Our phones tax our attention daily, and the smartest small business marketing lesson from this episode comes from two women at a networking event who simply asked better questions.
A group of 1970s kids react to modern life in a viral clip, and their horror at “the little box” gives Steve and David a fresh look at the toll of constant connection.
Steve took his recorder to the Women in Business event and came back with real questions from real business owners, Jane from Eight at the Gate Wines and Ranee from Jarnell Cut Colour Curl. Their answers reveal a common thread that touches almost every small business.
A $500 Chevy ad from the 2012 Super Bowl proves that great advertising does not need a big budget, just a true human moment.
Get ready to take notes.
Talking About Marketing podcast episode notes with timecodes
02:15 Person This segment focusses on you, the person, because we believe business is personal.
What a Bunch of 1970s Kids Taught Us About Our Phones
A video of children reacting to modern technology, from paying monthly for music to strangers delivering food, gives Steve and David pause about what they have normalised. David, who grew up in the 1970s, offers a rare counterpoint from his experience as a blind person: technology has given him more than it has taken. For most people, though, the trade has not been so kind.
The conversation turns to research from Oxford University Press showing that reducing mobile screen exposure produces measurable gains in wellbeing, sleep, mood, and sustained attention. David distils it best with his old teaching trick: hold up the phone and ask, tool or toy? Steve lays out a six-step, fourteen-day experiment for anyone keen to find out which one their phone has become, from blocking social feeds during work hours to creating phone-free zones at each end of the day.
14:15 Principles This segment focusses principles you can apply in your business today.
Jane, Ranee, and the Marketing Question Every Small Business Owner Asks
Steve took his recorder to Adelaide Business Hub‘s Women in Business event, in conjunction with the Office of Small and Family Business, and asked two attendees what they would want to know if they had a marketer’s full attention. Jane Richards from Eight at the Gate Wines wants to know which marketing activity actually drives sales. Ranee from Jarnell Cut Colour Curl wants to know where her limited time delivers the biggest return.
Both women have solid businesses already, and David points to a common thread: the constraint is not ideas, it is time and attention. His answer is the old 80/20 rule, applied to personas. Pick the ideal customer group most likely to move the needle, and build from there rather than chasing a hundred scattered efforts. Steve shares an old radio trick from broadcaster Jeremy Cordeaux, who kept a fictional listener named Gladys in mind for every interview, and suggests both women already have a “Gladys” walking through their door or tasting room every week.
The pair also unpack Jane’s daughter’s TikTok following, and David asks the question that matters more than the follower count: is it converting to income, or is it just a vanity metric? They close the segment with Steve’s long-standing digital marketing triage order: website first, then content, then email database, then reviews, then social media, with advertising last.
Learn more about Women In Business mentoring.
37:30 Problems This segment answers questions we've received from clients or listeners.
Meet Mini Steve, the AI Trained on Nine Seasons of Marketing Advice
A client in Darwin has been testing something Steve built by distilling everything from nine seasons of the podcast, his blog archive back to 2004, and her own StoryBrand framework into an AI tool powered by Claude. David has taken to calling it Steve in a box.
The test threw up a genuinely useful question: should a piece of content be a page or a blog post? Steve’s rule of thumb is refreshingly simple. Broad, essential content that most visitors need belongs in the main page structure. Narrow, specific content that answers one sharp question belongs in a blog post, where it can be found by search engines and AI tools alike when the right person goes looking.
David flags the safeguard built into the system: when mini Steve is out of its depth, it says so and sends the question back to the grown-up.
44:00 Perspicacity This segment is designed to sharpen our thinking by reflecting on a case study from the past.
The $500 Super Bowl Ad That Beat the Big Budgets
Steve takes David back to a 2012 Super Bowl ad for Chevy that cost just $500 to make and still won the day. A birthday setup goes hilariously wrong when the neighbour’s new sports car gets mistaken for the graduate’s actual present, a humble bar fridge.
David and Steve agree the ad still works today, not because of production value, but because it taps something timeless: the human desire for status, the discomfort of watching a misunderstanding unfold, and the universal excitement of a friend’s big win. Steve’s takeaway is a good one for any small business without a big budget: constraint can force the kind of creativity that money cannot buy.
Transcript This transcript was generated using Descript.
A Machine-Generated Transcript – Beware Errors
S09E03
Caitlin Davis: [00:00:00] Thinking about Marketing is a podcast for business owners and leaders, produced by Steve Davis and David Oldney of 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 perspicacity, yes, you heard that correctly, 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 Onie, last year you came with me to the big Women in Business event, uh, run by Adelaide Business Hub, but you didn’t come this year. What do you remember from your time last year?
David Olney: Biggest thing I think I remember from the day was the sheer amount of enthusiasm. You go to a lot of small business things and people are like, “Oh, it’s hard.
No, it’s this. No, it’s that.” Whereas what I remember with all of the ladies we spoke with, everyone was positive that they were gonna have a go, positive they were gonna do their best to do it properly, and even where a lot of them had the courage to admit they were worried about how it would go or worried whether they could pull it off, they were committed to making the effort to do it properly.
And it was really nice seeing that level of, I’m gonna say earnestness ’cause I can’t think of a better word. Um, it was really lovely to see that level of earnestness combined with energy.
Steve Davis: Well, I’m gonna take that level of earnestness combined with energy and raise it, [00:02:00] because we’ve got a couple of questions that I recorded live at the event from two of the women who were there.
So does that mean I win?
David Olney: You do, because you’ve got live humans on your side. I’ve just got memory on mine.
Caitlin Davis: Our four Ps. Number one, person. These are insights for the whole person, not just the business operator. Oscar Wilde 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: In the person segment, first of all, I saw a video, I think it’s been doing the rounds for a bit, but it’s the first time I’ve seen it.
