Dark Times And A Pop Culture Curveball

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Hey everyone, welcome back to Marketing Qualified. I'm Mike Griffin. And I'm Chris Newton. Chris, we have the military in our city streets, a job market so competitive that there has been a correlating surge in suicide hotline calls, AI being inserted, or honestly, in many instances, forced upon nearly every aspect of our lives. And so I guess my question to you today to kick us off is how are you feeling about the Taylor Swift engagement?

SPEAKER_01 0:56

You know, everyone needs some positive news, and uh, you know, I honestly don't have an opinion of it either way. I think that Travis Kelsey might be a little bit distracted in fantasy football this year. Uh not to say anything of his on-field performance, but uh yeah, I mean, good for her. I I hope that they're both uh extremely happy. I've I've got nothing, uh nothing but positive vibes to send their way.

When AI Tools Feel Like Threats

SPEAKER_00 1:20

There you go. Nice. Put him out into the ether. All those things are totally real, by the way. Like all the build-up, like yeah, the engagement, but like all those are those are real current events that are happening, including the latter. So live in the dream.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

I was about to go on a rant about how you uh you touched a nerve when you said that everyone's like being forced to use AI. And I've definitely read stories about companies that are like forcing their engineers to use AI, like using cursor and stuff like that. And it's just kind of like you know, you're you you you get an engineering degree, like you you go to school for years, like you might be an extremely experienced engineer and you're born being forced to use this tool, which essentially is learning how you do things so that you can like outsource your own job. Like that's what it seems like to me. Like you're you're basically helping train this AI model to code better than it can right now, so that the company that's forcing you to use the tool can save a buck by firing you later on.

Clay And The Manufactured GTM Engineer

SPEAKER_00 2:18

Exactly. And don't forget that really fun part of the employment clause where it's like everything that you do, everything that you create while using company equipment or on the company clock is all then complete IP of the company, right? You dare not take it with you for fear of like legal retribution, right? Like it's a it's a bad deal. It's a bad deal, is the truth. Uh okay. Speaking of truth, we're gonna get into something that I saw recently as one of your reaction to. So we got Clay's Manufactured Movement. This has echoes. Uh, you'll see in the comments of the post that we'll talk through of like Salesforce back in the day. I know that that's near and dear to both of our hearts. So wanted to talk a little bit about the replication of history that's going on with Clay right now. I have no idea what this is, but you have a bark.co mailer, a Callend Lee versus Callend Lee, fun little word play here. I can't wait to see what that's about. Uh, we have uh, what do you call it? A visual hierarchy of ads. We have a marketing draft we want to do, a campaign roast we're hoping to get through. So, like meaty, I'm sure we'll segue or deep dive into completely irrelevant things like we often do, but that's where that's where we're gonna start off. Uh, any any any do you have any inkling about what the manufactured movement should be, or should we completely set the table? Uh I'm gonna use you to set the table on this one.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

I don't know my perfect, perfect.

