Ann Handley "Good Content vs. Good Enough Content"

This morning we have Ann Hanley with us. Anne is a Wall Street Journal best selling author, keynote speaker, and the world's first Chief Content officer. She works from a tiny home, and if she wasn't a marketer, she'd love to be a dog walker. Ann speaks and writes about how you can rethink the way your business markets. Cited in Forbes as the most influential woman in social media and recognized by Forbes Women as the top 20 women bloggers. Ann Hanley is the Chief Content Marketing Officer at Marketing Profs, a training and education company with the largest community of marketers in its category. So without further ado, please join me in welcoming Ann Hanley.

Thank you, Charlie. Hi, everybody. How's it going? I am like, I'm so grateful and overwhelmed that you're all here. You know that this is not Amy Schumer, right? You know that. All right, just checking because I'm feeling like, look at this, he's leaving. What? No, I'm kidding. Anyway, so today I'm going to talk about good versus good enough content. But before I get into that, I just want to say I love speaking to the inbound audience in part because you are my people. Right. I talk to audiences all over the world and very often, you know, I have to start with why inbound? Why content? So thank you. Thank you. Right. So it is awesome to be in a room with all of you and I'm really, really grateful. And that's not just lip service. So very often the notion of good versus good enough content is framed as a kind of quality versus quantity issue. Quite often the assumption is that quality and quantity are kind of. There's a tension between them. Right. Very often it's like this. As the quality of. As the quantity. I'm sorry, as the quantity of something starts to go up, as the number of posts that you're putting out or as the amount of content that you're putting out increases from like 1, 2, 3, 4 a week to bajillion. At the far end of it, as the quantity starts to go up, the quality starts to wah, wah. It starts to sort of nose dive. So we see that a lot. Like in restaurants, for example, the more restaurants there are, typically in a certain chain, the quality gets a little bit more iffy. And you see it in email lists too, in a marketing context, as your list gets bigger and bigger, typically the responsiveness of that list starts to nose dive. But I don't think that has to be the case with content. I do think that content can scale, but only if you really get those basics right. So what I want to share with you today is three different attributes, three different things that I think everybody in this room could think about going into 2016 right around the corner. Three things that I think are key to good, quality, engaging content. And that's bigger, bigger stories. Secondly, braver, braver marketers, braver marketing, and then bolder writing and bolder tone of voice. And I want to just share with you some examples of some companies who I think are doing that really well. I do think that the biggest missed opportunity in content is really playing it too safe. And so I want to share some examples and hopefully give you some inspiration to maybe not play it so safe yourself and maybe convince the folks up the food chain that you can't play it too safe anymore, that content is an opportunity to do something different. And I don't say that in any sort of blue sky kind of way. I really believe it's a different way of communicating, of attracting people to you, of creating marketing that doesn't feel like marketing. As my friend, I almost said Marcus Sheridan. No, not Marcus, as my friend Tom Fishburne says, although Marcus probably believes it too. So here's an example of what I see as kind of a missed opportunity of playing it too safe. What you're looking at here is the world's first touch activated film. In other words, Instagram video. This is the way that Caress defined what they produced on Instagram. So what it is, it's a series of 12 different posts that Caress put out to promote its new body wash called Love Forever. And what it is, is it's like there's a couple of stills just like in a film. And then as you scroll down, you can touch activate the first 15 seconds or actually you can caress the screen for the first crazy, right? That's really. You can caress the screen for the first 15 seconds to, to start the film and then you go to the next one and you caress it again and you get the next 15 seconds and so on and so on, right all the way down through the 12 posts. So the storyline is that this super hot woman. It's not me, by the way. I know you're thinking that it's not me, but anyway, this super hot woman walks into a club and there's pulsing music in the background. And she walks in, she sort of glides in, beautifully dressed, and she stands in the middle of the room and sort of looks around, tries to see somebody that she's attracted to, whatever, doesn't see anybody. So instead, what she does is she starts dancing by herself in the middle of the room as you do when you can't find anybody. And as she's dancing, she's caressing herself and these rose petals are flying off her skin as they do right when you're standing in the middle of a nightclub dancing and caressing yourself. So then across the room, she catches the eye of a waiter who's like, me. And she's like, you. And he's like, really? So he takes off his jacket and weirdly, he has this Tron suit on. That's never fully explained. I felt like it was undeveloped in the film itself. Anyway, this whole thing happens. They finally. They sort of start dancing together at the end. And the last line of this film, again told in these 15 second increments, is, could this be the beginning of love forever? This thing had, like, not great engagement, right? 