In short
Podcast Episode Notes: Marketing School - Digital Marketing and Online Marketing Tips
Episode Title
CrowdStrike offers a $10 apology gift card to say sorry for outage, Olympic ad spending at record levels as streaming boom helps fuel demand, and What it means to be a real executive.
Episode Summary
In episode #2789, hosts Neil Patel and Eric Siu analyze CrowdStrike's recent outage and its implications, discuss record ad spending in the context of the Olympics, and explore essential traits of effective executives, drawing insights from a book by J. Paul Getty.
Time-Stamped Show Notes
00:00 - CrowdStrike Outage and Response
- Incident Overview: CrowdStrike's outage impacted numerous companies, including Delta Airlines, which canceled 6,000 flights.
- Apology Gift Card: CrowdStrike offered a $10 gift card as an apology.
- Criticism of Response:
- Hosts express that a $10 gift card is inadequate for the scale of disruption caused.
- Discussion about negative public relations and the emotional response from CrowdStrike's CEO during an interview.
- Emphasis on the ineffectiveness of the company's initial communication that downplayed the issue.
03:52 - Olympic Ad Spending at Record Levels
- Ad Spending Insights:
- Record-breaking advertising commitments reported by Comcast Universal, with $1.2 billion in revenue anticipated.
- Mention of the trend of ad buyers who are new to Olympic advertising.
- Polarizing Figures in Marketing:
- Discussion on Elon Musk’s polarizing influence on Tesla's brand and revenue.
- Emphasis on the risks of blending personal politics with corporate branding.
06:35 - What It Means to Be a Real Executive
- Insights from J. Paul Getty's Book:
- The hosts discuss key qualities of effective executives, as outlined in Getty’s book "How to Be Rich".
- Key Traits of Effective Executives:
- Leading by Example: Executives should be role models for their teams.
- Accepting Responsibility: Good executives take full accountability for their team's actions.
- Fair but Firm Leadership: Balancing firmness with empathy is essential.
- Public Praise and Private Criticism: Recognizing employees publicly while addressing issues privately boosts morale.
- Hiring Insights:
- Discussion on identifying valuable executives based on their progression in previous companies.
- Warning about hiring individuals who have not advanced in their careers.
Key Takeaways
- Crisis Management: The inadequate response to the CrowdStrike outage highlights the importance of effective communication in crisis situations.
- Advertising Trends: Significant shifts in advertising strategies can be observed during major events like the Olympics, particularly with the rise of streaming platforms.
- Executive Attributes: Strong leadership is characterized by accountability, empathy, and the ability to inspire and educate teams.
Conclusion
The hosts conclude their discussion by emphasizing the importance of effective marketing and leadership strategies, while also encouraging listeners to engage with the content by subscribing and sharing feedback.
Additional Resources
- Visit [Marketing School](https://www.marketingschool.io) to learn more about digital marketing strategies.
- Connect with Neil Patel and Eric Siu on social media:
- X @neilpatel
- X @ericosiu
Call to Action
- Encourage audience engagement by asking for comments on topics for future episodes and requesting reviews.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00CrowdStrike is offering$10 apology gift cards to say sorry for the outage to companies that have had issues due to CrowdStrike. did you see what happened to the sphere when the issue happened it was a blue screen of death on the sphere in vegas you know that big that big circle and it was like you know the windows air it's like the sad face the blue screen um yeah you know how like delta had to cancel 6 000 flights or whatever um and that's the best thing they can do you know and like what what tell you what what do you guys use for security now do you guys use crowdstrike before and if so are you still going to use it?
0:35I don't know what company we use for security. I know it's expensive. That's crap. We don't use CrowdStrike before. I definitely would not use CrowdStrike from now on after this. One, all the airports were shut down and they first released the statement. This is only effective for Microsoft users. Well, you know how many corporations are using Microsoft? And two, the way they handle the situation, especially with the$10 apology gift card, is just pathetic, right? Look how many airports shut down and people were stranded and how much money it costs all these other companies. And they're like, no, no, this isn't an attack or anything like that.
1:13We messed up and we released an update that just screwed all you guys up. Like, okay, it's better than not being hacked, but this is still not acceptable. Both are terrible. Yep. Yeah. And this is like, this is anti-marketing actually. So when you do this, it makes everyone even more pissed off and all the press you're getting is actually negative press. And I remember that CEO was being interviewed on some news channel, and then he started crying, like sobbing halfway through. Do you see that? I did not see that. Yeah. They're like, so what are you going to do? You know, we're going to do something about, you know, so he was just like panicking like that.
