⚰️ Introducing: Marketing Scares Month ⚰️
🕸️ Served with terrifying marketing scares from the Tink team
Hello! Shreya again. It’s FINALLY October and everything feels magical. We’re welcoming this month with this evergreen Robert Frost poem, and an introduction to our ✨ Marketing Scares Month ✨.
Wil and I will be covering all sorts of marketing scares this month, from worst pitches we’ve received to how to do marketing when it scares the
Beetlejuicebejeezus out of you.
I thought we’d kick things off by sharing some marketing scares from our own Tink team.
Before we begin…
Did you have a chance to read out bonus issue yet? On September 30th, we released Is Podcasting Dead?, in celebration of International Podcast Day. Our special panel episode features Wil Williams as moderator with Anne Baird, Lauren Passell, and yours truly reframing the tale. Check it out!
👻 Marketing Scares You Wouldn’t Wish Upon A Star
These are all folks I look up to and seeing their marketing scare and/or fail made me feel less alone in the mistakes I made. Honestly, I hope it makes you feel the same.
Enjoy!
💛 Arielle Nissenblatt:
Once, I was helping a network launch a podcast that had a big celebrity at the helm. As you can imagine, there were MANY rounds of back and forth between my team and this celeb’s team to make sure the press release and other launch assets were just right. I thought we had it all squared away, so we sent out our pitches and started getting some press hits only to find out that — at the last minute — the celeb decided he didn’t want to use his middle initial. This was a bigger deal than you might think it should be, but such is life. The lesson: double, triple, quadruple check with all parties involved. Even if it feels like you’re being annoying.
💛 Lauren Passell:
(Lauren had more than one to share and I think you’ll appreciate them as much as I did!)
I booked a client (who was pretty famous, guess who, like maybe one of the most famous clients I've ever had) on a (also pretty big) feminist show. I thought it would be perfect. He was supposed to send me his audio so I could pass it along to the podcasters. He sent it, and I forwarded it. They emailed me back and said, "Lauren did you listen to this?" I said, “no, isn't that half of the interview conversation?” It wasn't. He was sending me, Lauren Passell, a personal audio note telling me how much he hated the podcast and the podcasters, it was a horrible match, he has no idea why I pitched him there (even though I had prepared him.) I would like to say lesson learned but honestly this is just crazy if you ask me.
My first job was working for a big parenting magazine, like the biggest one. One of my jobs was to build and send a digital newsletter to about 500,000 people about a topic of my choice. During the summer I wrote an issue about how to travel with kids and went to our online database to find a photo to go with it. This was back in the day when print journalism was big and we'd hire photographers to shoot for every single article. I found a photo of a little girl laying in a suitcase with her feet in the air. My editor read and approved the newsletter and sent it out. Let's review: a photographer we hired took this picture, it got uploaded to our system, I picked it out, and my editor approved it. This was also the first year Twitter was around, thank god. So when I saw that Fox News was tweeting about the latest newsletter from this parenting magazine, it wasn't that big of a deal. (Once again, thank god this didn't happen now.) Here's a quick description of the photo: the girl on the photo did not have underwear on, that's something I had not noticed and apparently my editor hadn't either. (She was wearing a dress it was hard to tell.) Imagine the Fox News headlines. When I didn't get fired immediately, I thought wow it must be hard to get fired from jobs because if not this, then what?
💛 Devin Andrade:
The problem is that I’ve wiped the rogue typos, forgotten TKs, and unattached attachments from my memory as a coping mechanism so I’m struggling to come up with specific examples. But I can say what my marketing nightmares are made of - getting called out for sending a pitch letter that is missing an obvious connection or personalization that I should’ve known. It’s the fear that drives me to do my best to research thoroughly before sending a pitch.
Phew! 😅
I myself have accidentally posted pictures meant SOLELY for my personal Instagram account to the account of the brand I was managing. Fun, innit?
If you’ve got some stories to share, this is a safe space! Go ahead.
💫 More Magic:
The XMTR (pronounced transmitter) Audio Festival recently celebrated independent audio talent. They curated 21 short pieces that are liable to make you fall in love with audio again. How many times have I listened to I’d Rather Be Swimming? Yes.
Speaking of, if you’re into creating short audio pieces, you might enjoy this prompt from Welcome To My Home.
Congratulations to Tink’s friends Ausha on the launch of Ausha Intelligence, their new AI-powered tool that generates search-optimized show notes and marketing content.
🌝 From The Desk of Tink
We are kinda proud to be working on this one! Beyond+ is a new weekly podcast from the leading Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (EPGAF). Launched on October 1st, this podcast highlights the stories of youth living HIV positive. More than 40 years after the start of the HIV pandemic, Beyond+ asks the question: What is beyond the diagnosis?
Thank you for reading! Next week, Wil dives into the worst pitches they’ve received. I don’t know about you but I’m truly excited for that one.
Until then, keep listening for magic!
Shreya