From Viktor Frankl’s concentration camp wisdom to AI style guides that actually sound human, Steve and David explore why finding meaning beats chasing metrics, whether fake awards fool anyone, and why a man adjusting his fly in public might still make great advertising.
Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning” offers profound guidance for business owners feeling overwhelmed by today’s relentless news cycle, reminding us that survival often depends on having something meaningful to work toward rather than comfortable circumstances.
Steve shares practical questions for creating AI language guides that capture your genuine voice instead of corporate cardboard, while David emphasises why getting the human connection right matters more than perfect features and benefits.
A hilariously transparent fake award email reveals the growing cottage industry of manufactured credibility, prompting our hosts to consider launching their own award scheme (naturally at better value than the competition).
A classic Yellow Pages advertisement featuring an unfortunate trouser malfunction raises the eternal question: would this still work today, or have we lost our collective sense of humour about universal human embarrassments?
Get ready to take notes.
Talking About Marketing podcast episode notes with timecodes
01:15 Person This segment focusses on you, the person, because we believe business is personal.
Finding Meaning Beyond the Marketing Noise
Steve returns from the South Australian Variety Bash with a profound observation about digital overwhelm, particularly the “plastic individuals spouting self-congratulatory stuff written by ChatGPT” that populate LinkedIn. His remedy draws from Viktor Frankl’s experiences in Nazi concentration camps, where survival often came down to having something meaningful to live for rather than just comfortable conditions.
Frankl’s insight that “those prisoners were most likely to survive who had a meaning orientation toward the future” offers surprisingly relevant guidance for business owners feeling crushed by current events and marketing pressures. David reinforces this with Frankl’s three sources of meaning: love, work, and how we face suffering. The key insight for business owners struggling with direction? Having something greater than yourself to work toward provides resilience that no amount of tactical marketing advice can match.
The conversation moves from Frankl’s flying analogy about aiming higher than your target to compensate for crosswinds, suggesting that noble ideals serve a similar purpose in business: they keep us moving in the right direction even when external forces try to blow us off course.
11:30 Principles This segment focusses principles you can apply in your business today.
Teaching AI to Sound Like You (Instead of a Corporate Robot)
Moving from philosophical foundations to practical application, Steve introduces a comprehensive questioning framework designed to help AI tools capture your genuine voice rather than defaulting to generic business-speak. The challenge: most website copy sounds nothing like the engaging humans who run the businesses.
The question series begins with vision and dreams (“What does success look like to you, not just financially but personally and emotionally?”), moves through passion and values (“Why does your business exist beyond just making money?”), and progresses to origin stories and audience connection. David notes how these questions mirror Viktor Frankl’s approach to finding meaning, emphasising that emotional investment in your work creates the connection that differentiates you from anonymous competitors.
The hosts stress that while features and benefits matter, they work best when anchored in deeper context about why your business exists. David’s insight about HubSpot’s early community-first approach reinforces this: “Having a product without a community is terrifying. Having a community who are already listening to you… when you offer them a product, the chances of them saying yes is much higher.”
26:45 Problems This segment answers questions we've received from clients or listeners.
The Great Awards Swindle
Steve shares a magnificently transparent scam email from “Charlotte Green” at Food Business Review, offering Barista Door Coffee (his wound-down hobby business) the “prestigious” title of “top espresso coffee bean service” for the bargain price of $3,000 USD. The email’s shameless construction provides a masterclass in manufactured credibility.
David’s reaction cuts to the heart of the issue: “How dare they make claims about building credibility when the whole thing is absolute bullshit.” The hosts examine how these fake awards create a credibility arms race, where legitimate achievements get devalued by the proliferation of purchased recognition.
The conversation explores the broader implications for genuine business awards and media coverage, questioning how many “Adelaide’s top 10” stories actually involve financial transactions. With characteristic cheekiness, they consider launching their own “Australasian Small Business Award” at better value than the competition, highlighting how easy it would be to join this particular race to the bottom.
