do.

I only have $500.

It's not hard to do. I don't think that's true, Mitch.

But so, for example, maybe real live video when Bryan was giving his TED Talk. Maybe live video behind the scenes before he was going on. How was he preparing? What's his demeanor? Was he nervous? Was he excited? Was he getting hugs? Was he doing push-ups? I mean, whatever.

I know, I can tell you because I was there.

You know what I'm saying? And then that might be—

I was peeing my pants.

I was following him around with a mop and a towel.

Once again, you know, and so that, Bryan, is shock and awe right there. But I mean, that might be one approach that would be interesting for me watching, you know, one of the professional professions we talked about. I guess my follow-up is real-time marketing. I'm a huge fan, Stephen, of newsjacking, something that David Merriman Scott talks about a lot. Sure. But doing it in a way that's positive, adding value to the story, your unique professional spin to what's going on. Having said that, have you used guerrilla marketing in the real-time or newsjacking arenas? And once again, if so, maybe something that blew you away, something that you've watched somebody do, you know, that other people haven't thought about, all the above.

I haven't done it personally. I'm very keen on it. I've written a number of articles on it and been interviewed about it. The company that set the bar, in my opinion, for real-time was Oreo when they did the— when the The Super Bowl was in New Orleans and the power went out.

Right.

And they did a thing that was so organic and so quick that was about— I forgot the actual hashtag, but it was—

It was you

can't dunk in the dark. It was dunk in the dark.

Yeah.

That it was okay to dunk in the dark. And the fact that they were able to— I read into the backstory how that came about. You know, they were there, they were at the event. The people that were the decision makers were there. So they could quickly and organically roll with the creative guy's idea. They got the approvals and stuff. And I've seen a number of companies try to do that, but it's like, that is, that's the bar, you know, that's the— so I'll give you an example of someone who's done it horribly, if I may. Kenneth Cole, the shoe company. When Kenneth Cole himself tweets, he does a, he signs them with -KC. So, you know, it's him. Most of them aren't him, but going back a handful of years ago to what we now know is called the Arab Spring, when there was an uprising in Cairo and the Egyptian government said, you know, everything's fine. Well, we're seeing on Twitter, we're seeing all these live video streams of the police and the state, you know, doing things to— bad things, you know, violent things to citizens, and it's like Okay, Egyptian government, you can, you know, you can say what you want, but we can see this from 10 or 12 different video streams live on Twitter. Like, there's something going on. Well, Kenneth Cole saw that Cairo was trending as a hashtag. So Kenneth Cole brand had a shoe called the Cairo. So he started tweeting about that and signing it with his dash KC. That was a huge fail. I mean, if you're going to try to jump on a real-time thing, you ought to at least take 2 minutes to get the relevance and find out why is this, why is this trending, why is this important to people. That really was a slap in the face for, for him and the brand.

Mm-hmm.

Because they were like, oh dude, I mean, you're capitalizing on these people's, you know, Yeah, the abuse, the abuse of the, you know, the humanity and stuff. You're going to try to sell shoes based on this? There was another company, um, do y'all remember when, um, the awful, uh, shooting in the suburb of Denver in Aurora, Colorado? The guy that went into the movie theater?

Yeah.

So, um, Aurora was trending and there was a company, they were in the UK, I don't remember, it was a small retail company like ladies dresses and things like that. And they had— it was a similar thing to the Kenneth Cole story. They had a dress called the Aurora. And so they started tweeting it and showing pictures of it and stuff. And that was even worse. I mean, it wasn't as widespread as Kenneth Cole because they don't have— they didn't have as many followers. But that was a horrific thing, you know. So again, relevance is important, you know. I mean,

It's the context. It's, it's a two-edged sword. It's a two-edged sword. You got to make sure you use it correctly, right?

Exactly. I mean, it's, it is really easy to tarnish your brand, and it's really a hard thing to overcome and gain the trust of people who you alienated by doing something really stupid.

Yeah, well, let's— so it is risky, and I think that, that, that's something worth talking about because You mentioned the Oreo example, which the reason why that was successful is because their teams were present, they were organized, and they were empowered, right? They had the people who were the decision makers in that group to empower their team to make these real-time decisions. So if you're a big brand, how do you go about doing that?