77 likes on one of them. That's so brutal, right? I give them credit for not removing it, though. I guess I'll comment since nobody else did. And then underneath, I don't know if you can see it, but someone's commenting about the music. That bass riff has a Seinfeld vibe. Like nothing about the product or anything. I don't really mean to pick on this. I'm sure that there's some really talented people that worked on this. My problem with it isn't that, you know, it's not a beautifully produced film and that it's not a great commercial. It's just that it's a commercial, right? It's basically a piece of product centric advertising instead of real content. So instead of using the opportunity of Instagram, which, you know, I'm a huge lover of Instagram, I see the value in it for brands, and I really think that, you know, there's an opportunity there to do some different things. Instead of that, they just sort of produced this commercial, called it something silly like the world's first touch activated film, and. And sort of stuffed it into the construct of Instagram. And so it was sort of a miss for me. That's really my problem with it. So why does all of this matter? Why are we even having this conversation? What I wanted to do is just put it in a little bit of a broader context about what's going on in marketing, things that you guys all know. This is the noisy world that we live in, right? I took this shot at my house last night during dinner. We dress up for dinner. We live in a really noisy world. And part of it is because of all of us marketing Contributes to that. Some research that marketing profits my company does every year with Content Marketing Institute shows that 76% of B2B organizations plan to produce more content in 2016. So we're looking to do more of what we've all already been doing. At the same time, 51% of B2B organizations plan to spend more on content in 2016. So we're creating more stuff, we're putting more money into it, and here's the result. I think this is what it feels like, right? I know this is how I feel as somebody who creates content all the time on behalf of Prowse. But remember the scene from Jaws when Roy Schneider sees the giant website in front of him and he's like. Like, oh, shit, we're going to need a bigger boat. But here's the reality, right? 30%. I'm sorry about saying shit, by the way. Like, immediately I was like, why did you say that? Don't say that. All right, that's it. I'm sorry about that. 30% of B2B. No, really, I am. I never do that. 30% of B2b organizations know that their content is effective. So this is the reality dose, right? I think we all struggle with this. You know, how do we actually show business results? How do we connect what we're putting out with what we are doing, with engagement, with actually creating customers, with actually growing our businesses? Engaging content, according to our research, has been the top challenge for the past five years. CMI and Marketing Process have been doing this research for the past five years, and engaging content is always the top challenge. I think that engaging content, though, is more about brains than budget. I think we need to rethink the way that we are producing content and not do stuff that's a mismatch, right? That's a little bit silly. Like that caress example that I showed you about. So I want to just sort of shift gears a little bit right now and tell you a quick story. Cancoozies, A love story. Do you guys know what cancoozies are? Right? Oh, good. See, you are my people. I told you so. Cancun. If you don't know, they're drink insulators for beer or soda or. What other drinks are there, Right? There's a couple others. Anyway you can. So that's what a beer koozie is. This is my brother Bill. He's here with my nephew Ben. And Bill lives in Arizona and he loves beer. So he has, like a real thing for canned koozies, right? In his case, it is Beer koozies. And he's always looking for that perfect beer koozie. The reality though is that this is what most of them look like. They're the kind of thing that you get on the trade show floor. There's probably some here in the Expo Center. They have somebody's branding on it or whatever and they're made out of that foamy material. So Bill didn't want this. He wanted to find something that was better than this. So what do you think he did to try to find that item? Googled. Right Again, my people, seriously, I've spoken, I've told this story before and I say, what