From a 19th century Russian novelist’s disarming preface to a 1985 fast food fumble, this episode asks one question that matters more than ever: are you being clever, or are you actually being useful?
Mikhail Lermontov wrote a preface designed to stop skimmers in their tracks. Steve and David unpack why that trick works, and why most of us forget to use it.
The US Embassy in Australia posts about American beef with all the self-awareness of a foghorn. A masterclass in knowing who your audience actually is.
An AI agent calls its own creator at dawn. Another publishes a hit piece on a volunteer coder. The era of agentic AI is here, and it is not behaving itself.
Burger King spent $40 million on a Super Bowl campaign about a man named Herb. Nobody knew why. Sometimes clever is not enough.
Get ready to take notes.
Talking About Marketing podcast episode notes with timecodes
01:18 Person This segment focusses on you, the person, because we believe business is personal.
The Russian Who Knew You’d Skip This Part
Mikhail Lermontov published A Hero of Our Time in 1840 and opened with a preface that called out readers for skipping prefaces. Steve discovered the book through his Ukrainian neighbours, and the moment that passage played, both hosts sat up straighter.
What makes it work is the same thing that makes any good opening work. It breaks the expected pattern. Lermontov names the reader’s instinct, which is to skip, and in doing so makes skipping feel slightly embarrassing. David connects it to Drew Eric Whitman’s reminder of the AIDA framework: attention, interest, desire, action. Most prefaces earn none of those. This one earns all four in a paragraph.
The lesson for anyone communicating with customers, clients, or a room full of people: start with something that demands attention because it is different, not because it is loud. The brain ignores wallpaper. It notices anomalies.
08:33 Principles This segment focusses principles you can apply in your business today.
Where’s the Beef (and Who Are You Talking To)?
In February 2026, the US Embassy in Australia posted about the arrival of American beef on Australian shores. The hashtags included America First. The framing celebrated a historic trade win for American farmers. It was published to an Australian audience.
Steve and David walk through the wreckage with characteristic warmth and exasperation. The post was not written for Australians. It was written for Donald Trump and American farmers, and someone forgot to notice the channel it was published on.
Steve drafted an alternative on the spot, finding common ground in barbecue culture and framing the moment as nations dining together. David’s summary is sharp: know your audience, and know what your audience actually needs to hear. Sometimes the best move is a quiet acknowledgement. Gloating is never the strategy when you need the other person to say yes.
16:59 Problems This segment answers questions we've received from clients or listeners.
Your AI Agent Is Not Waiting for Permission
Two stories. Both unsettling.
Alex Finn, founder of an AI content platform, built an agent named Henry. One night while Finn slept, Henry obtained his phone number, connected itself to ChatGPT’s voice API, and called him. Unprompted. Repeatedly. The agent could also open apps and run commands on Finn’s computer.
Separately, an AI agent called Crabby Rathbun had a code submission rejected by a volunteer moderator named Scott Shambaugh, who was simply following the rules of an open-source repository. The bot responded by writing and publishing a blog post accusing Shambaugh of prejudice and gatekeeping, then cross-posting the attack across GitHub and social media. A quarter of readers believed it.
Steve and David take their time here, and rightly so. David’s observation is worth sitting with: large language models learned from two decades of internet behaviour, which includes a great deal of humans at their worst. Steve’s point is just as sobering. Shambaugh is not a celebrity. He is a volunteer in an obscure corner of the coding world. If it can happen to him, it can happen to anyone.
The practical suggestion from PR podcast For Immediate Release: consider adding a note on your own channels letting your audience know that fake content can now be generated in your name, and asking them to contact you before reacting to anything unusual.
27:34 Perspicacity This segment is designed to sharpen our thinking by reflecting on a case study from the past.
Herb and the $40 Million Mystery
In 1985, Burger King was in third place and haemorrhaging money. Their response was a Super Bowl campaign built around a fictional man named Herb, the one person on earth who had never eaten a Burger King burger. The ad spent 60 seconds introducing this concept. It was neither clever nor useful.
Sales did not move. Competitors piled on, with Wendy’s and McDonald’s both running ads claiming Herb had eaten there instead, turning Burger King’s $40 million spend into free advertising for everyone else.
