About a year ago, singer Ed Sheeran partnered with Heinz on a new hot sauce. This is a great lesson literally pointing to the future of influencer marketing, and I kept forgetting to blog about it. But before I get to the dazzling marketing lesson from Ed Sheeran, let’s talk about the marketing problem with soap …

The new influencer landscape

I recently attended a meeting at a CPG company famous for its iconic soap products. They went through a big competitive analysis with profiles of all their traditional global competitors. At the end of the talk, I sheepishly raised my hand and suggested they had completely missed their biggest competitive threat. It isn’t P&G. It isn’t Unilever. It’s a 24-year-old TikTok star.

Influencer marketing has entered a new phase. The biggest stars’ celebrity power commands more loyal audiences than traditional TV networks. Mr Beast has more subscribers than Netflix.

These aren’t just kids shilling energy drinks. They are savvy entrepreneurs who are building their own mega-brands. Here are a few examples:

• Addison Rae – Item Beauty
• Emma Chamberlain – Chamberlain Coffee
• Charli and Dixie D’Amelio – Social Tourist (clothing line)
• Hyram Yarbro – Selfless by Hyram (skincare line)
• Blair Walnuts – Jewelry line
• Michelle Khare – MKfit (fitness app)

And, of course, there is Kylie Jenner, the world’s youngest self-made billionaire who sells her cosmetics in airport kiosks,

These young creators have something the big companies don’t—a credible, authentic voice and a loyal audience that visits them online daily to see what they’re selling next.

And that brings us to the marketing lesson from Ed Sheeran.

The beautiful ketchup move

Like the other influencers I mentioned, Ed Sheeran could have created his own line of hot sauces and a saucy empire. But why?

Partnering with Heinz made so much more sense. For one thing, Heinz actually makes stuff. They have contracts with suppliers, big factories, and an excellent distribution system built over a hundred years. So, with very little actual effort, Ed made his hot sauce dreams come true just by lending his charming face to the new brand. Win-Win.

And here’s the lesson for the mega-brands. Put your marketing ego aside. Go find yourself some beloved influencers and make them rich. They can out-market you, but you can out-manufacture them. It’s a match made in heaven.

Since the Ed Sheeran announcement, I’ve been waiting for a deluge of influencer-brand product launches, but there have been very few. I don’t get it. Influencers own your market, folks. Partner with them to disrupt your market before you’re the one being disrupted.

if you’d like to hear more about this subject, I discussed these ideas with my friend Amanda Russell. You won’t want to miss it!

Click here to enjoy Marketing Companion Episode 298

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By Gavin McMacken, {grow} Community Member

This is a time of year when college football in America is reaching its frenzied peak. We’re enjoying the pageantry and tradition of bowl games and the upcoming championship games.

I’m lucky enough to be part of this world — I just finished my 21st season as a college football coach. You might be wondering why I would be following Mark Schaefer’s marketing blog and writing for you today. Well, I’ve come to realize that being a social media marketer is an integral part of being a coach. It’s a fascinating use case that has transformed the profession. I think you’ll enjoy my story.

From football coach to marketer

I never intended to be a coach. However, after several interviews in the sales and marketing world, I quickly realized sales and marketing was not for me. In this period of professional uncertainty, the head coach I played for at Alma College offered me a coaching position, and I jumped at the opportunity to join his staff.

When people find out I’m a football coach, the typical questions are:

“What do you do the rest of the year?” and

“Do you teach classes too?”

There is a level of surprise when I explain it’s a “coaching only” position because many people don’t understand how this could be a full-time job. It’s not their fault. When I first began coaching, I didn’t know either. What I learned is that football success really occurs in the off-season. That’s when we do our recruiting.

In college sports, we have a constant churn of athletes. Essentially we create a new team every year wit the new college athletes we bring to campus. And attracting these athletes requires a lot of marketing.

So, the joke is on me. I became a coach to avoid a career in marketing. And now, marketing is a major part of my job!

How I became a social media marketer

When began recruiting in the Fall of 2000, interactions with recruits consisted of snail mail letters, phone calls, and in-person visits.

