Marketing Dojo #67: How To Win Friends & Make Billions.
The magic of co-branding, AI-powered job search, the chaos of pack sizes and more.
Hello,
Welcome to the 67th issue of The Marketing Dojo. It feels great to be back!
There's something magical about taking a break. For the first time in ages, I went on holiday without my laptop. The spotty internet connection during the first week helped me finally disconnect, read a few books, and simply enjoy the scenery. I confess it wasn't easy—I had bouts of FOMO every now and then.
Check out the P.S. section for a book recommendation. I discovered this book by accident. By the end of the book, I had a new-found respect for flies, bats and beetles.
This issue starts with a brand that left me mind-blown. Here's a quick fun trivia for you:
Scroll down a section to find your answer.
Now, back to all the marketing goodness. Here's what we will cover this week:
👟 The Collaboration Rock Star
📹 Podcast recommendation: Single, multi, family, party, value….
📱 Creative Excellence: LG's Social Media Feed Detox
🤖 Human vs. AI Content
And lots more.
Before we dive in, I have a request: I'm adding a new section called "Just One Question." In this section, I’ll reach out to a marketer and ask them just one question. If you're a marketer eager to share your insights with the community, please help me by filling out this 3-question survey. I promise it won't take long.
The Un-disputed Champion Of Brand Collaborations.
What was your trivia answer? You would be right if you chose Crocs.
The article about Crocs by Chartr blew my mind. The "ugly shoe" brand has tripled sales in the past six years and remained the most profitable footwear brand ever. What's its secret sauce? Collaborations and co-branding.
In 2016, the brand's sales were sinking, but there was one bright spot—its limited-edition collaboration with luxury designer Christopher Kane.
Fast forward to today, Crocs has engaged in a wide range of collaborations, appealing to various consumer segments:
High-fashion partnerships: Collaborations with luxury brands like Balenciaga have elevated Crocs' status in the fashion world.
Celebrity collaborations: Partnerships with musicians like Justin Bieber, Post Malone, and Bad Bunny have helped attract younger consumers and increase brand visibility.
Pop culture collaborations: Crocs has partnered with popular franchises and brands like KFC, South Park, and Barbie, creating buzz-worthy limited editions.
Kid-friendly collaborations: Collaborations with Disney, Nickelodeon, Barney, SpongeBob SquarePants, and more have attracted younger audiences.
The company saw a 93% increase in revenue from Q2 2020 to Q2 2021, a period during which they released over two dozen collaborations.
Crocs has truly embraced the concept of collaborations, even launching a limited-edition line with the beer brand Busch Light.
Customers are spoilt for choice. Brands often find it challenging to keep churning out something new to keep customers returning. Due to the pace of innovation needed, collaboration is one of the key levers a brand can use to appeal to a wide range of customers without burning out.
Crocs, Uniqlo, Gentle Monster, and Stanley Cups are trendy brands, especially for the younger generation. Collaborations are a common thread across these brands.
Just One Question: Finding Marketing Jobs Powered by AI.
Brent Hametner is a curious marketer who is actively experimenting with AI use cases in marketing. He is extremely generous with sharing what he is learning along the way. Recently, he moved into a new, exciting demand generation role at Concord.
My Question for Brent: Congratulations on your new job! Finding a role in marketing can be challenging in today's market. How did you use AI to enhance your job search process?
Answer: Here are some of the ways I used AI to navigate the job market:
Approach—Many people focus on their resumes as a first step. I barely spent time on mine. I mainly just ensured that each bullet point was quantitative and that the progression of job titles/descriptions conveyed a coherent story. I allocated 80% of my time to brand building and 20% to applications.
▪ Sonara: It recently shut down, but upload your resume, and it automatically applies to jobs for you. I'm assuming there are other similar tools out there you could use today. This generated a few interviews for me.
▪ Custom Strategy Proposals: I used ChatGPT + Canva to craft custom demand gen proposals for open roles. I sent them to hiring managers via LinkedIn DM and email (I used Hunter to find emails). The sample size was low, but I saw ~ a 20% proposal-to-interview ratio.
▪ Company Research: I used Perplexity to quickly obtain information (year founded, funding $, offering, pricing, personas, competitors, etc.) about a company before a recruiter screening. This saved me hours.
▪ Content creation: used ChatGPT + YouTube to learn OBS Studio & Descript to create video content for daily LI posts. (Followers +40% | Imps +83% | Speaking opportunities)
▪ Continuous learning: I listened to various marketing-related podcasts & researched the current VC space to better understand the context in which early-stage SaaS companies were operating. I used ChatGPT to explain concepts I didn't understand from the content.