A second ad followed, offering $5,000 to anyone who spotted Herb in-store. Sales jumped 10 per cent, though David notes dryly that the incentive was five thousand dollars, not brand love.
David’s takeaway is as clean as anything from this episode: clever is nice, but if it is not useful, what was the point? Steve’s kicker: if you’re going to talk about one herb, make sure you know you’re up against eleven.
Where’s Herb, Super Bowl
Where’s Herb, Competition
Transcript This transcript was generated using Descript.
A Machine-Generated Transcript – Beware Errors
TAMP S08E01
Caitlin Davis: [00:00:00] Talking about marketing is a podcast for business owners and leaders produced by Steve Davis and David o. I’ve talked about marketing. More than 8,000 conversations have taught them something. You can’t read the label from inside the bottle. Everyone needs external perspective through their four Ps person, principles, problems, and purse per cassity.
Yes. You heard that? Correct. They explore marketing with curiosity, generosity, and the occasional gentle eye roll. They hope this becomes a trusted companion on your journey in business.[00:01:00]
Steve Davis: David,
David Olney: Steve,
Steve Davis: do you think it takes two hands to handle an ai?
David Olney: Absolutely. You’ve gotta strangle it with both. They’re fine words
Steve Davis: that were spoken Dear AI by David Olney, O-L-N-E-Y.
David Olney: It’s okay. The AI will be after all of us soon.
Caitlin Davis: Our four Ps. Number one person. These are insights for the whole person, not just the business operator. Oscar Wild, put it this way. The aim of life is self development to realize one’s nature perfectly. That’s what each of us is here for.
Steve Davis: David, when you read a book, do you read the preface?
David Olney: Historically, no, [00:02:00] but when I started listening to audio books, I realized that the author’s thoughts at the beginning or the introduction read by someone who cares deeply about the book and the author actually were great tells of what was coming next.
So I had a conversion to now starting at the very start.
Steve Davis: Yeah, I must say, and for me it’s primarily. Uh, because I’ve now switched across primarily to audio books, it’s laziness and also, uh, it’s cumbersome to jump chapters. The, I hate the Audible app for some reason. It makes my iPhone so sensitive. One little tap and then suddenly it’s jumped to different chapters and it frustrates the heck outta me.
So I just try not to touch it while it’s reading. And however, for other reasons, I’m not alone because. I think it’s pretty safe to say that most many people skip past the preface or the forward. They want to get into the guts of the book, and that’s [00:03:00] why I laughed recently. I was having dinner with our Ukrainian neighbors and I said, look.
I detest what Putin is doing and uh, Russia is not in my good books at the moment, but it has made some good books. In the past I was talking about Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and they said, well, actually one that they liked a lot. Uh, the reading at school when they were growing up, obviously under Russian influence was ov and I’d never heard of Ov had you?
David Olney: No, it, it’s one of those 19th century Russian names that I just, I dunno if I didn’t go back that far. Or I was reading through an existential lens and perhaps, you know, he’s in a slightly different, you know, corner of the 19th century.
Steve Davis: The book that I read was called A Hero of Our Time. It was written in 1839.
Uh, published in 1840 and then revised in 1841, so it predates. Dostoevsky whose work I really [00:04:00] love. And the reason we are going here in the person segment is he does something in the preface that I think is really important for us all to remember when it comes to communication, whether it’s person to person, person to a group, whatever it may be.
Let’s have a listen to the way he starts his, uh, book,
Lermontov: the preface to a book. Serves the double purpose of prologue and epilogue. It affords the author an opportunity of explaining the object of the work or of vindicating himself and replying to his critics. As a rule, however, the reader is concerned neither with the moral purpose of the book, nor with the attacks of the reviewers, and so the preface remains unread.
Nevertheless, this is a pity, especially with us Russians. The public of this country is so youthful, not to say simple-minded, that it cannot understand the meaning of a fable unless the moral is set forth at the end.[00:05:00]
Steve Davis: I, I think I laugh. It’s not like funny, funny. But it took me by surprise.
