The One With Ryan Holiday - I Love Marketing With Joe Polish And Dean Jackson - Episode #139

I'm dean jackson, he's joe polish, and this is the I love marketing podcast. Hey everybody, it's Dean Jackson and Joe.

Polish, and here we are. By the time you're going to hear this one, it will be a new year. And so we want to welcome everyone to the new year. And if you happen to listen to this episode many decades from now, pretend it's a new year.

Happy New Year.

Yeah. Yeah, it's going to be awesome. So we got a great guest today who I've really been looking forward to.

No time to waste today.

Yeah, we're going to get into it. His name is Ryan Holiday and Ryan is on the line with us right now. We're all in different parts of the world. You're in Austin, Texas right now, Ryan. Is that where you're at?

Correct.

Yeah. And Dean's in Florida, I'm in Arizona. So I'm going to read a real quick bio of Ryan and this is the only part of this I'm going to read anything. So. Ryan Holiday is a leading media strategist whose campaigns have been studied by YouTube, Twitter and Google and covered in Fast Company, Ad Age and Gawker. Ryan is the director of marketing at American Apparel and the author of Trust Me, I'm Lying, An Insider's look written in the great tradition of American whistleblowers about who really sets the media a jig agenda. Ryan Holiday works for notorious clients like Tucker, Max and Dov Charney of American Apparel after dropping out of college at the ripe Age of 19 years old to apprentice under the strategist Robert Greene, who wrote the book 48 Laws of Power and a bunch of other great books. He went on to advise many best selling authors and multi platinum musicians. His new book, Growth Hacker Marketing, A primer on the future of pr, marketing and Advertising explains the growth hacker mindset and overnight successes of companies like Dropbox, Facebook and Airbnb and Twitter. I've read Cover to Cover both of Ryan's books. Highly, highly endorse and recommend them. You will learn a ton of shit by reading these books. Growth Hacker marketing is fantastic. I've actually referred it to several people that run 50 $100 million plus companies who have read it and have sent me text messages saying that book is great. So all of our I love marketing listeners, I think you'll get a lot from this. But I'm just right off the bat, before he says anything, get his damn books because they're kill. And if Ryan doesn't say anything useful during this episode, which he Will the books alone, I think will change everything about how you think about the media, about marketing, about pr, about everything. So thanks for taking the time, Ryan. Great to have you on with us. And for what? I didn't say who the heck is really Ryan Holiday? What's your deal?

Well, I have to say I'm not as awesome as that introduction, or at least that's going to be something now I have to live up to on the course of this podcast. So that's going to be tough.

Well, we got Dean here, so it's not going to be tough. I mean, trust me.

Yeah, so I'm sort of someone who got started in marketing accidentally and was sort of thrown into the deep, deep end and kind of had to figure out how this stuff worked for a breed of clients that were sort of controversial or atypical to, to put it nicely. And we ended up sort of pioneering what is sort of our own unique way of marketing and sales that sold millions of dollars worth of products that I think people can learn from and I think are also emblematic of a new way of thinking about marketing. American Apparel is close to a billion dollar company that does sort of very little traditional advertising that built its brand. It's a company that was created 10, 15 years ago that sort of built this new way of getting attention that it has to do because it makes its clothes in the U.S. tucker Max, who's my first author client, was one of the first authors to turn a blog into a book, into a bestseller. It got turned into a movie. It sold millions of copies. So I think if I have to answer the question who I am, it's someone who didn't have any traditional training in marketing, but really by trial and error sort of figured out some of the fundamental truths of marketing. And then that's what my books are about. Yeah.

And you know, your growth hacker marketing not only describes a great mindset and about marketing and I read it on a Kindle. So, you know, I don't have the physical copy here where I can just kind of go through all the highlights and stuff easily. So we'll just do this off the top of my head. But before.

Well, it's actually, it's only an e book. We tried to growth hack that book itself, which is, you know, you start small, you don't have to do all the traditional publishing stuff. You can just start with an idea and see if it works.

And I will say it's a very short book and so it's only like a few bucks on Amazon. I Think it's like the time I bought it was like $2.99. Is that where it's going to stay? Okay, yeah. So there's a big investment, but that's more expensive than. I love marketing, which is like free. So. But Dean, Dean, what do you have to say for yourself? Because I've got a ton of questions for Ryan, but I don't want to be a bulldozer here, so I want to give you an opportunity.

Well, this whole thing, I mean, I love this whole growth hacker approach because it's so in alignment with a lot of the strategies that we teach without having called them growth hacking. But essentially things like the nine word email and the 90 minute book are. Those are growth hacks. Those are things that are very easy. Ryan. One of the things we talk about that's a really successful strategy is something we call the nine word email that revives dead leads. And it was just a simple hack that was designed to. Any business can use this like a magic trick. If they've got leads or inquiries or people who have opted in, they, they haven't bought in. You know, they've been on their list for more than 90 days. They can send just a quick email to them. And I did it with real estate agents sending to their clients saying, hey, Ryan, are you still looking for a house in Georgetown? That's just the nine words, right? And that's so, so simple. And we've had so many different examples of this. We had a guy who sent it to his yacht prospects and generated $100 million yacht buyer with Are you still looking for a yacht? And I was very interested to read in your book about. And I'd forgotten about Hotmail, about their strategy, but that essentially was driven by a nine word P.S. that said P.S. i love you. Get your free emailhotmail.com totally. And that just happens to be nine words. It is just something that was just so, so simple that all of these things kind of really resonate with me, you know, and I think it'll really resonate with all of our readers. That's just finding out what's the, what's the objective? Who are you talking to? And what's the, what's the bottom line, real objective that you have, you know?

