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In this episode of The Unicorny Marketing Show, Dom and Peter Whent discuss Peter's straightforward "pool rules" for better marketing messaging. Inspired by clear, no-nonsense swimming pool signs, these rules focus on the power of simple, bold communication.
Peter highlights the need for brands to stop using jargon and start focusing on the real issues their customers face. The conversation covers why businesses should be more direct, and how clear, impactful messaging can help brands stand out.
Key points:
- Peter Whent's "pool rules" for clear, customer-focused messaging.
- Avoiding jargon and using simple, direct communication.
- The importance of addressing customer needs over product features.
- Why bold and clear messaging is essential for differentiation.
Listen in for practical advice that will help you refresh your marketing and make it truly effective.
About Peter Whent
Yesterday, Peter Whent built several businesses, making mistakes and learning along the way. Dealing with the establishment—investors, lawyers, the tax authorities, and others—helped him develop a healthy cynicism towards the phrase, "that's how it's always been done."
Today, Peter owns and runs a modestly celebrated creative coalition called BoldAF, where he challenges norms and breaks the rules to help brands uncover the big creative idea that will ignite their identity. Once he's found it, he transforms it into bold messaging that gives the brand personality and draws prospects in like the Pied Piper.
Links
Full show notes: Unicorny.co.uk
Watch episode: https://youtu.be/vlAY0Kc55mE
LinkedIn: Peter Whent | Dom Hawes
Email: peter@peterwhent.com
Website: Bold AF
Sponsor: Selbey Anderson
Other items referenced in this episode:
The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout
Dropbox Original MVP Explainer Video
Brand AF: Blog on Virgin Cola vs Fever Tree
00:00 - None
03:21 - The Pool Rules Explained
07:55 - Rule 1: No one gives a s**t about you (or your product)
15:15 - Rule 2: It's all about the message
17:29 - Rule 11: Don't be better. Be different.
22:30 - Rule 8: Stop trying to convert everyone.
24:43 - Rule 4: There are no customers in No Man's Land
29:25 - Rule 6: Don't be afraid to offend the right people
34:15 - Rule 5: Harden the f**k up
34:59 - Rule 7: Welcome controversy and confrontation with open arms
39:49 - Rule 3: You're expressly forbidden to talk about your qualifications, your awards...
46:18 - Conclusion
Peter Wendt
People don't engage with you when you shout out them, buy my stuff.
Peter Wendt
They engage when you show them that you understand what's keeping them awake at night.
Peter Wendt
If people say, you know, want a quick one word?
Peter Wendt
How do we write great content?
Peter Wendt
Tell stories about your customer's pain.
Peter Wendt
If one out of ten is bland, beige, boring messaging, you could write one out of ten messaging, but you're going to get one out of ten attention and results.
Peter Wendt
Screwed to the wall is a set of rules.
Peter Wendt
No running, no jumping, no pissing in the pool.
Peter Wendt
Their rules, it's quite clear.
Peter Wendt
And they haven't been written by some brand guru.
Peter Wendt
They've been written by a bloke who doesn't want you to run or swim or piss in the pool.
Dom Hawes
Hello, unicorners, and welcome to today's show.
Dom Hawes
I am Dom Hawes and I am your host today.
Dom Hawes
And today we are bringing you the witty, wild, and wise Peter Wendt.
Dom Hawes
Now, I met Peter on LinkedIn, or should I say a couple of his posts and comments bulldozed through my attention deficit doom scrolling.
Dom Hawes
Because here is a man who really has a way with words that kind of grab attention by the throat.
Dom Hawes
So the more I saw of his work, the more I liked.
Dom Hawes
And I asked Nikola, our show producer, to get in touch with him.
Dom Hawes
She did that.
Dom Hawes
They connected.
Dom Hawes
And here we are.
Dom Hawes
Peter is an amazingly frank truth teller, and on his website, Boldaf Marketing, he's published what he calls pool rules.
Dom Hawes
There are twelve of them, and we are going to look at all of them today.
Dom Hawes
Now, the thing about the pool rules is this, they're excellent, excellent rules for all of us to live by as we seek to be more effective, both as marketers and communicators.
Dom Hawes
And that's why today is really, really worth a listen.
Dom Hawes
So let's go straight to the studio and meet Peter Wendt.
Peter Wendt
Thank you very much.
Peter Wendt
Nice to be here, and thanks for the kind words.
Dom Hawes
Well, not at all.
Dom Hawes
No.
Dom Hawes
Hey, unicorn is, if you haven't yet, go look him up on LinkedIn and look back through his post history.
Dom Hawes
And if you don't laugh, you probably want to unsubscribe from this podcast.
Dom Hawes
Anyway, why don't you start by giving us an idea of you, your background, who you are, what you do.
Peter Wendt
My background background was I've spent about a decade building a couple of companies as an entrepreneur and founder, sold those, and then probably another decade or so helping other people who had founded companies and maybe gone wrong or were losing their way to try and fix them.
Peter Wendt
The last one of those I did was about 20, 1617.
Peter Wendt
Didn't really enjoy them, if I'm honest.
Peter Wendt
You're always working, walking into a distress situation, and it wasn't filling my soul.
Peter Wendt
So I promised myself that was the last one I'd do.
Peter Wendt
And then I didn't know what to do.
Peter Wendt
And as I was sort of finding my way around LinkedIn and working out what might be next, somebody contacted me on LinkedIn out of the blue and said, we're a bit lost.
Peter Wendt
We don't know how to talk about ourselves.
Peter Wendt
I like your content.
Peter Wendt
Is that something you could help us with?
Peter Wendt
Do you have some sort of workshop?
Peter Wendt
And I said, yes, I do, but I didn't.
Peter Wendt
But I soon did.
Peter Wendt
And really, that was probably six years ago, and it's just all gone from there.
Peter Wendt
I sold that workshop a number of times, built on it, built some content, built some online courses, and here I am now, still doing the same thing, still enjoying it, loving it.
Dom Hawes
When I went to look at you in more detail on your website, I found these things called pool rules.
Dom Hawes
What are pool rules and how do you use them?
Dom Hawes
How do they come about?
Peter Wendt
If you look at most websites, there's a section which says, what we believe in or what we stand for, what are our values?
Peter Wendt
And you could nearly always see the influence of some brand guru who's turned up with a gilet on and a cold cup in his hand and asked them questions about their spirit animals and their chakras.
Peter Wendt
And what they produce is often quite bland, quite vague.
Peter Wendt
WeWork's a great example.
Peter Wendt
They would tell the world they were trying to elevate the world's consciousness.
Peter Wendt
I don't know what that means.
Peter Wendt
And I believe that if you're going to set some rules for yourself, they should sound like rules.
Peter Wendt
And there's no better place to see rules done properly than if you go to your local swimming pool and screw to the wall is a set of rules.
Peter Wendt
No running, no jumping, no pissing in the pool.
Peter Wendt
They're rules.
Peter Wendt
It's quite clear.
Peter Wendt
And they haven't been written by some brand guru.
Peter Wendt
They've been written by a bloke who doesn't want you to run or swim or piss in the pool.
Peter Wendt
And so that's how we wanted to present our rules.