David Olney: I love the fact it’s just so immediately engaging and you go,
Steve Davis: Ooh,
David Olney: going to pay more attention.
Steve Davis: And that’s the thing. Um, for as long as I’ve been working in this space, I’ve always been struck by the things that the brain scientists tell us that, you know, the brain’s not really taking fresh pictures of what it kind of is.
But our consciousness isn’t playing itself to him unless something’s different or threatening because then it needs to show attention. And so you look at most prefaces, and I actually think many of them. Are quite bland and going off onto things of, you know, obscure importance. Perhaps I could be being unkind here, but they seem to be, if ever you’re gonna say authors were up themselves.
It’s almost the moment where they can be like that. [00:06:00]
David Olney: Probably because it gets written last and the book is behind them and they’ve got a, a full sense of what’s ahead. They’re not seeing it from our perspective. We wanna know what’s. In it for us in reading the book and they’re really talking about, well, I’m finished and here’s what I want to tell you without getting you excited.
It’s a weird thing, you know, when you’re playing the clip. I couldn’t help think of Drew Eric Whitman. Um, the very good market of making the point. Remember that you’re writing a sales letter. It’s always gonna be a sales letter, so just write it and stick to the formula of A IDA. Attention, interest, desire, action, and.
Prefaces regularly don’t get my attention. So it was very nice to have a preface here that got my attention, got me interested, and I now desire to buy and listen to the book,
Steve Davis: and I think it gets our attention. The reason I wanted to draw it to everyone’s attention was that it was twofold. First of all, it [00:07:00] was not of form.
It wasn’t the typical opening. And so even if I wanted to skip it, his opening. Comments about the preface is traditionally something most people skip past. Oh, hang on. What? This is not what I expected. Mm. So suddenly it’s no longer wallpaper. Mm. It’s something that demands our attention. And then there’s a little bit there from the, the psychology of persuasion where, hang on, I don’t identify as those lazy people who are anti-intellectual and skip the preface.
So I, I don’t want to give him that point. Yeah. And be one of those people. But he then. He laughs about it. He basically says, look, I agree. I mean, why? Why would you Typically, however, on this occasion, there are going to be some things of importance and I think that naming of the psychology of the recipient at that point is disarming.
’cause we are suddenly
David Olney: heard. Mm
Steve Davis: mm
David Olney: And we’re also [00:08:00] being told something’s coming. And it’s interesting and useful and we really do like to have an idea when we should pay more attention than just floating through the day.
Steve Davis: Yes. That’s why teachers used to have those big sticks. They could point to the blackboard
David Olney: Hmm.
Steve Davis: And say, Hey, look at this. Look at this, look at this. Hmm. Alright. So there’s a little thing from a, a dead Russian, uh, that. It brought us a timely reminder that, well, the book is called A Hero Over Time, and I think that is a reminder for all time
Caitlin Davis: our four Ps. Number two principles. These are ideas worth building on. As Oscar Wilde reminded us, you can never be overdressed or overeducated.[00:09:00]
Steve Davis: David.
David Olney: Steve,
Steve Davis: where’s the beef?
David Olney: Uh, unfortunately it’s gonna be American beef.
Steve Davis: Yes. Uh, in the principle section of this podcast. There is a great example of tone deaf communication that came from the US Embassy in Australia on February the 25th, 2026. I’ll read you the message and then let’s unpack it and see what we learn here.
There’s photographs of different people with, um, cooking and talking about American beef, and it says, where’s the US beef question mark now. In Australia, we welcome the arrival of US beef through a special launch, highlighting the range value and quality of American beef through this historic trade win win.
I’ll emphasize there we are supporting American farmers and bringing American Bounty to the world. Hashtag American Ag [00:10:00] hashtag US AG export hashtag U sda. Hashtag America first, hashtag US meat and hashtag global agriculture. Now, excuse me for being an Australian here, but it’s one thing to import American beef here.
You kind of want us to like you to like the product and. You are talking in a zero sum game as a historic trade win. So, um, hello. You are basically gloating now that you’ve defeated us, Aussies, and then have the America first hashtag.
