Why do software companies put their logo in urinals?

Yes, in them. It's weird.

Hello Gobbledeers,

How’s it going? You almost ready for the long weekend? Me too. That’s why I’m taking next week off from the newsletter - we’re not going to publish on July 5th. You’re welcome.

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+1 Point for the Pun, -1 Point for the Location

One of the themes of Gobbledy is that marketing is more difficult than marketers get credit for. But one of the other themes of Gobbledy is that it isn’t THAT difficult.

Maybe let’s imagine for a moment that you’re running marketing for a pretty early stage startup. You’ve raised some money, you’ve got some clients. You decide you’re going to - for the sake of this hypothetical - get a little booth at the CommerceNext event in New York City in mid-June. That all seems pretty reasonable. Like I said - it isn’t THAT difficult.

But you really want to get the most impact from the investment you’re making in the conference, right? I mean you don’t just want to put up a sign at your booth, cross your fingers and hope for that best (though, don’t get me wrong, that’s not the worst marketing strategy. Some people will come by your booth, you’ll chat with some of them, you’ll get some leads and go home).

I think the worst marketing strategy might involve, for example, getting a booth, putting up a sign at the booth, telling people they should come by the booth, and chatting with people. But also adding on some awareness-building by having people urinate on your logo, and then also making a urination joke on that logo.

Oh weird, a startup called Proto.ai did that:

We have exclusively uncovered the list of slogans they rejected for this in-toilet campaign:

“No shit, we increase AOV.”

“Keep those orders streaming in!”

“The world’s best drip campaigns.”

Or whatever.

Pity the poor marketer who has to measure the influence of urinating on a logo on generating a sales qualified lead. And how many points does a prospect get for urinating on the logo? 5? And doesn’t this disproportionately generate more leads from men? Was there a female equivalent in the women’s bathroom? I have a lot of questions.

Even more amazing, that was not the only urinal-based marketing (UBM) inventory available:

Someone from Verasight had to go place those cards on all the urinals, and (I assume) had to go back every couple of hours and make sure that they didn’t need to be replaced. That was someone’s job.

So I guess my point was this - please don’t have people urinate on or near your logo. Even if you need booth traffic.

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But Have They Tried Urinal Based Marketing?

From Glossy:

So except for acquiring customers and keeping customers, everything’s great for wellness brands.

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You Can’t Have This Rolex

Last summer the New Yorker published a great article about door-to-door salesmen. Yes, there are still door-to-door salesmen. Door-to-door salesmen (they’re mostly men) have a huge (metaphorical) toolkit of, um, tools (?) to get you to buy stuff from them. In a newsletter last year I wrote about one of them:

(Quote from the New Yorker)

He employed a “pullback”—a door-to-door staple, based on the conviction that customers want a product more if they think they might be denied it. Your house may not qualify for solar panels—my engineers will have to check. Fear of loss drives more sales than hope for gain.

Imagine that your product’s positioning was “Marketing automation exclusively for sophisticated marketers” and part of your go-to-market was that a prospect had to spend 30 minutes in a discovery session where they need to be approved to move forward if they’re sophisticated enough in their tactics. And “only 9% of marketers have been approved to move forward to the next conversation.” Fear of loss drives more sales than hope for gain.

Hey, that’s a good idea! (I just thought to myself after reading my own idea.)

Sadly, I haven’t seen any software provider employ the “pullback” (except to “pull back” the number of people who work there, har har…no har har if you were one of the people pulled back, obviously.)

Someone (I forgot to note who - my apologies if it was you) on Twitter posted this Rolex advertisement from a bunch of years ago that I thought pretty effectively employed the pullback:

“But not yet.”

Damn, that’s good.

“You can’t have this” is incredibly powerful. And unused! Nobody in software is doing it! And - maybe I’m wrong here - it’s probably (?) a better option than “please urinate on us!”

Rolex has tried other messaging - there are ads that include long copy about the watches. There are ads with celebrities. There are ads with just a product image. All of those are fine.

I thought this one was interesting, though:

Typically the appeal to vanity in luxury goods is more subtle - maybe the suggestion is that you could play tennis like Roger Federer if you wore a Rolex (??). This ad is jarringly on-the-nose.

The first line of copy is - “The personal symbol of leadership in world affairs is the best watch in the world.”

Which I read as: “If you’re the Minister of Finance for a Petrostate Kleptocracy, here’s a watch that’ll be perfect for you.”

But not yet.

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The Gartner Islands of Sadness and Confusion

If July 4th isn’t about celebrating the freedom to make whatever the hell that is, then I don’t know what it’s about.

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Have a great holiday and I’ll see you back here in 2 weeks.

Oh - I should mention for all the new folks here…Hello again. Maybe I should introduce myself - I’m Jared. How’s it going? I used to run marketing for a few software companies, including marketing automation company Bluecore and ecommerce platform VTEX (we went public! Fun! sort of!). Now I work with companies to help them with their messaging and positioning. Typically that starts with a half-day workshop. It’s fun! (probably!). When you look at your homepage, does it sound like a bunch of gobbledy? I thought it might. I help companies with that.

If you want to talk about your website messaging, Rolexes, or whatever, I’d love to chat for 30 minutes. Here’s my Calendly link.

And here’s my “Share Gobbledy” link: