The secret sauce of brand building is bite-sized moment-in-time brilliance.
Brands are built brick by brick daily through products, paid media, social media, influencers, and email campaigns. Every once in a while though, the world gives you an opportunity to turn your brand into the Kool-Aid man and plow through the bricks being stacked by your competitors.
I call it moment-in-time marketing.
When you’re an underdog entrepreneur, and you bootstrap your business without any cash to throw at marketing, you’re forced to grab organic eyeballs through your own shamelessness and creativity. Our culture behaves like the beehive formation of a five-year-old’s soccer game and attention is the cultural currency. Bootstrapped founders know this and refuse to let the opportunity to ride the coattails of a cultural moment pass them by.
It’s that or you die.
I coach every entrepreneur I work with to market with this level of desperation.
Lazy marketing is the death sentence issued by too much cash.
An example of these moments would be:
- A TV show that all of a sudden explodes in popularity like Naked and Afraid.
- A song that comes out of nowhere like What Does the Fox Say?
- A contestant on America’s Got Talent shakes the world like Kodi Lee.
- An unexpected athlete like Emma Raducanu wins the US Open of Tennis.
- A viral video that has us all crying like a soldier returning home to surprise his kids.
- An underdog story that steals our hearts like…keep reading
In honor of being The Underdog Entrepreneur, today I’m going to give you my practical playbook for how I would leverage an underdog story happening in our culture right now to build my brand through a bite-sized moment of brilliance.
For the sake of this exercise today, we are going to pretend I own a golf brand.
(Call Out) Disclaimer: This is an example of a specific circumstance that may not be applicable to your company’s brand building, but take away the lesson from it.
Here is the playbook:
The Cultural Moment Theme:
Underdog Story
The Moment in time:
Last weekend, the head pro (in golf terms they're the pro at a course that teaches lessons) at the Arroyo Trabuco golf course in Orange County played in the PGA Championship. Block was playing in his seventh major and fifth PGA Championship but had never made a cut until this week. This week was different. In a weekend where the biggest names struggled, Michael Block made his name known to the world with a top-15 finish and an emotional slam dunk of a hole-in-one we'll see replayed for decades.
You can see it here: https://twitter.com/PGAChampionship/status/1660394046630576128?s=20
Step 1. Keep your finger on the pulse
The first step in the process is running a company with your head up. If you don’t know what’s happening in the world around you it will be impossible to take advantage of these waves of attention. In this pretend instance, I paid attention to the PGA Championship because I own a golf brand and I watched the eclipse of attention in real time. I didn’t watch it like a fan, I watched it like an opportunist and while it happened I thought to myself,
“This golfer aligns perfectly with my brand (not always the case with cultural moments) and I need him to wear my apparel.”
Step 2. You’re not alone
I know I’m not the only opportunist entrepreneur out there. Every brand from beer companies to cologne is wanting to get in on this moment and put their brand logo smack dab in the middle of it. If I think I’m the only one, I’ll play it too safe. By knowing it’s a crowded party, and assuming every brand has more budget than I do to throw at Michael Block in this instance, I give myself permission to take the third door.
Step 3. Take the third door
The third door premise comes from a book written by Alex Banayan. The analogy he uses in the book is that life is like a nightclub, and there are always three doors into it. The first door is the one at the front with the line around the block where your average Joe’s and jersey shore wannabes wait to negotiate their way in.
The second door is the VIP red roped section where the rich and famous who already have connections stroll in.
The third door is the one in the alley blocked by the chain link fence and hidden behind the cat-filled dumpster Tony Soprano has probably dumped a body into at some point.
For me to capture the moment, my strategy is to find the third door into the Charles Schwab invitational.
Step 4. Know what’s next
After every earthquake, there’s an aftershock. What is next for this person after the moment has occurred? Where will they show up? That’s where I need to be.
In golf, tournaments are played on consecutive weekends. After his play on Sunday went viral, Block received an invitation to this weekend’s Charles Schwab Invitational in Fort Worth.
I’m booking a flight to Texas.
Step 5. Know(s) the hero
I would research everything I could to know about Michael Block. Your job as a marketer is to find the breadcrumbs. He gave us some gems in interviews,
“I didn’t cry when my kids were born. If it makes any sense, the one thing in the world that makes me cry is golf,” Block said. “If that puts into context as far as how much I love the game, you know now. It's everything to me.”
Block later said about himself,
“I'm like the new John Daly, but I don't have a mullet, and I'm not quite as big as him yet,” he said laughing. “I'm just a club professional, right? I work. I have fun. I have a couple of boys that I love to play golf with. I have a great wife. I have great friends. I live the normal life. I love being at home. I love sitting in my backyard. My best friend in the world is my dog."
Who is he on the days when he isn’t competing to win at the PGA Championship?
- What matters to him?
- What competitive brands does he already wear?
- Every golfer has a style, what is his?
- What is his public personality?
- Who is his caddie?
- What club is he a pro at?
- What’s his backstory?
- What is his social presence?
- What are his aspirations?
- What beer does he drink?
- How do I think he’s going to leverage this opportunity?
