All bands give away concert tickets to fans. In 2009, Sugarland took the process to a whole new level, giving away pairs of tickets to anyone who cared to look for them–and sharing a little of themselves in the process.
First, some background.
Sugarland is a country music duo with a twist. As any fan of the genre can tell you, country music these days is divided between purists and mainstream fans. The latter group is more likely to embrace a Taylor Swift or a Brad Paisley, while the former casts a suspicious eye on any artist who can’t speak at length on the virtues of Waylon Jennings or Patsy Cline. If you’re going to play country music these days, you can expect to be judged–harshly–on which side of the border you fall. Most country acts work hard to establish their country bona fides.
Sugarland, a client of ours, openly flouts this divide. They don’t try to disguise their love for rock music or the influence it’s had on them and their sound. This is the essence of who Sugarland is—fans of eclectic music who grew up to become musicians—and they embrace it.
This includes their approach to giving away concert tickets. Traditionally, before a country music artist plays a show, he or she will go on the local country radio station and give away a pair of tickets to the ninety-fifth caller, or whatever number corresponds to the station’s call letters. But true to Sugarland’s eclectic philosophy, they wanted to be more inclusive than that. Why just offer tickets to country music fans (or fast dialers) when you could offer them to—anyone at all?
On their 2009 “Love on the Inside” tour, the members of Sugarland, Kristian Bush and Jennifer Nettles, videotaped themselves hiding a pair of tickets in the Walmart closest to the arena. Then they uploaded the video online with a vague description of where to find the tickets. (“I think they’re in aisle 15,” for example.) It was more fun than a radio station giveaway, but also more inclusive. Anyone could go and find those tickets and check out a Sugarland show for free.
Though they would never consider themselves marketers, Kristian and Jennifer are two people who understand the value of samples. The best way to lure people into your “tribe” is by first giving them a sample of what you have to offer. Here are some free tickets to come check out our band. Maybe you’ll like us, maybe you won’t. Sample our music and decide for yourself.
But there was more to these giveaways than letting people into concerts. The videos themselves were samples of the Sugarland “brand.” As I noted, Sugarland is all about flouting the rules, about being your authentic self regardless of what others expect. In one video, Jennifer is wearing a Beatles T-shirt, and Kristian is wearing a Bruce Springsteen T-shirt—not bands that are typically revered in all country music circles. And Jennifer appears busy and possibly even disheveled. She pokes fun at her own tousled appearance.
“I’m in disguise,” she says, laughing, from the back of a car, “because I have on my T-shirt and my zits. These aren’t really my zits. These are just for disguise, to look like ordinary folks. Along with the dirty hair. My hair is resplendent underneath this slicked-back ponytail and zits.” Find and watch the video. It’s an object lesson in creating talkable stories from the every day.
Even more so than the tickets, such videos were a great way to let people sample Sugarland. Anyone who came across them would see a cool, authentic, fun pair of musicians who treat fans the way they themselves would want to be treated by their musical heroes. Kristian and Jennifer figured out what was unique about them, and they found a fun, talkable way to share it.
In a world dominated by conversation, this is the way to lure people into your brand’s orbit. Figure out what makes it special, and then let people have a taste of that in a fun, shareable way. It may sound unorthodox, but in fact, it’s what consumers have come to expect.
Average brands advertise. Great brands share.
When was the last time you drank three of the same beers in a row?
It’s a simple question, but a revealing one. Ask yourself. Ask your friends. Hell, ask your bartender. When is the last time you had three of the same beers in a row?
Let me guess: it’s been a while.
It’s a question I often ponder when I find myself at beer festivals, an occupational hazard that comes from having clients in the beverage industry. As you probably know, beer festivals are not great places to grab a pint of your favorite brew and hang out with friends. They are venues for finding new flavors and varieties, expanding your knowledge and your palate, tasting as many different beers as you can till you find one that speaks to you. Then starting all over again.
In short, beer festival culture is all about sampling. And the standard size for those samples is about two ounces. Ask to taste a particular beer, and you’ll be presented with a two-ounce pour on which to base your decision. Do you want a full glass? Or is this brew not for you? Maybe try two ounces of something else first? Then try two more?
Over the past 20 years, beer festival culture has slowly infected the overall beer culture in America. Sure, we all still have our favorite brands or varieties. My first beer of the night will almost always be a stout of some kind. My wife will always start with a wheat beer. Certain thirtysomethings in Portland will always start with a PBR, and maybe even follow up with another. But three in a row? There are just too many options available.