As the internet advanced, snail mail was replaced with e-mail. Desk phones were replaced with cell phones. Phone calls were replaced with text messages. Eventually, the addition of social media platforms, most notably Twitter, changed college recruiting forever.

I resisted the move toward social media. But that all changed in 2015, when my new head coach at  Northwood University insisted that each assistant coach create a Twitter profile for recruiting. Creating my first tweet was intimidating. It felt like a job interview—anyone could see it and pass judgment. I wanted to make sure I represented myself and the university in a first-class manner. You can imagine my relief when I saw the first person actually “like” my tweet!

In those early days, I could have no idea the impact Twitter would have on my life and career as a coach.

The Twitter connection with athletes

Prior to Twitter, I had to reach out to high school coaches asking for contact information for their players. If coaches didn’t respond to my request, recruitment of their players was nearly impossible. Now, using Twitter, I can search a prospect’s name, give him a follow, and send a direct message to him immediately. I have an immediate and direct line of communication with recruits.

It’s also a great way to track a prospect’s recruitment process. Recruits aren’t always forthright with information, fearing backlash from coaches. A simple glance through a recruit’s tweets keeps me informed of scholarship offers they’ve received and recruiting visits they’ve attended.

The largest university football programs have entire departments dedicated to recruiting and social media. I work for a smaller school where the coaches wear many hats — from running the equipment room to coordinating team laundry. We also make up the entire recruiting department.

I don’t have anybody to delegate to. I am the first-line of social media connection with our potential student athletes. In fact, recruiting is 75 percent of my job. Recruiting, and the social media marketing that goes with it, is far more complex and time-consuming than actually coaching a football game.

Social media never takes a day off … so my recruiting efforts never take a day off. My social media engagement with recruits can number from 50 interactions on a slower day to well over 100 on a busy day. I receive direct messages throughout the day and into the evening when I’m at home with my family. I do my best to respond to each message because, in my mind, if a young man has the courage and takes the time to message me directly, it warrants a response.

And I’m frequently reminded high schoolers don’t ever sleep based on the number of direct messages I receive in the middle of the night! Once, a college football hopeful decided to continue sending messages after I regrettably responded to the first one at 1:45 am. I quickly learned responses to middle-of-the-night messages should wait until morning.

By the way, I choose to keep my Twitter account private for two reasons: 1) I want to know when a recruit wants to follow me instead of losing him in the shuffle, and 2) I learned the hard way that opposing coaches were trolling the heck out of my Twitter activity. So I decided to go private to make those coaches do their own research.

The image-maker

Along with essential daily communication, social media has been a great way to market the image of my football team to recruits. The ability to tweet eye-catching graphics allows me to spread information quickly, whether announcing camps we’re hosting, our game schedule, or the uniform combinations we wear any given week.

The team social media function also helps create the athlete’s image. When I offer a scholarship to a recruit, typically the first question is, “Can I post my offer on Twitter?” When I tell them they can, the follow-up question is if I will provide them with graphics they can use on social media to announce their scholarship offer. The graphic support continues when an athlete commits to a program (an example from Mark Schaefer’s mentee Elijah:

Along with the use of graphics, many universities host an elaborate, professional photoshoot as part of a recruit’s campus visit. Recruits excitedly try on the new gear we issue and pose for pictures in helmets, cleats, and a jersey with their own number on it. The pictures are put in a shareable file where recruits access them and post them with recaps of their visit.

Literally thousands of people see these pictures. It’s not uncommon for recruits who have not yet visited to comment on how awesome our jerseys are or how amazing our locker room looks. The brand expands in this way.

When a recruit tweets out a scholarship offer, a commitment, or photos from his visit, it often accompanies a thank you to the coach who has recruited them: “I have committed to Northwood University. Thank you @Coach_McMacken for recruiting me.”

As soon as my Twitter handle makes it into a post, the next group of college football hopefuls send follow requests, and the recruiting cycle rages on. I thought I was a college football coach. Turns out I’m a social media marketer!

Gavin McMacken is the Defensive Coordinator for NCAA D-II Northwood University in Midland, MI where he resides with his wife Lindsey and their son Gideon. You can follow him on LinkedIn.

