Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Escaping the Drift - The Weekly Drop: Unlocking the Power of Controversy
Fri, 6 Dec 2024
Generating buzz might sound risky, but it can be the secret weapon your brand needs to thrive. Join me, Jon Gafford, as I unpack the surprising power of controversy in brand marketing. We'll dissect Jaguar's audacious ad campaign that had everyone talking, and I'll draw connections to the legendary New Coke saga from the 1980s. Discover how these bold moves, despite initial criticism, kept these brands in the spotlight, illustrating that sometimes, breaking the mold can yield the most dramatic results. With insights from the likes of Apple, this episode offers actionable strategies to keep your business at the forefront of public conversation, no matter how fast the news cycle spins. In the second half of the episode, I share my enthusiasm for our latest "Escaping the Drift" content. There’s nothing as rewarding as connecting with our podcast community, and I hope you find as much value and excitement in the episode as I did. Stay engaged by visiting escapingthedrift.com for updates, and help us grow by leaving a five-star review and spreading the word. Let's continue to support each other and expand our reach as we chart new territories in the podcasting world. 💬 Did you enjoy this weekly drop? Tell us all about it in the comment section below! ☑️ If you liked this video, consider subscribing to Escaping The Drift with John Gafford ************* 💯 About John Gafford: After appearing on NBC's "The Apprentice", John relocated to the Las Vegas Valley and founded several successful companies in the real estate space. ➡️ The Gafford Group at Simply Vegas, top 1% of all REALTORS nationwide in terms of production. Simply Vegas, a 500 agent brokerage with billions in annual sales Clear Title, a 7-figure full-service title and escrow company. ➡️ Streamline Home Loans - An independent mortgage bank with more than 100 loan officers. The Simply Group, A national expansion vehicle partnering with large brokers across the country to vertically integrate their real estate brokerages. ************* ✅ Follow John Gafford on social media: Instagram ▶️ / thejohngafford Facebook ▶️ / gafford2 🎧 Stream the new Weekly Drop here: Listen On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7cWN80gtZ4m4wl3DqQoJmK?si=2d60fd72329d44a9 Listen On Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/escaping-the-drift-with-john-gafford/id1582927283 ************* #weeklydrop #johngafford #brandmarketing #controversy #jaguar #newcoke #apple #publicity #fastpacednewscycle #productlaunches #buzz #escapingthedrift #podcastcommunity #loyalaudience #mailinglist #fivestarreview #mutualsupport #chartingnewterritories
Chapter 1: What is the main topic of this episode?
From the podcast that gets you from where you are to where you want to be, escaping the drift, this is The Weekly Drop with Jon Gafford. No matter what platform you're watching or listening to us on, make sure you like, subscribe, and comment. And now, The Drop. What's up, everybody? Time for your weekly drop from... My podcast, it takes you from where you are to where you want to be.
And I got to tell you, man, I'm a little under the weather today. I'm feeling a little rough, feeling like I don't want to do this. But you know what? Like anything great in life, if you don't want to do it, that's when you have to do it. And last week was Thanksgiving, so we didn't do an episode. So I was like, you know what? I'm going to come down to the studio. I'm going to tough it out.
I'm going to be there for you guys today. And I want to talk about something. You know, as fast as the news cycle moves, I need you guys to go way back in time for me. Way back in time to last week. Because things come in and out of the news so fast. I know that. But this was pretty big news last week. And I really thought a lot about it. And I wanted to see what you guys thought.
Chapter 2: Why did Jaguar's controversial ad campaign spark discussion?
So if you didn't see it, everybody did because everybody was talking about it. But Jaguar came out with a new branding package last week that was really bizarre. It was like off the wall, like crazy gender bending, you know, actors and models. And it had nothing to do with a car and just a really artsy, super over the top type ad that came out that they did. And they got blasted.
And every talking head from Charlie Kirk to Fox News, everybody was talking about this. Everybody was talking about it. And they were saying how stupid they were, how the election was proof that the woke culture was done and people don't want this anymore and why would you do this and this and that. And I saw it instantly for something completely different. And this is what I saw it for.
