I Can Make You Feel Good

Welcome to The Beat by Rockstar CMO. I’m Ian Truscott, not a rock star, but a CMO and trusted advisor, and in this newsletter, I’d like to share a mix of marketing street knowledge that I hope will help unlock the rockstar marketer in you.

Hello!

If you follow me on LinkedIn and the all-seeing, all-knowing algorithm decided to show it to you, you may have seen me refer to work by Harvard Professor Leslie John this week, which I discovered on the Nudge podcast.

Since the Venn diagram of people who follow me, see my content, and read this newsletter seems vanishingly small (maybe just you, Simon), if you saw it, I hope you don’t mind me tugging on this thread again.

Professor Leslie John studied hundreds of Dragon’s Den (or Shark Tank in the US) pitches to see which pitch style led to investment. She found that founders who strategically share vulnerabilities or authentic personal limitations when investors challenge them were up to six times more likely to get funding than founders who stood toe-to-toe with investors on the numbers, the market, or whatever they were being challenged on.

The psychology is that flawed leaders inspire greater trust, and by showing weakness and vulnerability when engaging the Dragons or Sharks, they got them to reach for their wallets.

I’m not disagreeing that vulnerability inspires trust, but there must be a bit of status at play here.

The entrepreneurs who got invested, showed weakness, and sought advice in the den were actually inferring status, and the dragon then feels safe, or, more specifically, their money is safe, as they have been quickly positioned as high status in this future relationship.

And I imagine if life has put you in a chair with a pile of money on a table in front of you to tease hungry entrepreneurs with, you are very comfortable with maintaining that status.

Seth Godin talks a lot about status roles, and my thought on this was:

How do we gift status to our audience as marketers?

The watchword of content marketing is “useful”.

We need to create things that are useful to our audience. We build personas around needs, consider how we can satisfy those needs, and keep them engaged and build trust.

I’ve talked about FOFU, the Fear of F**king Up, that our content needs to manage risk.

But what if it could help them build status?

How do we help them look good and get promoted?

Coincidentally, just before I started writing this an agency leader, in a conversation on another topic said this to me this afternoon:

“My goal is to help my client to get promoted. It’s good for them, and it makes things a lot easier for me.

Which brings me to the song: “I Can Make You Feel Good,” some classic early ’80s funk from Shalamar.

We need to make them feel good.

What do you think? Hit reply, let me know.

Have a splendid week!

Cheers,

Ian

Classic early 80’s, you know you want to…