From Rick Caruso’s masterclass in protective foresight to David Lynch’s brilliance in crafting characters we care about, we explore why taking responsibility for what matters might just be the new normal in a world where systems increasingly shrug at our problems.
Rick Caruso demonstrates why planning for disaster means you might be the only building left standing when LA’s wildfires rage through – and why his private firefighter strategy offers lessons for us all.
David Lynch’s legacy reminds us that creating characters people genuinely care about is the secret ingredient to making audiences lean in and stay engaged – even when the narrative deliberately avoids closure.
Meta’s inbox impersonators are getting craftier with their urgent demands for “verification,” proving that digital scammers are banking on our panic response.
A small child tapping alongside a street performer in Galway asks the question we all need to consider: why aren’t more of us willing to step out of our comfort zones and join the dance?
Get ready to take notes.
Talking About Marketing podcast episode notes with timecodes
01:00 Person This segment focusses on you, the person, because we believe business is personal.
Rick Caruso’s Private Firefighting Playbook
Rick Caruso, former LA Department for Water and Power commissioner, real estate mogul and philanthropist, shares a remarkable tale of foresight that left his shopping centre standing while LA burned. Steve encountered Rick’s discussion in In The Politics of Catastrophe – Waking Up Podcast #399.
Drawing on lessons from previous Montecito disasters, Caruso and his team built a shopping centre with non-combustible materials, minimal venting, and a private firefighting strategy that didn’t deplete municipal resources.
Steve and David unpack this approach through the lens of strategic planning, noting how the “pre-mortem” exercise (imagining future failure and working backward) overlaps with Caruso’s meticulous planning. They explore the growing necessity of personal responsibility in an era where Donald Trump and Elon Musk seemingly mock standards, asking whether we should all be holding ourselves to higher account in both business and personal life.
As David notes, we’re entering a period where “if you don’t look after yourself, no one else is going to” – pointing to rising insurance costs, healthcare expenses, and other signs that systems we once relied on are faltering. Self-sufficiency, from solar panels to physical fitness, might be the new normal in weathering life’s inevitable storms.
13:30 Principles This segment focusses principles you can apply in your business today.
David Lynch’s Guide to Character Connection
Following the death of filmmaker David Lynch in January 2025, Steve and David reflect on the appointment-viewing phenomenon that was Twin Peaks and what made Lynch’s storytelling so powerful. Steve picked up on the news after hearing Tamler Summer from the Very Bad Wizards podcast, eulogise the famous director.
They explore Lynch’s deliberate avoidance of narrative closure – “as soon as you get closure, it’s just an excuse to forget you saw the damn thing” – and what this means for business storytelling.
The hosts connect Lynch’s character-building prowess to Donald Miller’s StoryBrand framework, noting that Lynch understood what takes many marketers years to learn: audiences connect with vulnerable characters who keep trying despite uncertainty. The key insight? In your marketing, position your customer as the hero and your business as the guide – not the other way around.
As David notes, “Lynch always left his central characters with some degree of vulnerability. We came to really care about the fact they were vulnerable, and it could go wrong, and they didn’t have all the answers, but they kept on trying.” They conclude that while storytelling in marketing isn’t new, Lynch reached a depth that many storytellers – and marketers – are still trying to catch up to.
21:45 Problems This segment answers questions we've received from clients or listeners.
Meta Verification Scams Get Craftier
A plague of convincing scam messages is hitting Facebook business pages and Instagram accounts, purporting to be from Meta with urgent notices of policy violations. These messages, typically from accounts with blue icons featuring three people, warn of imminent account suspension or deactivation unless “verification” is completed within unreasonably short timeframes.
Steve shares examples of these messages, pointing out the telltale signs they’re fake: urgency tactics (verify within 4 hours), suspicious web addresses that don’t end in meta.com, and exaggerated threats of account deletion. His preferred response to these scammers? “Thank you so much. Can you please remove my page? It’s way too much work” – a bit of fun at their expense.
The hosts offer practical advice: never click suspicious links, check that any Meta-related links actually end in meta.com, and when in doubt, contact trusted sources (like Talked About Marketing for their clients) to verify legitimacy.
