Embracing Marketing Mistakes
Welcome to Embracing Marketing Mistakes, the world’s leading irreverent podcast for senior marketers who are tired of the polished corporate b*llshit.
Join Chris Norton and Will Ockenden, founders of the award-winning Prohibition PR, as they sit down with industry leaders to dissect the career-ending f*ck-ups they’d rather forget. The show moves past any pretty vanity metrics to uncover the brutal, honest truths behind marketing disasters, from £30,000 SEO black holes and completely failed companies, to social media crises that went globally viral for all the wrong reasons.
We don't just celebrate the f*ck-ups; we extract the tactical blueprints you need to avoid them yourself. If you are a business owner, or a CMO looking for a competitive advantage that only comes from real-world experience, this is your weekly masterclass in resilience and strategy.
- Listen for: Raw stories from top brands, ex-McKinsey strategists, and industry disruptors.
- Learn from: The errors that cost thousands and the recoveries that saved careers.
- Get ahead by: Turning other people's nasty disasters into your unfair market advantage.
If you have a story to tell and would like to appear on the show, tell us your biggest marketing mistake and drop us a line.
Embracing Marketing Mistakes
EP 39: Why Weird Works: The Secret to Guerrilla Marketing Success with Peter Freedman
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Ever wondered how silly PR ideas turn into marketing gold? We're thrilled to have Peter Freedman, the genius behind Thinking at Think Inc., join us as he shares his journey from the newsroom to the PR boardroom. Discover the secrets behind Peter's knack for crafting campaigns that have made giants like Apple and Disney stand out, all without breaking the bank. He also gives us a sneak peek into his latest book, "How Calm Whipped Up a Storm," which dives deep into the art of mixing humour and seriousness in marketing.
Step into the world of creative PR as we dissect some of the most unconventional campaigns ever conceived. From the ground-breaking "Baa Baa Land" for Calm, which featured an eight-hour slow-motion film to help you snooze, to the strategy behind seemingly spontaneous stunts, we cover it all. Hear about the meticulous research and brainstorming sessions that transform wild ideas into viral sensations. We also explore how guerrilla marketing and viral content have evolved to keep audiences hooked.
Humour and weirdness—do they really have a place in serious marketing? Absolutely! Find out how weird celebrity endorsements and unusual concepts can generate massive media buzz. We bring you stories of Gwyneth Paltrow's infamous candle launch and John McEnroe's sleep stories for Calm. Don't miss this episode filled with laughter, creativity, and expert strategies to keep your marketing fresh and engaging.
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Innovative PR Strategies
Chris NortonWelcome to Embracing Marketing Mistakes , the only podcast for senior marketing professionals that celebrates the biggest mistakes and fails , helping you learn practical lessons from other people's misfortune . Also , you can double your return on investment and achieve record revenue . Have you ever found yourself struggling to stand out with your campaigns ? Are you ever asking yourself are we being bold enough ?
Chris NortonIn this week's episode , will and I are joined by Peter Friedman , who is the founder and director of Thinking at Think Inc . Think Inc is a creative PR and guerrilla marketing agency , and Peter is the author of a new book called how Calm Whipped Up a Storm . Peter has built up a career helping startups and challenger brands to grow faster and get more buzz by winning them global attention with unique and quirky ideas that spread virally , driving traffic , users , growth , all through what he calls silly PR . He's worked for everyone , from Craigslist to Calm , to Bloom , spoonflower , apple , disney , kellogg's , visit Scotland , m&s and even UNICEF . I know you're going to enjoy this episode because Peter breaks down a creative idea and looks at the difference between silly and serious , which is interesting . He also has a very unique take on weirdness , so if you're weird , you're going to love it . So , as always , sit back , relax and let's hear how you can improve your creative campaigns without having to waste hours and hours learning how to execute them .
Wil OckendenHi everybody .
Chris NortonWelcome to Embracing Marketing Mistakes . This week we're joined by the lovely Peter Friedman , who is the Director of Thinking at Think Inc . Welcome to the show , peter .
Peter FreedmanThank you .
Wil OckendenThank you for having me what does a director of thinking do , peter , that's a rather unusual job title and we've seen a few .
Peter FreedmanYeah , well , I'm in charge of the really deep thinking I . I worry about that . The universe is expanding and about global warming and really important things , and no one else is allowed to do any really serious thinking without my permission . That's the rule .
Chris NortonThat is high-level thinking . I like it .
Wil OckendenI need a job like that . That sounds good .
Chris NortonSo , before we get into , you've got a book you want to talk about today , which we can get into , because there's some fascinating rules in there that we're going to jump into in a bit . But I wanted to go right back to how you got into journalism , because you were a journalist before you were a PR person , correct ?
