Creating Superfans Podcast Episode 314: Steve Pratt

Brittany Hodak [00:00:00]:
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Creating Superfans podcast. Here’s the deal. If your customers aren’t telling their friends how awesome you are, you’re in trouble. But don’t worry. By the end of this episode, you’ll have some brand new tips for how to turn more of your customers into super fans. This week, I’m thrilled to welcome Steve Pratt to the podcast. Steve is the author of the brand new book, Earn It, Unconventional Strategies for Brave Marketers, and he’s the founder of the creativity business, which is a consulting company that helps brands develop differentiated content. He’s also the cofounder of the world’s 1st branded podcast agency, Pacific Content, which was named one of Entrepreneur Magazine’s 100 Brilliant Companies.

Brittany Hodak [00:00:41]:
His book is amazing, and this conversation is so much fun. If you’re struggling to overpower apathy with your customers or to keep them engaged, you will love the tips Steve is about to share for creating unexpected content and earning more attention. Let’s dive right in. Steve, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Steve Pratt [00:01:02]:
I’m so happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Brittany Hodak [00:01:05]:
So why did you decide to write earn it?

Steve Pratt [00:01:08]:
Well, it’s a it’s a bit of a long story. I’m gonna try and keep it tight, but I have been obsessed since I was a a kid with doing things differently and trying to stand out from all the other things, whether it’s like a school project or a presentation or anything like that. And, I got into the media, career wise, and I got a lot of jobs by you know, when you get asked why should we hire you, it was always, well, give everybody here the same project. Mine’s gonna be the only one you remember in a week or 2. As and it got me a lot of jobs doing that, if you can actually pay off and deliver that. So I’ve been kind of obsessed with being a bit unconventional and and earning attention for a long time. And it led to starting a podcast company where we helped brands learn how to earn attention by doing things differently and kinda acting like media companies and learned a lot a lot a lot of ideas and strategies and tactics for how to do that as marketers. And I left the podcast company a couple years ago and realized that there are still a lot of people who could benefit from all the ideas about building your own audience and making things that people value and look forward to hearing from you, and wanted to share them in an unconventional and entertaining way.

Steve Pratt [00:02:24]:
And that’s the, that is the book.

Brittany Hodak [00:02:27]:
And the book is called earn it, unconventional strategies for brave marketers, which is it’s a fantastic book. I absolutely loved it, devoured it so quickly. But you could have also called this book you’re doing it wrong because that’s kind of the through line through the book, right, is you take aim in a very helpful and constructive way, but you kind of tear down a lot of what has become established norms and accepted norms of what advertising is.

Steve Pratt [00:02:58]:
Yeah. It’s it’s interesting. And I I I’m generally a very optimistic person, and I I don’t like, you know, pointing the finger at anybody, but I think there is a real opportunity to question whether the things that we all take for granted are actually working anymore, because a lot of the, you know, bedrock of the way things work in the world with attention has changed. And I don’t think that marketing and advertising has changed enough to adapt to that. So we used to all be part of this thing where we all culturally bought into, well, we’re if we wanna watch the shows or listen to the shows or listen to the music we want on the radio or television, Part of the deal is we’re gonna get interrupted by these ads, and that’s how we get things for free. And the Internet changed all of that, and there’s still a lot of companies that are their primary interaction with customers or audiences is to interrupt them with things that they don’t want and that are very selfish and annoying. And the interesting opportunity is to think about, well, media companies are really good at making things that people like spending time with or that create value for them. Brands can just start doing that themselves and build their own audiences if they change their mindset and start thinking about creating value that can only come from them that people look forward to spending time with.

Steve Pratt [00:04:16]:
And, you you know, so when brands start doing that, you see it, like, an an enormous amount of time and engagement and, you know, a lot of the stuff that you talk about in your book, which I also love, building trust and relationships by wowing people instead of being the thing that annoys them. It’s a it sounds really obvious, but not enough people are doing it.

