Dan Salkey | Small World | Merging Marketing & Entertainment - Is It Right For Your Business?

Summary

CMO Confidential Podcast Summary: "Dan Salkey | Small World | Merging Marketing & Entertainment - Is It Right For Your Business?"

Release Date: July 15, 2025

In this insightful episode of CMO Confidential, host Mike Linton engages in a thought-provoking conversation with Dan Sulke, co-founder and strategy partner of Small World, an agency dedicated to creating Entertainment-First Brands. They delve into the intricate relationship between marketing and entertainment, exploring its applicability and effectiveness for various businesses.

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1. Introduction

Mike Linton sets the stage by introducing Dan Sulke and his expertise in merging marketing with entertainment. He emphasizes the growing importance of entertainment in modern marketing strategies.

• Mike Linton [00:35]: "CMO Confidential is a program that takes you inside the drama, the decisions and the politics that go with being the head of marketing at any company."

2. Defining Entertainment in Marketing

Dan Sulke elaborates on what it means to integrate entertainment into branding, clarifying that it's not about transforming into an entertainment brand, but about being entertaining.

• Dan Sulke [02:08]: "It's not about being an entertainment brand, it's about being entertaining... crafting a brand that earns and owns its audience's attention."

He outlines the concept of entertainment-first brand building, which focuses on behaving like a character, content studio, or storyteller rather than a traditional advertiser. This approach leverages humor, character, storytelling, and spectacle to create cultural value and capture attention in a fragmented media landscape.

3. "Entertain or Die" Research Findings

Dan introduces the "Entertain or Die" research conducted in partnership with Tracksuit, a brand tracking company. This study surveyed 20,000 people globally to answer three pivotal questions:

1. Who are the most entertaining brands?
2. What makes these brands entertaining?
3. Does entertainment value drive revenue growth and share price?

• Dan Sulke [05:29]: "96% of the brands in the top 30 of our index had revenue growth last year, and two-thirds had double-digit revenue growth."

The findings reveal a strong correlation between entertainment value and business growth, indicating that entertaining brands significantly outperform their counterparts.

4. Traits of Entertaining Brands

Dan identifies four key attributes that make brands entertaining:

1. Social Engagement: Creating the most engaging content on social media platforms.
2. Attention/Surprise: Brands that shock or grab attention with edgy or unconventional content.
3. Characterfulness: Developing distinct characters or mascots that embody the brand's personality.
4. Humor: Utilizing humor effectively to build entertainment value.

• Dan Sulke [08:33]: "There are four things in particular that they over-indexed in... social, surprise, character, and humor."

Examples of entertaining brands include TikTok, Netflix, Liquid Death, and Duolingo, each excelling in these attributes to capture and retain audience attention.

5. Application to B2B Brands

Mike raises a pertinent question about the applicability of entertainment-first strategies for B2B brands targeting specialized audiences, such as surgeons or CFOs.

• Mike Linton [10:51]: "I'm a B2B brand. I'm marketing to surgeons. I'm an investment bank selling to CFOs. Do I always want to go down the entertainment route or is that dangerous?"

Dan advocates for the universal applicability of entertainment-first approaches, emphasizing that building and owning audience attention is crucial across all sectors.

• Dan Sulke [10:51]: "You cannot afford not to follow an entertainment first approach to marketing."

He cites the example of Netscout, a traditionally "boring" B2B brand, which collaborated with famed director Werner Herzog to create a documentary titled "Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Internet". This unconventional marketing move garnered significant attention and reinforced Netscout's brand relevance.

6. Best and Worst Practices in Entertainment-First Marketing

Dan contrasts effective entertainment strategies with common pitfalls. He warns against self-obsessed approaches where brands assume their products are inherently entertaining, often leading to failed campaigns.

• Dan Sulke [16:06]: "The worst attempts... are those which are self-obsessed. They inherently think that their product and their brand is going to be the most entertaining thing in the world."

Conversely, he highlights the success of brands that own their attention rather than merely renting it through expensive ads or celebrity endorsements.

• Dan Sulke [18:00]: "I would always rather own 10,000 eyeballs than rent 100,000."

7. Measuring the Impact of Entertainment in Marketing

Mike and Dan discuss the importance of moving beyond vanity metrics like impressions and reach. They emphasize measuring engagement quality through metrics such as shares, saves, and attentive cost per thousand (a metric that tracks views over a specific duration).

• Dan Sulke [20:18]: "If your post has a 2% or higher likes to comments or likes to views ratio, it's probably going to be a success."

This approach ensures that marketing efforts genuinely resonate with the audience and drive meaningful interactions.

8. Building Brand Characters and Mascots

Dan explores the resurgence of brand mascots and characters as powerful tools for entertainment-first branding. He advises brands to develop unique characters or collaborate with niche influencers rather than relying on established celebrities.

• Dan Sulke [23:21]: "You're going to find your own cast of creators... not going for big, big person, the macro celebrity."

Examples include Liquid Death's "Murderland" universe and their inventive use of brand narratives to engage audiences.

