Tommy Walker is the founder of The Content Studio, a content marketing consultancy for Fortune 1,000 companies and fast growing B2B startups. Prior to founding The Content Studio, Tommy was the Global Editor-in-Chief at QuickBooks, and the first marketing hire at Shopify Plus. Currently, he hosts "The Cutting Room" where he interviews industry-leading marketers about their content marketing philosophy, process, and pre-game before they edit an article live. Guests have been from companies like Asana, Calendly, Docusign, Vimeo and more.
🔸 Edit-a-thon ft. Erica Schneider 🔸
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Top of mind:
No real big insights this week.
My son had his 13th birthday this past Tuesday, I'm at a conference, and planning out the next couple editions of this newsletter.
Something I've been thinking about, as I know you've been too, is "The Playbook."
You know the one:
- Write the blog to
- Promote the ebook to
- Capture the email, to
- Sell the thing, then
- Start a YouTube to
- Repurpose as a podcast to
- Chop it up to a million pieces to
- Share it everywhere so you can
- Get people to the blog and
- Repeat the process.
I've been asked a few times this week what I think about it, and quite honestly, I'm torn.
One part of me says that "The Playbook" is overdone to the point of cliché, and another part of me questions if it's the playbook, or are we just bored?
I'll fully admit that I am.
But Devil's advocate, is boredom enough to change things up if it works?
I think about how much B2B marketers have been hemming and hawing (again, myself included) about how things haven't changed since 2009, but then I think about another format that's been running the same playbook for 8 decades.
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With little exception, the TV advertising model has remained largely unchanged since ads were introduced on July 1st, 1941.
You have the show, the ad runs within the commercial breaks.
There have been a few innovations, like sponsored TV shows alá The Colgate Comedy Hour in 1951, or Ninja Turtles and every Saturday morning cartoon created explicitly with the purpose of selling toys.
But for the most part, the mechanism of advertising on TV has been largely unchanged.
Even product placement predates TV by 55 years, when the Lumière brothers, featured soap in their film “Washing Day in Switzerland.”
Yet, look at the numbers in the graph above.
Ad spending has been mostly flat since 2014, and even at its lowest in 2020, hasn't dipped below 61 Billion dollars.
That's to say TV's "Playbook" has been the same for over 80 years because that's what works.
However...
Even though the playbook remains the same, the execution has not.
Standout TV ads have always been in tune with the zeitgeist.
Consider this Pepsi ad with Britney Spears from 2001.
This came out at a time when MTV was at the height of its popularity, and music videos were the most popular form of entertainment for Pepsi's target demographic.
It stood out among other advertising while fitting in with what people were consuming.
What I'm getting at is this...
Maybe "The Playbook" is tired. But then again, maybe it isn't.
There are only so many reliable ways to reach our customers and email and blogs will probably be the best of them.
Maybe most of us are bored because we've been watching the rise of creators like Mr. Beast or Casey Neistat, or Michelle Khare over the last several years, and we feel there's a gap between what they can do on their own and what we're allowed to do.
I don't know the answer, but I think we need to encourage leadership to look for inspiration beyond what's happening in their corner of the industry and look to what people are consuming in their off hours.
As cliché as it is, our competitors are not the competition.
It's everything else.
That's as terrifying as it is exciting, because while it means we have to step into the unknown, it also means we can experiment with new things that get us excited to open our laptops.
That's just me though, what do you think?
Want me to edit you?
Starting in 2024, I'm hosting a monthly writing workshop where we'll explore the concepts through the lens of your work. Join me, and a group of your peers live while I edit attendees work and discuss these concepts live.
What's on our radar?
Let's get social
I felt like my knowledge had peaked for quite a while, and as a result, the work I was producing felt stale.
At some point, I started actively seeking out creators who were far beyond where I was and I started dissecting what made their work...work.
This is a great reminder from Wil to continue doing this if you want to keep your skills sharp.
From "The Vault"
Eric Schneider's episode of The Cutting Room is by far the most popular, and there's a reason why.
In this article, she digs into structural, developmental, and content edits masterfully and gives feedback that is lovingly blunt.
There's a reason why we're doing an Edit-a-Thon together.
Read the article
Enter the Edit-a-Thon
Get edited by myself and Erica & join us live for some 2:1 coaching.
| I'd like to have my article edited please |
See you in the next one ✌️
One Washington Street suite 3108, Dover, NH 03820 |
The Studio Insider
Tommy Walker is the founder of The Content Studio, a content marketing consultancy for Fortune 1,000 companies and fast growing B2B startups. Prior to founding The Content Studio, Tommy was the Global Editor-in-Chief at QuickBooks, and the first marketing hire at Shopify Plus. Currently, he hosts "The Cutting Room" where he interviews industry-leading marketers about their content marketing philosophy, process, and pre-game before they edit an article live. Guests have been from companies like Asana, Calendly, Docusign, Vimeo and more.
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