Catching up
INTRODUCTION
It’s been roughly six months to the day that we started writing this newsletter. Whilst it hasn’t always been easy to get up early to write them (every other Sunday) there have been many unexpected benefits. It has reaffirmed to us the power of consistency. It has helped to improve our writing style. And it helped us to make many brilliant and new connections. As we hit this mini milestone we thought it would be a great time to allow our new readers to catch up and recap our top five most popular articles.
Btw looking at the analytics of this newsletter there are many of you who read every week but have yet to share this newsletter. In truth, it’s not always easy to grow and spread the word. So we’d love it if you could forward this week’s newsletter on Linkedin to help spread the word. We are looking at you Rachel, Rebecca, Pollyana, Robin, Camilla and Mark 😉
ARTICLE 1: COMMUNITY BUILDING IS A CON
It is undeniable that the ‘creator economy’ is having its moment in the sun. More people are searching & talking about it than ever before. Some creators now command audience sizes greater than TV shows. And huge amounts of money is swirling around the space. In 2022 the creator economy was valued at a whopping $104.2BN alone. Yet despite all of the above many traditional marketers are still not convinced. When ‘communities’ or ‘fandoms’ are mentioned many simply dismiss the idea outright. Community building, they argue, goes against important marketing science established by the likes of Byron Sharp, Les Binet & Peter Field.
In response to that, I set myself a challenge. I try and reconcile community building with marketing science. To achieve this I broke down this longer essay into three parts. First, I reconcile some of the main criticisms against community building. Second, I show how community building actually complements marketing science. And finally, I offer a suggestion as to how community building might be better implemented into the moden marketing mix
ARTICLE 2: THE FOUR BIGGEST MISTAKES SCALE-UPS MAKE
We are fortunate at Defiant to work with a number of amazing scale-ups. Those that are not only building new business models but are genuinely looking to make the world a better place. Yet despite their noble ambitions and the new products or services they provide, too often we see these brilliant companies struggle to not only thrive but survive. In this edition we broke down the most common mistakes scale-ups make and how they can best avoid them.
ARTICLE 3: RYAN’S BLUE OCEAN
Earlier this year Ryan Reynold’s Mint Mobile sold for over $1BN. How did this telecoms challenger achieve such a sizeable valuation? And why was T-mobile willing to pay so much? The easy (and slightly lazy) answer is to say that it’s simply because Mr Reynolds is a Hollywood Celebrity. The more interesting answer, in my opinion, is that Mr Reynolds is a master marketer. Over the last few years, Reynolds & his business partner George Dewey, have created ‘Maximum Effort’ one of the most interesting marketing companies around. Want to know how they did it? Check out the link below.
ARTICLE 4: HOW TO CREATE A $700M BRAND IN JUST FOUR YEARS
In just four years Liquid Death has grown to be a brand valued at $700m. Further, it has been voted by numerous publications as being one of the best brands of the moment, in terms of creativity and pushing the boundaries of marketing. How did they do it? Check out the link below to find out.
ARTICLE 5: HOW DUOLINGO DOMINATED TIKTOK
In just two years Duolingo blew up on TikTok. They grew from 50,000 to 5 Millions followers & managed to create 83 viral videos that achieved over 1M views. Yet in 2023 as more brands jump onto the platform, but seemingly go nowhere, it raises a question. How the heck did they do it? Click the link below to find out.
Expect big thinking and small typ0s #madebydyslexia
Many thanks,
Will Poskett
Co-Founder
Defiant