How great marketers work at a time like this

To you, my friend and fellow traveler:

So what’s been going on? Anything? Cool, cool, cool…

😎

I keep seeing business owners and entrepreneurs making changes to what they sell, in order to move with the times and adapt to their customers’ concerns over this public health crisis. Today I heard about several fitness instructors offering at-home sessions via Zoom. I‘ve seen therapists and public speakers delivering their services face-to-screen instead of face-to-face … also over Zoom. (It’s Zoom’s world. We’re just living in it. Sometimes literally.) The examples abound.

These people are the good ones, the proverbial “helpers” in the Mr. Rogers sense. (“Look for the helpers.”) Yes, they charge money for their services, but they also provide genuinely helpful services, from a genuine place of wanting to help. They need to survive too.

Fair wages for fair work — that simple notion is somehow comforting in the workplace right now.

I’ve seen creators publishing inspired work, and service providers pivoting their paid services to address actual problems their actual customers face — because that’s what useful products do.

Then there are those other types of marketers.

These aren’t helpers. Instead, they’re hucksters. They use the phrase “coronavirus” as a way to capitalize without caring what the other person might be going through. They don’t think about helping. They think about hustling. They just want a quick injection of attention.

That’s what arbitrage marketers do. They don’t care about the means, just the ends — nor do they care about the change they instill in others.

Both sets — helpers and hucksters — charge for what they do. Both sets are trying to adjust to this era. But it’s fairly obvious when you spot one or the other.

Today, I’d like to offer to be a helper: As a temporary experiment, while my travel is paused, I’d like to advise some brands and teams on how to better practice your marketing and communicate with your audience with real impact, empathy, and community at the core.

But before we start working together, some ideas in response to the question on most marketers’ minds: “What should we say?”

0) Stop asking WHAT. Start asking WHY.

We’ve been over this time and again as an industry: stop a moment to ask why, not just race to the what, to the tactics. Of course, during this trying time, it’s really hard to break the habit. It’s even more understandable now than ever. So it’s with a more gentle tone than usual that I say this:

Y’all. Take a beat.

Intent matters. There’s a whole spectrum ranging from hucksters all the way to helpers. We want to be the helpers. So let’s ask some distinct “whys” to get there.

We keep flipping through playbooks in search of tactics and lists. But to figure this out, we don’t need a different page of the playbook. We don’t need a different playbook, either. We need to ditch the playbook mentality altogether and act like people.

Ask…

1) Why would YOU need to say something about this? Intent is everything. Discuss this with your leadership and your team. The first variable unique to your own situation is each of you. You don’t exist elsewhere, in any other situation. That matters, and that means the general advice is too general to start. So we each need to ask: Why us?

2) Why would THEY need to hear something about this from you? Our job as marketers is to earn trust.

Trust forms when competency meets consistency.

Ask: What are our core marketing competencies that we deliver consistently already?

If your audience already trusts you to routinely discuss various human topics or tangential things to your industry or product in various ways (by writing to them, through a podcast, through video, through events), then great: You’re a short hop to discussing this situation, too.

But if discussing coronavirus seems inconsistent to your core competency, you won’t seem trustworthy. You may have the intent to help, but because neither fundamental piece of trust is apparent to the audience, they’ll mistrust you. It’s not part of your competency. It’s not consistent with your brand to teach or inspire or use a human tone of voice. So you will seem spammy. (Remember: even a helpful newsletter seems spammy if you wrongfully add someone to your list. It’s when they receive something unexpected, out of whack with their expectations, i.e. inconsistent, that it feels bad.)

Thus, if we only ever advertise our products and services, or curate links without our editorial take, or if we never address the society at large or the audience directly as a friend … and suddenly we show up with a more empathetic email about this virus? It’s going to backfire. It’s going to map back to that thing we do primarily and consistently: try to sell stuff. It’ll be met skeptically, or even angrily.

This brings me back to my experiment.

As my speaking business goes on hiatus, and my digital workshops are not yet ready, I would love to take this time to apply what I’ve learned, seen, and built, in a more bespoke way — as an advisor, working behind-the-scenes with you.

This isn’t productized consulting, though I’ll happily share some mental models and frameworks that could prove useful. This isn’t a webinar, either.

This is one-to-one, or one-to-team, solving this problem, together.

I’d like to find a way to help other marketers find and share their voices and make a difference in this uncertain time — doing so in a way that is consistent with your brand … without the awkward or inappropriate mistakes, or total silences, that we’re seeing from some marketers.

I don’t have the answers. I believe you do. My role is to coax and coach and cajole such that we tease them out of you and your team.

If I can help, send an email to jay@mshowrunners.com. We’ll discuss your work and reality, and I’ll propose a way I can help offer advisory work. (This is unrelated to making podcasts, but certainly can apply there too.)

Remember: We’re in this together. Find those who see the world the way you do. Rally around each other. Take the moment seriously, but remove people who stoke panic from your life. Avoid the hucksters, and look for the helpers.

Thinking of you and your team,

Jay