Ethan

born in 🇳🇴 Founder and Marketer 🪄 - building and scaling SaaS companies

[Ethan @wifiethan]

Every cold DM you don't send is a closed door.
Knock.

[Sean Frank @Seanfrank]

"but what if everything went RIGHT"

[Sean Frank @Seanfrank]

Being successful does not mean you are smart.

One time I hopped on a call with a guy.

Amazing resume.
President of a billion dollar luxury brand.
Launched his own PE fund.
called in from a yacht in the mediterranean (no joke)

One of the dumbest people I have ever talked too.
Said Ridge's real problem was we sent too many emails.

And if we wanted to grow to be a billion dollar brand I needed to move to salesforce and ditch shopify

Stuck in the past.

[Sarah 🦕 @SarahLevinger]

Don't fall in love with your brand so much that you stop listening to the customers who are helping you build it.

[Ash @ashvinmelwani]

One of my new favorite follows no doubt about it.

But one nuance here I highly recommend people thinking about is how the algorithm has changed post Andromeda.

Before it made sense to take take an angle, create 3-5 ads and test them in a single ad set. Then pull out the winner.

The new algorithm wants more variables and less overlap.

So if you have weekly creative sprints, let’s say you have 30-45 new ads to test…

Instead of 8-9 ad sets with 4-5 ads in each ad set.

Give meta 3 ad sets with 10-15 ads in them, all different formats, different angles, different messaging.

Gives Meta more variables to make a better choices and less auction overlap with less active adsets to give you the most efficient pricing in the auction.

[Alex @heyitsalexP]

Another example of what I'm going to call "one round game" marketing.

Why do politicians get to trash talk their opponents, bend the truth in ads, slander the opponent's personal life, and otherwise do things that your average CPG brand would never dream of doing?

Because an election is a one round game. After election night, the winner takes office, the loser goes back to whatever they did before, and the ad budgets are turned off.

There are no major negative repercussions for the things said during the campaign. So people say whatever they think will get them elected.

Compare this to consumer: if Coke started digging up dirt on the Pepsi CEO's personal life and running attack ads, they'd get blowback from the board, industry groups, etc and the stock price might go down.

Or what if McDonald's attacked Burger King for using seed oils or exploiting workers? McD's probably also does both of these things. Both players would lose a cost advantage.

Consumer is a multi-round game. You can't make messaging and marketing decisions based solely on first order outcomes because marketing impacts your access to capital, consumer perception of the brand, and category dynamics.

Correction: consumer WAS a multi-round game. Affiliates and drop shippers operate much closer to the political "one round game" model.

Affiliates don't care too much about the long term viability of whatever they're promoting. And it's likely that the product they're promoting has a 3-6 month shelf life anyway.

Same with drop shippers–they're jumping from product to product searching for 3-12 month pockets of opportunity. They're not looking to build brand equity.

In the old media landscape, this was a disadvantage. Big brands = more capital and more access to big media and distribution. And the best way to build a big brand = be in it for the long haul, or signal that was your intent.

In the new media landscape...it pains me to say this, but long-term orientation is a disadvantage.

Attention is the bottom line. And the best way to get attention is to be sensational and do things that will probably undermine long term brand equity.

The only way out is to build a marketing machine that does not lean on attention-bait for growth.

In practices, this means one or more of the following:
1. Speaking to a niche that you can engage with expertise, not engagement.
2. Build a superior product/positioning that rises above the din of attention-baiting.
3. Don't pin your cash flow on channels that require attention-baiting to scale.
4. Make a practice of building IRL touch points early, in ways that are strategic and measurable.
5. Don't set unreasonable growth targets.

And btw all of this is terrible for the consumer, and a big contributor to the "enshitification" of consumer products.

But our revealed preference = 24/7 dopamine diddling is more important than quality physical experiences.

[Marin.Istvanic @IstvanicMarin]

All you need in a Facebook ad account?

One ABO testing campaign and one ASC CC scaling campaign.

That's the magic.

Stay tuned for the full scoop in a thread soon.

[Barry Hott ☄️ @binghott]

To win in modern advertising, you need to think like a con artist.

No, I don't mean that you should break any laws!

I mean, you need to be a chameleon.

You need to know how to blend into your surroundings.

If you fail, your audience will know and you'll stand out for the wrong reasons, getting ignored/skipped by users' subconscious ad blockers.

I actually think of advertising as pulling off an elaborate cognitive heist.

You're bypassing filters, borrowing trust, and guiding perception without resistance.

Oceans 11
Catch Me If You Can
American Hustle
Matchstick Men

These movies feature heists/cons and focus on the nuance of looking and feeling the part to sneak past people unsuspected, earn people's trust, and get away with it all.

Study them to understand how and why the small details can matter to your audience.

Your ability to be a con artist or chameleon can be what makes or breaks your ads.

[Ethan @wifiethan]

Every cold DM you don't send is a closed door.
Knock.