SPEAKER_00 3:41

So, in case you're a uh a visual guy as well, uh we could look at it together. So this is coming from uh Amos Barr Joseph. So here we go again with my name pronunciation. I saw this post on LinkedIn a little while ago. Uh, he is the CEO of GetSwan.com. Okay, so just giving proper at proper attribution here. Uh it reads as follows everyone's celebrating Clay's latest$1 million fundraise. I spent the last 24 hours digging into their go-to-market engineer movement claims. What I found will shock you, they're selling you on a quote unquote movement that barely exists. Less than 1% of go-to-market teams actually employ a go-to-market engineer. And here's the kicker 82 of those 650, quote, go-to-market engineers, end quote, work at Clay. Want more proof? There are only 79 go-to-market engineer job openings in the entire US on LinkedIn right now. Thanks, linked out to Harris for helping with the analysis. They're not leading a movement, they're manufacturing one. Here's what's really happening. Clay knows that their platform is impossibly complex for normal users. So instead of building a better UX, they're building a narrative that makes you feel inadequate. Oh, you can't use clay? You must need a 250k a year go-to-market engineer. And don't get me wrong, uh, word I've actually I lost my time. Don't get me wrong, clay is insanely powerful when mastered correctly, but they've created a brilliant scam. Make you feel like everyone else gets it but you. And who's manufacturing this FOMO? The army of clay experts flooding your LinkedIn feed. Every success story, every game-changing workflow, every humble brag about their latest automation. They're not sharing wins, they're creating customers for themselves. And here's the smoking gun. According to SalesNav, roughly 45% of active go-to-market engineer roles today are agencies or consultants. Think about that. Nearly half of the quote unquote movement is selling, is people selling you Clay services. Clay was founded in 2017 before ChatGPT, before AI changed everything. They bet big on complexity, on making sellers think like engineers, on convincing you that great sales requires great code. On turning human intuition into flowcharts and formulas, they double down on the wrong future. Stop for a second and ask yourself, what's AI better at right now? Writing your sales emails or writing your code? What's growing faster, 11X or lovable? The real go-to-market revolution won't come from a 250K engineer running complex workflows. It'll come from AI that makes complexity disappear entirely. Not humans pretending to be machines, but machines empowering humans to be human. The bestsellers I know aren't engineers, they're connectors, they read between the lines, they build trust in seconds, they turn strangers into champions with pure intuition. That's not code, that's human magic. And the future of go-to-market tech will amplify that magic with AI, not drown it in complexity. So that is the full post, lengthier one. Obviously, pretty well articulated, if not slightly verbose, there. The comments are fun. You take a look at that on your own time. We'll link to this in the show notes. Uh, your immediate reactions to this, sir.

SPEAKER_01 7:10

Uh I mean, my immediate reaction is that you could replace clay with like pretty much a lot of other tools out there, like Salesforce, for example, and just as exactly the post would read the same the same way. Like um, yeah, I mean, that's my my initial takeaway is that like how many people need like dedicated Salesforce, you know, ops people to like manage the software just to make it work? Like, isn't the whole point of a CRM so that it's kind of like self-manageable? Like the people who are actually using it are the people who who use it. I don't know. Am I thinking about this wrong here?

SPEAKER_00 7:47

You sound crazy, exactly. That that is not incorporate AI that is not accelerating velocity, that is not making no, of course, that's a very rational take, which is why you would be absolutely excommunicated on LinkedIn for saying something so radical like that. Yeah, yeah, it's all it's a whole thing. It's very, very smart, but in like a diabolical way, in my opinion, this like manufacturing movement, like creating the need and creating this whole like the flywheel kind of thing that spins. Like, I don't know, man. Like, I I've seen a lot of like these uh yeah, the B2B influencers on LinkedIn elsewhere, even even on like my Instagram feed now, touting the importance of clay and integrating it into like the need to get like these folks actually like a part of your go-to-market team. It's it's wild, and you're exactly right. Like the Salesforce engineer, like admin type of role that came about when Salesforce like was really starting to hit the scene, uh, almost identical to this. So it's not like Clay is the first company to kind of run this playbook, just the most recent and one that uh I don't know, apparently uh people are comfortable calling out for. Now, I have no idea what the vested interest in what did I say, Swan, get swan.com might be in terms of calling out this hypocrisy this not hypocrisy, but like this smoke and mirrors kind of movement. But safe to say they're probably a competitor. I don't know. I'm not gonna look too far into it, but I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_01 9:12

I mean, especially with everything that you mentioned about how um like what what was the stat like 40% or something or 50% were yeah, uh 45% of active GTM engineer roles are today are agencies or consultants. I would say with like Salesforce, you know, Salesforce uh ops people or whatever, like I'd say that you know, probably over half are probably agencies and consultants at this point. Like when you need to hire an agency just to like manage your Salesforce for your, you know, even just like do the build out and like get it set up and running. It's like yeah. I feel like back in the day, companies used to onboard you and you know, used to help you with that on on your own, but as everyone's like in the race to cut costs, now it's like you have to outsource all that even initial implementation and stuff to uh agency or a consultant. Exactly. And I say this as a as a consultant who's actually helped you know companies do full hub spot build outs.