This wonderful video shot and treated to look like it was Steadicam or, or similar from the 1970s or 1980s with these little kids, [00:03:00] and let’s have a listen to what they say
TV Ad: Wait, so you’re telling me in the future, people just stare at a little box all day?
And in the future, you don’t even own the music, you just pay every month to borrow it? Like, if you stop paying, the music just disappears?
Wait, so before people eat, they take a picture of the food and show strangers? And the strangers like and comment on it?
So in the future, everyone has their own phone, and they use it to type messages instead of call? And if someone calls you without typing it first, it’s considered rude? So you’re telling me in the future, people just post their diary for everyone to see? Some people get paid for it. For their diary? And in the future, a little box just tells you where to go turn by turn, and people still get lost?
If you want food from a [00:04:00] restaurant, you just tap the box, and a stranger brings it to your door? And you pay extra for that? And then you rate the stranger? Our moms always say, “Don’t talk to strangers,” but in the future everyone just talks to strangers all day on the little box? And shows them their house, and their kids?
So in the future, nobody ever just sits with the quiet, like ever? That sounds really exhausting. In the future
Everyone’s connected to everything and people are still lonely? Okay, but do we at least still stay outside until the streetlights come on?
Steve Davis: It really does for me, David, give pause when you hear what we take for granted in this mobile phone, third screen saturated world to have fresh eyes looking at us [00:05:00] and almost saying, “Oh, the emperor’s got no clothes. You lot are idiots.” It’s, it’s pretty chilling, isn’t
David Olney: it? It’s a very strange sensation for me because I remember being one of those 97, 1970s kids.
Steve Davis: Mm.
David Olney: But from my perspective as a blind person, not having to find a CD by going through and going, what order did I have them in? Or, you know, having to use technology to look at every cover and get every cover read to me. Just saying, “Device, play music,” and get exactly what I want. There’s an irony where most people have sacrificed a lot from then till now.
I think I’m one of the exceptions where I’ve gained more than I’ve lost, but I think I’m a real exception
Steve Davis: I think you’ve highlighted the exception comes from living with a disability where you need-
David Olney: Exactly …
Steve Davis: uh, access made easier, more robust. But it’s like, [00:06:00] let’s imagine this fantastic set of crutches.
When you have to limp and you’re recovering from a broken leg, they’re perfect. But would you walk around with them by choice? All the time, yeah. And, and I feel the way we have become so enslaved to our phones, I mean, I notice it in myself, I notice it in my wife a lot. Um, I notice it all around. It’s like we go about five seconds, and most of us have this urge to get the phone out and, and find some sort of distraction or dopamine hit from the screen.
And I remember drafting, I didn’t publish it, I might have to rethink that, a, a blog that was going to be saying, “Have you paid today’s social media tax?”
TV Ad: Mm.
Steve Davis: Meaning, have we paid to Mark Zuckerberg et al., our share of attention?
David Olney: Mm. ‘
Steve Davis: Cause it is a tax.
David Olney: Mm.
Steve Davis: It’s a tax we pay. We might feel we get something out of it, with [00:07:00] proximity to some customers, our friends, but at what cost?
This is the definition of being over-taxed, I think.
David Olney: Mm. Look, the, the ultimate example I remember of, of this in the last couple of years was going on a pub crawl, a pub crawl with a bunch of friends, and one of the challenges at one of the pubs was, don’t look at a device for the whole time we’re at that pub.
You know, other than being able to pay at the bar with your phone if you needed to, leave your phone alone. And you know, Karen and I were the only people on the table who didn’t feel compelled to pick our phone out of our pocket or bag.
Steve Davis: Yeah. It’s a… Look, I think it’s a damning bit of evidence about where we’ve gone as a society, because then it leaves us victim to algorithms which then corral our public debate and public thinking into whatever flight of fancy we had at one point, and it traps us in that world.
And, and- It allows this shallowness of society. And I do [00:08:00] carry, I mean, not heavily, but it is there, some guilt. I, I ran the first ever social media training in South Australia. It was in, uh, 2005, towards the end of that, and I’ve watched this whole thing emerge over the years, and we did start with naivety.
David Olney: Yeah, but where it started was so different to where the bros took it.
Steve Davis: Yeah, that’s true.
David Olney: So I think there’s an awful lot of people that would still like to use it to stay in touch with people, and to quickly look twice a day for whose birthday it is, who’s had a major life event, you know, who’s done something really new or interesting, who need a hand.
Steve Davis: Or who wants to put out a dad joke. Like, I was with my daughter at the podiatrist earlier today. The podiatrist just before her went into a room and shut the door, and I pretended to her that I took a photo of the door, and I pretended dictating a social post saying, “I’m at the podiatrist with my daughter, and he’s just gone into a room and shut the door.
Do you think he’s got cold feet?” Uh, and it made her smile, and luckily it was just a [00:09:00] joke, so I didn’t s- Yeah … I didn’t subject my people to it, but that’s an outlet for me. However, the reason I’m mentioning this, apart from that wonderful ad, uh, video, is Oxford Academic have shared a paper. It was published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the National Academy of Sciences, claiming that there’s actually credible experimental evidence now that reducing mobile screen exposure can produce meaningful gains in adult wellbeing, sleep, mood, and sustained attention.
Uh, the productivity case is promising, but less directly measured. The strongest evidence is for the cognitive conditions that enable productive work, so better or improved attention, uh, fewer interruptions, better sleep, more intentional use of time helps us with our agency in life. And this is the person segment.