33:00 Perspicacity This segment is designed to sharpen our thinking by reflecting on a case study from the past.
Would a Man Fixing His Fly Still Sell Yellow Pages?
In a delightfully unexpected turn, the hosts examine a 1990s Yellow Pages advertisement featuring a man attempting to fix his undone fly using a building’s window as a mirror, unaware that office workers inside are watching his apparent public display. Steve’s confession that he may have accidentally recreated this scenario recently adds personal relevance to the discussion.
David hopes the advertisement would still work today because “it’s a human thing” rather than something designed to cause deliberate harm. The hosts conclude that universal human experiences, particularly embarrassing ones we can all relate to, retain their advertising power regardless of changing sensitivities.
This segment reinforces a recurring theme: marketing that connects with genuine human experience tends to outlast tactical approaches or manufactured controversy.
Transcript This transcript was generated using Descript.
A Machine-Generated Transcript – Beware Errors
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 talked about marketing David Olney, in which they explore marketing through the lens of their own four Ps person, principles, problems, and per ity. 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: Figuratively speaking. David, have you looked at yourself in an AI mirror and do you like what you see?
David Olney: That’s one of those interesting questions to go, this AI is trying to flatter me and be like me and am I really like that. So yeah, I have thought about it and I keep reaching the conclusion I’m fine.
And it’s the AI that’s got the [00:01:00] problem.
Caitlin Davis: Our four Ps. Number one person, the aim of life is self-development to realize one’s nature perfectly. That is what each of us is here for. Oscar Wilde
Steve Davis: in the person segment. Uh, I want to just share something in case you like me, are finding the steady drumbeat of news in this recent bit of history completely debilitating and. Tragic and sad and depressing. That’s what I, I mean, am I alone? David? Do, do you get the same tone from what’s covered in the news?
David Olney: I’ve got the advantage of having taught international relations and international security for so long that I’ve [00:02:00] long since got to the point where I can just go, that is sad. Acknowledge the feeling, and then step away from it. Because walking into tutorials every day, having to teach the same groom thing eight times in a week.
Would just be crushing if you kept feeling the enormity of the mess we are making. So, yes, uh, it’s definitely a thing. It’s definitely palpable, but I’ve long since worked out that I need to detach from it for my own wellbeing.
Steve Davis: Well, for those of us without that background, um, one thing I’d like to suggest, I’m trying it myself actually, is I’ve just come back from being in remote South Australia, like South Australia and Outback up as far as Lake Air, that sort of region back around through Cooper pd.
Admittedly, I was doing it dressed as a monkey. How else would you do it? As part of the South Australian Variety Bash. Um, what was interesting is we were often in places without any signal, and I [00:03:00] deliberately was not really using my device much. I was taking some photos and sharing a little bit through our cars page, but talking about 5% of the user exposure I have to the digital stream.
And when I got back there was a real culture shock and it, I looked at LinkedIn and I regret it because although as many people who follow me on LinkedIn know, I don’t have much tolerance for the sort of pat yourself on the back, crap that gets shared over there. But it looked incredibly infantile, more and plastic and just.
Petty. I really, it was, I was repulsed by it. David, just having been in nature, I. Communicating with humans face-to-face the whole time. 400 of us on this journey in the, you know, to places where it was just us [00:04:00] often. And to come back and have this mediated version of plastic individuals spouting, self-congratulatory stuff written by Chuck GPT, uh, really made me feel even more profoundly sad upon my return.
And I thought, what the heck can I do? And I remembered reading. Viktor Frankl’s book, man’s Search for Meaning, which he wrote recounting his time in Nazi concentration camp. And what he ends up deducing from this work or suggesting is that the ones who were able to survive when they had no control over their plight, over their experience is they could fix their mind on the future on.