Peter FreedmanYes , I was a journalist for many years and as a sideline an unpaid sideline I used to come up with silly PR and marketing ideas . This was partly on behalf of my wife , who worked in charity and always needed to get a lot of attention without having any money , and partly when I was a journalist I used to write feature articles for national press and I did TV reporting and I also edited a couple of small magazines and the magazines had no marketing of PR budget but we wanted to come up with ideas , ways to get them attention without having any money . So , as a kind of unpaid sideline added value service , I was always coming up with quirky , creative , silly ideas to get the magazine's attention and I sometimes used to . There was one PR guy who I really liked and respected and I thought was the best person I knew at PR and he would occasionally ask me to come up with ideas for him . And then over a number of years he kept saying , saying to me , we should start an ideas business because people keep coming to me , as in him , saying , uh , I want to hire you because of your great ideas . So the idea , yeah .
Peter FreedmanSo think inc was originally billed as an ideas business and sadly , the idea of setting up an ideas business was not even my idea , it was his idea .
Unconventional PR Campaign Creation
Peter FreedmanBut yes , and then it sort of evolved over time into we give it various names . We call it creative PR , or guerrilla marketing , or viral marketing , or one client called it silly PR . What we do , silly PR . What we do and also I came up with the term of which I like but nobody else uses or probably even understands of , I think of what we do as guerrilla content marketing , because a lot of the ideas we come up with are designed to provide content originally which can then be shared and get attention and coverage and buzz , both on traditional earned media and on social media and indeed also on owned media . So , yeah , a lot of it comes down to creating quirky , offbeat content designed to generate coverage and attention and buzz and links and traffic and downloads and so on so if I was , I mean , that's kind that's exactly what we do and we love anything that makes people talk .
Chris NortonOnline chat , yeah , share stuff . You , you're creating standout moments , right . So if we were to say , what campaign have you done that you're most proud of , that has got people really talking you know it's become part of the national conversation what , what campaign would you do you think that is that would stand out in people's minds that remember you from ?
Peter Freedmanum , well , that's a high bar , but I mentioned quite a few examples in the book that you've already mentioned that I've published recently , which is about the work uh , about how calm the sleep and meditation and mental health app and brand one way more than its share of attention by coming up with quirky , offbeat , fun ideas , and about the work I did for calm over a number of years , and one of the biggest home runs we we did for calm was started working for Calm when it was pivoting from being a meditation app , which is what it started as , into being a meditation and sleep app , and so sleep was a big new focus . We started by asking the question . We said sleep , insomnia is a modern epidemic , so what would be the ultimate cure for insomnia ? And the answer we came up with was an eight-hour slow-motion movie about sheep standing in a field doing nothing , and we marketed the .
Peter FreedmanThe movie was called Baba Land , as in La La Land , um , and instead of Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone on the poster , we had two particularly good looking and sexy sheep canoodling on the on the poster , and we marketed the movie as 85-second trailer and a poster , which was an affectionate pastiche or homage to the La La Land poster and that really went viral all around the world , everywhere from Vietnam to Kazakhstan , and it went seriously viral in Bulgaria and in Poland .
Peter FreedmanIt was in the Polish edition of the game show who Wants to be a Millionaire . The million-dollar question , or the million-zloty question , was viewers of the movie Babaland had to spend eight hours watching what and if you knew the answer to that , actually it must have been very popular in Poland because it was also invited . It became an exhibit in a kind of cutting-edge happening design and technology exhibition . So it was not only a great PR and marketing stunt , but it was also a piece of conceptual art . And that was so successful that three or four months later we came back for a second helpings , a second swing at bat and we staged the world .
Peter FreedmanWe staged the world premiere of uh barbaland , because the original stunt had just been to announce that barbaland was coming . But we staged the world premiere of bar Land at a high-profile cinema in central London , in the West End , and we had sheep in tuxedos and evening dress walking down the red carpet , placing their hoof prints in cement or or in fact just trays of mud . Animals were harmed or consulted in the making of the movie and did you ?
Wil Ockendenand has anyone sat through all eight hours of the movie then ?
Peter Freedmanwell , at the world premiere we did actually sell some tickets not that many and um , I'm not sure I've even sat through the entire eight hours . I've heard , uh , there are one or two fairly exciting bits , which was not the intention , at about the six hour 30 mark , which might be too , too exciting for some , I think . Uh , certainly , uh , some people were still in the cinema after five or six hours . I don't know whether they actually stayed to the end .
Chris NortonIt's quite relaxing , though sat watching sheep in a field .
Wil OckendenI know eight hours of silence as well , without being bothered by people .
Chris NortonIt's just , yeah , just enjoying it , just chilling .
Peter FreedmanThere was actually quite a lot of bleating . It wasn't totally silent , a lot of sheep bleating , but that was kind of relaxing .
Wil OckendenI love that idea . Um , now , taking a step back , you know , when we talk , you mentioned the term silly pr or guerrilla marketing , or whatever we want to call it . I think , um , any kind of layman listening to this will think an idea like that , you just pluck out of nowhere and deliver it . But working in this sector , in this area , we know that you know there's loads of insight and there's , like you know , there's a whole kind of process that goes into developing a concept like that . So , from your perspective at thinking , you know , do you want to break down the creative process ? You know , how do you end up with a campaign like that that resonates and works so well ?