do you think he did? And they're like, I don't know, what would you do? Right? Yeah. So he googled and this is what he found. This drink insulator keeps your bottled beverages colder, longer, plus folds flat for maximum pocket portability. Okay, that's really useful. That's true. A lot of utility in that. So this is what he found. He googled some more. Our beverage insulator fits your bottle or can like a glove. Here, here's what he found. This is like deer skin, kind of koozie. He also found this one which is like road kill, I think. I think that's what this one was. What kind of fur it was anyway? Some sort of strange animal fur. So he continues to google. He finds one that describes itself like this. Classier than a brown bag. And this is what that was. It's like a boiled wool, like kind of can koozie. He also found this one which is. We call this the Keebler because it's like a hollowed out log. You know, it's super heavy. You know, you get a workout and quench your thirst at the same time. Then he found this company. This company is called Freaker usa. He here's how Freaker defines themselves. Here's how they talk about themselves. Infusing lifestyle and functionality into a drink insulator. Established in 2011, Freaker USA quickly grew to be the global leader of preventing moist handshakes and sweaty beverages. That's the founder right there, by the way, with his bathrobe and his scruffiness. They aren't just selling you their fit everything product. They're giving you an invitation to their party. A starter kit for a new lifestyle. The Freaker is the background music to a never ending journey. This is like a story that they tell. This is sort of a theme that they extend all across the social channels, the website itself, even on their like about us pages, which are generally Like, I think the opportunity for creating some interesting content and usually are often ignored. But here's what they did on their About Us page. This is what their president's bio says. We kidnapped and trafficked Michael Barr from his ancestral motherland of Minnesota, forcing him into presidency. He's the Cialis to our performance anxiety. Like, that is awesome, right? I can't even imagine working at a company that would let you do that. But still, it's totally on brand for these guys, right? They totally tell a different story all across, everything that they do. And it feels like less like a product description or just a utilitarian view of what they are. It actually feels like a kind of cultural call to arms, a kind of community that you want to be part of. I talked to Lauren Krakowskius, who heads up marketing for them, and she said when you sell a product that most people get free at trade shows, your story is the start of the thing that sets you apart. Your story is really the start of the thing that sets you apart. It's the only way, really, that you have to tell a different story to say who you are. So Freaker, in my mind, is one of those companies, they tell a bigger story, right? They're not just selling a commodity like a can koozie, right? They're putting their product in the context of your life, right? Of all of our lives. They are very brave, right? They make you feel like you are part of a tribe. Some people aren't comfortable with them, and that's kind of the point. That's okay. And the third thing is that they have a clear, bold tone of voice, right? They're very bold, obviously. Like, if you were to just strip the branding off of all of this, if you didn't have their products up there at all, you would still know it was them, right? They sound that unique. They sound that different. So the three things to think about in terms of your own products and services, in terms of your own companies, are these three things. Bigger story, braver marketing, and bolder voice. And I actually think of it as internally too. I think of it as kind of like using your brains to tell that bigger story, trying to figure out what that is, and also your heart and your gut, because I think it involves all three. It really does take some heart to tell your story effectively, and it does take some guts. And I recognize that. Okay, so how do we do this now? What? Where do we go from here? So the first thing is to think about your bigger story. And what do I mean by that? I mean, that the bigger story that you tell should put your business in the context of what people care about. Right? Don't just talk about your own products and services, but talk about what they do for others. And more than that, what your broader story is, what your bigger story is. Use your bigger story like Freaker does and like other companies I'm about to tell you about do, to really convert more people into your tribe. I actually changed this to Squad because my daughter is always like hashtag squadgoals. So I was going to put that up and then I felt like it. It was sort of a mismatch with me because, you know, I'm not 18. But anyway, so use your bigger story to convert more people into your squad. A company who I think does this really well is Blue Bottle Coffee. Do you guys know Blue Bottle? Yeah. Really? That