25:15 Perspicacity This segment is designed to sharpen our thinking by reflecting on a case study from the past.
Why Aren’t More Adults Dancing?
A viral video of Irish tap dancer Emma O’Sullivan performing in Galway captures a magical moment when a toddler breaks from the crowd to join in, mimicking the dancer’s movements with pure joy. What fascinates Steve is the child’s puzzled expression as she looks around, seemingly wondering why none of the adults are joining in the fun.
This prompts the hosts to reflect on the barriers that keep adults from participating fully in interactive experiences. David notes, “We all live in a world where we’re not allowed to do fun things in an unrestricted way very much of the time. Instead, we need to do the socially acceptable thing and fit in so we don’t attract negative attention.”
They discuss the importance of “priming the pump” in audience participation – how Glyn Nicholas’s Eurovision homage show, Club Eurovision, uses planted participants to model behavior, giving others permission to join in. As David observes, “If you want people to make noise, show them… Once people know it’s okay, then you give them that wonderful release of being part of a happy crowd doing things.”
The segment closes with the reflection that sporting events might be the last realm where participatory behavior remains naturally normalised – a sobering thought for marketers hoping to create interactive experiences.
Transcript This transcript was generated using Descript.
A Machine-Generated Transcript – Beware Errors
TAMP S06E01
Caitlin Davis: [00:00:00] Talking about marketing is a podcast for business owners and leaders, produced by my dad, Steve Davis, and his colleague at Talked About Marketing, David Olney, in which they explore marketing through the lens of their own four P’s, person, principles, problems, and perspicacity. Yes, you heard that correctly.
Apart from their love of words, they really love helping people. So they hope this podcast will become a trusted companion on your journey in business.
Steve Davis: Fire. Walk. With. Me. You still there?
David Olney: I’m still here. I’m just wondering how I respond to a David Lynchian moment at the start of an episode. Well, keep listening and all will be revealed.[00:01:00]
Caitlin Davis: Our four Ps. Number one, person. The aim of life is self development. To realise one’s nature perfectly. That is what each of us is here for. Oscar Wilde.
Steve Davis: We’re recording this a month or so after. The fires that went through L. A. and captured news coverage all around the world, A, because it’s in the U. S., a very saturated media environment, so if you’ve got pictures, and it bleeds, it leads, so it just feeds the sausage machine of the world video. But that’s not to take away from the fact of the extent of these fires, and how they just rip through, not just native.
Uh, natural environment, but inter urban built environment and, uh, that drew a lot of attention. So much so, that there was fallout about the fact that fire hydrants [00:02:00] were running out of water around L. A. Something that I didn’t even think could be possible and systemically could have been avoided with some proper planning because they’ve been aware of this for many decades.
To that end, David, I was, my ears pricked up when Sam Harris, who has a podcast called Waking Up, episode 399, interviewed Rick Caruso, uh, from, LA. In fact, he was previously commissioner of the LA Department for Water and Power, and also president of the LA Police Commission. These days, he’s a real estate mogul and philanthropist, and his shopping center, in the heart zone of this fire, came through unscathed.
Does that whet your appetite to find out why, David?
David Olney: I always like stories like that because it’s either dumb luck because no one’s done any research or we discover that something was radically different about the [00:03:00] location or the decision someone made about their location. And I’m guessing it’s going to be the second.
Steve Davis: Well, let’s have a little listen to this snippet and then we’ll apply this to what we can learn from it as individuals. It is scalable.
Rick Caruso: Tell you, we learned a lot building the hotel, the resort that we were building up in Montecito, the Rosewood Miramar. Because when we were building that about the same time as we were building the Palisades, they were both coming out of the ground about the same time. There was a massive fire in Montecito, if you remember.
And then after the massive fire in Montecito, there were massive rains. And that’s when the boulders came down, destroyed a lot of homes and people were killed. It was just a terrible time. But we were in framing up in Montecito and what we knew is the fire department up there up in Santa Barbara, rightly so, will put their resources to the residential neighborhoods, not the commercial.
And we didn’t want to be pulling any resources from the [00:04:00] residential neighborhoods. So our team wisely, when the fires broke out, contacted private fire departments and some came in from Colorado. Some came in from Arizona. And I’ll tell you, which I didn’t realize at the time, 45 percent of all wildfires in this country are fought by private firefighters.
This is a very large industry. And we also brought in companies that had retardant and we brought in water trucks. So we weren’t pulling on municipal water. And we were able to protect the Miramar and get it built. It wasn’t threatened to the same degree, Palisades. So we had a playbook and we took the time over the years.
I’ve got the head of what we call a rapid response team for any kind of natural disaster. We got a whole set of plans. They go to that plan, depending on the disaster, the minute those, when the wind warnings came out, they went into action and the same teams that we used up at Miramar were called in.
They were stationed up there, water trucks were stationed up there, [00:05:00] the retardant company was stationed up there, but where it really started was when we built it, we built all of Palisades village without any combustible materials, even things that look like wood. Right. They’re just formed to look like wood.
So when those embers were hitting the building, they were fortunately, it couldn’t ignite anything. If you go up there now and look at one of the back buildings, Serena and Lily, the building is scorched because of the vegetation, the plants, but the building is standing and the inside is untouched. We also designed it where there’s not a lot of vents.
A lot of people’s homes burned down because. An ember went inside an air vent inside the house. So we designed it knowing we’re in a high fire risk area and we had plans to protect it because we knew that. I think that’s really good preparation. And I do think it’s scalable.
Steve Davis: So David, you and I at the moment, [00:06:00] uh, you know, very much involved in promoting and running strategic planning days for groups. And there’s a toolkit that you draw from and one of them is the pre mortem, which is where you. You say, hypothetically, it’s a year or two down the track, or more, depending. It’s all gone to hell in a hand basket.
It hasn’t worked. What went wrong? And you work your way back so you can isolate what might have gone wrong and fix things up. I think an event diagram between applying a post, a premortem, and what Rick Caruso did in planning every detail of that shopping centre, there is lots of overlap. Wouldn’t you agree?
David Olney: Absolutely. And based on Rick Caruso’s sort of career and his level of experience, the idea of doing pre mortems of going, well, whatever we’re planning to do, assume it’s failed and now work out why, work out which things are under human control. And start making the corrections for them [00:07:00] before the problem even emerges.
To build a shopping center that essentially, other than a bit of scorched shrubbery on the edges, came through the LA fires, was able to reopen immediately, all the tenants still had all their, their stuff. People could come and make use of all the facilities in the shopping center immediately after. How radically different to All the images we saw here and everything I heard from colleagues who live and work in L.
A.
Steve Davis: It’s really interesting from a personal level to think about this because it would have been easy just to slap up a shopping center at meeting whatever the current standards are. But it seems that Rick basically transcended those standards and I really feel there’s something this says to us in how We hold ourselves to account in an era at the moment where Donald Trump and Elon Musk are really showing us a masterclass in how to trample [00:08:00] over standards, in fact, to mock standards.
Individual standards and unless it puts money in their pocket. It’s a really grubby Lesson that’s being taught the world by these two hideous creatures for us though What’s your take what in thinking about Rick Caruso story and theirs and just that general impetus We’re running a small business.
We’re leading one. We’ve got our own life. We’ve got our family It’s still Valid, isn’t it? To use the wordings of my teenage daughters, valid’s a big word, but it’s still valid to try and hold yourself to a higher degree of account. Would you agree?
David Olney: Well, ironically, we’re heading towards a, you know, it looks like we’re heading towards a period of history or existence where it’s going to be even more important that you take responsibility.
Because we’ve had the idea probably since The end of World War II, that there’s a big force out there that tries to make sure things are [00:09:00] fair, and that outcomes are reasonable, and that things end reasonably well, and in a sense, the Doge wrecking ball in the United States is a horrible sort of transformation of the norm from, there’s probably a force out there that will protect and help you, to, if you don’t look after yourself, no one else is going to.
