The Right Way to Win Attention

Branding is the game now. Attention is the only thing that works, not only for B2C, but also for B2B. Because anybody on enterprise, like people are scared to do these flashy fun things. But any millennial that is a CEO is doom scrolling like you and me. Hi, everybody. We promised we were going to be back doing this weekly and we're back. So very happy that we kept our promise. Today, we're going to do something special by chance because we have three topics, but all around one theme, which is branding. So we'll talk about the three of them first separated and then we'll mix them together. We actually talked about this this week by chance because the two things that Hank sent me, I didn't see before. And the one thing I sent him, he didn't see before either. So very excited to chat about this.

I saw bits and pieces. I did not realize how deep and like how much content there was around the thing. So, I mean, in our shared doc, I think you've got 13 links to unique tweets and pieces of content related to this one campaign, which is awesome.

And the one campaign is Ramp's campaign. I'm obsessed with Ramp's campaign. It was absolutely incredible. I don't know if you saw the campaign, but basically what they did is they did a whole campaign around the office, specifically focused on Kevin, even though they brought other people from the office as well. And the whole idea was that Kevin got confused in a call where he was going to be offered to be a spokesperson, but he thought he was going to be offered to be a CFO. So they did multiple clips. They did like two clips of Kevin. They actually did then clips from this CFO that was fired from the office saying like, wow, this guy is stealing my job. And then they did an art installation, very similar to what Severance did, where they put a big window box next to Flatiron. And basically Kevin worked there for nine hours and he was competing with Ramp. Ramp processes 600,000 receipts per day. They wanted to see how many Kevin could do. And it was basically all jokes during the entire day. There were people seeing. I think it was incredible. What bits and pieces did you see, Hank? And which ones caught your attention from it?

Well, I saw one where he was like getting ready in the announcement. And I gathered that like, okay, there's kind of a joke here, like building up to this event. And then I didn't see the event until you saw it. And yeah, it was like a seven hour stream. And yeah, it has this kind of callback. So one thing we talked about before the call is that your co-founder at Hypergrowth doesn't know The Office, which...

I'm blown away. I watched The Office five times. How can you not know The Office?

Yeah. And you were saying like, it's like a millennial mainstay. It's one of the most rewatched shows of all time. It's got to be like up there right next to Seinfeld, I think. And probably more rewatched than Seinfeld, you know, nowadays.

I didn't like Seinfeld, to be honest. I tried. It wasn't funny to me. The Office, the start that I think was genius. The start of this campaign, which I think is geniuses, Ramp sells to CFOs and BPs of Finance. All of CFOs and BPs of Finance are millennials right now. So they have to do a campaign that's focused on millennials. And they picked The Office, which is the most millennial show ever. So kudos on just that pic. Just because of that, I didn't watch, of course, the seven hour, but I actually watched an hour of the streaming, which is insane. But I would start with, they nailed the targeting so well. And they executed, I think, so well with so many videos. Like the presentation was incredible. They actually, there was a huge storm in New York and they had to move it one day. And even the move of it was Kevin talking about why it was moved and stuff like that. Then the CFO, as I said, was pissed off. They did so much work before the event so that it blew up on Twitter and people knew it was coming. And they even put banners on the streets of New York and billboards so people came. So it was like a huge campaign. Blown away, right?

Yeah. Like you said, like the targeting and the messaging and just the understanding of your audience, where when you have an idea where you know, oh, this resonates perfectly with our buyer and then it builds our brand in the right direction and it gets people asking the right questions about what we do, then just go all out on it. Such a good principle there of once you have a good idea, go all out on it.

They hired an agency for this, which was from the previous guy that owned the social media community from Mr. Beast. So very Mr. Beast, massive style. I can't share the pricing, but what I can say is it was insane. But for the size of ramp, it makes so much sense. And I think you get to a size where branding matters. And I think branding matters for everybody. Like before it was all demand gen because there were growth and tactics that you could do with outbound emails, with specific growth tactics on Twitter or in the web or SEO and stuff like that. I think most of those things are dying. We talked about that a lot, like still believe that you can do chat, GPT, SEO, but the rest, I think it's all branding and influencers. So I think diving into branding for B2B is fantastic, given that most branding for B2B is so fucking boring. I'm happy that they are waking up to learn more B2C.

Think about this. So who's ramp competing with? Who are they trying to unseat? Expensify is probably one of the biggest players. So Expensify spent a similar or greater amount this year being in the F1 movie, right?

Yes.

