Storytelling and fakeness and wrestling and I'm not ashamed about the wrestling stuff

And Kinder Bueno's no bueno press release

Hello Gobbledeers,

Before we start, a little housekeeping: It’s school break next week, so there’s no newsletter. It’s a heartbreaker, I know.

Anyway, I’ll share a little secret with you.

When I was 13 I was a huge pro wrestling fan.

Huge.

I won’t bore you with the details of 1980s wrestling, but suffice it to say I loved Hulk Hogan**.

(**Everyone loved Hulk Hogan. I really loved Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka, who was basically an acrobat who wrestled and also may have murdered his girlfriend. I contend that if I had known he would - allegedly - murder his girlfriend in a seedy motel in Allentown [where they’re closin’ all the factories down] that I would not have been a fan.)

I’ve mentioned here before that my father was a TV cameraman, and he worked frequently at Madison Square Garden, including at many of the wrestling matches that took place there. He knew in advance when something crazy was going to happen and would often call up me and my brother to tell us we had to watch that night because they had an extra camera set up in the locker room because something was going down.

He was also kind enough to bring us to the Garden in January of 1984, when Hogan was going to wrestle The Iron Sheik for the WWF championship. My memories of the night was that it was the loudest place I’d ever been. That people went absolutely out of their minds when (spoiler alert) Hogan won.

And whether you were into wrestling back then or not (and I would guess mostly “not”), it is worth 6 minutes of your time to watch the video of that match (which in my mind was 45 minutes long, but was actually about 5 minutes). Because while I was very very wrong about the length, my memory was absolutely correct that the place was completely out of control. Seriously, watch…

At that point in wrestling’s history it was broadly accepted that pro wrestling was “fake” (in that the matches were pre-determined) while at the same time the people running the wrestling companies and the performers denied that.

Wrestling in the 1980s was a Schrödinger's cat of sporting events - somehow both real and fake at the same time. (Fun fact - There’s a term for this - “kayfabe” - that means the events are staged, but we are all meant to believe it’s real).

My father let us in on that information, which - like how when you find out the truth about the Tooth Fairy you’re both upset but also relieved when you find out you’re still getting a quarter under your pillow regardless of the truth about the identity of the Tooth Fairy - brought us a nominal amount of upset, but didn’t really affect our enjoyment of it.

We were undeterred because while the outcome was determined (“fake”), the underlying things we were rooting for (good against evil) was not. Hulk represented American ideals of apple pie, good manners and Hulkamania running wild, while The Iron Sheik represented…um, I guess a cartoonish depiction of Iranians?

The outcome didn’t matter, the underlying story mattered.

I bring all of that up because I listened this week to Marc Maron’s podcast where he spent 2 1/2 hours talking to people involved with wrestling. I know, that seems like a lot.

But pro wrestling is really about storytelling, and the podcast talked a lot about wrestling and storytelling and I was pretty enthralled by it.

Here’s wrestler Chris Jericho in an interview talking about the subject:

“Wrestling is all character… The moves are important, and the matches are exciting, but you have to connect with the audience… If you can do that to a high level, the audience will pay to see you, and they’ll be interested in what you’re doing… That’s the number one thing of wrestling — it’s storytelling… There’s gonna be some crazy matches, [where] the athleticism is through the roof, but the stories behind them are the most important thing.”

I know that the idea of storytelling is popular among software marketers, but I’d say that, oh, roughly 100% of software companies get this wrong. Most just focus on describing the athleticism (the product), but not what the product represents.

And the typical approach to this is “make your customer the hero of the story, and resist the temptation to make the product the hero.”

That’s not wrong. But it’s not enough.

The hero still has to represent something. A bigger idea. And then each story has to reflect that idea.