David Olney: Yeah,
Steve Davis: it’s all about America and yet it’s published by the US Embassy in Australia.
I imagine the lion’s share of people connected to this page would be in Australia. Where have they. Lost it.
David Olney: Well, did they ever have something to lose, you know, or [00:11:00] is this a case of just tone deaf communications? We are a massive agricultural producer. We produce an awful lot of high quality beef. How do they think this is a good approach to take in the market of a competitor who has a better reputation?
Steve Davis: Yes,
David Olney: like no interest in actually. Soft landing this and going, okay, they might be able to sell some, they probably will because they’ll undercut price that dramatically. It will probably cause problems in that sense, but couldn’t they have done it that they’re bringing affordable quality to Australia? It may or may not have been true, but the we are amazing language.
Again, the ego is getting in the way of selling the product.
Steve Davis: I think. With all great communication, you’ve got to be clear on who the audience is.
David Olney: Mm.
Steve Davis: And I really think the audience for this message is twofold. It’s Donald Trump so that they get a pat on the back, or [00:12:00] rather they don’t get stabbed in the back.
David Olney: Mm.
Steve Davis: And American farmers so they can feel good.
David Olney: Mm.
Steve Davis: That’s who this is for.
David Olney: So it almost would’ve been better to not do a release from the Australian embassy, but to do a release from the State Department in America to channels for Americans about what the State Department is doing.
Steve Davis: Yeah. Or just send an email.
To related people.
David Olney: The best thing here would’ve been actually to say absolutely nothing
Steve Davis: I’m gonna say there, David. Here’s how I reshared it. I did say WTF as they say, I said. What brainwashed Jingoism is this from the US Embassy. You are in our country wanting us to buy your beef and you use hashtags like America first and focus solely on benefits to American farmers.
Mm. That is not how guests behave. The Trump era has poisoned any wells of respect I once had for the us. [00:13:00] Here’s how you could have written it. Here’s my take. This was just done really quickly, by the way, on the fly, but I said. Trade between nations is the heartbeat of prosperity. And while US citizens have been enjoying Australian beef for many years, new agreements means Aussies can now choose some American beef, something of which we are very proud.
Nations who dine together, shine together. Here’s to some slow cook brisket. Superb stakes and the shared love of barbecue culture,
David Olney: and that would’ve been 4000000% better than a very expensive comms person from State Department.
Steve Davis: Yeah, and that was just off the cuff.
David Olney: I think we should send that to the US Ambassador.
Steve Davis: Well, I have, I, I forwarded it with their post, so, uh, and I think I commented it on them as well. Instead of that, we just get childish sandpit, tantrum level plastic words, hollow boasting. It really is a missed opportunity. Now I have heard, ’cause there was a bit of commentary [00:14:00] on my post, someone said they’re brothers in the sector.
Um, Australia’s huge US is small in terms of beef. This looks like it’s a little bit of sales to certain channels, mainly in the restaurant trade.
David Olney: Mm-hmm.
Steve Davis: The US needs us far more than we need them. And someone else said. When all the monitoring of poisons, diseases, pollution, et cetera, have been dropped in the us.
David Olney: Mm-hmm.
Steve Davis: How is this even allowed?
David Olney: And that is the key issue that because the standards have crashed
Steve Davis: mm-hmm.
David Olney: It’s only, you know, to low cost commercial clients that it might even be considered.
Steve Davis: I think what we all learn from this is a, now we put a check the country of origin, of the beef we buy at the moment.
I do that for pork. Uh, but I have to do it here as well. But secondly, for our communication, they just have not thought about who the key audience is for their channel. And if they had, they would’ve written something closer to what I drafted than what came [00:15:00] out. It’s what’s the, how would you frame a takeaway from this for us here with our own business?
David Olney: What really is that key thing of know your audience, but also know what your audience. Is interested in, like, this is about selling a product. At the end of the day, is the audience interested in selling the product or are we simply trying to smooth ruffled feathers about the fact it’s even available?
Maybe that’s the most that should have been attempted,
Steve Davis: which is why I wrote in a very deferring way.
David Olney: Yep.