Yeah, No, I think what's funny too is that we, you know, because people who are not in advertising get so caught up in the show and the symbolism, they tend to think that marketing and advertising is like what you see in Mad Men. And that's part of it, but it's it's also to justify having an advertising firm and an office on Madison Avenue where you charge your clients, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars a year. You have to make it look harder and more complicated and more artistic than it really is. And what I like about that nine word email concept is it's so simple, but it actually works. So why don't you just do that instead of creating some super bowl advertisement or putting in spending $250,000 to run a television commercial or a billboard by the side of the highway when you've got an email list that you're not fully taking advantage of. And I think that's what growth hackers have figured out. They didn't have $250,000 to spend on a billboard.

Well, let me ask you, this is the most basic level then, just because we're talking about it right now. Like, what is growth hacking? You know, who is a growth hacker and you know, how does growth hacking work? I mean, like, let's just break it down of what do you actually mean when you, when you say that you titled your book over it, so elaborate on.

Yeah, so growth hacking is something that I don't presume any sort of deep understanding or ownership of. It's a word that came to describe a certain brand of Silicon Valley tech startup, sort of marketer, programmer, hybrid. And my background was in traditional marketing in the sense that I worked at American Apparel, I was the director of marketing. And I read this article one day by an essayist who I respect, his name is Andrew Chen. And his premise was growth hackers are the new VPs of marketing. And his argument was, if you look at Facebook, if you look at Twitter, if you look at Airbnb, and you look at these startups that didn't exist five years ago and now are billion dollar companies. They didn't even have marketing departments. They built these massively viral, hugely profitable, hugely popular websites without doing an advertising budget, without throwing parties, without doing that kind of stuff. What they did was they sort of focused. It's not just on direct marketing techniques, because I think it's more complicated than that, but they focused on things that are trackable and scalable and testable, that didn't require massive investments up front. Because we have to remember Facebook and Twitter, although they're big companies now, they started with zero, and they started with zero budgets and they had to build their company like sort of $1, one customer at a time. Growth hacking is that approach. It's the mindset of, okay, we're starting A website tomorrow. How do we get our first thousand users on day one? How do we have 2,000 users on day two? How do we have 4,000 users on day three? And how do we build it exponentially from there? And so growth hacking is that approach to marketing. It's Palo Alto and Silicon Valley rather than Manhattan and Madison Avenue.

Yep. Got it. Great. And you said three really important words too. You know, doing things that are trackable, scalable, and testable, which is very much what, you know, we want to do with direct response. And before our conversation, you know, I had said to you, like, how the heck did you learn this stuff, you know, early on, you know, at a very young age? And you made some comments about direct response, and instead of repeating what you said and not saying it exactly the same way, I'd like to just pose that to you now that we're actually recording this episode and kind of go back to that. What are your thoughts on direct response, and where did it fit into your life, and how did you get introduced to it? Because you certainly are a very savvy marketer.

Sure. What I think happens is people who have no traditional training in marketing, so they didn't go to school, they didn't learn what a press release was, they didn't lear how to do this or that. They're just sort of thrown in the deep end. They gotta experiment and figure out what works, like what brings customers through the door and put asses in the seats. And what you end up doing, if you don't have the freedom or the liberty of millions of dollars to spend, is you sort of fall to these direct marketing techniques because they're. What's their. What works when the idea of doing something and not testing to see whether it works or not is insane. The only reason you wouldn't do that is if you were just taking it on faith that television commercials were a great idea or that printing T shirts with your name on it were a good idea. Like, when you're starting from scratch, you've got to learn all this stuff. And you end up experimenting. You end up trying things. You end up, you know, googling around and watching videos and just taking ideas from people and emulating and reverse engineering what you think is effective. And then you look at the results and you go, okay, look, when I ran radio commercials, I'm not sure if sales went up or not, but when I put out this mailer, I know that I got 200 customers from it. And you end up repeating that thing over and over again until it Stops working because you know that it actually is working.

Right, Right. So for people that, you know, have no experience or understanding of marketing, I mean, how would you even define what marketing is? Like, what. What would be your definition of it?

Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's. It's that super crucial to belabor definitions, but I would say marketing is what grows the business. Marketing is what brings in customers and grows the business. And I think that might be part of the problem, is that people have said, oh, marketing is X, Y and Z. And so they think, like, if you're doing that, then you're being an effective marketer. Like, if you're wooing media reporters, that's marketing and publicity. Right. But you're not actually questioning whether being in the New York Times tomorrow is what your business actually needs and whether it will actually grow and enhance your business. So I think a real simple, straightforward definition of marketing, as it brings in new leads who become customers, you're going to limit the amount of waste and inefficiency. Yep.

I love the fact that because it's so, you know, you use other words like guerilla marketing or whatever, but at its essence, it's really about understanding what your. Who your clients are and what they really want and then doing everything you can to give it to them. I loved the fact that everything in growth, hacking everything in the book, is about really putting the clients first, giving them what they want and making that the marketing.

Right? No. And I think that's what's so refreshing about how these startups have worked. Look, the first several years of its existence, Facebook didn't have a marketing team. They had a growth team because they didn't want there to be any confusion about what these people's job was. Your job isn't to, like market. Your job is to get new users to sign up. So let's be very clear about that and let's be very clear about our priorities. And I think a lot of people lose sight of that and they get caught up in. It's like, hey, I'm watching a movie, so I must have a premiere party. They don't actually think about whether that's going to make people see the movie or not. Right. Because they just. In their head, movies and movie premieres are synonymous with each other, and therefore you must do it.

