Deep dive into index bloat – a critical SEO challenge affecting medium to large websites. Learn how to identify URLs consuming your index quota without delivering traffic, understand the difference between crawl budget and index bloat, and discover practical solutions for cleanup. This Whiteboard Friday video helps you assess your site’s index health and implement effective remediation steps, from content consolidation to proper URL handling.
Each week, Laura, Caroline, and I get to sit and chat with some of today’s most innovative marketing masters. We’ve run down the rabbit hole with folks from Spotify, Liquid Death, Oatly, New Balance, Zapier, Hootsuite, the Brooklyn Nets, and even the makers of Chicago’s most beloved tirefire-flavored liquor. If you could smoosh all of their combined wisdom into your head, it would be like getting your… well… master’s in marketing. (Oh, hey. I just got the name.) Well, you can’t. Not until brain chips are a thing. Until then, you can do the next best thing: Check out 12 of the most insightful, provocative, or just downright useful lessons our experts had to share. Lesson 1: People aren’t brainless consumers. Here‘s a fun fact: At Liquid Death, they don’t use the word consumer. Ever. Instead, they have a team called “human insights.” Greg Fass, Liquid Death’s VP of marketing, is proud to work against the mindset that people are just “brainless consumers” whose sole purpose on Earth is to consume products. (Yep – that’s a direct quote.) Instead, he says, “At Liquid Death, I‘m proud that we think of our audiences as people. And when you think of them as humans, you understand they’ll get a piece of copy that isn‘t straightforward, or jokes other brands are afraid to make. They’re intelligent, and have a sense of humor.” It’s a philosophy that has served them well. Just consider the commercial where Martha Stewart is a serial killer chopping off hands to make candles — not exactly something that would go over well in a standard marketing pitch. Liquid Death has done more than reinvent the better-for-you beverage category — they’ve reinvented marketing, as well. Embracing their anti-marketing approach can help you discover fresh and novel ways of connecting better with, well, other humans. Read Martha Stewart, $400K Fighter Jets, and Comedy Writers: How Liquid Death Wins at Anti-Marketing, According to Liquid Death’s VP Lesson 2: “If you’re not risking your career on a bold marketing move, you’re not thinking big enough.” Ron Goldenberg, VP of international marketing & innovation at BSE Global, got plenty of pushback when he pitched a Brooklyn Nets activation — in Paris, complete with an orchestral tribute to The Notorious B.I.G. and Brooklyn Nets-inspired pizzeria. One colleague even said to him, “You really think Parisians are going to show up to a Brooklyn Nets pizzeria?” (I get the hesitation — don’t they live off of escargot and croissants?) He knew there could be major ramifications if the event flopped. But he believed in the concept enough to risk it all. “If I‘m going to get fired for anything, it’s worth [it] for an orchestral tribute to Biggie in Paris,” Goldenberg told me last week. “When your ideas are big enough and bold enough, and you believe in them to the degree that you‘re willing to take a reputational risk, that’s when you’re onto something.” Playing it safe can be a risk in itself. But marketing thrives on standing out, which demands taking chances. For Goldenberg, the payoff was massive: Fans snapped up all 15K tickets to the Nets-Cavaliers game, 3.3K visitors indulged in Brooklyn pizza, and Biggie’s tribute sold out in five days 🍕 450K unique visitors to Brooklynets.com/paris 64K emails captured (90% net-new to their database) 195% YoY surge in ticket sales to French consumers and over seven figures in total revenue 💵 Source Goldenberg got stakeholders on board by being blunt: “You all need to understand how important this is, not just for the Nets but for our fans and the global sports industry,” he told colleagues. “It’s never been done before at this scale.” Sticking to the tried-and-true is tempting. But it was insight matched with instinct that landed Goldenberg his big swings. Read How An NBA Marketer Brought the Brooklyn Nets to Paris (& What Marketers Can Learn from Him) Lesson 3: Break the fourth wall. The first Malört ad I ever saw was in 2022, in season one of the Chicago-set TV show The Bear, of all places. Anna Sokratov says it was one of the first ads they ever ran — for nearly a century prior, Malört relied on word of mouth and Chicagoans pranking out-of-town guests. Since marketing Malört is such a new phenomenon, Sokratov, brand manager for Jeppson’s Malört, feels a lot of freedom to be funny, to be outlandish, to be experimental. (In fact, one of the people she looks to for inspiration is previous marketing master Greg Fass of Liquid Death.) It’s an old saw at this point that authenticity drives consumer loyalty. But less is said about what authenticity looks like. “People are really looking for brands that break that fourth wall,” Sokratov says. “They want to see the people behind the brand.” Past and present employees appear in a series of ads featuring