was like one person. So Blue Bottle Coffee is based in Oakland, California and they are. They've got a couple of locations. They just opened some in New York. They have locations in Los Angeles. This past spring, they opened one in Tokyo. When they opened in Tokyo, the line had a four hour wait just to get a cup of Blue Bottle coffee. They are known for two things. First of all, having single source beans. So they take that very seriously. But also for making a ridiculously good cup of coffee. It's not just a pumpkin spice half caf latte with a shot of vanilla. Instead, it's really good cup of coffee. That's really what they're all about. So I had noticed Blue Bottle when I went to San Francisco. I noticed the stanchions and the lines and people lining up. But what really piqued my interest in this company was when I was on SlideShare Skillshare one day. Do you guys know Skillshare? It's an online learning community essentially. So you can take a million courses on there for like, there's a free version or you can pay 10 bucks a month and get like a premium membership on there. You can take all kinds of things. You can learn how to do calligraphy or design, or there's business skills, all kinds of things. So I had noticed that Blue Bottle had a skillshare course on there. Their director of training, a guy named Michael Phillips, had a course on there and it was an hour long and it was all about how to make a perfect cup of coffee. So if I'm being honest, I will tell you that I. And I am, I will tell you that I took this class to mock it because I was like, I've been drinking coffee my Whole life. I mean, you're going to tell me that I've been doing it wrong. It was weird, like an hour long for how to make a perfect cup of coffee. I just thought it was a little bit crazy. If you'll notice here. So it's an hour on how to make a perfect cup of coffee and it's hard to see, but there's an eight minute segment on just tasting the coffee, right? So you've already gone through probably 45 minutes at that point, then eight minutes on tasting it and you haven't even started to enjoy it yet because there's a two minute segment on enjoying right under that. That's like nuts, right? But here's the thing. I took it again to mock it. As I'm going through the coursework, I sort of started to get it. I started to understand that it wasn't there. It is. That's that segment. It wasn't just about making any old cup of coffee, but I learned a lot about where beans are sourced from the freshness factor. I learned a lot about grinding beans, about how that blade grinder that many of us probably have is actually the worst kind of grinder that there is and you should give it to your worst enemy. Actually, you should go out and buy a burr grinder. So I learned a whole lot. It wasn't just five ways to make a great cup of coffee. It was really, really deep instruction. It was really, really deep learning. So of course I went out and bought, I ordered a pound of blue bottle coffee. But here's the thing, it was $19 for a pound of coffee, but there was free shipping. So that was a good deal. So like the whole idea of like, you know, five ways to optimize or five ways to make a great cup of coffee or something like that, it's kind of like, I think of it as like a throwback Thursday. Like that's like content 1.0 right now. I think we need to go beyond that. I mean, you can still produce those as maybe an intro to something like this. But I think really thinking about content that's deeply educational is way more valuable because I think that deep value makes smarter customers, right? Who are going to make better decisions about what the decisions that they're going to make, better buying decisions. So why did this work for me? And I think what can we take away from Told a bigger story, right? It had bigger context. It absolutely showed why you should care about this stuff. And then it actually got me involved in their story on a bigger level. It was A real class with real curriculum and real coursework all the way through it. There were short, tight segments so it never really dragged for me. It never got real boring. There was like two, three minute segments the whole way through. And I feel smarter and I feel like part of their squad now. Right. I feel part of something. There are other paths to bigger. This isn't the only way. Just through doing some sort of training program. There are many, many other paths. And I tend to have a PowerPoint problem. I tend to want to share tons and tons of examples. But because I only have 45 minutes, I sort of had to figure out what was the best story to tell you guys. But there are way more ways to do this. There are far more ways to do this. I wrote up a couple of things that I left on the cutting room floor from this talk@annhanhanley.com, yesterday. I published a post around it and one of the things that I talked about was mailchimp. And mailchimp is an email marketing company which you guys don't use, but right, no customers here. So they've done an amazing job of telling a bigger story. Its bigger story is that they want to make the world a better place