This email’s interrupting your day. Sorry-not-sorry.
I’m a professional interrupter. That’s what marketing is.
You’re online, or watching TV, or listening to the radio, or checking your email, and BANG. Interruption. Here we are. Pay us attention. And then pay us.
It’s how it works. Good marketers know that. Remember it. And offer a trade-off.
In exchange for your time, we will entertain or inform while we persuade. We make sure the message we’re putting out there appeals to you.
Like this email. You give me your time, I try and be entertaining and informative, all the while gently reminding you that you can pay me1 to write great copy for you.
Good marketers know this.
Not-so-great marketers have forgotten. And not-so-great marketers fucking love LinkedIn.
A friend of mine, Tom, published a great LinkedIn post. In exchange for my time, he informed me about the limitations of the site’s Creator Mode and entertained me with some great writing.
Enter the not-so-great marketers.
Oof. Talk about a bad interruption. A dude with an owl avatar leaping in to talk about what he wanted to talk about. No entertainment. No education. Just attempted persuasion. No malice, admittedly, but enough to grab my attention.
And he didn’t stop there. Tom’s a popular guy. There were loads of other replies.
Our owl didn’t give a hoot. He replied to the replies!
It was amazing. Car crash viewing. I’m sure his profile impressions were through the roof.
And I wouldn’t be surprised if all the people who were trying to have a real conversation with Tom took one look at that interruption, saw there was no entertainment or information packaged in with the attempt at persuasion, and filed our feathered friend in their mental “no thanks” buckets.
Butting in is part of the job. But if you don’t at least try to balance the scales and make it worth the interruptee’s while, you’re on a hiding to nothing. Even if you mean well.
I apologise for this email interruption. Now back to your regularly scheduled inbox.
An important update:
Tom, in his benevolent wisdom, dropped me a line to tell me “Churl, Interrupted” is perhaps the best email subject line of the year. Told you, he’s a smart guy.
He also went into bat for the Wise Owl, who is in fact wise, and helpful, and a very nice chap indeed.
He's just not a marketer.
Which goes to show, you shouldn't leap to conclusions based on LinkedIn comments you've read.
And that you never know which bitter, twisted newsletter writers are inferring malice from your LinkedIn comments.
Something mint - this original milk advert from California
Yes, the visuals have the hint of AI about them, and the song is naff as hell, but looking at the rise of plant-based milks and viewing it as a compliment not a threat is such a great, confident message.
Now who’s for a nice, cool glass of sushi milk?
Thought so.
P.S: Want to filter out loads of spam contacts from LinkedIn? Leave your date of birth visible and disconnect from anyone who uses it to try and sell you something in a birthday message.
Or Ben, or Martin. We split it all three ways.