It’s an incredible transformation, and we are apparently a long way from it here, but I don’t think we’re as far as people think we are, because at the end of the day, look at the cost of insurance across Australia. After so many floods and so many fires, look at how expensive it is to get medical care now.
Look at all these things where historically, you would have thought someone would have intervened, kept it low cost, made sure it worked well. Where in reality now, if you want it to work well, taking personal responsibility. isn’t just going to be something you do because it makes you perhaps [00:10:00] feel more comfortable about how you want to be alive, but it’s perhaps going to become a necessity that if you don’t take personal responsibility for practical things right at the beginning, when it goes wrong, there’s just going to be a disaster and lots of people shrugging and you going, well, no one’s helping me.
Um, what do I do? And unfortunately, I think Rick Caruso is probably going to have to become the model in the United States for what you do if you’ve got the resources and the ability to plan. You get ahead of as many problems as possible because you can’t rely on a system to help you.
Steve Davis: Yeah, I think that’s the takeaway here from a personal level for me to take away and our listener to take away and reflect on is, um, It’s, it’s one thing to be meeting whatever the current standards are, it’s another thing to have a long deep think and say, you know what, no.
We should do a little bit more than this. We should hold ourselves a little bit higher. For example, I mean, [00:11:00] luckily, I’m in a situation where I’ve been able to put solar energy panels and a battery on our home to sort of take some control back from the cost of electricity, etc. I’ve been going to the gym for a year and a half now to try and get that fly ball happening, because if I can make at least the base element of my body more robust and reliable than it had been.
Um, it just means, hopefully, in theory, I can weather the storms of anything health throws my way. It’d be better. And I suppose they’re two just little examples, aren’t they, of trying to just remember we can’t rely on someone coming to mop up for us. We’ve got to be as self sufficient as possible. And Zen Buddhism, uh, that’s saying how you do everything.
It’s how you do anything. It’s how you do everything. Um, it’s probably a measuring stick to say, well, if I’m going to cut a corner here, well, that has impact down [00:12:00] the track. And just to round this off before your final comment, David, um, Dr. Travis Brown and I I recently recorded a podcast live on stage at a medical conference about osteoporosis and the message that came through loud and clear is there are so many things we can be doing from the beginning of life to protect us from osteoporosis and we just don’t.
Almost everything is working against our bones, um, when we are overindulging women, not doing fitness, but the interventions are you flip those things and you have a longer, more secure, uh, future, robust future ahead of you. Final thoughts, David?
David Olney: Final thoughts, again, to go back to that Zen Buddhist comment of how you do anything is how you do everything.
Start with the little things. Start with making sure the security on your laptop is working. Start making sure the security on your social media accounts is set up properly. Start with the little [00:13:00] things, and it just becomes easy to roll doing the right thing that positions you as well as possible to have some degree of security that you’ve taken responsibility for making it work and stopping it going wrong.
Um Yeah, it’s a bit more work, but eventually the bit more work becomes so easy because you do it every day. And you have less dramas in your life, and a life with less dramas is preferable.
Caitlin Davis: Our four Ps. Number two, principles. You can never be overdressed or over educated. Oscar Wilde.
Steve Davis: David just said a life with less drama. Is preferable unless we’re talking about the drama that you enjoy on the silver screen or the screen at home And I refer as we lead into the principal segment to david lynch who died on the 16th of january 2025 [00:14:00] and It was, he, he left an indelible mark in many people’s subconsciouses, uh, let alone anything else.
I remember, David, having Twin Peaks nights, in which we’d go to different friend’s house. There were about three or four couples. And it was, uh, appointment viewing we all had to have. We got together, we enjoyed it, we enjoyed reflecting on it and rolling up in, you know. comatose in the corner, rocking back and forth after some of them, that sort of experience I think is unlikely to come back again.
David Olney: Yeah, to have something where we all decide to be sitting at home on the same night. Like I remember it used to be you didn’t ring anyone at that time, you didn’t answer the phone if anyone rang, and but what did everyone talk about on the train the next morning and at university the next day? It was such a cultural phenomenon to work out what was going on in [00:15:00] this series, where, despite how strange it was, there were all these characters we cared about.
Steve Davis: It’s an interesting point, and just to tease into this, to pick out some principles we can apply to our business, I want to play a little snippet in which my, uh, beloved fellow podcasters from the Very Bad Wizards podcast just lamented and eulogized David Lynch, uh, Um, and they make a point here in which he comments on how he didn’t like ever explaining what was really going on in a story so that people couldn’t get closure.
Let’s have a listen.
Tamla Summer: If I had to put my finger on it, it’s Number one, there’s always kind of mystery in his movies and people like mysteries. And then number two, it’s this thing that he could do just kind of like he could tap into emotions that you knew were important, but didn’t fully understand into fears, into like joys, into like, Stuff about the world that [00:16:00] you see now, but you didn’t see before and he never gave you closure.
And so, like, there’s so much to talk about, you know, I always quote that line. I’m sure I’ve said this like on eight different episodes. Someone says, you know, why, how come you don’t give a sense of closure? And I think they were talking about Twin Peaks and he’s like, closure. I keep hearing that word. As soon as you get closure or a sense of closure, it’s just an excuse to forget you saw the damn thing.
And I think that’s why, like, you know, he has, well, A, just such a devoted kind of cult fan community and, you know, when The Return was released, there were, like, ten different podcasts that were all brilliant and hilarious and, like, really insightful going on while it was released, it’s because there’s so much to talk about with him, but he combined it with just, like, the humor and the violence and the mystery.
I think the mystery can’t be overstated, how much We like a good mystery as, you know, [00:17:00] imbibers of art. And he understood that. And he gave us mysteries that we would never understand or get to the bottom of fully, but we would always want to just get drawn into it until it like swallowed us up, which it did, you know,
Steve Davis: Now, is it a long bow, David, to think that if I’m going to craft a story to share my business brand story, leaving things.
Unclosed is going to endear people to me, frustrate them and make them hate me, or find some sort of happy outcome.
David Olney: I think there’s an interesting thing that underpins everything you just said there, because you’re only going to get frustrated with an incomplete story if you care about the character of the story.
Steve Davis: Yeah. And
David Olney: Lynch’s power was to make strange stories. And yet There’s always at least one character, more often than not, more than one character, [00:18:00] you care about, and because you care, you want to know why things happen, what they mean, how’s it going to impact the character you’ve come to care about, and, if we look at even his casting choices, lots of relative unknowns.
Who, in a lot of cases, don’t go on to have great fame after working with him, and yet we still remember the roles they played, you know, in his productions. It’s quite remarkable how much he understood the importance of a character we can connect with. We cared whether the character survived or thrived.
We worried about the threat that was coming their way. You know, the ambiguity genuinely could concern you with a David Lynch film or series.
Steve Davis: And it did roll around. In dreamscape and in the subconscious, uh, week in week out between each episode and of course you had movies too. It’d be silly for me not to draw a connection to the work that we’re currently, [00:19:00] um, applying.
To our clients marketing drawn from the story brand framework that Donald Miller has honed after his years of being a writer in Hollywood, but then moving into the realm of business in which he’s reminding us and we’re going to come back to this in some future episodes about how people often talk about story.
In your branding, and stories have a hero, they have these characters, and most people make their brand the hero, and his very strong argument is, no, no, the customer must be the hero, you play the role of the guide, your product or service or you play the role of the guide, so the hero is the one that has things at stake, your job will be much better served if you’re just that stable source in the corner whose abilities and insights help the hero, uh, well, survive or thrive.
And I think there’s something here in the overlap, [00:20:00] David, that David Lynch reminds us of that synthesizes with this whole idea of a story brand.
David Olney: Absolutely. I think maybe the core thing is that Lynch Always left his central characters with some degree of vulnerability. That we came to really care about the fact they were vulnerable, and it could go wrong, and they didn’t have all the answers, but they kept on trying.
And there’s something very powerful in that idea. Of vulnerability and continuing to try and achieve your goals, even if you’re not sure what to do next. And, you know, we’ve all known that story is important in marketing for a long time. The literature goes back, you know, at least to Joseph Campbell, in terms of, you know, film.
Um But in terms of marketing, at least to the mid 1990s, Scandinavian writers were already talking about the importance of story really seriously. And it strikes me that only now we’ve finally gone, yes, story’s important, but how do we operationalize it to [00:21:00] genuinely make sure people connect and understand the stories we’re telling?
So David Lynch, I think, got there early and far more deeply than an awful lot of storytellers have. And we’re all playing catch up.
Steve Davis: It’s been fascinating to see how just a little flipping of the script, uh, makes a big difference, cos it helps a potential customer, an audience member in this case, go, Oh, I know how it connects to my world now.
Ah, now I’m drawn in, into the story. So I’m looking forward to turning the pages of that book and sharing little bits and pieces here on the Talking About Marketing podcast.
Caitlin Davis: Number three, Problems. I ask the question for the best reason possible. Simple curiosity. Oscar Wilde.
Steve Davis: In the problem segment, I’m just raising this because you might have seen one yourself if you have [00:22:00] a Facebook business page or professional Instagram account in particular. There is a It’s like locusts, a plague of locusts, uh, in our inboxes, coming from accounts that have a sort of two tone blue icon, typically with three people on it.
I don’t know why they keep choosing this, but in essence, the image, the message is saying, Dear Talked about marketing, or whatever your brand is. Your, here’s two examples. Your Instagram account is currently suspended due to a violation of Meta’s policies, including unauthorized use of content. The associated Facebook page also does not meet the necessary requirements.
You must comply. Violation date, this one said February 21, 2025. Violation ID, and it’s got a, uh, 12 digit, uh, code. To retain access and to avoid permanent deactivation, complete verification now. And the link [00:23:00] goes to fbdeskmetahelpcenter. web. app And as we can instantly see, if you’ve been with us long enough, none of that actually points to any property owned by Meta.
It is complete fakery. Interestingly, David, uh, they do apply, uh, urgency. You must verify within four hours.
David Olney: Which is amazing, really crazy a number to put on anything. You can see how hard they’re trying to rattle people.
Steve Davis: The other one, final warning for admins. We’ve tried to reach out to you several times but have not received a response.
We urge you not to ignore this message. It’s an important communication from Meta. We’d like to inform you under the new policy, all users are required to confirm their identity. If you don’t complete verification in 24 hours, the Facebook page linked to your Instagram account will be blocked. Please take a few minutes.
This one went to activecenterusers. site. Again, nothing [00:24:00] connected to Meta. So, my standard reply to these places, and luckily, most of them are ghost accounts, because by the time I go to reply, they’ve already been reported and removed. But, I just say, oh, thank you so much. Can you please remove my page? It’s way too much work, and it’s Just, I only do that, David, because it’s fun for me to do.
We’ve got it to find fun where we can. Yes. And that’s a good place to find fun. But in essence, ignore these messages, especially if the link they’re sending you to does not finish at Meta. com
David Olney: and don’t click the link to find out where it goes
Steve Davis: Never
David Olney: click reply to the email so you can see all the addresses uncovered if you really want to go that far But don’t please please please don’t click the link
Steve Davis: And if you’re one of our clients, of course Just always just let us know and we’ll give you that peace of mind that it’s yet another [00:25:00] fake crook trying to lazily steal from all your hard work and get inside your account.
Caitlin Davis: Our four Ps, number four, Perspicacity. The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it. Oscar Wilde.
Steve Davis: Were you getting up and jigging just then David?
David Olney: No, because I’m attached to a cable and if I wrap the cable around me there’ll be a big crash and it will be bad.
Steve Davis: Well, that was the sound, the tapping there is Emma O’Sullivan. She was tapping in the streets of Galway in Ireland and what happens in this wonderful video that’s doing the rounds on social media is she’s got the crowd, like a [00:26:00] busker, there’s a crowd around her, I would estimate 50 or 60 people, and they’re happy to watch her tap dance on the cobbled streets and enjoy it, but what caught my attention is as she’s doing it, the A little two or three year old girl is enamored and she steps forward, she starts actually mimicking Emma and then steps forward from her parent and starts emulating the tap dancing.
She’s doing the, the tapping, she’s the heel and toe. And then what I found really fascinating, the reason this is in perspicacity, when we think about how things are evolved, we think about thinking, is She looks around wondering, she’s puzzled. Why aren’t these older people around me doing the same thing?
Why aren’t they liberated enough to join in? And I just had to bring this to the table, David, [00:27:00] because if someone in their marketing relies on our customers to
I feel like the bar has become higher unless you plaster people with alcohol, um, to get that sort of free compliance. Would you agree?
David Olney: Yeah, it’s, it’s, I think two things probably going on. One, are people likely to join in? Less and less. Like, look at the fact it was a little two or three year old who was just carried away with the awesomeness of Emma dancing and do what little ones do.
They mimic. But the little one did the next logical thing they do and that is, what’s the group doing? I’m the odd one out. And what was the expression on the little one’s face when she realized no one else was dancing. Did she suddenly stop? No,
Steve Davis: she keeps going. She’s puzzled and it’s like, oh well more for you.
[00:28:00] I’m staying with this
David Olney: I’m glad she’s so little that she didn’t stop because no one else was dancing But we got to remember we can’t ask people to be too brave because we all live in a world where We’re not allowed to do fun things in an unrestricted way very much of the time. Instead, we need to do the socially acceptable thing and, and fit in the world so we don’t attract negative attention.
So don’t ask your clients to be too brave, or if you want them to be brave, show them what it looks like. So they know that this is what you want them to do, and that it’s safe to do it.
Steve Davis: Yes, and if you, uh, at the time of recording, if you hear this before Wednesday the 19th of March, Uh, the wonderful Glyn Nicholas, who began his career as a busker, is now producing a fun take on Eurovision.
It’s a complete satire of the whole thing, but it’s got lots of great dancers. Well, it’s a
David Olney: homage. It’s an homage, that’s correct. It’s more of an homage than a satire, yeah. And
Steve Davis: it’s happening at the Arca Bar, and [00:29:00] the crowd is encouraged to buy a little It’s only about five bucks, I think, of a clacker that makes noise and a flag to wave.
And he does have a couple of people, I’m giving away a trade secret here, but when he opened this in London, he did the same thing. Just a few people in the crowd who already have them because they’re involved in the show or whatever, just to demonstrate to others, oh, they’re having fun. And it’s amazing how that’s enough to give people the confidence to go and pick these things up to really immerse themselves in the experience.
Is that fakery? No, I think that’s just priming the pump and showing us what’s possible so we Ah, get it. Would you agree or am I being too soft on him?
David Olney: No, I absolutely think people need help to know it’s okay to do things. If you want people to make noise, show them. If you want people to know they can spin the clock or wave their flag and yell and scream, show them.
Because once people know it’s okay, then you give them that wonderful [00:30:00] release of being part of a happy crowd doing things. I wonder really now if the only place people know it instinctively is when they go to sport. You know, the crowd together, cheering and booing and yelling and yahooing, that that’s about the only space left where it’s normalized.
Wow,
Steve Davis: that’s interesting. That’s something to ponder. And from a perspicacity segment, it just means that if you’re doing this sort of thing, um, I think being aware that the bar’s risen a little bit higher and the importance of modeling is Yep. Because, you know, this, this thing that’s keeping us hidden, I’d like to quote from Sheriff Truman in Twin Peaks, there’s a sort of evil out there, something very, very strange in these old woods.
It was probably
David Olney: Dravid Lynch writing next week’s script.
Caitlin Davis: Thank you for listening to Talking About Marketing. If you enjoyed it, please leave a rating or a review in your favourite podcast app. And if you found it helpful, please [00:31:00] share it with others. Steve and David always welcome your comments and questions, so send them to podcast at talkedaboutmarketing.
com. And finally, the last word to Oscar Wilde. There’s only one thing worse than being talked about, and that’s not being talked about.