502 The New Rules of Marketing & PR (9th Ed.) by David Meerman Scott

Speaker A: You want to get your backyard summer ready, but you don't want to break the bank. Wayfair gets it. Planning on dining al fresco or relaxing poolside? Wayfair has everything you need to prep your space. Shop now and save up to 70% off during Wayfair's 4th of July clearance. Score huge deals on outdoor furniture, area rugs and more. We're talking thousands of products for every style and budget, plus surprise flash deals. July 6th. Don't wait. Shop Wayfair's 4th of July clearance now through July 6th at Wayfair.com Wayfair Every style, every home.

Speaker B: Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile.

Speaker A: Now.

Speaker B: I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited Premium Wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal. Uh, so there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try@mintmobile.com switch upfront payment

Speaker C: of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for a 12 month plan required $15 per month equivalent to taxes and fees. Extra initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes. Me slow.

Speaker D: Hey, this is David Meerman Scott. I'm the author of the ninth edition of the New Rules of Marketing and pr how to use Content Marketing, AI, uh, social media, podcasting, video and newsjacking to reach buyers directly. And you are listening to the Marketing Book Podcast with my friend Douglas Burdett.

Speaker E: Welcome to the Marketing Book Podcast, helping you keep up with the smartest thinking

Speaker D: in the quickly changing field of modern marketing.

Speaker E: And now, here's your host, Douglas Burdett.

Speaker B: Hello.

Speaker E: Thanks for joining me on the Marketing Book Podcast where every Friday I publish an interview with the author of a new marketing or sales book. This show has been named one of the top marketing podcasts by Forbes and LinkedIn, amongst others, and has millions of downloads and listeners in over 185 countries. Don't worry about taking notes. You can find links to everything linkable in this episode's website page@marketingbookpodcast.com and since I get to read every book featured on the show, if I can recommend a specific marketing or sales book or any other resource I know of for whatever challenge you're facing, connect and message me on LinkedIn and I will do my best to get you pointed in the right direction. All right, let's get on with the show. Today we welcome back David Meerman Scott to talk about the Ninth edition of his book, the New Rules of Marketing in pr. How to Use Content Marketing, AI, Social Media, Podcasting, Video and newsjacking to reach buyers Directly published by Wiley. David Meerman Scott is an internationally acclaimed keynote speaker, business growth strategist and author whose books and blog are must reads for professionals seeking to generate attention in ways that grow their businesses. He's the author or co author of 12 books, including the New Rules of Sales and Service, how to use Agile Selling, Real Time Customer Engagement, Big Data Content and Storytelling to grow your business. Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead. What every business can learn from the most iconic brand in history, Real Time Marketing and PR Fanocracy, how to turn fans into customers and customers into fans and marketing the Moon, the selling of the Apollo Lunar Program. The New Rules of marketing and PR has been translated into 29 languages from Albanian to Vietnamese, and is used as a text in hundreds of universities and business schools worldwide. And interesting fact, David Meerman Scott was the very first guest on the Marketing book podcast in January 2015 and is now the final guest. David, congratulations on the 9th edition of the New Rules of Marketing and PR, and welcome back to the Marketing Book Podcast.

Speaker B: Welcome back, friend.

Speaker D: I, uh, knew this day would come. Nice. How are you, Douglas?

Speaker E: Good, good. Well, a little sad, you know, kind of bittersweet.

Speaker D: I, um, know, right? I'm. I like, set my clock by. By the Marketing Book Podcast episodes that I've been on with you. You know, we started off in 2015, I think. Um, am I up to, what, seven or eight? What, how many, how many have I been on?

Speaker E: Nine book interviews.

Speaker D: Am I, am I the winner?

Speaker E: Uh, well, there was one other author who I interviewed ten times. Your friend, uh, Mark Schaefer. Ten books. But then I also interviewed you for authors in quarantine getting cocktails during the lockdown.

Speaker D: I did. I was drinking red wine at that time.

Speaker E: Yes, as was I. And I also interviewed you and Seth, uh, Godin for the Carbon Almanac.

Speaker D: That's right. So perhaps I'm the winner.

Speaker E: Well, you're a winner anyway. But you are also, and have, I've always said you are the patron saint of the Marketing Book Podcast.

Speaker D: Uh, that makes me feel warm and fuzzy.

Speaker E: Good. Well, you were the first guest, and now you are the last. David Meerman Scott. You are the alpha and omega of the Marketing Book Podcast.

Speaker D: Thank you so much, Douglas.

Speaker E: And I, I have to mention that the very first time I, uh, when I interviewed you, I. It was about the new rules of sales and service, and I was so excited and we did the interview and we stopped recording afterwards. And you said, hey, that was a really good interview, Douglas. How many of these have you done? And I almost didn't want to answer the question. I said, that was my first one, David. And you said, oh, that's great. That's great. That's. That's, uh, that was a great interview. And I think, you know, this is better than some other, uh, podcast interviews I've been on. And from that point on, I thought, you know what? I think. I think this may be okay.

Speaker D: Oh, you're.

Speaker B: You're great.

Speaker D: You're a great interviewer. And so many people aren't. You know, I can tell because they're just simply reading questions that they wrote ahead of time. And you don't do that. You have a conversation. Sure, you take notes to things you want to think of, but, yeah, I love. I love it. I love the conversation. Thank you.

Speaker E: Well, you, uh, uh, so that was sort of a, like a rocket booster of confidence for me. And we're going to talk about that in a second. But I was on a. I did an interview recently with Dan White, who's the author of the Smart Advertising Book, and I happened to mention that the first advertising book I ever read was Ogilvy on Advertising. And that was after I got out of the army, and I decided I wanted to go work on Madison Avenue in New York City. And that's what I did. And talk, uh, about the old rules. And so that book had a really big impact. You know, the right book at the right time can have an enormous impact. And then years later, I was doing the advertising thing, had my own advertising firm, and I saw that was all going away. And my good fortune was to be able to have stumbled upon the first or second edition of your book. And the clouds parted, and I saw where everything was going. And so your book is one of two that have had the biggest impact on my career.