Catching up again with their beloved or doing something that is rooted in community as a way to give something to [00:05:00] hold onto, to drive forward to, to keep on keeping on if you like. I just listened to him recounting this in one of his lectures. Now,
Victor Frankl: in actual fact, when I entered Auschwitz, I had a full book length manuscript in my pocket. Mm-hmm. It was that the manuscript of that book that later in your country has been published under the title, the Doctor and the So, so in any event. Uh, logotherapy was already developed when I came to Auschwitz, but certainly the four concentration camps in which I had to spend three years, uh, were a, in a way, a testing ground, an acid test to confirm.
To validate practically empirically, empirically the [00:06:00] widest sense of the word, my theories that I had developed previously, and the, uh, core, the nucleus of this theory, or if you wish me, uh, to put it that way. Uh, the lesson I had to learn in Auschwitz was that those. Prisoners, those inmates were most likely to survive.
Those who had a meaning orientation toward the future, taught a work to complete in the future, taught a person waiting for them at home. Those people. Who had a strong meaning orientation were most likely to survive, and I believe that something parallel even holds for mankind as a whole, if there’s any hope for mankind as a whole to survive.
This survivor also will be dependent. On meaning orientation, [00:07:00] mankind will finally have a chance to survive only if mankind arrives at a, uh, the awareness of common meanings and values.
Steve Davis: He just struck me that I think this message. Has another time in which it’s relevant right now in the current state of things, especially if you are feeling as I have. In fact, one thing that was interesting, David, in a different piece, I saw him talking about how he was, this is later in his life, he had to stop having his flying lessons and he remembered his flying instructor teaching him one thing that if you are flying from A to B and there’s a strong cross winged.
You can’t just aim at B because you’ll end up being thrown off course. Let’s say you’re down off to the right. You have to aim further up. To the left and you sort of crab your way [00:08:00] across in that wind and then through that you end up where you were going to be. And he uses that as a great analogy, is this is why it’s worth having noble ideals.
It’s worth having something to aim for. We may not get there, but it keeps us at a good place or perhaps even a higher place. Whereas if we just try and stay as we are inevitably. We start descending down to our more base selves. David, again,
David Olney: I always used to enjoy teaching bits and pieces about Viktor Frankl, and really the key takeaway from Man’s Search for Meaning is there’s, there’s three ways to find meaning.
There’s meaning in love, there’s meaning in work, and there’s meaning in how you face suffering. But the key thing, you know, he learned in concentration camps is, you know, as a doctor, he could look at people and go, that person is really sick and should die. That person is a little bit healthier. Well, why is it that the person who [00:09:00] was sick is the one who survived and the healthier one who has died?
And it was consistently the same thing. One of those two people knew why they wanted to be alive tomorrow. There was meaning in their life, greater than them, greater than suffering. That gave them the courage to keep moving forward. And in Frankl’s own case, he was out on a march one day on a freezing day.
He was very sick. Friends were high, you know, holding him up on either side, and he just thought, if I just go and lay face down in the snow, one of the guards will kill me and the suffering will end. And then it dawned on him in feeling terrible. But what if my wife survives the war and he just got on with marching?
So there’s immense power in Viktor Frankl and anyone who hasn’t read Man’s Search for Meaning should read it and really do a check of what, what do you value and what meaning do you want to contribute to, and what thing is worth suffering for and worth looking forward [00:10:00] to, and will make the world a better place and you can be proud of contributing to something.
Steve Davis: And it’s that last bit. ’cause certainly nothing I’ve endured anywhere near what he was enduring. But I was out of my comfort zone on this bash in the middle of nowhere. I’m not a great camper, hardly ever camped. And yet there was something that the echoes of Vic Viktor Frankl brought to my mind. We weren’t just doing this as riding around in Jalopies with the Bush.
We were doing it as the final celebration of a year of fundraising for Variety sa, which uses its funds to help disadvantaged families around South Australia and communities. And it wasn’t conscious, but as we stopped town by town and made announcements of things we were doing, it dared. Lift your spirits.