Each of these questions represents an opportunity to present your brand to him in a way that is thoughtful and genuine instead of shallow. It makes your outreach about making him the hero, not your brand. You want to jump in his sidecar, not try and put him in yours. When we engaged athletes at QALO, we tried to care about what they cared about beyond what they were known for.
Everybody knows who they are as an athlete, but who are they when they aren’t in the public eye?
Step 6. Design the Product
Based on what I discovered, I would have found out he was a down-to-earth Husband and Dad, whose shocking play in a major didn't stop him from grabbing a beer at the local bar after a round of golf like the rest of us. Overall, he enjoyed a good time.
Perfect.
The “Block Party” Polo and Hat are born. Some designs for the polo/hat could be a repetitive pattern of “$125” with the total number of the symbol equaling what he made in earnings at the PGA Championship. It could be a pattern around the divot he made in his hole-in-one on Sunday. It could be a bunch of blocks stacked like a kid’s fort to represent him as a dad giving double meaning to block party. I would move mountains to get as many custom polos printed with the pattern as I could before the weekend.
Step 7. Ignore the hero
No, I would not then overnight him a polo with the hope he wears it in the tournament. That’s what every other brand would do and that’s what every brand gets wrong about moment-in-time marketing. Golfers work off of sponsorships and Michael Block isn’t taking off that hat he just got paid boatloads to wear - I wouldn’t either.
My product needs to be in the box someone that he trusts hands him, not among the mountain of packages the other brands sent him.
Inexperienced brand builders are impatient.
You don’t go directly to the hero. You play hard to get. You go after the people around the hero who the hero trusts. To get to him, I need to ignore him. The goal isn’t to get Michael Block by the weekend, it’s to get Michael Block to notice you over the weekend.
How would I do this?
Step 8. Show up shameless
You can’t win from arm’s length. In this instance, a physical location is his next destination and I need to be there without an ounce of “Am I going to look stupid?” The best marketers are willing to look like fools. I’m showing up to the Charles Schwab invitational with my brown box full of Block Party apparel to outfit the whole damn place.
I would take a four-sided approach:
- The Participants - I would find a way to get the list of every non-athlete at the golf tournament this weekend. The volunteers, the concession workers, and the parking lot attendants. I want all of them in a Block Party hat. We used to do this for the Crossfit Games. We would send a ring to every volunteer and judge before the event, or show up a day early and hand out as many to them as we could. If the judge is wearing a ring an athlete is going to see it. If I can get even a few of the volunteers wearing it I’ve won.
- The Patrons - There’s nothing people love more than free stuff. I would wait in the parking lot of the tournament (hidden somewhat to avoid getting kicked out) and as people showed up I would hand out hats and polos to every person that showed up.
- The Clubhouse - During the last tournament he had a room full of people in the clubhouse of his home course cheering him on. You better believe we’re outfitting that place too. I’m sending a box to the pro shop with the same shirts and hats I’m handing out at the event.
- The Caddie - I’m sending his caddie a package like he's the star. It’s the biggest long shot I would take.
Step 9. “What’s happening?”
You win if they notice. The goal is to have a wave of patrons wearing Block Party Polos flooding the stands. He can’t avoid taking notice. Imagine he’s standing on the green putting only to look up and see dozens of people cheering him on wearing the same Block Party polo or hat.
If I can get him to go, “What’s happening?”
I've got him.
Step 10. Let it sink in
In the box we send to the clubhouse we include a special package for Michael Block. My hope is someone he trusts hands it to him. When he opens it expecting to see the polos he’s seen everywhere, he’s shocked to not see a polo.
Instead, he sees a Polaroid camera with a note on it saying, “Capture every moment.”
He picks it up and below is a case of his favorite beer with a note that says, “Drink this when you share the experience with your best buddies.”
A bottle of wine from the Southern Hills winery where the PGA Championship was played with a note that says, “Drink this and relive it with your family.”
A Block Party bandana for his dog with a note, "Tell him all about it on his next walk."
Finally, I’m including a journal that says, “Write it all down old school style so you never forget.”
Then at the bottom of that box, is his Block Party apparel from my brand. On that apparel sits a note with our information subtly placed that says, “No expectations from us, just a thank you from one underdog to another.”
Step 11. You move on without expectations.
You show up to work on Monday and wait in earnest for the next moment-in-time marketing opportunity. Maybe you hear from Michael Block, maybe you don’t, but we do it for the risk-taking rush of the moment, not to be the hero.
I’ve since retired from my golf brand, leaving the creative golf brand building to Bogey Bros.
On Thursday, Michael Block came back to earth shooting an 11-over at the Charles Schwab Invitational. Who knows where life goes from here, but I do know I’ll always be here for the underdogs.
Thanks for reading. This was a fun one to dream up.
With purpose,
KC
If you enjoyed today’s newsletter could you please share it on your social channels? Writing is the time of my life, and I’d do it anyway, but it’s nice when people read the results of your effort.
I encourage you to read this article about the weekend Michael Block had: https://www.golfdigest.com/story/pga-championship-2023-michael-block-club-pro-to-cult-hero-oak-hill
Here's the moment his caddie realized how much he'd be making off the win:
https://twitter.com/GolfonCBS/status/1660704953755639817?s=20