Thread by @george__mack

THREAD: The top 0.1% of marketing mental models.

Compressing a 6-year career into the best 8 ideas:

1. Contrast Is A Drug

• Rolls Royce stopped exhibiting at car shows

• They started exhibiting at private aircraft shows

• "If you've been looking at jets all afternoon, a £300,000 car is an impulse buy. It's like putting the sweets next to the counter" - @rorysutherland

2. The Best Content Involves A Red Pill

• "If you want to build a good podcast, following, or blog - you've gotta create your red pill"

• Hand society something they're not hearing anywhere

• Society says blue pill. Your content says red pill.

(@finnscave via @ShaanVP)

• The irony is that the red pill metaphor is itself a red pill - once you see it, you can never unsee it.

• The best content creators on the internet all have their own red pill, which makes their content so enticing.

E.g. @jockowillink's red pill:

• Society's Blue Pill: Writing is a boring activity from school

• @david_perell's Red Pill: Writing online is the fastest way to accelerate your career

• Society's Blue Pill = Trust the traditional finance system

• @APompliano's Red Pill = Blockchain is the future

3. The Law Of Shitty Clickthroughs

• The first banner ad ever had a clickthrough rate of 78%.

• In 2021, the average varies between 0.05%-0.16%.

• "Over time, all marketing strategies result in shitty clickthrough rates." - @andrewchen

• Most of the rewards of marketing channels go to early adopters

GymShark = Used influencer marketing before the term existed

PayPal = Used "Earn $ for signing up" before the term existed

Go fast. Entropy will occur - and only the wealthy can afford to keep playing.

4. The Most Underrated Marketing Channel

• "Your unboxing experience is the only marketing channel with a 100% open rate." - @TaylorHoliday

• When I first read this, I felt like such a moron.

• I'd spent years neglecting the most important marketing channel.

@TaylorHoliday has a fantastic "3 M framework" for unboxing:

1. Mission - Help customers understand why you exist

2. Magic - Unexpected moment that delights the customer

3. Money - How do we turn them into a repeat purchase or referral

5. Weird > Average

• If you optimize for the mean, you optimize for nobody.

• The average person doesn't exist - it's just a blended mean of 7 billion people.

• If you design an idea for them, you design an idea for nobody.

• In contrast, if you design for the extremes - it can then cross over to the mainstream.

E.g.

TikTok 2016 = Lip Syncing for teenagers
TikTok 2021 = Global short form video platform

GymShark 2012 = Vests for gym bro's
GymShark 2021 = Fitness attire for everyone

6. Costly Signalling Theory

• "The most efficient way to send a wedding invitation would be by email." - @rorysutherland

• A beautiful handwritten invitation by post contains the same message as an email - but the cost and effort signals how serious you are

Contrast below:

7. Linear Commerce - The Merging Of Media and Commerce

• "Brands will develop publishing as a core competency, and publishers will develop retail operations as a core competency". - @web

• This foresight from @web will be looked back upon like "software is eating the world"

You can already see this playing out...

• Nelk Boys + Logan Paul launching 8 figure clothing brands organically.

• @balajis idea of a "founding influencer" to enhance distribution.

• Hubspot acquiring The Hustle.

• Paid advertising is just acquiring attention

• If there's an organic media machine that acquires attention for free, they rely less on paid advertising

• And if the organic media machine ever uses paid advertising, it's miles cheaper (I've seen this on so many ad accounts)

8. Simplify

• "The more you simplify, the better people will perform. People cannot understand and keep a track of a long complicated set of initiatives...

Use a framework people can repeat without thinking about." - @rabois

You can change the world through a sentence...

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Check it out ---> bit.ly/MentalModelsBD

Notion document with all the resources here:

notion.so/The-top-0-1-of…

Last but not least:

@GoodMarketingHQ always has some 🔥 when in need of ideas.