Behind the Scenes - 9/20/2024

Dear Friends,

For those who are new to our emails, I try to do an email once a week where I go into the details of what is happening behind the scenes of our small business. If you want to catch up on prior messages, check out the blog here or just jump right into the story below.

The ship is turning. Our marketing has taken an interesting and upward trajectory. Part of the change is technical in the way our ad spend is being used, but that is mostly boring. The other part is the fun part. I also happen to think that the other part is the actual reason for the improvement.

This takes me back to my college days. As a young undergrad studying marketing, I would often do case studies on famous brands and how their marketing affected them. One thing I always loved was the slogan. Back before the world of advanced data science, marketing was more fun, and more human. In the old world, a good slogan would make or break a brand.

And all old things become new again.

So I have been having fun with my own sloganeering as well as using the soil from your submissions last week to help flesh out new ideas. It has lead to a handful of pages in my Pocket Cut Cover being nothing but random (and usually bad) versions of a good slogan.

What's funny about a good slogan is that the important thing is how it strikes you upon first hearing (or reading). Any slogan can be analyzed to death, and reading the same slogan over and over will make it lose all meaning. You can poke holes in the wording or phrasing, or perhaps you think it would have been better with a slightly different timing. All these things may be technically true, and when running through the refining process they are important. If your first impression of a slogan isn't immediately "that's a good hook" then its best to dive into word choice and phrasing. But if you do think "wow, that's great" then it may be time to roll with it before you go too far into changing it.

So armed with my list of slogans I've taken to making new content and posting it to our Instagram to let it get some organic testing. This is poor data science since the algorithm has as much to do with the performance as the content itself. However, the opposite is also true, a good piece of content will get the algorithms attention.

It's fun to see a slogan that you refined by fire see the light of day in a new ad. All of these posts will eventually become ads, and some paid testing will likely further yield information about what content is "good" for ads. I have a few I think will do the best, but I've been wrong on that before. It's best to let the algorithm run in the beginning and let it tell you some things.

This has also had some fun down stream effects and has lead to new email ideas. Using these slogans as the jumping off point, we can get the emails to flesh out the concepts that we are speaking to in the slogan. Earlier this week we had our "we make them like they used to" email and it was a huge success.

I've got ideas on how to incorporate some of this into our website redesign and I think by the time we get to Christmas we can have everything up and rolling. The video content is good to tell as story, but the words can help make it more pointed.

It's nice having my Pocket Cut so that when an idea strikes I can jot it down before I lose it. I've found that the first wording that strikes me often is a better starting point than when I'm trying to remember it later. I wonder why that is.

During this slogan process i've been able to put Rory Sutherland's idea of "the opposite of a good idea may also be a good idea" into practice. Many times I'll jot down a good slogan, and then think, what is the logical opposite of this. For example, I may write down something like "Each Journal is unique, Just like you" which is both true, and probably could use some polishing. We like rare and unique things. However the opposite concept of "Thousands of customers love their journals" is also a good one. We like to have a community and there is a desire to have some conformity. "If all those people loved their journals, I'll probably love mine too" is a powerful concept as well. The key is to be able to find where those two slogans aren't contradictory. If you think about it, they really do go well together.

So you can see that this process is like a song, or a painting as much as it is like anything. There is an ebb and flow to the ideas, and a whole collection of good phrases and slogans can help make the complex more simple. You begin to understand that writing in a leather journal is better than writing in a plain journal. It's hard to point to why exactly, but it is better. You understand that your item is made unique for you, but we make good things every time, so you won't be disappointed. It becomes easier to understand that waiting a few extra days for something made well is far better than buying something cheap and easy that will arrive quickly. Slogans can help craft that picture.

I've got a bunch more pages to fill in my book and I intend to do just that. After all, a complex thing can have a lot of phrases that explain parts of it. Eventually as these slogans are refined, published, tested, and run the story we are trying to tell and the products we make will become easier for people to understand and make the leap into owners.

I'm also deeply curious to see which ones are people's favorites. So please go check out our Instagram channel when you have a moment (@MurdyCreative.co) and comment on the one you like best. I'll try to keep you guys updated with the results from the ad tests as they come in.

Stay tuned for more letters on Fridays in the coming weeks and be sure to go subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you like and watch the videos it helps us get promoted more by the algorithm to people who may never have heard of us.

Ever your servant,

Colin MurdyCEO/Owner

Murdy Creative Co.

Cell: 414-434-9001

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