So that experience coupled with reminding myself of Viktor Frankl [00:11:00] has given me more buoyancy after the first few days when I was in quite a funk, uh, upon returning. So, as David said, if you haven’t read it, it’s only a short book. Man’s Search For Meaning Viktor Frankl. Probably a nice way to look after the person.
Caitlin Davis: Our four Ps. Number two principles. You can never be overdressed or overeducated. Oscar Wilde
Steve Davis: David. Our last episode was a juggernaut of an episode looking at ai. And use of AI tools and the hype around AI and perhaps the excesses where it just accentuates our laziness. And we did say we’d come back and look more practically at how we can get some goodness out of these AI tools. And the reason I referenced looking at yourself in the AI mirror earlier [00:12:00] is that one of the things that helps.
Create better output from these tools that more closely mirrors the way you talk so that the tool can help amplify the human and not just lazily. Turn out its plastic gunk is by getting it to generate a language and style guide in which we get it to hold up a mirror to the way that you speak and think about your business so that it can learn how to be more like you.
And finding a series of questions. See, because if you just take the stuff you’ve written on your website, often we find that content written on websites. There’s something that happens psychologically when people sit down to write stuff for their own business. A, a switch gets flicked and the grade three English teacher.
It comes to the fore and tries to get you to write more formally with beginning, middle, and end. [00:13:00] And we think, oh, we’ve gotta make this sound more businessy. And it’s often not a very eloquent or human voice. And uh, David, you and I have met many people, uh, where the businesses, if you just went by the website, you go, oh, this is pretty cardboard.
But you meet the people and they’re awesome.
David Olney: Yep. And then the people. Sort of make the question to us of, well, why does content on website look the way it does? Because we aren’t brave enough to be ourselves in a form that we think is gonna be around forever. And we have to remind people constantly, Hey, do the best job you can on content for now.
Update it later, but make it reflect you because otherwise, um, it reflects something that isn’t you.
Steve Davis: Yes, and I’m just gonna bring up, there was a, a woman I was doing some mentoring with and uh, she wanted to get cracking before I was back from the variety bash. I’m just gonna look up her, uh, details right now [00:14:00] ’cause I actually sent her a series of questions that I would normally draw from if I was working with her face to face to get from her thinking some deeper insights into her business.
And here they are. David, you might wanna chip in on some of these and see what you think. Uh, ’cause I find for us to get a tool like Chat gpt or Claude to capture the essence of how we speak and write and want to, we need to give it a fair amount of data. And I think that equates typically to a 20 to 30 minute conversation or scads of pages of content you have written that you are.
Fairly comfortable with, so I sent her this list of questions here. What you think of these. So the first group, there are a couple about vision and dreams. What does success look like to you? Not just financially, but personally and emotionally as a business owner?
David Olney: I like it because if you ask so many people, what does [00:15:00] success mean to you?
They’re gonna talk about the very practical things of, you know, money or what they do with money or it’s gonna affect, no, no. What would it mean to achieve the things you want to achieve? Changing that emphasis to how are you emotionally invested in what you do and what would emotional satisfaction feel like?
Get so much more outta people that is gonna connect with other people. Because you know, when people spend money buying a product or a service from you, they very often want to know what makes this person different to this anonymous company that have a slightly better price.
Steve Davis: Yeah, it’s this thing that builds a connection between us and you.
The second one in that group was, imagine it’s five years from now and you’ve achieved your wildest business dreams. Describe to me what your business looks like and how it’s impacting people’s
David Olney: lives. Just really nice again, ’cause it goes from the practical to, what does it mean again? They’re very much Viktor Frankl questions.
Well, they’re
Steve Davis: really, I think, um, is it Charles Squibb? Uh, [00:16:00] Simon Squibb. Simon Squibb. I think there’s a bit of Simon Squibb that’s in the, in the mix here as well. Uh, we talked about him in a previous episode. Uh, I can’t remember what the, his book was called. It was, um, it might come to us as we go through.
Do you know off the top of your head?
