You Are A Media Brand

If you like weather, you know all about Ryan Hall Y'All. His team covers severe weather like nobody else. That's an angry tornado there, folks.

At the peak of his coverage last week, he had around 300,000 people watching weather on YouTube ... if you assume bots and some people outside the country, it meant that 1 out of every 1,500 people in the United States were watching ... him.

With the money generated from his broadcasts, his team created the Y'All Bot ... enabling 24/7 live presentation of weather, narrated by a bot.

Users donated money to the effort on the right side of the image ... the bot announces/recognizes each contributor.

That's a weather enthusiast becoming a media brand right in front of our eyes.

I frequently reference Headphones.com ... leveraging a fusion of media, community, and commerce. I doubt you have the patience to watch three hours of programming about headphone theory, but each Saturday they give you the opportunity to test your patience.

You can nerd out on frequency response graphs during a review of a new in-ear monitor (iem).

COVID accelerated the fact that you are a media brand. I gave talks about this concept a decade ago, but we needed technology to evolve a bit, and we needed an event that changed how people created content (i.e. being at home in 2020).

Old-school catalog brands have always been media brands. It's been baffling to me that these companies willingly chose to not advance their media chops.

Look at Patagonia (click here). This is a media brand.

I know, you'll tell me that you aren't Patagonia. True. But you are certainly like Headphones.com or Griot's Garage, your sales are likely comparable to their net sales, correct? You could have created April Fool's content like Griot's Garage did. Look how cold, cloudy, and clammy it is in the South Sound in March.

You are a media brand. The advantage of being a media brand is that you don't have to pay Meta/Alphabet Facebook/Google for new customers. You put those platforms to work on your behalf when you are a media brand. I mean, seriously, you can't trust Meta with anything ... here's another example. Why do you pay them for anything?

Anyway, something to think about as you watch your retirement funds literally evaporate in real time.

P.S.: For those of you who are "hunkering down", it's really important to be a media brand. If you're spending 30% less on marketing, how do you increase sales to increase profit to offset increased costs? You better leverage your free channels at extreme levels. Your live and recorded video presence cost you almost nothing. Get busy!

Tariffs

I've written multiple versions of this post. None are sufficient. Heck, this image from Monday morning won't be sufficient by the time you read this.

Your emails to me are pointed, bitter, sarcastic. Most of you providing feedback simply cannot believe your businesses are at risk. I've yet to receive one (1) email where the professional is happy with the current direction of things.

Many of you remember 2007-2008. Festive times. You could get a $500,000 mortgage without income verification. The first act from This American Life from October 2008 represents an enlightening listen (click here) ... discussing how the global economy as we knew it nearly ended.

Calamities ... real or self-inflicted ... represent opportunities. Amazon exploded out the ashes of the dot.com collapse. Social/Mobile thrived coming out of 2007/2008. Shopify was born in 2006. The replacement of list/click forms of customer acquisition with community / video / live video came out of COVID ... TikTok thrived coming out of COVID.

You're going to be told to hunker down. You'll send me your data and I'll forecast where your customers are taking your business based on external cues. Contact me right now (kevinh@minethatdata.com) and let's get busy.

Some of you are going to create the future over the next 1-2 years. Any time there is a disruption to the "system", business leaders take commerce in new directions.  New directions surprise those who hunkered down.

Seriously ... ignore all the noise. You're prepared your entire life for challenging situations. Your skills are needed now. Be a Leader.

Wine and Steak

I was struck by this image from NEMOA last week.

This image was from a post that was liked 45 times as of Friday. I've given you every piece of knowledge I have for nearly twenty years (for free ... for free) and nothing I've shared on LinkedIn has been liked 45 times ... even though what I've shared will make you 450,000x more profit than the image above.

One of the pure joys of being in business is being part of a team. The image above represents a team. Do they all work for the same company? No. Do they work together to create their version of the future? Absolutely! One of the spoils of working together is spending a tiny fraction of the profit generated by a team on "the finer things".

In the era of videoconferencing, teams changed. In catalog marketing, it's common to see employees feel like their vendor partners are more of a "teammate" than are co-workers. You'll spend more time on video conferences with vendor partners than with merchants / creatives / web ops etc. This dynamic, of course, creates conflicting incentives. Your company pays your salary and bonus, so it's your job to maximize profit for your company. Your "team", however, does not share your incentive structure. Each member of your team has different incentives. Does your paper rep care about your bonus structure? Kind of. But she cares far more that you use more paper ... her incentive structure requires her to generate more profit for her than for your brand. If you lose more money by not moving into the future, she makes more money. That's a problem. It's unavoidable.