Bark.co Direct Mail Goes Off Script

SPEAKER_00 10:09

Like so, yeah, like I said, I'm assuming that get swan.com is a competitor of clay. Not really going to look into that, but Swan makes me think of a another animal, actually, and that is that is a dog, right? Which is brings us to the the next agenda item here, a bark.co mailer. I know nothing about bark.co. I'm certainly not familiar with their mailer strategy. What is okay, so we have a visual for those folks on the audio. I just saw something enter the screen. What do you what do you have? Playtime. Is that your dog?

SPEAKER_01 10:41

Uh no, it it is a dog. It is a golden receiver. It's not a play dog, but um for whatever reason it's not like showing the title there.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

Thanks, Zoom. I can see a little bit better.

SPEAKER_01 11:02

There we go. What's your what's your first thoughts on on what they're trying to do here?

SPEAKER_00 11:09

Uh my first thought is whatever it is, it's working. Like I'm fine, just oh, it's an adorable dog with some kind of like funky, I don't know if that's like a hat. Or was that well, what is that actually? Uh it appears to be a bra. Okay. Okay, it is a bra. Okay, now I'm confused. Now I'm very confused, but I need you to help me better understand what's going on here.

SPEAKER_01 11:29

Uh so I don't know why we got this, but we got this in the mail. And I show it to my wife, and like it says playtime, dog's number one on entertainment, August 2025. When I first saw it, I thought it looked like a playbill from like like a like a Broadway show, like a Broadway show play. Sure. That's that's what I thought it was. Like the same font and everything, like the date, all that kind of stuff. If if you've ever been to a Broadway show, um, my wife immediately points out that the dog is wearing a bra and that they're actually going more for Playboy. They're trying to do a play on Playboy on Playboy. Oh my. Oh my. And then upon a little bit further reading, when you open up, you see this picture of a dog laying seductively on satin sheets. Oh my god. And it only gets more interesting from here. Um I'll read a couple quotes from the mailer here. Uh, you didn't come here for wholesome, you came for squeaks, snorts, and scandal. When the lights go out, the leashes come off. That's when the big honk and pigs start talking dirty, oink oink, baby, and plush dice get rolled like someone's about to get rough at the dog park. These toys weren't made for well-behaved pups. They were made for the sniff first escalator crowd, the ones who hump on first play dates. So go ahead, bite it, shake it, make it squeal. There's no shame in this play band. So my question for you is uh are physical mailers back, Mike?

SPEAKER_00 13:08

Is that uh they are they are back like they never left, and we should never have left that door open based on what I saw and just heard you read to me. First of all, if the whole podcast thing doesn't work out, please consider a career in just audiobook retelling. I think you have a real potential for a voice actor for these guys here. Uh, Bark.co, if you're listening, give Chris a shout. Absolutely ridiculous. Who do you think? Okay, let me ask you this. So this is not the main point that we should we should focus on. Like mailer is a thing, but like, do you think that a human wrote that? Do you think that was AI generated copy that appeared then on the ultimate mailer? Or like what is the origin of this? And by the way, are you going to be purchasing the playpen?

SPEAKER_01 13:56

Well, that's the thing is uh even after reading this mailer probably five times, I still don't know what they're trying to sell.

SPEAKER_00 14:03

Wait, that's not great. That's not what you want.

SPEAKER_01 14:07

Bark.co, like it has uh it has a QR code on here. So I don't even really know what Bark.co does based on looking at this, but I think that might be the point. Like they've got my attention, which is the whole point of marketing these days. You know, once you can get somebody's attention, then you can, you know, you don't even need to tell them what you even do, but you've got their attention, so then you can dri drive them down the the purchase funnel from there. Absolutely. I'm actually going to Bark.co right now because I haven't bent at the website yet.

SPEAKER_00 14:36

But I I'm there. Spoiler alert, it is like very safe for work, the complete opposite of the mailer that you just walked me through. What the hell? This is crazy.

SPEAKER_01 14:49

Yeah, so it's it's I mean it's like a pet store. Like they have uh oh, so they do Barkbox. So yeah, I've heard of Barkbox. It's like a subscription box where you get like toys and traits and stuff each month. Um you can do like gifts and and that kind of stuff, but yeah, I don't even see anything on here about you know playtime or like anything in this uh in this mailer. That's like actually crazy. They don't even mention I don't think they even mention Barkbox anywhere on here. They just mentioned Bark.co and they try to like get people interested enough to scan the QR code.