Maron spoke with Tony Kahn, the founder of AEW, the second biggest wrestling company (behind WWE). Kahn writes the storylines for the characters and talked about how he builds storylines. He was saying how he builds the stories using a spreadsheet, and originally the spreadsheet was set up with each column containing that week’s show, and the rows containing the wrestler and the storyline:

I started doing something a little differently…At some point I inverted it. I realized I should tip over (the spreadsheet), and instead of looking at the dates and building it out, I flipped what the columns were and what the rows were, and put the columns where the rows were. I just organized it differently…I had it where I was looking at the shows, but the flow working from the wrestlers and the stories works much better.

Meaning, the stories were built around the characters and the values they represent, and then broken up into pieces of content (rather than starting with the content that needs to be created and figuring out what needs to go in it).

I always sucked at art, and even with Dall-e’s help, I still suck at art.

For whatever reason, that was a big a-ha moment to Kahn, and it was a big a-ha moment to me. Maybe it isn’t an a-ha moment to you, I have no idea.

For all of us in SoftwareTown (tm), it’s not about creating e-books and webinars and whatever. It’s about determining the values (we believe people work better when they collaborate). Then determining the “characters” or the functionality that represents those values (a virtual whiteboard that lets you collaborate without having to fly somewhere). Then how that story gets told each week (videos, emails, whatever).

Wrestling has the added benefit of ultimately being about good versus evil. That’s (obviously) a great hook. And then the characters can reflect different good values and different bad values, and the stories are about what happens when you pit those against each other.

I’m not sure there’s been a great example of this since this one from Salesforce:

Raise your hand if you’ve had a boss say to you: “Y’know what we need? A campaign like that ‘no software’ thing that Salesforce did.”

“Software is evil. Get the benefits of software without the evil parts” is an amazing hook.

You may remember the Air Fryer column from a few months ago where we talked about why an Air Fryer is called an Air Fryer — it’s because there’s no evil character in “Mini Convection Oven.” Frying in oil is the evil character in the Air Fryer story. “Mini Convection Oven” is the athleticism. Get the crunchy foods you like, without the evil oil frying.

Netflix launched with “late fees for movie rentals” as the evil character, which is why founder Reed Hastings made up a fake story (kayfabe!) about running up a $40 late fee on a tape rental. Get the movies you want, without evil late fees.

If you have an evil character, then you’ll have a good character fighting the evil character (they’re often two sides of the same coin - crunchy foods are good!), and once you have that you can figure out the stories you’ll tell about good conquering evil (on the top columns) and where you’ll tell those stories (in the rows).

But without the evil, you’ll never have Hulkamania (well, software Hulkamania.)

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An Unanswerable Question

A friend texted me the other day seeking my help. His text said, “Can you tell me what these guys do?” These guys = a company called Datapoem. Here’s what their site says they do:

My answer? “No.”

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PR Bueno

Some people love press releases. They love press releases because they allow you to do something without doing something (the best kind of something!)

The fine marketing team over at Kinder Bueno (Motto? “Duty free candy es muy bueno!”) put out a press release for some reason to announce they’re having a contest of some sort. Not important.

What is important is that somebody sat down and wrote this incredible quote for their VP of Marketing:

"Movies are jam-packed with details and effects like CGI, costumes, makeup and more that take them from ordinary to extraordinary. The same can be said about Kinder Bueno Mini," said Shalini Stansberry, Vice President of Marketing, Kinder Snacking. "From the crispy wafer to the creamy hazelnut filling, each mini bite tells a story. One that's action-packed, drama-filled and a crispy, creamy thriller. It's a bite that defies genre and fully engages you, turning the standard movie night into a showstopper."

Movies are jam-packed with makeup.

It defies genre and fully engages you.

Even so, I can’t tell you that wrestling is amazing because it tells a story and then complain about Kinder Bueno Mini’s marketing, because each goddamned mini bite tells a story.

Dios mio.

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And unless you want me to put you in the Iron Sheik’s patented Camel Clutch (tm) submission hold (I’m pretty sure we can’t say that anymore), please share Gobbledy. Or talk to me about the messaging workshops we do to eliminate your own gobbledy. Either way. Thanks for reading!