Brittany Hodak [00:04:40]:
And why do you think more people aren’t doing it yet, especially big brands with huge budgets? Obviously, there are some monetary restraints that that people can point to, although you make so many cases and arguments in your book of things that you can do that cost very little or nothing that people will enjoy and look forward to. But for the big brands who do have the budgets, why has it taken so long for this idea to catch on when there are so many proof points, many of which you share in the book, of brands having wild success by thinking about content this way?

Steve Pratt [00:05:11]:
Well, the this is you know, the other thing I could have called the book is, you know, unpopular, strategies for brave marketers, because it’s it’s hard work, is the is the short answer is it’s not easy. It’s very easy to buy a giant reach based ad campaign and just spray it everywhere and annoy 99% of the people to get 1% conversion on an advertising campaign. That’s easy. It is easy to talk about yourself and to talk about how great your company is or how great your products and services are. It is hard to think about creating a generous gift that is gonna create value for other people. And it is hard to think about how relationships are built over time and to have patience by being consistently awesome in your relationship when all the pressure on companies is we need short term ROI. We need sorry. We need short term ROI.

Steve Pratt [00:06:09]:
We need revenue coming in. We need new customers coming in immediately. Life doesn’t really work that way when it comes to relationships. Like, if somebody did that to you in the dating world and on their first date, they’re talking about, like, we really need to get married and start having children and buy a house right away, it would send you running for the hills. And yet I think that that’s kind of where the a lot of the marketing pressure is to deliver results quickly. And that is why most people don’t buy into doing the thing that actually works, which is having patience over time and doing awesome stuff over time that brings joy and generosity to the people you’re trying to reach.

Brittany Hodak [00:06:46]:
Well, I it’s such a great point, and I think you see it happening simultaneously in a couple of different areas because, absolutely, there is that pressure there of, you know, we gotta we gotta hit these numbers by the end of the quarter, and we gotta be able to show growth for the shareholders, and we gotta do this. And people are looking at their stock price every single day. And then also internally, especially when we’re talking about larger brands, the average tenure for a brand manager, depending on the industry, is is anywhere from 18 to 24 months. So you have people who are constantly coming in saying, well, I wanna change everything because I’ve gotta make my mark instantly to show what I’ve done that the last brand manager didn’t do so that I can have those quarterly numbers look really good for 3 or 4 quarters and then get promoted to a bigger brand. And then it starts all over again, right, with the new person who comes in. And so I do think that that is a part of it, that there isn’t a long term connection or commitment between the brands and the customers. And even if the customer wants to commit to the brand, things seem to be changing all of the time.

Steve Pratt [00:07:51]:
And it’s interesting. Like, one of the pieces that I took away from your book, which, you know, it related a lot to one of the first customers that the podcast company ever had, which was Slack, was just the value of creating these exceptional brand touch points at at every opportunity that every time somebody interacts with your brand, it determines what they think of your brand. And, you know, when we were making podcasts, the CMO of Slack at the time, this really brilliant guy named Bill Macaitis, was like, you know, we know that there’s only you know, we need a certain number of exceptional brand touch points with Slack before somebody signs up to start a team or become a paying customer. And with great content, like a fabulous podcast that’s a real show and not, you know, kind of a thinly veiled infomercial for Slack, we can put people on a schedule of giving them amazing brand touch points over and over and over again and use things like, you know, a net promoter score to see, are we wowing people to the point where they’re gonna talk about it? And that informed a lot of the work that we’ve done. I think a lot of the thinking that went into all of our future clients was how do we set this bar really, really high where, you know, people’s heads explode with, like, wow. I can’t believe that this brand is making my favorite show. I’m looking forward to the next episode and can’t wait to spend more time with them. If you’re a marketer, like, think about how weird that would be if, you know, you went to somebody’s door and knocked on the door and be like, hey.

Steve Pratt [00:09:14]:
Can I come in and hang out in your living room with your family for half an hour every 2 weeks? The answer would be like, absolutely not. That I’m not carpooling with you. I’m not hanging out in your living room. Like, there’s nothing. But when you make something really valuable like a podcast or a video or or, you know, a book or a newsletter, you get to spend lots and lots of time where people are opt opting in and excited to hear from you. I think that’s a huge, huge opportunity.