SPEAKER_00 15:27

Yeah. I wonder how effective it would be. Wow. Have you scanned it yet? Like what page does it bring you to? Is it a home page when you open it up?

SPEAKER_01 15:41

Yeah, let's find out.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

I have a sales roll open, Chris, if you're looking.

SPEAKER_01 15:52

Oh yeah, so it brings you to uh it looks like a dedicated landing page specifically about this mailer. Yeah, this yeah, UTM medium direct mail, yep. So the nerdy part of me is like looking at their UTM parameters. It's exactly what I would have done if I was if I was doing this. So it says uh hey there, you dirty dog, you these products are intended for naughty dogs only. By entering, you certify that you're 18 or older. So then I'm like, yes, I'm older. And then it brings you to this uh dedicated page. But I mean it's basically just designed to get you subscribed to Barkbox.

SPEAKER_00 16:30

Really, really interesting. This is again not like the main point here, but okay. What are your thoughts on so you QR code, right? It brings them to a dedicated page. I'm wondering, do you think that is like a cloned version of a main landing page? Uh or I guess what the the broader question is like, what do you think about cloning like a standard page and knowing that the only way that people could reach the if you no index, no follow, right, is by like this QR code, right? Similar idea for like ads that have been set up. Do you know that the only destination, the only way that you can get to this destination is by a particular medium, direct mail in this instance? Are UTMs then like redundant? Are they necessary? Do you err on the side of caution and include both? Do you only rely on UTMs to go to like a main landing page and not bother to clone it at all? Like, how do you typically approach that kind of that kind of thing?

SPEAKER_01 17:22

Yeah, I mean, I I usually just rely on the UTMs um just because they're, you know, people share stuff, for example. So like if you share something, you you want to you you might even use like a different UTM or something if you have like a share button or something. Um yeah, I mean, I I used to be a cloner, so to speak, uh, to have a separate landing page for everything, but I just found that it got way too much to manage. Like if you have to make updates to it and you have to change it in different places. So I usually just rely on on UTMs overall for this kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 17:52

Chris Newton, recovering cloners.

SPEAKER_01 17:55

This landing page was custom built specifically for this mailer because uh a lot of the content on it is related to kind of the stuff that you see in the mailer.

SPEAKER_00 18:03

Totally. And you've never made a purchase from these guys before, right? This was your first like exposure to the brand.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

Um, I want to say like maybe 10 years ago, I think we tried Dark Box for my dog. And but I mean they don't have like my that was like five apartments ago kind of thing. Like I don't I don't even know like how I got on this list and even got this this mailer.

SPEAKER_00 18:25

Well, that's that's where my head goes, right? Because that's very specifically oriented to like you are a dog owner, right? They did not focus like cats, right? We're not the subject of this direct mail, and they knew enough about you to glean that you are a dog owner and focus it around that. At least I'm giving a benefit of the doubt there, right? Maybe they sent it to everyone in their database that might be cat owners or lizard owners or whatever, and just like banking on this to be provocative and strange enough that they will scan the QR and go through. But that's crazy. You've been a you've been a closed loss opportunity in their CRM for it sounds like more than a decade at this point, and yet tailored enough to uh yeah, I don't know, to to actually resonate with you.

SPEAKER_01 19:02

Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, looking at who it was addressed to, it just says current residence. So I don't even know if it was specifically targeted towards me or if they just happen to know that maybe whatever resident of this house happens to have a dog, or I I don't know how they they targeted it. I actually think it would be kind of funny if it was directly addressed towards my dog, like my dog requested this dirty magazine thing.

SPEAKER_00 19:25

Well, right, right, yeah, that's crazy. Like that's that's what my head goes, because like I don't know, we do uh what do you call it, like heartworm medication subscriptions via Chewy, right? So like Chewy knows that I have two dogs, they know roughly like their weight and what have you, because that's important with respect to like medicine dosage. So there could be like a super tailored thing sent to me, and I would be very uncomfortable if they if they sent it uh in in the same way that you got your direct mailer, but yeah, I don't know. So maybe not. I wonder, do you do you know if any of your neighbors got a similar type of of mailer or no?