Speaker D: So kind of you. And to be putting me in the same category as David Ogilvy. Um, and I remember when we first met in person, it was at, ah, inbound 2012. Was it 2012? And I remember we were in the, um. I'm pretty sure we're in the exhibit hall. You came up and introduced yourself, and I'm like. You're like, I'm thinking of starting a podcast. Not quite there yet. I'm thinking about it. And I said, I'm. I'm in. I will happily be on your podcast. Well, I'm glad we met.

Speaker E: I appreciate that. And you know, there's two other things I want to mention, uh, about David Mirren Scott, because I'm, um, you know, you're an expert on the Grateful Dead and the Apollo mission. I'm the. I'm the expert. I will be the curator of the David Merman Scott Museum, or at least the Trivial Pursuit version of that game. And as we are recording this, we're going into a presidential election here in the U.S. of course, everybody around the world knows about it, which. They pay a lot of attention to it, which is troubling to me, but I guess that's the way it is, and it kind of sucks all the oxygen out of the room. And what's interesting to me is that I guess every four years you write a series of articles about how the candidates are marketing themselves. And what's amusing to me is that I believe every time you write one of those posts, you have a disclaimer that says, look, this is not a political thing. All I'm doing is talking about the tactics they're using. And it's very, very interesting. And invariably there's a person who posts a comment that says, I can't follow this. I don't like it when you talk. Uh, I don't want to know about your political views.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker E: I just think you have great patience.

Speaker D: Yes. And I. And. And I've now done this for five cycles. 20 years worth. I've been blogging. I've been blogging for 20 years. I've been doing this for 20 years, and I love it because I'm fortunate that I live about 20 miles from the New Hampshire border. I live in Massachusetts. That's right. Yeah. And so, um, New Hampshire is interesting because, number one, it's the first primary state. So all the. All the candidate, the wannabe candidates are crawling all over the state of Massachusetts, um, a couple years before the election. Uh, and. And you can just go to their events, and there might be 100 people or 150 people. It's fabulous. Have a chance to ask a question, have a chance to meet them and chat with them. Um, and then, um, and then Massachusetts, and then New Hampshire is also a swing state, a purple state. So they. Once the candidates are, um, established, they come back through New Hampshire. And of course, the events are way bigger because you're talking about the two candidates. But, um, I find it fascinating. And I remember the time I got the most flack was, um, I went to a Donald Trump rally in, uh, New Hampshire, and I was writing about it from the marketing perspective. I Said what goes on at a rally. His rallies are famous. Um, and I want to go, I want. Check it out. And so I did, and I wrote, um, a long blog post, thoughtful blog post on the, on the different aspects of his rally and how he, uh, gets people all excited and many different aspects of it. And, and I put my disclaimer on the bottom. This is not a political, um, blog. I am not commenting on Donald Trump's politics here. I'm simply talking about Donald Trump as a marketer. And yes, still, people still didn't. I don't know if they didn't. And everything I wrote about was marketing. It's like, I'm not saying anything about his policy. I'm not saying anything about the other candidate. Um, you know, it's just, hey, this is the rally, Donald Trump's rally, from a marketing perspective and why it's interesting.

Speaker E: Right? And I remember you wrote about Hillary Clinton and one of your, uh, posts was about how she would take the phone from people that wanted a selfie and she would take the picture.

Speaker D: And it was great.

Speaker E: It was, uh, very smart. And I mean, there's probably only two phones she had to know how to use, and it got a lot more people through, and they were good pictures because she did it probably a thousand times.

Speaker D: And then it's kind of neat because I could post that photo of a selfie with her, Post the photo, and then on the bottom say, Hillary Clinton photo. That's super cool. Right? But, yeah, she would grab, you know, she. People would say, oh, can I take a photo with you? And I've gone to. I think I've probably seen 30 candid by now. Um, over the years, maybe 40. And most candidates sort of fumble with a phone and they screw around and it takes 30 seconds to fire off a selfie. But Hillary Clinton is so efficient. She grabs your phone from you, um, um, turns around to do the selfie, bang. Takes the picture, hands it back. 10 seconds or less for everybody. So it's like, you're not going to get 30 seconds with me. I'll give you 10 seconds for your photo, and I'm moving on.

Speaker E: Yeah, it was like watching a Formula One pit crew.

Speaker D: It was fabulous. Fabulous. Absolutely fabulous. And I wrote about that. And people's like, going on like, Hillary Clinton. I'm not talking about Hillary Clinton as a candidate. I'm talking about her selfie skills.

Speaker E: Anyway, tell us about what's going on with Marketing the Moon.

Speaker D: Oh, my gosh. Marketing the Moon first came out, as you might remember, 2014 and um, it did well. MIT Press was the publisher's full color coffee table book about the marketing aspects of the Apollo lunar program. I, uh, wrote it. It's a history I wrote with my buddy Rich Jurek and Gene Cernan. The last man to walk on the moon wrote the forward to the book and it was a really fun one to write. Um, and quite soon after we sold the rights to the book to Robert Stone, the filmmaker who made a three part PBS miniseries called Chasing the Moon loosely based on our book. So how cool is it that a documentary, um, that was on pbs, uh, was made from the book. But then just very recently this summer, um, a new film came out called Fly Me to the Moon. Big budget Hollywood romantic comedy starting Scarlett, um, Johansson and Channing Tatum. And lo and behold, they used our book as their primary form of research around how, um, the Apollo program was marketed. And the story revolves around, um, Scarlett Johansson's character who's a marketer, and how she needed to drum up more interested in the Apollo program. And I saw the film, I was like, oh my gosh, they are using all of our stuff. Um, and then in an interview in USA Today, um, the screenwriter Rose Gilroy said, yeah, Marketing the Moon by Rich Jerrick and David Mehren Scott. Super important for my research. And I was really thankful to her for doing that because she didn't have to do that. She wasn't using our story, um, because our book is nonfiction. So she wasn't basing it, um, actually on our book, but she was using it for research, which happens all the time, of course, uh, and so she didn't need to do that, um, but she did and it made us feel good. We knew for 100% certainty that they, that she had consulted our book because we had found a bunch of really cool stuff that, um, um, that only, you know, only we could figure out. And they, some of that was actually in the film. Um, so yeah, it was a great Douglas to be able to have that book resurface. And I think I've counted, I don't know, um, 30 or 40 stories that mention us in it, which is amazing.