Brittany Hodak [00:09:38]:
Well and I think that meeting was like is that where you pitched your now infamous graphic? Was that the meeting where you were trying to land the client for the podcast company?

Steve Pratt [00:09:47]:
Yes. Yeah. So we

Brittany Hodak [00:09:48]:
Talk a little bit about that.

Steve Pratt [00:09:50]:
So we, had this idea where we knew what was needed to be successful for a podcast, and it’s a very basic, like, x y graph. And on the bottom axis is this this term we use called creative bravery, which is, are you going to make a real show? Are you gonna make something that is so good that it feels like it could have come from a media company or amazing creator? Or are you gonna make something that feels like it is corporate propaganda? And so you can measure, you know, along this scale, where’s your creative bravery? And you can tell it starts sliding downwards when it’s like, well, your CEO is hosting the show, or you’re interviewing your own customers. You’re talking about your own products and services, all those sorts of things. Maybe the best litmus test for great creative bravery is what I tell people about this if I didn’t work here. And if you can say yes confidently, you know, or if you could say, you know, at the end of spending time with this thing, would I say this is time well spent? If I had a chance to go back and read you know, make my choice about whether to consume this again, would I say yes again? That’s what that’s how the bar for earning people’s attention on the creative bravery side. And the commitment side, is about are we gonna tell people about it? Because, you know, in in the digital space, everybody starts with 0 people who are in your audience. But the amazing secret is brands actually have a lot of real superpowers for promoting great content. They’re just not used to doing it and promoting things like a media company or a movie studio.

Steve Pratt [00:11:21]:
And I remember we, we had this meeting in our boardroom with our founders, trying to figure out how to get bigger audiences for the shows we were gonna put out and how to teach people about how to activate, you know, all their all the powers inside their company to promote their shows. And our CFO said, like, it’s it’s commitment. It is about committing to using all these things. And so that’s the other axis in the graph on the vertical is commitment. Make a great show. Tell all the right people about it with all your powers, and you end up with an a very nice successful marketing strategy, of a lot of people spending a lot of time with you learning about who you are and building a relationship with you. And so we’re like, let’s try this out with a client, and we were out at a, a restaurant in, San Francisco with the people at Slack. And we’re like, can we run an idea by you? And they’re like, sure.

Steve Pratt [00:12:11]:
And so we had a charcuterie board in front of us. And on the wooden thing, we laid out, like, a knife and a fork to build the access. And then we put all these different pizzas of meats meat and cheese all over the board and explained this creative bravery and commitment graph. And we’re like, you wanna be way up here and have this pile of meat up in the, high creative bravery and commitment thing. And, anyways, they loved it and were like, totally buy into it. And we have used that ever since, and I still use it today as, like, the very simple, easy to understand way of how to find success, putting content out into the universe.

Brittany Hodak [00:12:44]:
We just have to be up here with the pile of pepperonis.

Steve Pratt [00:12:47]:
Exactly. Yes. It’s it’s it’s insightful, and it’s also delicious. So, you know,

Brittany Hodak [00:12:52]:
that’s a

Steve Pratt [00:12:52]:
double win. Yeah.

Brittany Hodak [00:12:54]:
Well and for anybody thinking, oh, that’s pretty simple, x y axis, yes. We wanna be up there. One of my favorite illustrations from the book was one you actually borrowed from, I don’t remember if this was one of the attention coaches that you mentioned or not, but it’s just punctuation. But its simplicity is absolutely brilliant and does such a great job of setting up the entire premise of everything that follows in the book. So talk to me about your incredible use of punctuation to make a point in this book, Steve.