by making email less annoying, essentially. So if you are using email to market your own products and services, you don't do it in a way that's annoying. And one of the things that they do is they really focus a lot on writing, which kind of speaks to my own heart quite a bit. OK. They posted a style guide on GitHub that it's just an open source platform that you can go, you're free to download. It's not behind registration or any of that. So you can sort of use this. If you are thinking about producing a style guide, a writing style guide for your own company or a content style guide, you can use this, download it, you can sort of take what you like and leave the rest. You can use it as the start to that. So it's just, it's a way, I think, of giving your audience gifts, right? Of giving your customers gifts and not expecting anything in return, at least initially. So takeaways. Think about leading a tribe. How do you lead? How do you make your customers deeply smarter, either through some kind of training or through giving them gifts the way that mailchimp does. And then how do you make the world a better place? I almost left this last one off because I feel like it sounds a little bit like Pollyanna. Like, how do you make the world a better place? But I really do believe that that's the opportunity of content. That's the thing that we can really think about as providing value to the folks we want to reach. All right, second thing, bolder marketing. What do I mean by bolder? I mean thinking about disrupting industry fairy tales. Don't just tell the same stories that everybody else tells. Don't just produce the same kind of content that your competitors might also produce. So one of my favorite examples of a company that does this really well is Greatest. I don't know if any of you know Greatest here, but it's a fantastic site. Launched four years ago in 2011, they now have something like 10 million subscribers, as well as lots of partners. What I love about this company is that they came out in 2011. It's a very, very saturated market. Health and fitness is not an easy market to get a toehold in. But these guys did it. And the way that they did it was their own particular point of view. They told a bolder, different story. They just didn't tell the same story that like Men's Health or Shape magazine or someplace like that was telling. You can see it right there. It's not about looking hot, it's about feeling confident. So that's an example of the different story that they tell. And it's not in like a self helpy kind of way. It's just more like, let's be real, right? Health and fitness is hard. We're going to fall off the wagon. It's like you still want to enjoy your life. You're not going to be all about it necessarily. That's the market that they're looking at. They do have 10 million subscribers in four years, as I said. And one of the ways that they've done that is by disrupting industry fairy tales, right? Telling a different story. A lot of content that all of us produce, not just health and fitness magazines. But I think it's true of B2B. It's true of typical case studies. Is this right? It's like you give the problem, here's the problem, here's how we overcame it, and now everything is awesome. These are the three steps. Three steps. So Derek, who's the CEO and the founder of Greatest, knew this and he sought to understand the specific challenges that the people in his readership have, right? People who were his subscribers have. He wanted to tell more authentic stories. I will tell you, authenticity is one of those words that I hate as it relates to marketing, because what does that even mean? I don't even know what that really means. But I like the way that he went at it. So he looks to tell more authentic stories. That doesn't follow this. That instead says, here's the problem, here's how we overcame it. And then there are still other struggles that are going on, but here's how life is a little bit better. So he says. Derek Flanz Reich, who's the CEO of the Greatest, says that authentic stories resonate more because they land on a specific challenge your audience is facing when which hasn't yet been told at the level of depth they desire. I think this is so applicable to so much of the content that all of us are putting out. So here's how he told a different story. Here's how he disrupts industry fairy tales. In the health and fitness space. They produce articles like this one. The brutally honest body image advice you need to hear. This isn't like buzzfeed style, like sort of light. It's actually really, really good content with a lot of integrity. The massive fitness trend that actually is not healthy at all. Again, lots of integrity. And the reason why he's able to produce content that's a little bit deeper, that makes his audience a lot smarter, that's bolder, is because he has assembled a panel of experts. And these guys look for. Look for a couple of things. They look to verify any studies that are sort of listed in the articles and the content that they produce. They question sources so that he sort of has a Greek chorus who's sort of questioning