9. Managing When Entertainment Goes Wrong

Addressing potential setbacks, Dan discusses strategies for brands when their entertainment efforts backfire. Using the Bud Light controversy as an example, he underscores the importance of authenticity and staying true to brand identity.

• Dan Sulke [24:48]: "They use it as fuel to do more. They lean into the risk and commit to the bit."

Brands like Liquid Death effectively turned negative comments into creative content, demonstrating resilience and adaptability.

10. Practical Advice for Implementing Entertainment-First Marketing

As the conversation concludes, Dan offers actionable insights for brands looking to adopt an entertainment-first approach:

1. Continuous Content Creation: Develop a content system that allows for rapid idea generation and deployment.
2. Maximize Daily Engagement: Consistently produce entertaining content to stay relevant in the "world of lots of Littles."
3. Adapt and Iterate: Embrace a writer's room style approach to foster creativity and increase viral opportunities.

• Dan Sulke [28:16]: "You need to think in this world of lots of Littles, you need to be entertaining every single day."

He emphasizes the necessity of agility and innovation in today's fast-paced digital landscape to maintain audience engagement and drive sustained growth.

11. Conclusion

Mike wraps up the episode by reiterating the importance of speed and depth in content creation, thanking Dan for his valuable insights. He encourages listeners to explore further episodes and stay engaged with the CMO Confidential series.

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Key Takeaways:

• Entertainment-First Marketing is essential across all industries, including B2B, to capture and maintain audience attention.
• Traits of Entertaining Brands: Social engagement, surprise, characterfulness, and humor are pivotal in building an entertaining brand.
• Measurement Beyond Vanity Metrics: Focus on engagement quality through shares, saves, and attentive cost per thousand.
• Authentic Brand Characters: Develop unique mascots or collaborate with niche influencers to embody the brand's entertainment ethos.
• Resilience in Setbacks: Use negative feedback as fuel for further creativity, staying true to brand identity.

Notable Quotes:

• Dan Sulke [02:08]: "Crafting a brand that earns and owns its audience's attention."
• Mike Linton [10:51]: "Do I always want to go down the entertainment route or is that dangerous?"
• Dan Sulke [18:00]: "I would always rather own 10,000 eyeballs than rent 100,000."

This episode serves as a comprehensive guide for marketers seeking to integrate entertainment into their branding strategies, offering both strategic frameworks and practical advice to navigate the complexities of modern marketing.

Transcript

[Mike Linton]

The CMO Confidential Podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything Podcast network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast, I Hear Everything delivers podcast production, growth and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice then visit iheareverything.com welcome to CMO Confidential.

[Dan Sulke]

The podcast that takes you inside the drama, decisions and choices that go with being the head of marketing. Hosted by five time CMO Mike Linton.

[Mike Linton]

Welcome marketers, advertisers and those who love them to Chief Marketing Officer, Confidential. CMO Confidential is a program that takes you inside the drama, the decisions and the politics that go with being the head of marketing at any company in what is one of the most scrutinized jobs in the executive suite. I'm Mike Linton, the former Chief Marketing Officer of Best Buy, ebay, Farmers Insurance and Ancestry.com here today with my guest Dan Sulke. Today's topic merging marketing and entertainment. Is it right for your business now? Dan is the co founder and strategy partner of Small World, an agency focused on creating Entertainment first brands. So that's Entertainment first brands. He has been in the agency business since 2014 and also spent two years working on the Adidas brand in the UK. Dan, welcome to the show.

[Dan Sulke]

Thanks for introducing me so brilliantly.

[Mike Linton]

Mike, what are you going to say in practice? So, and welcome to the show. Again. That's great to say before, before we get into the topic, let's talk about and discuss exactly what you mean by by entertainment. And let me also say it's rare for marketers, or any business for that matter, to say let's make our marketing and sales materials less entertaining. So let's be really clear on what you mean by entertainment.

[Dan Sulke]

Totally. And I'm really thankful for the question because it was the first time it made me sit down and actually write a proper definition because we do get this question often and you know, you assume as you just said, that everybody wants to make their marketing more entertaining. But I think the main shift in this is it's not about being an entertainment brand, it's about being entertaining. So it's not about being an entertainment brand, it's about being entertaining. And I'll talk about that in a little bit more detail later on. When you think about it like that you can get this sort of definition for entertainment first brand building as the practice of crafting a brand that earns and owns its audience's attention. And they do that by, by behaving like a character, a content studio, a storyteller, anything but an advertiser. And those brands then create cultural value through humor, character, storytelling, spectacle, effectively leveraging entertainment value to grow faster, build distinction, and win share of mind in a really fragmented media world. And when we look at all of the brands that are deemed as entertaining, I think they've become entertaining in response to three core truths. One is this idea that reach is no longer guaranteed. All attention today is effectively earned, or you're paying out the nose for it, which I've got some really good statistics on later on. You're not just competing with other brands because of this fragmented media landscape. You're now in this royal rumble with entertainment at large. You're competing against the likes of Mr. Beast, Fortnite, Netflix, and therefore the bar for attention is far higher. For, for what grabs attention from marketing is much higher. And lastly, and this has always been a truth, I think people engage with media that entertains them, not media that sells to them.

