MarketingSherpa Blog

This week the MarketingSherpa team is live in Las Vegas at Summit 2016. We are so excited to see all of the attendees who came out to learn with us at the beautiful Bellagio, and with thirty speakers diving into case studies on topics such as Digital & Data, Content & Social and Email & Mobile, there is so much to learn from our marketing peers.

This morning, Morgan Spurlock, Academy Award-nominated director and one of our featured speakers at MarketingSherpa Summit 2016, presented “The Greatest Lecture Ever Told.”

Read on for some of the many insights Spurlock shared with the audience.

Marketing is storytelling

Morgan opened with the idea that, with storytelling, you don’t want to be like everyone else — you want to bring something unique to the table — and you want to do the right thing, from a moral standpoint. And yet, you don’t want to go too far and be too crazy. “What does it take to create original stories that can make a difference?” Morgan asked the audience.

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When Cheerios came out with its gluten-free line, social media platforms erupted with Celiac and gluten-intolerant customers celebrating. Perhaps following in the wake of the Chex cereal flavors, Cheerios listened to consumer needs and created a product line to appeal to a very specific subset of customer.

Then the worst thing happened to a brand that had capitalized on being allergen-friendly — customers started getting sick.

It was determined that the way Cheerios was processing its gluten-free grains did not keep them from being cross-contaminated with wheat and oats, resulting in many gluten-free consumers becoming quite ill.

Although the brand made a huge mistake in how it was producing the product, this shouldn’t take away from the main effort: a brand listening and responding to consumers. And while Cheerios should have been far more careful, it is important to see a major brand adjusting its product model to try and respond to consumer wants, and then readjust once more when it made a mistake.

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Every year it feels like Christmas decorations go up earlier. Black Friday email sends are starting to arrive before Halloween, peppy toy commercials appear on every channel and our favorite brands’ social media accounts become a testament to the holidays long before it feels like we are ready.

Even in the age of the Internet, when most people’s access to content is at an all-time high, the same commercials continue to pop up year-after-year.

If all of this is the case, there must be something to it. In today’s post, we’re going to examine three lessons to be learned from the holiday commercials that we have all grown to expect during the holiday season.

Lesson #1: Repurpose content that resonates with consumers

Folgers has one of the most memorable holiday commercials, featuring the prodigal son returning home for the holidays and waking his sleepy parents up with the scent of fresh brewed Folgers coffee.

This commercial is so popular that not only has the same story been told year-after-year, but Folgers even gave the commercial a face-lift over twenty years after the original premiered.

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Who doesn’t love the feeling of seeing a package on their doorstep? While the mailbox is reserved for bills and sales flyers, a box on the front porch usually means a present.

The popularity of subscription boxes has allowed for millions of customers to enjoy this consumerism bliss bi-weekly, monthly or even quarterly.

Subscription boxes are the ultimate way for consumers to enjoy products. The boxes are delivered on some sort of schedule, filled with products the customer is interested in and usually have some element of surprise.

There seems to be a subscription box for every category of shopper — food, pet supplies, “nerd gear” and even apocalypse prep. The diversity of the boxes available speaks to the widespread popularity among consumers. However, not every company has the interest or ability to expand into the subscription box space. This poses a question: What can we learn from the success of subscription boxes?

To answer that question, we’ve compiled five takeaways from boxes that marketers in any industry can utilize to promote their product.

Takeaway #1. Be surprising, but don’t get crazy

Customers who subscribe to boxes have a general idea of what types of products will be mailed to them. For example, a box member knows that every month he’ll get a t-shirt, an accessory of some type and a small gadget.

However, every month there is a surprise element — the products that will actually make up the box will be a surprise upon arrival. That means our example box member doesn’t know that this month the t-shirt will have a comics theme or that the accessory will be a pair of sunglasses.

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