SPEAKER_01 20:01

Um I'm not sure. I haven't specifically brought it up to anybody.

SPEAKER_00 20:04

Well, it's also a weird thing. You know, you go down and get like your mail in the bathroom and like it's slippery.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

That uh looks like a Playboy magazine for dogs. Let me explain. Let me explain. Oh no, you didn't? Must just be me.

SPEAKER_00 20:20

Actually, it's funnier to imagine that conversation taking place without you having the visual and just you trying to like explain what it is and just this uh man.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

I mean, I I'm already awkward enough. I don't need to try to explain to my neighbors why we got a dog mailer that uh resembles a Playboy magazine.

SPEAKER_00 20:38

Right? Okay. So now, by the way, I noticed when we go to Vibe, I don't know if you got prompted, I certainly did not for any kind of like cookie acceptance or anything like that, which leads me to think that they're HQ'd in the US where at GDPR or whatever, just eh, foo food kind of thing, right? Like I wonder now how aggressively you will be re-marketed, retargeted based on that, and like even the particular like you know, URL. I'm assuming you're using Wi-Fi at home, right, on your phone to open up that QR code. So you're gonna be exposed to this now for for some time. Congratulations.

SPEAKER_01 21:12

I mean, uh, don't don't use the word exposed when you talk to me about this campaign ever again. Yes. Uh feeling lonely, Mike, for a good call, for a good time, call 1855-560 lick.

SPEAKER_00 21:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 21:27

Standard plus rates apply.

SPEAKER_00 21:29

I am all for sticking to the theme, the whatever, like look and feel, if you'll forgive the word doers there, of of a campaign. But like this to me is is is pushing it a bit too far. Like, it's clever. Also, like, what if my teenage kid picks this up out of the mail? You know what I mean? Like, this this seems like a great idea. What fucking marketing wizard sat there and was like, you know what we should do? Lean into the sex angle of dogs because that's not strange at all, and just take this. Calculated brand reputation, dude. If I I don't know, I don't know. That's that's crazy to me. That's absolutely crazy. If I were like chewyer competitor right now, what I'd be doing is using some of these like third-party signal tools, Bombora, Sixth Sense, you name it, demand-based heaven for bid, right? And just being like people that are searching for this, I'm running an aggressive campaign against, hey, do you get this really fucking weird thing in the mail? Like, want to wanna do your business with a company that isn't gonna make you like awkwardly squirm in your seat. Come on over. We have stuff that is uh better, comparable, whatever. You can take it from there. That's I don't know. That's just me.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

I'm actually curious now if uh like usually when I get shit like this, I just want to like check Reddit to see if other people are commenting. Because if other people got this, it'll definitely show up on Reddit as uh secretly.

SPEAKER_00 22:53

I'm hoping that no one else did. I hope that it was just you, like just the Newton household that got this like hyper-targeted campaign at current resident.

SPEAKER_01 23:03

I literally am not seeing any anyone else talking about this.

SPEAKER_00 23:09

That's just you, Mint. It's just you.

SPEAKER_01 23:15

Well, it worked. I mean, if they're they're if their goal was to have a podcast with three listeners talk about it, they got it.

SPEAKER_00 23:23

Honestly, the for for when this podcast completely takes off and Bark.co is a premium sponsor, we could just use the same audio recording that we just had of you going through the mailer as the pre-roll ad. It's perfect. The work is already done, and uh everyone will everyone will not listen to that particular episode.

SPEAKER_01 23:46

All right, should we move on? Give uh we've given enough free advertising to Bark.co at this point.

Calendly Mispronunciations And Name Respect

SPEAKER_00 23:52

I think that we have, yeah. Mission accomplished, guys. Well, well done. That was a uh that was a rough segment. I hate me too. Let's talk about uh speaking of play on words, calendly versus calendasly. I go ahead, take it, take it away.

