I'm a Walking Encyclopedia

I consistently get puzzled looks about transferrable learnings that I get excited about that don’t make sense to anyone else (without explanation).

Jo may have sent me this TikTok recently inferring I’m the walking encyclopedia in our relationship…

This week I had one too many conversations about “learnings” with Jo that I figured it’d be fun to put my top three into an email for you:

1. Redbull’s cross-platform short-form video strategy of slowly zooming out to repurpose content ideas

2. What Cava’s wild growth over the last year can teach about improving our offers

3. What Utah’s Department Of Transportation can teach us about making “dull” things (building bridges) interesting through different content formats on IG

Redbull’s Zoom out content repurposing strategy

If there’s a crazy sport, Redbull probably has a hand in marketing it or creating content about it. So I love keeping tabs on how they’re thinking about content since there’s so much to learn.

A week ago they put up a short form video of Hazal Nehir doing this infinity stride challenge, basically a parkour challenge of jumping from beam to beam running uphill, here’s the top-down view:

Across Instagram, TikTok, and Youtube Shorts they put up the same video. Just the run happening, and on each platform respectively it was the first (or second) best video of the week if not more:

Now the zoom-out strategy kicks in - if people loved seeing the run, what about pulling out a half step and showing how Hazal trained for the run (links: Insta, TT, YT)

In aggregate across the three platforms the second video got more views than the first. Making it the new best-performing video so they zoomed another step out and told the story of how Hazel came back from a horrible accident to be able to do the run (Trigger warning, she broke her arm bad, TT even has a sensitive content screen). As of writing this, it hasn’t been posted on YouTube yet. But it’s doing similarly impressive numbers on Instagram (in the time it took me to write this email it went up by another million plays on Instagram).

Cool cool - RedBull is a media juggernaut and this works for them, but how would this work for a small business?

• Other than the first running video, the second two videos are stitches of B-roll that was taken over the past few years. When you have something people find interesting, think about using content you already have to tell a bigger story and ride an engagement wave.

• Many people don’t see all three videos (I didn’t until I looked), so don’t be afraid of putting up similar versions of the same content if it’s performing well

• Take a B-roll even if you don’t always know how you’d use it. Easy places to start are things you’re already doing, zoom calls, packaging a gift for a client, walking into your new office for the first time, etc

• Using the exact same videos on IG & TT is a working strategy if you don’t want to create unique content for each platform

Cava’s unprecedented growth

Last week Cava reported their quarterly financials for the period ending July 14 (publicly listed companies report financials every quarter on investor calls). And something the CEO said stood out to me.

But first, why should we care what Cava’s CEO has to say? Well, investors expected Cava to bring in $15 million (net income ~ profit) in the quarter, and they actually brought in $19.7 million, or a little more than 30% more than everyone expected them to. Consistently beating estimates has their stock price this year looking like this:

Or roughly almost a 200% increase in stock market price since the beginning of the year.

In Axios’s article about their performance, CEO Brett Schulman explained the growth as:

But how can I copy this playbook with our business? I’d ask myself these 4 questions

1. What offer or service would your potential customers be “trading up” from to work with you? (for cava: McDonalds, Burger King, Taco Bell)

2. What differentiating factor can you add or market to encourage those customers to trade up? (for cava: better quality & healthy food)

3. What offer or service would your potential customer be “trading down” from to work with you? (for cava: sit-down restaurants, “legacy” Panera / Five Guys, etc)

4. What differentiating factor can you add or market to encourage those customers to trade down? (for cava: time, “new” or “hip”, healthy)

Utah’s DOT Bridge Fest

Government organizations aren’t exactly known for making exciting content.. especially not about paving roads.

Somehow Utah’s DOT (@utahtransportation) found a social strategy that has done an amazing job of tapping into some of the most engaging content types to make something boring and interesting (we’re talking hundreds of thousands if not millions of views).

I thought we’d pick a couple (ahem, 13…) to highlight different types of content you could try out if you think what you’re doing currently “looks boring” on socials. (Please watch them all, I promise it’s worth it — Jo).

• Memes - take a popular photo or cartoon and just write words on top

• Eye-catching carousel covers for educational posts (title & people)

• Voiceovers explaining something that’s happening with B-Roll clips while having character-like using terms like “demure” and “cutesy”

• Collab posts with other similar “businesses”

• Text chain graphics

• Short lip sync videos

• Skits (okay so maybe this is a little harder)

• Overlaying comments, questions, and testimonials on a B-roll

• ASMR / Slow living / Calm video with text

• Before and after of projects

• Behind the curtain explainers

• Employee (or client) spotlight

• Fun branding for something that could be boring, how can you not love BridgeFest

Okay so I know this email was a little bit of a walking tour around what I found interesting this week… so hit reply I’d love to hear what you found interesting this week!

Thanks,

Lyndon

Ps if you’re looking for a great breakdown on building an audience, I came across this great blog post by Shaan Puri over the weekend that definitely got me thinking

Pps so we slightly adjusted our monthly coaching package based on feedback we received, you can check out the new monthly package here