Andrew Huberman hitpiece has reverse effect, Ad Creative is a 12x ROI multiplier?, and Flexport’s CEO NYTimes OpEd

0:00Do you want to speak of social media here? I'll give you one more thing. You know how Dr. Andrew Huberman. There was a hit piece that happened on the New York Post recently. Did you hear about that you know Dr. dr huberman is though right andrew huberman everyone talks about him okay so he is this doctor and he's got he's probably got one of the top podcasts out there right now and it really talks about just how you can be healthier talks about sleep talks about your vo2 max all these things that contribute to just living a long life and healthy life and i think he's certainly been very helpful to me and so anyway this new york post does this article it's a really well-written post by the way but the whole hit piece is like oh andrew huberman has six different girlfriends that he didn't tell he didn't he didn't tell them about each other they all found out about each other and they created like a ring and they started you know they they started talking about all the different things they're doing with with andrew and basically it was it was this expose saying that andrew huberman is not a faithful boyfriend right and so basically the hit piece seems to have a reverse effect because let me show you this this tweet over here first of all Andrew Huberman he's not addressing it he's not saying oh this and that he's not responding to it at all so this is like a PR communication like this is how he's handling and it seems to be working out for him he's just continuing to post content and I think his whole thing is like this thing's gonna blow over but check this out let me share my screen over here um so Tom Osmond shares this.

1:27So that hit piece really did a number on Andrew Huberman. Wonder how he's dealing with all the new followers. So he was adding two to 700 followers per day before. I think this was on YouTube. Now he's adding three to 7 ,000 per day after. So check this out. So this helped him. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, this is Twitter stats. Sorry. So this was a three to 700 before, 200 to 700 before. Now it's way more. So pretty much when they published it, it may have gone viral and then more people learn about him and what he does and like oh let me learn about yeah and by the way we're not saying okay it's good that he's an unfaithful boyfriend or whatever i i think that at the end of the day it's his business and net net has he been helpful to society i would say yes he has but you know at the end of the day i think this is a the hippies didn't really work on him so so i i don't really follow him um and the way i look at a lot of this kind of stuff Yes, people should do ethically what's right, but it's their personal life.

2:27I try not to get involved. Dude, if you don't believe in what they do, don't follow them. Yeah, you're free to think on your own. That's why this information is available. And I'm hoping that even listening to this podcast or other podcasts, you are listening and then forming your own opinion so you can think for yourself. That's what the goal is, at least my opinion. that that's why we're here to share what we know. But here's an interesting thing, Neil. I'm reading the comments over here. And one comment here says, killer marketing, I wonder how much they charge for this service. And so what if someone did hit pieces as a service to help you get more reach?

3:07Depends where it gets published. But like, for example, I've heard his name. I've seen some of his stuff. I don't really follow him. I don't know most of the stuff he talks about. I get what he's talking about. But, you know, I don't know much about him. Hence, I didn't see the hit. Well, if you go to the YPO Health and Wellness Summit in two weeks, he will be speaking there as well. So, yeah, yeah. All right. So did you know that ad creative can be a 12x effectiveness multiplier? Did you know that, Neil? No, but yeah, I know ad creative. So check this out. This is from your good friend Pep Laja.

3:44Okay. So ad creative can be a 12x effectiveness multiplier. Really great creative is hard and rare. Most PPC agencies are good at campaign management, not creative. I agree with that for the most part. Who does killer creative best? So check this out. Figure two, the top 10 ways to improve advertising ROI. So this source is from data to decisions. Number one is market brand size plus share. So look like Coca-Cola, right? 18X multiplier, profit multiplier. This is in 2014, by the way. And then number two is creative, tagging ad length. And this is 12X multiplier. And then number three is budget setting across geographies, 5X, and then it just goes down from there.

4:21Isn't it interesting? Yeah. And I'm curious to see what the data would be in 20 today. Yeah. But we always talk about this with our clients and even on our team. The biggest leverage point you have a marketer when you're running ads is the creative. Because a lot of the technology and the software, a lot of people have access to that. It's at their fingertips. But the creative really can help you stand out from the competition. shit. We call that the X factor, right? Because that's what you can do that others potentially can't. Yep. So that's how we think. So when we, when we pitch creative on, on, on our side, when we actually show the creatives and we show what we're going to do with that, we show the different formats versus when we didn't do that in the past, the conversation's completely different now.

5:06They're way more engaged. You can see their eyes lighting up. It's like, Oh, I haven't thought about it that way. Oh, nobody, nobody's talking about creative, right? Like when you show how capable you are and how you're thinking of it for them and you can bring them to a future state, if you are selling creative, it does wonders, right? And when you think about it, creative, what does it do? Good creative at the end of the day, it decreases your CPAs. It just makes your costs a lot more effective. But, and this is what Gary talked about on Friday, it's not all on the brand side. It's not all on the creative side.