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This is a happy marketing story. It’s short and sweet and I love it so much because it represents marketing the way it should be done for a small business in the heart of a marketing rebellion.

Let me talk about the photo at the top of this post.

That’s me with Jeff Corbin, the owner of The Tie-Dyed Pig a relatively new barbecue joint in Radford, VA. I was visiting this little college town to do a guest lecture there at the invitation of my longtime friend Dr. Gary Schirr. Gary knows I love BBQ — especially beef brisket — and he had a treat in store for me.

When we walked into the cozy restaurant, the first thing you see is this giant pig. A significant amount of floor space that could have been serving paying customers is devoted to the towering fiberglass swine.

“What is this?” I asked owner Jeff Corbin.

“That there is my marketing,” he said with a proud smile.

And so it is.

The visual prompt

Here is a truth about all human beings. We love posing with giant animals. Dinosaurs. Dogs. Even bears.

But I digress.

Back to the pig.

Let’s look at a few core ideas from my book Marketing Rebellion —

• In a world of streaming content and ad-blocking, consumers don’t see ads like they used to. And if they see them, they don’t believe them.
• Two-thirds of our marketing is occurring without us. Consumers carry our stories forward through social media, word of mouth, and reviews. The customer is the marketer.
• The job of the professional marketer in this environment is to help customers do their job. How do we help our customers carry our story forward?

Placing a big pig in the middle of your store is an invitation to share your story.

However …

You have to deliver the goods

A big pig is only going to work if you have an authentic, interesting and, relevant story to share.

Let me tell you about the rest of my experience at this restaurant.

• Brisket is normally a dinner-only item, but Jeff made it available for lunch because I was coming in.
• At the end of the meal, Jeff came around with a plate of beef and asked us if we wanted another helping. More meat? Yes, please. That stands out.
• The food was delicious and plentiful. He had some unique menu items. The venue was clean and whimsically decorated in a tie-dye theme. There was free parking near the restaurant’s location at the business center of town.
• Jeff’s personality filled the room. He approached a table of elderly women by saying “Hello you beautiful, wonderful women!” They blushed in appreciation.

My point is, Jeff delivers the goods. If the place was dirty, if the food was cold, if you could not find a parking space, then the pig doesn’t matter. The pig only works as a reminder to tell people about the overall experience at the restaurant.

You have to deliver the goods, every time.

So I think Jeff is set up to succeed. He is surrounding his customers with authentic, interesting stories and offering the opportunity to pose with a big pig as an excuse to tell people what it is all about.

I think this is a happy marketing story indeed.

Mark Schaefer is the chief blogger for this site, executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions, and the author of several best-selling digital marketing books. He is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant.  The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world.  Contact Mark to have him speak to your company event or conference soon.

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By Mark Schaefer

This week the New York Times did a long, investigative report on how Amazon has weaved its way into nearly every aspect of life in the city of Baltimore — government, education, politics, economics, and employment, to name a few. The city is mostly positive about its dependence on this gigantic company, but there were also a few unintended consequences!

I experienced this myself. I live far away from Baltimore. In fact, I live in the country but Amazon is disrupting life even here. They are disrupting our telephone poles!

Big trucks, unintended consequences

A few months ago, a big DHL delivery truck dropped off a package at our home, which is situated at the end of a long driveway, at the bottom of a hill.

When the truck was going back up the hill, somehow the top of the vehicle got caught on the electrical wires strung from a telephone pole to our house. It was dark outside but I could tell something was wrong. When I walked to the top of the hill, I saw that a live electrical wire was on the ground.

Even stranger, I turned my flashlight to the top of the truck and saw that the caught wire had peeled back the top of the truck like a can of sardines!

The driver took one look at it and said, “I’m sure glad we have insurance!”

The headline of this article promises news about how Amazon is involved in all of this, so let’s get to it.

A tall tale

Police and emergency vehicles arrived at the driveway scene and eventually, the truck was safely untangled from the wire.

But now, I had to get the wire to my house repaired. The electric company said they would put in a temporary fix but that they would have to come back and put in a whole new, larger telephone pole, which appeared to be fine to me.