And think about that placement versus this. If you think about, okay, Expensify, cool, they were the underdog team that came up like, they're associated with Brad Pitt and all that. That's cool. There is no talk in the movie about what they do or anything. I didn't see anything, I don't think you did either, about how Expensify tied this in to their marketing and to actually elevating their brand beyond that. Whereas this...

And nobody talked about it on Twitter. Like, this blew up on Twitter, so everybody on Tech Twitter saw it. I even saw posts from people like, I didn't know what Ramp was, but now I do. And not as much people that is the target market saw it on F1 compared to the number of people that saw this on Twitter and LinkedIn.

And you can think of... So I don't know exactly how the idea... If I were trying to reverse engineer how this idea came to be, because one question I get asked sometimes is how do you come up with crazy ideas? Because I do weird stuff. You do weird stuff, you know? And people ask this question and you and I have talked about before, like, how can you get more creative? So if I were to reverse engineer this idea, it starts with thinking through what is the alternative to Ramp? And well, it's like having some normal accountant dig through receipts and like do this in the boring way. And you take that a couple steps, you ruminate on that idea, and eventually somebody says, the alternative is having Kevin from the office. Do you want Kevin from the office to do your receipts? Or do you just want like Ramp to do it? And then when you have that idea, like that's how simple it starts, people. When you have someone make a statement like that in your company, that's when you should lock in and it can become, yeah, you don't have to go all out, New York glass, like, you know, display with a human inside for seven hours type of thing. But you can blow up ideas just starting from there. And so I would encourage all the listeners to think of how do you reverse engineer the ideas that you want to imitate and the type of marketing you want. And when you have something that seems on point for your audience and your brand, just go for it.

And I think the glass thing, they stole it from Severance. Before launching the new season of Severance, they put this glass box inside of Grand Central in New York, where all of the Severance team was working for six hours. Literally the same thing, but this was from the CFO on Ramp. So part of it is exactly what you said. The other part is just inspiration from other things that happened recently. And I think if you combine the two, this is how you get it. What I think they did really well is they went multiple media. So it was some videos on Twitter. They had billboards in person. They had these boxes in person. There was live streaming. There was people watching live. So this idea of multiple media things, I loved what you said on it's linked to Ramp and people could actually see the clock ticking all the time. And then they used their existing sponsorship and relationship to boost this even more. TVPN, which is basically the most watched show in Silicon Valley, actually did a live interview with Kevin while he was streaming because Ramp is the biggest sponsor of TVPN. And they were like, we need to do this. Like you need to do the call. And then people also realized about this just from the TVPN side. And maybe if they didn't see the Ramp thing, they were like, oh, Kevin from The Office is there. So they went all out in multiple media. They went all out on Twitter, all out on LinkedIn. And they planned this so, so well. But I think the other takeaway that I want people to take is branding is the game now. Attention, and we said this on the past episode, is the only thing that works not only for B2C, but also for B2B. Because anybody on enterprise, like people are scared to do these flashy fun things. But any millennial that is a CEO is doom scrolling like you and me. So like, think about that as well.

I mean, attention has always been the game. It's just in a different place now. Like it used to be, you know, if this were 20 years ago, we would have been telling you, everybody's watching The Office every Thursday night. You better have a commercial in that spot. And that doesn't exist anymore. People don't have that specific of a time and place, which is great because you can compete with Coca-Cola in a way today that you could not compete with Coca-Cola or Expensify or whoever the big player is. You couldn't compete with them in the same way back then. So marketing has really become, I hate the word, but democratized. And, you know, you can, yeah, you can execute any crazy idea and get attention. Now, I think that's a good segue to our next thing here. You agree?

Yeah. Share the Clay thing. What is Clay doing?

So Clay, and I saw this on LinkedIn, LinkedIn marketing works, people.

It was funny because he shared with me on Twitter, the LinkedIn link. And just because of principles, I didn't open it. So I had to open it just before the call just to know what he wanted to chat about. Yes.

So they had, it was kind of a, this 70, if anybody's watched this 70 show, not as popular as The Office, but like they would do the thing when, where they're in the like the circle around the table, you know, passing the joint around. They kind of did that camera work and they were smoking a blunt with the guy who rolls blunts for Snoop Dogg. And they talk about how nobody takes risks in B2B marketing or enterprise marketing anymore. Like there needs to be innovation. And, you know, look at this guy, he rolls a joint and that's his canvas for artistry. And there's this, you know, and they talk about how now there's this job of being a GTM engineer and Clay is the GTM engineer's canvas. This is where you, you know, create workflow and automation for modern go-to-market. And I have a lot of mixed thoughts about this, but first I want your thoughts.

