Product, Price … Procreation?

I listen to a lot of podcasts. A lot. I like them because they’re a pretty passive medium and I have a pretty dramatic aversion to focusing on just one thing at a time. Compared to YouTube videos, which probably accounts for 50% of my consumption of stuff, including food, water, and air. Seriously, I consume a lot of content. Between YouTube, podcasts, Twitter and Reddit, you’re probably looking at 90% of my knowledge of the world… and I have a Masters degree in Marketing (think about that.) 

For people like me, and god I hope there aren’t that many of you, during these sessions of unstoppable assimilation of information it’s pretty common to be faced with a question. Could I do that too? Could I make a YouTube video? Or a podcast? And, the answer is almost certainly yes — and maybe you should! 

I’ve been sitting on the desire to put stuff out into the world for literally years, and that is in no small part why I’m creating this website (also, it’s a pandemic, and I’ll be out of work for the better part of a f*ing long time.) But, I’ve procrastinated for almost that entire time, because talking about doing something is infinitely easier than actually doing the thing.

There’s a laundry list of content projects I have in mind, most of them are complete trash, but I think some of them have legs! It’s taken me a long time to realise these things, but I believe them to be truths:

1. Nobody is good when they begin. And if they are, they probably waited too long to start. Nearly all of my favourite creators had been grinding for years before I discovered them, and when you look back on their catalog the early videos are just sh*t. So, to begin is to be okay with that, to publish utter garbage but commit to effort and incremental improvement. Amateurs create when they feel like, professionals create even when they don’t. 
2. It takes a lifetime to become an overnight success. People that are lucky enough to become an overnight success rarely are. Most of these people turned up over and over again, and put themselves into a position where they could capitalise on the attention they earned. Luck is a function of persistence and being ready when the opportunity comes.
3. Few people who are known for what they do are actually the best at what they do. And that is totally okay. I consume a lot of engineering and marketing content from people who aren’t the absolute best in their field. Just like academics, there is value in learning and repackaging knowledge to distribute to whomever will listen to you. There is beauty in sharing your interests with the world.
4. Accumulating knowledge but not sharing it is a selfish waste of time. If you’re lucky enough to be learned, it you have the time to study then you almost have a duty to share it. Simply telling someone, or sharing it to social media is good enough, but don’t be selfish, put it out there.

All this is to say, there is a podcast I want to make, and it’s about marketing. Originally the title was going to be Product, Place, Price … P*rn? But other than being a little long, it’s just asking to get shadow banned or reported. If I ever write a book though, you’d better believe that will be the title! Anyway, Product, Price… Procreation has a similar vibe and the added benefit of being shortened to 3PR. The podcast will be a series of short episodes created in the spirit of the venerable marketing mix. For those of you who didn’t waste your tertiary education on the field of marketing, allow me to explain.

The Marketing Mix, delightfully known as the 4Ps of Marketing, is a foundational model of marketing. Marketing’s prodigal son, at least academically speaking, Philip Kotler defined the marketing mix as the “set of marketing tools that (a firm) uses to pursue its marketing objectives (extract the most amount of money from you.)”

 I like to think of it as the levers you pull as a marketer, and the levers that pull you as a consumer. I will probably end up using something like that as the podcast description, just you wait! In the spirit of arbitrary alliteration I have a list of at least 100 different words that start with P, and I have faith that I spin every single one of those into something vaguely related to marketing. These are the pitiable standards low enough for me to get started (don’t feel sorry for me, at least not until the first episode is released.)

Here’s just a small example of the words I’ve got so far (don’t you dare hold me to these):

Privacy. Participation. Parliament. Purpose. Philanthropy. Portability. Proof. Practicality. Prevention. Profitability. Probability. Phones. Principles. Packaging. Publishing. Property. Provincial. Parking. Possibility.

I’ve also got some ridiculous ones like petrichor, and plebiscite. Lord help me if I have to scrape the bottom of the barrel with the word plebiscite…

Anyway, now that I’ve written this blog post I have to do it. This is what the pros called accountability. Which if I fail to follow through with will rightly provoke what the pros call bullying and humiliation. So wish me luck legends.

Pandemically,
Dan Lawson x