They explained:

For decades, the electric company has used 30-foot poles. That provided more than enough room for any traditional delivery vehicle — like a mail truck — to navigate a residential neighborhood.

But in the last 10 years, home deliveries from Amazon and other eCommerce sites have increased at such a rapid pace that bigger trucks have been coming into residential neighborhoods to keep up with the delivery volume.

Apparently my situation was not unusual. These trucks are getting caught by wires with regularity,  causing the electric company to replace the traditional pole with one that is 10 feet taller — 40 feet!

Unintended consequences

A new 40-foot pole costs about $500, not including labor. For fun, let’s throw another $500 in there for labor (conservative) to make it an even $1,000 to replace a pole.

Think about how much it’s adding to our utility bills. Eventually, every telephone pole in a residential neighborhood will have to be replaced with the 40-footers and that cost will have to be recouped somehow.

There are eight poles on my street, serving five houses. That would be an assessment of $1,600 per household in this little thought experiment. Sort of an Amazon tax.

Anyway, I thought it was interesting. Who would have thought the electric bill is going up because we’re buying jeans from Amazon?

Mark Schaefer is the chief blogger for this site, executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions, and the author of several best-selling digital marketing books. He is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant.  The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world. Contact Mark to have him speak to your company event or conference soon.

Illustration courtesy of Unsplash.com

The post Unintended consequences: How Amazon is disrupting telephone poles appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

Imagine for a moment that a fast food chain contacts you to help them sell more milkshakes.

How would you approach this challenge? What would you want to know?

Well, this scenario actually played out years ago. A franchise wanted to sell more milkshakes. So they hired a market research firm to kickoff the process.

The market research firm did what market research firms do. Then the advertising agency did what advertising agencies do. A lot of money was spent. And nothing happened. Sales remained flat.

That is until they discovered that some people buy milkshakes for breakfast. But that’s not the interesting part.The revelation was the one question that led to that discovery. It is a question that completely changed my view of marketing and I want to share it with you today.

The traditional view of marketing

A few years ago, I was part of a team charged with launching and scaling up a national hospital awards program.

The idea was that independent industry judges would select 10 Programs of Excellence. We would host an Oscars-style party to announce, award, and promote the best hospital programs in the U.S.

You’d think it would be easy to give away grant money and free publicity to a bunch of underfunded, under-appreciated community health programs. But it wasn’t.

The hard part was getting hospitals to know, like, and trust our awards program. Why? Because hospitals are suspicious about vendor programs that seem too good to be true. It’s a healthy suspicion. “Surely there’s a bait-and-switch sales motive,” they thought. So we had to earn their attention and trust, which takes time and money.

In other words, we had a marketing problem.

For the first couple of years, we spent significant money with a traditional view of marketing to promote the program, and yet we couldn’t get even 100 nominees.

Why on earth weren’t more hospitals nominating their programs? Let’s go back to the milkshake story.

Milkshakes for breakfast

After the fast food chain spent so much money on marketing tactics and plans with no results (like us) they hired another research group.

The other strategists asked the obvious question: what was the product, demographic, and competition for this product?

But the new researcher started with this question: “What jobs do people hire milkshakes to do in their lives?”

Let’s read that question again. “What JOBS do people HIRE milkshakes TO DO in their lives?”

What they discovered was profound and it led to a dramatic increase in milkshake sales.

A new view of marketing

The researchers discovered two key groups of milkshake buyers. The first group hired milkshakes to make their boring commute more enjoyable. Milkshakes tasted good and lasted much of their 20-minute commute. They staved off hunger until lunch. Plus, milkshakes were something commuters could consume with one hand, while driving, without getting greasy fingers and crumbs in their lap.

A second group of milkshake buyers were parents hiring milkshakes to do the job of being loving parents. After a week of “no, you can’t have that,” moms and dads could hire a milkshake as a “yes” moment with their kids.

This framework is referred to as “jobs to be done” by Clayton Christensen, Scott Cook and Taddy Hall, who authored the 2005 Harvard Business Review article where the milkshake story first appeared. This research ultimately formed the basis of the book, Competing Against Luck ,which I consider required reading for anyone trying to sell anything.