David Olney: I struggle to remember Squibb stuff because he’s Mr. Have a dream. And hit the accelerator. And really, I like that at one level. But after that, I didn’t find the rest of the book any more convincing than saying, have a dream and hit the accelerator for a
Steve Davis: hundredth time.
Yeah. The book’s called What’s Your Dream? Yeah, you’re right. It was, it was worth reading, but it’s, it’s not an empty calorie. It’s not a full calorie. It was somewhere in between. Yeah, it would’ve made a great. 10 page pamphlet, seasoning. It’s seasoning on that journey. Yeah. Uh, the next cluster I had under the subheading of passion and Values, we had, why does your business exist beyond just making money?
What deeper purpose or change are you trying to bring into the world? And I’ll give you the other two of this cluster then I’ll get you to comment. David, uh, what gets you out of bed every morning, [00:17:00] even when things feel tough or uncertain? And can you recall a specific moment or experience that reinforced.
Why you started this business.
David Olney: They’re great questions and I would suggest to anyone out there who is looking to start a business doesn’t have one yet, try answering these questions about the thing. You wanna start even hypothetically. Yeah, even hypothetically. Like if you can’t imagine getting up at 5:00 AM to go and do this thing you’re dreaming of, it’s not just, oh, I’ll, I’ll achieve this in five years time.
It’ll be amazing. No, no, no. You have to be willing to get up on day 100. And day 200 and day 400, and what’s gonna get you up on those days? So in some ways this reminds me of, I think his name is Robert Demarini, uh, the author who talks about the fact, if you can work out what your core values are, then you can work out what you should do with your life.
Because if you align with your core values, you’ll find whatever you do to feel rewarding and [00:18:00] feel relatively easy compared to something that doesn’t align with your values.
Steve Davis: The next cluster. I had a couple under origin story and motivation. So the, uh, number six was, um, what was the turning point that pushed you from thinking about your business idea to taking real action And tell me about a key challenge you face that shaped your business philosophy or the way you serve your customers today.
David Olney: What I like about both of those questions, it takes it beyond dreaming about it to. Tangible moments where you pivoted or took action. ’cause one of the big things that’s critical is getting the momentum up. To start a small business is a big enough thing on its own, but the people who succeed are the ones who come up with a reason to rejuvenate the momentum every day, every week, every month, every year.
Like, you know, there’s times where you deal with people in small business and they’ve got their small business. It’s like they’ve bought the perfect pocket watch. [00:19:00] It’s beautiful, but they’re not winding it up every day. So it’s a beautiful object, but is it doing its job? Is it ticking? Is it helping them keep track of time so that they use their time wisely?
So really these questions, if they can help you realize it’s all well and good to be able to see it in your head. But how are you gonna do it? What’s the inflection point? What’s gonna make you risk something to achieve something?
Steve Davis: And the reason why I believe questions like these help us get your language and style guide right, is they take us away from talking about, will we sell 750 horsepower motors?
And they have this bearing or that bearing or this, it takes you into a different realm where I, I feel we can tap into the human who’s behind the. The machine, if you like, audiences and connection. A couple I put in here was, um, who exactly do you dream about serving and why does this particular audience matter [00:20:00] so much to you?
And what emotional experience or transformation do you hope your customers feel after engaging with your business?
David Olney: And that really reminds me of some of the initial literature that HubSpot created in the early two thousands when they were first growing. The idea of inbound, where they started talking very early about the idea of build a community even before you have a product.
Mm. Because having a product without a community is terrifying. Having a community who are already listening to you as someone who’s helping them to understand something, helping them to move forward, who are looking for trusted products or services. If you’ve got a community, when you offer them a product, the chances them saying yes is much higher.
So realistically, this thing of having the breakthrough, the perfect widget, you know, in the modern economic situation, you’re better off with the community first and the product second. Yeah. And they’re not alone in
Steve Davis: talking about that.
David Olney: No, there is no, they [00:21:00] just, I think the originator, yeah, certainly in the 21st century.
I’m sure it’s been
Steve Davis: talked about before by somebody. Yeah. And, and, and, and you might have guessed already as we’re doing that, that is honing in on our, you know, our target market, which is the bread and butter. Of, of marketing specific offerings and differentiation. I had a couple here. Uh, in simple human terms, how would you describe what you do to someone completely unfamiliar with your business and what sets you apart from competitors?
What can your customers get from you that they can’t easily find anywhere else?
David Olney: Again, really good questions. But very often there’s a risk with those two questions that people descend into features and benefits ’cause they love the product they designed rather than talking about how it will solve someone’s problem better than another product.
Now, the features and benefits might be what solves the problem, but that’s the context in which people are interested. How are your features and benefits going [00:22:00] to affect them?
Steve Davis: And I think, see, I, I find that the features and benefits definitely play a role. Uh, they, they, ’cause that’s the real stuff that we can stick into some Velcro, I guess, along the way.
And the reason I didn’t start with these and waited until we warmed up the engine was. To, I think once we’ve got that prior context, they have a role to play. And if, if we’d only done these, uh, I think you’re dead, right, we would be trapped in that. Pretty. Yeah. Meat and potato, your
David Olney: conventional sales space of look at the features and benefits.
Yeah. But you haven’t understood me and my problem
Steve Davis: yet. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, another couple of questions I added were, when you look at your industry, what frustrates you most about how your competitors do business or serve customers, and what opportunities or customer needs do you believe others in your industry are currently overlooking or neglecting?
David Olney: I really like those questions and I probably. [00:23:00] Having gone through them in this order today with you, we’d probably often put those two before the last two. Mm-hmm. To reframe how people are thinking. Yeah, that’s a good idea. To get their brain in that spot of seeing it from the, how are they helping perspective, what are they improving?
Steve Davis: Yep. Good point. The last three I finished, I will change that order actually, ’cause this is a nice little set of questions to you. Uh, is looking to the future, so. How do you want people to talk about your business or remember your business after interacting with you or your product and services? If your business could solve one big problem in your community or industry, what would.
You want that problem to be and why? And what is the problem or goal potential course participants are experiencing that you will help with? What’s the problem or the goal? Potential course participants. This was for a woman who was doing courses, uh, are experiencing you want to help with,
David Olney: I think the three.
Great final questions because someone’s gonna be in such a good [00:24:00] state to answer these, you know, final three deep questions after all the other questions. But I also have a, a feeling that sometimes people are gonna answer those last three and now realize they understand their business better and they’ll want to go back and answer the earlier questions again, which is fine.
And maybe that’s something you should put as a final comment, if you feel that your answers to these final three are the best understanding you’ve ever had of what you do. Take another 15 minutes. Don’t copy over your earlier answers, just write down a second set and see how much your insight into what you do has changed by going through this process.
Steve Davis: And this is one of the first times I’ve actually sent the questions with someone to record on their own. It was, I think it’s the second time, and that was because of a unique situation. I, I find that. If you’re gonna do anything like that, have some other person ask you the questions. It’s just a bit too hard to be juggling interviewer and interviewee in the
David Olney: head.
Yeah. We have too much pressure on [00:25:00] ourselves if we’re sitting in a keyboard or with a pen or pencil thinking, we’ve got to write it down cohesively. Whereas if it’s talking to a person and we can stream of consciousness at a bit, we are more likely to start making noise and end up producing some pretty good meaning.
Steve Davis: Yeah. And, and the other thing I was gonna say is, look, that is where there is some value of having someone who’s been around the block a lot like we have, uh, being able to ask these questions. ’cause you’re gonna say something that is going to prompt the extra questions along the way. But even if you’re not working with us and, and doing that.
Being able to have someone ask these questions, record it, get that transcript, and then you go to your favorite tool and you say, can you please review this transcript? And can you develop a comprehensive language and style guide that would enable you to recreate writing using the same or, or similar, uh, tones and value statements and structure in the [00:26:00] way that we do.