1:50But yeah, I think it's, a response is warranted, but to do something like that is a slap in everyone's faces. Because again, let's go to Delta Airlines. 6 ,000 flights were canceled. I remember seeing some TikToks of people. This one gal was like screaming at the airport and running around. She kind of just like collapsed to the ground, right? Because everyone has a lot of things to do. So when you take away someone's life from them like that, in one day, you owe a lot more than a$10 gift card. Yep. And this isn't$10 gift cards to like, oh, you're a traveler. No, it's a$10 gift card like, oh, you're a corporation being affected.
2:25Here's$10. bucks you may spend millions of dollars with us but here's ten dollars yeah that the worst that's i don't know who whoever came up with that idea from the communications department should be fired should be fired yeah yeah all right and then they were like it's not if you're on apple or linux you have no problem you know this isn't affecting everyone well majority of the world for corporations is on microsoft they're not on pc yeah they're on pc and windows which is what we used to be on all the time too. So. Dude, funny enough, still from our corporation, we still are on PCs. I use a Mac, but people in my company, like we use the whole Microsoft suite, Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, Excel.
3:07It's hard to run a business without it. I know Google has Google Docs. It's not the same. Yeah. Microsoft just kind of has it all built in together. It's easier for enterprises to manage and they're one of the, you know, multi-trillion dollar companies. So it makes a lot more sense for you guys especially to be using uh microsoft office teams enterprise all the things and it's cheaper that's the thing that no one really talks about yeah yeah yeah that costs you hey hey hey so how did this outage affect you uh this outage did not affect us at all wow okay again because we're not on crowdstrike yeah okay that that's that's right that's right i forgot that you mentioned that right if you're using microsoft but you weren't on crowdstrike there's no issue It was just the people who are on Couchtray.
3:51Interesting. Olympic ads spend at record levels as streaming booms, boom help fuels demand. And when you look at the Olympic spending, it's been on a tear. Comcast Universal seeing record-breaking revenue for the Games in April, which is way before the Olympics started in months. the network said it was on track to set a new record after notching a 1.2 billion advertising commitments with 350 million of total coming from ad buyers who have never bought during the Olympics before but yes like this kind of stuff it's polarizing and a great example of this that everyone can relate to and it has nothing to do with like LGBTQ if you also look at Elon Musk a lot of the stuff he's doing is polarizing, good or bad, it's just polarizing, and it does affect revenue.
4:42And a great example of this is I know people who love Tesla cars and had them and always drove Tesla cars, but stopped because they don't like Elon Musk anymore, right? His brand is so associated with his corporations that some people choose not to buy him because of the stuff he puts out you know he got into it on twitter with um or more so his um his i guess her name is jenna now so name was formerly formerly xavier which was elon's son and then transitioned to jenna and jenna was going after elon on threads and then that thread blew up and then people moved it over to twitter um so i think our point of saying all this stuff is it's probably better off not probably it's definitely better off to just leave your politics outside leave it away don't talk about this stuff and um because when you rile people up like that you could uh you can kind of screw yourself so you can definitely screw yourself and it can cause an impact in revenue i gotta take a minute to tell you about the agency owners association this is a peer group for agency owners think ypo or eo but for agency owners and i just wanted to read you a couple of testimonials So this first one comes from Carrie and we asked her, what do you like most about the group?
5:57She said, having a group of people to discuss and bounce ideas. The leads are great too. Yes, we share leads in this group as well. This one from Alian, he says, the ability to really post whatever I want and need and the group responds. Great experience members, getting a lot of insights from conversations with other members, getting a lot of value from sessions from Eric, getting advice from others as well. And so if you want to grow your agency faster and you want a peer group to do so, just go to marketing school dot IOS slash agency. This is a group that both Neil and I created. And our hope here is to create a vibrant community of agency owners and do a lot more with it in the future.
6:30So again, marketingschool.io slash agency, and we'll see you inside. What it means to be a real executive. So Neil, you know, you know, J. Paul Getty. That name sounds very familiar, but I don't know him. Okay. So he was one of the richest men in the world back in the day. He was an oil tycoon. He came like way after the Rockefellers. Yeah. So he has the Getty Museum. kidnapped or his kid or grandkid or one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then he's like, I'm not going to pay it type of thing. But he has these in this book. So I'm reading this book right now. It's actually sitting over there. The book's called How to Be Rich.
7:04And it might sound like a tacky title, but it's basically the billionaire's playbook. Like he wrote this book, this book came out and then he died like a month, a month after I believe. And so he was just saying like, you know, to be an effective executive, there's there's five things. And I'm going to try to remember as much as I can right now, but, and we can kind of, we can kind of debate on this and we can talk about what it means to be an effective executive because, you know, Neil, you have executives at your company, you know, I have executives and it's always important to have a strong executive team.