Peter Freedmanyes , that's a good question . Well , there definitely is process . Yeah , we start by speaking to the client in person or on Zoom , and then we send them a questionnaire designed to gather as much information as possible about their objectives and their key messages and their target audience and their key metrics . So we're really trying to educate ourselves about their brand and their subject . And then we usually do research on Google and now on ChatGPT , where we compile lots of information about their subject area and we immerse ourselves in it and steep ourselves . So it's like putting food and meat into a meat grinder you're trying to feed yourself as much information as possible .
Peter FreedmanAnd then part of the technique is often trying to identify or work out some . What are the normal ways of doing things , what are the standard uh approaches and what are some of the cliches and stereotypes that everyone does in this area ? And then , once we've identified the cliches and stereotypes and the normal ways of doing them , we try and work out well , how can we subvert those cliches and stereotypes , how can we subvert those cliches and stereotypes and conventional thinking and conventional wisdom ? And we use various common techniques to subvert those conventions . I mean , we try and say , well , what would be the opposite , or what would be an example of extending this to the point of ridiculousness , this to the point of ridiculousness , or what would be ? How could we take one key element , key ingredient in a stereotype or convention and replace it with something new and different and unexpected and incongruous ?
Peter FreedmanI mean , like the Baa Baa Land movie I talked about actually illustrates some of those examples . So , instead of trying to make the most exciting movie ever made , which is what most people are trying to do , what Hollywood's trying to do we said , well , this is the dullest movie ever made . And instead of making a movie that was just slightly dull and boring , we tried to extend it to the ridiculous by making a movie that was excessively and ridiculously dull and boring . So it was yeah , it was , instead of being three hours long , it was eight hours long , and eight hours in this case because that's the standard number of hours that people sleep . And it even replaced key ingredients in something familiar . So it replaced , uh , movie stars like ryan gosling and emma stone with , as I say , some very sexy and good looking sheep . So it illustrated all the all those techniques we work with them .
Chris NortonOur client will love this because we , our client is british wool , so they're the the uk farming industry representative of um , the wool industry in the in in britain , um , and so , yeah , they'd love that . We're always doing stuff with sheep and and also we work with a client called uh , black sheep um , which is a drinks brand up in the north in the massim area , so it's it's an ale brand and we did a big launch because they sponsored my local football club Nothing to do with me , actually , but they sponsor Harrogate Town , which are in League 2 . And to do that , to announce that partnership , we had to film . We found a black sheep to be chased by the football team . I can't remember the exact creative ways to why the team were chasing the black sheep , but he was a celebrity black sheep to be chased by the football team . I can't remember the exact creative way to why the team were chasing the black sheep , but he was a celebrity black sheep called Batman .
Wil OckendenAnd he's appeared on Peaky Blinders , apparently , and Mission Impossible , and I bet he's at your premiere as well .
Chris NortonYeah , probably was Really .
Peter FreedmanYou can never go wrong with sheep is one of my mantras . You had a celebrity sheep . Our sheep were complete unknowns at the time but now they're well known , surely ?
Chris Nortonnow they're world famous , particularly popular in uh , bulgaria and certain parts of poland you mentioned the book , so , and it covers the 10 golden roles of pr and guerrilla marketing . So do you want to walk us through a few of your golden rules , then , and let's unpick what makes a golden rule in public relations in 2024? .
Peter FreedmanYes . Well , one of the golden rules I talk about , which I quite like , was yeah , the golden rule is that only two things nowadays get attention celebrities and weird or weird or weirdness . And that was actually something . I was asked to get attention and coverage for Lulucom , a self-publishing website based in North Carolina , and I needed to find somebody on the ground in the US who would do the media relations and pitching . And somebody recommended me to a talented PR woman in New York and I had a call with her and when I explained who the client was , she sounded very skeptical and dubious and as if it would be really hard to get attention for them . She said the problem is nowadays only two things get attention celebrities and weird and I remember that was her exact wording because it seemed sort of ungrammatical at the time , but I knew exactly what she meant and I also had a kind of epiphany or light bulb moment because I realized that that at that moment that what I did Was what she called weird , or what I thought of as quirky or creative or offbeat , but but weird was also a good word for it and I realized that what she said wasn't maybe not a hundred percent true , because there are some other things that get attention , like kind of I conflict or controversy or sex , or , but I think there was an awful lot of truth in what she said and I also realized that if I had to pick , choose either one or the other , either celebrities are weird , that I would choose weird every time , because the problem with celebrities is they are in finite supply and they tend to be expensive .
Peter FreedmanThey tend to have agents whose role is to be difficult and to limit what they'll do ,
The Power of Weird Celebrities
Peter Freedmanwhereas quirky , offbeat or weird ideas are an infinite supply and they don't need to cost a lot of money . If you even Baba Land actually didn't cost as much as it might sound , because it was made by one person , one man standing in a field beside a load of sheep for one day and he edited , shot and edited and did everything for the film . But then actually , over time , what I also realized ? That there is a third thing that gets attention nowadays which is even better than the first two things , which is celebrities and weird combined . If you can get both together at the same time . Weird celebrity , you can get weird celebrities celebrities doing something weird .
