MMarketing Against The Grain
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Kipp Bodnar12 April 2022

‘Half-Baked Marketing Ideas’ with Kipp Bodnar and Kieran Flanagan

11Frameworks
11Insights

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Frameworks in this episode

Marketing5 steps

Community of Product vs Community of Practice

Organize people around mastering a practice, not merely supporting a product.

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Strategy7 steps

Customer-Benefit Distribution Flywheel

Aggregate customer perks into an audience that sends demand back to participants.

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Marketing7 steps

Expert-Authored Credential Flywheel

Use difficult expert-built tests to create status, sharing, mentorship, and demand.

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Innovation5 steps

Half-Baked Marketing Ideas

Generate independently, challenge openly, and improve promising campaign ideas live.

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Marketing6 steps

Opposite Positioning Exercise

Escape category sameness by examining the truthful edge of the opposite claim.

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Marketing6 steps

Product Interface as Content

Publish remarkable content through the product’s own delivery mechanism.

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Marketing6 steps

Product-Utility Reality Competition

Turn a product’s core outcome into a public competition that generates leads and proof.

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Marketing5 steps

Review-to-Campaign Insight Loop

Mine customer reviews for a valued behavior, then dramatize it through a campaign.

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Marketing5 steps

Surprise Expert Office Hours

Place an unexpected expert inside the product experience and turn access into content.

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Innovation6 steps

Tokenized Skill-to-Recruiter Access Loop

Turn verified skills into token-gated career access and recruiter outreach.

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Strategy5 steps

Web2-to-Web3 Startup Order of Operations

Build community before product when shared participation creates the product’s value.

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Insights & moments

The myth-busts, hot takes, explainers, and tools worth keeping.

Explainer· 2

Explainer03:30

Why Marketers Need to Understand a Multi-Chain World

Kipp and Kieran argue that shared consumer experiences will increasingly span multiple blockchains. Marketers may need to understand the distinct communities, norms, and opportunities associated with each ecosystem rather than treating Web3 as a single market.

  • Multiple blockchains can converge inside shared front-end experiences
  • Different chains may develop distinct communities and tribal identities
  • Marketing strategies may need to adapt to each ecosystem
  • Proof-of-stake networks can offer environmental and creator benefits

I think living in the multi-chain universe matters because there's just different ecosystems that you will need to learn as a marketer.

Kieran Flanagan · 04:30

There's gonna be different places that your marketing will need to be migrated to.

Kieran Flanagan · 04:30
#web3#blockchain#marketing#communities
Explainer06:30

Community of Product vs. Community of Practice

Kipp distinguishes communities organized around product support from communities organized around improving a shared professional practice. He predicts that broader peer education and strategy discussions will become more important than communities limited to answering product questions.

  • Communities of product primarily support users and deflect support tickets
  • Communities of practice help people improve their work independently of specific tools
  • Peer education and strategy can create value before product adoption
  • Community provides a natural bridge between Web2 and Web3 incentives

We talk about two types of community.

Kipp Bodnar · 07:00

What's happening now is we're moving in the next generation of the web, community of practice is going to be more important.

Kipp Bodnar · 07:00
#community#web3#customer-education#strategy

Story· 6

Story09:30

Turn Employee Productivity Into an Online Reality Competition

For Sticky Tasks, Kipp proposes an Amazing Race-style contest to find the world's most productive team. Participating companies would complete weekly tasks in a public online show, creating entertainment while demonstrating the product and generating leads.

  • Recruit teams through a high-value prize and competitive application process
  • Assign new productivity challenges every week
  • Package the contest as a recurring online reality show
  • Use applications to generate leads and free product signups
  • Demonstrate the product's utility through entertaining competition

I think they should do the most productive team in the world contest.

Kipp Bodnar · 09:30

Launch an amazing race style competition where you put these teams from around the world, you give them uh different tasks every every week, and…

Kipp Bodnar · 09:30
#productivity#campaigns#reality-tv#lead-generation
Story13:00

Bring a Surprise Expert Into a Remote Team's Virtual Office

For virtual-workspace company Worker, Kieran proposes a campaign centered on the spontaneity remote work often lacks. Selected teams would unexpectedly receive a recognizable expert in their virtual office for a day of conversations and questions, while an assistant records the interactions for reusable campaign content.

  • Build the campaign around restoring spontaneity to remote work
  • Let teams apply without revealing which expert might appear
  • Give the visiting expert a virtual desk inside the workspace
  • Allow employees to hold informal conversations and ask questions
  • Record and repurpose the interactions as proof of the product experience

So what we're gonna do, Kip, is we're gonna launch a marketing campaign where the winning companies and teams will have a special guest join…

Kieran Flanagan · 14:00

Your team can interact with, ask them questions.

Kieran Flanagan · 15:00
#remote-work#influencer-marketing#campaigns#content
Story19:30

Create Expert-Built Skills Tests With Public Leaderboards

For Toggle Hire, Kieran proposes recruiting respected practitioners to design definitive assessments for pivotal roles such as engineering and digital marketing. Public leaderboards, difficult passing thresholds, mentorship, and exclusive events would turn assessments into desirable professional credentials.

  • Focus first on roles that are pivotal to hiring companies
  • Recruit recognized experts to design the assessments
  • Publish the tests and rankings publicly
  • Keep passing thresholds difficult enough to preserve credibility
  • Reward top performers with mentorship and exclusive access

Then you get the best known people who have an audience in those categories to create the ultimate test, the ultimate front-end engineering test, the…

Kieran Flanagan · 19:30

The people with the best grades get some kind of unique mentorship.

Kieran Flanagan · 19:30
#hiring#skills-testing#credentials#community
Story20:00

Use Role-Based NFTs to Connect Proven Candidates With Recruiters

The hosts extend Toggle Hire's assessment idea into an NFT-based credential and access system. Candidates who pass difficult tests could claim role-specific NFTs, while employers use wallet-based messaging, incentives, or gated access to contact qualified talent.

  • Create a distinct NFT for each assessed professional role
  • Allow successful candidates to claim the corresponding credential
  • Use token ownership to provide access to curated job opportunities
  • Let employers contact or incentivize verified candidates through wallets
  • Design carefully around whether credentials should be transferable

So you create an NFT for each role type.

Kieran Flanagan · 20:30

Airdrop and incentive to actually talk to that company about a role they have.

Kipp Bodnar · 21:30
#hiring#nfts#credentials#recruiting#web3
Story23:00

Turn Hospitality Customers Into a Shared Consumer Benefits Network

For Stampede.ai, Kipp proposes aggregating benefits from hospitality customers into a consumer membership program. The resulting audience and newsletter would promote participating venues, give Stampede distribution leverage, and make its software more valuable as a source of new customers rather than only an operational tool.

  • Ask participating hotels and restaurants to contribute consumer benefits
  • Aggregate those benefits into a free membership or card
  • Promote participating venues through a shared newsletter
  • Use consumer distribution to attract more hospitality businesses
  • Position the platform as a customer-acquisition channel as well as software

I think the magic for them is how do they work with their existing customer base to put some really cool benefits together and merchandise…

Kipp Bodnar · 23:30

they're actually able to help them get net new customers.

Kieran Flanagan · 25:30
#hospitality#loyalty#distribution#customer-acquisition
Story25:30

Partner With an NFT Club to Unlock Hospitality Perks

The Web3 version of Stampede's benefits network would partner with an existing membership NFT project such as Pool Suite. Token holders would receive exclusive hospitality perks, while the partner promotes Stampede to a culturally relevant audience and participating venues gain exposure to prospective customers.

  • Partner with an established membership-based NFT community
  • Gate hospitality benefits by token ownership
  • Share royalties or value with the community partner
  • Use co-branded events and marketing to reach a desirable audience
  • Show hospitality operators a practical Web3 business application

And so if you own the pool suite NFT, you have access, it's like a virtual club.

Kipp Bodnar · 25:30

And they could partner with Pool Suite and say, hey, if you're a pool suite holder, we have these exclusive benefits at all of these…

Kipp Bodnar · 26:00
#hospitality#nfts#partnerships#loyalty#web3

Takeaway· 3

Takeaway11:00

Escape Category Sameness by Starting With the Opposite

Kipp recommends comparing a product's positioning with every competitor and identifying the resulting cluster of sameness. Instead of making an incremental adjustment, marketers can write the exact opposite position, identify its truthful elements, and use those elements to construct a genuinely differentiated message.

  • Place your positioning beside the language used by competitors
  • Identify where every company communicates the same idea
  • Write the exact opposite without immediately publishing it
  • Find defensible kernels of truth inside the opposite position
  • Aim for categorical rather than incremental differentiation

Take your positioning and all the competitors in your market. Look at their positioning.

Kipp Bodnar · 11:00

And the way you want to start is you want to first start saying, what if we said the exact opposite of that?

Kipp Bodnar · 11:30
#positioning#differentiation#brand-strategy
Takeaway16:30

Make Product Notifications Entertaining Enough to Share

Kipp suggests that Wisp demonstrate its website-notification product by turning its own notifications into serialized entertainment. Jokes and short narratives could encourage screenshots, sharing, website visits, and product discovery while showing the channel's creative potential.

  • Use the product itself as the campaign's content format
  • Write jokes or stories that unfold across multiple notifications
  • Map notifications to web pages so recipients can share them
  • Hire a comedic writer to improve shareability
  • Convert entertainment-driven attention into product demand

I think they should have their own notifications for their own website be content and basically make different jokes and stories out of their own…

Kipp Bodnar · 17:00

And I think they should turn notifications into content.

Kipp Bodnar · 17:30
#notifications#content-marketing#product-led-growth#word-of-mouth
Takeaway27:00

Web3 Must Become Understandable Before It Becomes Useful

The hosts acknowledge that Web3 is difficult to understand because developments are rapid, numerous, and technically complex. They argue that useful marketing coverage should simplify discrete concepts and connect them to practical business-growth applications rather than merely reporting trends.

  • Web3's pace and complexity make broad comprehension difficult
  • Even engaged observers may understand only a small portion of the space
  • Concepts should be broken into focused, digestible explanations
  • Explanations become valuable when connected to practical business utility

You have to be so dialed in to even understand a small part of it because it's so complex.

Kipp Bodnar · 27:30

we want to try to show you some utility and a particular utility for how you grow a business.

Kieran Flanagan · 28:00
#web3#education#business-growth#marketing