One of my good friends, Dallas McCray, always used to say, man, you ain't got to worry about how people talk about you. It doesn't matter if you're talking good or talking bad. It's when they stop talking about you, you got a problem. And I looked at that. As soon as I saw the Jaguar ad, I thought about that. When's the last time you thought or talked about Jaguar?
And the answer is probably you didn't. And if you look at some major companies through the years and over the history of these big companies, sometimes people got to a point where they're like, we need a little bit of buzz. We need some buzz. We got to do something kind of off the wall.
So today what I'm going to talk about is why I think Jaguar did that and how important it is in some ways that you can create buzz for whatever your company is and whatever your company is doing and how to do that now. So the very first thing I thought about when I saw the Jaguar ad was new Coke. And for those of you that are younger and youngins, if you will, you won't probably remember this.
But back in the early 80s, when we had horse-drawn carriages and whatnot, no, I'm just kidding. But back in the early 80s, Pepsi started doing these taste tests everywhere, these blind taste tests against Coke. And they were heavily advertising these taste tests because people kept picking, in a blind taste test, they would pick Pepsi, which had a higher sugar content in it than Coke did.
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Chapter 3: What lessons can we learn from the New Coke saga?
So Coke comes out and says, for the first time in 100 years or whatever it was, we're going to reformulate our product and we're launching new Coke. And then they put out this new, completely different tasting formulation of what they had. They discontinued the original stuff. They got rid of it. And everybody started talking about Coke.
I mean, people were like, this is not as good, blah, blah, blah. And it was like upheaval over new Coke. But everybody was talking about Coke. And this was before the internet, before all that stuff. So this was literally just like mouth-to-mouth, hand-to-hand. The TV would talk about it, but whatever. It was just such a huge buzz over this product. And then what happened was this.
So now you got this huge company that's created all this buzz, maybe not for the right reasons, but people are buying the product to try it and they're mainly to see if they can just bitch about it. But then you have this giant outcry for like, we miss the old Coke, we miss the old Coke. And then Coca-Cola comes out and says, you know what, people? We hear you, we listen to you, we understand you.
We're going to launch classic Coke. And this was pretty close behind. It wasn't that far. And then they released classic Coke. And I can remember as a kid, right? I had some friends down the street, the Adamson's and there was always like Coke at their house. Right. And I can remember like it was their mom, maybe that like the day that classic Coke came out.
Cause they, they kind of, I don't remember if they said it was going to be like a limited edition deal or not, but But the day it came out, she went out and bought like 12 cases of like classic Coke, because people thought they were going to have to like hoard it. And it was so funny. But that little exercise, you know, eventually New Coke became a footnote.
They got rid of it and then they pushed forward. But it turned the tables on that Pepsi war. It got nobody talking about Pepsi anymore. Everybody was just talking about Coke. And over the long run, it changed their brand because that's how the value of buzz can help whatever it is you're doing. If you look at Apple, Like think about Apple. Apple launches all of their products on one day.
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Chapter 4: How can creating buzz benefit a brand?
Like they have the big Apple announcement. Now I get it, these days it's not as exciting with Steve Jobs gone because let's face it, it now weighs 0.10th of a gram less and has a little bit faster processor.
Hasn't really been anything great from Apple in a hot second, but there are still people that like wait for that countdown and wait for that show because they start to promote it as this big event and then they just drop it all like it's a big drop. And it creates a tremendous amount of buzz. And there's a book called Contagious, How to Build Word of Mouth in the Digital Age.
And in that it talks about one of the most important things to create buzz is having some exclusivity. And again, if you are a person or a service or a product and you're for everyone, then you're for no one. And you'll hear big companies think that way a lot. If you try to be for everyone, then you're gonna be for no one.
And so by having a exclusivity part to whatever it is you do, like for example, when I talk about real estate, me personally selling real estate anymore, I specifically tell people when I talk about real estate, if I'm gonna work with somebody buying or selling a home, I only work with high net worth clients. That's what I say anymore. That's where I'm at in my career. I only do this.