According to the authors, people hire products, services and ideas to do specific jobs in their lives. And each job has functional, emotional, and social dimensions to it. For example, those morning commuters were hiring milkshakes to do a functional job (convenience) and an emotional job (enjoyment). Those after-school parents were hiring milkshakes for a social job (bonding) and an emotional job (feeling like good parents).

The power of the jobs framework is that it opens new avenues for innovation. What other treats could parents hire to bond with their kids? What other twists on milkshakes could take commutes to the next level without jeopardizing the essential job to be done?

Applying this to hospitals

As I considered this framework, I thought about what job our awards program was meant to fulfill.

The big aha was discovering that these community program managers didn’t have a “national publicity” job to be done. Their focus was very local and personal. Some had a “I want the hospital CEO to know I exist” job to be done. Others had a “I want to expand our program model to other cities” job to be done. We even found a small population of managers who had a “I want to build my personal brand and teach others” job to be done.

Armed with these insights, we were able to speak to these jobs to be done through our marketing. We were able to hone in on the functional, emotional, and social dimensions these hospital managers deeply desired.

Like milkshake sales, our nominations grew. Over the course of a few years, we built a very loyal and appreciative base of nominees and award winners.

The jobs framework even gave us the insight to present the awards onsite at the hospital, rather than at the Oscars-style event we had originally established. Why? Because local publicity was the job they most wanted done. They wanted to be hometown heroes.

It’s your turn!

What functional, emotional, and social jobs are your customers/clients trying to get done in their lives? What product or service are they currently hiring to get that job done? The success and growth of your business depends upon your ability to answer this question.

But there’s a catch.

You can’t answer this question sitting in your office! You have to spend time in the field listening to and talking with the people you seek to serve. And keep asking “why” questions until you get to the deeper, more personal jobs they’re trying to get done.

What are your thoughts about this new view of marketing?

Keith Reynold Jennings is an executive and writer. He serves as vice president of community impact for Jackson Healthcare. He’s an advisor to goBeyondProfit. And he writes about the intersections of social impact, stewardship and legacy. Find Keith on Twitter and Linkedin.

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By Mark Schaefer

In my book Marketing Rebellion I make a case for why in the long run, the most human company in a niche will win. Today, I’d like to provide an example of what that looks like.

A recent news story published on Yahoo provides this account:

Lenore Koppelman posted a heartwarming story on Facebook about her family’s trip to the Universal Studios theme park in Orlando, Florida, during which employees were responsive to her son Ralph’s needs every step of the way when he had what she called an “autistic meltdown.”

“Ralph is awesomely autistic, and we are proud to be a neurodiverse family,” she wrote. “As wonderful, loving, intelligent and incredible as Ralph is, sometimes he struggles.”

In her post, Koppelman described how excited her son was to visit the Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man attraction at the park. She explained that the Spiderman ride, which was near the exit, was the ride Ralph was looking forward to most. But when they finally reached the front of the line, the ride broke down.

Jen to the rescue

After waiting so long, and then being disappointed, Ralph “collapsed onto the floor while crowds of people were attempting to exit the ride and the gift shop attached to it,” Koppelman wrote. “He began sobbing, screaming, rocking, hyperventilating, and truly struggling to breathe.”

According to her post, an employee named Jen immediately rushed over to help and lay down on the floor with him, speaking calmly and encouraging him to do whatever he needed to feel better, the Facebook post said. Jen was successful in calming Ralph down, and even offered him a free gift from the park gift shop to make him feel better.

Universal Studios trains its employees to respond to customer issues like this and obviously this paid off for the park.

This is a great human interest story, but it’s also a great story of human-centered marketing in action. I’d like to break down this case study by applying some of the ideas from the book.

The customer is the marketer

This story went viral by moving into the mainstream news. But it wasn’t generated by ad or any branded content. The story of Universal Studios and it attentive service was carried forward by a customer. There is no ad that ever could have made this story work.

People trust people

Trust in companies, brands and ads have declined for ten consecutive years. Who do people trust? People.

