Satan Hates This App and Gave It Zero Stars

And maybe it's a good thing everyone including Satan hates Workday?

Hello Gobbledeers,

How’s it going?

At the bottom of every issue, I include a Calendly link for people to set up time to chat with me about marketing stuff or whatever. But it occurred to me that some of you don’t read to the bottom (because you get bored by my brilliant, yet hilarious, insights). So I’ll include it here: This is my Calendly link. I had great conversations last week with a people from a random group of companies - someone who runs a bunch of Escape Rooms, someone who works in marketing for a developer tool, someone in a non-profit. If you want to spend 25 minutes talking about marketing (or whatever), I’m available through that link.

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The Cat’s In the Cradle and the Silver Spoon, For a While

If you’re fired from a job (or you step down from a job…to avoid being fired) it’s very kind of you to send out a note to your co-workers explaining the situation in zero detail whatsoever, and then thanking them for everything you learned from them, and mentioning how excited you are either for your next chapter (I have a new job) or to spend time with your family (I do not have a new job).

When someone (often a politician) steps down to “spend more time with my family” there’s often a chuckle in the media class about that phrase, because if they wanted to spend lots of time with their family they would not have chosen a profession that requires them to commute from Boise to Washington, DC, every week.

So what might you write if you stepped down from your job, did not have another job lined up, and wanted to be a little more truthful about the time you’ll now be forced to spend with your family?

The answer may lie in this note from now-former Amazon Web Services (AWS) CEO Adam Selipsky. See if you can spot the 3 words doing a lot of the work here:

Spend more time with family… “For a while!” Hahahahahhahahahahaha.

He’ll “take the opportunity to spend more time with family” - he doesn’t WANT to spend more time with them, but, screw it, I guess if the opportunity is presented to him, he’s not going to turn it down.

For a while!

And then, toodle-oo, kids!

(Thanks to longtime Gobbledy subscriber - and occasional Gobbledy reader - Amit S. for that one…)

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The Devil’s Zero-Star Review

Yes, I am obsessed with ads that include a bad review from someone outside your target market (Oatly’s “Blech, this tastes like shit” is one I keep mentioning.)

If I were sitting in a meeting about an upcoming marketing campaign and we’ve got zero ideas, I would absolutely suggest at least trying to come up with this type of message. I mean, if someone we don’t care about hates our product, then, by very faulty logic, someone who is the opposite of that person will love our product. Or something.

Also, let’s be honest with each other, the alternative - actually coming up with something good - is hard.

Like, for example, let’s say you get the either enviable or very unenviable task of running marketing for one of the various groups that are trying to sell God to people. That could be the Mormons, who have taken a direct-to-consumer approach. Or the Jews (my hometeam) who have gone the content marketing route by producing 85% of sitcoms in the last 50 years. Or the fine folks who have created the fascinating “Jesus, He Gets Us” campaign. Or the United Lutheran Church, who went with a far less hilarious content marketing approach as creators of the 1970s claymation-n-morality non-sitcom Davey & Goliath.*

Maybe nobody ever noticed that Davey (pictured here wearing the Italian restaurant tablecloth) is larger than Goliath.

(*I remember seeing this on TV on Sunday mornings as a kid - I definitely watched it - but I also remember thinking that something was up with it. Like I couldn’t put my finger on it exactly, but something about it always just felt a tiny bit off.

At that time in my life I also watched a lot of Tom & Jerry, and that usually had no dialogue but did have a mouse lighting a cat on fire or dropping an anvil on his head. That didn’t seem odd at all.

Whereas Davey & Goliath was 100% free of anvils and offered quieter stories about Davey getting an airplane stuck in a tree, and then this:

Davey:
My airplane, will you help me get it down with the ladder?

Dad:
Frank, will you excuse me, we have an emergency.

Frank:
Sure John, see you in the office on Monday?

Dad:
I’ll be there, God willing.

Davey:
Dad, what did you mean when you said, ‘God willing’? Does God care whether or not you see Mr. Johnson on Monday?

Dad:
Of course He does, He cares for all of us and what happens to us.

Davey:
Why?

Dad:
Because He loves us.

Then 9-year old me would sit there befuddled as to what happened to Davey’s airplane in the tree and why they were yammering about God and whether God hated Tom for letting Jerry drop an anvil on his head. At 9 years of age I didn’t know this was content marketing for the Lutheran church.)

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, ads with bad reviews.

So if you’re tasked with selling a bible app, you could take the bad-reviews-by-non-target-market-users approach and go with this wonderful piece of work that I saw in the subway:

I love that Satan is giving reviews.

Minus 1 point for the art direction where it actually looks like Satan is giving the Bible 5 stars.

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Even the Devil Hates Workday (I Guess?)

Sure, so sometimes Satan will hate your product and give it zero stars. That’ll sting among Satan-lovers, but it can be useful as a marketing tool.

But what if a publication with a very-slightly-better reputation than Satan gives your product zero stars?

Let’s say that Business Insider (formerly Insider, formerly formerly Business Insider, also what the Wall Street Journal would become if it were bought by Satan) writes an article that’s just a brutal takedown of your software. Let’s say that they published this:

Ouch!

You know there were meetings about this at Workday. So many meetings.

But it made me think of late great comedian Norm MacDonald. MacDonald used to say that the perfect joke was where the setup and the punchline were the same. He said his favorite was a joke he told on Saturday Night Live about former Yippie leader Jerry Rubin: “Yippie! Jerry Rubin died this week…Excuse me. Yippie Jerry Rubin died this week.”

I think that concept holds true for great marketing - a terrible review from outside your target market should work great as a positive review for your target market.

For example, what if Workday just owned what Business Insider wrote:

I mean, is that worse than what they currently have on their site?

I’m pretty sure that “drive flawless operations” DOES mean “mountains of busywork.” But I am actually curious why half the Fortune 500 uses it.

And WTF is a “rock star of business?”

OK, now I’m just getting sad.

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If you want to advertise with Gobbledy (our last advertiser got a bunch of actual, genuine leads - for real!), or learn more about our 2-day messaging workshop that has helped a whole bunch of companies clarify their messaging , I’m at jared@sagelett.com.