And Mitch, you're welcome to stay on if you want. I

don't know if you had to— I was just typing to you. I don't want to take up the seat because I know other people. I'm willing to stay on because this fascinates me. And Courtney, a good example of real-time newsjacking is if I was selling flat-bottom boats right now, or even generators, I wouldn't be jumping on the tragic, tragic Harvey hurricane situation, right? It's just not appropriate. However, if I was involved with the American Red Cross, or if I was involved with Rotary International, and they were putting together, you know, support financing or teams that were going down there, you could be interviewing them staging, you know, leaving California to travel to Texas to help. You could maybe, you know, behind-the-scenes live broadcast. I think something like that's interesting and it adds value, but you don't want to— you don't want to approach these things the wrong way. And if anybody wants to jump on, just let Bryan and Courtney know.

Mitch, I couldn't agree with you more.

I just want to make sure, just in case anybody else did want to

And I think you bring up a really good point, Mitch, though, too, because if, if you're doing it with the intention of selling your product, like, you're— it's for selfish reasons. Yeah,

and it's so insensitive.

It's so— it's terrible. It, it is. But if you're doing it to show your values, say filming yourself behind the scenes because you want to take a whole truckload of flat-bottom boats down to Houston to try to save some of these people, that's different. That's showing that you value helping and you know that you have a solution that you want to get to this place where they desperately need it. I think that that's something different and will— it will connect people to you and your brand. And if you, if you sell some boats, great, but I bet if they don't, then that's fine too because they're helping people.

Do you guys all remember the Bat Kid? in San Francisco?

Yes, yes.

It was a Make-A-Wish Foundation. This was a wish. It was a wish of a little boy who had leukemia that he wanted to be Batman for the day. And this was probably the most viral— I can't say that for certain, but I know it was one of the most viral Make-A-Wish Foundation wishes. It went crazy because they didn't just meet it. An entire city, City of San Francisco, got behind it. And it went— they actually had maps on that day following him from place to place to place for him pitching at the Giants Stadium or getting into the Batmobile and going to different places. And people were on the streets cheering as he went by. It was just like, man, it had me in tears. Yeah. And you look at stuff like that and really all the— when you pinpoint what actually made that go viral, it was one person who wrote a blog about this little boy's wish. And from there, everyone wanted to be a part of it. And so that's the power, I think, of content and what content can do to share, you know, this little boy's dream and make it go, go viral. It was impressive.

You know,

that's a cool story.

Sharing positive stories is so much, I think, more effective and safer. And, and as you guys know, I was on stage, um, Stephen, a couple of weeks ago with David Marin Scott at the, um, Tony Robbins Business Mastery, uh, event in Las Vegas. And one of the things you guys— David stressed was You know, you probably want to avoid natural disasters. You want to avoid negative stories if you can, and then you want to learn how to use real-time newsjacking before you try to use it.

Yeah.

You know, understand the power just like anything else. And, uh, but I think a lot of people go out there and they shoot themselves in the foot—

They do.

Or feet before they realize the power of this. And, uh, but you guys, thanks for having me on. This was fun. And Great conversation. I'm going to keep watching while I'm finishing my lunch. And Courtney and Bryan, it's always good to see you guys.

Good to see you too, man.

Thank you, Stephen. All right, thank you.

Thank you. And, you know, so Stephen, how, how we met is you were one of our IBM influencers, part of the New Way to Work influencer program that we ran, and we invited you to come and be a part of our influencer team. And like newsjacking, we also were asking our influencers to help hack hashtags at events, you know. So in a very similar fashion, I think that the tenets are very parallel where you, you have to do it in a way where you're not saying anything negative about the content. You're not you know, trying to take away from the main message of whatever that conference was, but instead add to it in a way that you can also sort of not, I guess, monopolize the conversation, but in a very educational way on social. So, you know, asking our influencers to tweet out with our specific hashtag in addition to whatever the conference hashtag was allowed us to make our presence known that we were there and help educate the audience that was there too, because our influencers all had, you know, a great perspective in their related fields.

Well, it does, it does a great job in amplifying the message as well. When those tweet chats would, would go on, or still do go on as I continue to participate in that stuff, you know, when it, when it gets to the point where it's trending on Twitter, I mean, they get really excited. Because they're making a lot of— they're creating a lot of buzz and raising awareness, and that's cool.

Yeah.