Speaker E: Oh, that's terrific. That's terrific. Maybe you and Rich should send autographed copies to, uh, Tatum and uh, Johansen. They would probably really enjoy.

Speaker D: That would be cool having that.

Speaker E: Yeah, I've got a copy of it. It's wonderful. And we actually featured it on the show when it was the 50th anniversary of Apollo 17, which I believe was the last one.

Speaker D: Apollo 17. 1972 was the last Apollo mission.

Speaker E: That's excellent. That's great to hear. And, uh, do you know when that movie's gonna come out?

Speaker D: It's out.

Speaker E: Oh, oh, okay.

Speaker D: Yeah, it's out. It came out. It came out the second or third week. I can't remember exactly. I think it was the second weekend of July.

Speaker E: Oh, okay, terrific. Well, I know what I'm doing tonight.

Speaker D: It's a great. It's a great movie. It's a great. It's in the theaters.

Speaker E: Yeah. Yeah, okay. It's super. Well, let's talk a little bit about this book that is probably the most recommended book because I hear from listeners from around the world all the time, and they're saying, what's one book? And I don't always recommend yours because they may have a more specific need, but this is the one that I'm often recommending.

Speaker D: I appreciate that, Douglas. Thank you so much.

Speaker E: Let me just read a quick excerpt from page four. I believe it is. There used to be only three ways to get noticed. Buy expensive advertising, beg the mainstream media to tell your story for you, or hire a huge sales staff to bug people individually about your products. Now we have a better option. Publishing interesting content on the web. Content that your buyers want to consume. The tools of the marketing and PR trade have changed. The skills that worked offline to help you buy or beg or bug your way into opportunity are the skills of interruption and coercion. Online success comes from thinking like a journalist and publishing amazing content that will brand you as an organization or person it would be a pleasure to do business with. You are in charge of your own success. David, what are some of the new things in, uh, the different things in this 9th edition?

Speaker D: So the 9th edition is interesting because it's probably the most significant change since the first book came out. The first edition came out way back in 2007, and it's fascinating that every single edition, something new happens. Um, uh, and I remember the second edition was Twitter. Twitter was out there. So as I was writing, the first edition was 2004, 2005, and very early 2006, and, um, Twitter hadn't launched yet. And I remember the first edition of the book came out, and a few people would say, david, there's this new thing called Twitter. You know it. I'm like, yeah, ah, I know it. I was too late. I couldn't get it in the book. And then I realized, you know what? I got to keep updating this book because there's so many new things coming out yeah, so this, so this edition, the ninth edition, um, I started uh, working on in um, late ish, 2023, um, the 8th edition, the edition just prior published prior to chat GPT coming out. So I did have a chapter about AI in the 8th edition, but nothing about generative AI and chatgpt and Claude and Gemini and all the other ones. So the biggest change, um, in this edition, uh, and it's probably the biggest change over any edition is the availability uh, for marketing and public relations to have the use of generative AI systems, um, like ChatGPT and the others. And that's a fundamental change, um, in the ways that we're able uh, to implement the new rules of marketing and pr. And so I had to really dig into that one, um, to understand it. And it was actually a fun process because I'm interested in artificial intelligence. I'm on the advisory board of a couple of AI companies, investor in a couple of AI companies. So it was sort of fun to do all the digging, um, to find out the good and the not so good about, about AI and marketing.

Speaker E: Yeah. And all the implications for search, ah, and so forth. And I was delighted to see that uh, you relied on Paul Raitzer for uh, some of your information. And I was so excited. There must have been 10 people you mentioned in the book that I, oh, I interviewed them, I interviewed her. So it was a little bit of a reunion there for me.

Speaker D: I know, right, yeah.

Speaker E: So, uh, just so folks understand and let me just say the book is organized in three parts and the first part is a, an overview of how the web has changed the rules of marketing pr. And part two has details about each of the various media. And then part 3 has detailed info on you uh, know, putting an action plan together to help you, help you get going. So let me ask you a question about the first of the three parts of the book. Just take us back and remind folks how has the web changed the rules of marketing and pr? And I asked that because I'm not sure everyone has gotten the memo.

Speaker D: So as you said in the wise choice of the um, introductory paragraph that you read, um, the rules have changed because initially we only had the ability, prior to the web we only had the ability to um, buy expensive advertising in someone else's media, whether that's a magazine or newspaper or um, trade ah, show booth or whatever, uh, or um, try to convince somebody in the media to say something about us or hire salespeople to bang on doors. Those are really the only options. And the web opened up A completely new option, a way to generate attention, which is to create content. And then over the course of nine editions of this book, there's like constantly new forms of, um, media that we can, uh, generate attention using. Uh, I mentioned Twitter a moment ago. Didn't exist when I was writing the first edition. Facebook did exist when I was doing the first edition, but it was only for students back then. Um, now it's of course available, available to anybod. Um, um, and constantly things change. I remember one edition, Google, it's here, you know, it's going to compete with Facebook. And then a few additions later, Google has been closed down.

Speaker E: Right. And I remember at one point you had a chapter on mobile marketing and then you later dropped that. So I'm always interested. I mean, are there certain things you, what did you drop?

Speaker D: Well, what was interesting about the mobile marketing thing is, um, early on it would have been, I don't know, second or third edition, I created a chapter about mobile marketing because there were elements that were different about how to do mobile way back when. Um, and then very quickly it became apparent that it's a mobile first sort of environment now and people constantly have their phone with them, they constantly have their tablets with them. So that it didn't make any sense anymore to talk about mobile marketing as something different. So I didn't drop it because it's not important. I dropped it because it's now it's just marketing. It's not something different. Um, and so there's been other. I can't think of one off the top of my head right now, but there's been other things like that where I made a really big deal out of making a brand new chapter around something. But then when it became ubiquitous, it's like, oh, I don't really need to make this a new chapter. I bet, I bet one day AI will be in that.