We’re all involved in business in some way. Surely that would be a good thing. [00:10:00]
David Olney: I think it’s a great thing, and it’s something that I saw when I was teaching, and that is if you can attract students’ attention to the front of the room or to each other rather than their devices All kids you teach are capable of doing more than they’re doing, and it just made it so clear that even by the time I walked away from teaching in 2020, the devastating effect of the technology on people who didn’t know they should say no.
At least now we’re talking about saying no. Yeah. And we’re structuring saying no, and, you know, with the stuff that’s just happened legally in America in the last week, it could be that very soon, uh, children don’t have to worry about Facebook during school hours in all the countries that don’t have social media bans until 16.
So the fight back’s begun, and we just need more and more reasons to go put it down.
Steve Davis: And I think, uh, a couple of bits of nuance that came out of this research is that it’s not that screens are bad. What’s bad is the [00:11:00] constant portable internet access. It taxes our attention-
David Olney: Hmm …
Steve Davis: and it displaces activities.
David Olney: Well, the, the thing I often used to say was hold the phone up, point it, and go, “Tool or toy?” Yeah. And everyone would just snigger because they knew I was using it as a tool, and they were using it as a toy.
Steve Davis: So look, let’s make this practical to bring this segment to an end. Um, in the paper, there was a practical adult experiment, David.
Are you up for this?
David Olney: Yeah, happily.
Steve Davis: You haven’t seen what I’m gonna say yet. But you trust me.
David Olney: Well, look, my premise is I don’t pick it up for hours at a time anyway if I’m playing guitar or talking to friends.
Steve Davis: Okay.
David Olney: So really, how could this test be much harder than what I’m doing already?
Steve Davis: There are six things we can do, and I’ll try and make sure we put these in the show notes as well.
So number one, for 14 days, remove or block social feeds, news apps, and browsers from the phone during [00:12:00] waking work hours. 14 days.
David Olney: Don’t pick it up during work unless it’s you texting me.
Steve Davis: Two, keep calls, texts, maps, banking, camera, and essential work authentication, ’cause you need them. Three, move intentional browsing, client work, and content publishing to a desktop or laptop.
David Olney: Do that anyway because accessibility’s better.
Steve Davis: Mm-hmm. Four, create two phone-free zones, the first hour after waking and the final hour before sleep.
David Olney: And can’t do the first one ’cause I get up and I’m in meetings 15 minutes later. And-
Steve Davis: Get up, get up earlier, David … No, I’m already getting up at
David Olney: 5:10. But at the end of the day, two hours of playing guitar is two hours of no phone time.
Steve Davis: Yeah, that’s true. Number five, track four daily measures. Recreational phone minutes, number of pickups, deep work minutes, and a simple 1 to [00:13:00] 10 score for mood or energy. And six, pre-commit the recovered time. A walk, meal preparation, a conversation, a book, or a creative project. Do you think that’s plausible, those, um, those six things if we did it?
Would it, would it… Do you, do you… Is your intuition that we would notice a, a positive change?
David Olney: My intuition is the addicts would. I fit most of those criteria as someone who uses my phone as a tool-
Steve Davis: Mm …
David Olney: 16 hours a day, but I use it as a tool.
Steve Davis: Yeah.
David Olney: When I’m playing guitar, if I’m learning a new song, how am I listening to it while I’m learning the song?
Via the phone. But do I pay any attention to social media? No. If you text me, I’ll look at it ’cause it’s you. You know, if it’s family or close friends, I’ll look at it. But other than that, I’m ignoring notifications if I’m playing my guitar. I’m ignoring my phone if I’m talking to my wife. I, I really see that all these things are doing is getting people from the toy to tool usage [00:14:00] space.
Steve Davis: All right. Tools down for two weeks. Oh, no, toys down for
David Olney: two weeks. Toys down for two weeks.
Steve Davis: Tools up, toys down
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.
Steve Davis: In the principles segment now, I’m gonna take you to a special event that Adelaide Business Hub held, uh, earlier this month of August, and they were, uh, celebrating the work they’ve been doing with the state government in running, uh, the Women in Business Mentoring Program, which, of which I’m one of the mentors, uh, that was able to work with women in business in South Australia.
It’s a wonderful gathering, uh, always good [00:15:00] conversation, as David was alluding to at the beginning of this episode. But I couldn’t help myself, David, I took my recorder with me, and I managed to convince a couple of the, uh, attendees to step outside with me and have a little chat about the sorts of things they would like.
If they got to sit down with a marketer, what would they want to ask? Um, and so I’ve captured them. We have Jane Richards from Eight at the Gate Wines, and let’s have a listen to what she had to say
Jane from Eight At The Gate: Uh, Jane Richards, Eight at the Gate Wines.
TV Ad: And
Steve Davis: Jane, when it comes to thinking about marketing your business, is there something at the moment that you’re struggling with, that you’re unsure of, or you wish you understood better? What would that be?
Jane from Eight At The Gate: What, what is the most important aspect of marketing, of all the things we do, that is actually growing my business?
Is it the [00:16:00] website? Is it social media? Is it our EDMs? Is it face-to-face events? Like, which, it all comes under this umbrella of marketing, and can’t do it all well. Which ones should I focus on that is actually giving me a ROI?
Steve Davis: One question. Intuitively, do you have a sense which one seems to be more closely related to sales being generated?
Jane from Eight At The Gate: The website is where sales happen, so I guess I… The trying to drive traffic to the website for either information or purchasing, and obviously if we get them to our website for information, which is where we’re working on AI and, and how to be an expert in a certain field, if we can get them to our website and they start to get a flavor of our personality, hopefully that encourages them to wanna buy from us, ’cause it’s a very competitive market.
Steve Davis: Now, you’ve mentioned AI, and I know you particularly like Claude, one of my favorites. [00:17:00] You would’ve asked these questions of Claude. What’s Claude telling you?