Steve Pratt [00:13:21]:
Yeah. So this came from, one of my favorite writers, a guy named AJ Jacobs, who is kind of a an experiential journalist and did books like the year of living biblically, where he followed every rule in the Bible literally for a year to see what he could learn from it. He wrote a book a couple of years ago called The Puzzler, which is about our obsession with puzzles and games and things like Wordle. And he talked to a Japanese puzzle maker who explained the magic of why we are obsessed with puzzles and games. And it’s question mark and then an arrow and then an exclamation mark. And the question mark is what’s the problem that you’re trying to solve. There’s a problem or a question that needs to be answered. The arrow is the process where you’re noodling around and trying to figure out how to solve it, and the exclamation mark is the moment when you actually realize what the solution is.

Steve Pratt [00:14:13]:
And the magic of this thing is that we all think it’s about the exclamation mark, but it’s really about the arrow. It is about the process of figuring out how to solve the problem creatively that is where all the magic is. And I know it’s about puzzles, but it applies to so much stuff. Like, it’s it’s almost you know, I should get it tattooed on me somewhere because it feels like it’s the secret to life for me.

Brittany Hodak [00:14:34]:
It does feel like the secret to life.

Steve Pratt [00:14:36]:
Yeah. And it and it and, you know, and it also applies to figuring out how to earn people’s attention is that there is a problem you’re trying to solve of, like, how do we earn the attention of the people we are seeking to reach? And you’re gonna get to the moment, but you have to go through a real process of figuring out how to do that. There’s no shortcuts. There’s no tips. There’s no hacks. You actually have to do the hard work of figuring out who these people are and what the gaps are where they’re not being served properly and how something that only you have can benefit them in a big way, then you have this moment, and you end up with the high creative bravery and and commitment piece. But, I I love the punctuation piece.

Brittany Hodak [00:15:18]:
Yeah. And it’s almost you you’re so right. It does feel like it is a statement on life in addition to business, so I totally cosign on you getting a tattoo of that. The other thing that I was thinking is that it feels almost like a flywheel if you think about it because you start with the question, you have the journey, you get to the And what does the almost always do? It leads to another question. Right? So you go back and start it all again. So now you have the next question and the next phase of the journey, the next big breakthrough moment, and it starts again and again and again. And, obviously, with episodic content, that makes sense. But to your point before, with sort of life in general or I’m always looking through the lens of customer experience, kind of the what is the next experience with the customer, how do we go deeper with the customer, what’s the next step, It very much applies to that as well.

Brittany Hodak [00:16:04]:
So it’s very, appropriate that it comes from a Japanese puzzle master.

Steve Pratt [00:16:09]:
I also have to say, like, to your point on the fact it keeps going, I just love the concept of iteration and experiments in all of life also, but particularly in this space. It’s been so valuable to just keep thinking about, like, how how can we tinker and make this even better? Or if that worked, but it was kinda, like, 80% if we wanted, how can we do, say, few things differently and keep finding out new question marks to go and explore the process and find new exclamation marks. It’s, it’s a really fulfilling creative process, but it also really delivers a lot a lot of results when you’re like, it’s never baked and done forever. It’s always an open iteration process of trying new things to see what’s new and what’s changed.

Brittany Hodak [00:16:48]:
Well and I think that is one of the really great things about this book is it it doesn’t just sort of speak to the sometimes absurdity of what we’ve all been trained to. Right? Like, at one point, you put fake ads in the book, and you’re like, doesn’t that feel weird? Like and it the only reason it feels weird is because we’ve been trained that a book doesn’t have ads in it, but a magazine has ads in it. Right? And so sort of this, this level of of ridiculousness of thinking about how we’ve sort of, as you said, just come to accept that the price of being on the Internet or listening to the radio or watching a show on network TV is that somebody’s gonna interrupt us to, you know, try to sell us something because we are the product. So I love the idea of sort of questioning the norms, but then also reimagining what the future can look like, not just as it comes to creating media, but also consuming media. And I thought that was a a really interesting thing for marketers to think about is what is the experience that you’re building for your customers? What is the experience where they’re hearing about you for the first time engaging with you, and do they want to tell their friends? Like, is this something that I want to share? And, you know, you open the book with a really great story and really gripping case study and example from Red Bull and how they have continued to earn 1,000,000,000 and billions of eyeballs, not because they’re paying for them, but because people want to give them their eyeballs again and again and again and again and again throughout all of this brave and courageous marketing. And so I’m curious what you suggest for now the book’s been out in the world for a few weeks. People are reading it. People are writing into you.