Speaker E: That's just what I was thinking. Yeah, right.

Speaker D: I mean, this is the second, uh, in the eighth edition and now the ninth edition there's a separate chapter about AI. But I think at some point it's like, no, AI is. AI is like baked into everything. It doesn't make sense to make it a separate chapter.

Speaker E: Yeah, well, let's get something out of the way though. Kind of a disclaimer. Uh, when you talk about the new rules and compare it to the old rules, people should understand that you don't mean to suggest that all organizations should drop their existing marketing and PR programs and only do what's in this book. And you also Go on to talk about how what's in this book is not the only marketing worth doing is only on the web. You are very clear about that in your book.

Speaker D: Uh, 100%. So, um, I always say to people, um, I'm totally cool. If traditional, um, public relations, which is essentially just meeting media relations, if that works for you, if working with members of the media to get your story out is working great, keep going. If having a huge sales team to knock on doors is working for you, that's awesome. If traditional advertising, whatever they are, television commercials or magazine ads or whatever they are, if that's working for you, that's great. Um, however, there are so many people that I've spoken with who just say, I don't see that this is worth me spending all this money on. And therefore, um, I don't know whether it makes sense. And for those people, the new rules of marketing and PR makes total sense because, uh, you can create content on the web, you can create content that people will find. You can use social networks to get your ideas out there. And that's a very different approach than simply the idea of, um, uh, paying to get into someone else's media or trying to convince people to say something about you or banging on doors and so on. Um, but I in no way suggesting that there's only these ways. But I am saying very clearly that many people are telling me that those old ways don't work so well anymore.

Speaker E: Just wanted to make that clear because I know that people are annoyed by maybe an author or a guru coming along saying everything you've done in the past, throw it out. You know, it reminds me of uh, the dot bomb where all these startups would say bricks and mortar retail going away completely. It's like, no, no they're not. Or there's a lot of the similar wailing and gnashing of teeth about AI. It's like, folks, come on, put some context around it.

Speaker D: That's right. And that's exactly the way to think about it. And in some cases it's a combination. You know, it's like certain companies, especially large organizations that have bigger budgets, um, it m very well may make sense to spend money on advertising or business to business companies. Maybe it does make sense to have a booth on the trade show floor of your huge, um, important trade show or to advertise in the magazine, the trade magazine that covers your industry. I'm not saying don't do those things. Yeah. But I am saying that the way people are researching products and services to buy Whether it's for their company, so a B2B kind of thing, or for themselves, a consumer, um, purchase. Um, they go to the web first. They do their own independent research first. They're not just waiting for a TV ad to tell them what to buy. Uh, oh, I need a new car. Why don't I turn on the TV and see who advertises to me? M. No, I need a new car. I go to the web and I, I do my research.

Speaker E: Yes. And at one time I was part of that advertising industrial complex. And I call those the good old days. But they're gone. So. And, uh, that's why your book played a role in my career development. I want to ask about something that surprised me. And you mentioned that on the speaking circuit and on your blog, you're often asked to critique marketing programs or websites or blogs. And your typical response is, uh, what's the goal? And what problems do you solve for your buyers? And you write that that often throws people off. Why do you think that is?

Speaker D: Um, I think the reason is, and I've looked at thousands of these over the years, I think the reason is that too many marketers, um, their natural instinct is to talk up their organization's products and services. And I don't know the reason for that. I suspect it comes from, um, either traditional marketing education or perhaps just they think, oh, my job is to just hype what my company is doing. And, um, so therefore, um, I see the biggest, and that is the biggest problem I see is websites or marketing materials or social media feeds or whatever they are. It's just basically it's just, here's my product. Buy it. Um, whereas if you truly understand the people you're trying to reach and you understand the goals for creating the content and doing the marketing programs that you're creating, it makes it a heck of a lot easier to get, uh, to generate attention for your organization because you're not just hyping products and services. You're understanding your buyers. You're creating content. Content for them. You're developing programs that will help to drive them into the buying cycle, and those can be measured and become part of your goals.

Speaker E: And, uh, you're very clear about that. I couldn't agree more. I just want to quote from another, uh, section there you write, does your company sell great products? Or if you don't work in a traditional company, does your organization, like a church, nonprofit consulting, uh, company school, offer great services? Well, get over it. Marketing is not only about your products or services. The most important thing to remember as you develop a marketing and PR plan is to put your products and services to the side for just a little while and focus your complete attention on the buyers of your products or services or those who will donate, subscribe, join or apply. Devoting attention to buyers and away from products is difficult for many people, but it always pays off in the form of bringing you closer to achieving your goals. Can you dig it? Can you dig it?

Speaker D: Can you dig it? Nice, David.

Speaker E: When I'm reading through the book, I, you know, you light a lot of my fuses and, uh, you know, you get me emotionally involved because I can't remember how many times I've tried to explain to companies they shouldn't be doing certain things or. It's all about people, uh, that want to take your advice. And you were the second guest on the limited time series Authors in Quarantine. Getting cocktails I mentioned during the lockdown of 2020. What can listeners learn about social media success from cocktail parties?