Jane from Eight At The Gate: Claude says so much, it’s frightening. Um, I’m, you, I’ve d- you’re right. I’ve done a lot of this, put a lot of stuff through Claude, and I’m not sure it answers the question as well as I would like it to, because it’s only as good as the information I give it, and that’s, I guess, the ultimate question.
I have all these statistics and analysis, but does it really matter if thousands of people like my TikToks or not? Or is it just, it’s fun, but it’s not driving sales? And as much as my daughter loves getting lots of likes on her TikToks, um, if it’s not driving business, it means nothing to us.
Steve Davis: We’ll come back to what Jane was talking about, ’cause I think we’re gonna find there are some similarities here. Uh, we also had, uh, Rani from Jarnail Cut Colour Curl, which is a hairdressing salon here in Adelaide.[00:18:00]
Ranee from Cut Colour Curl: I’m Rani from Janael Cut Colour Curl, where we concentrate on all things hair that relate to those three things.
Steve Davis: In small business, we often wear many hats. Probably makes you shudder as a hairdresser to think that we’re putting hats on our hair. Um, when you reflect at the end of a big day on your marketing, if you had someone sitting in your chair who was a marketing expert, and they said you could ask them anything you want, what would you ask them?
What are the… What, what, what comes to mind first? What would give you confidence of something to do tomorrow and something to think about long term?
Ranee from Cut Colour Curl: I guess my biggest issue is finding time because I work on the floor, I’m working on the business, I travel 40 minutes to get there. I try and get there early to do the things that are my admin related to marketing type things.
So time is of the essence to me, and [00:19:00] I wanna know what’s gonna give me the biggest bang for my buck, uh, when it comes to marketing. I feel like the answer to that is generally face-to-face, but there’s only one of me. So having recently, uh, done a complete new website, I’ve made sure that that’s as informative as it can be to reduce that load on me.
But what other areas are the ones I need to focus on to, uh, hit my target audience and my target market.
Steve Davis: Because you have the specialities, does that mean you have less people walking off the street and more people who have traveled for you? And h- wh- th- that must change the way you would think about your marketing and how you attract your people.
Ranee from Cut Colour Curl: Yes, it does. Um, so most of the people who come into my chair have traveled a long way generally. So yes, I guess my goal is to market to more A and B clients, dare I say. Um, so that [00:20:00] it’s… I’m, I’m not wearing myself out, basically. So that’s what I try to aim for when I’m looking at ways to market.
Steve Davis: And last question, if this fairy godmother marketing person was able to give you some answers, what format works best for you?
Is it followed by numbers? Is it a general thing to move towards? What, what works in your world?
Ranee from Cut Colour Curl: I’m a little creative, so I like to have the accountability of mentoring and a tick type box scenario. So this is what we’re gonna focus on. Once you’ve created this, you can tick it off. But I also… Yeah, I, that’s why I need to be so time aware so that, uh, yeah, that works best for me.
Steve Davis: So David, there’s Jane, there’s Rani with their reflections, and I guess there’s a common thread that runs through both of them. I’d say it would be time and [00:21:00] attention, uh, the real constraint. Not so much a shortage of ideas, more so, where do I direct this energy when my time and attention is so thinly spread across many different things?
Both women actually have built pretty solid foundations in their businesses, and, but they’re asking these same sort of questions. What happens next? Where does the next unit of marketing effort actually pay off? Let’s, um, kick this around, ’cause before we started recording, there were a few ideas that surfaced, and the first one was about the old-fashioned thing, David, would you believe, of being focused on a persona.
David Olney: Yep. A- again, this is the key thing. Everyone in small business has limited time and limited attention, and all these things we wanna do, but this is really a case of applying the 80/20 rule, the Pareto principle What could you do in your limited time with your limited attention that is gonna move the needle the [00:22:00] most?
And normally, that is to go back to one of your core five personas of your different ideal customers, and one at a time go through and go, “Which one of these could I have the biggest impact on talking to this group of people?” It’s not necessarily as exciting as a lot of ideas, but it’s finding the right idea to fit an existing customer group that you can grow.
And that to me, going back to basics is always the place to start because you get those basics right, and the foundations you build, it’s always easier to add a bit more work from some time and attention to good foundations than it is to kind of have a scattergun approach and do 100 things that don’t really add up to a cohesive strategy.
Steve Davis: And in fact, you know, this going back to basics is interesting. It just occurred to me that back in, I don’t know, 2012 to 2014, that sort of zone, I did a lot of workshops on marketing positioning, so thinking [00:23:00] about how you would like to be perceived in the marketplace, and that did center on who our ideal personas are- Mm
who are the ideal customers.
David Olney: Mm.
Steve Davis: And I remember, I used to often say, once you’ve settled on that, even just one, what you’ll notice is suddenly all your decisions become so much easier.
David Olney: Yeah.
Steve Davis: Things from what price you’re gonna set-
David Olney: You’re relating it to a known of the persona. Well, you are. What- And relating to a known, yeah
Steve Davis: what are you gonna wear? If someone says, “Hey, come and we’ve got this advertising deal,” well, straightaway you can go, “Well, hang on. Does that connect to my people?” In fact- Yep … it’s a great filter and focus.
David Olney: Yep, and it reminds you that you’ve either got this community already or maybe your community’s in flux.
Maybe there’s generational change. Maybe there’s a new group of people. Maybe you’re gonna open a store in a new location, and you’re going to retire one of your five personas and add a new one. But then that puts you into [00:24:00] learning phase to learn the new persona as well as you know your old personas. So it’s a case of even when you’re doing something new, you do it better because you know you’ve done it before.
