Doing your thing vs doing "the thing"
Let's talk about brandwagoning.
Hello friends,
How have you been? I hope you’re well.
For those interested, I am currently on day 87 of my “posting the same thing every single day on LinkedIn” experiment.
It’s still providing me with a mild thrill, and it’s cute to see a little community developing in the comments. I still get the occasional “is it working, though?” as if “working” is anywhere near the point. It’s just a bit; not everything is results-driven. The posting is the point.
Oh, and I also did a fun bit where I zoomed in on my profile pic 10% every day to see if anyone noticed.
But you didn’t come here to read about me, did you? Here’s a potted guide to the frankly relentless world of social media marketing over the last few weeks.
And remember to subscribe, yeah?
There was a lot of tedious discourse about employee social media guidelines.
Sigh. I thought we were over this.
First up, British Airways caused a flap by updating their employee social media guidelines. I imagine this was mainly to prevent inappropriate behaviour like staff taking photos/filming difficult passengers. But it's had a knock-on effect of employees feeling censored and stifled.
Indeed, many popular accounts from BA staff, including pilots, have grown a following entirely around posting about their job. It's a nice free bit of employer branding, but these creators feel they can no longer create this content, given the new guidelines.
BA tried to clarify the situation, but I don’t think it helped much:
We’re in a bit of uncharted territory when it comes to your personal/professional presence online. We stumbled through a decade or so of ‘views my own’ policies, but we’re now in a world where your Starbucks barista might be making content out of your order or when your staff are unknowingly posting confidential stuff to their daily BeReal (the things I’ve seen….).
MY TAKE? You probably need some kind of guidelines for your team. But that doesn’t mean a “views my own” disclaimer - that’s not protecting anyone. And telling people they can’t have views isn’t a solution either. Instead, remind folks of your company values (you have some, right?) and ask them to try to align with those.
I used to run a workshop on this as part of company onboarding. Showing people a video of the Justine Sacco incident is usually enough to get across the idea that, as Jon Ronson says, one tweet can ruin your life.
And they’re due for a refresh, but here are the Social Media Guidelines we wrote for the company in 2018. Woo transparency.
What’s your brand’s bit?
I say this constantly, but a simple strategy for winning on social is to have one joke and run it relentlessly.
Specsavers are my go-to example for this, owning the ‘mistake’ category with “call us next time” gags. And you’re seeing it more with brands like Aldi making the M&S lawsuit their sole obsession.
And here’s a double-whammy of this strategy in action:
I mostly think about this as a basis for a Twitter strategy, where copy-only content like jokes and quote-RTs are the main formats. But Jack Appleby made an interesting point here that it’s also how you can win on TikTok:
That's how Khaby grew to become the biggest creator on the platform. And The Famileigh continue to do precisely one thing.
But I put it to you, dear reader, can it last? Brand social has to constantly evolve, or it grows stale. Even Ryanair didn’t do Plane Face forever. But then again, Duo isn't going anywhere, so who knows? WHY NOT COMMENT AND LET ME KNOW? (Can you comment on substacks? I don’t actually know; maybe email or tweet me instead).
Doing your thing vs doing the thing.
Following up on the previous point, I want to quickly distinguish between having an ownable thing you always do and are known for vs jumping on bandwagons.
We all saw the #maxwellthecat trend on TikTok, yeah?
This trend involved brands putting a sky cat onto something to do with themselves. And that was it?
Maybe I’m getting too old, but it just feels kinda lazy. It’s fun to ‘do the thing,’ but surely you have to put your own spin on it? SURELY?!
But then again, marketers should not be marketing to marketers. The fact that I’m annoyed at the creative bankruptcy of it does not make it bad content. If audiences like seeing brands ‘do the thing,’ then I guess that makes it good.
The one downside I want to call out, though, is it means that the originator of the thing can get overlooked. The trend was started by an account for Clancy’s Auto Body Shop in Florida. But that got buried, and by the time the big brands were doing it, they were getting zero credit whatsoever.
That all said, I am also not above doing it lol:
You are not Red Bull.
This take annoyed me and I want to address it:
The take is thus: look at how Red Bull are CRUSHING social and selling their sugar water without even posting about their product! Product marketing is dead, blah blah.
And to some extent, it’s true. Looking at Red Bull’s TikTok, you’d been forgiven for not realising they have a drink to sell.
But a reminder: RED BULL HAS BEEN GOING FOR 36 YEARS. People were drinking Red Bull before I was even born.
You earn the right to non-product marketing when you’ve already conquered the market. Cadbury don’t run ads for chocolate; they run ads for joy. Coke run ads about happiness. McDonalds’ latest ad doesn’t feature a single burger, merely some raised eyebrows.
But the takeaway here is not that you shouldn’t post about your core product. The takeaway is that in thirty-six years you should find something else to talk about.
Sure, I’d love to get to a point with Monzo where we own the entire ‘money’ category, where good financial habits and health are synonymous with the brand. But that’s not where we are yet. And how do you get there? Well, you’ve gotta earn it.
QUICK LINKEDIN COPY MASTERCLASS
POST YOUR FIRST SENTENCE IN ALL CAPS. IT ADDS URGENCY AND CATCHES ATTENTION WHEN SCROLLING.
REPEAT AFTER ME: THE GOAL OF THE FIRST LINE OF COPY IS TO MAKE PEOPLE READ THE SECOND LINE. THE GOAL OF THE FIRST LINE OF COPY IS TO MAKE PEOPLE READ THE SECOND LINE.
I’m guilty of writing flowery opening copy. But no, get straight to the good stuff. LinkedIn, especially, is super aggressive with truncating copy, and nobody will “Read more…” if the 20 or so characters up to that point weren’t worth reading.
This is also a good place to crowbar my favourite thing I’ve written lately.
Yes, you can make technical blog posts entertaining.
Stop social media I want to get off.
Let’s talk about Cinnabon
First up, this fits with my big 2023 prediction:
But it's worth stopping and asking what the point of this all is. Sure, it creates noise and awareness. But to what end?
More importantly, what’s it actually achieving from a brand perspective? There’s a thought experiment that brand marketers love to shout about (but never actually do) which says: ‘if you removed the logo/brand name, would you know who this was from?’
Passing that test is not always 100% important. You can do fun things that don't have to be a direct descendent of your core brand proposition; in fact, you SHOULD. But when it's literally just a random string of characters, what are we even doing?
Are Cinnabon making a play for dominance of the category of randomness? What does that have to do with delicious sugary treats? (I miss Cinnabon UK SO MUCH, by the way). This just doesn’t feel ownable in the way that Ryanair/Duolingo/Aldi chaos is.
Thoughts very welcome.
Fair play to innocent for calling out content thieves.
More of this, please. I live for the drama.
That’s it for now. Thanks for reading!
I leave you with this advice:
Don’t pay for Twitter Blue.