things before they go out. And they offer feedback and advice. So it really does give the content that's on the Greatest, and integrity that is often lacking in his competitors or in other kinds of other sources like that. So the other reason why this works, the second reason why, is because he has a much narrower audience than a lot of his competitors have. And the reason why, or one of the reasons why he's able to do that is because he has very reliable Personas that he's developed over the four years that he's been publishing the Greatest. So we hear a lot about Personas in marketing. I'm sure a lot of you might have them. My problem with Personas is that a lot of times companies develop them and then they sort of sit on a shelf in the marketing director's audience somewhere and they're never really used. Instead, I think you need to always be challenging, always be asking, is this really what our Personas look like? How do we actually represent a composite of our audience based on conversations with real people? How do we actually evolve Personas to use them consistently throughout the process? I think it starts with really understanding your audience's specific challenges and then to get at them more deeply to tell those deeper stories. So just a couple of quick things. I could talk about Personas at a different time. I don't really have time to get into it today, but think of your Personas as a proxy for actual people. Not actual people, but sort of composites of actual people. And challenge assumptions about your market. Right? Challenge assumptions about who these people are, you may think that they're one thing, but based on your conversations with the folks that you're connecting with, your audience, the folks you want to connect with, constantly surveying them, reading what they read, and then using data to refine. So how is this actually resonating? Maybe looking at the information in your marketing Automation or your CRM, or using a tool like BuzzSumo to see what is really resonating, what's really bubbling up and rising to the top. So come up with some composite Personas and then use data to tell you whether you're right and to refine them as you continue to publish. And it's not a one and done. Right? It's an evolution. It's always asking yourself, are we really talking to the people we want to talk to? Another company who has done this really well is Toyota. And by really done this, I mean disrupting fairytales really well is Toyota. So Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, he famously called hydrogen cars crap. He said that when he heard about the notion of a hydrogen car, he sort of dismissed it. So he sort of called them bullshit, essentially, is what he said. So Toyota, instead of just sort of hiding their feelings about that, or instead of just ignoring what a powerful figure in the automotive industry said when they announced a plan to sell a hydrogen car, they went straight at it. They took on the criticism that was sort of articulated by Elon and incorporated it into the marketing. So what you're looking at here is not a commercial. It's actually a three and a half minute mini documentary about hydrogen cars, not about the Mirai, which is what Toyota actually manufactured. It'll be available for sale in 2016. But they actually took on the role of underdog and created this like 3 1/2 minute film talking about why they believe in hydrogen cars. So I'm sharing this with you only because I think it's a great example of not hiding from the tough issues, right? Of just not pretending that there's not, or not pretending that there's some kind of groundswell out there, and at least just, you know, let's just take it straight on. So the takeaways from this is, you know, does your content tell a different story with a specific point of view, or do you sound like everybody else and are you talking to a narrowly defined, refined audience? My third point here is braver voice, right? How do we create writing that resonates? How do we use a braver voice for our own content? I think tone of voice is vastly undervalued, but I do think that it's your gutsiest and your bravest asset, and I think it's something that we should all work to hone. Voice isn't about grammar. No. You don't think that's funny? Come on. That's funny. When I start talking about writing and tone of voice, I get that a lot. You know, it's like, oh, yeah, we have a copywriter who's like, you know, who looks at everything. That's not what I mean. I mean developing a tone of voice that's really unique to your own company. So what do I mean by tone of voice when I'm talking about tone of voice? It's three things. I think it reflects who you are, who you are as a company. Secondly, why you do what you do, not what you sell, but why you sell it. Right? Why you do what you do. And the third thing is what you are like to deal with. And I think this final point is really, really key, what you're like to deal with. Maybe everybody is not going to want to deal with you based on your own tone of voice, But I think it's really important to convey that what you are like to deal