You know, that's a really good insight. Just even what you said there about not having a marketing team but calling it a growth team, just to not confuse everybody, because I cannot tell you how many people and I'm sure you would say the same thing, Ryan, is that you meet, that have marketing titles. Like you're. You're director of marketing for American Apparel, which is a giant brand, and you're a director of marketing that actually understands marketing inside and out. I can't tell you how many people I've met that were VPs of marketing, directors of marketing that are complete and utter morons. I mean, they don't even understand what the term means. And they're just doing nonsense that isn't trackable, that isn't scalable, that is never tested, that doesn't have calls to action, that doesn't have compelling copies. They don't know what an offer is. They don't use emotional engagement, but they call themselves marketers. And I think it is a term that really confuses people that don't get it.

Yeah, And I think that's why growth hacking has come around, because it's like, look, if you started this company and you're funding it with $10,000 or $20,000 because that's what you raised on Kickstarter, that's what you got from Y Combinator, from some, you know, angel investor. You don't have the liberty of hiring some fancy VP of marketing at, you know, $150,000 a year who's actually totally clueless and is just going to, you know, like, pull the wool over your eyes until you realize that they don't do anything like, you've got to grow yesterday. And so I think, and I think that's with you guys, is like, with the kind of people that you speak to and the customers you deal with, it's like, look, we don't have time for blowing smoke. We gotta grow or we die. That, to me, is what builds and generates really creative, innovative marketing techniques, because it's born out of necessity.

One of my favorites of those is you talk a lot about knowing your customers, knowing how to reach them, knowing where they are goes so far. One of my favorite stories about that is when Snapple launched their mango flavor, they contracted with the Mango Growers association to put stickers on 10 million mangoes that said, now available in Snapple.

Oh, that's great.

You know how on bananas they have the little stickers or whatever? I mean, could you imagine, like, you know, because a mango is like an acquired taste, and who better than somebody who actually likes mangoes to buy mango flavored Snapple, right?

No, I would totally classify that as a growth hacking technique. It's like, look, instead of trying to bring people to us. Let's go find where our people are.

But where they are. Exactly.

And try to come up with something that no one has done before that's innovative. And by the way, because no one had done it before, I'm sure they got a great rate on it. Whoever came next and wanted to put stickers on their mangoes probably paid a huge premium. Right. But because Snap came up with the idea, it probably cost a fraction of what a series of television commercials would have cost or some other more tried and true tactic. Yeah.

And not many ad agencies, traditional ad agencies, really think that way. My favorite of those is Crispin Porter Bagoski, the guys who do all the advertising for Burger King and the Mini and all these things. But, I mean, there are things of thinking outside of the box, you know, like bringing back the Burger King in that kind of surreal kind of way, and then sending him on dates with Brooke Burke, you know, so he's photographed in People magazine or all these, you know, all the tabloids with courtside seats to the Lakers with Brooke Burke, and then he's out on the beach, you know, rubbing oil on her back. And, you know, all these things are, is Brooke, Brooke dating the Burger King? Like, all those kind of things are just kind of phenomenal, you know, crazy ideas that reach the right audience.

Well, and that's something that I talk about in my first book, which is about media manipulation, is I think people. I think people don't understand how desperate reporters and journalists and media outlets are to just chatter about anything. And so when Crispin Porter does crazy stuff with the Burger King, they get all sorts of free publicity and press out of it. Meanwhile, some other brand, Wendy's, is continuing to do the same boring crap that they've always done. And they wonder why People magazine isn't talking about their mascot. It's like, because your mascot's not doing anything, you're not taking any risks, you're not taking any chances. Right. They're not making them real.

Right.

Yeah. So I think growth hacking goes along with that in the sense that it's about thinking and trying things that other people haven't done and then doing that until diminishing returns set in and then trying something else new and repeating that process indefinitely. And that's what all exciting companies have done.

I think one of the things that Crispin Porter Boguski did before, they allow their team, their creative teams to come up with or pitch TV or radio or print ideas, which are the standbys immediately go and spend the budget on that they have to come up with 100 ideas that are not print, TV or radio. And so that kind of thinking is where they came up with. I don't know if you remember years ago they did the subservient chicken.com where they had this guy in a chicken outfit in this city apartment and you would go there and you type a line, type a command in the search bar and the chicken would do whatever you commanded. So you'd type in jump up and down and the chicken jumps up and down and it looks like this guy is following your every command. But the truth is it was all just video loops that all start and end on a mark and it was all search engine search driven where people would do the thing, but the way that they drove it was they, they printed a thousand flyers with a picture of the subservient chicken and 10 lines, 10 blank lines underneath and just went out on the streets and asked people what they would ask the chicken to do. And they compiled all of the results and they found that, you know, once you get past the sort of had a long tail, but the steep slope was jump up and down, chase your tail or do the chicken dance or all the things that were the standard things that everybody could think of. There really wasn't much after the long tail, after you got to the first 200 answers, right?

Well, yeah. Another one I like about that too is I talk about this a little bit in the growth hacking book is one of Amazon's policies is as a company, if a project manager or an executive wants to roll out like a new initiative or a new project or a new service, they start by writing the press release first. Like before you can pitch it, before you can get approval, you have to write it as a press release as though the product already exists. It's not because press releases are important, it's because if you can't describe it in a way that would make people say wow, Amazon just announced blank, then you can't do it. And you have to go back to the drawing boards until you've figured out what that wow factor exciting announcement worthy part of your idea is. And you've leaned 30 minute delivery. Exactly, exactly. And I think, you know, people far too often they come out with something and then they're scrambling to figure out what makes it interesting. They're scrambling what will make people talk about it. And it's like it's too late. And if growth hackers do anything, well, it's building those things into the product. And you guys know this better than Anyone. The best marketing decision you can make is just to have something awesome that people really like. And then all the other techniques are just about drawing attention to that fact rather than compensating for the lack of that.

Yeah, you know what? That's a real key thing too, which I think is becoming more difficult to get away with selling mediocre stuff. I mean, one of the great things, when me and Dean started this, there was no Internet. I mean, we're doing offline marketing and advertising and tons of direct mail and building referral programs and space ads and TV and radio and all that stuff. And now it's a lot easier to get exposed for being shitty for having crappy mediocre stuff. And I like that. And because of that, it really causes people to step up their game. I mean, it's really rare these days that if I ever go to a restaurant, I don't look on Yelp. I mean, if I ever go to a movie, I have a little app, Flixter, things like that. And I read lots of reviews. What is your advice for business owners void of just really useful marketing about just having their act together? How do you explain to someone how to create enormous, immense value for what it is you're selling? Have any thoughts on that?

Yeah, well, first off, I think for far too long, marketers have only felt like they were qualified to do the external marketing. What I actually feel like, and I think this is what growth hackers have innovated on, is, look, if you're a marketer and you understand what the people want and someone comes to you with a crappy product, tell them what they need to do and change on the product to make your job easier. I think this idea of like, oh, you can only go to market with the product you have, is less relevant in a world of apps and online services that can be much more easily changed. It's not like you spent 10 years in a factory perfecting this automobile. Chances are that's not what most of us are selling. We're selling informational products or services or ideas, and those are much more malleable. And so I think first off, a marketer has to step down, step out further than just marketing and really improve and make the products better. And there's this idea that also originates from the Silicon Valley, which is this sort of idea of product market fit. So Instagram, which is a great service that millions of people use, it went from zero to a billion dollar company. It was acquired by Facebook in less than 18 months. But a lot of people don't know that it's. It didn't start as a photo sharing app. It started as a sort of a mobile check in geo service, sort of like Foursquare that you could also upload photos on. And what the owners found was that the users really only liked the photos and the filters. And so they rebranded the product. They got rid of all the extraneous stuff that nobody liked and they leaned just into the photo filters thing. And that's what made then the day it launched as Instagram, it did something like 25,000 downloads. That's the power of product market fit. Instead of trying to force something, try something out and see how people respond. And you know, in the photo space there's lots of great examples. Like people don't remember that Flickr, the photo sharing service that sold to yahoo for like $25 million about eight or nine years ago, started out as like a video game. And so it's like, I want people to understand that their idea of what the product is should be flexible and receptive to real market feedback. And if the market is telling you strongly to change your idea or to tweak it or to emphasize different parts, you should listen because it will make your thing much more marketable and spread much faster and therefore be more successful.

No, that's great. I'd like you to describe product market fit and also how you talk about building the marketing into the platform, which you go into detail and show many cases of like Dean had talked about with Hotmail and Airbnb and Dropbox. Could you kind of COVID those couple areas?

Yeah, sure. And I don't think any of these things are going to be surprising to direct marketing folks. But. But I think it's worth saying again, product market fit is when your audience and the product are in perfect alignment. When you make something that people have been after for a long time and you fulfill a real and compelling need. Again, the best marketing you can do is make something that's really awesome, that people love talking about, because then I can recommend it and tell you about it. If you make something that's sort of like this bonus, that nobody really cares, they're not going to press it in other people's hands. And so I think what you see is solving a problem is a really compelling way to have product market fit. And that means also thinking about who's going to make, who's going to be interested in this. And sometimes you've got to go like, look, I'm not. You can't just make products for yourself. I guess would be another way of putting it. And far too many people do it. They make things just for them and their friends, and they forget that maybe there's not that many people like them. And then you've got other people who are really good at seeing what groups of people want and creating a product just for them. So product market fit is this thing that all startups are looking for, and they're constantly tweaking and iterating and changing until they get there. Airbnb, which now you can rent everything from castles to lake houses to ski lodges on, started as a way for people who are traveling out of town to conferences could crash on people's floors. And it's called Airbnb because the host had to cook the guest breakfast. But that's not a billion dollar idea. That's like an idea for like 10,000 people who live in San Francisco who are poor. But Airbnb took the feedback and they improved and they changed and they made the idea better and better until it became what it is now. I think product market fit is not something that magically ensues. It's something you've got to iterate and get to. And then if the idea is to make something that's worth talking about as a marketing technique, that's step one. Step two is building in. What? Building in and encouraging that talking. So Dropbox, which is another amazing service that allows people to share files and work collaboratively, or to save a document on your desktop and then be able to pull it up on your laptop when you go out of town two weeks later. Dropbox, 38% of its customers for most of its beginning, came from its referral program, and they just called it, like. So right now, Dropbox is free for the first bit of storage, and then the rest of the storage you have to. If you want extra, you have to pay for it. But you can get bonus and get free storage by referring your friends and family. It's just a standard affiliate sort of referral program, but theirs is so simple and basic that it drove millions and millions of users in through Dropbox.

And it's built right in because in order to download the file. Yeah, exactly. People are, oh, let me put it in the Dropbox. That's interesting.

