Thread by @visakanv

in my past life I did a ton of reading about marketing for work. a colleague-friend and I did an elaborate infographic summarizing everything we learned, and I think it holds up pretty good. intense amounts of effort to really condense everything – books and books of info

two parts to a Wow – Unexpected Utility and a Meaningful Story.

If you make something that lets people do something they weren't able to do before, they'll talk about it

i repeat myself again and again that elon musk is a marketing genius

no single variable ever explains everything, but there's usually some front where a significant competitive advantage makes a decisive, game-changing impact

I spent a lot of time reading about @marcbarros – he was the co-founder of Contour, which some argue is technically a better product than GoPro. But GoPro ended up being the go-to X-mas gift because it had the better story

h/t to @fakegrimlock for "minimum viable personality"

if you want people to talk about you, you have to have a story

people are lazy, they're not going to make up a story for you on your behalf

you have to literally tell them "go and tell your friends this specific story"

but what story? whole other book there

hoping people will stumble upon your stuff by chance is bad strategy. you have to find a way to get your stuff in front of them. simplest thing is to sell to your friends. respect their time and attention and give them something great. even coke did a version of this early on

influencer marketing is complicated because of signal vs noise problems – but the point is, social graphs are not built equal. some people are more influential than others. make them legitimately happy and you earn the right to reach their networks too

a thing I've been discussing with my cofounder is that we need to get involved in events + do events. any brand that wants to grow needs to do content, community and events. no way around it. Twitter tripled in size at SXSW 2007

RIP Pebble

Ellen selfie beaten out by nuggs

the Warby Parker NY Fashion Week 2011 stunt is one of my favorite stories

how do you find and hire people like that, with that sort of spunk? you need naughty people

crossfit of course is an entire religion

there's a lot to be said about how interesting scenes get monetized by passionate founders but then eventually the capitalist machinery smashes the walls and ruins everything

I still firmly believe that an honest, passionate founder can contribute real value

I am a big fan of starting communities. i have like a dozen facebook groups, telegram groups, etc. some people find this to be narcissistic or sociopathic or something but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. criticism's easy; building a great space for other people to enjoy is hard and under-appreciated

this can be a bit of a dark pattern, but it works

I guess just be mindful of what you're doing and don't be a dick about it

I'm thinking of doing a limited run of 88 @jibabom t-shirts for the fun of it. it doesn't hurt anyone, and people who want to pay a premium can do it

this is maybe my personal favorite method – the waitbutwhy / bill wurtz / oatmeal method. just make something phenomenally, ridiculously good. it has to be 10x better than everything else like it

does anybody use snapchat anymore

great product, powerful mission – but is it easy to talk about? if you want people to talk about something, it has to be something they'd talk about. (reminds me of that feedback form response to "would you recommend this operating system to your family...")

Now that i've been away from RC, what are my honest opinions on referral programs? Honestly... they can be pretty great! We saw all kinds of merchants in different industries grow like crazy. The thing is it's not magic – it's an amplifier. People have to really love your product

Meta: we made this in 2015 (I remember staying up all night before publishing) but I think it's well-made enough that it's still worth sharing and talking about. It still holds up! Btw I have blogposts for every single one of those examples, and more: referralcandy.com/blog/how-to-ge…

You may notice that some of the companies listed as examples of great word-of-mouth case studies... aren't doing so well, or have even shuttered. This is because buzz is not a substitute for unit economics. Business is hard!! You gotta do everything

lmao I miss working with Jon, I loved his art style and sense of humor. we did so much cool and interesting stuff together. We once did a mega-summary of like fifty commencement speeches... you know what, i'm gonna make a separate thread about that 😂