The 4 words that always work in marketing

Plus a bad week for ketchup

Hello Gobbledeers,

How’s it going? I hope our Florida readers are staying safe. (Just to be clear, I also hope our non-Florida readers are staying safe.)

This week we’ve got:

• A difficult week for ketchup slingers.

• How many sub-brands is too many sub-brands? (Answer: no such thing as too many sub-brands)

• The 4 words that work for every software company’s marketing.

• A mind-blowing AI tool.

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Playing ketchup with the apologies

Did you have a rough week at work?

If so, did you think to yourself, “Gee, I bet almost nobody in marketing had a worse week than I did.”

And then did you think to yourself, “Well, hold on. There are marketers who work for home builders on the west coast of Florida. I bet they’re having a rough week.”

And that would be true - convincing people to buy a new home on Florida’s west coast beaches would be challenging right about now.

OK, they had a worse week than you.

But you know who else had a worse week than you? The newly named CMO at Heinz. It’s a rare week when you get to apologize not just for 1, but for 2 advertisements that were perceived as racially insensitive.

Let’s see, the ketchup-loving folks at Heinz ran this ad in the London Underground, which received some blowback:

I was offended because I thought that woman was eating spaghetti with ketchup on it.* It turns out Heinz makes pasta sauces, which, actually, totally makes sense. I had no idea.

(*There is a disagreement in my family about this exact thing - I believe that my grandmother, who was not known to be a woman who cooked frequently - once served me and my brother spaghetti with ketchup when we were young. I am 10000% certain this happened. My grandmother, before her passing, had no idea what I was talking about when I brought it up to her. I am not one to say that my grandmother was 10000% wrong, but I wanted to mention that two people have different recollections of the event.)

However, some folks who saw the ad found it somewhere between “odd” and “offensive” that it appears that the bride has no father sitting at the table, while the groom does have 2 parents there.

Heinz, for their part, responded by offering its “deepest apologies” while adding, “will continue to listen, learn and improve to avoid this happening again in the future.” Which is absolutely what I would’ve suggested Heinz say if they did not care what people thought. Also, I really liked their use of “this” - as in, “to avoid this happening again.” What’s the “this” they’re referring to, exactly?

Anyway, after apologizing that they may have played into some unfortunate stereotypes, they then released a campaign centered around the new Joker movie that included this:

That ad harkens back to the “Got Milk” campaign, of course, though also it apparently also harkens back to some minstrel imagery that was perceived as offensive. Heinz released a(nother) statement saying, “As a consumer-obsessed company, we are actively listening and learning, and sincerely apologize for any offense caused by our recent ‘Smiles’ campaign…Although it was intended to resonate with a current pop culture moment, we recognize that this does not excuse the hurt it may have caused. We will do better. We are working to remove the advertisement immediately.”

It’s probably an open question whether Heinz is more upset about the perceived racism or the association with the widely reviled Joker sequel. Probably both.

I usually try to pull a lesson out of these types of stories, but sometimes the lesson is anytime creative involves smeared food on a face, it’s just kinda gross. Also people will hate it for reasons you didn’t see coming. Also it reminded me that my grandmother definitely served me spaghetti with ketchup.

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Courtyard by Marriott Express City Express Inn and Suites

Before working in software I never had any exposure to product marketers (for you non-software types, product marketers in software help the company present their products in a way that makes sense to prospects & customers, while telling a cohesive story about the company.)

I have a ton of respect for that group because the job is challenging and complex and requires a level of both marketing and product knowledge that’s difficult to come by. And at the same time, in software often the portfolio of products that a company has doesn’t necessarily make a ton of sense as a package — it’s up to the product marketer to figure that out.

And while this is certainly a challenging role, I wanted to point out another industry where this role is challenging: hotels.

One of the big changes in the hotel world over the past 15 years is the massive proliferation of brands that all live under the loyalty program of a single program.

For example, here is a list of all of the Marriott brands:

That is quite a number of brands, and it is challenging both for the brand managers of those brands and for the customers of those brands to understand how the hell an “Autograph Collection” hotel differs from a “Tribute Portfolio” hotel. Or how an “aloft” differs from a “moxy” (other than sometimes the names are all caps (WESTIN), sometimes it’s regular caps (Residence Inn), sometimes it’s no caps (aloft).

Wyndham also has a whole bunch:

I can’t tell you what’s actually different between the Wingate by Wyndham, the Microtel by Wyndham, and the AmericInn, except that if I were going to dump the body somewhere, it’d definitely be at the AmericInn. (I mean, I’m NOT going to dump the body anywhere. Just to be clear. And I didn’t just spend a few minutes thinking about whether it would be the AmericInn or the Travelodge.)

Finally, French hotel group Accor may win this contest (the number of brands contest, not there where-do-you-put-the-body contest), with 47:

I’m boring you with all of that, because Accor’s CEO was recently speaking at the Future Hospitality Summit and was asked if the company is “insane” for having all these brands. I liked his response (it’s more effective if you read it to yourself in a French accent):

“We have 47 brands and counting. What do you mean ‘insane?’ It’s smart. It’s not too many. When I started, we had 12. Make sure they’re different from one another, make sure you have a competent channel… and make sure most of them are local and relevant.”

That’s a brilliant answer! It seems so obvious - there’s no number of hotel brands that’s too many if you’re able to differentiate between them, make sure your distribution strategy makes sense, and they resonate with customers in each market. Duh!

