In this solo presentation, Evan Carmichael argues that the vast majority—about 95%—of businesses are wasting money on paid social media advertising because their organic campaigns are fundamentally weak. He explains that advertising only amplifies an already successful campaign; it cannot rescue a campaign that lacks quality, emotional resonance, or shareability. Using the metaphors of a franchise restaurant and a fire, he illustrates that a solid, proven “core” campaign (the successful location or the fire) must exist before adding the “gasoline” of ad spend. He challenges viewers to evaluate whether they would personally share or be proud of their own content, emphasizing that true shareability and genuine belief in the message are the real drivers of growth. The talk concludes with a call to first build high‑quality, organically shareable content and only then consider paid promotion.
Chapters
95% of businesses should not be spending money on social media advertising. Let me say that again. 95% of you guys should not be spending any money on your social media campaigns on the advertising side. The problem is advertising improves already existing successful campaigns. And the problem is your current campaigns aren't good enough. Your current campaigns suck. And so throwing advertising dollars on top of it is not going to help you. I like to think of campaigns as franchises. So if you're going to start a restaurant and you want to franchise it out, you have to have one location be successful first. You can't franchise if your one location doesn't work. I like to think of it as a fire. So your successful social media campaign is your fire, and advertising is the gasoline on top of it. Advertising can make your campaign explode. It can make it go to new heights, but you have to have the fire. If you pour gasoline on nothing, you're not going to get a huge spark, right? You need to have the fire, and that's having a quality social media campaign. Your campaigns aren't good enough yet. I also believe that you can build a huge fire, you can build a forest fire without any advertising. Just by having a really good quality campaign, something that you can be proud of, something that you believe in. If the conditions are there, if you're standing for something important, you don't even need the advertising to help you grow. This hopefully is not you today during my presentation. This is most of your campaigns. They're boring. They put people to sleep. They suck. That's most of your campaigns. That's 95% of the campaigns out there. They suck. Think about what you're putting out there. Are you actually proud of it? Is there any feeling behind it? Would you retweet your tweets if it wasn't you? If it wasn't your company, would you share this stuff? Probably not. And that's the problem. That's the problem with your campaigns right now. You throw advertising on top of this, nothing's going to happen. You have to make your campaigns better. The key thing to think about is how many people are actually sharing your stuff. Whatever you put up right now, you have a little bit of a following, Twitter, Facebook, whatever you're using, you have a little bit of a following. Are people actually sharing your stuff? Even though you have a small sample size, do they care enough to share it? Because if they don't, throwing advertising dollars is not going to do anything for you. You have to produce something that you are proud of.
