The University Using "Our Competitors Are Racists" as a Marketing Strategy

I'm not saying that's a bad idea...

Sep 27, 2023

Hello Gobbledeers,

How’s it going? Did you know that Taylor Swift is dating a football player? Did you think I was going to let Gobbledy be the only publication not mentioning that? C’mon!

‘Disheveled Politician’ Is Apparently a Longstanding Messaging Strategy

You’ll remember (or not, I have no idea) the discussion we had here last week about Senator Sherrod Brown’s marketing campaign where he said he was a disheveled, sloppy mess because he didn’t have time to iron his clothing while also fighting for his constituents. Or whatever.

But thank you to longtime Gobbledy reader John W. for pointing out that the Senator from Ohio was not the first politician to use the “I’m a slob, vote for me” messaging.

Barney Frank used a similar line back in 1970 when he was running for State Representative in Massachusetts1:

I guess I kind of appreciate that they didn’t even bother with the “this disheveled mess is so focused on his constituents that we can all agree he’s a slob” and just went with “he’s a slob.”

For a tech company, “You’re right, our user interface is ugly” would be disarming, no? Why not just get the bad stuff out up front?

And now that I’ve been thinking of it, Ronald Reagan actually had the best use of the “show how the bad can be the good” back in the 1984 debate with Walter Mondale:

I know from the analytics that none of you click on the YouTube links. Fine. The questioner in this 1984 debate asks Reagan if he has any doubt that he would be able to perform at the level necessary to be President, despite his age (73). Reagan responds:

“I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”

The best part of the whole exchange - as you can see in the Youtube screenshot above - is that Mondale is laughing. He knows it’s a great line. It might be the moment he realized he was going to lose 49 states. That’s how powerful “let me show how my flaw is a benefit” is.

I’m not going to suggest how you should spend your time. You’ve been successful thus far in your career. I’ve been, y’know, whatever level* of successful I’ve been.

(*”whatever level” is exactly the level I’m at.)

But one thing you could do with your team is to go and make a list of your product’s glaring shortcomings. And then figure out how to reframe them as positives. It’s so powerful. Sales does this to try to anticipate objections. But that’s different (though whatever you come up with can be re-purposed by sales).

I mean, it worked for Barney Frank and Ronald Reagan, and they were re-elected a bunch of times. Also, they couldn’t be more different. Let me know what you come up with.

Dude, Where’s My Groceries?

You may remember the story that Netflix founder Reed Hastings told about the inspiration for starting Netflix. He said he rented Titanic from Blockbuster and then forgot about it and returned the tape quite late and incurred some ridiculous amount of late fees. He decided then and there that he would start a video rental company where there would never be late fees, and fast forward a bunch of years blah blah blah, everyone is watching Suits.

It later comes out that he made up the story about the Titanic late fees.

But due to Netflix’s success, every consumer-facing startup founder decided they, too, needed an origin story like that. And it was always, “oh my socks are dirty, where do I buy socks, I guess I’ll raise $7 billion so guys can find socks.” (I may have paraphrased that.)

Instacart went public this week, and its founder shared this story, that is definitely both 100% not true and also insulting to the human race:

So we are meant to believe that Mehta was sitting on his couch in San Francisco in 2010. He was hungry. He got up off the couch, went to the fridge, opened it, saw that the only item inside it - like on every cop show where they are trying to demonstrate that the cop has no life outside of work - is a packet of hot sauce (also acceptable - half empty carton of Chinese takeout; a quart of milk that the cop picks up and smells and realizes is bad, yet returns it to the fridge). And he goes back to his couch and texts a friend “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, all I have to eat in my fridge is hot sauce….what has my life come to?????”

And then he gets inspiration and texts his friend (even before the friend can text back from the first text) “I know what I’ll do! I can solve this! I will raise billions of dollars and hire thousands of people (and also not hire thousands more and make them independent contractors or whatever), and in several years you’ll be able to wildly overpay to have your groceries delivered, and THAT way I will have more than just hot sauce in my fridge.”

And Mehta was so busy tapping away he didn’t notice the 3 dots on the phone where his friend is texting him, “Dude, there’s a Safeway downstairs.”

I’m always fascinated with these types of fake origin stories. Because we’re meant to believe that the founder’s life was in shambles because he (always a he) couldn’t figure out how to get groceries, but he could figure out how to raise $30 billion.

Which, now that I write that, is actually probably true and kinda sums up 24 year old guys in San Francisco in the early 2010s.