Peter FreedmanIf you can combine both those ingredients , that's greater than the sum of the parts and I'm a celebrity .
Chris NortonI've made a fortune out of that , haven't they ?
Peter Freedmanyes , that's right . Well , a couple of examples , uh , I've mentioned in the book . One is that , yeah , a few years ago you probably remember that gwyneth paltrow , uh , launched a candle called this candle smells of my vagina . And if gwyneth paltrow had launched a candle saying this candle smells of meadow flowers , that would have been kind of sort of moderately interesting , maybe just because Gwyneth Paltrow was involved , but because she launched a candle that was seriously weird . And so you had the element of Gwyneth Paltrow and Something Seriously Weird that got huge attention and coverage .
Peter FreedmanAnd another example I give in the book is something we did for Calm is that Calm was approached by American Express and one of their brand ambassadors was John McEnroe , the tennis legend and comment player and commentator , and they wanted to do something with calm and they wanted to have him read a bedtime story which , uh , one of calm's biggest content strands was and is called sleep stories , which are kind of newfangled bedtime stories for grownups , complete with music and sound effects . And so we , we could have got John McEnroe to read Beauty and the Beast or Little Red Riding Hood or Baba Black Sheep , some kind of traditional , safe bedtime story , but instead we asked him to read out the rules of tennis , and I mean some of your younger listeners may not remember that in his youth , john McEnroe , in his playing heyday , he was known as the bad boy of tennis , always moaning to umpires and raging against unfair decisions .
Chris NortonYou cannot be serious .
Peter FreedmanExactly and raging against unfair decisions .
Peter FreedmanYou cannot be , serious , exactly yes , his USP was that he hated the rules and he hated the people who enforced the rules . So instead of getting him to read some conventional , traditional bedtime story , we got him to read something that was weird . So to read out the rules of tennis , and this was just on the eve of Wimbledon , which gave it some extra topical interest . So , yeah , so something . It was really useful having a conversation with the New York PR woman , because I think it was really true , or it was a lot of truth in what she said , but then I realized over time that even better and even more powerful is combining celebrities and weirdness at the same time .
Wil OckendenAnd I love that , gwyneth Paltrow , I mean that put her website Goop on the map , didn't it ? Pretty much , and that's still talked about today , isn't it ?
Peter FreedmanYes it was iconically weird .
Chris NortonHow many rules are there in tennis ? How long did that go on for ?
Peter Freedmanuh , I don't think he read out all the rules . He read out a long chunk of the rules . I mean another thing uh , we did for calm uh , which was more weird than celebrity , but it was at the time when the EU was introducing its new privacy legislation , gdpr . This was four or five years ago and I didn't realize at the time that American businesses were obsessed and worried about it not just businesses in the UK or the EU , but American businesses were getting really anxious about it as well , because any business or any brand with EU citizens and residents on its database was exposed to the risk of large fines if it contravened GDPR contravened GDPR . So there was a uh comms largest market , like most uh English speaking brands .
Peter FreedmanWhat uh apps was the U ? S ? So we we always were looking for ideas that would work in the U ? S and the UK and and in the global Anglosphere generally . So what we did it was kind of growing media frenzy about GDPR , um , and what we got there was a kind of growing media frenzy about GDPR and what we got ? We got Peter Jefferson , who used to be a BBC continuity announcer and he used to read the shipping forecast on the BBC for about 40 years and we turned GDPR , which was a kind of , I think , a 538p document of dense legal language , dense legislation , and we created a sleep story , a bedtime story called Once Upon a GDPR , and we got Peter Jefferson , who used to read the shipping forecast , to read out a very long and tedious and sleep inducing extract from gdpr and what voice ?
Wil Ockendenthe ultimate car ?
Peter Freedmanyes , he's got a great voice , very soothing interesting .
Chris NortonSo , um , that's one of you . That's one of the rules being um celebrities and weird um , preferably together . Yeah , weird celebrities , or celebrities doing weird things always gets loads of media awareness . I've got another one
Constant Innovation in Marketing Strategies
Chris Norton. Here Is this one of them ? One lightning bolt is not enough . You need rolling thunder .
Peter FreedmanYeah , nowadays people's attention span is so short and they're so overwhelmed by a constant tidal wave of information and marketing messages that getting one marketing success or one successful stunt is not enough . You need to stay constantly in front of people , so you need the marketing equivalent of the perpetual revolution . You need a never-ending launch . So you need idea after idea to a kind of production line of ideas , and I think that product people and engineering people in apps and startups know this , because their working process is constant iteration and constant learning and tweaking and improving . But I think the PR and marketing mindset is often more oh , we'll , we'll , we'll launch this thing and then we'll move on to the next thing . And I think pr marketing people could arguably learn from the product and software engineers . Um , that you really need . Yeah , once the launch is over , it's only just begun , and you need a never-ending launch . You need idea after idea .