SPEAKER_01 24:07

Uh so this was uh prompted by a meeting I had with a client uh a couple months ago, I want to say. Um first of all, how how do you pronounce Cal Do you use Calendly? Are you familiar with it?

SPEAKER_00 24:18

Uh no, actually, we were talking about using this for like our joint availability for all these hot uh interview requests that we're we're gonna start fielding. But so many. So many. Just like call off the hounds. Um I I I pronounce it calendarly. Uh is there a correct pronunciation that I should be using?

SPEAKER_01 24:40

I actually don't know, but like how how would you pronounce it? Like if you saw the word, how would you pronounce it?

SPEAKER_00 24:46

Uh how I have been pronouncing it for better or worse is just calendly.

SPEAKER_01 24:50

Calendly, right, exactly. That's how I pronounce it as well. Well, this client that I uh had a meeting with, he kept pronouncing it over and over and over. Um, because I I use the Calunly for you know booking client meetings and stuff, it just makes things a lot easier. He kept report he kept uh calling it Calunly. Calunly. By the end of the meeting, I almost dropped had to drop him as a client. I'm like, I can't work with you anymore, but like this is not working out. Calunly. That's Callunly.

SPEAKER_00 25:23

Your client isn't trying. Like they're not reading the word. There's no way that there's no what do you mean? There's no you where it should be.

SPEAKER_01 25:30

That's the thing, is like Callendly, like it's obviously a play on the word calendar. I I've never pronounced it calendar, you know. Right. Oh yeah, put some time on my calendar. That's almost as weird as calling it a fucking diary. Like, yeah, put some time on my diary.

SPEAKER_00 25:46

He means no offense to our two British listeners, okay? You just mean your European atmosphere.

SPEAKER_01 25:53

No, it's no, no, I do I do mean offense to it. It's called a calendar. It's a diary is something you write your deepest, darkest secrets in, which I should have probably written my deepest, darkest secrets about playtime in this this dog mailer. That would have been the better place for instead of releasing it to the the world, but a diary is private, a calendar is public.

SPEAKER_00 26:14

I yeah, I listen, I I agree with that. At least usually it is, right? Uh if calundly doesn't make any sense. By the way, not to like push you into the voice acting career, but the way that you said like Calundly. Calundly made it sound like when I am reading our Spanish books at night with Javier and I'm not quite sure how to pronounce the word, I'll pull up like you know, the translation thing you do on Google, and they have those short little audio snippets that'll do it a couple of times. That is exactly what you sounded like. That would actually be a fun like prank to run, is like incorrect pronunciations only for people that show up.

SPEAKER_01 26:51

We should start posting some of those on our Instagram. Uh yes, marketing qualifying Instagram, just uh mispronunciations of marketing words.

SPEAKER_00 26:59

That's perfect. That's perfect. Yep, we've done buzzwords. Now we're doing completely fake words, not fake, but like incorrectly stated words, incorrectly pronounced words. That's fun. That's very fun. Uh my question to you is are you going to like it subtly try to correct the behavior? Are you gonna be like, oh yeah, definitely use my calendarly link to do no?

SPEAKER_01 27:23

I think I might just switch to HubSpot meetings, honestly. Really? Okay, nobody can fuck that up unless he starts calling it like HubSpoot or something. Hoopspot.

SPEAKER_00 27:34

Oh my god, yeah, you're safer. You're definitely safer doing that. By the way, like on a similar note, I had a CMO once that all I'm gonna say is if you're a people manager, right? You should know how to pronounce your team members' names. He would habitually get this actually repeat offender. There are multiple people whose names the the CMO would just get completely wrong. And so I I felt uncomfortable enough so that like in those meetings, I would go out of my way to like find a reason to talk to those people and say the name correctly. And just like, please be paying attention, please pick up on this. Like, I know, I know you're used to being right, but like you gotta trust me on this one.

SPEAKER_01 28:19

Like maybe he was doing it on purpose because he wanted to force like uh connections and force uh, you know, some managers like their their only job, like all they do is they're like, Oh yeah, so and so should talk to so-and-so. Like, oh Mike, you should go talk to so and so.