5:36It's not also not on the math side. It's a mixture of both. So it's not blue or red. It's really purple, which is why the color of his new book that's coming out, Day Trading Attention, that's why it's purple, right? So you got to consider both sides. But I do believe in a world where an AI-driven world, the optimization is not so much going to be the X factor. It's not your superstructure or how you're optimizing your campaigns. That's not what matters anymore. It really is creative and data, I would say, on the other side. So it really is those two bands. Yeah. No, I believe it. You need good creative and you need to look at data and you need a mixture of both.

6:12The hard part for marketers is some people lean one way or another. I'm more very data oriented. I can be creative with my own marketing, but what I found as a solution is instead of trying to do everything perfect, what you need to do is partner with people who are great at the side that you're weak at. I'm better at the data side than the creative side. So we will hire, we do hire, like we have an amazing creative person who leads up that department named Alex. And Alex is just great at that. And that's how her brain works. Mine is all the zeros and ones and you combine them and that's how you can start doing better.

6:54I want to take a second to tell you about my podcast co-host agency. So NP Digital, So Neil Patel Digital, what they do is they do a whole host of marketing services, and they are global. They're worldwide. They have SMB services as well. They have mid-market to enterprise services as well. They cover the entire gamut. So you can just go to mpdigital.com to learn more about it. And now back to the episode. By the way, Neil and I have an agency owners group called the Agency Owners Association. All you have to do, just go to marketingschool.io slash agency. Once again, it's marketingschool.io slash agency to learn more.

7:33And now back to the show. You know what I realized, Neil? So recently we got a one-star rating with someone complaining about our audio. And then I was like, what? I have a beautiful mic. And then I was like, oh, I just look at you. Neil did not unpack his mic yet. And so, Neil, we're going to have to get you a new mic because someone's complaining. and that means other people are hearing bad audio and that's the only thing that matters with this pod, right? People can't stand bad audio. So guys, if you're hearing bad audio from Neil's side right now, please leave a five-star review and say bad audio because that would be helpful to us.

8:09So that's that. You're like, leave a review and then you realize you're like, wait, wait, wait, no, we don't want more one-star reviews. Five stars, please. But to Neil's point, there's a macro business thing too that Neil and I have been talking on the phone about. It's we've subconsciously or unconsciously for me, I've designed my organization around my weaknesses, right? And then you have too, I would argue. So for me, like I mentioned in the last episode, I'm not a very detail-oriented person. But the people that work with me closely are extremely detail-oriented, right? Which is funny enough.

8:41Funny enough, you're very detail-oriented, right? And so think about what you're weak at and then make – don't try to plug every weakness. Yes, get stronger at those. But at the end of the day, if you can design your organization to like if someone else is better than you at creative, go hire them to do it. Right. I wouldn't. You need to reset it. You miss it. Eric didn't mean what he's saying. He what he's he's not talking about plugging the weaknesses with other people. He's saying don't focus on fixing all the things that you're weak at yourself. Like you don't need to be a jack of all trades.

9:11Correct. Say plug them in because you said don't plug in all your weaknesses. You're saying don't fix all your weaknesses. Yeah, sorry. We're going to slow down. Yeah, so don't try to fix all your weaknesses because nobody can be perfect, to your point. And instead, focus on your strengths because that is what you're valued for at the end of the day. It's your strengths that make you world class. And then the next part, add the next part. I forgot the next part already. What was the next part? Hiring the people. Oh, yeah. I kind of implied that already. So yes, you want to hire great people around you that really your weaknesses are actually their strengths.

9:50That's what you want to do at the end of the day. And that's how you're going to scale. And that's why people talk about hiring all the time. Because everything, I forgot who talked about this recently on a pod. It's like two main things that matter. It's people and technology. Oh, it was Brad Jacobs. Brad Jacobs wrote a book called How to Make a Few Billion Dollars because he founded like seven multi-billion dollar companies. And he's like, two main things that matter, people and technology. but you can't build technology without people. So at the end of the day, everything that comes down to scaling, how do I grow to a million?

10:16How do I grow to 10 million? How do I grow to 100 million? It's all just great people. And I'm oversimplifying, but that's what it is. It is, but sometimes people can mess things up. And a great example of this is social media marketing. So it's just like a lot of businesses are struggling to get traction on social media, but in many cases, it's because of the people they hire. I'm not talking about just the wrong people. it's they're overcomplicating it. So example, if you take social media marketing, a lot of people will be like, I have these ideas. Let's sit in a meeting and brainstorm it and then come up with, bring a copywriter in, then create a script and then start looking at data and analytics and then be like, okay, how do we film this beautiful thing instead of making it just lo-fi?