Malört faces (Google it), which are underscored by the tagline, “Do not enjoy. Responsibly.” Malört may be a lot of things, but it’s neither dishonest nor indirect. Read “This is disgusting, try some”: Marketing Chicago’s vile-tasting liqueur Lesson 4: Use the peanut butter method. “Everyone hates advertising, but they’re okay being sold to,” Hassan S. Ali, creative director of brand at Hootsuite, says. It’s like using peanut butter to sneak your dog a pill. “If people are willing to be sold to, pitch the pill in something yummy. People will watch it.” (Let’s ignore for a moment that we are all the hapless dogs in this analogy.) “I often think that the best ads are ones we can‘t measure, because they’re shared in a group chat with friends.” I sincerely hope nobody is working on a pixel that can track my group chats, but it’s true that if somebody shares an ad, it’s because it’s both funny and emotionally resonant. Maybe you see a funny ad for diapers. Your sister’s just had a baby, and you share the ad in the family group chat. “All of a sudden, there’s
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Pop quiz! What do Meow Wolf, Blue Man Group, Cirque du Soleil, Disney Imagineering, and Ringling Bros. have in common? They’ve all sought out today’s guest as a consultant. But today’s master is… actually not a master of marketing at all. In fact, he’s never worked a day in marketing. But he literally wrote the book on interactive performance. And as marketing leaders pour big budgets into branded experiences, live events, and interactive brand activations, you’re going to want to hear what he has to say. Name: Jeff Wirth, Co-founder of the Interactive PlayLab Job: Designs, directs, and consults on interactive experiences, virtual world applications, and live immersive fiction Claim to fame: Did you see the list of companies he’s worked with?! Fun fact: Started his career as a clown for the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus Lesson 1: Begin at the end. When designing your interactive experience, Wirth recommends first thinking about what you want participants to walk away with. No, not a shopping bag full of merch. Think more philosophically. “What do you want people to understand after the activation that they didn’t understand before?” For Meow Wolf or Cirque du Soleil, that might be discovering a childlike sense of wonder. For a brand activation or marketing event, it’ll be… something no less deep, actually. Sure, you could aim for them to walk away with some product info — if you want them to forget it by the time they get back to their car. Truly memorable experiences aim for something more profound. Wirth says step 2 is asking: “How do we make it so we don’t tell them what to understand? We create a context within which they have an opportunity to discover that.” That context is the skeleton for your event or experience design. But Wirth emphasizes that this must only be an opportunity — trying to force a participant to a specific conclusion is, to his mind, both unethical and potentially damaging. Which brings us to Lesson 2. Lesson 2: Empower your participants to think for themselves. “Put the priority on the participant’s capacity to think for themselves,” Wirth advises. As an anti-example, he shares the story of a pharmaceutical company that approached him to create an interactive experience. When Wirth required that the experience present their product among a range of options, the company quickly backed out. That’s a mistake. Aside from being ethically questionable, railroading a participant will assuredly lead to an experience that is forgettable at best — at worst, it could be harmful to the participant and your brand. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give your participants something to think about. Wirth explains that if you want people to play, you need to give them enough to play with. What’s more, “you need to give them the experience that they can play and be successful at it.” In other words, your experience needs to provide enough context that your participants know how to play — and can even feel accomplishment — but not so much that they’re simply following instructions. Lesson 3: Play is not just for children. Play can be a powerful component of a live event. But “play” means different things to different people. You can play a game. You can play around. You can play along. These all have different shades of meaning that affect what your participants are asked to do and what they get out of your event. You need to decide what type of play serves the context you defined in Lesson 1. For Wirth’s experiences, play means “make-believe for the purpose of empowerment.” Why make-believe? That’s a hard word to put in front of stakeholders. “One, you get the opportunity to be more authentic. Because you’re not having to hold the mask that is how you present yourself to society.” And two? Make-believe gives you “the ability to have deeper empathy for people who are not like you.” “When you play make-believe, it doesn’t have to be winning and losing. The joy is simply in the making of belief.” And, as for what a participant walks away with, “joy” is a pretty good bag of merch.