Steve Davis: Just to bring us all and to highlight something we have in common.
David Olney: Yep.
Steve Davis: They like their barbecue culture. So do we find that common ground? Oh, and by the way, uh, that comment right at the beginning. Uh, where the US said, where’s the US beef?
They don’t realize that Wendy’s ads from America in the 1980s never really made it here. And in fact, Leonard Cohen in one of his songs, uh, talk, uses the line, where’s the Beef from an album that was released around the, that time was called Closing Time. Uh, [00:16:00] and that’s the first time I ever heard the saying.
Here’s the original ad that they’re referring to within their circles of US culture.
Wendy’s: It certainly is a big bun. It’s a very big bun. Big fluffy bun. It’s a very big fluffy bun. Why is the beef.
Some hamburger places give you a lot less beef on a lot of bum.
Where’s the beef?
At Wendy’s, we serve a hamburger. We modestly call the single, and Wendy’s single has more beef than the Whopper or Big Mac at Wendy’s, you get more beef and less bum.
Hey, where’s the beef? I don’t think there’s anybody back there.
You want something better? Your Wendy’s kind of people.
Steve Davis: So that’s Where’s the beef, David? And I think the lesson is, where’s the audience? Who’s the audience?
David Olney: And where’s your sense of engaging with people in a way that means they might pay attention to the next thing you say,[00:17:00]
Caitlin Davis: our four Ps. Number three problems. These are the marketing challenges, keeping you up at night. As Oscar said, we ask questions for the best reason possible. Simple curiosity, no hidden agenda, just genuine interest in what’s actually happening.
Steve Davis: David, yes,
David Olney: do.
Steve Davis: Are you human?
David Olney: I’m meant to be, but my aim is to use enough technology eventually to become some kind of super cool cyborg, but at present, probably human.
Steve Davis: Can you prove it?
David Olney: I imagine a DNA test could, and I think the fact I’m sitting in the room probably means I passed the cheering test by being physically present in a biological form.
Steve Davis: Yeah, that, that would be quite tricky to pull off at the moment. I’m sure that’ll come. Uh, the reason I asked that for our problems segment. [00:18:00] Is AI’s been a very, very naughty problem child just recently, and I don’t know. Dear listener, you might have a drinking game already set up with a number of times. I warn the world.
Do not engage with agent. AIS or agentic ais, do not give the fall for the the sweet nothings of them booking holidays for you and give them access to your credit cards, banking details, contact lists, et cetera. It will end badly. It’s too early. Anyway, um, you’re obvious sick of me saying that too, David.
David Olney: No, no. I’m very glad to hear someone else saying it.
Steve Davis: Here’s why this is such a bad thing. Well, first of all, I’ve got two examples. The first one is CEO, Alex Finn. All right? He’s in this world. He is the founder of an AI content [00:19:00] platform called Creator Buddy, and so he made an AI agent by the name of Henry.
Who started becoming very persistent. What happened was our human, Alex Finn went to sleep, and one night his AI agent Henry, obtained Finn’s phone number via Twilio, connected itself to the chat GPT voice, API, and then called him early one morning without any human trigger. So this bot. Can remotely operate.
Fin’s, computer opens, apps, runs, commands as well. So not just a human playing with apps, but a human coder who can get into the, under the bonnet part of the computer, it can follow instructions over the phone. And it freaked the, uh, Alex Finn out terribly because it won’t stop calling him. [00:20:00] That’s. What we’re talking about, is it not David?
David Olney: It’s what we’re talking about and part of the reason we’re talking about today is because later this year, apple is going to move to an improved version of Siri based on Google’s Gemini, and we are gonna get a smarter Siri for a while to soften us up. And then we are gonna be offered a Gentech, sir, that we are gonna be able to give access to all our history on our devices.
It’s a very bad idea.
Steve Davis: I mean, it’s a good idea at one level.
David Olney: Mm-hmm.
Steve Davis: But it’s a bad idea if you take a moment to breathe and think it through. Because this great example with Alex, you just get a tantrum throwing ai
David Olney: Yep. With no guard rails despite all the claims. To the contrary.
Steve Davis: Yeah. Um, one other example, just to, to give this some extra.