This is a far cry from the beer culture of 1950s America, when there were maybe four brands of beer for sale, and they were all pretty similar to one another.
What happened?
Before World War II, beer in America was all about consistency—a major challenge before the advent of refrigerated trucking. As a highly perishable product, beer could travel only so far before it turned into carbonated garbage. So brands like Miller and Busch made their fortunes by establishing nationwide networks of breweries that could produce a clean, hearty product that tasted the same in Dallas, Texas, as it did in Portland, Maine. In an age of varying quality and limited product choices, consistency was the key to winning customer loyalty.
Of course, imports existed, as did smaller, specialty brews. But they were expensive and hard to find, and you could never really be sure of their quality—particularly if they had traveled from far away. Such niche items were for the true connoisseurs, or maybe a special occasion. But go to a friend’s house and ask for a Belgian wheat, and you stood a pretty good chance of losing a friend.
No, Budweiser was your beer. Or Miller. Or later, maybe Miller Lite. If you were drinking beer, you drank your brand, can after can after can.
In the late 1980s, things began to change. Small craft breweries were producing more exotic and flavorful beers, which captured the attention of younger and more adventurous beer drinkers. And because it was different—it came from different parts of the country—each beer had its own taste, texture, and color. Breweries employed long-neglected brewing methods to create a more interesting and authentic product, and customers loved telling their friends about it. Craft beer wasn’t just a new product category. It was a collection of great stories that fans were excited to share.
As these beers made their way across the country and they became available in more and more stores, the cost of trying something new—both in terms of money and effort expended—began to drop. You didn’t have to seek it out. It was no longer prohibitively expensive. Trying an alternative brew became easier.
A few years later came Internet access, which turbocharged the spread of the craft beer story. On dedicated beer forums and message boards, but also in unrelated venues like music or travel chat rooms, people eagerly told tales of their favorite local brews. Friends told friends, strangers told strangers, and word spread. And a whole lot of beer was sold.
Soon, to a new generation of beer drinkers, the idea of drinking nothing but, say, Coors Light—followed by another Coors Light, and then another—was unthinkable. The point was always to be tasting something new. The craft beer revolution had taken hold.
In 1980, craft brewers in the United States produced 26,000 barrels of beer, according to the Brewers Association. By 2012, that number had risen to 13,235,917 barrels, accounting for 6.5 percent of total U.S. beer sales by volume and 10.2 percent by dollars.1 In early 2014, craft beer accounted for about 30 percent of Costco’s beer sales.
And if you ever need proof, talk to a young beer drinker. Ask him when was the last time he drank three of the same beer in a row.
Then ask yourself, would my marketing strategy have any effect on the choices this person makes?
I tell the beer story to illustrate how Americans have changed their approach to buying over the past 50 years. Today, beer drinkers are hardly the only ones demanding their two-ounce samples. Foodies, bookworms, music fans, movie buffs, even porn enthusiasts are loathe to spend a dime before they have had a taste.
It is a fundamental change in how purchasing decisions are made by American consumers, and it affects nearly every aspect of our lives. The number of options has expanded so widely while the cost of sampling has plummeted so much that we now have the luxury of browsing to our heart’s content. Try a little of this, try a little of that. Commitment can wait.
In turn, the old ways of advertising no longer make sense. Simply telling people about your product won’t cut it. In a two-ounce culture, you need to get your product into people’s hands. You have to recognize that they want to explore their options, which means you have to give them a taste first.
Take a look at how our approach to dating has changed in recent years.
Once upon a time, your dating pool was limited to the people you had actually met or heard about from your friends or family. Assuming you were willing to date only people who were roughly your age and not already married, that was a relatively limited number of options—particularly if you lived in a small town or had a small social circle.
Matchmakers and personal ads expanded your options somewhat, but at a snail’s pace. Personal ads were tiny and rarely included photos; matchmakers knew only so many people, and they could send you on only so many dates at once.
If you found someone worth dating, you spent time with that person—face-to-face, or at least on the phone—in order to learn more. Is she close to her family? Does he want to have children? Does she share your taste in music? If you wanted to experience that person, you had to go on an actual date.
The Internet, specifically sites like Match.com, changed everything. Now, we can scan endless pages of multimedia personal ads—pictures, testimonials, likes, dislikes, hobbies, income—before we commit to even a single date. We reject hundreds if not thousands of potential mates based on nothing but digital previews. Before we will commit to a single cocktail, we browse through seemingly endless options, weighing the pros and cons and seeing what suits us.