Speaker D: Um, I actually have said for a long time that social media is like a cocktail party. And so if you imagine a cocktail party, um, where, uh, you walk in, maybe, you know, two or three people, but most of the people you don't know, and there's a certain kind of behavior when you walk into that cocktail party. The same thing is true if you, um, walk into, virtually walk into a social network of some kind. Maybe it's a Facebook group, or Maybe it's a LinkedIn group, or maybe it's, um, your Twitter feed or whatever. And, um, that is like a cocktail party. It's a group of people who come together, maybe you know, a couple of those people, and probably most of them you don't know. But that's also a form of a community of people getting together like a cocktail party. So if you think about a physical cocktail party in the real world, you know, it doesn't work so well if you go to the middle of the room and you shout at the top of your lungs, buy my products and services. Here's my business card. Everybody come get one of my business cards. That doesn't work so well. What does work, though, is, you know, just meeting a couple of people, having a conversation, finding out what the other person is up to, what, what are their motivations, what are the things that make them happy, what are their passions, have a conversation. And, you know, maybe you make a friend, maybe that's somebody who, um, can help you in some way, or maybe they do have the problem that you solve in your organization. And I believe that the same thing is true of social media. So I think that you enter a social media group, whether that's a Facebook group or your Instagram feed or Twitter feed, whatever it might be, and you're helpful and you provide interesting information, you listen to others comment on other people's posts. Um, uh, you become part of a community. And I think that's an easy way to understand how social media works and how you can derive benefit from it. Uh, in other words, the more you give, the more you tend to get back over time. Yet so many people are just using it as a place to push out their own content and to try to sell something as opposed to trying to be helpful and having meaningful conversations.

Speaker E: Well, let me ask you a couple questions about websites and then we'll talk about AI. Now, this is going to hurt a lot of people's feelings, but you write that the vast majority of sites are built with the wrong focus. Explain.

Speaker D: Yeah, it goes back to what we were talking about before that. So many websites are simply hyping products and services.

Speaker E: It's all about them.

Speaker D: It's all about them. And you look on the site and it's about, you know, all about them. And the navigation is all about products. And, uh, everything is like a hyped filled kind of. We're the flexible, scalable solution for improving business process using, using cutting edge technology. And, uh, you know, there are all kinds of big, big busy buzzwords and so on. And um, I see that all the time, Douglas. It's everywhere. There's so many organizations that are talking about their products and services exclusively. Uh, and it just doesn't work that effectively.

Speaker E: Yes. And there's a section in the book where you have these three bullet points that a visitor is thinking maybe subconsciously when they look at a site. Does this organization care about me? Does it focus on the problems I face? Does it share my perspective or push its own on me?

Speaker D: Yes. And what's, you know, uh, what's fascinating is when you go to a website that's well built, well thought out, focused on, I call it buyer Personas. But the idea, and you don't need to use that language, but the idea is focused on the people whose problems you, your organization solves. When you go to a website that's built that way, it makes you feel warm and fuzzy. It's, oh, my gosh, these people understand me. It's almost as if they're reading my mind. This is an organization that's dialed into me as a person. This is a company. I want to do business with. That's the benefit of this approach. Whereas most of us, when we go to a website, it's like, yeah, they're trying to sell me something. Um, so there's a really, really big difference when you think of those two different approaches to building a website.

Speaker E: Yes. And you write that you've been writing and speaking about the importance of content marketing for 20 years now and it is still the most overlooked element of most sites.

Speaker D: Yes, most web, most websites are built, um, with the primary focus of the website being either search engine optimization or the primary focus of the site being a pretty design or the primary focus of the website is to, uh, hype products and services. Uh, but there really aren't that many websites that are fundamentally designed from the ground up to create great, to be able to deliver great content. That's pretty rare. Um, because when it is done that way, it changes the focus of the navigation of the website. It changes the focus of how things, um, are organized, where the design is in service of the content. The SEO is actually better because the content is, um, focused on reaching buyers as opposed to just putting SEO tools and techniques on top of bad content, which just makes it slightly less bad. But starting with great content and then, um, doing some things to optimize the SEO. That's great. That works really well.

Speaker E: Yes. And I always get a warm and fuzzy feeling on the rare occasion when I go to a website and I see a header or a part of the navigation that says problems we solve. Wow, this is great. This is great. Now, speaking of bad content, let's talk a little bit about AI. Explain why using generative AI tools to replace human based content creation is a big mistake.