One thing that Mitch said, um, that I wanted to touch on— it's okay that he's already off— but the behind-the-scenes stuff, people love that. I don't know about, you know, how Bryan would have felt about being seen behind the scenes prior to doing a TED Talk. I've never done a TED, but I've spoken to, I don't know, like 1,000 people is the largest audience, and You know, I think of the old adage from Mark Twain that there's 2 types of public speakers: those who are nervous and those who are liars. I mean, it's, you know, when you have a big audience, it's scary. It doesn't matter, you know, maybe to some who speak constantly, you know, that they just get butterflies in their stomach rather than, you know, wet their pants, like Brian referred to. But behind-the-scenes stuff in general, you know, consumers love to see what's going on behind the scenes. If it's a brand they're interested in, you know, it doesn't have to be the sexiest thing. It doesn't have to be like a super professional production. It can be on your iPhone and just show them, here's, you know, here's kind of what's going on. Yeah. That's, you know, that's very human. That kind of stuff is— if you, again, if you don't care about the brand, you're probably not going to tune in. Anyway, but if you are interested in the brand and are passionate about it, you love seeing that stuff and will probably tune in and just, you know, like kind of being on the, on the inside, if you will.

Yeah. And you know, it's true because now everyone has their phone in their hand, which basically makes everyone a guerrilla marketer. Like, anyone can do this. You don't have to be a professional to livestream or to have a tweet chat or You know, in any of these real-time marketing hacks.

Right. I mean, the research shows that people will put— consumers will put up with and tolerate, you know, grainy video and stuff like that. Not that that's what happens with an iPhone or an Android phone, but they really— they don't have a lot of patience for poor audio, which you do get from like an iPhone or a Samsung phone unless you have an external mic. But that's all you need really is, is, you know, those condenser mics on, on cell phones, not to be too techie, but, you know, they pick up everything. They, they're designed to pick up sounds 40 feet away as much as they are your, your voice right next to it. But, you know, an external mic, we're talking $10 or $15, um, and put a, you know, a lavalier mic on or a boom mic to get the sound. But that's all you need really. And you're right, Courtney, I mean, Everyone has the potential to do guerrilla stuff. It's just like we've spoke about here today. You need the content, you need the relevance, you need to make sure that what you're about to do is not an instance of shooting yourself in the foot or both feet or worse. Shooting off vital, vital body parts.

Right. It's, it's a lot of it is thinking it through with a strategy.

Well, and that was, that was back to a question you asked before, before you brought Mitch on, as far as what does a big company need to do to kind of do the Oreo thing, so to speak. And that's to have a team, and, you know, it can be a very small team. It's a small group of people. Have them empowered, give them the ability to, or, you know, empower them and give them the okay to, if such a thing occurs, and you've got the digital assets or can create them quickly, and you're certain that it isn't capitalizing on, uh, you know, mass destruction and loss of life like what's going on in, in Houston, then roll with it. Go. You know, the, the idea of— Uh, one reason I don't consult with huge companies very often is that, you know, you need 5 levels of approval for to buy a box of paper clips or something. I mean, I'm being somewhat facetious, but you get the point. It's like, you know, real-time marketing isn't going to work if you need multiple levels of approval from senior management. You know, the people in the trenches, empower them, give them the okay that, you know, like I said, if something, if it resonates and it helps our brand and it is not a a, you know, humanitarian crisis, roll with it.

Yeah,

you know, it's interesting. I interviewed Bonin Bal, who did that Oreo cookie dunk in the dark. He was at Mondelēz International at the time and the head of marketing and social, and he said, said some really interesting things. Now, this is after the fact, and so he— of course, everyone thinks of stuff after the fact, right? But, but he said that, that they had practiced. They didn't know they were going to do that, but they had practiced as a team coming up with things quickly on the spot. And they would, they would sit in one room and they made sure that they had the creative director, the art, their agency, and a copywriter and a social media person all in one room to be able to respond. And they were practicing. responding. And so it wasn't— well, they didn't know the lights were going to go out. Sure. So you're totally dead on. They practiced that as a team to make that happen. He said, where we fell short, and I found this really interesting, was that was it. The tweet went out and we had no follow-up. Like, there wasn't any, any, anything else left because people now wanted to participate in something fun. They wanted to be, you know, a part of the Dunk in the Dark. So do a campaign around it or do a landing page where you can earn points for dunking in the dark or something. I'm making this up. Oh

my, they totally—

That would be great. That would have been great.

All the places that you could dunk.

So they killed it and yet they lost an opportunity.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, hindsight being what it is, but gosh, the mind just reels. I mean, the way you could use gamification And, and keep that momentum rolling for those who didn't see it in real time and weren't hip to it or don't watch the Super Bowl or whatever. Um, they could have got a lot of mileage out. So is it true, Brian, what I had read about the, the powers that be that could make the decision were all, uh, present?