When we finally arrive at that date, we show up more informed about our companion than any person from the 1980s who didn’t work for the FBI ever could have imagined. We have made the smallest of commitments—a single night out—only after many hours of searching and considering and rejecting.
In short, we have sampled our options. Exhaustively. Because we can.
It’s true of nearly any industry or human activity you can name these days. Want to read a new book? Start with a free sample from iTunes or the Kindle library. Curious about a new restaurant? Buy the Groupon and try it for half-off. Looking for a new home? Take virtual tours of dozens of listings in your city, whether or not you can afford them. And I won’t even get into the many ways of nefariously “sampling” every piece of music ever recorded before deciding if you want to purchase a song, much less a whole album. (When’s the last time you did that?) The same is true for nearly every movie and TV show ever made.
Because of technology and the proliferation of brands, it’s a sampling culture that we live in. And we are never, ever going back. We, as marketers, need to deal with that.
How did we get here? One obvious answer is technology. Widespread broadband access, smartphones, digital cameras and recording equipment, MP3s, Internet-based publishing platforms, on-demand television—the list goes on and on. Thanks to the digital revolution, it is cheaper and easier than ever to produce and consume—or merely browse through—nearly everything.
Think about the state of photography. Anyone over 30 will remember a time when taking a picture was a pretty big deal. You had to line up your shot, make sure the lighting was correct, and make everyone say “cheese” at precisely the same moment. Why? Because film was expensive! You had 24 or 36 pictures per roll, so you had to make each one count. Worse, you had no idea whether your pictures were any good until you got them developed, a process that cost nearly as much as the film.
Only the most wealthy or reckless among us would run around snapping pictures indiscriminately. You’d go broke in a week.
Today’s iPhone has a feature that allows the user to hold a button for a few short seconds and capture dozens of pictures at once. Hold it a bit longer and you’ll end up with hundreds. The camera then automatically chooses the best one for you. If you disagree with that choice, you can manually scroll through all those pictures, choosing the ones you like and deleting the ones you don’t. Or keep them all. Who cares? The iPhone can store thousands of photos. Or download them onto your laptop, which can hold hundreds of thousands.
The point is, the cost of taking a picture is literally a microfraction of what it used to be. As a result, we take many, many more of them. Why not? There is little to no risk or cost involved.
It’s an example of how technology has made it easier to consume and produce once-costly things. But it’s also a metaphor. The way we take pictures today is like the way we try new things: haphazardly, with little to no sense of risk or cost.
Because it is so much less expensive to try something new, people are trying a lot more things. If you’re curious about skydiving, you can start out with some first-person skydiving videos online. Maybe you can’t make it to Pamplona this year, but you can spend an afternoon watching videos of tourists wearing Go Pros running with the bulls. Last year, as we were planning a trip to Brazil, my wife spent her evenings online sampling everything there is to do in the three towns we were going to visit. Twenty years ago, finding all that information would have taken six months of deep library work, and even then she would have come up short. Now she can look at films, slide shows, user reviews—she did everything but taste and smell our vacation before we even made a hotel reservation.
The other reason sampling is so easy now is that there are simply so many more choices. That is why sharing has now become so much more important. Gone are the days when there were two beers to choose from, or three TV shows, or four kinds of candy bars. The cost of producing and marketing new products has sunk so low that the shelves are full to bursting with new options. Faced with a dozen new kinds of chewing gum, who among us won’t give something new a try now and then?
These days, very little is holding us back from trying something previously unavailable to us. This is both very good, and very bad, for your brand. Which is why it’s more important than ever for you to have a great story to share.
Adapting to this sampling culture can mean the life or death of your brand. Sound extreme? Compare the case of beer brewers to that of the record companies.
When it comes to embracing sampling culture, few industries can hold a candle to beer brewers. Again, this is best encapsulated by their approach to beer festivals. Throw a festival, and brewers will happily show up with their various brews and recipes, which they are happy to share with whoever shows an interest. And it’s not just the beer. Brewers all seem to have beards and clothes that somehow reflect the ethos of their beers. The implication is that choosing their brand means joining their tribe. Maybe you want to belong, maybe not. Either way, here is a chance to give it a try.
If you don’t care for a particular beer, the brewer will more than likely tell you about a colleague—a competitor, in fact—who brews something you might prefer. He might even tell you he’s been kicking himself for not coming up with the competitor’s beer first. But he’s not going to copy that beer because that’s not what his brewery is about. But hey, why don’t you go give it a try? You might like it as much as he does.
