Would you join a community build around your brand?
If you’re anything like Groucho Marx, you’d refuse to join any club that would have you as a member, which is why this episode might make some uncomfortable and challenging listening, re Belonging To The Brand.
This book by Mark Schaeffer, offers community as a new frontier for marketing to explore, but it’s a high stakes option where people will be able to smell bad motivation from miles away.
Later in the episode, we tackle community in different ways, reacting to an article that labelled The Banana Splits as the best TV show of all time. Yep, it certainly has a passionate tribe of fans, which is one flavour of community.
Plus we reflect on reading and how to embed it into our lives better, while sharpening our alertness regarding a different type of scam from any we’ve mentioned before.
LISTEN BELOW
Talking About Marketing podcast episode notes with timecodes
01:57 Person This segment focusses on you, the person, because we believe business is personal.
For The Love Of Reading
We talk a lot about reading on this podcast, so we thought it would be fitting to talk about reading habits.
As business owners or leaders, being exposed to fresh and structured thinking can shine a new light into the shadows of current operations. New insights might affirm what we’ve been doing or cause us to take stock and decide to change direction.
This opening conversation was inspired by one held on the podcast, Econtalk, and, in particular, the episode from April 2022 in which host, Russ Roberts, had a sprawling conversation with Tyler Cowen of George Mason University, who Russ describes as an intellectual omnivore.
08:39 Principles This segment focusses principles you can apply in your business today.
Belonging To The Brand
In his book, Belonging To The Brand, Mark Schaeffer asks, can a business have a community or serve one?
David and Steve discuss this “radical” idea and try to ground it in the practicalities of small businesses or organisations.
Can we create communities that don’t get dismissed by cynical consumers or citizens?
For some extra background, here is a chat with Mark Schaeffer by Petra Zinc.
20:23 Problems This segment answers questions we’ve received from clients or listeners.
Registration Scammers
On the day of recording, Steve received two scammy registration letters, one from Registry Australia and the other from Online Business Registration, both trying to lure him into their worlds to renew registrations with them.
While they stick to the letter of the law and have wording on the letters saying they are not official and they are not invoices, the whole thrust of these letters is to get a busy business person to assume they are routine and official, and just pay them, thus, making the business person their customer and from that time forward paying higher fees for their registrations.
It is yet another reason to be vigilant when receiving unsolicited communitation, whether that is email or paper-based.
22:39 Perspicacity This segment is designed to sharpen our thinking by reflecting on a case stude from the past.
Best TV Show Ever
Steve stumbled upon an article recently that named The Banana Splits as the best kids TV show ever.
That’s a big claim.
So, for our Perspicacity segment, David and Steve decided to reflect on the way we label things like TV shows as “best ever” and whether this can ever be subjective.
And they also ponder how timeless some cultural programs might be.