with. So here's how I think about it. I think tone of voice reflects your culture, who you are. It amplifies your story and communicates with empathy with people you want to reach. Or more simply, another way to look at it is culture times story times empathy equals tone of voice. Those multiplication signs are key, by the way, because if the value of any one of those things is zero, right? If your tone of voice isn't reflective of who you are as a company or culture or the story that you tell. And it's not communicating with empathy, with empathy for those you want to reach. But I think the sum or the product, I guess, would also be zero, right? So I think you have to have elements of those three things in your tone of voice. So my favorite example of a company who does this really well is M and R M and R is a consultancy who helps nonprofits leverage social media to market better, essentially. So here's what the M and R homepage looks like. And right on the homepage, they have this little piece of content here that essentially says who they are, what they're all about. We help nonprofits achieve lasting, real, lasting change. We only work with clients we believe in. We take risks. So think about that construct that I just gave you a few minutes ago. It fits perfectly into this, right? We help nonprofits achieve real, lasting change. Who are we? What do we do? Why do they do it? We only work with clients we believe in. Right. So they're not going to take you on if what you're trying to raise money for is in conflict with their own values. And the third thing, we take risks. Right. What are you like to deal with? If you don't have a strong stomach for risky marketing, then you probably don't want to work with M and R. So they're just putting it right out there, right up front. Every year, M and R does a state of the industry report for nonprofit marketing and social media and they try to give a sense of some benchmarks for the industry. So they put out this report called M and R Benchmarks. And even the way that they market this thing is so brilliant and so beautiful and really falls into this. It doesn't sound like any other piece of research marketing that you've ever seen. Here's an email that arrived in my inbox. Here's what it says. It's a Q and A, like an FAQ about the report. So it's super, super nerdy. Yes. And also no. Collecting and analyzing such a wealth of information warmed the cockles of our data nerd hearts because we are the kind of weirdos who get really excited about comparative metrics and nifty data trends and. And also we like saying cockles. Second thing, that sounds really useful. We know, it totally is. I'm sorry for reading slides, by the way. I actually really hate it when speakers do that. But it's hard to talk about writing without reading. You know what I mean? No. Ok. So anyway, that's why I'm reading them. So I talked to their director of marketing, a woman named Marilyn, and I said I really love the copywriting I on your site. And she said to me, it's not just copywriting, actually, it's who we are. It's how we do the work, which I love. She said, if the label falls off, you know it's ours. If the label falls off, you know it's ours. I think that is such a powerful statement. You know, ask yourself about that with your own content that you put out there. And I think about this all the time, even when I'm just writing a post on my blog. If the label fell off of this, would people know it was me? Does it sound like me? I asked her, how do you think about voice? Like what are the attributes for you? She said, three things. Super smart, weirdly creative. They're a little bit weird. You can sort of tell by that FAQ for the research report that I shared. And they're scrappy, right? They'll do whatever it takes for the companies that they believe in. So you might be thinking, well, you know, bully for M and R, but we aren't fun or snarky or weird or flippant. You know, all the things that M and R is all about, right? Or another adjective. So ask yourself, who are you? Come up with those three words and then use it as the foundation for a tone of voice that's truly reflective of who you are. So I think of it as kind of a marketing mad lib. Think of these three things like, who are you? But here's what you can't do. You can't cheat and use words like this, friendly, reliable or honest, or like cutting edge or revolutionary or proactive. Because you just can't. You should be allergic to all of those words and never use them on your website ever again. I think M R is a really good example of using a brand voice to both attract people to you and then repel people as well. You know, we talk a lot in marketing about lead generation and just getting as many people into our funnel as we can, getting them as many, getting as many names as we can. But I don't think that's a really smart strategy because especially for a smaller company like M and R, you're going to spend a lot of time trying to figure out, are these people the right clients for us? Are they really people who. It's going to be a satisfactory relationship on both levels, right? On both