Brittany Hodak [00:18:26]:
For people who say, I wanna do this. I wanna be more brave. I wanna be more courageous. I wanna come up with content people love. I don’t know where to start. What do you say to people? Where do you tell them to to jump off on this adventure?

Steve Pratt [00:18:39]:
Well, I I mean, the book’s a great start, obviously. Yeah. So have

Brittany Hodak [00:18:43]:
one. Read it. Burn it.

Steve Pratt [00:18:45]:
Yeah. It’s interesting because, you know, like, in some ways, red Red Bull is such an amazing example, but it can also be really daunting for other companies to be, like, we’re not Red Bull. I’ve worked with so many different companies in different industries and some things where you may think like, oh, we’re I’m in an insurance company or I’m in a financial industries company. We’re not Red Bull. Everybody has expertise and information, you know, that that resides only with them that is valuable to other people. And I think, you know, if you were to teach a course to your potential customers or an audience that you would like to build or group of people you’d like to connect with, what are the things that you know that other people would value? And think about how you could package that in a way that would be different than what they’re getting. Sorry. Think about how you can package that in a way that is different than what they’re getting from anywhere else.

Steve Pratt [00:19:39]:
Make something memorable and interesting that is sharing what you already know and you’re already an expert in, that’s like the a very easy instant shortcut to creating value for other people. You know, for me, I I also like to think of it as, like a gift. What is the gift that you could give to people that only you can give that they would highly value? Everybody has that. If you have a successful business or you have a business where you have paying customers, there’s I have zero doubt there is stuff that you know that other people are gonna value. And it’s a question of, like, how can you package that or share it in a way that is very generous, where people will be excited to get it.

Brittany Hodak [00:20:16]:
Absolutely. And a quote that I probably shared this on the show before, but from my friend Rory Baden, he says, you’re most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were.

Steve Pratt [00:20:27]:
Yes. Yeah. And that’s

Brittany Hodak [00:20:28]:
about the lessons that you’ve learned and the things that you do. And I was I was just on a call yesterday with a young mortgage professional, and he’s, like, 19 years old. He’s so excited. He is you know, this is what he wants to see for forever, but he knows that people are going to be dismissive of him sometimes because of his age. Like, he may have clients that are, you know, older buying maybe their 2nd, 3rd, 4th home, whatever, who are gonna say, I’m not gonna work with a 19 year old kid. What do you know? And so he was talking to me about that, and I said, don’t care. Who cares? Like, don’t worry about them. That’s not your audience.

Brittany Hodak [00:21:06]:
Like, there are always gonna be people who are dismissive. You’re not trying to get everybody to pick you. You’re trying to get the right people to say, I would never wanna work with anybody else. And he said, you know, I feel like I and it’s, like, a really, like, good good looking young kid. And he was like, I feel like I should create content, and I don’t know what to do. And I said, well, what content do you like? And he started talking about what he liked on TikTok, and I was like, well, do that. Make that

Steve Pratt [00:21:28]:
I was literally gonna say tell him to start a TikTok channel because that’s exactly

Brittany Hodak [00:21:32]:
what a mortgage broker

Steve Pratt [00:21:32]:
is gonna do.

Brittany Hodak [00:21:33]:
Right away. And I was like, and you don’t don’t feel like you have to be talking about, like, interest rates and, you know, PMI insurance and, like, all of these these things of, like, you know, FHA versus conventional. Like, that that’s not what the content of your channel should be. You should be meeting people where they’re at, creating the kind of content that you enjoy because you know if you enjoy it, other people like you are going to enjoy it, and and and that’s what you should be doing. Like, stop trying to figure out how to make a 45 or 50 year old not look down their nose at you because you’re 19 years old. Like, that is that is not the audience. That is not the path, and you’re never gonna make everybody wanna choose you. So why not be the best choice for the right subset of people?

