HubSpot - 👟When small wins add up

Lesson 1: Want to sell your product? Personify it.

You get the sense that Matt Zaremba's mind is always in story mode. 

Take a recent collab with ASICS on an older, previously archived running shoe: When asked how his team came up with the "Small Wins Add Up" campaign to show off the shoe, Zaremba doesn't even blink. 

"First off, we know you can run in this thing, but 98% of people buying the shoe are not running. They're just trying to look cool, probably in a city somewhere… They want to be on-trend," he tells me, effortlessly spinning a story of who this desired consumer would be. (He's not wrong — I just bought $160 Cloudnova shoes to look cooler while I run …  errands.)

"So then I ask myself, 'What's the sentiment? This product walks into a room… What does it look like and sound like? Does it have an accent? How can we personify it?'" 

From there, his team starts riffing — talking about the state of the world today, and how everyone is a little burnt out, and how sometimes just getting up in the morning is a major accomplishment — and voila. A campaign is born. 

"Right off the bat, we came up with this idea that small wins add up. So then we go back to the drawing board… How do we visually represent small wins? How do we give a little wink to running, but keep the human element that people have all sorts of little wins they should celebrate?" 

Zaremba does this for all his marketing campaigns, and it's sound advice: Get to know the ins and outs of your product, and what story people will tell themselves when they buy it. 

And think outside the norms when it comes to that story: Are you sure you're selling a running shoe, or are you actually selling the message that little wins matter? 

Because at the end of the day, a Stanley is just a water bottle with a really cool story. 

Lesson 2: Don't use the first idea that comes to you – find the fresher angle.

One of Zaremba's proudest campaigns is one he did with Nike a few years back. It was a big moment for him — at the time, Nike was one of the biggest brands he'd ever worked with. 

Zaremba knew it would be easy to make a splash with a big-name celebrity. He could stick the shoes on LeBron and call it a day. (Relatable, I know.) 

But he didn't want to do that. 

"The shoe reminded my team of our childhood — it kind of tapped into The Sandlot movie. So we decided to take a moment to reflect our own team. We did a yearbook shoot of all our actual employees wearing a special jacket we made, along with the sneakers. And we had the school-picture cloud background."

"We presented the campaign as 'This is who we are, and who we are is the same as you.'" 

I'll admit most marketers aren't regularly working with LeBron-sized budgets, but the takeaway still matters: Your first idea is probably the too-obvious one, and you should keep thinking. Unexpected angles will surprise your audience and make them feel like they're seeing something new.

And ideally, they'll see pieces of themselves in your marketing, too.

Lesson 3: Marketing should make your buyer feel confident — not insecure.