Visual Hierarchy That Stops The Scroll

SPEAKER_00 28:35

Uh quite quite possibly, but I think frankly, that gives way too much credit to this particular individual with respect to just like EQ level. So, yeah, I want probably not. Probably not is the thing. Uh we uh I'm gonna save it. Remember that we were talking about like EQ and like read and draw a connections for later on. Okay. Uh let's do let's do this visual hierarchy in ads. Okay, so this is something that actually uh my wife found, I think, on a Reddit post to share to me because it was really interesting. And so I uh actually tracked down the the poster on LinkedIn and came across it. And so this one is gonna be tougher to do uh like audibly here. So maybe we can just like uh post a link to it in the show notes. But essentially, there is a visual that this uh copywriter produced that calls out kind of like I'm just gonna read from the top down. You guys are gonna have to like mentally visualize the uh like the ad copy of different font size and what have you. Like you'll read this first, then come back here, and then you will read this line after. And it shows like uh just based on like a bunch of training, like where people's eyes typically go and experiences with clicks and what have you, like where it is that you should be putting your punchiest line versus like the the pitch and what have you. I just think it's really interesting because so much of A-B testing, especially on paid acquisition channels, comes down to creative and copy therein, right? Like the intro text matters from a positioning standpoint, but like when's the last time that you stopped to scroll because you saw a really good like intro text, right? Probably never. It's based on like what is cons what you're able to consume within the actual piece of creative. And so just having this kind of template that lays out, and this is just text, by the way. This is to say nothing of the visual components that would factor into the piece of creative, but I just thought it was really interesting and something that I've actually bookmarked and plan on bearing in mind when it comes to rolling out the next, especially like product positioning pitch or something like that, or doing in a go-to-market capacity. And I just thought it was cool. Have you have you seen this particular thing or other type of like creative uh like positioning hacks in the past?

SPEAKER_01 30:50

Um, I mean, I've definitely seen like like website like eye tracking studies and stuff, and people tend to scan it like more like a F or like a T-shaped pattern. Um, so you that's why you typically want like your your header up at the top, obviously, and then people kind of like scan down the page down the left and then they'll read to the right. Um the seems a little bit similar to that, but it's more like the visual hierarchy, like the where it says you'll read this first, I mean it's bigger, it's a different font color, so that makes sense that people would kind of see that first and and how it stands out to them. But yeah, I mean I I think it makes a lot of sense, and it's definitely something that you know a good website designer should keep in mind as they're designing the layout of the page and stuff.

SPEAKER_00 31:30

Yeah, I agree. Something similar. What this brought to mind for me was so way back in the day when X was at least in my opinion, a bit more like prominent of like a platform for for demand gen, the idea was you would want to place your link back to the website at some like 45% or so of the way through your actual tweet. Like the studies that were conducted by like the Hoot Suites and Sprout Socials of the World back then uh indicated that there was a greater click-through rate of tweets that had that URL linking out in the middle than they did uh towards the end of tweet, which is like for me at least where I was naturally inclined to include them, right? Because it's just like, oh, I've made my pitch now enter here and experimented with that a little bit. It's um a couple of different roles. This is actually one of the tips that I did. I don't know if you know this. Back in the day, I I did a like a social media campaign optimization uh like talk at one of the inbound conferences. Uh, and it was one of the things that actually got a lot of traction. Like, people came up to me afterwards who were asking about uh data to back it up and like listen, I hadn't done any of the work, I was just citing all the reports that it had been done for me. But it was a really interesting takeaway kind of thing. Um I forgot to mention this in the Calendley or whatever Calundley section, but Calendlay, that's a new one. Calendly. Calundle, God. Again, like wrong pronunciations only. Uh embarrassing like career move. I don't know if I've told you about this on a recording or just like in real life in the past, but like uh the placement of links in a tweet reminded me. It was my first postgrad job at a PR agency. We were doing like a press release training with business wire. I don't know if you've ever used business wire to disperse like a company's press release or something like that. And I asked, it's exactly what I asked, I was like, will we still be able to see something about like impressions coming from? And this is what I called it bit.ly. I said the entirety of it out loud. Not bit.ly, bits.ly. And to her great credit, the woman doing the training was like, Yes, you can totally see whatever stupid fucking thing you're asking about from bit.ly good times.