When I think of B2B marketing, rock ‘n’ roll is far from my mind. But Video Brothers CEO and former touring musician Chandler Quintin brings exactly that to his strategy. It turns out the skills he built playing Warped Tour and opening for bands like Panic! At the Disco are surprisingly transferable to marketing. “That kind of experience gives me the charisma to go out there and tell an industry like B2B, ‘Hey, you’re boring,’” he says. “B2B is having a really hard time standing out and cutting through the noise, so they need a little rock n’ roll, right?” But even the most raucous rockstars have a method to their madness, and Quintin says Video Brothers’ method for helping B2B brands stand out is called the ad suite formula. “One of the principles of the ad suite is bringing people through a journey because people like stories,” he explains. “They like to be entertained. We want them to remember things; the best way to do that is to tell a great story.” The formula hits all the right notes. According to Quintin, after implementing this formula, Loxo, a Video Brothers client, experienced a 46% increase in quarter-over-quarter revenue and a 25% increase in pipeline growth. So, what‘s the deal with this ad suite formula? Here’s a step-by-step breakdown: Step 1: The Teaser Ad Step 2: The Hero Ad Step 3: The Follow Ups and Reminders Bonus Track: The Landing Page Step 1: The Teaser Ad While most marketers get caught up in clicks and conversions, Quintin focuses on what he calls an “attention matrix.” “Audiences are in this bottom left corner of not knowing who you are and not caring. They’re also not going to watch a lot of content,” he says. “Our goal as marketers is to bring them to the top right, where they know who you are, care a lot about what you do, are problem-aware, and possibly solution-aware. Now, they’ll watch a lot more content.” Think of the 15-second teaser as an opener to a live show. It gets the crowd’s attention and prepares them for the main act. “We’re not looking for clicks or conversions; we’re looking to stop them in their tracks and introduce them to the pain because great marketers market pain,” Quintin says. “They don’t market solutions.” In the teaser ad Video Brothers created for Loxo, the problem is a recruiter trying to find the most elusive candidate yet — Bigfoot! It’s short, snappy, funny, and exciting. The teaser ties the problem to the brand and spotlights the business as the solution. And in a world where viewers like me struggle to muscle through even 10 seconds of ads, Quintin says it‘s okay if audiences don’t get through the teaser. The ad will just run again. “We don’t want to be afraid of showing the same ad twice because the ads are fun. People actually want to watch them,” he says. “The idea is to start warming the audience up, so we capture them with a teaser ad, we retarget them with a teaser ad again to get them to a higher viewer intent.” And once the crowd is warmed up, it’s time for the headliner: the hero ad. Step 2: The Hero Ad If you’ve been to a concert, you know the headliner usually has the longest set. The same goes for hero ads in the ad suite formula. The hero ad is about 30 seconds long and is a stand-alone, front-to-back narrative that introduces the problem and solidifies the brand as the solution. “It’s all done in this memorable, fun environment,” Quintin says. Loxo‘s hero ad is an excellent example. The recruiters are looking for Bigfoot as a job candidate. Of course, Bigfoot isn’t easy to find. Notice how the ad shows the recruiters discussing the tools Loxo provides to lead them to Bigfoot. Okay, you‘ve seen the opener and the headliner. That must mean the show’s over, right? Nope! It’s time for the encore. Step 3: The Follow Ups and Reminders After the hero ad gives the audience the full story, they’re treated to follow-up and reminder ads. The follow-up ad shows the positive transformation the brand provides and gives the audience closure regarding the story. In the Loxo follow-up below, we see the recruiters finally reached Bigfoot via video call and are preparing to send him to the hiring manager. The story may be over, but the work isn’t. Video Brothers will roll out reminder ads to stay top of mind with the audience. “The reminder ad plays into the psychology of needing reminders and signs to see things,” Quintin says. “You’ll tune out a lot of information in your day-to-day life, but signs will stand out to you.” Reminder ads are about 6 seconds long. Like stop signs and green lights, they convey one action the brand wants the audience to take. That action could be to make a call, book an appointment, or visit the brand’s website. “Think of reminder ads as video billboards where you could be scrolling by it fast, but because your brain recognizes the patterns from the prior ads, you know subconsciously that you’re seeing ads from that company,” Quintin explains. If the audience sees the ads enough, they‘ll eventually become curious enough to research your brand or visit your website. Just make sure your website isn’t a letdown. Bonus Track: The Landing Page I can‘t tell you how many times I’ve gone to a concert, fallen in love with a band, and then decided to visit their merch table, only to be underwhelmed by the items there. No business wants its audience to be disappointed by a bland website, which is why Quintin says the visual aspects of the ad suite formula are crucial. “The one thing a lot of marketers get wrong is that they’ll have these awesome ads and send someone to a boring landing page with a form-fill,” he explains. “You were just entertaining them, and
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