The Beat: Fame

Welcome to The Beat by Rockstar CMO. I’m Ian Truscott, a 3xCMO, trusted advisor, strategy consultant and Chief Bottle Washer at Rockstar CMO. In this newsletter, I’d like to share a mix of what’s caught my eye from our community, our podcast and our street knowledge blog.

Hello, Happy Monday!

Yes, I usually send this on Sunday, but yesterday, I got lost in a project. It was a fairly miserable weekend here in Oxfordshire, and I decided to write some code, something that’s a story for another day but a process I find really absorbing. The little dopamine hits when something works, especially as, frankly, I am the faded gunslinger of development. OK, I was never that good, but it’s an incredible mental exercise where I find flow.

And…… well, now I am writing this today.

When not seeking the dopamine hit of seeing a row update in a database, I have been thinking about fame, specifically the right amount of fame. And, as this newsletter is named after song titles, it has to be the classic from David Bowie.

Last week I read this fabulous article on Vox that states that “Everyone’s a sellout now” and the author summarises all of our relationship with social media fame with:

Reading this coincided with me concluding a book proposal writing challenge that I shared I was doing a couple of weeks ago.

(It’s The 10-Day Book Proposal Challenge by Alison Jones, if you are interested, and I highly recommend it).

When I signed up, I hadn't appreciated it was a competition, there were 30 people on the course, and the worthy winner of a publishing deal had not only a good idea for a book but also, he had the “right amount of fame” box ticked.

Of course, it’s a fantasy to think that today, our art has any value to an intermediary like a publisher without an audience. I have spoken to lots of authors on our podcast, and they are on the podcast as they are doing the hard work of bringing something into the world, marketing, finding the audience and getting that right level of fame.

It was certainly a big focus for writing a book proposal; how big is your audience, and how many books do we think you will shift? And many of the authors I have spoken to on the podcast have shared that writing the book was not the hardest bit; it was the marketing or creating the right level of fame.

I use the expression “the right level of fame” as I think this is the challenge today for any content creator, or maybe anyone. Whether you are writing a book, creating a newsletter, blog, podcast or, as the Vox article suggests, anyone on LinkedIn looking for a job, we all have to ask, “What is the right level of fame?”.

We are so drawn into LinkedIn and all this hustle porn advice to grow your network, to like, comment, or this f**king annoying thing of putting links in comments to play the algorithm, to be more visible, to be more famous

“More” is a hard goal, there is always more, how much more is enough?

And to pick a line from the Bowie tune “Fame (fame), what you need you have to borrow”, there is probably a rabbit hole of social media rented land I could dive into here.

I think this is also why a lot of newsletters, podcasts and blogs die, because the creator hadn't considered this. What’s the goal? How famous do I need to be? And why?

It seems to be the question for our age - what is your right level of fame?

Cheers!

Ian

Ian Truscott | Chief Bottle Washer Rockstar CMO

I am still trying to get the Threads habit, and I would love to connect with you there - https://www.threads.net/@iantruscott

Street Knowledge

The good stuff from Rockstar CMO, our community and other stuff I’ve liked…

On the topic of fame

From Rockstar CMO

Special mention

Get your Monday Marketing Mojo Working

As I am sending this a day late, I hope you already have your Monday Marketing mojo working, but this may help jolly it along a bit.