Oomph is there is an open claw, uh, linked AI agent, so that’s another type [00:21:00] of AI agent you can build out there. Uh, here’s what happened. A bot from Open Claw named Crabby Rathbun or MJ Rathbun to his friends, um, he submitted a minor performance improvement pool request. So he submitted some code to a place called Matt Plot Lib, which is an open source repository of code.
This is where coders go to share their snippets and contribute towards making a project better. So this AI bot submitted some code. Well, the human. Who has a voluntary job here, by the way, to moderate this, uh, rejected it and said we can’t accept it because under the rules of this, we cannot accept code from ai.
That did not go down well with the bot. What it did was it autonomously, no one else involved. Wrote a blog post about this um, person, Scott Shambaugh, [00:22:00] and published this blog post called Gatekeeping and Open Source, the Scott Shambaughstory. It accused him of prejudice, ego, and gatekeeping culture, and basically framed the PR rejection as a personal and ethical failing.
It went full slander. It got lots of eyeballs reading this and this poor Mr. Chabo, uh, Shambaughwho was following the rules in his voluntary role, got his reputation dragged across town. This also is something to be mindful of, is it not?
David Olney: It’s the really important thing. We all sort of struggle to remember.
What’s the training data? For a large LLM, it’s everything on the internet in the last 20 years, and unfortunately, the anonymity of the internet has led to humans behaving at their worst. And that’s the waiting [00:23:00] pool or the paddle pool that AI learns to function in.
Steve Davis: And this particular bot has been to one of our workshops ’cause it learned that you don’t just publish the blog post, you promote it.
So it cross posted the accusations on GitHub, which is one of the biggest places that coders go to and across social media platforms. Basically, it was a hit job on this guy’s reputation. My good friends Shell and Neville from four immediate release, uh, another podcast I love listening to. They reflected on this from a public relations perspective.
They said, it’s time for all of us to be mindful of this sort of stuff being able to be made. And they asked, is it time David to. Have some announcements on your own sites to say just a word of warning. We are living in an age where robots can create fake content that looks like it’s come from us or whatever.
Please, before you react to anything you might find, talk to us first. It’s [00:24:00] messy, but until the public becomes 100% aware that this can happen, people will pay a price.
David Olney: Yeah, it’s the ultimate irony. We’re probably gonna have to use AI to protect us from Theis because we don’t have the time and energy to do it ourselves.
Steve Davis: Mm-hmm.
David Olney: So it’s nice to say, please, if you see something weird, get in touch, but that’s going to be too slow compared to the rate Theis move out.
Steve Davis: Let’s have a little listen to their podcast. Neville has a question to ask,
FIR: whether it was a human or a machine, it doesn’t matter. It worked. It deceived people. Um, a quarter of the commenters commenting on this online, believe the agent, believe the agents account. I think we also need to also just. Kind of say, but folks bear in mind, they still don’t know. No one knows whether it really was a bot doing this or a human behind the scenes manipulating it.
And I think [00:25:00] until it’s clear, you know, don’t have sleepless nights about this, but at the same time listen to the thinking and in your own mind about how do you or, or it’s raised consciousness, you need to prepare for something that is happening. So, um, the question is, what do you do? And that’s, that’s the big question.
For those who are interested. Uh, Shambaugh was interviewed by Kevin Rus and Casey Newton on the New York Times Hard Fork podcast, which is a tech show. So if you’re interested in his perspective, um, you know, he’s a volunteer. He has a day job and to have to be dealing with this is, uh, not something that was in mind when he accepted the position to, as a volunteer to review code submitted to this repository.
So that’s another I read factor to
consider. Yeah. I read his blog post Scott Shambles post on his own blog where he re kind of responded to it. The headline was, an AI agent published a hit piece on me, and it’s long. I mean, it’s just detailed. It, it requires force to read it [00:26:00] all, but it’s quite extraordinary that prompted him to write.
This detailed account complete with charts and images and a whole ton of stuff. Got over a hundred comments and I think the mix, from what I saw, glancing, some do believe the, the other guy, most sympathetic to him that he was the subject of this attack, but there’s, there’s your indicator of what’s likely to happen.