Yeah.

Were they in fact on site? Were they at the— okay, that's, that's what I'd read.

They were all in the same room. They weren't in separate rooms. They all were in the same room. They were in a In, in like a

suite.

Yeah, a suite together. They had all their computers there. They had all the right people to create and post within seconds. They had practiced making decisions together and tweeting out with other things that we all didn't pay attention to. They had practiced.

You know, I just love that. I love knowing that, that they not only had a team in place, but they practiced. And Again, not to sound like a warmonger or anything, but back to the military stuff, or you think about space, NASA astronauts, they do things over and over and over, drills and practice. And the fact that they did that and had that situational readiness or operational readiness in place to do it when the opportunity did arise is— or did arise, I meant to say— It's really impressive to me.

Yeah. And, you know, as Joseph here just mentioned, so this form of marketing is more art and less science, but agility is important. Personal authority, novel responses to differentiate from your competitors, i.e., David and Goliath. And I don't know about you guys, but I really agree with that. And I know that some people that have really impressed me are the brands that are that are a little more forgiving and a little bit, dare I say, human, that can allow people to make mistakes. And we've seen it with companies like GoDaddy who have screwed up and yet came back as the gentle giant. And we've seen it with Netflix. We've seen it with so many companies that allow them to operate in real time. And I think it's just, it's so cool.

But I think even the David and Goliath comment is so appropriate because it kind of brings it back full circle about how guerrilla marketing really does even the playing field. And I mean, your, your story, Stephen, about your company, you know, beating out Microsoft is a true David and Goliath story. And you guys were able to know exactly where to hit the giant in the head with the rock, you know. Definitely. I think that's how the parable goes. I don't remember, but

it is.

Um, but I— and all of that goes back to practice and strategy and thinking things through, um, so that you can overcome the big giant in the room. So I think that's a fantastic analogy.

So we, we're coming up on the hour, and we always like to ask one last question, um, and that's, what do you believe Stephen makes a company truly embrace the H2H philosophy? How do you see H2H becoming a part of a company, a better part of the company?

I think it's a vital part of a company and needs to be embraced by being transparent and being, you know, like, I'll give an analogy. Just cancel a meeting, cancel an internal meeting, and go talk to a customer. If you have— if they're local, you know, go take them to lunch or go to their office and talk to them and understand what keeps them up at night. And if you're not— if it's not local, you know, get— it's back to the voice of customer thing. Talk to people, ask them questions so that you can understand what they want, what they like, what they value. But, you know, get, get out of the Get out of your own environment and, and be human and talk to other humans and embrace them and listen, listen keenly. Don't feign listening to wait to talk. Listen because you listen to learn. As a human, we don't know everything by any stretch of the imagination, but, you know, get into the minds of your, of your consumers.

Fantastic.

Amen.

That is a great place to leave off. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. I think everybody knows where to find you, but what is the best way just in case people would like to reach out to you?

On Twitter, it's @StephenMonaco. So S-T-E-P-H-E-N Monaco, like the country, M-O-N-A-C-O. And that's my website, stephenmonaco.com. And just the contact page on there is a great way to get In touch with me. I get all of those directly. I don't have an assistant or anything, so I read those and I respond to them. So, Bryan, Courtney, thank you so much for having me on. I appreciate it. This was great.

Thank you. It's always great to talk to you too, Stephen.

Thank you so much. And thank you, uh, for those of you who jumped on, uh, video as well as on chat. I know we had some chat, um, some chat hiccups here on Crowdcast. Apologize for that. We'll get that straightened out for the next time. Um, I see, uh, Christy tried to do that through questions. I apologize, Christy, but we'll get that all straightened out. I think this was a fascinating discussion. I can't wait to, uh, to get the transcript. We'll have this up within 5 days. We are not going to be back next Monday because it is

Labor

Day,

and on Labor Day we don't labor. So, um, so we're not going to be, uh, on that Monday, but we'll be back the week after. So a week from Monday, you can look forward to another Another HA Chat. We'll announce all the details, uh, next week as well. Same time, same place. And thank you once again, Stephen. Thank you everyone out there who is watching another wonderful HA Chat. More great content to come from us humans to you. We'll see you soon. Cheers.

Thank you very kindly. Bye, y'all.