7:32So maybe Neil, why don't you start first? What do you think are the most important traits for a strong executive? And I'm actually going to pull up the book right here. Sure. So I have, I've never read the book. One, someone who is good at managing. Two, I think systems and processes are really important. Three, I think learning is super important and being able to admit when you're wrong, learning from it, right? You don't want an executive who just always thinks that they're right. They not only need to learn from their mistakes and other people's mistakes, but they also need to listen to the people that they manage.
8:07What are some of the other, what are the main ones that are in the book here? Yeah, so I'm going to read over here. So number one, example is the best means to instruct or inspire others. The man who shows them as well as tells them is the one who gets the most done from his subordinates. Number two, a good executive accepts full responsibility for the actions of the people under him. If called before his superiors before something has gone wrong in his department or office, he accepts full personal blame for the fault is his for having exercised poor supervision, which is exactly what you said.
8:41Okay. Number three, the best leader never asked anyone under him to do anything. He is unable or unwilling to do himself. Case in point, I'm on vacation recording. You're up in the morning early at 5am recording right now. Um, for the man in charge must be fair, but firm with his subordinates showing concern for their needs and doing all he can to meet their reasonable requests. He treats his juniors with patience, understanding and respect and backs them to the hilt. On the other hand, he does not pamper them and always bears in mind that familiarity breeds content. Number five, last but not least, there is one seemingly small but actually very important point that all executives should remember.
9:21Play should be given in public. Criticism should always be delivered in private. Employees who have done a good job should always be told in front of their fellows. This raises morale all around. Employees who have done something wrong should be told in private. Otherwise, they will be humiliated and morale will drop. There's more in here, but I these, we can react to these to begin with? Yeah, no, I think they're all good. What I found with when it comes to screening executives, the easiest way to figure out if they're good, like all these points, and there's probably another 20, 30, 40, whatever the number is of key traits that you want them to have.
9:57The easiest thing to do is look to see you work for your competition, continually got promoted, because it means that the company found that they're valuable. If they stay there for a while, that's great. And if they did this at two places that were competitors, right, two different companies, and they continually got promoted at both of them, that means two companies in your space found them valuable, because they probably perform well, so they'll probably perform well for you to if they already have done that same exact thing that you're looking for them to accomplish in the previous organization.
10:24I 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. What we're really saying here is success leaves clues. And especially to Neil's point, if they've worked at two companies and they've been promoted, by the way, I've seen a lot of people that have worked at agencies and I've made the mistake of hiring people from agencies that have worked there for 10 years, but haven't been promoted.
11:04Right. So just because somebody worked at Densu for 10 years, but they haven't been promoted, that's actually a huge red flag. It's like they're good enough to keep, but you know, it's, they're probably more or less a B player. And it turned out, you know, unfortunately people like that are usually B players. The black Friday cyber Monday weekend is where systems get stress tested. Traffic surges, inventory moves fast. And every second counts. You need a platform built for the moment. That's Shopify, the commerce platform behind millions of businesses and 10 % of all U.S. e-commerce. With Shopify, you can launch fast with thousands of templates and tools that make your site not just beautiful, but conversion ready.
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12:10Go to shopify.com slash marketing school and make this Black Friday one to remember. And if they're at a big organization and they haven't been promoted, big organizations can't cut as easily as startups, right? There's a lot more bureaucracy, red tape, especially if they're publicly traded and depending on the country that they're in, the rules and stuff that they follow. But, you know, if they've been somewhere for 10 years and they can't get a promotion, something's wrong with them. You know, J. Paul Getty said something really interesting, too. So, by the way, like when you're when you're, you know, when you're wildcatting or whatever, you're prospecting for oil, you have to learn how to drill.
12:47You have to learn explosives and all these things. Right. You have to be out there in the field. this guy was out there in the field, even though his dad was already rich and he was kind of taking over his dad's business. He was out there. And that really like that got everyone's morale really high. Another thing he said that sticks out to me, and I don't know if it's necessarily in this chapter, but, um, Neil, he said this, he's like, so back in the day, this was probably in the 30s, 20, 30s, 40s, right? 50s or so. Um, he's like, look, if you're about to sign a big deal, or if you're about to go into a big meeting, go get your shoes shined, go do something to take your mind off it.
13:18So you can, you can not take your mind off it, but it's more so to mentally prepare yourself. He's basically saying, just take a little pause before you jump into things head first. And usually even that five, 10, 15 minutes before that goes a long way. And he, he, he, I don't think that's something we've ever mentioned, but I'm pretty sure you and I both do it. Um, and it's something that doesn't get talked about enough. No, you're totally right. It doesn't. People want to talk about all the sexy stuff, the glamorous stuff. They don't want to talk about the stuff it's like doing it grinding it out the boring ugly stuff which is usually what creates success i think that's it i think eric got cut off we'll see you guys tomorrow appreciate you guys tuning in for marketing school have a great day and check out marketing school.io slash agency i believe
