Prof G on Marketing: How to Stand Out in a Saturated Market

0:27Adobe Acrobat Studio, so brand new. Welcome back to Office Hours with Prof G. Today we're kicking off a special three-part series, Prof G on Marketing, where we answer questions from business leaders about the biggest marketing challenges and opportunities companies face today. What a thrill! I'm a little bit self-conscious. My whole career, not my whole career, most of my career was about brand strategy and working with CMOs and CEOs, but I am so out of shape. I've been taught in over a year, and my kind of brand strategy muscles are atrophying. I'm worried about the next class I teach. I'm going to be one of those guys that should have been put on an ice flow about 15 years ago.

1:04I mean, most of the faculty at elite institutions. Anyways, a little self-conscious, but I'm going to try and get over that. Let's bust right into it. Let's get into it. He's an imposter, but he's your imposter. Question number one. How do you market to a world that doesn't want to be bothered? Nobody answers phone calls, texts, etc. What medium drives engagement? That's a good question. And by the way, that question comes from Telehead Dog Fan on Reddit. My subreddit is very entertaining. Entertaining and upsetting. I sometimes go on there and I think, oh, I'm not like that. I'm a nice guy. Say hi.

1:39I'm a nice guy. Anyways, okay, Telehead Dog Fan, the mediums that drive engagement, there's just no getting around it. If you want to build a personal brand, if you want to build an aspirational brand, you have to allocate more money to social. I think about just the amount of time. I mean, you are where you spend your time. One of the reasons I got off X is I found that I was speaking in 140 characters and I was becoming terse and constantly looking for the weak point in people's arguments such that I could weigh in and press on the soft tissue and make a character or a cartoon of their comments such that I could feel good about myself.

2:16In other words, I was becoming an asshole. I mean, that's literally what X is. It's like an asshole turns into a social media platform. And I thought, you know what? I already have too much tendency to be an asshole. I don't need an environment that turns me into an even bigger a-hole. So you want to go where people are spending their time. And the bottom line is social media is where everyone is spending their time. In addition, the people who kind of set the trend for most aspirational brands are youth, right? Once your dad starts wearing Nikes, the young people stop wearing them. So everybody wants to kind of follow the lead of an 18 to 30 year old aspirational male or female.

2:51And those people are spending way too much time on social media. So I would say that socialist engagement, I think events create a lot of engagement, content marketing. If you're B2B at L2, we used to put out these weekly videos that went on one of the fastest growing social media platforms in the world, YouTube, and we built essentially our own mic. Instead of paying some PR agency 10 ,000 bucks a month to get me on Bloomberg or whatever it was, we went straight to consumer. We went direct to consumer with our own media channels, and we would put out thoughtful research and interesting data that a ton of consumer brands was focused on CMOs, would watch the video, and we were constantly in the selection set.

3:30So when they thought, you know, I'd really like to benchmark my digital footprint relative to Clorox or Unilever or whoever's in the competitive set of P &G, P &G would think, We'll call that crazy dude and his firm L2. And within about seven years of launch, we were working with a third of the global 100 or the 100 biggest companies in the consumer world. So B2C, I think you gotta be a master of social and find a voice and create two-way engagement. B2B, I think it's content marketing or thought leadership. That's my kind of quick and dirty answer. Thank you so much, Telehead dog fan. Question number two.

4:06Our next question also comes from Reddit. user mxt240. I work for a giant software company. I do nerd work, not face work or management, and I am damn good at it. Every so often I get emails telling me to build my personal brand. What the fuck does that actually mean? Should I always wear cardigans? Do I need a catchphrase? Inspirational bullshit in my email signature? I'm well-respected and well-liked by my peers, and I take time to unofficially mentor those less experienced. isn't there value in hyper-exclusive brands that don't advertise? MXC240, so thanks for the question. I teach an entire class on building a personal brand.

4:47A lot of people think a lot about the brand of the company they're working for, but they don't actually take the time to think about their own brand. And they might think, well, I'm not interested in building a brand. You have a brand whether you want one or not. A brand is essentially the promise or the associations that are linked to you and linked to your name, linked to your visual identity, linked to you when you show up. everybody has a certain preset set of expectations the promise you present if you will and then you have to deliver hopefully against that performance and ideally you want to differentiate a brand such that when there's an opportunity for a promotion or an assignment and they have five different cereal boxes i.e people to pick from they pick you so how do you go about that the first thing is i think it's helpful to think of what are your core associations what do you want to be known for professionally.

5:33And that is the two or three kind of adjectives, descriptors that sort of identify, do you want to be known as especially empathetic? That's important. Those people make great managers. Do you want to be known as especially strategic? And that is there's a role for those people, put them on figuring out our six or 12-month plan. Are you kind of no nonsense? All right, send that person and kind of harsh, quite frankly, and good with numbers. Send that person to the branch in Houston and have them do the analysis and come back and give it to me straight on what's going on with that business. There's all sorts of qualities, features, attributes that are positive or differentiate someone in the work world.