Steve Pratt [00:22:15]:
You know what? I I love that so much. It’s such a great story because I I see in so many cases, it is like champion the thing that makes you different. The thing that you think might be the thing that that is your weakness may be your greatest strength. And, you know, like, figuring out what makes you weird or different and doubling down on it instead of avoiding it is actually a path to finding your group of superfans. Right? Like, it it it I gotta tell you a strange story is I had finished writing the manuscript of my book when I’ve read creating superfans, and I have the term superfans in my book also. I’m like, oh, this is crazy that, they were in there, but, like and, oddly, mine is also from a music background. But this idea of really super serving a niche of people and not being for everybody is also an amazing way to as a shortcut to think about how can I create a ton of value where I don’t have a lot of competition because I’m the only one serving this group of people in this way? And the 19 year old mortgage broker is gonna stand out from every other mortgage broker because he’s 19 and because he’s probably the only one on TikTok. And I think he will find his group of people, and all the other people are like, I’m not gonna use a 19 year old.

Steve Pratt [00:23:27]:
Yeah. Awesome. Go to the same other boring ones that, everybody else is competing with. Own your own your audience and champion the fact of what makes you different.

Brittany Hodak [00:23:37]:
Absolutely. Erin King, who’s a friend of mine who I’ve had on this show before, said her grandmother used to always say to her, I’d rather be somebody’s shot of whiskey than everybody’s cup of tea.

Steve Pratt [00:23:48]:
I love that. That’s such a great. That is a way better expression than what I use. It’s like, why why be something that everybody likes when you can be something that people love? Or why you know, when I think about ads, why buy things and interrupt people with things that they hate when you instead, you could choose to, you know, give people things that they love? Finding smaller groups of people and doubling down on how to superserve them is an amazing, amazing strategy. And I I think that that’s also a missed opportunity because I you know, when we think about doing things differently, I think that common perception is more is better always. You know, it’s always better to reach more and more people or that success is measured in the number of people you reach. And for me, I find, you know, particularly with marketing, but, you know, with almost anything, it’s really it’s more about the depth of the relationship you build with people and how much time and attention you get to spend with them. And I would rather spend much more time and have a much deeper connection with a smaller, tighter group of people who are a 100% in, super fans, than have a, you know, super thin relationship with, lots of people who don’t really care very much.

Brittany Hodak [00:24:58]:
Yeah. A really great question is, how bummed would people be if your brand went away? Like, if you were no longer doing the thing you did, would they be like, alright. Why are you even emailing me to tell me? Like, who cares? Or would they be so bummed out?

Steve Pratt [00:25:13]:
Yeah. I I I and I think that that’s a great bar to strive for is, like, it would be wonderful to strive to be missed, you know, because people care. And I don’t know how many people think about that day to day, every single interaction you put out from your brand for people, is this something that is gonna people would miss it if I didn’t put it out? It sets a very high bar for yourself, and I think that’s awesome.

Brittany Hodak [00:25:38]:
So I know you were looking at so many different brands, big and small, as you were writing this book, putting this book together. I’m sure it probably, heightened your sense of paying attention to things and the content that people are putting out in this world. So I’m curious. Who who are some brands that you think are really crushing it right now, doing a really great job of earning attention?

Steve Pratt [00:25:57]:
So I saw one 2 days ago, that a guy named Tobin from a a company called Pilgrim, shared with me on LinkedIn, and it is a breakfast cereal called Surreal, surreal. And, you know, when you you we were talking earlier about, like, oh, what about budgets and how do we figure out how to do creative creatively brave things with when we’re not a big brand. This is a masterclass for me and just ideas are free and creative ideas stand out. They did a LinkedIn post with this, like, I don’t know, like, a 30 page gallery on LinkedIn about and the premise was we’re not a cat a cat food company. We are a cereal company. Please stop getting us confused with being a cat food company. And it was and and there’s this whole bizarre thing about how they like posting pictures of pets, and people started mistaking their cereal for cat food. And so there was, like, this whole, you know, almost like a thesis deck of, like, why they’re actually a great cereal company.

