Midweek newsletter — The Emma Chamberlain Strategysssss

This is something you probably didn't expect to get, right? Anyways, I hope you're drinking some coffee. I'm currently sipping Chamberlain Coffee's Careless Cat, but I made it into a cold brew (you just let it sit overnight). 13/10 coffee.

I was on the phone yesterday with a close friend of mine, JT Barnett, who is really sharp when you think about the intersection between creators and brands. As a service, he started working with brands to be more creator-oriented with their content, internally, and now after too much demand, he just helps brands get matched with creators to hire full-time.

One thought that came from it was:

The creators today that have the best audiences long-term — think Emma Chamberlain, Mr. Beast, Danny Duncan, NELK, etc — are entirely focused on delivering value FIRST, and then thinking through what is the transaction they can get from that.

Sometimes the transaction isn't even a sale, it's just getting you to click and check something out, or it's earning your patience to let them finish an ad read. The point is — there is value delivered upfront, and then there is something after that asks for you to make an action.

Put that into perspective today in our world, the brand world, and I believe that brands focus on the opposite. In the tech world, there's an old saying, "If you build it, they will come." And, it doesn't work. That's why everyone advertises. But, when everyone is advertising and asking for you to BUY, or TRY, or SAMPLE, or SUBSCRIBE, or some other action, then that doesn't work either.

I believe for brands to be able to cut through the noise today, they're really going to have to invest in what their customers want. Your customer is a guy who enjoys poolside beats? Cool, make a weekly mix show with a great DJ, sponsor it, and that's a form of content. Your audience enjoys shopping from you because you're a sustainable brand? Build a marketplace of other sustainable brands where they get to discover them in one spot or go interview founders who are building sustainable businesses.

Brands need to think more like creators, really understanding WHY they are doing something, and how that will make the customer feel.

If you're only launching, running ads, and then hitting people with more promotions to come back and increase your LTV, you'll always feel like you have a gun to your head by the finance department.

The best way I've found to go about this is to forget about what the revenue impact might be in the short term. What is dope for your customers? What would make them think, "Holy sh!t, that is so awesome that this company took the time to make this!" Make that.

Here's a simple example we setup with Postscript & Mr. Beast: click here to see the tweet.

That's my rant. And here's my plug:

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Also, this is relevant:

JT Barnett, who I mentioned above, is hosting an event this week with #paid that I highly recommend you check out!

#paid is hosting a Branding Bootcamp with JT Barnett, tomorrow (April 13th) at 10am PST/1pm EST.

JT said he's going to walk through how brands should build their content on TikTok, and he'll take a few people who sign up and help you build out a strategy in real-time.

Regardless if you're an entry-level marketer or a CMO, I highly recommend taking some time to learn from JT. The man is a content creation machine and he understands it on the front-line level, not from a paper-pushing / management level.

Click here to sign up (it's completely free)!

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