I like, there's things that I liked and things that I didn't. What I liked about it, number one is, I think most people in tech get drugged at some point in time, but nobody talks about it. So I like this point where they're sort of trying to make explicit what everybody talks implicitly. They also talked about how GTM engineers have to be creative on the Clay canvas. And I think a joint with, at least for me, it sometimes helps with creativity as well. So I like that link. And I, as a millennial as well, was always inspired by this guy who was actually paid 120K a year just to follow Snoop Dogg and roll joints. And then he asked for a raise and he got it for one to 150. And that's his fucking job. So being able to see him live or do something about it, I just thought it was very fun. Having said that, I think some people might be offended with how it's linked to joints. I like how basically they are putting some risk on it, but I really liked that they've done that, even though I think it's a bit more risky. They also, on the video, I don't think it was that clear that they are doing an event live afterwards. That's what I sort of understood from it. But it wasn't that clear on the video. It was hard to understand. And the whole linking, I think the whole beginning, which is the first 20 or 30 seconds, is people smoking a joint and saying weird things. And I was about to stop the video because it was boring in the beginning. And then I got it eventually. But I think they fucked up the video structure, linking it to the video. Like, great idea, not as well executed as Ramp, I think.

Yeah. So I agree that like, okay, they're doing something different, which is also what the, there's like a nice meta cognitive thing here about doing something different, thinking different, having your own canvas. The message is great. The video, like the actual execution of this specific idea, I agree, also wasn't great. Like you had to stick through the video. It's only if you have enough curiosity peaked that you would stick through it. And the execution could have been better, but I actually think the core idea was good, but this was the wrong idea. This would be like, if Ramp had picked some accountant from some show that not most people have seen. And, or if they picked like an entirely different type of job. And it's, it's polarizing content. Like you said, it's about drugs. One of the top comments was like, you know, some people were like, look, I appreciate the creativity and I'm not against marijuana, but like, whatever. Like you can argue that some of that helps you with engagement and your reach, but something feels too polarizing, like a little too avant-garde or something about it. They could have taken the same principle and found a different way to be different and innovative. And hopefully they will. Like,

I think everything is bait now on Twitter and LinkedIn. I think they just picked the wrong bait. Like it was, I agree, it's too much, like too polarizing. And I agree with you. Like I knew of the guy. I don't know why, but I think most people will not.

Yeah. Most people don't know in their heads that Snoop Dogg had a professional joint roller, let alone that it was this guy. And it's like, it's like 50 seconds in, I think before they even explain this guy rolled joints for Snoop Dogg. And like, how is that relevant to Clay and all that? Like they don't get it. They could have actually lopped off, I think the first half of this minute 15 video and it would have been more effective.

They could have put that in the end, I think. Like I was allowed to quit the video just based on like those first few things that were showing up. So I agree with that. The one takeaway I have is I want to be friends of Varun because he knows the same strange facts about the weird joint roller for Snoop Dogg than I do.

Indeed. Indeed. And so related to this, I also shared a tweet from Aaron Francis which had some highlights about, you know, it had this other, it was quote tweeting this other very lengthy Twitter thread where I'll sum it up as basically there's a danger to playing the attention game and just going for the vanity metrics of attention. So what we liked about Ramp is the tie-in to their product and the targeting to their audience is right on point. What we didn't like about this Clay one is the targeting is too polarizing. As many people as it will attract, it'll probably also push away. And so the message, the message is good but the execution and the actual like idea to get that message across was off. And then, you know, in that Twitter thread they talk about Cluely a little bit which is one of those things that like a lot of people are aware of Cluely and they're not aware of what, they don't know what it does or why they do these weird content bits and how that translates to them.

And with Cluely, we talked about it in the past but what they fucked up is they did the hype before the product. The last month Cluely was down 53% of the time. How can a good product be down 53%? Like go to the status page of Cluely now. Everything is red. So it's like how you do hype? You do hype before the product is ready. Somebody comes and see it's 53% of the time it's down. Like you're not sticking out. Like they even fucked up timing. The other thing I was thinking related to this as well is my co-founder G on Hypergrowth doesn't know what the office is but he's not mad about it. If he was anti-drugs he would have been mad with the Clay thing even if he doesn't know who Snoop Dogg is which he probably doesn't. So just interesting to understand like what is the negative of somebody not knowing it or what it means. But having said that I applaud Clay for trying something different. I think all brands should try something different and something unique.

I agree with that.

With that thank you for coming to our show today. The clap was not good, right?

The clap's never good but you love the clap.

I do now. I like that. Now that I have a kid I clap all the time so he claps so I'm now clapping even more than before. You say the goodbye.

Thanks for coming everybody. We'll see you again next week. Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold Hold