Then once you’ve got that and you’re happy with it again, don’t just accept what it spews out. ’cause it will sometimes go off half-baked, get it right so it becomes an accurate mirror of how you want to write and talk about your business. And then any future chat you are doing. Upload this into the chat and say, look, here’s the language and style guide as you do this next task.
Please follow those guidelines.
Caitlin Davis: Ah, four P’s. Number three problems. I asked the question for the best reason possible. Simple curiosity. Oscar Wilde.
Steve Davis: David, you are about to, uh, get an award. In my magazine as the top marketing podcast host in Australia, congratulations. [00:27:00] Uh, thank you. It will cost you 1,500 US dollars just so we can put the articles together, et cetera. Maintain your exclusivity of that title deal. Uh, how many people are gonna read this?
Exactly. So, um, in the problem segment, the, your inbox too might be filled with these, that mine certainly is one I got yesterday to barista or coffee, which is my little coffee hobby business, which I’ve sort of wound down now because I’m too busy. With my own clients. I got this from Charlotte Green from the Food Business Review.
Hi Steve, I’m Charlotte from Food Business Review apac, a well-regarded magazine reaching. Here’s your answer, David, 74,000 qualified subscribers. Across the Australian Pacific region.
David Olney: What’s
Steve Davis: a qualified subscriber? Good question. Our magazine shares news, insights and expert opinions from top executives and prominent companies in the food sector.
This helps businesses stay updated on [00:28:00] every aspect of the food sector, from the latest updates and advancements to the best practices in food business. Okay. Mm-hmm. So far, so good. I’m excited to share some great news. Barista Door Coffee is shortlisted based on nominations from our subscribers, um, as the top espresso coffee bean service.
The Australian Pacific for 2025 in our upcoming edition, who reported that they would suggest your services to their peers. And this prestigious recognition highlights your exceptional reputation among your customers. How amazing. David, I think Charlotte is, um, a little bit artificial. Really, really
David Olney: given that the business has been wound down, and I know all the customers, I, for some reason keep thinking about what it’s like to eat a chocolate crackle.
You hear the word chocolate [00:29:00] and you think crackle. You think that’s gonna be great, and then you get the terrible taste of Kofa and wonder why you’re bothered.
Steve Davis: Oh no. I love Kova. I love it. Oh, okay. We finally have difference. Yes, and that’s okay because you can have all the chocolate crackles. Good. I want ’em Now.
Notably, this is the email I got. I’m reading it in full because we need to be aware of all these things. Notably, you will be the sole recipient to receive the top espresso coffee bean service recognition in the edition, as they say, edition only one. Um, now as part of this, we want to high. What makes you stand out among others in this sector?
By featuring an engaging profile alongside your differentiating factors. The article will delve into your services and showcase their impact through real world examples. The overarching goal is to create an engaging and compelling narrative that conveys your importance to prospects. Additionally, we’ll provide you with reprint rights for this feature.
Our clients were thrilled [00:30:00] to notice a surge in their visibility after receiving similar. Junk recognition. Oh no, sorry, that was my word there, uh, from our magazine as a prominent company. Furthermore, being highlighted in our print and digital magazine, help them receive quality inquiries from subscribers and website visitors.
Similarly, you can increase your prominence and visibility with the help of this top espresso coffee bean service. Award. This endorsement from a renowned magazine builds credibility. David, remember this credibility, uh, making prospects confident in your service. Here’s the catch. In addition to the reprint rights, you’ll receive a certificate, a logo, and other benefits, all for 3000 US dollars.
Furthermore, the profile will be hyperlinked to its website where all your potential clients can reach you directly. Steve, I would like to connect and discuss how you can leverage this to increase its visibility. [00:31:00] Just as our clients have done. Let me know the best time to reach you in the year 4,322.
How dare they? How dare they make claims about building credibility when the whole thing. Is absolute bullshit.