About Brent: Brent started my career in the electrical manufacturing industry at a Fortune Global 500 company. He then switched gears and moved into tech. Over the past 8 years, he has worked at early-stage series A-C companies ranging from edtech, fintech, and e-commerce tech. He started on the sales side as an SDR and moved into demand generation over the past few years.
If you're interested in learning more about how he used AI for my job search, feel free to follow or DM him at https://www.linkedin.com/in/brenthametner/
Creative Excellence: My Feed’s Good.
Combine a well-recognized brand promise, a topic on everyone's mind, a dash of influencer marketing, and a solution as easy as scanning a QR code!
LG Electronics' latest "Optimism Your Feed" campaign hits just the right spot.
Social media's adverse impact on teenagers and mental health, in general, has been a hot topic lately. The U.S. Surgeon General even suggested that social media should come with a warning label, much like a pack of cigarettes!
LG collaborated with influencers who specialize in creating positive content. By scanning the QR code, users are directed to a stream of uplifting content, effectively training the algorithm to shift away from negative, fringe messaging.
While sugar-coated, positive content might not be the ultimate antidote to social media's adverse effects, it certainly feels like a quick feed detox when you need one.
LG's brand promise of "Life's Good" comes alive in a socially relevant format through this campaign. Kudos to the agency partner who created this innovative idea and the brand for giving it the green light.
From Tiny Cans To Giant Tubs: The Fascinating World of Grocery Store Pack Sizes.
Multi, single, family, party, gift, value, snack, mini, trial—these are just some of the various pack sizes for Lay's potato chips.
In the podcast, What's with all the tiny soda cans? And other grocery store mysteries, solved by Planet Money, the chaos and reasoning behind the plethora of packaging options is unveiled.
Products like Coke, Oreo, Lay's, and M&M appeal to a broad range of customers who consume them for different purposes. The variety in packaging sizes helps brands appeal to different audiences with varied needs.
The podcast delves into the history, market forces, and trends behind the bewildering array of pack sizes in our grocery aisles.
Have a listen!
Is AI-Generated Content Swamping The Internet?
Copywriting is one of the most common use cases for AI in marketing. So, how much has AI-generated content spread across the web? And how does AI-generated content compare to human content?
This research by Graphite.io offers the most comprehensive analysis to answer these questions. The study analyzed 11,994 URLs across ten sectors: Tech, Productivity, News, Food, Finance, Entertainment and more.
The researchers used Originality.ai to detect AI-generated content. Originality.ai returns a score representing the likelihood that page text originated from AI tools such as ChatGPT, GPT-4, Gemini Advanced, or Llama.
The content was divided into four categories:
Human-created: Less than 10% AI content
AI-generated: 90% or more AI content
Mixed: low AI content: 10-50% AI content
Mixed: high AI content: 50-90% AI content
The results?
Only 3% of the content was entirely AI-generated.
Over 50% of the content is human-created.
Some sectors, such as commerce and crypto, have a higher ratio of AI-generated content.
Human-generated content almost always outperformed AI content in search rankings. Big sigh of relief.
These results will likely change over time, but this research provides a glimmer of hope for now. Tools like ChatGPT have been on the market for over 18 months. Yet the internet is not flooded with AI-generated content, and human-written content continues to outperform machine-generated outputs.
Cheers!
Short Stuff:
TikTok Shop rolls out image search. (Giving Google Search a run for its money).
Amazon unveiled its cookieless ad-targeting solution (AI-based ad relevance solution).
Meta pauses the training of its model on EU data (It’s EU v/s Meta all over again).
That’s a wrap on this week. Thank you for your time and attention. If you liked this week’s newsletter or found something interesting, please give me a like ❤️ or drop a comment🗨️. Your support helps drive the newsletter's discoverability.
Once again, thank you for your time. See you in your inbox next Wednesday.
Regards,
Garima Mamgain
P.S: Book Recommendation: Taking Flight by Lev Parikian
Taking Flight opened my eyes to the fascinating evolution of flight in animals. Did you know that flying evolved four separate times over millions of years? It all started with insects, followed by reptiles (think giant flying dinosaurs), then birds, and finally bats—the only mammals capable of powered flight.
I stumbled upon this gem while listening to a science podcast. The best insights are often hidden in plain sight. I was amazed by the intricacies of flight and how it varies significantly across species.
A great book sends you down a rabbit hole of curiosity. For me, Taking Flight did just that. I found myself researching the multi-generational migration of the monarch butterfly, the brief yet busy life of the mayfly, the incredible vision of the dragonfly, and much more.
If you're interested in evolution or just looking to broaden your reading horizons, this book is worth reading.
Here's a quick video on how flies fly. I hope it sparks your curiosity and makes you marvel at nature's beauty and complexity. Toodles!