In order to optimize the profit of your informal "team" across vendors, your brand likely makes less profit. You're not trying to make less profit, of course, but it's the nature of the beast. Everybody has to be successful. In a perfect world, the relationship is symbiotic. In the real world? No.

Modern business sure is fascinating, isn't it?

P.S.:  I realize this happened 24 years ago, but it happens everywhere, both in e-commerce and in catalog marketing. When I was brought into Nordstrom with the immediate request to turn a $30,000,000 loss into profit, I cut circulation by 20%. I was ruthless. Our paper rep called me and said "I can't let you do that". That's the problem with cross-functional teams across vendors and your brand. Yes, you can let me do that, because that is what is best for my business and if you don't let me do that I'll let your competitor do that on my behalf.

Sometimes You Have To Let People Do What They're Going To Do

I recently played bocce ball with new players.

#ohboy

One of the new players was in a particularly interesting situation. He wanted to roll the ball at 74mph, blowing everything up. The "right" play was to gently roll the ball between the other balls to achieve the desired result.

No amount of communication or logic could convince this inexperienced player to do the right thing. He had a theory (maybe). He wanted to test his theory. Maybe he just wanted to see what happened if he invoked the nuclear option.

He rolled the ball at 94mph. He looked stunned when the outcome was opposite of his pre-conceived notion of the outcome ... ultimately causing his team to lose.

These are the kind of situations that come up every day ... in government, in business, in public health, in your personal life.

This certainly comes up in e-commerce. Somebody is hired, they have theories that are untested, they have a lot of confidence, and then their results aren't good. Sometimes you have to let these people do what they're going to do. You can make a really good living cleaning up the messes left by fools.

Fools. You can't talk them out of wreckin' things.

For My Catalog Readers: Catalog Keynote Presentation #2

It's lunchtime at NEMOA, which means it is time for my second keynote (click here). My advice is for several of you to sit around a table with your iPhones, perusing the content. Have a group discussion. Sound good?

Do You Want A New Metric?

Try this one on for size.

• YouTube Index:  Total Subscribers / (Annual Net Sales / 1,000,000).

Let's consider two companies.

Company #1:  JCP. Approximately $11,000,000,000 in annual net sales, 61,900 followers on YouTube.

• YouTube Index = 61,900 / (11000000000 / 1000000) = 6. Six subscribers per million in annual net sales.

Company #2:  Griot's Garage (I've used this example frequently ... and I don't know their annual net sales, let's say it is $20,000,000). 39,300 followers on YouTube.

• YouTube Index = 39,300 / (20000000 / 1000000) = 1,950. One thousand nine hundred and fifty subscribers per million in net sales.

Now, Griot's Garage could have double that volume in net sales or half that volume ... it doesn't matter. They have a video following. JCP does not. Griot's Garage customers/prospects care.

If you are a traditional catalog brand, your days of lists and co-ops are ending. They ended years ago to be honest. You'll move over to Google/Facebook, but your merchandise assortment (catering to a 60-84 year old customer) won't align with prospects in that realm. You'll be disappointed. You'll tell me that digital doesn't work very well. It works fine. It's a merchandise / channel alignment that flummoxes you.

Meanwhile, Google/Facebook become more expensive as time passes ... and the competition out there dilutes response. Acquiring new customers? It gets harder every day.

This is why community matters. In 2025, Community is your prospect list ... it's the place where you interact with both best customers and prospects ... it's the place where best customers and prospects interact. It's a living, breathing ecosystem that doesn't cost you much but pays you back handsomely.

YouTube is just one aspect of community, but it is a reflection of how much prospects and customers want to come along for the ride with you. In the example I gave above, the Griot's Garage customer/prospect is 300 times more interested in going along for the ride than is the J.C. Penny customer/prospect.

Your YouTube Index matters. It tells you how much your customers and prospects care.

If your YouTube Index is over, say, 200, you've got a fighting chance. Though these numbers aren't set in stone.

What is your YouTube Index?

For My Catalog Readers: Catalog Keynote Presentation #1

Here's the link to Keynote #1 ... tomorrow we focus on Keynote #2. It's lunchtime at NEMOA, so it's a good opportunity for you to gain a different perspective! Gather 'round your garden salads with chicken breast, fire up your noise cancelling headphones, and watch the keynote on your iPhone.