Speaker D: Well, um, that we could spend an entire hour on Douglas. But, um, first of all, I think that generative AI tools like ChatGPT and the others are wonderful to do things to help you to create content. I, uh, use them myself. Yeah, frequently. Practically every blog post I write includes generative AI tools in some sort. Um, when my blog posts are done, I run it through a company called Lately and generate, um, social posts automatically using AI, um, from m my own content. But I think what I see as the biggest difference here and why some generative AI is horrible, um, to use for marketing and in some, in other cases it's wonderful is whose data are you using. So the way I like to think of AI is really, really, really simple. And if you want to sound really smart at a cock your next cocktail party. Douglas, we've been on this cocktail party theme for the last couple minutes. But if you want to sound really, really clever at a cocktail, cocktail party and the subject of artificial intelligence comes up, you say, oh, artificial intelligence, you know, that's just data and math. Yes, that's what you said. That's what you say, data and math. So that's how I always think of it. So you think whose data is it? And then whose math is it? So in the case of Chat GPT, um, and the public Internet data, so you're just asking ChatGPT a question and it's going from uh, the content that it's ChatGPT or OpenAI, it's their math and it's public Internet data. That I think is generally a mistake for companies to say, you know, go to ChatGPT or Google's Gemini or Anthropic's Claude or whatever one they're going to um, generative AI system and say hey, hey, please write me a blog post about, you know, xyz. And I think that's a mistake because it's not original. Ah, I think it's a mistake because generally um, the writing that comes out from those um, large language model, um, generative AI systems are pretty darned boring. And, and the world does not need another generative AI created blog post to be put out there. But where it is really helpful is to do all kinds of different things to help with your content. So one of my favorite uses of various AI tools is, and I suspect you probably do similar things Douglas is I'll do an interview with someone and I'll record it much like we're recording this, this, this discussion. I'll record the interview. Um, uh, you know, maybe I'm interviewing somebody for ah, a blog post I'm going to write. Maybe I'm interviewing somebody for a story that's going to end up in one of my books. So I do the interview, I record it and then I generate um, a translation, sorry, a transcription from one of the AI transcription engines I happen to use, Otter AI. There's many of them. Them, that's the one I like. So now I've got a full on transcription. Ah, then I take the transcription and I put it through one of the generative AI models like ChatGPT and I say please summarize and my prompt is more involved in this. But basically I say please summarize this conversation, uh, and give me the ah, five or ten most important points of this discussion and then I'll get, get five or ten paragraphs of the most important points and they're generally excellent. Generally the summarization by those large language models is really well done. And then I'll eyeball that and say, okay, well what is this telling me now about what I can create and then what I'll frequently do. Uh, because this was an interview, let's say that I did with someone, I'll then take those important points. I might rearrange the order of the important important points, but now I've got my important points there. Then I'll go back to the transcript and I'll look for quotes that the person I interviewed gave me that I can drop into the summary. And then I'll rewrite it, um, as one full on story and then I'll take it and put it through um, ChatGPT or one of the other models a second time when I've got my story written and I'll say um, please generate a compelling headline for this story. And generally um, chatgpt is better at writing headlines than I am. Or at least it gives me an idea for direction for what the headline to the story should be. And then I'll also say um, please generate a meta description and please generate keywords that I can use for this, which I sometimes will then use um, when I'm creating a blog post around it. So um, the difference here is I didn't just go and say write me a blog post about this topic, which the large language model then pulls from public Internet data, which is not original to me. I did not do that. Nor did I do what I used to do, which was a drag, which is record the interview. And then way back in the early days I would transcribe, I mean I wouldn't transcribe the whole thing. I'm just looking for the, the quotes I can use. And that was hard. And then creating a first draft was hard. So these AI tools now have done a fabulous job at um, at at reducing the amount of work required for me to produce what's essentially the same quality content. I bet it's taking me half the time of what I used to do and if you include actually doing the translation, ah, transcription as well, I bet it's saving me four times the time. Uh, in other words, it's taking me 1/4 of the time it took me 15 years ago to write a blog post. Probably half the time of what it takes me to write a blog post even just two or three years ago. Um, so those are really great ways to use these tools. And then I mentioned lately a minute ago, but then I take my Finished blog post. And I drop it into lately AI. And lately AI then takes a full on blog post and cuts it into um, 10 or 15 or 20 um, social posts for LinkedIn or for Twitter. And then I can automatically schedule those um, to go out um, on the schedule that makes sense to me like one a week or two a week or whatever. It might, whatever might make sense. So again I think the key here is that I'm using AI with my own data, not using these large language models to create something using somebody else's data. And I think that's a very critical um, aspect of understanding how these AI tools can help.

Speaker E: And one of my favorite lines in the book was not written by you, but by your wife. And she referred to, I think it was as it related to artwork. But she mentioned that it's a Frankenstein's monster of stolen art.

Speaker D: Yes.

Speaker E: When you use it to create a whole blog post, you have a Frankenstein's monster of stolen art.

Speaker D: Yeah, I, uh, know, I think that's absolutely right and I see it a lot because as you know I invented the concept called newsjacking and I wrote a book called Newsjacking. Newsjacking is in the subtitle of the New Rules of Marketing PR because it changed chapter about it. Newsjacking, um, is in the Oxford English Dictionary. Um, I've got my website@newsjacking.com and so the large language models have um, have all um, uh, used. I will use the word stolen. They've stolen my information and have then created the ability for people to um, create content using the generative AI models with my content. And so I've seen, I have a, I have a Google alert set up for the, for many terms but one of them is the term newsjacking. And I frequently see blog posts that I clearly has my work in it, but not, but it's never, almost never credited. And frequently that's because they say write me a blog post about newsjacking in one of the, one of the large language model chatbot systems. And they, they draw on my content because I'm the guy who invented this thing. Um, so I see that all the time. Now let me, let me just back up for just a second. When I say stolen information, I'm not referring to my newsjacking.com website. I'm not referring to um, any content that I've already put out into the public Internet. That's fair game. I mean people want to use the content that I put out there. That's fair game. But where I think the line should be drawn is that, um, three of my books, the New Rules of Marketing and PR, Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead and Fanocracy. Those three books are part of what's called the, uh, the Books3 database, which is one of the, um, uh, one of the data sets that was used to train many of these, um, generative AI systems that content my books, that's paid content, that's a copyright that I own, that my publisher pushed out there, and several different publishers in the case of those two books, Penguin Random House with Fanocracy, and Wiley, uh, with New Rules of Marketing and PR and Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead. And so that's where the idea of the stolen comes from. So my content that I push out on my blog and my websites that, yeah, fine, take that, it's free, it's out there, it's already out there in the public domain. But don't take my, um, my content from the books that I write, uh, and use that. So I, I think those large language models need to figure out how they're going to come clean with content creators like me whose work they've spent stolen.

Speaker E: Yes. And that seems like it's, uh, there's quite a bit going on, uh, these days in the courts.

Speaker D: Yes, absolutely. Litigating around that. No, no question about it. But I see, um, I see light at the end of the tunnel, like, because ChatGPT, as it first came out and how it, most people use it today just spits out the answer that you ask it. You know, hey, I want to, uh. What are some great surfing spots on Nantucket Island? Might be a question, and it spits out an answer for you in a paragraph for. But what I am seeing more and more of are the services that are kind of a hybrid between traditional search where you end up with the, you know, the blue links and you have to answer the question, you have to go to a website. So what are the, what are the best surfing spots on Nantucket Island? Um, you, you, you have to click through to somebody's website to learn the answer. But, but with ChatGPT, you just can read the paragraph you're not clicking through. You don't know the source of that information. But the hybrid is what, um, is. Um, my favorite example of it is Perplexity, which is a search engine which I use all the time. So Perplexity will give you an AI generated paragraph or two answer. Um, so it's going to tell you, here are some great surfing spots on Nantucket island, but it'll also give you links where you can learn more and those are the places that it generated its answer from. So, uh, I think that hybrid approach is a great, great model because those of us who have created websites and have search engine, you know, search engines are finding our content and surfacing it to the people. To people. That, that surfacing of our content completely went away when someone was using ChatGPT because there's no sourcing of the content that goes into the answer. But now with these hybrids like Perplexity and there's other ones, um, we're seeing not only the Answer and in a generative AI format, but then you're seeing the links and the, giving the credit to the source of the content. So, um, all is not lost. For those people who have spent lots of time creating wonderful websites, um, it looks like they will still be generating attention, um, for their business through those websites with these hybrid, um, search engines like Perplexity.