Sorta duh.

In the software world, when we create new products (or acquire other companies), we nearly always roll them up under the main platform. I don’t actually know why this is the case - my guess is that software companies all think they need to be a platform (rather than a portfolio of brands) to generate the highest valuation, since one of the pitches when acquiring a company is that you’ll be able to sell the new product to your existing customers, a feat that’s likely easier if it’s all bundled in the same platform.

But two of the best tech acquisitions of the past 15 years (and possibly two of the best acquisitions, period, of that past 15 years) took the opposite approach: Facebook’s purchases of Whatsapp and of Instagram. Although there’s been more integration between Facebook and Instagram than the founders of Instagram ever wanted, to Meta’s credit, those three brands have remained distinct, specifically because they’ve focused on different customers in different markets and offer clear product differentiation between them (to reiterate - this has not been perfect, and there’s overlap between all 3, but it’s distinct enough for this conversation).

Allllll of this goes back to the basics around brand - if you understand what the market looks like, and you’re able to segment that market, and you’re able to find a space to position a brand to speak to that segment, then Accor’s 47 brands isn’t insane at all. Probably.

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The 4 words that underly every bit of software marketing

There’s a pretty terrifying article in the New Yorker this week about the success Silicon Valley has had lobbying for things that they want. Specifically, bullying candidates who don’t support AirBnb’s efforts to expand in cities and who don’t sufficiently support cryptocurrencies.

Chris Lehane, the lobbying guru who now works for OpenAI but who previously worked on AirBnb’s lobbying efforts, ran a strategy where he leveraged every politician’s greatest fear. Someone who worked on the campaign told the author of the article:

“It wasn’t really about explaining how crypto works, or anything like that. It’s about hitting politicians where they are most sensitive—reëlection.”

The strategy they employed was two-fold:

1) Spend a ton of money on ads against an incumbent politician running in a primary to signal to other politicians that they are serious about how much they’ll spend to take them down if they don’t vote the way AirBnb wants them to;

2) Create “grass roots” outreach where individuals will call their congressperson to ask them to vote the way AirBnb wants them to.

I’m bringing this up because that quote from the source is a great example of something we talk about here all the time: don’t focus on explaining how your product works, it’s about connecting with your buyer in a way that is very personally resonant with them.

For the politicians, that was discovering that they may have trouble winning reelection. For all their talk of policies and lawmaking, politicians ultimately care about getting reelected.

In software, sure we all care about building great customer experiences. But really we just want to be sure that we are not going to get fired.

“You won’t get fired” is the most powerful software messaging, and almost nobody uses it. In consumer packaged goods marketing, “your family will love you” is probably the most powerful messaging - it’s why so many ads feature a mom (natch) serving her family dinner. Sure, it tastes good. Sure, there’s nothing (?) artificial in it. Sure, it’s quick to make. But really, if you buy Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, your family will love you.

The only tech example I’ve seen of this strategy was employed by IBM, which enjoyed the benefit of people always saying, “nobody gets fired for buying IBM.” And they actually used that idea in an ad:

I shared this ad a couple of years ago, and I still haven’t found a high resolution version of it.

Sure, they’re saying that you’ll sleep well knowing that IBM is stable and you have no reason to worry about your technology. But really what it’s saying is that you’ll have no reason to worry that you’ll get fired because the technology that you selected failed.

There are lots of ways to say this without saying, “you won’t get fired” - though you can say, “we think you won’t get fired!” But saying, “HR executives who buy Fluzzio.io enjoy long careers” or “Meet the email marketing tool beloved by email marketers’ bosses.” Though I think “most people who buy Ai.ai don’t get fired for it” works best.

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And lastly…an AI thing that was kinda amazing

For all the AI silliness and hype out there, every once in a while I come across something that blows my mind.

If you have not seen the Google tool that will take any text and turn it into a podcast hosted by an AI man and woman, oh man are you in for a treat (“treat.”)

The product is called NotebookLM (rolls off the tongue) and it allows you to upload any text to it, then you click “deep dive conversation,” and it will create a 10ish minute podcast-like thing with two eerily lifelike hosts talking about whatever you uploaded. Not reading it. Talking about it. Discussing.

You can listen to and example of it here, where someone uploaded the Federal Register (the daily, very dry update as to everything the federal government does each day), and it spit out a podcast about it.

And because, y’know, Internet, someone wrote “poop” and “fart” 1000 times in a document, uploaded it, and wanted to see what it came up with. You can listen to that here. And what’s crazy is that it starts talking about Dadaism and pulling other examples of outsider art that are similar to someone writing poop and fart 1000 times.

And it sounds like a podcast. Which is absolutely more of an indictment of every podcast sounding the same. But also, it’s amazing. Also, terrifying.

Enjoy :)

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As always, thanks for reading to the end. Like I mention each week, I get so much out of chatting with readers about marketing stuff. If you’d like to spend 25 minutes in marketing therapy (or whatever), here’s my Calendly link.

And if you’re new to Gobbledy, welcome. When I’m not writing this newsletter, I help companies with their messaging. The short way is that I can review what you’ve got and make suggestions to improve the clarity. Or I’ll lead a workshop with your team and get you a new homepage that will tell your story brilliantly. I’m happy to chat - I’m at jared@sagelett.com.