Steve Davis: I used to have a- A story I would share from my days at 5DN when it existed, Jeremy Cordeaux was the announcer there, and his persona was a lady called Gladys-
TV Ad: Mm …
Steve Davis: uh, who was in her 50s. Um, she had a car, but often took public transport. Her kids had grown up and left home. She played lawn bowls, bit of bridge- Mm
loved her AFL, et cetera. What that meant, he had a little picture of someone in front of him who was for him, Gladys, while he was on air, and what would happen is if they’re interviewing someone like Dennis Lillee, who was a big cricketer at the time, he would ask some of the questions that the sports people want, but what would Gladys like to know?
Mm. And because Gladys was right there, he could say, “Dennis,” back then, test matches had a rest day. Mm. “On a, on a rest day in, in your Ad- and you’re in Adelaide, where, where do you go? What- [00:25:00] Mm.
TV Ad: What do
Steve Davis: you do? What do you like to eat? Where do you go?” Yeah. And I actually think with both Jane and Rani, Jane goes to a lot of tasting events, so she gets to meet her punters.
Mm. Um, Rani, of course, sees them. Mm. They come in the store. If a live personage of the people they sell to who like their wine was in front of them, I think all of these questions would have almost instant answers.
David Olney: They would get a laser focus and know that they were on the right track. So really, if there’s five kinds of wine buyers, five kinds of people who come into the hairdressing salon, there’s probably more, but again, we’re looking for the 80/20s in the world.
Steve Davis: Mm.
David Olney: Which people, if we get it right, come in more often, bring more people like them, become a really good foundation for building out the website. Like, there’s always the hard peripheral work on the marginal cases, [00:26:00] but more often than not, we don’t need to go there. It’s not worth it.
Steve Davis: Yeah.
David Olney: We can stay with the core.
Steve Davis: It’s why we enjoy doing the StoryBrand Framework process- Exactly … with people, and, uh, I have actually done that with Rani. So we’ve actually got a clear understanding of the different layers of problems her ideal customers face, which does sharpen, uh, the processes a lot. But there are a couple of Other things that floated around in those two, um, recordings, there was the TikTok usage.
Uh, Jane’s daughter is very active. She loves her TikTok, and she’s getting some sort of, uh, following there. And-
David Olney: But, but toward what end would be my follow-up question-
Steve Davis: Mm …
David Olney: to Jane if I’d been there. Like, your daughter’s getting an audience, that’s great. How is it benefiting her? Like, is this her target audience?
Has she got an audience she didn’t expect? Has she worked out how to leverage interest into income? Like, there are so many questions here from a marketing or business [00:27:00] point of view. Followers is lovely, but unfortunately, the only data we have at the moment is a vanity metric. Lots of interest. What’s the conversion on that vanity metric?
We want conversion on the vanity metric, otherwise it’s not a small business. It’s a struggling business
Steve Davis: And there are shifts in alcohol consumption, especially wine consumption Very
David Olney: definitely
Steve Davis: And there is some data that does say that younger demographics are not taking to it the way older people, uh, do.
And there is a common belief that TikTok is focused on young people. Mm. Although I have done mentoring, uh, particularly with one gentleman who was very active there. He does business insolvency, and, and I’ve told him to his face, his posts on TikTok are some of the most boring posts I’ve seen in my life.
Mm. He stands there, he reads from notes, and he has tens of thousands of followers. He gets work out of this. Yep. So [00:28:00] a lot of people are there.
TV Ad: Yep.
Steve Davis: They’re there particularly because of the curse of what we talked about in the person segment.
David Olney: Mm.
Steve Davis: They’ve gone there to escape from the world. Mm. Maybe having content there that helps people feel a little bit of that, and maybe what you do could help them take it to a deeper level.
David Olney: And again, that’s the kind of decision you have to make about your personas. So for example, my work in America, we help attorneys do, you know, TikTok videos. We do them for them. For the fact that when someone is stressed out of their mind about a car accident, an injury, or something else, they do disappear into TikTok, and when they see a legal ad for someone in their area that can solve their problem, they jump on it instantly.
It’s a very specific case where TikTok is useful. It’s useful genuinely for the young and when people are stressed out of their mind. They’re the two use cases for TikTok I’ve seen. There’s probably a third or a fourth use case if it’s relevant to a persona that you want to chase, but it [00:29:00] really comes down to, is it relevant to the persona that you wanna chase?
Steve Davis: So that’s going to be some fun for Jane and her daughter to have a
David Olney: conversation. Well, it gives them a much deeper conversation because, you know, her daughter can explain how it is working with the personas she wants to attract. Or is it? ‘Cause an attention economy is one thing, but a financially viable business is another.
Steve Davis: The other thing that Jane mentioned is she’s using Claude, which we love. Let’s just bow our heads a moment to Claude. Very good at writing. Where it really, I think, hits the straps is when we have gone through the story brand framework process and we’ve got a solid story brand framework which helps identify who our heroes are, the parlance they use there for personas, and a style guide, and that’s equipped or belted, bolted into Claude It does help Claude become a smaller version of you and get things close to the mark, especially if you also can backfill it with, um, data from [00:30:00] the business and current website content and things you’ve done, so it’s got a whole picture.
But as I’ll be saying, uh, well, probably the night this goes out, the day this goes out, I’m in the town of Gawler on the Wednesday of that week with an AI workshop, and one of the analogies I’ll be using is, can you ride a horse while you’re asleep? And yes, you can get away with it, but you’ve got no control where it’s gonna go.
You might end up falling off. These AI tools that we’ve got are like horses. Hmm. We have to feed them, train them, we guide them. They help us get from A to B a little faster. That’s the beauties they bring, and probably jump over things we find too hard, like digesting lots of data and, and things like that.
