Partnerships

My prediction about the future of direct response hits

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“The next Tesla may even hire creators to evangelize the company or at least, serve as a paid marketing channel. Creators are essentially media companies now, which means that the creators of tomorrow will operate a lot like the New York based publications of yesteryear.”
— David Perell

My email yesterday looked at some fancy science, and made a simple point:

A hit product is the result of chance. The first few raindrops of popularity determine which spots in the product landscape become lakes, and which ones deserts.

I think this leads to a few conclusions. One is that, just because a product (or an offer) was successful before, this doesn’t necessarily mean it is worth studying. It might have become successful due to chance more than any intrinsic quality or real demand. And vice versa. You clearly cannot count on the quality of your product as your only key to success.

So what can we do about this?

One option is simply to put out lots more offers. This will increase your chances of getting at least one big hit.

And then there’s the fact that early buzz seems to be crucial to long-term success. Which to me suggests that street teams.. astroturfing… or influencer marketing are really where much of your marketing efforts should go.

And that’s what David Perell is saying in the quote above. Media-savvy businessmen like Elon Musk are already using creators as their main marketing channel. And the “next Tesla” will probably do more of the same.

But hold on a second. Tesla? That’s a whole other country from the direct response businesses I normally talk about.

After all, if some guy in 1995 got a sales letter from Gary Halbert about a book on killer orgasms… he probably didn’t go down to the local bar to ask his buddies if they knew anything about this orgasms book, and if it’s worth the $39.95 Halbert was charging for it.

In other words, people chose traditional direct response offers in a more independent way than they choose cars or movies.

But as I’ve written before, I feel that’s changing. In the same way that traditional brand businesses are becoming more direct response savvy… traditional direct response businesses are discovering the power of having a brand. So the same reality of what makes a big hit matters for modern DR businesses too.

The way I see it, that means you’ve got two options:

One is to become a creator yourself, because businesses will need you more and more.

The other is to hire creators or influencers to promote your offers, so you can create enough initial buzz to make it a hit.

That raises the question of who to hire and when and what they should say… All interesting questions. I’ll talk about that another day. And if by some strange circumstance you want to hear what I have to say then, you can subscribe to my email newsletter.

Exclusive “Bejakovic livery service”

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Here’s a quick foray into big-brand marketing, which might be relevant to you even if you’re a complete non-brand:

To start, imagine the year is 2008. Skinny jeans have just become non-negotiable… M.I.A.’s Paper Planes is playing everywhere… and the biggest question on everyone’s mind is, “Was that really Sarah Palin, or was it Tina Fey?”

You, a young and stylish traveler, have just landed in New York City. So you check into your hotel — the hip and modern W Hotel on Lexington Avenue. You’re starving, and you’re ready to hit the town and get some Sbarro’s.

But Uber hasn’t been invented yet. You don’t want to walk all the way to Times Square… so you ask the concierge to call you a cab.

“A cab?” the concierge chuckles. “Oh no, sir. We have something better for you. Something much better. We have a luxury livery service… an Acura MDX SUV to chauffeur you around town.”

It turns out back in 2008, Acura (Honda’s premier line of cars) teamed up with W Hotels to offer something called the “Acura experience.”

Acuras were supposedly good cars, but nobody knew that. Back then the Acura brand of luxury cars was about as desirable as the Flint brand of bottled water.

So rather than plowing more money into ads, the marketing team at Acura created an exclusive “livery service” to anybody staying at any W hotel. You could be chauffeured around town in the new Acura SUV… or if you’re the controlling type who doesn’t want anybody else touching the steering wheel, you could take the MDX out for a test drive yourself.

According to Jonah Berger’s Contagious, the “Acura experience” resulted is millions of rides… tens of thousands of new car sales… and 80% brand switching.

I think there are two lessons here.

The first is that demonstration is much more powerful than bloviation. But you probably knew that.

The second is an illustration of the central idea of Jay Abraham’s marketing philosophy:

“Any problem you have is the solution to a much bigger problem somebody else has — they just don’t know it.”

Jay’s idea goes way beyond what you might think of as joint ventures or affiliate marketing. Instead it’s the insight that, whatever you’re trying to do, somebody out there would love to help you, because it serves their interests also.

I’m not sure what problem W Hotels had back in 2008. But I guess if you’re trying to position yourself as fancy and hip, it’s a constant race to keep ahead of expectations. That’s how Acura helped W Hotels… and made a bunch of car sales as a result.

Like I said, I believe this can help you even if you’re a complete non-brand. Wherever you’re trying to go, there’s somebody out there who has a stable of horses… and will lend you one for free, if you just deliver a package along the way.

I’ve been taking this attitude since the start of this year, with several projects I’ve taken on.

Is it working? Well, I’ll let you know (in the next week or so) if my exclusive “Bejakovic livery service” has produced any result. And if you like, you can decide then if Jay’s idea is something you should adopt as well.

Final point: I have an email newsletter where my updates go first. If you’d like to subscribe so you find out how my livery service experiment goes, you can do so here.