The Beat: Why?

Welcome to The Beat by Rockstar CMO. Delighted you are here! I’m Ian Truscott, and I intend to share a mix of what’s caught my eye from th Rockstar CMO community, the latest discussions from the podcast and our street knowledge blog.

Hi!

This week’s newsletter is brought to you by the letter Y and the number 13. As this is the 13th edition of this rebooted Rockstar CMO newsletter, and I’m kidding about the letter Y, I came over all Sesame Street for some reason - it’s actually the question Why?

The word “why” seemed to be cropping up a lot this last week, I was interviewed for a couple of podcasts, joined an Experience Advisors navigation session run by Robert Rose, and on the Rockstar CMO podcast this week, Jeff and I chatted about content marketing. In each, it was clear that asking why is a core part of what we should be doing as marketing leaders.

Maybe stating the bleedin’ obvious, but there isn’t just one “why” we should be asking, and I’ve been inspired by / stolen / thought of a few:

• Why do we do what we do? - This is Simon Sinek’s Why - what is your business’s purpose, cause or belief? (Summarising wildly there!) This is good in that it forms your story, finds your north start and all that, but who cares about your story? (Yet!)

• Why will people care? - What is about your content or your marketing that people will care about? Is it useful to them? To twist that famous Steve Jobs quote, your audience doesn’t care about your content; they care about the content that helps them with their problem.

• Why are we doing it? - Often, marketing conversations start with tactics. An executive pops his head into a Zoom meeting with something he’s picked up in whatever is the modern equivalent of an inflight magazine; “Hey kids, we should be on Tikface”. We need to able to ask why? What are our goals and objectives and will this help?

• Why us? (#1) - There are two sides to the why us? The first, why our destination, why would our audience come to us and not wherever they go today to meet their need or solve their problem. A better answer could be we go to them, where they already get this information or discuss this topic.

• Why us? (#2) - The second “why us” is why would they choose us as a source of content. What can we bring to the conversation that is useful or different than what the audience has already got access to? Perhaps it’s our research, expertise, case studies or point of view. It probably isn’t that we can write a better five reasons you should use our shit.

• Our customers why - This is what all the previous why’s really ladder up to and maybe should have gone first. What is it you are helping your customers achieve, and on the flip side, how are you handling their fear of f**kng up (or FOFU).

I’m no Simon Sinek, but here are five why’s to think about, and as I use a song title as the subject line, this week's tune is “Why” by UK Garage’s version of Destiny’s Child - Mis-teeq from 2001 (video at the bottom of this email).

What do you think?

Thanks for reading, have a great week! Please check out the links below; if you have any thoughts or comments on this newsletter, our blog or the podcast, please get in touch.

Cheers,

Ian

Ian Truscott | Chief Bottle Washer | Rockstar CMO

Latest on the podcast

Street Knowledge

Some of the articles from our blog and around the community have caught my eye this week.

Get your Monday Morning Marketing Mojo Working

Maybe not a classic, but Why by Mis-Teeq, from the UK garage early noughties archives, go with it, and maybe your mojo will be tapping it’s toes.

Finally

Yes, my friend Dennis, we keep tryin’!

The promo image used on the web page was partially created using A.I. through NightCafe Studio