Thanks to that kind of attitude, the Great American Beer Festival in Denver, for example, has grown from a small industry gathering to a nationally recognized event that attracts tens of thousands of beer drinkers—and seemingly as many brewers. The beer industry is teeming with brands, fans, and success stories. People today love to talk about their beers and love to hear about beers they haven’t tried yet. And you can expect to get your two-ounce sample not only at beer festivals but at pretty much any bar that is serious about beer. This is what can happen when you embrace the sampling culture.
Then there is the recording industry, which has done more to fight the culture of sampling than any industry I can think of. And it has not worked out well for them.
For record companies, the world began to change in the early 2000s, when it suddenly became easy to sample music. Napster, Gnutella, Kazaa. All these peer-to-peer file-sharing services gave consumers the freedom to share their music collections with anyone around the world. The record companies’ reaction? They whined about how easy it had become to sample music, and they did everything in their power to stop it.
Of course, they had a legitimate gripe. The product they had paid millions of dollars to produce was being downloaded for free—not a problem the brewers ever had. But rather than seeing this seismic shift as an opportunity to change the way they deal with customers, record companies refused to look beyond the piracy aspect. When they saw kids downloading music, they didn’t see lifelong superfans on the cutting edge of music distribution. They saw thieves, and they treated them as such. Instead of adapting to the new reality, they sponsored legislation that made downloading music a crime, paid people to populate file-sharing services with bad copies of their own products, attempted to shut down the sites themselves, and most infamously, had teenagers arrested for downloading music.
As you probably already know, this approach did not work. And suing teenagers who love music was not great for the industry’s reputation either, particularly among teenagers who love music.
Steve Jobs saw things differently. When he saw teenagers sharing songs on the Internet, he didn’t see thieves. He saw enthusiastic music fans who were fulfilling the dream of owning all the music in the world at little to no cost. He saw kids who were downloading music they had never heard before, or would never have considered listening to, simply because the cost was so low and the effort so minimal. He saw potential customers.
He also saw that the file-sharing services were not perfect: Viruses abounded. It could be difficult to find the music you wanted. And they were far too technically complex for those of us no longer in our twenties.
What if, he imagined, he could create a place where people could download music easily and safely and have to pay only $0.99 per song? Who wouldn’t part with $0.99, particularly if it meant music files that were guaranteed to be safe?
iTunes worked because the people downloading music weren’t interested in being criminals. They were interested in music. And it turns out that most people will happily pay a small price to get the music they’re looking for without having to work too hard or worry about hurting their computers—or steal. Jobs embraced the sampling behavior that the recording industry fought.
I’m not saying the record companies would be raking in huge profits these days had they done the same. Technology changed, and much about their old business model was rendered obsolete. However, they did themselves no favors by fighting a futile war against an unstoppable cultural shift.
It comes down to this: Now that we live in this two-ounce culture, are you going to be the record companies, or will you be the brewers? Will you come to grips with this situation and work with it, or are you going to work against it? Because when you work against it, you lose. How much smaller is the record music industry today? In 2012, total U.S. album sales were 316 million units. That’s down from 617 million in 1996. The bestselling album of 2013 sold fewer than 2.5 million copies. That wouldn’t have cracked the top 10 in 1985.
Fighting the urge to sample won’t get you very far. The trick is learning how to make money from it.
Question: In a world where consumers are faced with a thousand different choices, any of which they can sample at almost any time, at little to no cost or risk, what is keeping them loyal to your brand?
Answer: Very, very little.
It is a simple truth of modern consumerism: nearly every product category is full to bursting with competing brands, each laser focused on appealing to a certain kind of consumer. Not happy with your mainstream cable company? Try that sports-centric satellite service, or cut the cable altogether and buy your programming piecemeal from Amazon.com and iTunes. Worried about the environmental impact of your plastic diapers? Try the ecofriendly brand—there is one available in nearly every store—or sign up online for your local cloth diaper delivery service. It takes just a few seconds, and there is a guaranteed trial period during which you can change your mind for free.
As a culture, we have evolved into this two-ounce mindset, and that has put a serious drain on brand loyalty. That means different things to your brand depending on what you’re selling and what you’re trying to accomplish. But either way, you have got to adjust.
This erosion of brand loyalty has three major effects on brands.
For legacy brands, the facts that the cost of switching brands has lowered, options have exploded, and consumers are obsessed with sampling clearly spell bad news. Mostly.
Consider the case of Ragú spaghetti sauces. When I was growing up, there was no more authentic spaghetti sauce in the grocery store than Ragú. As a kid, that heavy red jar was the height of Italian cuisine. Many other Americans felt similarly. But the fact was, we didn’t know any better. Ragú was, for all intents and purposes, the finest thing on the shelf. If my family wanted a quality Italian meal but didn’t want to spend two days making a meat sauce, Ragú was it.
Today, there are 31 different brands of spaghetti sauce on the shelf at my local grocery store. Some have no preservatives. Some are organic. Some are designed to look as if they were jarred yesterday by a grandmother in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. Some are meant to appeal to kids.
Faced with those options, even the most loyal consumer would be tempted to stray. Maybe you try a new sauce, find something you like better, and switch forever. Maybe you find something that you serve just to your kids. Maybe you add a couple of new sauces to your family’s rotation. Maybe you stray only once, and then return forever to Ragú.
The point is, in any of these scenarios, Ragú loses, even if it’s just a little bit. A previously loyal customer gave his money to a competitor, even just once, because he was presented with options. Most legacy brands have built their businesses to focus obsessively on not letting that happen. Today the two-ounce mindset requires these brands to think differently.
Your customers are going to wander. You’re going to spring leaks. The question is how you plug them.
Now, imagine you are one of those newer spaghetti sauces. Congratulations, this is your age of glory. It has never been easier to get someone to try something new. Today, consumers want to try your product simply because it is new. How great is that?
In a two-ounce culture, where people are constantly presented with new options, consumers are more likely to seek out the advice of their influencer friends. They want to hear stories about these new brands they’ve heard of. Like everyone else, they are in search of new experiences and tastes, but they don’t have time to waste on unworthy products. So they talk to more people in search of experiences and recommendations. If they’re going to take a vacation, they’re going to speak with their well-traveled relative first. If they’re unsure what book to read next, they’re going to ask their buddy the bookworm. If they’re looking for a restaurant in which to celebrate their anniversary, they’re going to consult with their foodie friend.
This is great news for startups and other young companies. Rather than looking askance at the new product on the shelves, consumers these days are more likely to be intrigued and want to give it a try.
The problem is getting them to stick. In an age of constant sampling, you have to give your customers a reason not to take their two ounces and move on to the next thing. You need to give them a quality product—but you also need to give them a great story. Your story, backed up by word of mouth, is what turns a sampler into a loyal customer.
And just like legacy brands, newer brands also have to stay on their toes. They, too, must always be innovating. In a two-ounce culture, the speed at which you move from hot new thing to old fuddy-duddy has increased exponentially. How long did it take Starbucks to morph from hip underground brand out of Seattle to the McDonald’s of coffee? To the extent that Starbucks has held on, it is because it has continued to innovate. And the same is true of any brand, old or new, trying to survive in a sample-mad culture.
Here’s where the established brands have an edge over startups: in addition to a name that consumers know and trust, older brands have the resources to invest in research and development. And never before has the return on investment for innovation been greater.
I’m not talking about innovation for innovation’s sake. I’m talking about the kind that makes CFOs sleep better at night, the kind that brings in more money this quarter than last quarter.
Because sampling is so inexpensive now, it is going to be more and more common for people to want to sample a variety of things. And if you as an existing company know that, you can feed it with brand extensions, new products, and true innovations. Get them in front of the consumer, and the consumer will try it. And that means that the dollars you invest in innovation are going to be more valuable for you than ever before.
Take Boston Brewing, the company that makes Sam Adams beer. The Boston Lager is its flagship item. In addition to that, it has dozens of other brews, some seasonal, some in production year-round, that consumers are always looking to sample. Maybe those other brews make up 15 percent of the company’s overall sales. But if that 15 percent is what’s always new and always interesting and it is attracting more people to the brand, then it’s a good investment.
If sampling were expensive and difficult, you wouldn’t have to do all these things. But sampling is inexpensive, and consumers’ brand switching costs are low. So people are naturally going to try things, and a certain percentage of them are going to find something they like, and a certain percentage of them are going to be influential. So if you are an existing brand, you must continue to innovate and give customers something new to share.
You must move from sampling to sharing if you’re going to build relationships. Your customers are going to wander. It’s a fact of modern consumerism. It’s your job to keep them from wandering to another brand entirely, to give them enough new and exciting products to try, and to get samples of those products into their hands.