If the Universal PR department spread this story it would have gone nowhere. We have an inherent distrust of this type of content. But customers sharing stories represents organic advocacy and that is more powerful than any paid content you could provide.

The personal brand is the company brand

In my book I contend that the brands of the past were created through an accumulation of advertising impressions. The brands of the future will be created through an accumulation of human impressions.

This example demonstrates this exactly. Universal trained its employees well to make positive “human impressions” on its guests. When you experience those contacts it forms the story of the brand.

This could have very easily gone the wrong way. What if the Universal employee stepped over the autistic child or dragged him out of the way? It could have been a nightmare for the park. But the impact of this personal response tells a story of the company no ad ever could.

Our marketing is occurring without us

I begin the book by citing a famous McKinsey study that shows that 2/3 of our marketing is occurring without us. At first, marketers who hear this statistic cringe. It sort of calls into question our existence.

But when you think about this as a consumer, it begins to dawn on you that yes, this is how the world works. We form impressions of companies and brands from conversations with friends, social media, reviews, and posts from trusted influencers.

Markets are conversations. This case study is just a small sliver of the marketing that is going on beyond the walls of the Universal Studios marketing department.

The most human company wins

Our jobs as marketers is to find a way to enter that two-thirds. We can’t buy our way in.

But as Universal demonstrated in this example, focusing on customer experience earned a place in the customer conversation.

An accumulation of human impressions drives the brand.

In the end, the most human company wins.

Mark Schaefer is the chief blogger for this site, executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions, and the author of several best-selling digital marketing books. He is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant.  The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world. Contact Mark to have him speak to your company event or conference soon.

Illustration courtesy Universal Studios.

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By Mark Schaefer

I first learned about online retailer Everlane from a close friend. She raved about the honesty and transparency of the company — every clothing item on the site comes with a break-down of the actual cost of the product, with links to where the item is manufactured. She became a fan because the company is disrupting the traditional economic model of retailing.

Now, Everlane founder Michael Preysman is on another mission — to eliminate plastic from the company’s supply chain. Every company employee is obsessed with eliminating plastic, as reported in this Fast Company article.

Everlane is launching a sneaker brand called Tread that attempts to have minimal environmental impact. It partnered with The New York Times to share facts on climate change.

But here’s the part of the story that connected with me on a personal level. Preysman was trying to find something to eat at an airport and bought McDonald’s hamburgers because they were the only item he could find that wasn’t wrapped in plastic. This is a great example of how a company is congruent with its environmental stand, and an example of values-based marketing at its best. He demonstrating that big changes start with small acts like this.

This story connected to me deeply on an emotional level because it was:

• Interesting — This leader is walking the talk
• Relevant — I’m interested in the environment
• Authentic — This was not a story manufactured by a PR factory.

Those are the elements of a story primed for transmission! Buying a hamburger to reduce an environmental footprint became a story I am now transmitting to you. I have become the marketing department for Everlane.

And, I went to their site and bought a jacket.

But here is where it gets interesting. What happens when Everlane employees are obsessing over eliminating plastic instead of doing their actual jobs? Or, has this become the job?

On the new episode of The Marketing Companion, Brooke Sellas observes that Everlane is exhibiting many characteristics on a non-profit. Is that a glimpse of the future of marketing? Will we be seeing successful companies organize and operate more like a non-profit?

Such an interesting discussion. You won’t want to miss this episode!

But wait! There’s more!

• ASMR is a new marketing and YouTube sensation. Never heard of it? Don’t worry. You’ll get a full-on demonstration on this episode!
• The retail apocalypse is upon us. If you depend on a brick-and-mortar business, what can you do to survive?
• Karen Quintos is Dell’s Chief Customer Officer. She explains why listening and serving is key to marketing success.

Click here to dive into this amazing show!

Click on this link to listen to Episode 160

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The post Maybe the future of marketing looks like @Everlane appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

By Kerry Gorgone, {grow} Contributing Columnist

Jesse Cole had a vision.

Professional baseball had failed in the American city of Savannah for 90 years, but Jesse thought maybe college summer baseball could work there. This was no capricious whim. The move took planning and money. Jesse had to buy an expansion franchise that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

People thought he was bananas, to put it mildly.

