The Allure (and Danger) of Summer Sausages
My online buddy Kevin Ogan challenged me to create a blog post about summer sausages, and I told him I’d take the weekend to think about it and write a post for Monday. But as it turns out, it’s really difficult to create a marketing metaphor out of summer sausage. I tried my best here, but my apologies to Kevin and the rest of my readership if it fails to meet expectations — though there’s probably something to be said about you if you have lofty expectations for a blog post titled “The Allure of Summer Sausages.” Just sayin’. Anyway, here’s what I came up with:
This might be a “guy thing,” as those things go, but you know those summer Saturdays when you wake up and remember that you’ve invited people over for beer and sausages? Of course you’re excited about hanging out with friends, and beer is delicious, but if you’re anything like me you’re constantly surprised at how excited you get about the prospect of a perfectly grilled sausage.
You might even have a favorite. Are you a cheddar bratwurst kinda guy? Hot Italian? Kielbasa? All delicious choices, to be sure. You might have a particular brand you’re faithful to, or a favorite deli. Maybe you’re the industrious sort who makes his own sausage, maybe from an ancient family recipe that has been passed down for generations. Or maybe you have a recipe from a cooking magazine that you want to try out.
Whatever your particular preferences, you wake up on those mornings with a plan. Myself, I usually plan barbecues for later in the afternoon — around 4:00, give or take — and schedule the cooking of sausages accordingly. That means that they go into the boil at 5:30 (I slow-boil them in Belgian witbier), which gives me plenty of time to chop the veggies (red onions, red and green bell peppers) and clean the grill before 6:30 when the sausages and veggies are ready for the (propane) fire.
I have performed this task so many times that it has become part of my internal clock. In nerd terms, my brain is wired such that IF day=Sausage_Day THEN clock=Sausage_Clock.
Sausage Day is a metaphor for how marketing should NOT work.
See, I know my sausage schedule will produce a predictable result. My sausages will turn out pretty good. They will arrive on the plates of my guests at an appropriate time, and will be pleasing but otherwise unremarkable. Why? Because they are the result of a tired, dispassionate schedule — even if I really am passionate about keeping it.
Take an email marketing blast. Every time you send an email, you create a workflow so that your design and technical elements are all crafted to exacting specifications. You could be as passionate as you want about any or all of the various elements of creating an email, but if your workflow looks identical to the workflow of your last email blast, you’re probably going to get similar — or even slightly worse — results.
And if you keep going down this road of creating similar things with exactly the same workflow, eventually you’ll wake up to find that you’ve spent years doing nothing more than cooking sausages the same way, over and over again. Imagine if you cooked the same sausages for the same group of friends every weekend for six months. Do you think they’d keep coming over? If they did, do you think they’d eventually request something different? Or bring their own food?
Similar work produces similar results. If you’re producing the same kind of content over and over, your audience will eventually tune you out. Unless, of course, what you’re producing is of tremendous value, every time.
Are your sausages THAT good? If they are, great! Don’t listen to me. But I’m betting your sausages are only pretty good. Don’t be ashamed — it happens to lots of guys. You just need to change things up a little, that’s all.
Oh come on, give me some credit. I held out till the very end of the post to make a “sausage” joke.
Photo credit: Bucklava
Don’t Be Such a Prufrock.
The line from T. S. Eliot’s 1917 masterpiece “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” reached meme status in the literary community long before the word “meme” came into common parlance. Unfortunately it has not yet reached many in the marketing community.
Prufrock is a window into the desolate worldview that the fearful create for themselves. The verse containing the line above sums up the whole of the poem rather nicely:
I’ll spare you further flashbacks of your high school English courses, except to remind you of the crucial point, the point at which you stand up and scream in indignation:
| And indeed there will be time | |
| To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?” | |
| Time to turn back and descend the stair, | |
| With a bald spot in the middle of my hair— | 40 |
| [They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”] | |
| My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, | |
| My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin— | |
| [They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”] | |
| Do I dare | 45 |
| Disturb the universe? |
“Yes!” you scream. “Dare to disturb the universe! Eat a peach! Part your hair however the hell you want! Just go do something!”
And then you realize you’re in the middle of the library screaming at a character whose author has been dead for several decades.
The point, you realize as a beefy security guard accompanies you to the nearest exit, is that despite Mr. Prufrock’s assertions to the contrary, there is no time — in life or in business — to second-guess your impulses.
We have a name for people who chronically second-guess themselves. We call them cowards.
| I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, | |
| And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, | 85 |
| And in short, I was afraid. |
Now, cowards have their place. If you want to keep your money safe, for example, you’d prefer a cowardly banker. A cowardly banker won’t invest in nascent industries or in volatile third world countries. A cowardly banker will invest your money in boring, familiar markets and will give you a modest but predictable return.
Cowards have no place in the marketing world.
Of all the professions in all the world, marketing is perhaps the least tolerant of safety. Safe marketers do not make their message or their brand stand out. This failure results in a lack of visibility for the brand, a lack of eyeballs for the message, and a lack of effectiveness in your marketing strategy.
My good friends over at Captains of Industry put it another way. “Safe (i.e. boring) marketing becomes invisible,” they say, “which is a total waste of money. To attain success, make your marketing bold so it stands out in a crowd and on strategy so it achieves results.”
I’ll go even one step further: If you’re not taking risks as a marketer, you have no business calling yourself a marketer.
HubSpot took a gigantic risk launching an Alternate Reality Game, and as a marketing tactic it failed miserably and upset a lot of their customers.
But did HubSpot sit around and wonder, “Well gee, I dunno if we should do this. It’s kind of out there”? No, they didn’t. They just launched the game and dealt with the fallout.
“But it failed,” you say. “HubSpot didn’t get any leads or press from the game. It was a waste of resources. How could you advocate for that kind of marketing?”
How? Because it’s worlds better than the alternative.
If marketers played with Prufrock’s playbook, imagine what the state of marketing would be. We’d be stuck with boring ads-by-committee, publishing only those ads that were the most PC and the least creative. A good marketer would be one with an encyclopedic knowledge of only the safest and most benign methods of advertising. Print. Outdoor. Television. Direct mail. Anything that interrupts a creative channel is fine, but don’t even think about creating your own channel. It’s much too risky.
Sound ridiculous? It is. Prufrock himself agrees:
| No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; | |
| Am an attendant lord… | |
| At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— | |
| Almost, at times, the Fool. |
So if I may channel Seth Godin for a minute, I have a very simple question:
Who are you?
Image credit: Captains of Industry
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