Peter Wendt
And we thought pool rules washington a very good way to describe it.
Peter Wendt
These are the hills we would die on.
Peter Wendt
They're what we believe messaging is all about and how you should do it.
Peter Wendt
But I think they're also a good manifesto for most businesses in terms of what their messaging should look like.
Dom Hawes
Well, we're going to look at those today, and they are really cool.
Dom Hawes
So I'm really looking forward to digging into some of these.
Dom Hawes
You recently introduced the concept of a brand wank.
Peter Wendt
If you take most businessmen to the pub, you'd have a good conversation, you'd have some banter, you might have a few swear words, a few jokes, take them back to the office and put a keyboard in their hand and ask them to write something about their business.
Peter Wendt
And they, they start speaking a different language.
Peter Wendt
They're elevating and they're harnessing and they're unleashing.
Peter Wendt
And we really, as a throwaway line, some time ago on LinkedIn, I wrote a post terming that brand wank, and it kind of caught people's imagination.
Peter Wendt
So we've used that term quite.
Peter Wendt
In fact, we're using it increasingly.
Peter Wendt
And just last week, actually, on our LinkedIn, on my LinkedIn post, we launched as a bit of fun brand wank bingo, which is a bingo card you can take into a meeting and tick off all of the brown wank you hear from the people in the meeting, and you shout brown wank.
Peter Wendt
As soon as you do a line or a row, if you got the courage.
Dom Hawes
If, if I have a feeling we might come back to Bran wank as we go through today's show.
Dom Hawes
Let's start there.
Dom Hawes
By clearing, you also use that word messaging.
Dom Hawes
Many people listening might think it's synonymous with general communication, but I'm assuming you are talking about a more considered approach to messaging as part of a brand strategy or part of a positioning exercise.
Peter Wendt
I think there's a real premium on simplicity, so we try to keep our definitions very simple.
Peter Wendt
So if you think about your brand as how you want the world to perceive you, or you think about your visual identity as how you want the world to see you, messaging is how you want the world to hear you, whether it's spoken or written.
Peter Wendt
And there are lots of, obviously, you could atomize that into lots of little parts, messaging and value propositions and taglines, all that sort of thing.
Peter Wendt
It boils down to how you want the world to hear you and what you got to say and what's in it for them and why you're the right person for them.
Dom Hawes
What stops people being bold enough to say the things they should say?
Peter Wendt
Fear of failure is probably, or fear of ridicule, or fear of pushback.
Peter Wendt
So if you think about messaging as a scale, you can write.
Peter Wendt
And if one out of ten is bland, beige, boring messaging, you could write one out of ten.
Peter Wendt
Messaging but you're going to get one out of ten attention and results.
Peter Wendt
If you write ten out of ten messaging, you could get ten out of ten results.
Peter Wendt
You might get seven, eight, nine.
Peter Wendt
You're not going to get one, probably.
Peter Wendt
But you're also probably going to occasionally get ten out of ten failure, where you do something wrong or you offend the whole world and you get a torrent of abuse.
Peter Wendt
It's that bit that stops people writing ten out of ten content messaging, whatever it is they're writing.
Peter Wendt
And so they fall back into their comfort zone, which is to write one out of ten.
Peter Wendt
But there's a phrase I'm sure will come up a couple of times today.
Peter Wendt
We talk about no man's land, which is a place where there are no customers.
Peter Wendt
There's a lot of founders who are crying into their coffee that it's all unfair.
Peter Wendt
And if you write one out of ten messaging and you get one out of ten results, then you will spend your life in no man's land.
Dom Hawes
Good.
Dom Hawes
Let's dive in.
Dom Hawes
Dive in.
Dom Hawes
God, that's a brand wank, isn't it?
Dom Hawes
Damn.
Dom Hawes
Let's talk about some of the pool rules.
Dom Hawes
Well, let's talk about all of them.
Dom Hawes
Now, I've grouped these a little bit because I looked at them before and I wondered, maybe just to help guide the conversation, whether we could group them.
Dom Hawes
And the first group I've got is under the heading of, you are not your customer.
Dom Hawes
And rule number one, which I think is really powerful, is no one gives a shit about you or your product.
Peter Wendt
If you start a business as a founder, you live, eat, sleep, and breathe as product you're bringing into the world.
Peter Wendt
And so naturally, you're obsessed by it, but nobody else is.
Peter Wendt
Let me tell you a very quick story which I think illustrates this.
Peter Wendt
Imagine you go to the pub and you meet a friend you haven't seen for a while, and you get a drink, and you go out to the garden and you sit down and your friend says to you, you're not going to believe the holiday I've just been on.
Peter Wendt
I've got some photos, and they get their phone out and they open the photo app, and they show you a picture of them standing in a bar with a drink, and you paint that, very polite, that's interesting look on your face.
Peter Wendt
And then they scroll across to another photo, and now your heart sinks and you're thinking, okay, I wonder how many of these are going to be by the time they get to the fifth photo.
Peter Wendt
You're writing a kettlebell workout in your head to do at the gym tomorrow.
Peter Wendt
And by the time they get to the 10th photo, you're looking for the exit.
Peter Wendt
Why do we react to other people's photos like that?
Peter Wendt
And the answer to that question is because we're not in them.
Peter Wendt
And the one photo where we say, stop, stop, go back, blow that one up.
Peter Wendt
Give me the phone.
Peter Wendt
Let me have a look.
Peter Wendt
Is the one we're in.
Peter Wendt
We're obsessed with ourselves.
Peter Wendt
And we wander around all day with a conversation going on inside our head, which is a conversation that's all about us.
Peter Wendt
But the problem is that our customers aren't ready for us to bundle into their life saying, look at my product, look at the features, my awards, my TED talk, all that sort of stuff.
Peter Wendt
If we're obsessed with ourselves, guess who our customers obsessed with?
Peter Wendt
They're obsessed with themselves.
Peter Wendt
And so there's a whole lot of stuff that follows on from that as to how we, how we counter that.
Peter Wendt
But that rule is, in my view, is the most important rule.
Peter Wendt
And if in doubt about any of the other rules, refer to rule one, nobody gives a shit about you or your product.
Dom Hawes
As a marketer, how do you make non marketing people understand that point?
Dom Hawes
Especially, you know, if you're a product, if you're a product engineer or the founder or you're in product management, and, you know, you tend to be very inside out thinking.
Dom Hawes
You tend to think that everyone wants the opposite of this.
Dom Hawes
Everyone loves it, and they just won't understand this comment.
Dom Hawes
What advice can we give to marketers to help them understand that no one really gives a shit about the product?
Peter Wendt
I would tell them that story to start with because I think that's quite, it's quite true.
Peter Wendt
And most people can relate to that.
Peter Wendt
They've all been exposed to baby photo.
Peter Wendt
Right now we're seeing a torrent of back to school photos.
Peter Wendt
And, you know, you look on Facebook, every back to school photos got the person who posted probably liked it, their husbands liked it, the mother in law's liked it.
Peter Wendt
Nobody, you know, nobody cares.
Peter Wendt
You posted that for you because you're.
Peter Wendt
I'm not knocking it.
Peter Wendt
It's, it's great, but it's a great example of how we don't care.
Peter Wendt
So I think the first thing I would do is I would tell them that story and I would tell them another quick story, which I think is, that is the sort of the follow on from that, which is, it's a story I tell in the workshop about how it was the day of the men's Olympic triathlon final in Hyde park in 2012.
Peter Wendt
And I was giving a talk at an entrepreneurs conference on the other side of town, a couple of hundred people in the audience.
Peter Wendt
The theme of my talk was three or four things I'd failed at.
Peter Wendt
And my idea was that if I told them about things I made a mess of, it might help them to avoid those same pitfalls.
Peter Wendt
And I told a story about a business we started in the very early noughties.
Peter Wendt
And really early on in the lifecycle of the business, we won Orange as a customer.
Peter Wendt
Orange then was the number two mobile network in the country, a customer that was way too big for us.
Peter Wendt
And it swamped everything.
Peter Wendt
It swamped our cash, it swamped our mindset, it swamped all of our resources.
Peter Wendt
And there was a point at which I thought it might actually put us under.
Peter Wendt
And I lay awake at night worrying about it, thinking, what am I going to tell my employees?
Peter Wendt
What am I going to tell my investors?
Peter Wendt
Anyway, finished the talk, and as people were filing out, it was the end of.
Peter Wendt
It was the last talk of the day.
Peter Wendt
A guy came up to me and said, peter, that story you told about how you took on a customer that's too big and it swamped you and it swamped your resources, and you were lying awake at night worrying about what you were going to tell your employees and your friends and your investors, that's exactly the problem I've got.
Peter Wendt
And I'm like, can I buy you a coffee and have a chat?
Peter Wendt
Now, what's interesting is at no point in my talk had I said, this is what I do, these are my services, this is how I can help.
Peter Wendt
He hadn't been attracted by my product.
Peter Wendt
He'd been attracted because I told him a relatable story about his problem.
Peter Wendt
So if I would tell those two stories to technical people, they're quite relatable stories.
Peter Wendt
They're not, you know, they're not artificial or abstract.
Peter Wendt
And I think that, you know, if you can't see in those two stories the pitfalls of just going and talking about your product, I think you're in difficulty.
Dom Hawes
Is there a challenge as a marketer, though?
Dom Hawes
If people don't give a shit about your product, do they care about the brand?
Dom Hawes
And we spend a lot of time talking about brand and the importance of it.
Dom Hawes
Do people care about brand?
Peter Wendt
Do you think brands have an abstract emotional impact on us that we probably don't notice?
Peter Wendt
So what if I said to you, innocent, you would have a different set of feelings than if I said to you, IBM.
Peter Wendt
So I don't think it's about caring about brands.
Peter Wendt
I think that in terms of things like names, I don't think that.
Peter Wendt
I'm a great believer that names aren't that important.
Peter Wendt
I think if you name soon become just generic and part of a good example.
Peter Wendt
Carphone Warehouse, one of the biggest companies in Europe.
Peter Wendt
Great success story.
Peter Wendt
Don't sell car phones and they don't work from a warehouse.
Peter Wendt
But we don't think about them as the car phone warehouse anymore.
Peter Wendt
It's just a name.
Peter Wendt
So I'm not sure it all matters that much.
Dom Hawes
But of course, one of the things about brands is a lot of people, when they buy brands, they're buying them because they feel the brand says something about them.
Dom Hawes
So we're back to the same thing.
Dom Hawes
They don't really give a shit about the product.
Dom Hawes
What they care about is how the product's going to make them look.
Peter Wendt
You're absolutely spot on.
Peter Wendt
People buy Macs, for example.
Peter Wendt
They couldn't tell you what the clock speed of the Mac is or how much memory it's got or what sort of memory.
Peter Wendt
They don't know anything about what's going on inside that they like it because it's got the badge on the outside which they think says something about them.
Peter Wendt
We post about this quite a lot and every single time people will go to great lengths to deny that's why they buy a Mac.
Peter Wendt
But it's not true.
Peter Wendt
It's very fun, interesting.
Peter Wendt
About a couple of years ago I went to a meeting in the IOD on Pall Mall and I was early, so there was a pret just opposite.
Peter Wendt
And I had a coffee in there and it was probably 10:00 in the morning.
Peter Wendt
So it's full of freelancers who were sort of moving around London in between meetings.
Peter Wendt
Everybody was on a MACD.
Peter Wendt
So these are kind of designers and that sort of person.
Peter Wendt
Then I went across to the IOD for my meeting which was full of businessmen.
Peter Wendt
Directors found, you know, people, corporate.
Peter Wendt
Everybody was on some sort of Microsoft device.
Peter Wendt
So you can't tell me there's not an emotional pull for all of those people in prep.
Peter Wendt
They wanted to stay away from corporate.
Peter Wendt
There's anathema and corporations.
Peter Wendt
Not all of them, but a lot of corporations like Microsoft, because Microsoft does corporations very well.
Peter Wendt
So you're right, there is a very.
Dom Hawes
Good rational reason to use Macs as well.
Dom Hawes
I must say I'm on a Mac myself at the moment, is you can buy them used so they're cheap and they have a residual value.
Dom Hawes
So actually the rational thing, but no one likes to talk about that specifically.
Dom Hawes
Apple is cost of ownership actually is really attractive, but there you go.
Dom Hawes
That's a feature, not an emotion.
Dom Hawes
Let's talk about message, though, while we're talking about this.
Dom Hawes
Rule number two, pool.
Dom Hawes
Rule number two, it's all about the message.
Peter Wendt
Another post, which we do occasionally, which gets lots of pushback, is message versus design.
Peter Wendt
So words versus design on a website, I believe firmly that the words you write on your website are worth 100 times what the design of the website is and what it looks like.
Peter Wendt
So we have used to build our website and we also introduce into some of our clients a very good designer.
Peter Wendt
I won't tell you his name because he works for another corporation.
Peter Wendt
This is a bit of a side hustle, but he's the creative director for quite a big company and he won't start designing until you give him all your copy because he says that the personality I'm going to give you a website is in your copy.
Peter Wendt
A couple of examples, I think, which back this up.
Peter Wendt
Dropbox.
Peter Wendt
So when Drew Houston invented Dropbox because he was on a greyhound bus going across America and he'd forgotten his flash drive, and so I had no access to his files.
Peter Wendt
So that was the beginning of it.
Peter Wendt
And he put a.
Peter Wendt
He had the idea, made an explainer video, put it on a website blank page, just with a sign up field underneath.
Peter Wendt
And he signed up 75,000 people.
Peter Wendt
No flashing carousels, no things sliding in or flashing.
Peter Wendt
Just a white page with an explainer video.
Peter Wendt
75,000 sign ups.
Peter Wendt
Go to the Berkshire Hathaway Warren Buffetts company, go to their website.
Peter Wendt
They've just become a trillion dollar company.
Peter Wendt
I'm never quite sure.
Peter Wendt
Is that a thousand billion dollar value company?
Peter Wendt
It's the same website they've had since the.
Peter Wendt
Well, they probably built their first website when the web was invented.
Peter Wendt
And it's the same one and it is boring and dull and beige, but the messaging on it is just, you know, is everything.
Peter Wendt
So there's no design at all on there.
Peter Wendt
So I've never heard anybody say, I looked at this website and I loved that way that carousel moved across the page.
Peter Wendt
And I thought the way that they slid in that opt in form was fantastic.
Peter Wendt
I must call them and do business.
Peter Wendt
They do.
Peter Wendt
Look at the, they think these guys, the way they express themselves, the way they're, the points they're making and the way they're doing it is right up my street.
Peter Wendt
I'm going to give them a call.
Peter Wendt
So, messaging Trump's design every time in my book.
Dom Hawes
Okay, unicornists.
Dom Hawes
There we go, messaging Trump's design every time.
Dom Hawes
If you disagree, get in touch with me via LinkedIn and let's have a chat.
Dom Hawes
But I think I agree with you.
Dom Hawes
Messaging is the number one most important thing.
Dom Hawes
And on that note, pull rule number eleven, which I love as well, which is don't be better.
Dom Hawes
Be different.
Dom Hawes
There's a lot of debate at the moment about, you know, differentiation.
Dom Hawes
It's impossible anymore, but it's just not.
Peter Wendt
I don't think I've seen a really properly differentiated product.
Peter Wendt
Maybe once I saw, I met the founder of Skype very early on in their life, before they became famous, I looked at what they were doing.
Peter Wendt
I thought, this is a game changer.
Peter Wendt
Game changer is Bram Wank.
Peter Wendt
I apologize.
Peter Wendt
That was something which was going to really change things, but I haven't seen many like that.
Peter Wendt
So differentiation, the way you differentiate yourself, could be as simple as your personality.
Peter Wendt
What innocent did wasn't they made smoothies.
Peter Wendt
There was tons of people who made smoothies before, but they did it in a sparkly, entertaining, playful way that we all loved.
Peter Wendt
And it was aimed at kids to start with.
Peter Wendt
And it took off like a rocket.
Peter Wendt
Let me tell you a story that I think illustrates it very well, which you may have read.
Peter Wendt
There's an article which I think certainly on our blog, we may have published it also on LinkedIn, but it's about Virgin Cola and what they did and compared to fever tree and what they did.
Peter Wendt
And there's a very good book which I recommend anybody with aspirations in marketing would read.
Peter Wendt
It's written by two guys, Al Reese and Jack Trout, and it's called the 22 immutable laws of marketing.
Peter Wendt
And it was written, I think, late eighties, early nineties.
Peter Wendt
So some of the references in it are outdated, but the laws are timeless.
Peter Wendt
And the first law is what they call the law of leadership, which is don't be better.
Peter Wendt
Be first.
Peter Wendt
What they're saying is that the product that wins is not the best product.
Peter Wendt
It's not the most cleverly constructed product.
Peter Wendt
It's probably not even the product with the deepest pockets.
Peter Wendt
It's the first product into the market.
Peter Wendt
And the reason the first one normally wins is the first one into people's minds.
Peter Wendt
We are creatures of habit, and the Cola wars is a great example.
Peter Wendt
Coke v.
Peter Wendt
Pepsi.
Peter Wendt
They've been at each other's throats for 100 years.
Peter Wendt
We all grew up somehow.
Peter Wendt
We don't know how, probably choosing one or the other.
Peter Wendt
So we're all coke or Pepsi.
Peter Wendt
Some people are seven up or Fanta people, that's the niche.
Peter Wendt
But most markets will sustain two leaders, Coke and Pepsi, Visa, Mastercard and so on.
Peter Wendt
What Richard Branson tried to do with virgin Cola was to come into a market and aspire to be one of the leaders.
Peter Wendt
So he wanted to displace Coke or Pepsi.
Peter Wendt
But the problem wasn't the budget or Pepsi's place on the supermarket shelves.
Peter Wendt
It was the fact that in the consumers heads, we'd made that choice already and we weren't about to go and revisit it.
Peter Wendt
We don't change our minds easily.
Peter Wendt
Most people bank with the same bank all their life.
Peter Wendt
If you smoke, they smoke the same brand of cigarettes all their life.
Peter Wendt
We're creatures of habit.
Peter Wendt
So I wasn't personally, I'm a coke person.
Peter Wendt
I probably discovered that when I was five or six and I drank Coke over Pepsi all the time, but I wouldn't drink virgin Cola.
Peter Wendt
And so he spent millions of pounds, got nowhere.
Peter Wendt
I think.
Peter Wendt
By the time they eventually wrapped it up, the only market they'd taken a leadership position in was Bangladesh.
Peter Wendt
So it failed because he ignored the laws of marketing.
Peter Wendt
If you look at fever tree, exactly the opposite happened.
Peter Wendt
So the two guys that started fever tree looked at, they started just making tonic and they looked at the tonic market, dominated again by two leaders, schweppes and Canada dry, and they thought, what are the leaders doing wrong?
Peter Wendt
That we can do better.
Peter Wendt
And if you look at Schweppes, for example, the branding, their little tins of tonic are just yellow.
Peter Wendt
There's no branding on them.
Peter Wendt
Fever tree.
Peter Wendt
Okay, well, we'll have a slightly playful, interesting, lively brand.
Peter Wendt
Schweppes is full of man made ingredients.
Peter Wendt
So fever tree majored on that.
Peter Wendt
It's all natural ingredients.
Peter Wendt
It's natural quinine.
Peter Wendt
But if you look on the tin, it's not just natural quinine, it's natural quinine from central Africa.
Peter Wendt
It's very glamorous to try and sort of play up that sort of slightly artisan feel.
Peter Wendt
If you look on the tin, they have tasting notes.
Peter Wendt
The standard tonic is orange with a gentle bitterness.
Peter Wendt
So it's playing up this whole, we're not just a blande, man made boring brown with something a bit sparky.
Peter Wendt
So what they did was they separated themselves from the tonic category and they invented the artisan tonic category, which they couldn't be first in the tonic category, but they can be first in the category they've invented.
Peter Wendt
And it took off from there and they dominated that category.
Peter Wendt
And I don't know when it happened, but not long ago.
Peter Wendt
They now sell more tonic than schweppes.
Peter Wendt
So they obeyed the laws of marketing and the law of leadership and have been a huge success story.
Peter Wendt
And you would have thought if I said to you 20 years ago, there's this unknown brand, these two guys in west London, we don't know them, and there's virgin, who's most likely to start a soft drinks brand and succeed.
Peter Wendt
Everyone would choose virgin, but actually, the two guys who started fever tree did it smart.
Dom Hawes
They also obeyed a few of your other pool rules, which leads us on to the importance of focus.
Dom Hawes
Pool rule number eight, stop trying to convert everyone.
Dom Hawes
Fever tree created their own category.
Dom Hawes
They didn't care about the majority of the market.
Dom Hawes
They knew where they were entering it and that's all they were focused on.
Dom Hawes
Talk to me a little bit about why you think so many businesses are afraid of focus, and they do try.
Peter Wendt
To convert everyone, especially in the early stage of business.
Peter Wendt
Your natural instinct is throw the biggest net out there that you can in the hope that when you pull it in, there'll be something in there.
Peter Wendt
And there will be, but it's not a sustainable, repeatable process.
Peter Wendt
The psychology behind it is that nobody goes to bed at night having bought something they had no intention of buying when they woke up.
Peter Wendt
We're not certain.
Peter Wendt
You might have bought a Mars bar or a packet of peanuts, but big things, b two b stuff.
Peter Wendt
We're not impulse buyers like that.
Peter Wendt
If you're selling CRM systems, you're not going to, just by dming 10,000 people, persuade loads of people to buy a CRM system they had no intention of buying.
Peter Wendt
But they're out there.
Peter Wendt
There are a large group of people who've got CRM on their mind, so what you need to do is to find them and we can talk about how we do that.
Peter Wendt
And then once you've found them, you need to keep reminding them that this is who I am.
Peter Wendt
So that's what billboard.
Peter Wendt
I'm not an advertiser, so the advertising world might all tell me I'm wrong here, but I think that's generally what billboard advertising is about.
Peter Wendt
If you see on the side of the road a big billboard for the latest model of Oaks wagon, a lot of people are going to drive past that because they have no interest at all in.
Peter Wendt
But the people who are on their mind to change their car, my car's become unreliable or the contract's about to expire, or we need a new family car.
Peter Wendt
That's going to prompt them.
Peter Wendt
It's going to jog their memory that they should do something about it.
Peter Wendt
And so I think that we need to find those people that we would describe as the semi converted, the people that have got CRM on their mind.
Peter Wendt
And we need just to keep on gently reminding them that here we are, we're a CRM.
Peter Wendt
And that's not just by saying, talking about our product.
Peter Wendt
We can do that in lots of interesting ways in lots of different places.
Peter Wendt
But the principle that underlies it is that people don't go to bed at night having made an impulse purchase they had no intention of making when they wake up.
Peter Wendt
We can't convert people just by telling we've got a great product and hoping it'll work.
Dom Hawes
So this is the pool rule, actually, that I think led to our very first conversation, because we.
Dom Hawes
I think we're engaged in a thread about the importance of focus.
Dom Hawes
And you said messaging isn't about trying to persuade people they're hungry.
Dom Hawes
It's about finding hungry people and giving.
Peter Wendt
Them a big stake, a big stake to focus on.
Dom Hawes
And that's a lovely image to keep in your mind as you're thinking about your own segmentation.
Dom Hawes
And targeting, of course, is find people who are hungry, then give them a big stake to focus on.
Peter Wendt
Yeah.
Peter Wendt
And if you look at what's happening in direct marketing at the moment, we all see it.
Peter Wendt
We get our DM's on LinkedIn, are flooded with people.
Peter Wendt
We get tons of direct email coming at us.
Peter Wendt
And that's because people think that all they got to do is put a product in front of us constantly and they'll convert and they won't.
Peter Wendt
And there's a really important part in all of this, which is part of this, reminding people gently and regularly, is about building a relationship until they get to know you.
Peter Wendt
And what seems to me to be happening is the new generation of marketers seem to want to shortcut that relationship.
Peter Wendt
In fact, they want to outsource that to you.
Peter Wendt
They say, here's my product, and if you like the sound of my vibe, go and look at my website, go and look at my instagram, go and look at my LinkedIn.
Peter Wendt
And then when you've done all that, come and buy from me.
Peter Wendt
And they seem to want to outsource the whole building a relationship back to you.
Peter Wendt
They have these sort of spam machines which just throw shit out into the world, hoping that something will stick and it just doesn't work.
Dom Hawes
They're so irritating as well.
Dom Hawes
It's like, firstly, they're easy to identify.
Dom Hawes
The good news is they're easy to identify because firstly, they put quick question in the subject headline.
Dom Hawes
So, quick question.
Dom Hawes
Hi, Dom.
Dom Hawes
I couldn't help noticing that you are insert job title.
Dom Hawes
And you've done an amazing job at insert company.
Dom Hawes
I do this.
Dom Hawes
If you'd like to book some time with me, here's a link to my diary.
Dom Hawes
Yeah, as you say, I love the concept that they're outsourcing everything to us.
Dom Hawes
It's like, I will go and develop my own relationship with you and when I'm ready, I'll book your time because it's probably more precious than mine.
Dom Hawes
It's completely barking.
Peter Wendt
Yeah.
Peter Wendt
I'll do all the legwork of getting to know you and I'll go and have a look around your website and I'll get to know you.
Peter Wendt
When I'm ready, I'll come by.
Peter Wendt
It's not going to happen.
Dom Hawes
It's like, thank God you emailed me.
Dom Hawes
I hadn't thought of getting a CRM before until you mentioned it.
Peter Wendt
Exactly.
Dom Hawes
There are no customers in no man's land pool.
Dom Hawes
Rule number four, we mentioned no man's land earlier.
Peter Wendt
It's a little bit going back to this.
Peter Wendt
You can write content.
Peter Wendt
That's one or it's ten.
Peter Wendt
I think you have to ruffle some feathers.
Peter Wendt
If you don't ruffle some feathers, then no one's going to talk about it.
Peter Wendt
If no one's going to talk about it, there's no engagement and then you're stuck in no man's land.
Peter Wendt
So no man's land is where people who write one out of ten messaging and content live.
Peter Wendt
And it's got.
Peter Wendt
And we have a bit of fun with it.
Peter Wendt
The sort of people that live in no man's land, people who are.
Peter Wendt
Maybe it's a bit disparaging, but, you know, founders who are handing out coffee through drive in windows and.
Peter Wendt
Or drawing hearts on coffee foam at Starbucks, you know, it's not the place to be and you don't have to live there, but you've got to have a little bit of courage to get yourself up the one to ten scale and ruffle a few feathers.
Dom Hawes
You do that by having an opinion.
Peter Wendt
Yeah.
Peter Wendt
You need to understand what you stand for.
Peter Wendt
You need to understand what's really important to you in your business.
Peter Wendt
We say to people, there's a few exercises we do, but, you know, think about if you were a.
Peter Wendt
Imagine you're a superhero and you, what, what evil have you been in relation to your business?
Peter Wendt
What evil have you put on earth to solve?
Peter Wendt
And that helps people to sort of focus on.
Peter Wendt
Okay, what, you know, what evil are we solving?
Peter Wendt
Stop talking about.
Peter Wendt
We'll improve your customer services and we'll get, you know, do faster and cheaper and all that sort of stuff.
Peter Wendt
But tell me what you're trying to, what evil you're trying to solve.
Peter Wendt
And then, you know, once you've done that, okay, well, take that evil and now create an enemy.
Peter Wendt
One of the things I think is evil is telephone, cold calling.
Peter Wendt
It's not for all the obvious reasons.
Peter Wendt
I just think it's can telephone.
Peter Wendt
This is another post which gets lots of heat.
Peter Wendt
Can telephone, cold calling work in the hands of an expert?
Peter Wendt
Yes, but, you know, it's not the most efficient way to do it.
Peter Wendt
I could travel to Edinburgh on a horse and cart.
Peter Wendt
I'd get there, but it's not the most efficient way to do it because someone's invented a car or a train or a plane.
Peter Wendt
So we say to people, create an enemy.
Peter Wendt
And when you create an enemy, it's much easier to start to write stuff which might ruffle a few feathers.
Peter Wendt
Now, I don't care how many people rise up with their pitchforks against me saying, I'm a cold caller.
Peter Wendt
You're wrong, because they're never going to be my customer.
Peter Wendt
So I don't really care.
Peter Wendt
I mean, I don't care what they think, because on the other side of the equation are people who say, we absolutely agree with you.
Peter Wendt
We think content is the right way to do it.
Peter Wendt
We're just not sure how to do that.
Peter Wendt
And some of them say, can you help?
Dom Hawes
Guess what?
Dom Hawes
Bingo.
Dom Hawes
They are your potential customers.
Peter Wendt
Exactly.
Dom Hawes
And that's pool rule number six.
Dom Hawes
Of course, don't be afraid to offend the right people.
Dom Hawes
And the right people, therefore, are people who are never going to be your customer.
Peter Wendt
Yeah.
Peter Wendt
And it doesn't matter how many people you offend, as long as you're delighting enough.
Peter Wendt
So we should be careful about this word offending people.
Peter Wendt
We're not being gratuitous, we're not setting out.
Peter Wendt
I could write a post which offend the entire world, but it wouldn't do my business any good.
Peter Wendt
It's got to be in relation to your business.
Peter Wendt
So go back to that who's our enemy?
Peter Wendt
And let's not be frightened to take them head on and take the flak we get back for it.
Peter Wendt
Nike are brilliant at it.
Peter Wendt
You probably remember the Colin Kaepernick episode.
Peter Wendt
He was the guy of the american football player who was the first guy to take the knee in protest at some the police.
Peter Wendt
And there were some killings of some african american people.
Peter Wendt
And that obviously was very controversial.
Peter Wendt
And Nike then did ran out ad campaign.
Peter Wendt
He was a Nike athlete.
Peter Wendt
They ran an ad campaign which was believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything.
Peter Wendt
And he was the.
Peter Wendt
It was him.
Peter Wendt
So that is a really good example of how you ruffle feathers but delight someone, offend others.
Peter Wendt
That touched on probably the two most controversial topics in contemporary patriotism and racism.
Peter Wendt
And a lot of people were burning Nikes and protesting against what Nike had done and boycott Nike and would never touch them.
Peter Wendt
But there was an awful lot of people who absolutely were right behind it.
Peter Wendt
And you have to believe that the people who were right behind it were Nikes.
Peter Wendt
They were young athletes, african American, and a lot of them obvious Nike customers.
Peter Wendt
And Nike, the proof of the puddings in the eating.
Peter Wendt
Nike took quite a nice little sales spike just after that.
Peter Wendt
But they weren't afraid to attack a real ruffling feathers issue head on.
Peter Wendt
And we'll talk in a minute about what happens when the flat comes.
Peter Wendt
But they were happy and they've got form.
Peter Wendt
They've done that a few times.
Peter Wendt
I think we're not being offensive gratuitously, we're just not holding back on what we think.
Dom Hawes
I get it.
Dom Hawes
And I think Nike, again with the ad they released just before the Olympics, which was really hard hitting and it spoke to the character, the obsessive character of what it takes to be the best.
Dom Hawes
And it really upset a lot of people.
Dom Hawes
And I wasn't a massive fan of it myself, but I'm not in their target market.
Dom Hawes
But I absolutely get why that would have, would have hit.
Dom Hawes
And I think actually your mechanism, the superhero and identifying an enemy is a really nice way of encouraging people to think outside in.
Dom Hawes
So we talk a lot about inside out and outside in here.
Dom Hawes
It's part of what we've been talking about today, instead of thinking about you and your product, because we know no one gives a shit about it.
Dom Hawes
The enemy you're identifying outside the company is the problem you're solving for the people you want to talk to.
Dom Hawes
It's a really nice way of trying to identify that and create content towards it.
Dom Hawes
It's fabulous.
Peter Wendt
And if we go back to the very beginning where we said that some people don't engage with you when you shout out them, buy my stuff.
Peter Wendt
They engage when you show them that you understand what's keeping them awake at night, your enemy and your stories about your enemy will be stories about your customers pain.
Peter Wendt
And that's if people say, want a quick one word.
Peter Wendt
How do we write great content?
Peter Wendt
Tell stories about your customer's pain.
Peter Wendt
On the flip side, we talked about Nike and how they are very happy to plant their feet, make their point and stand behind it.
Peter Wendt
The problem a lot of people have and where it falls down is they make these bold statements or these bold posts or bold ads, whatever it is, and then as soon as the flat comes, they crumble.
Peter Wendt
So we've seen it a couple of times recently.
Peter Wendt
There was that Apple ad for the new iPad, which was a hydraulic crusher.
Dom Hawes
Yes.
Dom Hawes
Yes, I did.
Peter Wendt
Crushing all those creative tools.
Peter Wendt
What they meant to say, I think, was we compressed all these tools into one iPad.
Peter Wendt
But actually, as soon as I saw that ad, I thought, oh, no, the imagery there is, we're crushing creativity and machines are taking over, and everyone thought something around that.
Peter Wendt
Now, if that had been Apple under Steve Jobs, he'd have said, bollocks to all of you.
Peter Wendt
That's a great ad, and we're sticking with it.
Peter Wendt
We believe it.
Peter Wendt
Modern day Apple said, no, no, we're really sorry, we apologize.
Peter Wendt
And they withdrew the ad.
Peter Wendt
Bumble did something similar.
Peter Wendt
They did an ad about, I think it was sort of attacking celibacy, saying celibacy is not the answer.
Peter Wendt
And of course, that, you know, there are people who are celibate for reasons other than romance and relationships.
Peter Wendt
And there was a huge wave of anti bumble.
Peter Wendt
And so bumble went into retreat and pulled the ad.
Peter Wendt
And so I think there's a.
Peter Wendt
It's not a.
Peter Wendt
One of our rules, but maybe if we do another version of the rules, it would be.
Peter Wendt
And it would be if you write something that you believe in and people are offended, let them be offended.
Dom Hawes
Well, you do have some rules on being tough and being a little bit more outward looking in that way and pull.
Dom Hawes
Rule number five is harden the fuck up, because bold messaging isn't for the faint hearted, and it's going to attract criticism.
Peter Wendt
Right, exactly that.
Peter Wendt
It's easy to write a bold post that's going to ruffle some feathers.
Peter Wendt
Anyone can do that.
Peter Wendt
It's not quite so easy to press post and put it out there, and then it's even harder to see some of the reaction.
Peter Wendt
People, we like harmony.
Peter Wendt
We like everything to be happy in the house.
Peter Wendt
But if you're writing a ten out of ten messaging, you can't do it without some criticism, some flack, some hard pushback, and in some cases some abuse.
Peter Wendt
And it goes with the territory.
Peter Wendt
You either don your coat of armor and just take it or go back to one.
Dom Hawes
So I think poor rule number seven gives some hints about how you might handle that, because that rule is welcome.
Dom Hawes
Controversy and confrontation with open arms.