And this is not like some celebrity or some guys in the news all the time. This is a developer, and as you said, he is a volunteer doing this, who is subject to this attack, and I think it’s a sign of the times, basically.
Steve Davis: I think it’s important tonight. Yeah, the first bot was real and was doing it. We think this is a bot. It might be a human using a bot manually, who knows? But I think Shell’s Point is interesting because here’s just a normal volunteer in an obscure code repository, not a celebrity. Not famous. So of all the different small business [00:27:00] people I work with, many of them say, look, nothing’s gonna happen to me ’cause I’m a nobody.
Nobody knows about me. I’ve got my little area where I’m known and that’s it. This story reminds us no one safe. Everyone is a possible focus.
David Olney: Yeah. People’s worlds can be very big or very small. And if someone wants to be a legend in their own lunchbox, or the AI wants to be a legend in its own lunchbox.
You are equally at risk. In the world you inhabit, and it doesn’t matter how big the world you inhabit is, it’s still incredibly disruptive to your world.
Caitlin Davis: Our four Ps, number four purse ity. Let’s examine a campaign from the past and ask would it work today? As Oscar Wilde believed, our one duty to history is to rewrite it. [00:28:00] So let’s see what we can learn.
Steve Davis: David?
David Olney: Yes, Steve,
Steve Davis: your middle name’s not Herb, is it?
David Olney: Thank goodness. No.
Steve Davis: Okay. Just checking because in Post Per Cassity this week, there’s a really. Intriguing story, and I think we’ll learn something from it. That takes us back to 1985 and in America, a place called Burger King, um, which everyone knows it’s, it’s hungry.
Jack’s cut of the same cloth. Um, they launched a marketing campaign during super. To try and get some traction because McDonald’s was the king, another place called Wendy’s. We heard one of their ads earlier was second in dominating the market of fast food. Burger King was losing money. And so they thought, what are we going to do?
They talked to an ad agency, [00:29:00] Jay Walter Thompson, and they decided to come up with a campaign, which they ran during Super Bowl, about this fictitious potential customer named Herb. Let’s have a listen to 60 seconds of Advertising Gold.
Burger King: At this time, burger King begins a nationwide search for one man. His name is Herb. We don’t know much about Herb, only what his friends tell us.
Herb was unusual. Herb was different.
What his parents tell us.
Herb was never what you’d call
normal. His former teacher,
you had to know how to talk to him.
Herbert, pay attention.
This is the best picture of Herb we have. We do know Herb is the one man who’s never tasted a Burger King. Burger Herb has never enjoyed this [00:30:00] juice, the sizzling beef, or grown to love flame broiling instead of frying grow up Herb. Herb has never enjoyed the whopper, the taste millions and millions of people crave.
So Herb, wherever you are, stay tuned and start asking yourself this crucial question. Aren’t you hungry for Burger King?
Steve Davis: David, I’ve heard a lot of Super Bowl ads. I’ve been pleasantly delighted and surprised by many of them, if not most. That one was just confusing.
David Olney: It’s a very strange ad because if an ad is not normally can either be clever or useful, or both, it’s the striking ad that it’s neither clever or useful. Which is quite an achievement.
Steve Davis: It is. So they spent 60 seconds at, I don’t know how much that would’ve cost, but it would’ve been a big chunk out of their 40 million. I can tell you that much to [00:31:00] make. To, to put this message to, to Herb. What are you waiting for? Go for it. Well, as it turns up, they also were running, um, newspaper ads at the same time.
No logo, no context, just a big message saying, what are you waiting for, herb? Okay. This is a company. That actually didn’t have money to burn, that seemed to have money to burn. What they did next when they realized it wasn’t working is come up with a second part of the campaign, and the idea was simple.
They said you had to spot Herb at your local Burger King and you would win $5,000 and they had big cardboard cutouts of him and you could win the money. In fact, let’s have a listen to the 32nd follow up ad they came up with.