But we have to stay alert at the wheel, and I think where it goes wrong is where we hope that it will just solve everything for us and it’s all done. As opposed to treating it [00:31:00] like it is an employee that needs guidance, uh, and it, you, you have to maintain the responsibility for the direction you set it
David Olney: Julia McCoy summed it up beautifully in a video this week by saying, “If your job is just executing the same tasks every day, you’re in trouble.
But if your job is directing tasks every day, then AI is nothing to fear.” And that’s exactly the case. AI needs to be directed just like people need to be directed. But if all you do is crank, repeat, execute, execute, execute, um, you’re in trouble.
Steve Davis: So the other thing is, uh, website content, we need that to be active, live, have your voice on it, and also in this era of GEO, generative engine optimization, so making sure your content is easily findable and digestible by AI tools like ChatGPT and Google’s AI when it’s doing searching.
There’s a discipline that we apply there, [00:32:00] and, uh, I mention this in particular, I know Rani’s just had her site redone, and it has been done in w- very mindfully, uh, for this new level of search. And her inclination, she said, to go from, uh, to get more A and B customers, uh, one of the things that I would reflect on is she gets good numbers of people coming through her doors.
It’s the follow-up we do ’cause keeping and building a relationship with an existing customer, we all know, much less expensive than going out to find new ones all, all the time. Mm. And so harnessing some of the inbuilt power of her point of sale system to have scheduled thoughtful follow-ups. Follow-ups and information that’s helpful- Mm
for the different situations. So f- say a client’s come in, they’ve had their curls cut, there’s a particular type of maintenance you need to apply at particular times. You know, 48 hours after it is [00:33:00] where the beauty from the salon needs to start, be your responsibility. Mm. What do you do? A few weeks into it, et cetera.
So having that nuance, which is where a trained version of you and Claude can help with word those things. And so you’ve got everything working towards keeping that ’cause if that person becomes regular, then they’re gonna talk to their friends about you as well.
David Olney: I was reading something this morning, and it said in a survey done in July that 92% of people look to verify something in an AI overview.
So- Gee … if people are so willing to do follow-up This follows the referral rules as they’ve been for decades, and that is you’re really happy to have a referral from family or friends. But the majority of people now, because of the nature of the world we live in, will still do follow-up to confirm they can trust the referral.
So the fact that, you know, both of these ladies know so [00:34:00] much Make sure that the things you know that make you you and make your business unique are captured on the website. Because even when people were referred, they’re still gonna read and look ’cause they wanna know if what they’ve been told is right.
But more importantly, so many cases now, people aren’t unique in what services or products they offer, but the way they deliver them is unique. Yeah. It’s the fact you are you. These two ladies do things in their way, and their way is actually the greatest value in small business, is that’s what makes you different.
That’s what makes you irreplaceable. Let- And that’s what to capture whenever you can.
Steve Davis: Let’s just bring this segment to a close by going back to the digital marketing formula we use here at Talk About Marketing. Anytime we stray away from this is where we hit issues. So here’s the triage order of importance, and I think this might help put things into perspective.
[00:35:00] Number one, the website itself. Get that done. Get that right. Uh, the GEO disciplines applied to it, responsiveness, all those things. Two is the content, which is what Dave has just been talking about, having that content for your personas and capturing your persona in it as well. The third is your email database, um, inviting people to stay in your world, which is going to be relevant for most businesses, uh, so that you build that connection.
You’ve got that connective tissue. It’s a really valuable asset, and if you are, as part of your content, blogging and sharing these little droplets of your helpful wisdom, when it’s newsletter time, you’re not starting from scratch. You just have to give some sort of timely intro and then share a link to a blog post or two that you’ve done.
We all like getting stuff that’s helpful, and if it’s not helpful for us, it might be helpful for someone we kn- we know, and it’s easy just to forward on a short email, so it’s often underused. [00:36:00] The fourth is reviews, uh, not only encouraging them, but when you get them, uh, there is so much scope. There is a, I’ll pro- I’ll put a link in the show notes to the article I wrote about that from a workshop I did for the Tourism Industry Council on the change we’re leaving on the table by not following up reviews, good or bad ones.
There’s just some easy goals we can get there that’s valuable and, for Jane and Rani, worth the energy. Then we get to social media at number five, and finally, advertising, which is really when all else fails. So I find, we talked about going back to basics today, for me, that’s my basic. It’s my ready reckoner.
Where are we focusing our energy? Have we lumped so much at number five, social media, and trying to not mention the war and forget that we haven’t been blogging and giving that thought? Because a good blog post is like a fruit tree that you [00:37:00] plant and it bears fruit. You can pluck ideas from each blog post and turn them into content for social media, content for newsletters, et cetera, et cetera.
So thank you, Jane. Thank you, Rani, for having a brief chat with me. All the best with everyone involved with the Women in Business program, which is available. We’ll put a link to that in the show notes as well, um, through Adelaide Business Hub, uh, supported and made possible by the Office of Small and Family Business of the state government.
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: We turn to [00:38:00] the problem segment now, and we had a, an interesting question, David.
Uh, one of our clients up in Darwin, um, is running an experiment with me. She’s a small client. She just needs some help now and then. And what I’ve done is I have distilled everything we’ve said for nine seasons.
David Olney: Scary thought, isn’t it?
Steve Davis: Everything I’ve blogged about from here back to almost 2004, as well as our guiding principles, information in between what I- we have done for her business, as well as her story brand framework.
So what it is that, uh, her heroes worry about, what are their problems, et cetera, and what’s her information. And I’ve made a mini Steve, David. Can you imagine that? A mini Steve.
