A few weeks ago, news surfaced that British jihadi Hamza Parvez was being held in a Syrian prison.
Hamza was one of the first Britons to join ISIS — he ran away in 2014 to Syria, after convincing his UK family that he was going to study in Germany.
So what was Hamza doing in Syria?
Well, along with standard ISIS duties, he appeared in a recruiting video. He also tried to create a social media following back home in the UK, to convince other young Britons to come join him in the land of jihad.
But he failed in his social media quest.
The trouble seems to have been that Hamza, who was solidly built at the start of his ISIS career, lost almost 70 lbs. while in Syria.
He wasn’t happy about the distribution of food within ISIS.
And unfortunately, he decided to complain about this online. At one point, he even wrote on Twitter how he had a dream — ordering food from KFC, Nando’s, and even his fave Thai place.
As a result, his online followers started to mock him as “Hungry Hamza,” and his jihadi credibility went down the tubes.
There’s a lesson here for hungry marketers as well.
It’s from a throwaway comment I heard Ben Settle make in his now-dead podcast.
“Whatever you do,” Ben said, “you want to make it look easy.”
He was talking both about the content of your marketing (ie. don’t complain about being hungry)…
As well as about the form (ie. keep sending out an email each day, as though it costs you zero effort).
Of course, the reality might well be that you’re hungry…
Or that producing a constant stream of marketing content is costing you effort.
But your audience — jihadi or not — never needs to know that.
Hopefully this helps you in your own marketing.
And if you want more advice of how to write fresh daily emails that never sound hungry, check out the following: