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The Monday Morning Memo

What My Mentor Taught Me

June 6, 2016

Kraken_BeaglePainting

Loren L. Lewis always said,

Never play another man’s game.
Always have a game of your own.”

In the advertising business, RFP means “Request For Proposal.” In other words, some big company wants you to dance for them. They want you to sit up and beg like a dog at the dinner table.

I’ve never responded to an RFP.

I believe in the FPS.

In my little homemade world, FPS stands for Free Public Seminar. I did my first one in 1988. By 1992 I was doing at least one a month. In 1994 I launched the little missive you’re reading now. For the first several years of its life, this Monday Morning Memo was delivered by FAX. Can you believe it?

Don’t bother to Google FPS. No one uses that term but me. Today people call it “content marketing.”

It didn’t have a name in 1895 when John Deere launched a magazine for farmers about how to become more profitable. That magazine, The Furrow, is still in circulation. Today it reaches 1.5 million farmers in 40 countries who speak 12 different languages.

In 1904 a weird new food company sent its workforce door-to-door across America giving away free cookbooks. That company became a huge national brand within 24 months. Ever heard of Jell-O?

Ninety -five years later (1999,) author Jeff Cannon wrote,

In content marketing, content is created to provide consumers with the information they seek.”

Bingo. One hundred and four years after John Deere proved it would work, someone gave it a name.

But content marketing probably isn’t for you. I believe that ship has sailed.

Does content marketing still work? Of course it does. The problem is that everyone is working it.

If every manufacturer in 1895 had been publishing their own magazine… if mailboxes everywhere were overflowing with them… would John Deere have seen success with The Furrow? Possibly. But they would have been playing another man’s game.

You need to have a game of your own.

Content marketing is a competition for the customer’s time. But it’s not the only way to win the customer’s time.

There is a way, I promise, for you to give away a sample of your product.

There is a way for you to demonstrate what you do in a dramatic and convincing way.

Both of these have been done before.

But not lately.

When everyone else is competing to win the customer’s time through the publication of online content, perhaps it’s time for you to start a game of your own.

For me, FPS meant Free Public Seminar.
For you, it can mean Free Product Sample.

Or maybe you just need to put on a show.

Demonstrate what you do.

Open some eyes.

Get some attention.

Roy H. Williams

Telecast_PennieEven though you may be reading this after our Live Teleconference today at 11:30 AM Eastern, 10:30 AM Central – Monday, June 6 –  it’s still worth registering because even if you didn’t join us Live, you’ll still receive a link within 24 hours to hear the audio replay, but only if you register. Our two “A-List” celebrity guests – plus Princess Pennie Williams –  make this the ultimate storyteller event. Registration takes 15 seconds. Just go to MondayMorningRadio.com

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Random Quote:

“If a man writes clearly enough any one can see if he fakes. If he mystifies to avoid a straight statement, which is very different from breaking so-called rules of syntax or grammar to make an effect which can be obtained in no other way, the writer takes a longer time to be known as a fake and other writers who are afflicted by the same necessity will praise him in their own defense. True mysticism should not be confused with incompetence in writing which seeks to mystify where there is no mystery but is really only the necessity to fake to cover lack of knowledge or the inability to state clearly. Mysticism implies a mystery and there are many mysteries; but incompetence is not one of them; nor is overwritten journalism made literature by the injection of a false epic quality. Remember this too: all bad writers are in love with the epic.”

- Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon, p. 54

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