David Olney: I, I keep thinking of it as Steve in a box. It’s a bit like- Which doesn’t sound as good as mini Steve, which is why I’ve been quiet about thinking about it as Steve in a box.
Steve Davis: So it’s a little app, um, powered by Claude, um, that she has [00:39:00] a- access to, so she can at any time, day and night, ask Steve a question. And she went back and forth with Steve and developed a blog post or, or, uh, a p- an article, and then she asked, “Should this be a page on my website or a post?” And mini Steve prevaricated on it because I hadn’t given it specific thoughts about that.
And what I’ve built into mini Steve is when it’s stuck, like earnestly stuck-
David Olney: Call the grown-up …
Steve Davis: it says, “Talk to the grown-up one,” which she did, and I was able to lay out a couple of principles. Now, just in short, if the content is broad-shouldered, it’s important content that most people are going to need to know, it’s a strong sense of direction on your website.
To me, that’s a page. Mm. That has to sit in your main page structure, whether it’s a parent item or a dropdown, doesn’t matter. It needs to have [00:40:00] Easy, visible access to everyone ’cause it’s crucial for the majority of your visitors. But if what’s in the content is really thin, uh, not thin as in lack of content, but focused, sharp, specific, it’s getting right into the weeds on a particular question, to me, that’s a post.
That’s a blog post. Because when that’s published on your website, it sits there and is shared through Google to be picked up by ChatGPT, Google AI, other tools, for when that particular persona of yours has a particular problem and they’ve gone searching. The fact that you’ve got this long tail specific content sitting there, the search engines will work their magic to help that be found, and they’ll take the person right in there.
And once they’re reading that article, they’re now on your website, and then they can wander around your pages if it’s relevant. As well as that, you’ve got a [00:41:00] beautiful thing that you can send to people. If you’re talking to someone at a barbecue or an inquiry, and it’s also in the same territory, but you don’t have time for a deep conversation, you can say, “Look, we’ve captured some thinking about this.
Can I flick you the link?” And you can give someone not a generic piece of content, but something very specific, David.
David Olney: It’s certainly the way to go. Where possible, if something’s evergreen, make sure you, you know, you build it into your website in that evergreen way. Because every time you’re reminded of it or something changes about it is an opportunity to update it, but also write why you’ve updated it, and then do a post about this important new thing you’ve learned or observed that would be useful for your people.
Steve Davis: Yeah.
David Olney: So, so many ways to build on this in a constructive way where you’re always reinforcing the foundations. And when they’re really good, you can do sparkly things on top.
Steve Davis: And as this beta test of mini Steve comes to fruition, and I think it’s finding its feet now, I think it’s pretty good, [00:42:00] we’re gonna try and make it available for our clients at a very, very almost negligible price.
And what you’ll find in this segment is the sort of problems and questions you ask mini Steve that have relevance to lots of people will give us fresh content to share on this podcast to be helpful for many people, not just the one person. So- We’re all helping each other, which is the, the key thing of our approach to marketing, isn’t it?
Marketing that goes out there that’s earnestly trying to help people from within your realm of expertise, that’s the marketing we wanna sign off on. So I, I just have to work out whether … Does, does mini Steve speak like this, David, do you think?
David Olney: No, I think mini Steve needs to sound like you. I- ‘Cause we need people to go, “This is not weird.”
“It’s just a bit weird.”
Steve Davis: This is not weird, and it sounds like me?
David Olney: Yeah. No, you don’t sound weird. You sound happy. But I think the other key thing to remember is the very deliberate choice Steve has made to make sure that if mini Steve doesn’t have a good answer, [00:43:00] mini Steve says, “Communicate with Steve.” And this is a really good thing here.
We’re not taking any risk that you get odd advice that we wouldn’t have given. This is, here are things we hear enough that we can get you started, but if what you’re doing is more complicated than that or deeper than that, mini Steve is gonna say, “Talk to the grown-up.”
Steve Davis: And that’s the advantage of being able to have a marketing question asked at 3:00 in the morning, because if it was me, human Steve, you might get a silly answer.
But- … mini Steve has- On the ball … his disciplines. Good at … ‘Cause mini Steve does not have access to the Ade at the Gate Cabernet Sauvignon, and so therefore it sticks to the straight and narrow.
David Olney: We might have to have a second version of mini Steve- … called two bottles in mini Steve.
Steve Davis: Yes. And that stuff can then be put out through your TikTok channel.
David Olney: Yeah, absolutely, to both groups, the young and those that are rather stressed.[00:44:00]
Caitlin Davis: Our four Ps. Number four, perspicacity. 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. So let’s see what we can learn.
Steve Davis: In the perspicacity segment, I wanna take us back, David, to a Super Bowl ad. Now, in the world of advertising, you know, America, love it or hate it, one of the highlights in the world of advertising is the Super Bowl because that’s where the brands pony up the cash to try and do their best effort.
David Olney: Yeah, and it’s interesting because the cost of the ads are so high.
Steve Davis: Yes.
David Olney: You’re only gonna see major companies and major agencies or, you know, startup-ish companies with huge investment taking huge risk. Mm. So either way, they’ve either been very successful or they’re very comfortable with risk. [00:45:00] So it makes for interesting advertising.
Steve Davis: And that’s why I wanna surprise us all today because the ad we’re gonna listen to, which I think won the Super Bowl in 2012, really-
David Olney: No one won the football game, but an ad won the game.
Steve Davis: Yes. It’s for Chevy. It cost $500 to make. Let that sink in. What they did, this is genius, David, ’cause I know what you say, and look, big money, you can bring the best minds and all that.