Dom Hawes
How do you choose where and how to be controversial?
Peter Wendt
So there's somebody I met on, I know from LinkedIn, I've known him for a few years, and he's a sales trainer, and he's nurtured an audience that have come to him because they like what he does with sales training and the content he puts out there.
Peter Wendt
And he wrote a post about, I'm guessing, three or four months ago, berating female football commentators.
Peter Wendt
Nothing to do with what he did.
Peter Wendt
And the likelihood is that what he would have seen is half a dozen people liked it and commented, those are his, you know, his misogynistic mates.
Peter Wendt
But what he wouldn't have seen is the probably 100 people who unfollowed him or the several thousand people who made a mental note not to go near him.
Peter Wendt
So if you draw a Venn diagram of people who don't agree with your outrageous views on misogyny and your audience, the overlap, which is going to be reasonably big, is people you piss off for no good reason and you're losing an audience because you just want to get something off your chest.
Peter Wendt
So you've got to be a bit careful about your subject matter and it's got to be related to what you do.
Peter Wendt
If you want to go and rant about that sort of stuff, create a false idea and go on Twitter and do it, because there's a sewer there to play in.
Peter Wendt
So I say to people, stay away from culture wars.
Peter Wendt
This is not about knocking the competition.
Peter Wendt
In fact, we created an enemy.
Peter Wendt
We have to curate that quite carefully.
Peter Wendt
It's not about saying the opposition to crap.
Peter Wendt
We can do that.
Peter Wendt
We can reposition them in much cleverer ways than that.
Dom Hawes
Yeah, knocking ads don't work well in this country.
Peter Wendt
I agree.
Peter Wendt
I agree.
Peter Wendt
I don't know if I'm generalizing too much here, but it seems to be an american thing.
Peter Wendt
Look at what's going on in the presidential election.
Peter Wendt
I don't think I've heard many policies.
Peter Wendt
What I've heard is lots of why the other person's awful.
Peter Wendt
So I think we stay away from that.
Peter Wendt
Stay away from the culture wars, stay away from your personal rants.
Peter Wendt
But, you know, when you.
Peter Wendt
But if you believe in what you're saying in relation to your product and your principles and your values, don't hold back.
Peter Wendt
As I say, we have.
Peter Wendt
Cold calling is dead.
Peter Wendt
Words always trump design.
Peter Wendt
Another one we've done recently, which I believe in is most headlines on most websites are awful.
Peter Wendt
They'd make fantastic sub headlines, but they're not good headlines because they don't do anything.
Peter Wendt
And I get lots of people coming back at me that, you know, can you look at our headline and tell me what you think?
Peter Wendt
And they're all expecting me to say, that's fantastic.
Peter Wendt
And generally they're nothing you have to nicely say.
Peter Wendt
So I think if you and the other one, which again gets a lot of pushback, is people who in their LinkedIn profile, put a string of letters after their name, who are they doing that for?
Peter Wendt
They're not doing it for their audience.
Peter Wendt
Most people don't understand what those letters mean.
Peter Wendt
I've seen people with more letters after their name than they got in their name and they're doing it for them.
Peter Wendt
And it's about feeding their ego rather than feeding.
Peter Wendt
And again, I'm not being rudeness.
Peter Wendt
Well, I probably am, but.
Peter Wendt
But you can understand if somebody spent three years doing a degree or a qualification or spent a year and 30 grand or 50 grand, whatever, he's doing an MBA, or they've done a life coaching course, it's the centre of their world.
Peter Wendt
And it goes back to this, nobody gives a shit, but it's the centre of their world.
Peter Wendt
And so they put it up there thinking it's going to be the centre for everybody else and everyone's going to go, wow.
Peter Wendt
I spent some time in the army right at the very beginning of my career and I went through Sandhurst.
Peter Wendt
I remember the day I got commissioned and I was allowed to wear one pip on my shoulder.
Peter Wendt
I put it on and I walked out into Camberley, the town that Sandhurst is in, thinking everyone in Camberley is going to notice.
Peter Wendt
Problem is, there's another two or 300 people doing the same thing and we didn't even notice each other, let alone the population.
Peter Wendt
Been watching that for the last hundred years.
Peter Wendt
But it was the most important thing I'd ever done in my life up until then.
Peter Wendt
And so I thought it was important for everybody else, but nobody gave a shit about me or my product.
Dom Hawes
It is an interesting one.
Dom Hawes
So there's a reason there's a qualification section on LinkedIn, which of course is the right place to put MBA and all those various fellowships and all that kind of stuff.
Dom Hawes
The other thing is people care more about things and they bias towards things they discover rather than things they're told.
Dom Hawes
So if you just have your name because you're a human being and someone is researching you and they discover that you've got these qualifications, it will resonate better with them than if they just see it in your headline.
Dom Hawes
The only reason I think, for having it in your headline is to help weed out really poor personalization attempts.
Dom Hawes
Because I did for a while, I was guilty of this.
Dom Hawes
I had, I'm a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and I had Dom Haw's FCIM and I used to get, dear Dom FCIM, you know, then they've got dreadful personalization.
Dom Hawes
The other thing, of course, is, you know, LinkedIn is meant to be about relationships and it's hard to develop a relationship with someone properly if their name is confusing.
Dom Hawes
And a name followed by 16 different qualifications is very confusing for the brain to process.
Dom Hawes
Got to keep it simple.
Dom Hawes
Stupid, I think.
Dom Hawes
And it also plays well into pool rule three.
Dom Hawes
And I love this pool rule because I see so many companies and so many people posting to social media actually sort of about themselves, their profile, their humble brags, and no one cares.
Dom Hawes
One of the trends I've seen really recently is companies do profiles of their people.
Dom Hawes
Today we're going to profile John Snooks, who works in the quality control department.
Dom Hawes
And it's like their normal posts will get lots of engagement and distribution.
Dom Hawes
This will get three and they're all internal, but still people keep going with these.
Dom Hawes
And other than maybe to please John Snooks, I've no idea why people do them.
Dom Hawes
But your pool rule speaks to that one very well.
Peter Wendt
I think the rule is you're expressly forbidden to talk about your qualifications, your awards, your achievements, your fucking TED talk.
Peter Wendt
And then the last, which covered on that ridiculous string of letters after your name.
Peter Wendt
Seriously, you're embarrassing yourself so that it's a derivative of nobody gives a shit about you or your product.
Peter Wendt
People care about themselves and their own problems.
Peter Wendt
This stuff sits at the center of our world and therefore we think it should sit at the center of others.
Peter Wendt
It does give us a problem, though, because we do at some point in the relationship we do have to talk to people about our product, otherwise they don't know what we do.
Peter Wendt
And I think there's a way of doing that.
Peter Wendt
I think even in your content on LinkedIn, a very simple example, most people would say is something like, you must use our fantastic 60 day diet powder system.
Peter Wendt
It'll help you to your clothes will fit better.
Peter Wendt
And imagine 60 days from now walking into a local nightclub and all heads turn and you're the center of attention because you look so fantastic.
Peter Wendt
Now the end of that is quite nice.
Peter Wendt
But the problem is, as we've started talking about our product and we're likely to lose people.
