Espresso: James Smith - The Hidden Secret to TONNES of Attention for Your Brand

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0:23What is the first principles of getting attention? I think the first has to be, and this can go back all the way to my coaching days, where it's not about giving someone an optimal workout or diet. it's about giving them something that's optimal for them. So everything has to be, first of all, understanding of where that person's at. And I think the landscape that we're in is ever-changing. And people, probably through ego, are quite hard to accept the fact that the landscape is changing so much and they need to adapt with it. So one thing at the moment is an interesting kind of shift from maybe six, 12 months ago, very fast, in your face, really sharp edits, lots of animations, lots of visual and audio kind of hooks to keep people into it i think we're starting to see some fatigue with that i think longer format slower format text-based format is coming back a bit where even i like to try different things on different platforms in the moment just typing things on linkedin which i've always been terrible at on linkedin and rather than trying to take something that works on instagram reels and putting it somewhere else i think that now we're almost seeing a bit of a comeback to typed thought out content in the sense that so much of what we've had probably since the pandemic is short viral in your face obscene obscure tick tockification of social media and now we're starting to see a little bit of a bounce back from that similarly to how politics goes left and right left and right the same thing happens on this landscape in front of us so i like to temperature test with that a lot of the time if you ever see a random post from me on a platform it's probably me just trying to gauge how it works.

1:55I always, I joke around with people and say, when you first start dating a girl, you have no idea what she's into and what she isn't. You kind of have to play around and gauge the response by looking at them. And it's the same absolutely everywhere else. And yeah, I like to just have a look at those things, try different things out. And even 10 years into this game, I still transparently would say to people, I don't know what's going to work. I have a feeling that this could benefit you. I have a feeling that this could be a good way of doing it. We spoke offline before that even I feel traditional marketing for so many departments is still feeling quite archaic.

2:27With for instance, one creative I was given was almost going to war with coffee for the drink. I said, this is ridiculous. What, and you were working with a, you had an agency giving you creative ideas? Just our social team within Newtonic were saying, here's an easy shot. We have 120 milligrams of caffeine and nootropics. That's just 100 milligrams of caffeine. Easy shot. And I'm thinking, do you know what? If I try and portray this anti-coffee, it's not going to be disingenuous, it's going to be ineffective. So what would be an interesting way to start the content would be to almost semi-shit on the marketing department.

2:59So I started a video saying that the marketing department told me that coffee is a bad thing. I ordered a cup of coffee in my hand. I'm like, this is great. This is fantastic. This is a different product to what I'm about to sell you. And I even say to people, and I make money on this. And I think that first hook is a little bit refreshing, a little bit different, a little bit, oh, that makes the change from everyone trying to say their product is superior and i kind of said to people you should start your day with coffee i think if you start your day with a fizzy drink you're something wrong with you and your dentist probably won't be too happy and to take someone on a little journey where you actually were honest in the onset is so different to what we see in traditional media for instance the majority of people on tv are they're playing a character which is so easy to see as fake when i'm on tv they're like james welcome welcome to the show this morning I'm like whoa whoa whoa.

3:45Chill the fuck out. Yeah yeah yeah. Human emotions don't go that high. Even if we're in a bar with all my best mates. We're not like oh Dave fantastic to see you. Then the second they cut to an ad break. The face drops. They're on their phone checking Twitter. I think there's so much fake stuff out there. That just being real with people. Is almost a hook and a trend in itself. Where people go oh that's refreshing. I think Liquid Death again. We're very good at going against the grain. With media that was so unordinary. The title or the brand name. kind of doesn't make sense. Older people are like, hold on, what did you just say?

4:19Then the marketing, the videos they put on YouTube. I mean, they didn't actually promote the drink that you made viral videos with the drink. And again, that's where I think a lot of brands are maybe taking the wrong avenue. There is a lady in America who is thinking up creative ways to destroy the drink that she works for. And I think her hook is proving a marketing department that I can make better creatives than them. And she drives over the cans, destroys them does really weird things but she's getting the attention of people on short form content platforms do you know the company is she works for can't remember so she's not that good yeah yeah yeah no it's just it is interesting it's it's i think with all your a lot of your content is you are pushing against it's again it's almost as observing where is the uh attention landscape going say it's moving in that direction then you you push against it with raw authentic just truth.

5:13And this is what I was saying to you at the beginning is I think you've got these abilities to spot truths that other people aren't necessarily cognizant of. I think as well that so much, I suppose the purpose behind this is so much of anything that I've had in the realm of success is because of attention. Yeah. And I think that really the true first tier audience of people for this product are people that also want attention because there are so many better authors than me that didn't sell any books. There are so many better coaches than me that never had a fitness app. There are so many better entrepreneurs than me that never started a business.

5:45And it's all because they couldn't get people's attention. And we're now in a world that when people are filming, editing, even you think about this studio, the fact that we've got professional lighting, good audio, it's all part of getting attention. And that's really where I feel the masterclass that I would like to give to people is that if you can capture someone's attention, everything trickles down towards a business. and there's been traditional old media paid ads but now we live in a world where organically because the majority of all of our sales have been organic to begin with yeah and it's not new tonic yeah and i think that in itself is again kind of counterintuitive where people go just get some paid ads behind it just do this just do that but in a world we can get attention again chris williamson his podcast is just an attention seeking machine the guests the conversations the clips all thought out methodically so that when he presents his argument or his clip to a YouTube browse page out of eight videos that you see on that page it's his that you click it's all about getting the attention of the people that are spending time on social media a biggest downfall of YouTube is people try to optimize content for search seeing thinking of it as a search engine but really YouTube is a browse engine you want to optimize your titles and thumbnails for people browsing not searching if you were saying how to open a beer bottle with only two fingers next time you're camping.

7:06That could be, one, it could be something that people could be searching for, how to open a beer bottle. But if you were to then pick something obscure, 99 % of people can't open a beer bottle this way. That's something that would capture someone in a browse. Yeah. Kind of mindset. So yes, having all of these things in mind that really, I bet there are so many products that have been thought of, planned, strategized, but they just lack the attention to grow it. thank you so much for listening to that espresso i hope you enjoyed your morning coffee and are ready for the day let's be having your boy and please do subscribe follow the podcast share this espresso on whatsapp if you liked it and also there's a link to our newsletter in the show description i spend 15 hours toiling and writing this bad boy it's full of wonderful wisdom from the biggest names in food and drink.

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