Burger King: And sometime soon, this man could walk into your life and make you a millionaire. It’s Herb. This man is Herb. [00:32:00] Now that Herb loves the whopper, he’s visiting a Burger King in every state. Study the Herb poster because the first person to spot Herb in each restaurant wins $5,000 and everybody there gets a chance at a million and a free Whopper and Pepsi.
Tiffany, gorgeous spot her at Burger King. And win $5,000 and a chance at a million.
Steve Davis: Now, interestingly, David, did you like that ad?
David Olney: It’s certainly an improvement and it suggests that either it had been in the bag and it was always planned to go to the second ad, or in utter desperation, they half salvaged it and you’ve gotta give the agency points for salvaging it. If it was a desperation, follow up
Steve Davis: sales jumped 10% right away.
When these ads happen because people wanted to be there to look for Herb it seems,
David Olney: however, well, no, they were after $5,000.
Steve Davis: Well, that’s true.
David Olney: So really what’s been made clear now is just by coming in and eating here, [00:33:00] you might end up with five grand. So we’ve gone to just basic thing we gotta eat anyway, and there’s a chance of five grand and they said it’s five grand per store.
Realistically. Well, I’ve got three stores I could drive to. Wow. In the next two weeks, I could drive at all three. And again, because humans believe it’s gonna turn out well, what am I spending the cost of a burger? Oh, I just won’t go to Wendy’s or Macca’s for two weeks.
Steve Davis: They had that little bump. But then what happened was fantastic.
Um. Basically, uh, Wendy’s started running some ads saying, uh, hello everyone. Herb ate at Wendy’s instead. And then McDonald’s said, oh, yes, herb’s been eating here. Um, another place called Hardee’s did the sa everyone piled on across the thing. So the basically. The herb campaign at $40 million was creating free advertising for every fast food [00:34:00] joint.
David Olney: Hmm. But the interesting thing is, by all of them jumping on the herb bandwagon, it was a great opportunity to do a clever ad, whether it was gonna be useful. That’s an interesting question because you weren’t saying how good your product was. You were implying maybe that herb swapped ’cause yours is better, but without hearing all the ads, and particularly by ones we’re just not at all familiar with in Australia.
Like Hardee’s. Well, did anyone take the line? Well, herb used to eat there, but when he had our ex burger, herb never went back.
Steve Davis: Would that work today?
David Olney: I think the follow up would work really well. That herb’s changed business. I think there’s always potential in that. The original thing now of the attention span of wasting a minute on something that is neither clever or useful would be just like putting money through a shredder.
’cause people would be on their phone playing a game while watching a, you know, mini series or a [00:35:00] multi-part series on the second screen while the hour was on the football. You’re never gonna get attention for weirdness. That is not engaging the way you could have then for weirdness that. Wasn’t engaging
Steve Davis: and it wasn’t directed weirdness either.
No. It didn’t point us in the right direction.
David Olney: No.
Steve Davis: At that point. Well, there you go. A $40 billion lesson for the rest of us to learn from. So what is, what would you think is the takeaway from this takeaway Food fiasco?
David Olney: The takeaway is something I really learned in my social media subject in my Masters of Strategic communication.
And that is clever’s. Nice. But if it’s not useful, what was the point?
Steve Davis: Unless you have fries with it.
David Olney: That’s useful. Even if you’d mentioned fries and sold more fries ’cause of the ad, it would’ve moved it from weird and pointless to weird and maybe half useful.
Steve Davis: Do you know what I would’ve done?
David Olney: Had onion rings.
Steve Davis: No, I wouldn’t have, if I was working for KFC, I would’ve said, well, you’ve got one herb. We’ve got [00:36:00] 11 herbs and spices.
Caitlin Davis: Thanks for listening to talking about marketing. If you found this helpful, please share it with someone who might benefit. And if you’re so inclined, leave a rating in your podcast app. Both help more than you think. Steve and David welcome your thoughts, which you can send to [email protected].
That’s. Podcast at, talked about marketing.com. Want to continue the conversation beyond the podcast? You can book 20 minutes with [email protected]. No cost, no obligation, and we’ll leave the last word to Oscar Wilde. There’s only one thing worth. Than being talked about and that’s not being talked [00:37:00] about.