Steve Pratt [00:27:02]:
And and you’re like, this is the strangest thing I’ve ever seen. But I went through every single slide in their deck. I’m on a podcast talking to them about you, with you now about Surreal, the high protein, healthy breakfast cereal that tastes great. And I only know this because they had, you know, kind of like a a fake dilemma about being confused with cat food. So, I don’t know. That that’s the thing that is most recent for me, but I I will tell you I also love you know, in the book, I talk a lot about Oatly and the Poo Pourri bathroom spray, and I’ve been fascinated in the last year with Duolingo and, you know, their unhinged marketing on TikTok. And it is all stuff that stands out and people who are brave enough to say, this is who we are. This is our voice, and we’re gonna do things differently than everybody else because that’s what people are gonna actually notice and remember and tell other people about.

Steve Pratt [00:27:59]:
And I think today, like, boring conventional average doesn’t cut it. And if you’re 2nd, 3rd, 4th best, or you’re copying things that are already out there, not many people are gonna wanna spend that much time with you and no one’s gonna talk about you. But when you do something differently and it’s really interesting or entertaining or valuable, that’s when you get the superfans and people start talking about it and, all of those examples. But, you know, surreal is the latest, I pay attention to, and I love telling people about it.

Brittany Hodak [00:28:28]:
I love it. That’s such a fun example. And, you know, this also speaks to one of the things that I talk about, which is when somebody hears about your brand from somebody else, they are statistically more likely to tell someone else about it because there’s social proof that exists already. My friend said this was gonna be great, and it is. So they’re more likely to tell and share because it feels like there’s a less potential reputational damage that they could suffer if they were wrong and you’re actually not awesome because now, you know, they’ve they’ve got the social proof from somebody else. So when you create these engaging experiences that people are talking about, then you’re more likely to have several layers of benefits of the person that somebody told telling somebody else. Right? That’s the virality that we’re all so familiar with of when people create great content.

Steve Pratt [00:29:15]:
Yeah. That’s interesting too because they you know, almost by definition, they end up being really good stories, which makes them easy to tell to other people as well. And everybody likes to tell entertaining stories or to be the person who has the new nugget about the thing that is unusual that it kinda reflects well on you when you’re the curator of interesting stories. So, you know, if you can create those stories and you’re the home of interesting, like, interesting unexpected things that break people’s patterns or surprise them, those are the things that people talk about. Again, no one talks about the things that we all know how it’s gonna happen, and it’s very predictable and and conventional.

Brittany Hodak [00:29:52]:
Yeah. And, you know, something you said before that is so smart and I think the ultimate test of content that you’re creating, whether it’s for a big brand, a small brand, a personal brand, a huge corporate brand, would I care about this if I didn’t work here? And if the answer is no and if your intention is to attract customers who do not get paychecks from your company, then maybe go back to the drawing board because that is a terrible litmus test of, oh, the 14 people working on this campaign all gave it an obligatory like on social media.

Steve Pratt [00:30:23]:
Yeah. It’s so interesting. Like, I if if one really good example of this, I’ll I’ll keep it short, but we worked with Dell Technologies on a podcast called Trailblazers, and they knew exactly what they wanted to do with this show. It was for senior IT business decision makers and C suite executives, and they were trying to change the positioning of their brand from Dell laptops and servers to Dell Technologies as, you know, a company that really understood digital transformation and innovation and disruption. And they made the show called Trailblazers, which traces the history of a different industry with all the different points of innovation and disruption in it, told by the executives who were there and made those decisions. And they had 2 interesting choices they made. 1 was, who should host this show? Should it be Michael Dell? He would be an amazing host. He’d be a phenomenal host, but it would also signal to audiences, this might not be a real show.

