The Politics of Dancing

Welcome to The Beat by Rockstar CMO. I’m Ian Truscott, a CMO, 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, topics from our podcast, and our street knowledge blog.

Hello!

This week, the topic has me reaching way to the back of the virtual record box into the 80’s for the subject line and the song “Politics of Dancing” by Re-Flex - nope, me neither, I’ve heard of the song, but even if you are an 80s music fan - Re-Flex?

Anyway, Mark Twain, someone we might be more familiar with, although his greatest hits were a little earlier and his views on dancing don’t seem to have been recorded, apparently once said that we should never discuss politics or religion in polite company.

Yet, today, politics, a once benign topic that would be hot every 4 or 5 years, seems to pervade everything all of the time right now.

I am working with a client that provides software to the EV charging industry. Their big growth market is the US, and now it seems clean energy and transportation aren’t just about technology and innovation, but it now seems important to know which side of the aisle you like to stand on.

The simple answer, and perhaps the easiest, of course, is to do a Mark Twain and steer clear of anything that even has the vaguest of whiffs of political partisanship. To be honest, this is my advice for the branded content marketing strategy.

The challenge with that approach is that being neutral or anodyne is to be unremarkable, and keying into a social issue, signaling your politics or even religious beliefs, can help you find your tribe. Just ask Patagonia, Ben & Jerry’s, Chik-Fil-A or Nike.

It becomes even trickier advising brand ambassadors, influencers, or company executives with a personal brand who present the authentic human face that we B2B marketers are encouraged to encourage.

Neutering these voices runs the risk of diminishing their expression of passion for solving the problem that the company, product, or service solves.

We’ve also seen numerous examples where the pendulum swings too far the other way.

The brand marketing team and agency decide it would be a splendid idea to ally with a cause, take up the burning pitchforks, storm the castle, and realize the rest of the company, or more importantly, their core customer base, is not with them.

They stayed at home because Dr. Frankenstien scored well in the audience research, and his monster did not rate highly in their list of things they worried about, or it transpired that the company was a prime contractor on the drawbridge, revealing that this position was all a bit fake.

Yeah, maybe I am avoiding politics to such an extent I am stretching a classic fiction analogy, but it’s hard to know where the line is.

Is the answer somewhere in the question - is this important enough to lose audience and/or revenue for?

Like Chik-fil-A, and their Christian values mean they are outspoken on issues and stay closed on Sundays.

Taking a position on anything, regardless of whether the topic is political, deepens the connection with your people and creates differentiation, but it also signals to “the others” that you are not for them.

This is fine when the position you are taking is that you are not in favor of monolithic marketing software stacks and prefer interconnected best-of-breed solutions. Nobody will hate you for that, but if you suggest that the way they voted was foolish, that’s personal.

So…

I’m probably with Mark Twain on this one, or maybe we should all be taking the advice of Re-Flex and focusing on the “politics of, ooh, feeling good”.

Thanks for reading this far, have a great week.

Cheers!

Ian

Ian Truscott | Chief Bottle Washer Rockstar CMO

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The politics of, ooh, feeling good….. look at the 80’s oooozing out of this one.