Chris NortonYeah , but I mean on the flip side of that , to argue the other side of that , because I listen to a lot of watch a lot of podcasts and listen to a lot of podcasts about advertising , creative advertising in this space , and like , if you're a CMO , or a lot of podcasts about advertising , creative advertising in this space , and if you're a CMO or a head of marketing , a lot of the job is two to three years usually you might be in the role that's the average life of a CMO , somewhere around that . And they come into the role . There's a lot of pressure and the first thing they look at is maybe the TV advertising . If it's a high street brand or something like that , they'll look at the TV advertising and they might say , right , I've got to make my mark here , let's do a new , creative . And the counter argument to all the stuff that I've heard is , if you look at the system , one data and stuff like that is actually the theme .
Chris NortonThe stuff that's run for years and years and years and years is more effective than the stuff that is a new campaign , a new campaign . A new campaign . So , for instance , should have gone to Specsavers , the Nescafe ads , cadbury's you know , there's a glass in every bar . There's so like the holidays are coming Coca-Cola , and it's the campaigns that are that have been running for a long , long period . Um , but , and to go back to your idea , so instead of having a different , a different piece of creative , you can have a different creative idea , as long as it's part of that theme , because then it helps reiterate oh , that's some of the stuff like this should have gone to spec savers , it's another on it . So it's quite interesting that , rather than having to reinvent the wheel every time , you can reinvent the wheel within the parameters so people recognize it and associate oh , I get it , I get that brand . And apparently that is so much more powerful than just doing a new campaign every single time .
Peter FreedmanYes , I completely agree . But yeah , something like I should have gone to spec savers is using the same tagline and catch line . But it's endless variations on the same thing , isn't it ?
Chris Nortonyeah , and it's humor as well humor always works great definitely , which I think .
Peter FreedmanUh , advertising people sometimes understand more and better than PR people . Pr people sometimes take themselves too seriously .
Chris NortonWell , this year , Cannes launched a new award for a humorous section in the awards for TV campaigns and stuff , because previously I think they feel like we've lost humor in ads . There's not as much humor as there was there used to be and Specsaver stands out because it is funny . Um , but the you know that hamlet cigar ads .
Chris NortonIf you people of a certain age , yes that's probably one of the best ads of all time , with the guy adjusting his , the gen z guy in the corners looking at me like who the hell are hamlet ? Yeah , it's a bit like vaping yeah , it's the old school vaping .
Wil OckendenBut I think humour I mean we're deviating slightly . I feel like humour is making a bit of a comeback , certainly in TV advertising , you know , you look at things like the old spy set . There's an awful lot of people leaning into humour at the moment . And you're right , peter , I think PR people can take themselves very , very seriously at times , can't they ? And I think yeah humor is a really , a really good way to get cut .
Chris NortonI think what the point that peter was getting at is . And having lots of creative ideas , um , because the next , lots of creative ideas can be so much more powerful . My thing , my , my thing is , as long as your ideas are within a framework of a theme you know , like for what your brand's about , rather than just random floating stuff down the thames , yeah there needs .
Wil OckendenYeah , I mean , the spec savers example is the perfect , you know , the perfect example of that , isn't it actually ? Um , our recent interview um around paddy power was a good example of this kind of constant , um , you know , constant activity , rather than just one off . I mean , it must be exhausting , though , coming up with idea after you know , certainly on the scale of paddy power , I mean yeah , stuff they do is yeah .
Chris NortonSo we interviewed ken robertson from ex paddy power . He was head of mischief um a couple of podcasts ago and um , he was saying that when he selects an idea like very similar to what you're saying , peter , but they would say they would look at it and go , would anyone else do this ? Yeah , they would say they would look at it and go .
Wil OckendenWould anyone else do this ? Yeah , they would Right bin it . Then it's basically who's risky enough ? What was the other test ? Will we end up in prison if we execute on this ? If the answer's yes , we won't do it , and one of the things we ask people is how do you measure campaign creativity ?
Chris NortonYou know people say how's PR or campaigns ? How do you measure your campaigns ?
Wil OckendenThe way that Paddy Power measured them is by how many complaints they got in , based on how successful their campaign was , which is an interesting strategy , very challenging , brad Okay so I used to .
Peter FreedmanI had a phase when I would measure them according to two criteria . One was did the client's website crash from the traffic and did it get picked up by the North Korea Times ? I used to describe myself as the world's or maybe the Western world's leading expert in getting coverage in the North Korea Times . Not because I knew anybody at the North Korea Times I had no media contacts but and not because I was even interested in getting coverage in the North Korea Times , but because if you got coverage in the North Korea Times , that was an indicator that you probably also got coverage in the 50 or 100 other media outlets around the world called the Times and the New York Times and what Americans call the London Times and the Singapore Times and the london times and the um singapore times and the taipei times and so on , and so , uh , it was the equivalent of hitting a , a six or a home run , and how many times have you been in the north korea ?