Speaker E: Yeah, and as you mentioned earlier, an AI application is data plus math. And the thing I like about Perplexity is that it sort of shows the math.

Speaker D: Yeah, kind of. Yeah, kind of. It's a good way to look at it. I hadn't, I hadn't quite thought about it that way, but I think you're absolutely right. They're showing the math. They're not really showing the math of how they came up with it, but they're showing where, where the data that they source to come.

Speaker E: Right. It's sort of a reference, uh, to our, uh, you know, junior high math teachers who said, like, I don't want the answer. I want to see how you, how you, how you got, how you solve that.

Speaker D: That's right. That's right.

Speaker E: The thing that I like hearing about is the, the idea that AI is not going to take your job, but it is going to be taken by someone using AI or that AI is not going to put you out of business. But, but you're going to be put out of business by a competitor using AI. And you write that the sooner you learn how to apply AI responsibly, the bigger head start your organization will have on your competitors. Now back to the perils, uh, of trying to expect, uh, let's say, um, AI to generate a blog post for you. Paul Raitzer once again says that AI cannot offer curiosity, creativity, empathy, emotion, intuition, and maybe most of all, imagination. So to conclude this section, I would like to ask you to, as it relates to remaining human in a world of AI, explain how the new world of AI makes marketers work Even more important now.

Speaker D: Yeah, and more interesting too, I think. You know, AI, uh, a lot of people, they been scared that AI is going to replace jobs. Um, but I don't think that's the way to. The best way to look at it. I think a better way to look at it is that AI is able to replace tasks. And so it's replacing the kind of repetitive tasks that, uh, aren't for most people at least not that much fun and um, can be really difficult. Like I mentioned earlier, I'm not very good at writing headlines for my blog posts or my stories. Um, and so, you know, I would spend, you know, half an hour trying to come up with a good headline and it was never really, I was never really very good at it. But now I can ask, um, one of the, um, one of the chatbots, ChatGPT, for example, to say, here's my blog post, suggest some headlines for me. And they're good, they're perfectly serviceable and good. So, so I've saved 20 minutes by doing it. Um, so that's a great example of, um, automating a task. What I'm not doing is automating me, uh, out of a job. Uh, that's not the way I look at it and that's not the way I think that marketers should look at it. Um, so be thinking about, um, what are those tasks that can be automated? And then once you've automated the things that you're either not very good at or you don't like doing, or that is just drudgery kind of work, it gives you so much more, um, ability to do the stuff that creativity really matters around, like coming up with a great idea for a blog post that no one's ever done. Or I like to think of the way that I think of my books are what is a pattern in the universe that I've never seen before? What's, uh, a pattern in the universe that no one's talking about About What's a pattern in the universe that there isn't a book about? And so, for example, we talked about this book earlier, but Marketing the Moon. I'm like, I'm a fan of the Apollo lunar program, have been for a while, and people are always talking about how wonderful the rockets are and how heroic the astronauts are, and those things are true. But as I was thinking about the Apollo program, I was thinking, well, wait a minute, there's a marketing job going on here because, because, um, if we hadn't marketed the program, there's no way that the American people would have allowed, um, 2% of our national budget for an entire decade to be used to put 12 people onto the surface of the moon. Um, and so marketing was super important. That was a pattern in the universe. I noticed, and then I wrote about it. And all of a sudden, as we're recording this, um, interview within the last 10 days, a, um, feature film came out that was based, based on that pattern in the universe that I identified that no one else talked about. That's the fun part. So I think AI can allow us to, um, offload, uh, the routine stuff that's not very fun or that you're not very good at, or that's just simply repetitive so that you can get to the fun stuff, which is like writing a book that turns into a movie. That's the fun stuff.

Speaker E: Yes. Well, there are so many things we could talk about, but we got limited time. And two of the things I find, find so amusing is when you write, and I've seen you speak about, uh, using stock photos on your website and also gobbledygook, and it just really. I couldn't agree more. But let me just ask just a couple other quick questions before we wrap up here. Years. A couple years ago, I was talking to this company when I had my agency and they were looking for some help, and they had a marketing consultant that was helping them. And they said, said. She said, well, we have a company that's already doing our SEO for us. And I, of course, that I can't resist. I said, well, tell me what they're doing. And basically she said, I don't know what they're doing, but they're doing SEO for us.

Speaker D: I hear that all the time. I hear that all the time. Doing SEO is kind of like, um, is kind of like an air traffic controller, Right? Like, it's really. It feels like it's really complicated and you'll never understand it. Like, I'll never, uh, I'll never know how to be an aircraft traffic control person. That's what SEO people want you to believe about what SEO is. It's really, really, really, really complicated, and you'll never know how to do it. So you have to hire me to do it for you.

Speaker E: Yes. Let me just quote you, right? In my experience, people often misunderstand search engine marketing because there's a slew of SEO firms that make it all seem so darn complicated.

Speaker D: Yes.

Speaker E: To add to the problem, many, but certainly not all SEO firms are a bit on the shady side, promising stellar results from simply manipulating keywords on your site. Perhaps you've seen the spam email messages of some of these snake oil salespeople. I've received hundreds of unsolicited email messages with headlines like Top search engine Rankings guaranteed. While many search engine marketing firms are completely reputable and add tremendous value to marketing programs, I am convinced that the single best thing you can do to improve your search engine marketing is to focus on building great content for your buyers. Search engine marketing should not be mysterious and is certainly not trickery. And what I find so interesting is that in the search engine marketing chapter on page 400, you have the following sentence. This entire book is about search engine marketing.

