The Adaptive Marketer

Lessons From Joel Goodson – Social Marketing Genius

Posted on 06. Jun, 2010 by Robert Rose in Content Marketing, Social Media

This week I head to Chicago for the Web Content 2010 Conference.  My talk is on Social Media Brand Management  (download my presentation and my little present for the attendees if you like).

I always like to bring a little Chicago flavor with me when I speak there – so in this talk I’m centering two of my main lessons on one of my marketing Gurus – Joel Goodson.

If you’re not familiar with Joel, he’s of the Chicago Goodson’s – he’s a Princeton business student – and dances to Bob Seger.  He’s also (as he would say) having the “time of his life”.

One of the centerpieces of my talk – and the two social marketing lessons that I think we can learn from Joel are two of the main points coming out of Risky Business:

“Sometimes You Just Have To Say What The Fuck”

“I deal In Human Fulfillment”

Let’s start with the first….

Sometimes You Just Have To Say What The Fuck

As Joel learns, in order to have exponential success, sometimes you have to operate outside the bounds of “normal”.  Sometimes, you have to do things that might otherwise be seen as crazy.

As marketers and brand managers today, it’s imperative that we have this flexibility. We need the ability to quickly and easily take advantage of opportunities which are presented to us.  For example, if we see a new market opportunity, or the opportunity to create a conversation based on a piece of news we’ve got to be able to roll with that as an experiment.

For example, go search for the phrase “top kill” and you’ll see Repower America – a non-profit has quickly taken advantage of the new word and put a campaign around it.  Or, one of my absolute favorite examples of this is what Accolo did with their send up of the Paris Hilton Carl’s Jr. Commercial.   Their message “hiring the right person is important”.    Awesome way to say WTF!!

Or, on the brand management side – if we (as Nestle did) see a conversation getting out of control on Facebook – we need the ability to move that conversation quickly to another platform.

This is the heart of today’s social marketing success – we’ve got to be able to move fast and iterate quickly.   It’s no longer good enough to follow the rules – we’ve got to be able to break them just as quickly.

The key is, however, that you can’t decide to break them until you have a process in place that sets them in the first place.

I Deal In Human Fulfillment

By the end of the movie, Joel has learned that what got him into Princeton wasn’t pitching an incrementally better product or service – it was in fulfilling a human need (I’ll leave all the jokes to your imaginations).

And this is the major shift that we’re seeing in marketing.  From what we’re learning in Content Marketing, to the trends that we’re seeing from practitioners such as David Meerman Scott, and Chris Brogan – is that it’s no longer good enough for us as marketers to pitch products and services.  Our content – our social web strategies have to reach further than just satisfying a pitch or positioning statement.  We’re now charged with taking care and engaging that customer AFTER they’ve become a customer.  We have to nurture them, retain them, upsell them – and ultimately turn them into evangelists.

This is the magic of making the Social Web and Marketing go together like PB&J.  It’s not about Social Media as “advertising” or “lead generation” or “SEO” or “brand awareness” – it’s about making all those things better.  In short, marketing on the Social Web is like butter – by itself it isn’t very tasty – but it makes everything else amazing!

Time Of Your Life

The very last lines of Risky Business are:

“My name is Joel Goodson.  I deal in human fulfillment.  I grossed over eight thousand dollars in one night.  Time of your life, huh kid?”

And maybe this is the most important lesson to us.   If we get nothing else – the biggest benefits we’ll get by applying these two important lessons are that we’ll continue to have grand adventures.

And, at the end of the day, that’s what makes our marketing – our careers – our businesses so interesting….

Time of your life, huh kid?

Tags: Risky Business, Social Media Management, Social Web