Steve Pratt [00:31:22]:
This might be an infomercial for Dell. And so the group pushed back and was like, you know what? Let’s go after Walter Isaacson. Walter Isaacson is associated with innovation all over the place. He’s a journalist. He, you know, he’s in a he would be a phenomenal host. And so I I literally, sorry for all the coughing.

Brittany Hodak [00:31:42]:
You’ve been promoting your book. I get it. You’re talking a lot. You’ve been talking a lot in the past few weeks.

Steve Pratt [00:31:48]:
So I I just you know, he was working at the as Aspen Institute at that point. I Googled the Aspen Institute and called them and asked to speak to Walter Isaacson, and he ended up hosting the podcast. It was great. So instantly, one very big signal, this is not like, this is a real show. This is not an infomercial for Dell. The other one was, if you went into any podcast app and you could see this piece of artwork, it said, Trailblazers with Walter Isaacson. And there was no Dell logo on it. There’s nothing.

Steve Pratt [00:32:19]:
And that was a very, very brave decision for them to make because, again, the pieces, what are the signals we’re sending to an audience about would I listen to this if I didn’t work here? If you’re add if adding your brand to something is a potential deterrent from people sampling it and trying to spend time with you, because it may signal that it’s about you sorry. It may signal that it’s about you rather than from you, Don’t put your logo on it. And, it turned out to be an enormously successful podcast where, you know, it’s been, like, added to curriculum in university because it’s such a good podcast with so many good business lessons. But it also all the research on it maps, like, a single exposure to this show compared to a control group. You like Dell more. You remember who made the show because it was a surprisingly great show, and you map Dell to understanding innovation and disruption and transformation. That’s the opportunity of making something really great instead of kinda sabotaging yourself by turning it into, like, a a logo wall.

Brittany Hodak [00:33:24]:
Such great advice. Yeah. Don’t feel like you have to put your logo everywhere or lead with your logo. Let it be your customer’s ideas to find you to think you’re great.

Steve Pratt [00:33:35]:
Yeah.

Brittany Hodak [00:33:35]:
Well, thank you so much for sharing all of these wonderful ideas with us today. Where can people go to to hear more from you? Obviously, we’ll link to the book, earn it. It’s a fantastic book. Everybody should check it out. Where can people go to find more about you and your work?

Steve Pratt [00:33:50]:
Very easy. Stevepratt.com is my home base for everything. I just wanna say thank you. Like, I I feel like you and I are kindred spirits on this, and I’ve been looking forward to this conversation because I loved all the ideas in your book so much. And, you know, I have I have these attention coaches in my book, which are, like, these really very smart, awesome experts who kinda help people along the way. I wish I had known you before I started writing this because you would have been an amazing attention coach in my book because all your ideas are very, very aligned, from your experience and your, you know, your expertise. So, yeah, thanks for doing this. I had a really great chat with you.

Brittany Hodak [00:34:25]:
Well, thanks so much, Steve. I really enjoyed the conversation as well, and I really did love the book. I know I told you this, in email and even before we started it. I always know, when I feel like those, like, little, you know, pinches of jealousy, that it’s gonna be a great book when you’re like, oh, I wish I had thought of this. Oh, I wish I had done this. Oh, I wish I had said this. Like, it is a fantastic book, a phenomenal book. I’m happy to say that we we share we share a publisher in page 2, and the team did an incredible job with this, just really knocked it out of the park.

Brittany Hodak [00:34:53]:
But, it is a really great book to really challenge many of the things that you’ve learned or been told, and not to just keep doing things the way they’ve always been done because that’s the way they’ve always been done. Because if you wanna change the future and if you wanna earn attention both from people who know you are ready and people who may hear about you from their friends, then you gotta start thinking about things a little different.

Steve Pratt [00:35:17]:
Thank you.

Brittany Hodak [00:35:18]:
Awesome. Thanks, Steve. Come back soon. That’s it for today’s episode. Please help me out by leaving a review for the show or sharing it with a friend. Until next time, remember, don’t settle for standard. Be super.