11:03Who's going to edit it? Does it match every single brand guidelines? And I get why companies do this but dude that 14 year old kid from missouri or the middle of nowhere is just like oh this looks cool let me just post it yeah you want to talk about that what is that because i don't know what that is talk about that what the 14 year old kid does yeah yeah yeah because you have that here what the 14 year old kid is doing is they're just browsing their internet and be like oh that's a cool concept let me talk about that or post that they're not overthinking it and what they're doing is they're creating quote-unquote content that's more authentic that relates they're not you know trying to make things too uh high-end in production they're just posting what they think is cool and they're trying to understand the community instead of spending too much time focusing on the type of content to create versus understanding the community and figuring out what they want oh got it so i thought you had an example here of someone doing it but this is more of a generalized thing i don't have i was making a random example like um what do you have one more otherwise i have one more go for it okay check this out so you know the the baltimore bridge collapse that happened recently yeah with the big shipping container that follow but i also follow the stock market and a lot of these company it affects a lot of companies yep so this this post is from lulu lulu meservi here i'm going to share my screen again lulu chang meservi i'm pronouncing that wrong sorry lulu so case study and founder is going direct ryan peterson so he's the founder of crap what's the flex flexport flexport so ryan peterson and the baltimore bridge collapsed so the recap the bridge is hit early morning tuesday number two by midday ryan posts a detailed x thread analyzing the failure he barely mentions flexport but doesn't need to showing the ceo's expertise and explaining the need for better logistics is better promotion for flexport's mission than any outright shilling just just so everyone knows flexport is a logistics company.

13:01Maybe I'm oversimplifying it there, but that's what it is. So number three, same day, Ryan writes an op-ed. He does it himself in one hour. He truly types fast. That's his username on Twitter. The team edits it and submits it to the New York Times. New York Times usually takes days to respond to submissions, but accepted this one immediately because it was so timely and on point. Number four, Ryan's first New York Times op-ed publishes the next day. Number five, look into screenshots. I can't resist pointing out the delta between Ryan's views and the New York Times. Not a dunk on the New York Times, by the way.

13:31Their distribution is huge. The op-ed was good. And it's a great way to reach customers. But it's hard to match the power of a founder speaking direct and unfiltered. So takeaways. Speed matters. Substance outperforms marketing fluff. People want to hear from people, not corporations. So going back to creators again. A great post can rival the distribution of a leading newspaper. And finally, Flexport has a great comms lead. But something like this doesn't work without the founder's personal involvement. and talk about being involved again. Look at this. So 327K views on this one. And then I think the New York Times, sorry, 4K views for New York Times, 1.8 million for Ryan Peterson.

14:12But also another important thing to mention here is he understands this industry really well. It comes from what Google talks about with E-E-A-T, experience, expertise, authority, and trust. Ryan is the right person to talk about this. Neil Patel and Eric Su are the wrong people to write an article on this because it's just not what we know. We don't know anything about bridges and logistics. Yes. It's like those VCs doing a post being like, here's how much AI traffic decrease you're going to, how much search traffic you're going to get from AI. I'm like, oh, so you've never done SEO and you just looked at 10 of your portfolio analytics.

14:51I'm not saying they're wrong. I'm just saying it's a small sample and they don't really know how the industry works it doesn't mean it won't go the way they're talking about but it's more so you want the right people to talk about something it's the same reason where i try not to talk too much about politics or the economy i don't know much about it for example uh a week or so ago i posted on i'm not economist but i'm starting to see marketing recover and it did exceptionally well on twitter um i don't know how many retweets you want to share it yeah i'm trying to actually pull it up i didn't even have it on the list but where is it best economy uh marking lesson no that's not it dude i have so many tweets it's just hard to find this stuff gen z nope quick hack influencer when i first started my business the overwhelm was real i didn't have the tools to help me scale if only i had shopify from the start to handle all the behind the scenes work.

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18:13So I don't know if this year is going to be good or bad. I don't know what's going to happen with the elections. But we're starting to see more companies spend money on marketing. And we're seeing it mainly in the United States. It's coming back. India has been booming for years. Australia, Canada, UK, rest of Europe are still slow. We're seeing what we saw in the US. We're seeing there roughly six months ago. I mean, what we saw in the U.S. six months ago is what we're seeing there right now. LATAM, Mexico is slowly picking up, but the rest of Latin America is roughly where we're seeing in the market industry where the U.S.

18:45was nine to 12 months ago. And most of Asia other than India is experiencing what we experienced in the U.S. six to nine months ago. Again, not economists, but it shows at least where marketing is going from our small subset of data. Yeah, an 86K views on it. So not bad. So anyway, that's it for this episode. everyone. Neil has to go to Easter. Happy Easter, everyone. That's it for today. Please don't forget to rate, rate, and subscribe. Also go to marketingschool.io slash agency. If you want to learn more about growing your agency, that's the agency community that we have. It's growing, so it's application only, and we'll see you tomorrow.