Speaker D: Uh, right. Exactly. Exactly. Because if you're creating great content, you're getting your search engine marketing out there. So, yeah, m. That's all. I mean, I'm not saying that's all it is. There is more. But generally the search engines are pretty good at surfacing the best content.

Speaker E: Yes. And if you're hiring an SEO firm and they are not talking about content at all, uh, run from them. Two other quick questions. One is explain what you mean when you ask companies this question about if they can afford to rent their marketing.

Speaker D: Yeah, so, um, uh, I think that the idea of advertising is like renting your marketing. So advertising. And let's just take for example, Google AdWords. Um, I don't think it's called AdWords anymore. Whatever. It's called Google advertising. Uh, you know, when you advertise in Google and people click through and you start to make sales as like, that's great, right? It's working. But you have to keep feeding the beast. You have to keep doing that advertising because as soon as you stop paying Google, your ads stop. And if that's how you are generating your sales, you, uh, it's gone and you're not generating any more sales. But if you're doing the sorts of things I talk about in the new rules of marketing and pr, you own your marketing. You're not renting it, you're owning it. And the ideas that you write and talk about, um, people, the search engines or other places will find it, drive people to you, and that will not go away. And every once in a while, dig into my analytics and I'm seeing people find me and my ideas from blog posts I wrote 15 or even 20 years ago.

Speaker E: Yeah, right.

Speaker D: And it's really kind of amazing. And with my co author Rich, I'm probably no more about the marketing aspects of the Apollo lunar program than practically anyone on the planet. And I'm glad I wrote about that because in the last, um, two or three weeks as this film came out, out without me doing a single thing, reporters find the book, they find me, they find my co author, they write about our stuff, they link to our website, they, we've got a website marketing the moon. They talk about our book because of the content. In the case of that book I wrote more than 10 years ago. So it's really a big difference between, um, owning and renting.

Speaker E: Finally, David, in the book you talk to the mindset of a lot of people who might read this book and feel completely overwhelmed. What words of encouragement do you have for them?

Speaker D: I think a lot of people become overwhelmed because they believe they have to do everything. Oh my God. I need to be tick on TikTok. I need to start a blog. I need to do a podcast. I need a YouTube channel. I need to have a fabulous website. I need to do this, I need to do that. But I want to give you permission to not, not try to do everything. You can't do everything. I don't do everything. I'm m the dude who wrote the book.

Speaker E: And you say that at the end of the book and you say, now don't tell anybody, but I don't even do everything in this book.

Speaker D: I don't do everything in this book. I don't, I don't. You just pick and choose. And I think the way to pick and choose is what do you like to do? What are you good at? What do you like to do? So my default is to write. I'm a writer, so I don't have my own podcast. I love to be a guest on people's podcasts. I don't have my own podcast. And so just be thinking for yourself, what are the things you like to do? Do you like video? Do you like words? You know, and start there. You do not have to do everything and have fun.

Speaker E: Find something that might be fun. Just like you were talking about earlier.

Speaker D: Exactly, exactly. Right.

Speaker E: Well, David, if readers took only one thing away from the book, what would you hope it would be?

Speaker D: The rules have changed and I think, uh, we just talked about it two seconds ago. So let me emphasize that marketing can be fun. Reaching, finding people to do business with. You can be fun. And so try not to think of this marketing as like, oh my God, I have to do my marketing now. What a horrible thing. Think of it more like, oh, cool, I get to interact with people. I get to create stuff. Yeah, I think that might make m. That might even make it More effective if you do it that way.

Speaker E: Uh, oh, terrific. Well, at marketingwoodpodcast.com we'll include links to everything linkable, including all the books that have been mentioned, all the sites that have been mentioned, uh, your LinkedIn profile, and so forth. And now, dear listener, please reach out to David and congratulate him on the 9th edition of this book. He actually responds to these messages. Hey, he even responded to me 10 years ago. So thank him for being a guest on the Marketing Book podcast on the first and last episode. If nothing else, just share this interview on LinkedIn and tag us so we can. Thank you.

Speaker D: Douglas, let me just jump in for a second. You have done marketers a huge service with your Marketing Book podcast. I can't tell you how many people I've spoken with who've said that they find good marketing books to read because of your podcast. They learn a little bit about, um, marketing books from the podcast. Some of the books they end up buying, but they can learn a little bit about each one every time they listen to an episode. So you should be incredibly proud of this show that you've produced for nine years. You should be incredibly proud of the amount of people's lot whose lives you've touched and affected, and especially we authors. Uh, I can't thank you enough. And I know others. I've spoken with Seth Godin about you and your podcast. I've spoken with other very well known marketing book authors about what you do. And, um, you really have done a great service, not only for your listeners, but also for we authors. So thank you so much for that.

Speaker E: Well, thank you, and I'm grateful to you and the over 360 other authors I've been able to interview. And like we just talked about, I've had so much fun doing this podcast, but I'm going on to another happy stage of my life. So just to wrap up the book is the ninth edition of the New Rules of Marketing and pr. How to use content marketing, AI, social media, podcasting, video, and newsjacking to reach buyers directly. The author is David Meerman Scott. David, thank you very much for returning to the Marketing Book podcast one last time.

Speaker D: My pleasure, Douglas. Thank you very much for having me on.

Speaker A: You want to get your backyard summer ready, but you don't want to break the bank. Wayfair gets it. Planning on dining al fresco or relaxing poolside? Wayfair has everything you need to prep your space. Shop now and save up to 70% off during Wayfair's 4th of July clearance score. Huge deals on outdoor furniture, area rugs and more. We're talking thousands of products for every style and budget. Plus surprise flash deals. July 6th. Don't wait. Shop Wayfair's 4th of July clearance, now through July 6th at uh wayfair.com wayfair

Speaker D: Every style, every home.

Speaker C: When it's time to scale your business, it's time for Shopify. Get everything you need to grow the way you want. Like all the way. Stack more sales with the best converting checkout on the planet. Track your cha chings from every channel right in one spot and turn real time reporting into big time opportunities. Take your business to a whole new level. Switch to Shopify. Start your free trial today.