But he believed in his vision. Even as his six-person staff gathered around a picnic table in a completely empty stadium, he could already tell that he had something special.

“There we were working around that picnic table, and we said ‘what are we doing for our fans first,’ he recalls. That became everything in our culture.”

The first order of business was getting the Savannah community excited about baseball. The organization held a competition, inviting people to name the new team. Ultimately, a local resident’s cheeky suggestion won out: “The Savannah Bananas.” Things only got zanier from there, and area residents embraced the team, revelling in the spectacle of it all.

Right from the beginning, Jesse was a leader in the “Marketing Rebellion,” and he didn’t even realize it yet. It was only after reading Mark Schaefer’s book, Marketing Rebellion: The Most Human Company Wins and giving a report on it as part of a reading initiative at work that he saw the parallels.

“People do not want to be marketed to any more,” he observes. For Jesse, reading Schaefer’s book offered validation. In his quest to bring baseball back to Savannah, he has always put people first, and made sure that the public gets to know his staff and players on a personal level.

“Our mission is entertain fans first, always,” he explains. “But our biggest fans are our own people, so we put them first.”

Jesse and his core team actively cultivate an informal, zany culture for the Savannah Bananas organization.

Many companies claim to have a “customer-centric” approach to marketing, but they often fail to support their own employees. When a “people-first” approach doesn’t include your own people, employees become demoralized, and your customer experience is sure to suffer.

That’s not how the Savannah Bananas do things.

“Our culture is the strongest thing we have,” says Jesse, “and it has been from the start.”

The team even has a “Fans First Playbook” that they share with all staff members and players. “Professionalism is boring,” it declares. “We embrace our weirdness.”

The 25-page guide introduces all the staff members, shares the beliefs and principles on which the Savannah Bananas were founded, and provides plenty of examples for new members of the fold to follow in order to succeed.

What’s surprising about the playbook is that it encourages employees to focus on their own personal growth, because fulfilled employees will be better able to put fans first.

As a result, the Savannah Bananas front office has seen surprisingly little turnover, even with a staff largely made up of Millennials (“the job-hopping generation”).

“Our staff doesn’t even want to leave after games,” Jesse says. Then, sensing my skepticism, he elaborates. “After a game, we’ll stick around the stadium and play kickball until 1:00 a.m. sometimes, even after getting to work at 8:00 a.m. that morning! We just don’t want to leave.”

This fun experience and fans-first culture has led the organization to business success, as well. They sold out their inaugural season, then went on to win the Coastal Plain League championship, and the team’s gone on to sell out every game since.

You could rightly say that they are “the most human” sports team, and they certainly do their fair share of winning.

Marketing Lessons from the Savannah Bananas

Put fans first (and that includes your employees)

Happy employees make for happy customers (or fans or clients). It’s human nature: when our cup “runneth over,” we’re able to give more to others. Support personal and professional development for your employees, not with empty mission statements, but with time and money.

The Savannah Bananas sent one staffer on her dream trip to Ireland. Another staffer got to attend a playoff game with his Dad (all expenses paid). The front office sent another Savannah Bananas staffer VIP passes to see a KISS concert. These investments in staff happiness pay dividends in the form of lower turnover.

Let people get to know your employees

“People buy from the people behind the brand, not just the brand,” Jesse emphasizes. So he invested in a full-time videographer to help people get to know the players and the staff.

“We post videos every single week of our people,” says Jesse. “We’ve had millions of video views on Facebook and Twitter and YouTube. Everyone knows who our people are. We started showing who the people were behind the bananas from Day 1.”

The team has a video series called “Bananas Unpeeled,” which features staff members and players. Everyone gets some time in the spotlight, and they all become the face of the Savannah Bananas. If you’re only showcasing your CEO, you’re missing an opportunity to create a deeper connection between your employees and your audiences.

Embrace your weirdness

Jesse wears a yellow tuxedo, complete with top hat the color of sunshine. When he and his wife were expecting a baby, they held a press conference to announce “the first signing of the year.” (Incidentally, the “banana baby” is officially a thing now and I am so here for that.)

