Demand Curve - The Growth Newsletter #149

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The Growth Newsletter #149

Respond fast, cover fast. Don't make me think. {Clever 3rd tactic}.

Welcome to all you growth-loving founders and marketers! 

HOLY COWS IT'S DECEMBER. 2023 flew by. 

Now for the final couple weeks before all the OOO autoresponders kick in.

Until then: Respond fast, cover fast. Don't make me think. {Clever 3rd tactic}.

Let's dive in ☃️

– Neal

Thanks to our sponsors for keeping this newsletter free for all of you! Check them out :)

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1. Respond fast, or cover fast

Insight from Amanda Goetz, North Face, and Stanley.

Two videos (and their responses) went viral on TikTok lately that led to crazy brand exposure. Then their stories went viral on X/Twitter:

1. Car fire Stanley mug. A woman recorded a video of her completely destroyed car, but her Stanley mug was basically untouched. Within 24 hours, the founder of Stanley recorded a 30-second selfie video in response. This video got 38M views.
   1. Amanda's tweet got 30M impressions as well.
2. North Face helicopter delivery. Another woman on a hike in New Zealand complained about her "waterproof" North Face jacket and got 11M views. 5 days later, North Face posted a video of flying a helicopter to her on the mountain to deliver a new jacket. North Face got around 4M views for this video.
   1. Amanda's tweet got 19M impressions.

In both situations, the companies acted fast:

• Stanley did an off the cuff response to an amplify a positive mention.
• North Face did costly and staged response to make up for a negative mention.

And Amanda, got nearly 50M impressions on her posts. Her tweet promoting her newsletter got nearly 700k impressions on the Stanley tweet.

Act fast, as either the brand, or the "reporter." Waiting two weeks, two months, or two years will hit way less hard than 2 hours.

2. "Don't make me think"—especially in your hero copy

Insight from the Above the Fold playbook.

If you confuse, you lose.

It's honestly horrifying how many home pages, landing pages, and product pages use confusing aspirational language that don't tell you what they sell or why you should care.

Here are some example rewrites:

The right one is better because:

1. It no longer sounds like corporate speak (all-in-one? visual communication solution?)

2. It describes the specific benefit of the product clearly.

The right one is better because:

• It no longer uses vague phrasing.

• It describes the specific benefit of your product.

The right one is better because:

• It doesn't talk in self-congratulatory terms. It talks in terms of benefits to the visitor.

• It clarifies the specific outcome of using the product.

3. {Insert clever title about experimenting}

Insight from Nate Matherson of Positional and Rory Sutherland.

Last week, we had our kookiest sponsorship:

1. I loved it. It was creative, funny, and I figured it would probably work.
2. I hated it. I was afraid people might think I made a mistake 😅.

I decided to add the small PS and to run with it. I'm glad I did:

It's really scary to experiment.

We don't want to: waste money, look dumb, or fail. 99% of the time, we take the safe, logical option.

As Rory Sutherland says: "You'll never be fired for being logical," but, "the fatal issue is that logic always gets you to exactly the same place as your competitors."

So be like Nate, be illogical.

Quick question: How would you describe yourself?

Your response will help us personalize the content you receive from us.

News and links

News you can use:

• Google is updating its Video publisher policy.

• YouTube Shorts ads are being rolled out to more advertisers.

• Google Bard can now answer questions about YouTube videos.

• LinkedIn rolled out performance measurement capabilities and enhancements to Document Ads. 

• Meta is going to launch Threads in the EU before the end of the year.

• I talked on the podcast Marketing Powerups about hooking people's attention.

AI writing platform we recommend*: Inkform

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Want to be featured in front of 85,360 founders and marketers? Learn more here–booking 4 weeks in advance.

Something fun

From @thebrusselswithmuscles2.0.

This has nothing to do with marketing or startups.

But I often see dogs like this and think: "This used to be a wolf... what have we done?"

What did you think of this week's newsletter?

😍 Loved it | 😄 Great | 🙂 Good | 🤷‍♀️ Meh | 🤬 Bad

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing it with a friend. These newsletters take hours to make each week, so it really helps when you share us with fellow founders and marketers.

And if you have any comments/question, I'd love to hear them. Just hit reply!

In case you're new: Who's Demand Curve?

We’re on a mission to help make it easier to start, build, and grow companies.

We share high-quality, vetted, and actionable growth content as we learn it from the top 1% of founders and marketers.

How we can help you grow:

• Read our free playbooks, blog articles, and teardowns—we break down the strategies and tactics that fast-growing startups use to grow.
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• Are you an ambitious startup/scaleup looking to grow? Our agency, Bell Curve, can be your strategic growth partner.
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See you next week.

— Neal and Justin

Neal O'Grady

Justin Setzer