Peter Freedmantimes come on well , I had a phase when I just I kept getting into the north korea times and I didn't understand . I couldn't figure out what was going on or how it was happening . And then I realized that there in New Delhi in India there's about three or four big news agencies and the North Korea Times was one of the subscribers to one of these news agencies , and these news agencies kept covering the stories . They would often pick them up from the UK media . So , yeah , these news agencies in New Delhi were picking up stories from the UK or US media and syndicating it . But I've slightly lost my touch on the North Korea Times . I haven't been in it for a while and I think they probably cancelled their subscription , so they're probably no longer subscribing to these new news agencies . So I'm going to have to um figure out a new strategy to to get into it so , um , some really good , uh , golden rules so far .
Wil OckendenSo what else ? What else to kind of um , you know , prs and marketers need to know .
Peter FreedmanThen , in terms of um , yeah , well , going back , um , I had one uh long-standing client , um , who we worked together on a lot of successful campaigns and when his brand became a unicorn , he wrote a blog post about the lessons that he'd learned along the ways . And one of the lessons he learned was , he said , silly PR is better than serious PR . And I turned that into one of the 10 golden rules in my book about how calm got so much attention . And I mean , I know this cause . He showed me the article , he asked me to have a look at it before he published it and that actually , at the last moment , he changed it to Creative PR is highly effective or something something blander , but I much preferred the way he put it Originally . But one of the ways calm was able to get so much attention Was because it was willing to be playful and humorous and even silly , even though it's ultimately a mental health brand and mental health is ultimately a serious matter . And it was starting out as a meditation brand . A meditation has an image of being serious and po-faced . But when I started working for Calm , I read I never checked this figure there were over 2,000 other meditation apps , and then , three or four years later , I read there were over 5,000 meditation apps and I never fact-checked these figures but they sound plausible . But all the other meditation apps and meditation and sleep apps were being deadly serious about what they did . And the problem with meditation in some ways similar to the problem with mental health is meditation is something that is much loved by those who love meditation , but that's only a minority of people and the larger number of people the majority , many people are suspicious and fearful of meditation as something that's a bit woo-woo for kind of vegans with beards and sandals . So , being playful and humorous about meditation and indeed about mental health , it helped detoxify meditation and I've done a lot of work with mental health brands and they almost always talk about wanting to destigmatize mental health , which is something that gladly has happened over the years , which gladly has happened over the years .
Peter FreedmanBut I think one of the best ways to achieve that and destigmatize it is by showing a sense of humor and being playful and lighthearted about it and not being earnest and po-faced and utterly serious and speaking in low serious tones all the time . But yes , I think by by willing to be playful and silly , you can really stand out from the crowd in the market when all your rivals are being deadly earnest and serious and you can , instead of getting one or two pieces of coverage at the time , you can get 50 or 100 or several hundred . You can really go viral and you can . So you can get 50 or 100 or several hundred . You can really go viral and you can see you can get way more for your money and a disproportionate ROI .
Peter FreedmanSo , yeah , what I found , with calm and many clients , is the silliest ideas are often the most successful and I think also , silly ideas are the future and serious ideas are the past . As traditional media is in long-term decline and is shrinking and social
The Value of Humor in Marketing
Peter Freedmanmedia is correspondingly growing and in the ascendant , you want to come up with ideas that will work across both , and social media is more and more about silly , entertaining , amusing ideas , because that's one of the key things that people share . It's one of the key things they remember and one of the key things they share , um , but yes , I think , I think silly pr is not just somewhat better than your rivals , but when it works well , it can be spectacularly better than what all your rivals are doing so , um , is humor right for every brand ?
Wil OckendenI mean , I think probably . Um , you know , it's not about being flippant , is it ? It's about ? It's about using humor to get cut through .
Peter FreedmanBut would you , would you argue , every brand can look at using humor to kind of engage , probably not every single brand , but I would argue that a lot more brands could use it than currently think they can .
Peter FreedmanAnd , like I mean just going back to calm , that all their rivals there's literally 1000s of rivals thought it was inappropriate for them because they wanted to be taken seriously . And calm was smart enough to realize that they could get their message across , their ultimately serious message across , by being playful and humorous . I mean , I've had clients say to me oh , I love that idea , it's hilarious . And then they kind of pause and they say but it's a bit silly , isn't it ? And my advice to them is don't knock silly . Silly is good and silly is your friend , and silly can take you much further and get you much more attention than being serious . So , yeah , I think way more brands than currently realize it or feel comfortable with it can benefit by being silly or humorous or playful . There are probably some uh you know , some brands that it's not appropriate for , but far fewer than you think takers I was going to say , yes , the co-op funeral service won't want any humor .
Chris NortonBut I mean , one thing for me is the b2b brands , and if there's anybody out there listening that works for a B2B brand that uses humour , please get in contact with us , because I'd like to interview somebody that uses humour in the B2B space , because everyone thinks that you've got to be so professional and serious in the B2B space but you're still selling to people , aren't you ?