But sometimes the hunger, sometimes having to force your creativity to do the extra yards can… You know, like letting some winemakers, I don’t know if this is out of the gate, but some of them will leave the grapes out longer so they have more baume, that sugar develops- Yep … et cetera, et cetera. Okay, let’s just come back from the wine analogies here because they had a competition, $500 was the price to make an ad, and this is genius.[00:46:00]
I’ll set it up because I don’t think it’s all covered in the audio. In essence, a, a mature, uh, mom and dad have their son who’s turning of age, big birthday. He comes out the front, and they have… He doesn’t notice this, but there’s a little bar fridge with a little ribbon around it, and that’s their ta-da moment they wanna give him as the present.
But the neighbor has parked a really big, beautiful, bold Chevy sports car right out the front of their house. That’s what the son thinks is his present. Let’s have a listen.
TV Ad: A blindfold, Mom? Really? Is this necessary?
Happy graduation, sweetie.
Can’t believe you got me
this car. Amazing. Status update. Best day of [00:47:00] my life. I’m calling grandma. Grandma-
Should we tell him it’s-
No, no. Let
David Olney: him tire out first …
TV Ad: jogger, check out my sweet ride. How can you jog when you can drive?
David Olney: Not yet. He’s losing steam. Oh.
TV Ad: Oh. Just
David Olney: like a rides course.
TV Ad: You’re marrying me right now. So marrying you right
now.
We’re getting married. Yeah. This is the best day of my life. Hey, Steve. Best day ever. Love the car
Best thing ever. Hey! Mr. Johnson just stole my car.
Steve Davis: David, I think this ad is genius on so many levels. It has [00:48:00] that novelty. We’re all in on the joke. Mm. Because we all see the fridge.
David Olney: Mm.
Steve Davis: And so we… It adds that awkwardness that keeps ab- a bit like The Office. Yeah. That sort of humor. You can see a train wreck happening.
David Olney: Yep.
Steve Davis: It’s just priceless. It really is.
David Olney: And you can… The wonderful thing was it, it captures the foibles of humans. Mm. The parents had no idea the car was gonna be there.
Steve Davis: And if it wa- no, they, not that it was, but even if it was, it’s their neighbors, so you don’t see stuff that you’re used to.
David Olney: Yeah.
Steve Davis: Yeah.
David Olney: Or even if the car was new and they might have seen it, they wouldn’t expect that that day this was gonna happen.
Yeah. And, you know, normally how much would a new fridge have meant to the son? Probably heaps.
Steve Davis: Yeah, ’cause he gets to put his beer in it now that he can drink. Yeah. Or- So
David Olney: everything’s relativistic, like on a given day something is or isn’t funny, but when you can see it going wrong, you know, at the human level, like, “Uh-oh, I know how humiliating this is gonna be for this kid, and how [00:49:00] sad everyone’s gonna feel, and how everyone’s gonna be confused.”
And really that ability for us to feel the emotions in the ad- Yeah … is the power of great advertising.
Steve Davis: And the other thing here is the two sides of the coin that I think is genius. The action of the son, his friends, his girlfriend, propose, you know, the whole bit- Mm … on the basis of this car says to us, “This is something to covet.
This is something we all should want as humans.”
TV Ad: Mm.
Steve Davis: And on the other side of the coin, the sort of perplexed, nonplussed, um, neighbor walks out- Yeah … who is later age, uh, he’s made his life. He opens the boot, pops his golf clubs in and, and drives away.
David Olney: Yep.
Steve Davis: He is their persona. That’s who it is.
David Olney: Yep.
Steve Davis: And they’ve got something over the jocks and the, the young- Yep
[00:50:00] bros because they’ve, in inverted commas, made it.
David Olney: Made it, and this is the way they show how.
Steve Davis: Very clever. Very. Very clever communication.
David Olney: Yep.
Steve Davis: Um, here’s the thing. Would an ad like that work in 2026?
David Olney: Oh, absolutely. I, I don’t think any of this changed because that human desire for status is as strong, that whole thing of watching a drama unfold, that whole thing of misunderstanding.
You know, the overacting might be a bit too much of everyone being so excited, but also- You would be really excited if your friend just got a car like that
Steve Davis: Well, you would ’cause you wanna go for a drive in it. Yeah. Um, I’ve got my two daughters, my oldest one’s driving, and the first time she was able to drive by herself, my younger daughter said, “Great, can we go to Macca’s?”
That was her thing. Yeah. Her taste of freedom-
David Olney: Yeah, was through her sister. But nonetheless, everyone gets on board with this thing of agency.
Steve Davis: Yes.
David Olney: We could do this. We could do this. All these things are now possible.
Steve Davis: So if you’re a [00:51:00] new listener to this podcast, you’ve just had a little poke around, it’s very rare when we come to perspicacity that an ad we talk about we think would work in this age, but I think this one does- Mm
because it’s tapping a human truth. It’s not trying to confect something out of nothing.
David Olney: Yep, and it, it’s not about something that works for a week. It’s about something that will work as long as people still wanna show they’ve made it, and people still get excited about, you know, beautiful things.
Steve Davis: All right.
Let’s hop down in the car. I’ve gotta get you home. You’re- And
David Olney: you’ve got your new car, so I’m really excited. Yes.
Steve Davis: Or is it
David Olney: a bar
Steve Davis: fridge down there that’s mine?
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 [00:52:00] app. Both help more than you think. Steve and David welcome your thoughts, which you can send to podcast@talkedaboutmarketing.com.
That’s podcast@talkedaboutmarketing.com. Want to continue the conversation beyond the podcast? You can book 20 minutes with Steve at talkedaboutmarketing.com. No cost, no obligation. And we’ll leave the last word to Oscar Wilde, “There’s only one thing worse than being talked about, and that’s not being talked about.”