February 4, 2020

How to Do Marketing Like a LEGEND: Christopher Lochhead on the Real Marketing Real Fast Podcast, Hosted By Doug Morneau

Check Out The Real Marketing Real Fast Episode Page and Show Notes

CREATE YOUR OWN CATEGORY
- Legends never compete—competition, by definition. is a comparison game
Data allows businesses to know their customers— if something can be digitized, it can be personalized
Products don’t speak for themselves—position yourself or be positioned
“The empires of the future do not fit into the categories and paradigms of the past. Product-market fit, by definition, is backward-looking, not forward-looking.”– Chris Lochhead

To improve your marketing skills, Persuasion: Convincing Others When Facts Don’t Matter by Lee Hartley Carter is a must-read

Chris Lochhead (@Lochhead) is the former Chief Marketing Officer of three publicly-traded companies
- He’s also the bestselling author of Niche Down and Play Bigger, as well as the host of the Lochhead on Marketing podcast
- Check out his website
Host – Doug Morneau (@DougMorneau)

When a business creates a new category, everything/everyone that attempts to compete is compared to them—they become the standard
“The number one skill that CEOs are looking for in CMOs [Chief Marketing Officers] is the ability to create and design categories” – Chris Lochhead
Legends never compete—competition, by definition. is a comparison game
- CREATE YOUR OWN CATEGORY
In the beginning, new categories are often described by what they’re not
- Ex.: “Horseless carriage”

In a sense, category leaders build a moat with their customer data
Data allows businesses to know their customers— if something can be digitized, it can be personalized
- For example, every time you consume a piece of content on Netflix, that transaction is logged and stored to provide you with improved recommendations
Companies who are “first movers” acquire data on their users and have market intelligence nobody else has access to
Customer data is more valuable than cash
- Why? – It’s more monetizable
Think of your product or service as a data platform
- For instance, Tesla doesn’t sell cars—they sell a platform

The science part of marketing is becoming more precise and powerful
The combination of human creativity and the increasing cost-effectiveness of starting a company offers widespread opportunities
“We can have an idea, deploy that idea, and see what response we get. We can try a bunch of different things. We then invest in the things that get traction … Our ability to do that for a very small amount of money is incredible.” – Chris Lochhead

Design a category with a provocative/unique point-of-view, encouraging the world to think about something specific in a massively different way
- Example: Dyson competes in vacuum cleaner category, but changed the discussion/priorities by going bagless

Start off with where you think you can be radically different. Then, connect that to a problem.
- Ask yourself: “What makes us radically different? What problem or opportunity do we see that no one else sees?”
Then, offer customers a unique, differentiated product
- “When there’s nothing unique, you have a stupid conversation that says, ‘Compare us on price, availability, and service’.” – Chris Lochhead

Radical differentiation: Figure out a unique and interesting way to look at a problem, then tie it together with a radical point of view
Products don’t speak for themselves—position yourself or be positioned
- If you don’t tell people how to think about a product, they may not “get it”

Chris says: Product-market fit is one of the most dangerous ideas in the history of business
- “The empires of the future do not fit into the categories and paradigms of the past. Product-market fit, by definition, is backward-looking, not forward-looking.”– Chris Lochhead
  - Think: The reason companies like Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft are now worth trillions is because they were unique upon conception