Right? Right. And it's just a great idea that people really need it. So that's step one. And step two is, hey, if I refer my friend, I get 250 megabytes of free storage. Hey, if I follow Dropbox on Twitter, I get 100 megabytes hey, if I take this tour that teaches me how to be a really great Dropbox user and makes it so I'm super fluent and literate in the software, I get an extra hundred megabytes. If I follow you on Facebook, I get more. You know, the more you do with Dropbox, the more they want to reward you for being an awesome customer.

Gamification.

Totally.

Well, you just mentioned the term gamification. Let's hear your thoughts on gamification. Ryan, point out a couple of examples of things that you see that are just brilliant.

Well, I think at the core, gamification is about making sharing and participating in a product less onerous. And right now, I think you see a lot of big companies that don't capture growth and don't grow as quickly because it's hard to participate and it's hard to do those things. So, look, gamification isn't something that, that I talk a ton about in growth hacker marketing, but I think it's something that didn't exist as a marketing thing five or 10 years ago because it wasn't technologically possible. We're seeing these advancements and we're seeing the definition of marketing expand because of it. Look, if you're launching a movie, 10 years ago, it was throw a premiere party, buy a lot of ads, cast the celebrity, do the celebrity gossip thing, blah, blah, blah. But then today, you're able to create this whole universe that the customers can participate in. They get drawn into. There's just so many more opportunities to do awesome stuff. And I really think if you're not paying attention and you're not trying them out, you're missing out.

Yeah. Let me ask you this. Is there a way to make something quote, unquote, go viral and like, what are the elements that need to be in place if you can talk about that?

Yeah. Well, I think that's the favorite thing.

Yeah, that's somebody's marketing strategy.

Yeah.

We're going to create a viral.

Well, I like about how he talks about even the term go viral and growth hacking, even though it's funny.

So that's why I said quote, unquote.

So I'd like to have you talk about that.

Yeah. Every marketer has been in one of those terrible meetings where someone's like, hey, what we want you to do is just make this go viral. And I remember sitting them and thinking, like, this thing's a piece of shit. Why would it go viral? You know, I'm not a magician. I can't make an un viral thing. Go viral. What can go viral is something that has those elements baked into it. And if you do it right, you drastically increase the efficiency, the efficacy of whatever you do. So a great example of a sort of a viral concept is like, if the product is only being used privately and people can't see it, it's not going to be very viral. So, like, I like the idea of Apple deciding to use white headphones on all their products. So that way everyone knew you were listening to an ipod or an iPhone or whatever. That. That seemed like a simple decision. It was. Maybe they weren't even thinking about it at the time, but it made a huge difference because it made everyone who bought an Apple product. It made their first customers walking billboards for those products. Or another great example, next time you buy an Apple product, check the box. There's always a couple stickers that they give you for, like, why do they do that? So they'll stick them on things and give them free advertising. Virality is about doing something different that makes people talk and then building in those tools that encourage that talking. It's not, hey, let's make a funny video, put it on YouTube, and then hope it gets millions of views. You know, that's hope. That's not a strategy. And, you know, there's actually a bunch of fascinating studies. There's one done by Jonah Berger, who wrote the book Contagious, where he was looking at what articles make the most emailed list on the New York Times. And it turns out that the number one predictor is the extremeness of emotion that the article generates. So an article that makes people really, really happy is gonna do better than an article that makes people, you know, kind of upset, or an article that makes people. Or conversely, it turns out articles that make people sad don't get a lot of spreading or sharing because, like, who wants to pass on a sad, boring article, right? And so I think if I remember correctly from the study, the number one most high valence emotion is anger. So, like, things that make people pissed off or provoke a reaction are very, very viral. And.

But it's like they're banging the send key. They're banging the send key when they're forwarding it to somebody.

Look at this.

This pisses me off. I'm gonna tell everyone I know about it is the reaction, I think. But, you know, it's all sorts of emotions. Like we've seen with Upworthy.com which sort of dominates Facebook these days. They specialize in these sort of uplifting, gooey, emotional, manipulative I would say articles, but they do tens of millions, if not billions of page views because they know how to exploit people's emotions.

Let's talk about that. Because in Trust Me, I'm Lying, it's Confessions of a Media Manipulator. And my take from that book, well, there's many takeaways, but just the exposing of what the entire media world and your perspective and your experience and the sheer amount of complete manipulation and bullshit that is taking place on just everywhere of what people are consuming is quote unquote news. And you have this, I can't even remember the report, like a guy that owned a newspaper from many years ago that said that the purpose of the news is not designed to inform, it's designed to startle. I think that's what you said. Yeah. And so first off, let's give a background on Trust Me, I'm Lying, why you wrote the book. It's kind of an expose in a lot of way of even yourself, of kind of like Confessions of a Media Manipulator. That's what you said in the title of the book. But it's a frickin awesome book and it's so insightful and some people may not even like you for writing that type of book, but I found it very fascinating and very informative. And I just think anyone that is in business or any human being that really wants to get an insider's perspective of what the hell's going on needs to read that book. So why'd you write the book? What's it about? And then I'll. And I'll ask you some questions specific to things.