SPEAKER_01 33:47

I mean very good times. Better than calling it like B-I-T.ly or B-I-T.ly or B-I-T.

SPEAKER_00 33:55

Well now it just sounds like you're starting to like rap. B I T.ly. B-I-T.ly. Nice. Uh what do you think here? We got we got time to roast, or you want to do the the bonus thing? Um, yeah, let's uh the bonus thing being the the draft. Uh no, the bonus thing being the thing that you don't know about that I'm just gonna splash.

SPEAKER_01 34:19

Let's do the bonus thing and we'll save the draft for next time.

LinkedIn Dating Marketing And The Sign Off

SPEAKER_00 34:21

Perfect, perfect. Okay, I'm going to visualize this with you so you can see the full uh cringeworthy nature of the post, and I'll read for the folks on the line. TLDR, who is the most eligible single you know in LA? I trust LinkedIn for this. On September 4th, Sitch is officially launching in LA with the party of the fall. Trust me. The San Francisco launch party had five couples and 200 shots. Here's who I'm looking for. You can go from 7 a.m. berries to 8 a.m. boardroom, included sound baths at Joshua Tree on the corporate retreat itinerary, takes client calls in the smoothie line for Errowan, single because they are too busy crushing their company to date. Know someone who fits the bill, tag them in the comments, and we'll see them an invite and we'll send them an invite to our LA launch party. And if that's you, use code LAVP to skip the Sitch wait list and get instant access to the app. And then there's a picture of the co-founder of Sitch who uh did a Batam and I did a bit of like an investigation into this last night, like habitually going just like putting up flyers with QR codes across like different parts of LA and shit like that. And so this is uh this is what it's come to, buddy. On your favorite social media platform, uh dating. My question to you is uh, are you going to be tagging any of your potentially single friends in the comment section of this post?

SPEAKER_01 35:50

Um no, I won't. Uh I I was actually thinking of ways I could fuck with people to do this. Like, you know, old co-workers I don't really like, just tag them in the post or something.

SPEAKER_00 36:02

That's hilarious.

SPEAKER_01 36:03

It's like kind of like uh, you know, I'm sure everyone's done this before. You you sign somebody up, some you sign somebody you don't like up to a newsletter and like like all the newsletters and they start getting a bunch of email spam. I could see this uh being something similar.

SPEAKER_00 36:17

That's fun. Yeah, a lot of those like bogus leads coming in from this kind of thing. It's just like, man, I this this makes me uncomfortable. This makes me uncomfortable. This is this is why LinkedIn needs to just cease to exist. It's brutal. It's brutal.

SPEAKER_01 36:34

Uh you know, I I admire the uh you know the the scrappiness and trying to do something a little bit different, but yeah, LinkedIn just needs to go away. It it uh it's it's come to this.

SPEAKER_00 36:48

It was inevitable, I feel like that it was gonna turn into like a dating platform somehow, right? Like yeah, and now that we're doing like free advertising for it, right? It's like get the hottest takes and the hottest singles brought to you on the same book. Get out of here.

SPEAKER_01 37:04

Get out of here. Like social media will always like like sink down to the lowest common denominator, and you know, LinkedIn's just about there right now.

SPEAKER_00 37:15

Yep. Yeah, it uh I'd be curious to see just how just how hard the basement floor is when we get there. It's gonna be a lot of fun. Uh speaking of a lot of fun, that is just about the time that we have today to have ours. And next time we'll take a look at some campaign roasting. We have a fun little football-oriented exercise we'd like to do. Uh, appreciate you guys coming along with us on this ride. Uh, shout out to all those clay go-to-market engineer folks that are out there. Drop us a line, let us know how the career is going. And that's it. We'll do it again real soon. Any final words of wisdom, Chris?

SPEAKER_01 37:50

Uh no, I'm gonna go uh back to reading my playtime magazine.

SPEAKER_00 37:54

Yeah, listen, what you do in your personal time is fine. I just don't update the people, whatever you do. Good deal. Take it easy, everybody. Bye all.