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