Yeah. So I wanted it to be an expose of sort of what happens behind the curtain or how your sausage gets made or whatever expression you wanted to use. I felt like because of my experiences in marketing, because of my experience as a media buyer, so interacting with the media, with publicity and with representing controversial clients, I really sort of saw how the media really operates. And it's funny because, you know, marketers get the marketers and publicists get the reputation of sort of manipulating the media or trying to trick us into thinking things. And what I saw was actually kind of the opposite. It's that marketers are fairly straightforward about what they do. It's like, look, I represent or I own this product and I'm trying to get people to find out about it, right? But it's the media, it's the reporters now who have the real agenda, who are operating to try to capture the public's attention to get them to do this or to do that because they benefit from it the most. And so, you know, we live in a media world where today the page view is the metric on which everyone is judged. It's not whether they report the truth. It's not whether they're good writers, it's not whether they're good reporters. It's whether their article gets lots of traffic online. And that, in a lot of ways, is in direct conflict with, you know, objective, reasoned journalism that we've come to feel as a society is important. And so I wanted to show people, yes. What I, as a marketer, have done and how reporters don't really care and how reporters do worse stuff on a daily basis to get your eyeballs so they can sell those eyeballs to advertisers. And so the book is an expose on all sides about how the media that you consume and make decisions on in terms of what you buy, what you invest in, who you support politically is motivated and driven by this desire to get your attention.

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, you say in the book, the main focus is on, you know, it's on the media. And if you have to. To summarize it to one big idea, what is the one biggest idea about the media today? I mean, how do you interact with the media? I mean, you've seen behind the curtain. How's a guy like you get informed of the truth? Or is your perspective just skewed because you've seen so much utter and complete horseshit?

Oh, yeah, I'm a total skeptic now. And it's really hard to convince me of anything just because I've seen sort of the flagrant disregard for fact and truth in these media outlets, and I've participated. It's hard for me if I can send a fake email to Gawker and get my clients in the press on the basis of this Anonymous tip in 10 minutes. It's really hard for me the next day to read about a story that that outlet broke and that everyone assumes is real. So it's like, it's sort of. It's like once you see that the emperor has no clothes, it's really hard to take it seriously. I guess what I want people to understand is, like, look, we don't pay for the media anymore, Right? Most of it's free. Like, it's free and it's advertising supported, which means the advertisers are the customers and you're what's being sold. So the New York Times online is just the same as the Huffington post. It's just the same as Gawker. It's just the same as Business Insider. The idea is we want to say something that will get your attention and then to go to that sort of virality we were talking about earlier, we want to get something that's going to get your attention. We want to make something that you're going to post on Twitter and Facebook that's going to get us more views, and we're going to sell those views to advertisers in the form of pay per click and pay per CPM advertisements. And if what we're saying happens to be true, that's an extra bonus, but is not in any way required because it's not like you're going to ask for your money back because you didn't give us any. So I really want to sink in.

How.

In some ways, evil and manipulative the media can be. And you know, I wrote the book from both perspectives. Like, one, I think it's bad culturally. But two, as a marketer or a publicist or an advertiser, this presents so many opportunities to take advantage of it. And, you know, the book and a lot of my career has been about using that environment to get lots of press and attention and ultimately sell millions and millions of dollars worth of products for my clients. So it's not like it's, hey, the world is ending. I'm just saying, hey, you can't trust what you read. And as a marketer, you got to be aware that this is how the game is being played.

Well, yeah, like in the book, you talk about nine tactics to manipulating and controlling media. Can you give an overview of some of those nine tactics?

Yeah. So, like what I talk about, I think a big one, I think the most sort of actionable is like, look, if in the old days, take a paper like the New York Times, right, they can only print so many articles in the newspaper each day, right? So. And they don't make any more money if the paper's any bigger because that's not how ads are sold. Right. So there's open finite amount of slots in the newspaper each day, and you and all these other outlets are competing for that spot. So it's a buyer's market. The reporter gets to decide who makes it in the press or not. Well, today it's the opposite. Right? The Huffington Post can publish an infinite amount of articles, and each reporter gets paid by how many articles they produce on a daily basis. So if you come to a reporter at the Huffington Post or a Business Insider and you deliver them an amazing concept for an article, even if it's a total puff piece that benefits you, you're doing them a favor because by publishing it, they're making more money. And so I want people to understand that the media has transitioned from a buyer's market to a seller's market. And so as a brand or as a publicist or a marketer who's doing interesting things, you're in the driver's seat. And you can essentially bribe journalists and media reporters by doing interesting things and handing them these stories. You basically do their job for you and they're not going to care because that's how they pay the rent. And so I sort of talk about these.

That's kind of like Amazon getting featured on 60 Minutes the Sunday night before Cyber Monday about their 30 minute delivery, which isn't even real.

Right? It wasn't real. It was a total marketing stunt. But 60 Minutes is perfectly fine to participate in that marketing stuff.

Absolutely. Yeah.

Because they got millions of views out of it. Whereas in the old days, I don't want to say there was some golden age, the idea should be that 60 Minutes should be investigating and exposing publicity.

The gold standard.

Yes, Right. Rather than enabling and encouraging them for their own gain.

It's amazing. So, I mean, hell, continue on. Ryan, this is very useful.

So, yeah, so look, the book is about revealing those tactics and showing how they work. And I want you to know that it's also a cautionary tale in the sense that, look, you've got to understand that now a reporter isn't obligated to produce the truth. So if one of your competitors decides that they want to leak a salacious allegation about you, a reporter might be happy to play along because they know that's going to be good for business. So, like I have one of the examples in the book. Facebook hired a covert PR firm to leak bad stories and mount a campaign about privacy against Google as a way of distracting from Facebook's Facebook's privacy issues. And so that should be pretty shocking. And this campaign got featured everywhere from the Huffington Post to an editorial in the Washington Post. And so it's like, it's not just that you can take advantage of it, it's that you've got to be on guard because this is a system that really doesn't play by any rules other than self interest. And so as a marketer, that's something that I really wanted people to be aware of because I've seen too many clients get blindsided, whether it's by, you know, a bogus lawsuit that is settled because, you know, someone doesn't want the media attention. Whether it's a disgruntled employee who gets to make you look bad or it's a competitor who gets to, you know, sort of control your Wikipedia page because you were too busy thinking that, you know, Wikipedia is controlled by people who actually care.