6:10And I think it's helpful to kind of identify what those three things are, those two or three things are, such that they can serve as sort of a guiding light or religion. Think about religion. It's a set of rules that you try and shape your actions and your life around, such that you behave in a way that reinforces the teaching of Jesus Christo. Right? What would Jesus do? I remember that question in Sunday school. By the way, rest in peace, El Papa. Rest in peace. Anyways, so think of some core associations. If you want to be really formal about it, find some people in your life you trust. You trust and say, what do you think of when you hear me in a professional context, tell me you're going through this process?

6:46And not only think about the positive things, but also find out if there's anything negative. And here's how you know if that criticism is valid. If you feel as if you've been punched in the gut, that means it's true. If they say something stupid and it's mean or whatever, you can write it off. But if it's like, I remember in some of my student reviews, they said that use profanity too much. And as a result, it reduces your credibility. And it really upset me. Why did it really upset me? Because it's probably true. And I kind of deep down know that it's true. Now, have I done anything about it?

7:16Fuck no. Well, a little bit. In class, I try to tone it down. But anyways, we're going to think about if there's any negatives that get in the way of us. Then we're going to think about visual metaphors. We are a very visual species. You need to lean into your visual metaphors. Are you losing your hair? Then shave your fucking hair like the dog when he was 30 years old. And all of a sudden back then in whatever it was, 2004, 1994, it was seen as aggressive and different, right? Are you in good shape? Then get in fucking crazy shape. Do you have really wonderful frizzy hair? Then have out of control frizzy hair.

7:47Do you like glasses? Then wear big Sally, Jesse, Raphael glasses. Visual metaphors are so powerful. What's the most powerful thing about Nike? Some people would argue it's the advertising or landmark endorsements from Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan. I don't think so. I think it's the goddamn swoosh. I can recognize the swoosh in my peripheral vision. Can you recognize the Reebok logo in your peripheral vision or Puma? No. Swoosh, yes. What does that mean? It means billions of times they're getting unearned media from people on the street who recognize that swoosh without even thinking about it consciously.

8:19What is your visual metaphor? What is your medium? Are you really good at giving text? Are you a great writer? Are you fantastic on TikTok? Can you put out PowerPoint? Are you fantastic speaking in front of people? Whatever your medium is, you need to identify it and then find every opportunity to display your expertise in that meeting and develop a following. I am really good in front of a lot of people. I'm not great one-on-one. I'm very good on video and decent on social media. I'm not that good on the phone. So I try and shape my interactions, my contact with others around those mediums and specifically avoid the ones I'm not good at.

8:59What is the one thing, the product you're gonna own? You have to be known as the go-to person on one thing. When it comes to pivot tables, looking at forecasting, our customer acquisition strategy. Oh, we gotta go to Lisa. Okay, when it comes to recruiting, sending someone to Carnegie Mellon to do recruiting and talk about the firm, you know, Bob is just so good, so young, so handsome, so excited about the firm. That's the person we want in front of the people. Well, what about someone who knows how to manage people? They're just very good. They're a player coach. Okay, that's Catherine. We got to put Catherine in charge of this group and we'll get better work out of them.

9:34What is the one thing you are going to own? Core associations, positives. A negative association that might be getting in the way of people getting to the core associations, the positive ones that you need to dial down. What is your medium? What is your visual metaphor? And what are you gonna own, right? And then we're gonna apply three hurdles. First, is it differentiated? Is that being able to do pivot tables and being known as empathetic, is that really differentiated in this firm? You wanna be different. Two, does anyone care? Is it relevant to what you do every day? And then third, what are you going to do to make it sustainable?

10:09What are you going to do to invest in it such that you pull away from the rest of the pack and consistently get better and go deeper and deeper and deeper in those chosen kind of domains which you want to own? All right, that's it. Boom. Your brand is done. And yeah, it's absolutely worth it, boss. And be clear, you have a brand. It's just a question of whether you want to manage it or not. Thanks for the question. We'll be right back after a quick break.

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12:10Question three. Welcome back. Our final question comes from Proof of Profits on Threads. They say, American companies are known for their great marketing. They've been so effective that we've seen genericized trademarks. How much of a role has this played into the monopolization of America? And are America's duopolies bad for consumers? If so, what can we do to change it? I think what you're asking is, has great marketing led to the concentration of industries where we have monopolies or duopolies that extract unfair rents from other businesses or consumers? I don't think it's a great marketing.

12:47I think it's mostly regulatory capture and a lack of FTC or DOJ who's been essentially in a slumber for about 30 or 40 years. The bottom line is when you have one company that controls two-thirds of all social media, Meta, one company that controls 92 % of Search, Google, one company that controls 50 % of all e-commerce, Amazon, and one company that controls, I don't know, 50 % of all smartphones and 90 % of the revenues from smartphones, Apple, it probably means we'd be better off if we broke these companies up such that there'd be more entities trying to rent people's labor, wages would go up.