Wil OckendenYeah , and certainly from our perspective , the biggest challenge we put onto B2B brands is you can be creative . And you know being creative and thinking almost like a consumer brand is the way to get cut through . And you're absolutely right . You know you shouldn't be dry and boring and conservative , with a small C if you're a B2B brand .
Peter FreedmanI totally agree . Agree and and paradoxically , it's actually easier in the b2b space because so few people are doing it , because all your rivals are being deadly serious and earnest and they're all focusing on the trade you know narrow trade , uh media and so it's easier to stand out . I mean , I actually have silly ideas for b2B brands . I mean , I did quite a lot of work for a translation company in London and they were very open and translation is ultimately a commodity product . I mean , it's not that different going from one agency to another , so it's very hard to stand out . But one of the ideas that we did for them which got huge attention and cut through .
Peter FreedmanAt the time there was endless stuff in the media about emojis and they advertised that they had translation interpreters and translators in over 200 languages . But we said , well , what's the world's fastest growing language ? And it's emojis . And emojis are meant to be an international , global language which is understood the same in every country . But in fact there are wide differences and variations in the way people use emojis and the way people understand them in different countries .
Peter FreedmanSo what we did ? We placed a job ad , I think , on read and on the company's own website for the world's first specialist emoji translator and we had an emoji translation tests that you in order to apply , and then nothing happened for a few days . But then the BBC ran a story about it and it totally exploded and it just went crazy right around the world . All four of the um biggest us tv networks did long pieces about it . We never , uh , pitched it to any of them , we never had any contact with any of them , but and it just went all around the world and the client was complaining . She said she was having to hide under her desk , she was under siege from the world's media .
Chris NortonI hope she used the hiding emoji .
Peter FreedmanYes .
Peter FreedmanWe had over 500 applicants for the job and we eventually hired an Irish guy who'd recently completed a PhD on emojis . He was a doctor of emojis and he did actually become the world's first professional emoji translator and he they actually did get it . I mean it was designed as a way to get attention , but but they actually did get business and he was hired as a consultant and translator . And then again three or four months later , after the initial huge hoopla and attention for the ad , we came back again for second helpings when we announced his appointment as the world's first emoji translator . When we announced his appointment as the world's first emoji translator . And then he kept getting consulted and interviewed as a pundit and expert every time emojis were in the news .
Chris NortonI can't believe there's a doctor of emoji . Imagine doing a doctorate in emojis . He was .
Peter FreedmanHe was a genuine world expert on the usage of emojis and did something a year or so ago for a software company in Los Angeles that does software to help corporations track that they're complying with equal pay legislation and doing all the right things . And at the time there was a talk about what is it the great resignation ? Everybody . It was really hard to get find recruit employees . There weren't enough people and one of the things that companies were doing was that they were offering more and more generous and sometimes outlandish employment perks . So this was just a very cheap and simple idea . But we did a poll to ask people what would be their ultimate fantasy job perk , employment perk , and I think one of the runners up was that people wanted one of the . A lot of people like the idea of getting house plant bereavement leave , because , uh , pet bereavement leave is already a widely used perk um , but the the winning um result by some way was hangover leave . That's what people wanted .
Chris NortonDo you offer your leave ?
Wil OckendenI'd never be in if it is house part We've got Deadpool in the office at the moment .
Chris NortonIt's not been watered for a while .
Peter FreedmanDo you offer your staff hangover leave ?
Wil OckendenThat's a great question , Andy . Ireland would never be in , would he ? Yeah ?
Chris Nortonhalf the staff would never be here if we offered that . So this show then , rich . This show is all about mistakes , and you've put a mistake in your questionnaire when we asked you about what's one of your biggest mistakes that you've made in marketing , and I've got here that it was to do with Craigslist . Do you want to walk us through that , peter ?
Peter FreedmanYeah , I feel a failure for not having a more dramatic or spectacular mistake .
Peter FreedmanBut yeah , I worked for Craigslist , the online classified site , for 11 years as a contractor in the US and the UK , and Craigslist , you probably know , is a much bigger name , a bigger brand in the US than it is in the UK , but we were doing stuff for them in both countries and at the time of this idea , it seemed to me anyway that premiership and the top football clubs were doing more and more corporate sponsorship on the players' shirts and in the stadia and everywhere . It was kind of more prominent and ubiquitous and in your face , and so that seemed to be a kind of trend in the zeitgeist at the time . So what we did was we found a women's football team in Battersea Park in London I think they were called something like Battersea Women's Football Team and we sponsored them as their shirt sponsors . But instead of sponsoring just their shirts , we got them to play their matches wearing advertising sandwich boards , which those kind of A-boards you sometimes see people wearing on the street even now advertising brands .