Right, right. That's interesting. Now, you know, the other thing too, I think about the book is it will give you a perspective that you're just never going to get anywhere else. I mean, even the stuff that you write about, like if someone starts attacking some of your clients or you, you're getting attacked and how people think the right way to respond to something is versus what just exasperates problems.

Yeah, totally. I think, you know, what will happen is someone will get accused of something, and then you go and you run a statement by your lawyer, and it takes him two days to get to respond. And then you issue this bland, boring announcement, and then, hey, it's too late. Nobody, like, you're already, you know, a child molester, whatever they decided to accuse you of. And you can't ever undo that because the media cycle operates so quickly and so unscrupulously that you can really be labeled permanently forever off really bogus accusations very quickly. And conversely, you could get a reputation as an awesome saint, totally unwarranted, if you're strategic about the information and the perception that you. You present to the public. I really just want people to understand that, hey, your old assumptions about how the media works, what you feel like the rules are, those don't apply. There's a new game and you've got it. I'm not saying you have to play it yourself, but you better understand how it works or you are going to either fall painfully behind or rudely awaken one day with a very unfortunate situation.

Yeah, you know, I've kind of linked the book, sort of like just like a great book, along the lines of, you know, completely different topic. But our friend Neil Strauss, you know, he's written many fantastic books and, you know, we recently, you know, had him as a guest on I Love Marketing. And I've known Neil for quite a while, and, you know, Dean and Neil are good friends. And, you know, he's just a great writer and he wrote the Game Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists. And, you know, it kind of starts out about this whole, you know, I didn't know how to beat women, how to, you know, he kind of goes through this whole period where he actually learned it and got really into the game. And then it sort of ends about, you know, saying, wow, you know, I mean, he becomes kind of like a changed person throughout. But he tells the whole story of how the game is real and you know, how it works. And you know, I kind of. Lincoln, trust me, I'm lying the same way. I mean, you kind of become. You tell the story of what you were doing, how you were doing it, techniques that are used, things like that. And then you become soured to a lot of. You really find out what the hell's going on. And then you start cautioning and warning people about how to interact with it and how to think about it and how to utilize it and use it if you want. And it's just. But I really left that book feeling not only a hell of a lot more educated and very strategic, but I think you're doing a real service by writing a book like that because frankly, most people don't have the balls to do it. I think it's just a really kick ass book. Anything else you want to say about. Trust me, I'm lying because I want to go back and ask you to talk a couple more marketing things.

No, no, I think that's it. I think like anything, you get drawn into a world and at first you're sort of captivated by it and you want to figure it out and you start going down this path and then maybe one day you're like, man, what am I doing? Is this, Is this how things should be? And I wanted to help other people figure that out before they went as far down it as I did. And I think that's what Neil was doing with his book. And yeah, Neil's amazing. He actually gave me a bunch of great advice when I was working on Trust me, I'm lying. Yeah, yeah.

You know, one thing I gotta mention on this too. I don't even know if you know him, but there's one of the top copywriters in the world is Paris Lantropoulos. He's got a really long lasting. He's written some huge direct mail campaigns and direct marketing campaigns that have been read and viewed by billions of people. And he's been writing for Boardroom Inc. For many years. And he's in my 25k group with Brian Kurtz, who also runs Boardroom Inc. And publishers Bottom Line Personal. And at the most recent meeting that he was at here at my office, he told everyone in the room, and this is a guy who's a world class writer. He's like, if you want to understand the media, you got to read. Trust me, I'm lying. He's like, it is a great book. So I almost want to. I just want to say it, because people that are direct marketers that know Paris, that's a huge endorsement of your book, because this is a guy who's just one of the greatest writers in the world. And so. Yeah, there you go. Wow. Yeah. Well, I want to ask you. Like, me and Dean have a bunch of small business owners that listen to. I love marketing and all kinds of different varieties, from brick and mortar to information marketers to designers to restaurants, to real estate agents and carpet cleaners, you name it. We have a few that run gigantic companies, a lot of fitness people. For a carpet cleaner as an example, if you were to sit down with someone and they're like, I need more business, Ryan, what do you recommend I do? And you only had a few minutes to say anything to him. What would you. Other than read your book, what would you say to someone? What sort of advice would you give a small business owner looking to just get exposure, get business grow?

Sure. Well, you know, it's interesting. I wonder if you guys agree with me on this. I find it really hard to give hypothetical marketing advice. Like, when someone's like, hey, what would you say? It's like, I wouldn't say anything because I try to give actionable stuff that actually would work for that specific person. But you know what I'm saying?

So anyway, let me also speak to that. I think that's one of the reasons me and Dean became such niche marketers. And our very first profit activator, and the eight profit activators that people download on our website, ilovemarketing.com, which doesn't even sell anything, is select a single target market. So we're very much about niching and being specific and giving people. Well, in this particular case, this is what you do. So, yeah, totally. The only reason I'm asking you that is because that's what me and Dean constantly get asked. So we. We always like asking some of our guests. Well, what the hell would you say to people?