Using Origin Stories in Your Marketing

As much as I think the Instacart origin story is funny (and incredibly stupid and insulting to my intelligence), origin stories can be an effective marketing tool. As with Netflix, it can work extremely well in PR - a cute anecdote can make it easy to show the value your new company provides (we hate late fees, too! we’re also too lazy to walk next door and buy food!) in a relatable way.

It can also work well in early stages of a software company - often the founder will be the first person actually out there doing the selling, and the origin story can be a compelling way to build connection with a prospect. Even so - once you bring in salespeople, the origin story generally sounds weird and false coming out of the non-founder’s mouth, and most companies pivot away from it.

This week I wanted to share an example of what I thought was a fascinating combo of smart positioning combined with an origin story. And then tied together with a messaging approach that directly tears down competitors in a pretty brutal way.

Also, it’s a university.

So I’m thumbing through the Atlantic Monthly magazine, and I come across this ad:

(In case you can’t read the copy:)

For the first half of the 20th century, American higher education was rife with antisemitism. Universities that didn’t ban Jews established quotas to test their numbers. Forced to take up their own cause, the Jewish community founded Brandeis University in 1948. It was the first secular university founded by the American Jewish community, established specifically to fight antisemitism, racism and sexism; it welcomed students of all backgrounds and beliefs. Clearly, Brandeis has much to recommend it. We’re a bit reluctant to tell prospective students where they should go; that’s a decision they should make themselves. Keep this in mind though: no matter what their race, religion or gender identity, there’s no quota on how much Brandeis students can accomplish.

(tl;dr: we founded Brandeis because other universities were keeping Jews out.)

Below the copy is a headline and text (also from The Atlantic) that reads, in part, “How Anti-Semitism Shaped the Ivy League As We Know It.)

I found this ad striking.

I think Brandeis is known as a good school, but one of the challenges colleges and universities have is how to position themselves in a crowded educational market. Over the years they’ve basically outsourced this to US News’ rankings, which they both complain about constantly and (until very recently) have also participated in while complaining about it.

In other words, US News’ rankings determined whether you were comparable to an Ivy League school.

Here, Brandeis tries to position themselves against the Ivy League schools by calling them out directly in the ad, and then talking about Brandeis in relation to those schools.

This is great, and something all smaller tech companies should be thinking about - as a smaller company, you should (almost?) always call out your successful competitors. Force yourself into the conversation. Brandeis has done that here.

When I suggest this, I often hear something like, “We don’t really have competitors” or “we don’t want people to compare us to [big giant company everyone has heard of].”

Yes - yes you do! It’s the easiest way for people to understand your positioning. Pretending competition doesn’t exist is both a missed opportunity and a red flag - you’re now leaving it up to prospects to draw their own conclusions.

And I have some bad news for you - people are really stupid. Not you. You’re amazing. But, like, other people. You don’t want them to draw their own conclusions.

All that said, universities don’t tend to be particularly controversial in their marketing. My daughters are going through the application process, and basically every college sends out a brochure with a photo of 4-5 kids of varied ethnicity smiling away on a campus where the leaves are changing colors. That’s college marketing.

So it’s a bit shocking that Brandeis has gone with a positioning/messaging combo of “We’re like Ivy League schools, but without the anti-semitism” and “we’re not going to tell you where to go, but if you go to Ivy League schools, you should know that those smiling co-eds on the brochure might be anti-semites.”

(And for the sake of this discussion, let’s set aside the merits of that argument. Gobbledy is a safe, non-political space…until in desperation I decide it isn’t.)

I’m bringing up a random ad from a university here because tech companies rarely if ever talk about competitors. And I think they don’t talk about competitors out of the fear that the prospect will go and look at the competitor. I know, that’s ridiculous. But I wanted to show that - again, this specific message aside - being fearless in your marketing can make an impact. Being direct about why you’re different from your competition - being fearless about calling out the real reasons you’re different, that makes an impact.

(On top of all that, this also creates the Tribe idea we talked about last week - creating an us vs them, an in vs. out.)

I guess what I’m saying is - Don’t let fear get in the way of great marketing. And don’t be afraid to call your competitors a bunch of racists.*

(*Not marketing advice.)

To End on a Lighter Note

Here’s a good rule of thumb if you’re ever working on a slide and wondered if there’s too much text on it:

If it looks like this, there’s too much text.

(Thanks to reader R.S.)

As always, thank you for reading (and especially for sharing) Gobbledy.

I’m always happy to chat - here’s my Calendly link. If you want some feedback on something you’re working on, or want to make sure you’re clear about what a bunch of racists your competitors are, I’m here.

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I ultimately decided not to make a joke about that ad being stolen from another politician and then showing this…but since I did the work, I didn’t want it to go to waste:

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