David Olney: If they just put that much work into doing something constructive, they’d
Steve Davis: probably succeed. It makes you wonder, all these stories that you know, your glam, Adelaide, you’re in daily, your advertiser.
Have Adelaide’s been named in the top 10 X, Y, Z? How much money has changed hands to make that? So, to make these pathetic transitory unheard of previously award recognitions to become headlines, it’s just. PR BS headline mill rubbish. I said it, but it’s a good idea. David, maybe we should run something like this.
Maybe we should run our own award system. Yeah. Where we are the only judges we should email all [00:32:00] our listeners saying you would be the sole, what would we call it? The top. We can’t just call it the top listener to talking about market. It is gotta have something that gives the guys. Of external validation that talked about Marketing
David Olney: Australasian Small Business
Steve Davis: Award.
Let’s do it. Um, and we can probably beat 3000 us. We’ve better do it in Australian dollars or it might look a bit dodgy. We’ll do 3000 Australian dollars. Sounds good. That is a probably what, 40% discount on this crappy award. Our crappy award is better value.
Caitlin Davis: Our four Ps. Number four per ssy. The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it. Oscar Wilde.
Steve Davis: [00:33:00] David, do you mind if I ask you a personal question?
David Olney: Mm, nah.
Steve Davis: I can always run away. Okay. Have you ever walked along the city street? Let your hand go down to your crotch and fiddle around a bit and discover your flies undone.
David Olney: Not that I can remember. I can remember going to try suits on and being about to walk out from the change room to find out.
You know, whether the suit looked good on me from sighted people and going, it feels a bit drafty and just in time realizing I should do the zip up. So that was just pre-me embarrassment. Yes. So you, you nipped it in the butt.
Steve Davis: But I did, and thankfully nothing got caught in the zip, so everything was fine.
Okay. That’s very good. Uh, well there’s a wonderful Yellow Pages ad. From, well, I, I’ll date it in a moment as we are listening to it, of someone, a bloke encountering a broken zipper on a city street. [00:34:00] Let’s have a listen.
A very in blow the street realizes his flies undone and he’s trying to fix it and trying to find a place. And he shuffles across the side of the city street where there’s a big building with a glass window. You can’t really see it. And he’s using that as a mirror to sort of do flow. Meanwhile, we cut inside and there’s, they’ve.
Right up against their window looking like he’s massaging his crotch.
And so in the purse per cassity segment, our question is always, look, this may or may not have worked. I think it would’ve been fun in the nineties. [00:35:00] Um, would this ad. Work today. How universal does this? Can we cope with this? Is, is this, does this fall on the taboo side of, uh, what woke sensitivities? Or is it universally a human thing that we could get away with?
David Olney: I would hope that it would still be seen as funny and still be something that people would go, oh gosh, embarrassing but funny. And it would be okay because it’s. He’s not doing deliberate harm to self or others. Yeah. It’s a dumb thing to walk over and use a, a big window into a building as a mirror, but in that moment you’re probably not thinking very clearly.
I would hope that it’s very much a human thing and maybe it can stand up as an ad that would still get a laugh.
Steve Davis: Yeah. That’s my intuition as well, because it’s tapping into a universal human truth. These things still happened.
David Olney: Yeah.
Steve Davis: In fact. I have a sneaking suspicion [00:36:00] I did this yesterday accidentally. Uh, there you go.
There’s a confession for you that I Is that oversharing?
David Olney: No, I think it’s good because that way when we get emails wondering what the heck you were doing, walking down Harley Street with your trousers undone, we now have some data. Jan,
Steve Davis: I’m not happy. Jan.
Caitlin Davis: Thank you for listening to talking about marketing.
If you enjoyed it, please leave a rating or a review in your favorite podcast app, and if you found it helpful, please share it with others. Steve and David always welcome your comments and questions, so send them to [email protected]. And finally, the last word to Oscar Wild. There’s only one thing worse than being talked about and that’s not being talked about.