Peter FreedmanThey're quite heavy , aren't they ? They were heavy and ridiculously impractical and they were very photogenic . We did a short video and we took photographs and we took photographs , and so the intention was to satirize this growing trend for more and more blatant and in-your-face and ubiquitous commercial sponsorship . And I thought it was very funny and it produced great pictures , but it got a disappointing amount of coverage . It didn't get as much coverage as we hoped . It didn't matter totally , because the CEO of Craigslist thought it was hilarious and brilliant and he really enjoyed it . But I realized afterwards that one of the reasons it had failed was that it was too wacky and too out there and too ridiculous . I got an email from , uh , one journalist saying oh , this is one of the most peculiar ideas I've ever seen , which I took as a compliment , which I'm not . I'm not sure I like that . I'm not sure he meant it as a compliment no , I don't think you know , how jaded and cynical journalists are .
Peter FreedmanI know I suffer from high self-esteem too much self-esteem so I took it as a compliment . But I realized one of the reasons it had failed was it was too wacky and out there . And I remember reading later that they somebody had done a study of applications for scientific research projects and they found the most successful applications were the ones that were moderately innovative , that they were the right combination of being new and innovative and familiar . And then I also read an excellent book called the Creative Curve , and a big theme of that was that our human psychology is that we simultaneously crave things between being new and familiar where it's simultaneously new and familiar , both to exactly the right degree and the right extent .
Peter FreedmanAnd this idea sandwich boards for Craigslist was just too novel and not familiar enough . It was too outlandish and so , uh , yeah , and so I think that's one of the reasons . Uh , it failed , yeah , so I think the secret for creativity jonah berger also talks about this in his book contagious about viral ideas the secret of successful ideas are ideas that are simultaneously similar but different , and both things at the same time . And this was too different and not similar enough . So I think I learned a valuable lesson from it and um I mean it could have been a lot worse .
Wil OckendenIt could have been a lot worse . I was thinking there's going to be some horrific injury to the goalkeeper who clattered into a wooden A-board . They're quite big advertising but I see what you're trying to do , like symbolise it .
Chris NortonBecause we spoke to Ken from Paddy Power , ex-paddy Power they did a very similar stunt , but they put Paddy Power shorts on Nicholas , boxer shorts on Nicholas Bentner on Nicholas boxer shorts on Nicholas Bentner and they sponsored him that if he scored a goal he was going to pull his pants down and show Paddy Power pants , which was before the FA and all the different footballing , the FIFA and all those had locked down sponsorships . And subsequently he did score the goal and did the deed and they got Paddy Power all over . But there was a bit of an outcry and I think they got fined as well .
Wil OckendenIt's like a €50,000 fine .
Chris NortonTo pay that . Paddy Power paid the fine . So similar idea but a bit more practical . On boxer shorts , because advertising hoardings . It was either during the Euros or one of the World Cups , wasn't it ?
Wil OckendenI've actually got a similar stunt to that . So in one of my first jobs in PR , we were promoting a chain of Indian restaurants regional Indian restaurants and we created a new advertising medium which was a naanwich board rather than a sandwich board , and it was made of two giant naan breads with an advertising message published on it .
Peter FreedmanAnd actually that flew actually Does it . Yeah , I'll give Andy naan breads with an advertising message published on it and actually that flew actually .
Wil OckendenYeah , I'll give I'll give andy green the credit for that who is one of the guests on one of our early episodes similar but different .
Peter FreedmanYeah , and I think the nicholas bentner story illustrates the idea of how you need celebrities and weird , because they had a celebrity doing something weird the uh transport for london .
Chris NortonThey London .
Wil OckendenTheir advertising boards are always shared on social aren't they On the underground ? Yeah , on the underground Message of the day and stuff like that , yeah , they're always quite thought-provoking Not always , but sometimes .
Chris NortonYeah , Okay , great . Well , I think we are good . So thanks for joining us on the show , Peter , One of the questions that we always ask somebody when they've come on . You've come on the show now and experienced how it is
Show Guest Contact Information
Chris NortonIf you were us . Who ?
Peter Freedmanwould you invite to be the next guest on the show , and why ?
Chris NortonOh , I don't know , I don't know .
Peter FreedmanWell , I guess someone who's been doing this for many years is richard branson , isn't it ? I mean , he's a natural , uh it'd be good , wouldn't they , they are talents genius . Ryan holiday , who writes all those books about stoicism nowadays . He started out doing kind of guerrilla marketing for american apparel .
Chris NortonI don't know , but he's more about sto , about nowadays and seth godin for your purple cow that you've based a lot of years yeah , obviously he's the great godfather of modern marketing and uh yeah he's the dawn , isn't he ? He's the dawn exactly so if people want to get in contact with you , peter , where can they find you ? Where can they find what's your book called ? Where can they find that and how can they get in contact with you if they want to get in contact with you ?
Peter FreedmanMy book is called how Calm Whipped Up a Storm , and the subtitle is how one small app won a ton of PR and buzz . That helped it grow big , and how you can too , and that's available on Amazon as a paperback and on kindle , and I'm hoping , later this year , to turn it into an audiobook . Uh , people can get in touch with me on linkedin , peter friedman , think inc or um , via my website , uh , the website , which is think-inccouk . And yeah , if you type in things like guerrilla marketing and viral marketing with my name as well , that can help .
