Growth Newsletter #149

Last week, we had our kookiest sponsorship:

1. I loved it. It was creative, funny, and I figured it would probably work.
2. I hated it. I was afraid people might think I made a mistake 😅.

I decided to add the small PS and to run with it. I'm glad I did:

It's really scary to experiment.

We don't want to: waste money, look dumb, or fail. 99% of the time, we take the safe, logical option. 

As Rory Sutherland says: "You'll never be fired for being logical," but, "the fatal issue is that logic always gets you to exactly the same place as your competitors."

So be like Nate, be illogical.

If you confuse, you lose.

It's honestly horrifying how many home pages, landing pages, and product pages use confusing aspirational language that don't tell you what they sell or why you should care.‍

Here are some example rewrites:

The right one is better because:

1. It no longer sounds like corporate speak (all-in-one? visual communication solution?)
2. It describes the specific benefit of the product clearly.

The right one is better because:

• It no longer uses vague phrasing.
• It describes the specific benefit of your product.

The right one is better because:

• It doesn't talk in self-congratulatory terms. It talks in terms of benefits to the visitor.
• It clarifies the specific outcome of using the product.

Two videos (and their responses) went viral on TikTok lately that led to crazy brand exposure. Then their stories went viral on X/Twitter:

1. Car fire Stanley mug. A woman recorded a video of her completely destroyed car, but her Stanley mug was basically untouched. Within 24 hours, the founder of Stanley recorded a 30-second selfie video in response. This video got 38M views.
2. Amanda's tweet got 30M impressions as well.
3. North Face helicopter delivery. Another woman on a hike in New Zealand complained about her "waterproof" North Face jacket and got 11M views. 5 days later, North Face posted a video of flying a helicopter to her on the mountain to deliver a new jacket. North Face got around 4M views for this video.
4. Amanda's tweet got 19M impressions.

In both situations, the companies acted fast:

• Stanley did an off the cuff response to an amplify a positive mention.
• North Face did costly and staged response to make up for a negative mention. 

And Amanda, got nearly 50M impressions on her posts. Her tweet promoting her newsletter got nearly 700k impressions on the Stanley tweet.

Act fast, as either the brand, or the "reporter." Waiting two weeks, two months, or two years will hit way less hard than 2 hours.