The shift to a two-ounce culture mindset is an opportunity to refocus your company on the idea of innovation. Done right, every dollar you spend on innovation today is going to yield greater benefit than it would have 40, or even 20, years ago.
That said, you must beware of the innovation vortex—that is, being in a state of constantly dreaming up new extensions and “innovations” that eventually fail to make an impact. Mattel is a marvelous company that has done spectacular things with its multi-billion-dollar Barbie brand.
But the sheer volume of different Barbies for sale, not to mention her cars and homes and boyfriends, plus the special anniversary dolls, have long since made the dolls a comedy cliché. At this point, the new extensions cease to really be innovations. I’m sure there are economic advantages to producing these products. But if you’re producing new brand extensions simply to have something new on the shelf, they are not going to generate much conversation.
Luckily, the right story can keep you from falling into the innovation vortex.
For companies looking to sell something, the two-ounce culture can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it is an opportunity to attract new customers. Because people are looking to try something different, it gives companies a chance to constantly be introducing their products and stories to new people. Engaging potential customers is easier than ever. That’s the wonderful part of being in business today and the reason it’s important to be comfortable with the sampling culture.
On the other hand, a sampling culture encourages people to constantly move on, to always be in search of that next best thing. It’s hard to build much of a customer base in that kind of environment. Getting people to sample is easy; getting them to stay is hard.
This is where your brand’s story comes in. It is your story, told and reinforced by an influencer or group of influencers, that gets people to stick. “I’ve already told you this is the best product in the category,” says the influencer. “This is what we use. Why are you still trying those other things?”
A few years back, I was having a drink in a cop bar when I saw something that perfectly encapsulates this point. Everyone in this bar was drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon. Apparently, it was the preferred beer of the regulars—and everyone in this bar was a regular. Then, in walks a trainee and his training officer. The training officer, of course, orders a Pabst Blue Ribbon. The trainee, however, ordered a Miller Lite.
It was one of those drag-the-needle-across-the-record moments. Everything stopped. All the other officers with their PBRs paused their conversations to look at the new kid who was ordering the funny beer. Eventually, the kid noticed the disapproving looks and changed his drink order.
The cops in that bar had long since decided, as a tribe, what they were about. And the message to the trainee was, “If you’re going to be part of this tribe, you’re going to drink what we drink.”
We may not all have a bar full of cops to enforce the purchase of our products, but we do have access to influencers and their networks. By constantly providing these influencers with stories about your brand and what makes it cool, you can turn them into your very own bar full of cops. Make enough influencers in a single tribe love your brand, and anyone who wants to be a member of that tribe will be embarrassed to order anything else. Those stories can be any number of things: innovations, some cool (and authentic!) promotion with a band, or treating your employees well. These are the sorts of things that generate word of mouth, that keep influencers talking about how great your brand is. It can be the reason people decide to sample your brand, and it can also be the reason they stay. Word of mouth makes your story sticky.
As important as it is to embrace the sampling culture, it is just as important ultimately to get off the sampling carousel. For obvious reasons, you don’t want your customers perpetually living off your free two-ounce samples. It is the compelling story, shared enthusiastically among friends, that engenders loyalty, that says, “This is our brand. We are done sampling those other things. By showing your loyalty to this, you prove yourself to be part of our tribe.” You only have to find your story and get it into the proper hands.
A good story will attract people. A great story will keep them.
A truly great story is one that can constantly be refreshed. Can you keep your story interesting? Can you keep adding interesting details that enrich and deepen your story? Can you keep adding new ways to think about it without being repetitive? That’s a great story.
In advertising, they talk about The Big Idea. It’s that tag line or concept—Nike’s Just Do It, Volkswagen’s Think Small, the Marlboro Man—that can keep on delivering, that hits on something so elemental it resonates widely across language and time. Great stories are a lot like that. They can be told over and over again from different perspectives and with varying details, yet always remain compelling and resonant.
This is the world we now live in. Just as technology does not go backward, our taste for sampling will never be quenched or abandoned. You cannot put the toothpaste back in the tube. If you want to reach the maximum number of people, if you want to be the brewers, not the music industry, you need to get your product into as many hands as possible. You need to provide your two-ounce samples. And those samples must come with a story that can be shared long after the sample is gone. And that story should be one you can tell again and again, a hundred different ways. That is how you get people to join your tribe, and how you will keep them from wandering. It starts with samples, but it ends with great stories.