“We have to be a circus, and maybe a baseball game will break out,” says Jesse. There’s nothing ordinary about how the Savannah Bananas operate. They’re bold and audacious. The gameday experience is organized chaos: spectacles like players going on intragame dates with fans, lots of contests between innings, and plenty of family fun.

In a way, they’re anything but “yellow.” (Sorry.)

Embrace your own eccentricity. Don’t over-polish your personal brand. A little tarnish makes you more relatable.

Show gratitude

Jesse sends a handwritten thank-you letter to someone every day.

“I remembered how impactful thank you letters can be, so started a list and wrote down everyone—from past teachers to coaches to authors and really anyone else in my life. I just started writing it down,” Jesse explains.

“It was probably the most selfish thing I’ve ever done. It felt so good doing it. And all of the sudden, those thank-you letters started making bigger connections than I’ve ever had in my life.”

Gratitude looks good on everyone (and on every business), so make it a core value of your company and watch what happens!

Kerry O’Shea Gorgone is a writer, lawyer, speaker and educator. She’s also Director of Product Strategy, Training, at MarketingProfs. Kerry hosts the weekly Marketing Smarts podcast. Find Kerry on Twitter.

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In the course of working on the Marketing Rebellion book, I had the chance to interview Chris Savage, CEO of Wistia. We had a fantastic conversation and he said something that I thought was incredibly wise and insightful. Instead of explaining it, I’ll let Chris tell the story in his own words:

“When we started out, we didn’t have any deliberate marketing strategy. We were messing around in our office and just shot a video that was behind the scenes of what it was like to work at Wistia. No voice over or anything. It was just shots of the team working to music. And the thing made it to Hacker News and it went viral. People were talking about how cool and interesting it was.

“I thought we were on to something, so we did more of that kind of open video. We basically did it for our own enjoyment – it was essentially something we could send to our parents! It was funny, because these videos were never intended to get us customers. We weren’t selling a thing. And two weeks later … we had a bunch of new customers.

“It was this interesting moment because we had been talking about our product a lot and it wasn’t moving very fast and then we stopped talking about our product and instead showed who we are, and we got a bunch of new customers buying our product!

“I started to learn that our company culture is our marketing. I began to realize that if I screw up the culture of this company, it will directly impact our ability to market ourselves.

“It goes back to creating a culture that enables storytelling, connections, community. It goes back to all of those things that mattered to us before the internet. It’s about that human connection and emotion.”

Marketing and organizational culture

The more I think about his statement, the more I realize how true and important it is. It explains why some companies are thriving in the current environment of hyper-empowered consumers and why some are failing.

The hallmark of Wistia’s culture is transparency. The company leaders are accessible, honest, and nurturing of a commercial  environment that is integrated with its customers.

Customers are actively involved in the company, including Slack groups dedicated to every aspect of the company’s products and services. Chris describes his customers as “fans” who are cheering for the company. Most of his new business comes from referrals.

The end of the easy button

Wistia has rolled up its sleeves and invited the customers into the family. The company has online channels, webinars, and live events to maintain a constant dialogue with its customers. Chris told me they have 6,000 customer conversations a month. They’ve built their organization to be intensely customer-responsive.

I’m in touch with many diverse companies, and a hallmark of marketing today is that we’re over-automating our commercial efforts. It’s intoxicating to think we can multiply our reach and lower our costs through automation, but much of the time, this is in conflict what people really want. There is no marketing easy button. You have to do the work.

Nobody ever became a “fan” of a company because of robo-calls, lead nurturing, or email blasts. Chris has true fans because he has developed an organizational culture that is unafraid to actually befriend its customers.

If you compare what Wistia is doing to the marketing efforts of many established companies, you can start to understand why their ossified marketing approaches won’t work in today’s consumer environment.

Customer loyalty is over in most places. Across most industries, 87% of customers now shop-around. In this post-loyalty era, Wistia is beating the odds and creating true fans with marketing that has a compassionate, human touch — an extension of their organizational culture.

Mark Schaefer is the executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions. He is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books and is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant. The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world. Contact Mark to have him speak at your company event or conference soon.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram.

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