sides. So use your tone of voice and all of your content actually, as a result, to attract the like minded, right? The people who want to work with you, who will be good customers for you and repel the timid. Right? Just repel them. So another quick example of another path for braver marketing is Chubbies. Do you guys know Chubbies? Yeah. All right. They're short shorts for men. If you don't know them, it's a fantastic company. I am not the target market, but I am obsessed with their marketing. So much about this company that I love. You should just go to their website because it's hilarious. But one of the things that they do really well is something that I think we could all learn from, which is to practice the rule of Fit Swivis and Fitzwibus is to find interesting ways to say boring stuff. Essentially, look at the way that they do this. A lot of times you see a subscribe box or something like that, they say mailing list, awesomeness. And then instead of the button being the call to action, instead of it being subscribe, it's boom shakalakalaka, right? And then talk to an actual human or hit us up on chat and then share if you hate pants, right? My friend Steve Garfield always says this, right? Tell me why I should follow you on Facebook or why I should follow you on Twitter or friend you on Facebook or whatever that's right there. Share if you hate pants, you don't like pants. We don't like pants. Let's be together. That's basically what they're saying. I think there are lots of places that you can do this, and it doesn't have to be this silly. But I'm just suggesting that you should think about how can we find interesting ways to say boring stuff that's consistent with our own marketing and our own tone of voice. Think about your About Us page. I mentioned that it's usually undervalued, usually sort of ignored. So think about your About Us page. Think about popovers or landing pages. Another great way, another great place. Microcopy at the top of an email, especially on a mobile phone. Instagram. See this all the time. I feel like you could tell a better story there. Find interesting ways. And then your FAQs. Just remember this scene from the Lion King. Remember when he's like surveying the kingdom and he says to his son, everything the light touches is content. Remember that line? That was a fantastic line. So do think of it that way. Everything your customer touches is content. Everything that is out there, across social channels, your own site, every place is content. So the takeaways here is really very simply. If you covered up your logo, would you recognize you? Not even your customers, but would you know it was you? This is a great way to convince your boss that you need to do something about content, that you need to tell bigger, braver, bolder stories. Take your website, print it out, cover up your logo. Do the same with your competitors. Put them on a conference room and try to figure out which Is which I've actually done this exercise, and it's incredibly powerful. All right, so I knew I have, like, what, three minutes right now? I'm just going to finish up real fast. Anybody wondering about my brother? What happened with the beer koozies, right? This guy, he worked hard. He spent a lot of money on beer koozies. So of course he orders a freaker, right? Takes it on vacation with him. That's he and his girlfriends, drinks down in Florida. He also travels a fair amount for work. And so he goes to Malaysia. He's an engineer for intel, so he goes to Malaysia from time to time. And the first time he went to Malaysia, he brought Hershey's candy bars as, like, a present for all the engineers at the Intel Malaysian office. And he kind of walked up like, here, I bring you chocolate from America. And. And they were like, yeah, we have that in the cafeteria. So he's like, damn. So this time he brought them freakers. He brought some to London when he did some work there. Back in Malaysia, More Malaysia. He goes to Malaysia quite a bit. He also found some home uses for it. This is like, you know, the can of pan? He put a freaker around that. Guess what we got for Christmas? All of us got freakers. It's like you get a freaker and you get a freaker and you get a freaker. It's like an Oprah moment. So that's true love, right? My brother used to be a koozie guy. Used to be like his thing. Now he's a freaker guy. Such a freaker guy. So I think the biggest missed opportunity in content really is playing it too safe. And I hope I've given you some inspiration for that today. My favorite quote from my dad. No, it's not my dad. He's a Presbyterian minister who lived like, actually, this photo was from, like, yesterday. A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are for. In all seriousness, I don't think that's what content is for either. Right? I think the boldest content is the stuff that's really going to move the needle for you. Right? It's not about producing safe content. It's bold. Content. Content. Bigger, braver, bolder. Takes hearts, brains and guts to create bigger stories and braver marketers and bolder voice. So let's do this. And thank you so much.