Yeah, yeah, totally. And this is something I've been thinking about, too, because, like, look, it's like, how do you market more? How do you market the more boring stuff out there? How do you. If it's like, hey, I'm in. I'm in the carpet business, or I'm in. I'm in the construction business, or I'm, you know, I'm Not, I'm not like one of my clients, he does books about drinking and hooking up. So it's like he's not. That's a. That's fairly easy to get controversial media attention for because it's inherently controversial. So I guess first I would also push back on the idea that boring stuff has to stay boring. GoDaddy is a great example of a company that's about as boring as you can get from a business perspective. It's a domain name registry, but it's a brand that we all know about and we've all talked about and we've all seen, even if we've not used it, because they're really good at creating compelling spectacles that get people's attention. But the first thing to really answer your question, the first thing that I talk to people about or perspective clients or anyone is they go, hey, I want more customers. And I go, well, like, who are your customers? Like, who are we? Who specifically do you want to reach? And I really actually make them tell me who that person is because I think far too many people just think, they think that they should be in the New York Times because that's where everyone is. But it's like, why would you be on the front page of a newspaper to reach the 75 potential customers in your local area that you actually need? Like, that seems terribly inefficient to me to go to the biggest media outlet in the country and so you can reach 17 people that are within a 15 minute drive from your house. You know, that seems like you're needlessly going through a middleman. So I really try to push people and figure out who your customers are. And then I say, what is the most interesting thing about what you do and how can we come up with something? Whether it's pr, whether it's advertising, whether it's a campaign, whether it's direct response, something that can reach those people and communicate that fact. And I think that's, that's the core of marketing. Right? Like you have something special. There are prospective people out there who would be interested. How can you communicate that fact? And let's be totally agnostic in terms of what it is that we use to get there, provided it's the best way to do it in this specific case.

Yep. Love it.

Love it.

Very good advice. So, Dean, anything else you want to add or say or ask?

I love it. I can't believe it's already announced.

That's amazing. Yeah. Wow.

Well, it almost is. I think we've got maybe Another minute and a half or whatever. But I usually do all the yakking when we have guests and stuff.

Well, I know I'm going to have to ask him. Do you think that you could take Dove in a fist fight?

Do I think I could take Dove Charlie in a fist fight? Yeah. That's a controversial question. I like it.

Dove.

Dove has maybe the most energy I've ever seen in a human being. Like, he doesn't sleep at all. So on the one hand, he's got that going for him. But Dove doesn't do any exercise of any kind. So I think that I might have him there. But he is not someone I would ever want to fight. Actually, he is one of. He's been at. But he's been a great mentor to me. He's taught me so much. And you know what, it's funny. Despite his very controversial reputation, he built the largest garment manufacturing business in the United States that pays workers between 13 and $18 an hour when the going wage for garment workers internationally is like 15 cents or 25 cents. So it's funny, he's got this reputation of being this, like, villain and he's actually, I think, one of the sweetest, nicest good people I've ever met in my life. But I guess that goes. That's part of why I wrote, Trust me, I'm lying, is I knew this man and then I knew what his media reputation was and they are at direct opposite ends of the spectrum. And I felt like that really wasn't fair and that that shouldn't keep happening.

No. And that's. And you really do give a real good insight and perspective about, you know, just, you know, how wrong the media can get or represent things for their own, you know, their own purposes. If you were to be a referee in a fist fight between Tucker Max and Tim Ferriss, who would you hope would win?

That is a tough one because they both do Brazilian jiu jitsu and mixed martial arts. They are both extremely strong. And I don't know, I would. Tucker is bigger, like in terms of height and stronger than Tim, but Tim has an inhuman strength quality to him. So I don't want to pick sides, but that would be a good fight, that is for sure.

And I bring that up because no commitment.

You've been very.

I'm trying to get you. Can you see what we're doing here? We're trying to get you to commit to something that we can get on the front page of Gawker.

Of course, that Ryan Holiday says he.

Could take in a fist fight.

And you've been really instrumental in helping book authors and stuff with their marketing campaigns. And so if there's any anyone listening that is an author, you got to read both of Ryan's books. But yeah, that's it. Ryan, it's great chatting with you. This is really useful. I just love the fact at such a young age you've just really cranked out some awesome shit. And what is your blog? If people want to read your blog, where do they go?

Yeah, it's RyanHoliday.net I'm at Twitter, at Twitter.com RyanHoliday and I actually on my site, if people care, I'm a huge reader. I love books. And so I do a weekly or a monthly email where I recommend like 5 or 10amazing books and you can get that on my site.

Oh, and one last thing, since you're on. I love marketing. Why do you love marketing? I mean, you gravitated towards this subject. What does it do for you? Why do you get into it? Why do you like it?

Yeah, I love taking things that I personally love and think are awesome and making more people know about them. I think that's what marketing is and that's what I. I get to pick the clients that I work with and I take an immense amount of pleasure out of popularizing things that I'm personally.

Yeah, awesome. Me too. Me too. And I think that and one of our goals and objectives with I love marketing, for lack of a better word, we said, you know, we got to really rebrand what how people think about marketing, how people utilize it, how they interact with it. And that's the whole purpose of I love marketing and why we have a boatload of people that listen to it and subscribe. So thank you, Ryan, to all of our listeners. Let us know what you thought of this episode. Go to ilovemarketing.com and post your comments. Share it with anyone that you think needs to hear it. Read Ryan's books and let us know what you thought about the recommendations and we will keep you posted of any shenanigans or happenings that you need to be aware of related to Ryan and everything else in the world of. Of real marketing that works. So thank you guys.

Thanks.

Thanks for having me.