Category: Contentions
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Contentions: Poor Charlie’s Almanack, Stripe Press, and why it all works
A good friend of mine recently showed me Stripe’s new book, Poor Charlie’s Almanack. One of Stripe Press’s tactics is to republish old works with new packaging, and this one was a great choice. The original book was made nearly two decades ago by Peter Kaufman, who compiled quotes from Charlie Munger’s speeches, and put…
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Permission marketing, consistent distribution
“My passengers surprised me,” Gavin says, remembering his early days. “I thought they would be silent or on the phone. But most people wanted to talk. When I mentioned my jewelry, they asked for business cards, but I didn’t have any.” That’s when a light bulb went off in his mind: Why stop at business…
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Future fables
Aesop partnered with Literary Hub to release the second season of a podcast entitled Future Fables, where each episode is a bedtime story for adults in the form of the fable. There’s a lot to like about this, from the creative premise (“What sort of fables might its namesake—Aesop, the ancient Greek fabulist—write [today]?”), to…
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Anna Wintour on audiences
The relationship between creator and audience is one of leading and following. If you’re a creator, you may find that you’re best off making things that you wanted to see yourself; that your audience will follow you because they want the same thing. For me, I’m glad I caved into my instinct and found the…
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Contentions: A good brand enables profit margins and product expansion
It’s obvious that it takes money (or time) to nurture a brand. What’s much less obvious is that a brand also pays off in the long run in more money, in the form of profit margins. Jon Lax writes: The only purpose of a brand is pricing power. The stronger a brand, the more pricing…
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Contentions: The best content marketing example is Marginal Revolution
Marginal Revolution should be how every person or company measures success with its content marketing efforts. Let’s evaluate it from a marketing perspective: It has made authors Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok undeniable leading thinkers (i.e., thought leaders) It has become an incredibly effective launchpad for their projects (like Emergent Ventures, or acquiring PhD students…
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To promote your work on social media, ask friends to like or share, and send them a calendar invite
Because there’s so much noise on the internet, it takes an extremely loud one to stand out. In marketing, there’s a heuristic known as effective frequency, also less formally as the Rule of 7; in order for a person to commit to trying your product, they need to hear it at least 7 times. Given…
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Contentions: Same campaign, fresh hook
While many marketers, journalists, and writers gather up their year-end round ups and campaigns—each largely only differing in the assortment of inventory—a decade ago, the Bloomberg Businessweek team found a moment of truth within the structure: the jealousy list. It describes the premise as, “All the stories we wish we wrote this year.” It’s a…
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Writing, in the Office of the CEO
Over a year ago, GitLab put a job post out for a Senior Executive Content Communications Manager (CEO), which involved ownership of the current CEO content program (including elements of publicity, guest posts, speaking topics and decks, social media, category creation, etc.) and developing and executing a content plan for the next three years. Similarly,…
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Contentions: Bringing creativity, brand, and distribution together
As an expertise, marketing has an even wider set of specialties and experiences than many other lines of work. Even in the world of organic internet marketing, it’s easy to experience overwhelm considering the many channels; TikTok, SEO, Twitter (X), LinkedIn, Threads, Reddit, etc. While marketing can be extremely fun to work on (and equal…