And then I really do only do that because it creates some exclusivity to work with me. You know, if you look at Tesla, who Elon Musk has just become a master at creating buzz around things, it doesn't always have to be good. Like just like the new Coke thing, right? If you think about what Tesla got the most buzz for in the last several years,
It was when he took that hammer, walked up to the cyber truck and broke the window. That wasn't supposed to be breakable. But who do you think was pushing that out harder than anybody else? Tesla was, because it was everywhere and everybody was talking about it. And nobody remembers that window breaking, but they were talking about Tesla. So lean into your imperfections.
Lean into those things that make you remarkable. Because there's a book called The Purple Cow by Seth Godin where it talks about businesses excel when they stand on being unique or remarkable. And remarkable doesn't always have to be remarkably good. It can just be remarkably interesting, remarkably funny, remarkably top of mind.
You know, my good friend Steve Sims always created a lot of buzz around him and his brand by doing one simple stupid thing. And that was he would go into back when they had the SkyMall magazines on the airplanes and he would go into the SkyMall magazine and he would find that if you remember what those were, they had just it was a collection of goofy stuff. Right.
And he would go into those magazines and we'd find like the weird like Bigfoot statue that you put in your yard that nobody's ordering. He would rip that statue out. He would write, I saw this and I thought of you. Put it in an envelope and send it to one of his clients. And he said the value of that was my clients would get it and be like, number one, why am I getting this?
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Chapter 5: What role does exclusivity play in marketing strategies?
Chapter 6: How does Apple maintain excitement around product launches?
It was when he took that hammer, walked up to the cyber truck and broke the window. That wasn't supposed to be breakable. But who do you think was pushing that out harder than anybody else? Tesla was, because it was everywhere and everybody was talking about it. And nobody remembers that window breaking, but they were talking about Tesla. So lean into your imperfections.
Chapter 7: What are some effective strategies to create brand buzz?
Lean into those things that make you remarkable. Because there's a book called The Purple Cow by Seth Godin where it talks about businesses excel when they stand on being unique or remarkable. And remarkable doesn't always have to be remarkably good. It can just be remarkably interesting, remarkably funny, remarkably top of mind.
You know, my good friend Steve Sims always created a lot of buzz around him and his brand by doing one simple stupid thing. And that was he would go into back when they had the SkyMall magazines on the airplanes and he would go into the SkyMall magazine and he would find that if you remember what those were, they had just it was a collection of goofy stuff. Right.
And he would go into those magazines and we'd find like the weird like Bigfoot statue that you put in your yard that nobody's ordering. He would rip that statue out. He would write, I saw this and I thought of you. Put it in an envelope and send it to one of his clients. And he said the value of that was my clients would get it and be like, number one, why am I getting this?
Number two, they would be at a dinner party and they would share it because it was remarkably interesting. Hey, this guy, Steve Sims, sent me this thing and said, hey, it's a Bigfoot statue. Why would he have thought of me when he saw this? And now the whole table is talking about Steve Sims.
And if you look at what Elon Musk has done, not just with breaking a window along those things, but he did something. And this is where now building a buzz becomes a little bit easier.
Because for the last several years, everybody that I know in business that has a big business, we've been a little terrified of getting canceled, of saying the wrong thing, of doing the wrong thing, of being perceived to be the wrong thing. and getting canceled. And it was a real fear with business owners that I know.
I know that for years I've taught, don't talk politics because half of the people you do business with aren't going to agree with you. It's just one of those things where you're so scared of doing this. But again, it goes back to that thing of if people don't know what you're for, then you're for no one. You can't be for everybody. No product is for everybody. You've got to be for something.
And I think Elon Musk, if you talk about one of the two, what launched that dude into the stratosphere, in my opinion, in the recent times of being everyone's hero, is when he sat on the stage after he bought Twitter. And that reporter asked him at that press conference, what do you have to say about all the advertisers pulling out or threatening to pull out because of you buying this?
And he looked right at the camera and he said, what do I think? I think go fuck yourself. I think he goes, you're going to blackmail me with money? Like something I literally have more of than anybody on the planet? That's how you're going to blackmail me? Go fuck yourself. And right there, that dude became an absolute hero to so many people that I know, me included.
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