13:22They'd be more focused and more risk-taking because they wouldn't be coordinating and cooperating with each other. How did Google let OpenAI ever exist? Why? Because despite the fact that the majority of AI IP resided within Alphabet, they didn't want to risk the existential threat. They didn't want to disrupt their own search business. So they weren't excited to kind of put out an AI product that might disrupt or cannibalize their Google search. So what happened? They left the door open or they left the garage door open and Sam Altman walked right in and took their AI. In sum, you've got to eat your own young or someone else will.

13:59So effectively what's happened in breakups is that they've been good for shareholders. The original seven baby bells that were broken up or came out of a broken up AT &T were all worth more than the original AT &T within about a decade. It's good for shareholders, good for consumers. I would argue the biggest increase in rents from Meta have been the rents on parents who have to put up a social media that is making their kids feel shittier and shittier about themselves. There's no real options. And when you say, well, it's bad parenting, just get them off of Instagram or just get them off of Snap.

14:30Well, here's the problem. They end up more depressed because everybody is on Snap. or Instagram. And if they're not on it, they feel ostracized. So we're in sort of this prisoner's dilemma where we don't know what to do as parents. But we see a consolidation across majority of industries where they weaponize government and say, let us be regulated monopolies. They buy off senators and congresspeople from both sides of the aisle. And the DOJ and the FTC have been neutered. And you have a concentration of industry. I wouldn't want to do that. I wouldn't. Why? Why Peter Thiel said it, competition is for idiots.

15:03You don't want competition. You want to figure out a way to have access to cheap capital, establish yourself as a leader, which gives you more cheap capital such that you can just pull away from the competition and then you start investing in DC where they basically say, despite the fact you have 93 % share of search, despite the fact that you're radicalizing young men on Google, we're not going to move in and we're not going to break you up because there are so many really charming, highly paid people. Do you realize there are more full-time lobbyists in Washington, D.C., living in Washington, D.C., who work for Amazon than there are sitting U.S.

15:35senators? Let me repeat that. There are more full-time lobbyists, really well-paid, they make a lot more than any senator, whose entire job is to be likable and take senators to lunch and take them golfing and give their money for the campaign and have really thoughtful conversations about the future of e-commerce and why they should not break up Amazon. And here's the thing. When you're paid not to understand something, you're never going to understand it. So when you're paid not to understand why that concentration of power is bad, you're never going to understand it. So what do we have? Wireless.

16:08Verizon and AT &T control 70 % of the U.S. market. Soft drinks. Coke and Pepsi, 70 % of the U.S. soda market. E-commerce. Amazon, again, somewhere between 40 % and 50%, depending on how you account for it. According to the Brookings Institution, 75 % of U.S. industries have seen an increase in concentration over the past two decades. It's everything from home improvement to big chicken to big pharma. And what do they do when they have a lack of competition or they kind of wink at each other and cooperate? They raise prices. In sum, there's been a transfer of wealth from lower - and middle-income households that don't have a lot of stocks to these companies in the form of higher prices.

16:45Why do you think inflation is so fucking out of control? Every year, companies get more productive, which means they should be able to pass on the savings to the consumer. But instead, they increase their profits. And by the way, there's some ancillary benefit to that. It's great to be a shareholder, but what's happened to wages? Boom, they haven't moved at all, right? What's happened to household wealth? Well, the average has gone way up because the top 10%, the shareholders are killing it. So essentially, there's been a transfer of wealth from the lower and middle-class households to the households that own shares.

17:13So if you've made the jump from widespread from being an earner to an owner, you've done really well. But the earners now have higher costs and can never make that jump to being an owner. What's the result? Dynastic Cast System. Alphabet should be three companies. It should be YouTube, it should be their advertising, and then it's Search and other companies. It might be a spinoff Waymo. Apple Services should be a different company from Apple. Instagram should be an independent company, as should WhatsApp, for God's sakes. AWS should be an independent company, not part of Amazon where they cooperate and coordinate and get cheap capital to put every retailer, online retailer out of business.

17:52What would we have? Who wins? Shareholders. Who wins? Employees. Who wins? Society, lower rents. Who wins? The tax base. Who loses? The one person who has dual class super voting shares who wants to sit on the iron throne of all seven realms, not just Westeros. We absolutely need an absolute breakup palooza to bring costs down, to bring rents down on consumers. The concentration of industry in the United States is the culprit around inflation. Thanks for the question. That's all for this episode. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to officehours at propertymedia.com.

18:31That's officehours at propertymedia.com. Or if you prefer to ask on Reddit, just post your question on the Scott Galloway subreddit, and we just might feature it in an upcoming episode.

18:50This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez. Our intern is Dan Chalon. Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prop G pod from the Box Media Podcast Network. We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice, as read by George Hahn. And please follow our Prof G Markets pod wherever you get your pods for new episodes every Monday and Thursday.

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