Peter Wendt
You said earlier on those DM's, you see, there's a formula.
Peter Wendt
They lose us because they talk about themselves at the beginning.
Peter Wendt
And those red flags are easy to spot.
Peter Wendt
The biggest one on LinkedIn is people who start a post.
Peter Wendt
I'm proud to announce I don't read anymore because I know exactly what's coming.
Peter Wendt
But imagine if you were to do that the other way around and say, imagine 60 days from now walking into your local nightclub and all heads turned because you're looking fantastic in your new outfit.
Peter Wendt
Your clothes fit better, you feel better.
Peter Wendt
We can help you do that with our 30 day diet break.
Peter Wendt
Whatever it is, you've got them.
Peter Wendt
You've pulled at those emotional heartstrings first, and you've got their attention.
Peter Wendt
It's exactly the same post.
Peter Wendt
I haven't changed any of the words.
Peter Wendt
I've just moved them around a bit.
Peter Wendt
We started by talking about them and telling a little mini story about their problem.
Peter Wendt
And then once they're listening, then we say, now this is how we can help.
Dom Hawes
So that plays into another pool role, which I really love.
Dom Hawes
And it's expressed as you don't promise a better camera.
Dom Hawes
Describe a better cameraman.
Dom Hawes
Market to who people want to be, or market to what they want to be, not to who they are, which is what you just talked about with the nightclub example.
Peter Wendt
Marketers will call it the transformation.
Peter Wendt
So rather than tell people all about your product, show them a picture of what their life would look like after they work with you or used your product.
Peter Wendt
And you see, you see it all over the place without probably realizing you're seeing it.
Peter Wendt
You look at a holiday brochure, they don't show you pictures of the baggage carousel and how efficient it is, or the transfer and how efficient it is, or how comfortable the seats on the plane are.
Peter Wendt
They show you a picture of the beach and the blue sky and somebody drinking a cocktail.
Peter Wendt
They're trying to create an image in your head of what life is going to look like when you get on that holiday.
Peter Wendt
Picture a young sort of ten year old boy who wants to learn to play the guitar.
Peter Wendt
And he's standing in a guitar shop and one salesman saying to him, now, this guitar has got cap gut strings, and it's got this fantastic reinforced fret and, you know, et cetera, and the kids just going to sleep.
Peter Wendt
The guy over here picks the guitar up and says, look, if you do the lessons, I'm going to give you for the next six weeks, you'll be able to play this and plays the opening bars to Romeo and Juliet from dire straits.
Peter Wendt
And this kid's mouth hits the floor because he's showing him a picture of what his life will look like.
Peter Wendt
So that transformation is really important because, again, you're tugging at the right emotional heartstrings rather than there's a place in our brain which processes the emotional stuff.
Peter Wendt
There's a place in our brain which processes tax returns and council tax bills, and there's a place in our brain which processes Bambi's mother being killed and that sort of thing.
Peter Wendt
And that's where we want to be.
Peter Wendt
And so you have to do that by telling people stories about their pain.
Peter Wendt
What's keeping them awake at night.
Dom Hawes
Peter, we are coming towards the end.
Dom Hawes
We haven't covered all the pool rules.
Dom Hawes
I don't want to do that deliberately because I think people need to go to the website and see them apart from anything else, because the illustrations are absolutely fabulous.
Dom Hawes
Love those.
Dom Hawes
Are they done by your creative director?
Peter Wendt
No, no, we bought those.
Dom Hawes
They did?
Dom Hawes
Well, they're fantastic.
Dom Hawes
Let's leave our unicorners today with some homework.
Dom Hawes
If they want to stand out, if they want to make a mark, if they want to find a hill that they're going to die on, what process can they go through?
Dom Hawes
And then how can they find out more about you?
Peter Wendt
So I think the process they can go through is sort of, we can pull together a couple of things we've talked about.
Peter Wendt
I think the first thing I would do is ask that question if I was a superhero.
Peter Wendt
What evil have I been put on the earth to solve?
Peter Wendt
And so who's my enemy?
Peter Wendt
What am I trying to.
Peter Wendt
What's the enemy?
Peter Wendt
I'm trying to fight?
Peter Wendt
And I think once you created that enemy, then think about that enemy in terms of the pain it's causing your customer or your potential customer, and write a story about it.
Peter Wendt
And the real trick, the real challenge when you write that story is don't mention your product.
Peter Wendt
You just want to mention, if you look at, I would say, 99% of our posts on LinkedIn, we've probably written thousands over the years.
Peter Wendt
You might see a call to action in the last line.
Peter Wendt
Otherwise, we don't mention our product.
Peter Wendt
We just rather like that guy at the talk I gave who heard the story about his pain and came and talked to me.
Peter Wendt
We try and tell people stories about their pain, so they come and talk to us and they.
Peter Wendt
And they do.
Peter Wendt
So ask that question about which evil are you here to solve?
Peter Wendt
Use it to create an enemy.
Peter Wendt
And then when you've got the enemy, and you know what the pain your customers lying awake at night worrying about, tell them a story about that.
Peter Wendt
But don't mention your product.
Peter Wendt
And if you want to send it to me, I'll happily give you some feedback.
Dom Hawes
Well, you can send that unicorners either direct or you can send it via me.
Dom Hawes
And let's choose the best three and we'll send them a little pack of goodies of some unicorny goodies.
Peter Wendt
Let's do that.
Dom Hawes
Brilliant.
Dom Hawes
So how can people contact you?
Peter Wendt
So I'm on LinkedIn.
Peter Wendt
Peter went.
Peter Wendt
That's w h e n t.
Peter Wendt
That's probably the best way.
Peter Wendt
Our website is Boldaf Boldaf dot marketing and my email address is peterwent.com.
Dom Hawes
Well, I told you Peter was outspoken.
Dom Hawes
What an amazing interview.
Dom Hawes
Thank you so much to Peter for taking the time to come and speak to us in the studio.
Dom Hawes
But thank you to you too for taking the time to watch or listen to this episode.
Dom Hawes
Now, if you want to talk to me about any of its content, you can find me on LinkedIn.
Dom Hawes
And there's a link to my profile on the show notes at unicorny Dot co dot Uk.
Dom Hawes
Why don't you connect to me?
Dom Hawes
I'd love to be connected anyway.
Dom Hawes
Now, if you did like the content and you want more, please give us a thumbs up or please subscribe.
Dom Hawes
And if you're feeling really kind, well, honestly, I'd love you to write us a review today, though.
Dom Hawes
That is all we have time for.
Dom Hawes
Thank you very much indeed for listening to the show, and I will see you next week.
Peter Whent
Owner
Yesterday, Peter Whent built several businesses, making mistakes and learning along the way. Dealing with the establishment—investors, lawyers, the tax authorities, and others—helped him develop a healthy cynicism towards the phrase, "that's how it's always been done."
Today, Peter owns and runs a modestly celebrated creative coalition called BoldAF, where he challenges norms and breaks the rules to help brands uncover the big creative idea that will ignite their identity. Once he's found it, he transforms it into bold messaging that gives the brand personality and draws prospects in like the Pied Piper.