I’m angry. I hate him so much.
You know who I’m talking about.
My angry song
As a teen, this was the song I would play blaringly loud into my earphones to drown my anger.
Not for the lyrics, mind you. Just the intensity of the hard rock sound. (Hat tip to Joe Bosco, my hometown best friend, who gave me a “Houses of the Holy” cassette for my 16th birthday, I think.)
Tread carefully
I can hear Beth in my head.
“Joey, this is your public, online persona. Are you really sure you want to write this? I’m telling you not to write this.”
I can also hear my lame refute. “Yeah, I know, but blah blah blah.”
To be honest, I can’t even think of a valid excuse this time. She’s totally right and I should probably hit the back key and start over.
But my brain is flooded and I promised I’d write you every Wednesday without fail. So here we are, as other, healthier, thoughts compete for space in my stupid head.
Yes, I do have a medical device marketing point.
Stick with me. I promise I won’t drag this out.
Did you know there’s a months-long uprising in Nicaragua with hundreds of civilian casualties?
No?
I wouldn’t either unless my beloved video editor Lucia lived there and told me. This weekend she posted on Facebook,
Esta mañana a las 5:30 pasaron los mismos grupos paramilitares frente a mi casa, armados y con música de Gorillaz a todo volumen en las camionetas. Cuando se fueron dejaron un muchacho muerto justo en la acera del Rincón Cubano. A las 7:20 llegó la policia junto con Medicina Legal a llevárselo.
Roughly translated, “This morning at 5:30, paramilitary groups passed in front of my house, armed and playing the loudest music from their vans to intimidate us. They left a dead boy right on the sidewalk.”
If you want more information, see the Confidencial.com homepage because Nicaraguan stories probably wouldn’t interest Americans like me. I’ve seen nothing on the national news, on Yahoo, or other news media I access.
The raw emotion and the newsworthy
U.S. news organizations share news they believe will generate American clicks. Their whole model is based on it.
Nicaraguan uprising? Yeah, not so much. They don’t even talk about it.
At last! My point: If a civil war in Central America doesn’t even hit our radar, can you imagine how many messages the average citizen is getting per day?
I’m putting Content Shock – the single most important medical device marketing point I want to make this year – in the context of anger, emotion, and newsworthiness.
You may be thinking, Really, Joe? Now, come on, this is a stretch, even for you. How can you even put “medical device marketing messaging” and these other thoughts in the same sentence?
OK. Maybe. I accept that. It’s a stretch.
But my point is,
Your messaging is not competing with other medical device videos, images, and words. You are competing with every possible stimulus out there.
Think about that the next time you send out a self-congratulatory press release or “stating the obvious” blog post.
We don’t have time for it.
Well, hell. If you put it that way…
So, Joe. If you’re saying my website or brochure has to compete with parents being separated from their children, of course! I’m not going to be able to compete.
I mean, if you put it that way, what hope do any of us have in breaking through?
I’m breaking through. Right now. You’re reading this.
Why? Because I am real, unfiltered. I tell you life stories which happen to involve marketing. You know I’m not going to bullshit you.
When I do write a dead-on piece about email marketing, or trade show marketing, or generating more leads in Salesforce for your sales team to follow up on – what you subscribed for – you’ll already BE HERE. Because I engaged you at some point before then.
Can you do that?
Is that a risk you’re willing to take?
I hope so.
And if my journal today had you run to the unsubscribe link, it’s okay.
Because while you left, I gave remaining subscribers a reinforcement of my value proposition: “I am a real person doing medical device marketing who will tell you what he thinks.
Which was so worth it.
Fast Round
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Open rates. I bet today’s subject line generates more opens than I’ve seen in months. Edgy sells copy. Vanilla does not.
Also on open rates, I asked my friend Chen Sirkis what his open rates are. They are comparable to mine and told me my suggestion – to resend the exact same message to those who didn’t open it the first time – lifted his open rates by a third to a half.
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General Electric goes away! Did you see yesterday? They booted GE from the Dow Jones Industrial Average, effective June 26.
From CNN.com, “David Blitzer, chairman of S&P’s index committee, noted that industrial companies like GE are no longer as prominent in the American economy. Banks, healthcare, tech and consumer companies play a larger role today. ‘Today’s change to the DJIA will make the index a better measure of the economy and the stock market,’ Blitzer said.”
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The Future of Technology Panel at Wharton. Watch this video from my alma mater. To save time, start at the 17-minute mark. It may inspire you to improve.
Thank you for joining me on The Journey.
See you next week – or sooner – if you choose to reply to this email,
P.S. You’ll be amused to know I actually did have Beth read this. She wasn’t TWO SENTENCES into it before she said, “Really, Joey?!” I replied, “Keep reading.” At the end, she gave her okay. A win. I’ll take it.