[Mike Linton]

Hey, so that is a great definition. I'm glad we did a public service for, for you to write it down. I, I, I, I want to know, though, how do you know if you're entertaining? Like, so when you look at our podcast, obviously it's entertaining, but how do you, how do you know? How do we know we're doing an entertaining podcast?

[Dan Sulke]

Yeah, I mean, really, simply put, again, if you want, if you want the layman's terms of it, like, when we're deep, when we're judging a client's piece of work, content, really anything out in the world, the main way that you know whether something is entertaining or not is, is it being shared in your friend's group chat? I think ultimately, you know, has someone gone out of their way to say, yes, this thing is interesting enough to me to share it with another person? It's effectively word of mout on steroids in the era of the Internet, I suppose. But to me, that is what makes something genuinely entertaining. If somebody will go out of their way and share that piece of information with another person and show that.

[Mike Linton]

But that's the marketplace saying it's entertaining. If I want to think I know it's entertaining before I release it or before I even shoot it or make it, how do I, is there, is there a way to look at that? Or is really the marketplace the only arbiter of how to do this?

[Dan Sulke]

Yeah, I mean, I would always say that the Internet is the world's greatest democracy. And what I mean by that, I suppose, is that it's ultimately, that's the place you put something out into and you really know if it's going to work or not. But if you wanted sort of a, a grounding beforehand to know if something's vaguely going to be entertaining or not, we did this piece of research called Entertain or Die, which I'll give the proper plug for in a second. But in that piece of research we Track, we survey 20,000 people across the world. Do you want to say something, Mike?

[Mike Linton]

Yeah, let's go right to the research because that, that was where I wanted to go anyway. So it's a perfect segue. You guys did this research on brands and entertainment. Tell us what you learned.

[Dan Sulke]

Fantastic. Yeah. So, yeah, I think first thing to say is we, we. And by we, my company Small World, partnered with a brand tracking company called Tracksuit who run affordable, always on brand tracking. But they were also intently interested in what makes brands entertaining and whether that entertainment value kind of drives growth effectively. But when we looked at the landscape, there was literally no research done into that topic whatsoever. There are loads of really lovely creative case studies that had been written about entertaining brand work and you know, can ly and talks about creativity and towards no end, but there's no real sort of data behind that and it doesn't take a macro look at what makes brands entertaining. So we said, cool, let's do a piece of research that answers three questions. One, who are the most entertaining brands in the world? To what makes those brands entertaining? And then three, does that entertainment value drive a lift in revenue growth and share price? Spoiler alert. And I won't go into this in detail because again, it's all in the report. We'll put in the show notes. Etc. 96 of the brands in the top 30 of our index. So the most deemed the most entertaining brands in the world had revenue growth last year and two thirds of those brands had double digit revenue growth. And then if you look at what actually makes those brands entertaining, which was your original question I've taken, and if.

[Mike Linton]

You want to throw any brand names out and then talk about what makes them entertaining, that'd be great.

[Dan Sulke]

Yeah, sure. I mean there were, there were lots, there were lots of brands in there that you would expect to be there. So TikTok topped the index, for instance. You also had brands like Netflix there in the top 10. You have brands like the NBA for instance, lots of sports franchises. But there were interestingly lots of brands in that index, perhaps, you know, a third of the top 30, for instance, who came from categories that you, you wouldn't expect.

[Mike Linton]

So those three, I would expect their Entertainment brand. So of course they're not entertaining. You know, Netflix and the NBA aren't entertaining. They have a product problem. So let's go to the other ones. What are the other ones, of course?

[Dan Sulke]

Well, you've got brands like. And again, if I, if I just put the categories out on a table to you and said, which of these categories are the most entertaining, you probably wouldn't, wouldn't pick them. If I actually put the brands there, you would instantly recognize them as entertaining. But canned water, so Liquid Death, one of the brands, is talked about as one of the most entertaining brands in the world. And Duolingo, a client of ours as well, who are, you know, a language learning app, basically. Again, not, not inherently an interesting or entertaining category. You would, you would suggest. But they by and large are one of the most entertaining brands in the world. There are other examples in there, like Visa. We purposely didn't include B2B brands in this edition of the index, but it's something that we're trying to remedy for next year. That's just because we wanted to compare apples to apples in the overall index. But we're going to go category by category for next year. And yeah, ultimately there were four things that entertaining brands over indexed in when it came to driving entertainment value. So we track seven attributes. They're all in the report. You can, you can read them at your own leisure. But there are four things in particular that they over indexed in. And if a brand scored really highly in two of these four things, it meant that we knew they're inherited.

[Mike Linton]

Let's hear the four.

[Dan Sulke]

I know I've been, I've really been teasing you, haven't I? Yeah. So the four things are. First is social. And largely what we mean by that is, is this a brand that feels or creates the most engaging content on social media? It doesn't matter what social media. It could have been any social media. They were generally brands that mirrored content creators and felt like content creators in the same way, you know, a Netflix might be or in the same way that an individual personality might be as well. So social was one of them. Second was attention or surprise, what we called, what we called surprise. Is this a brand that shocks me into attention? Is this a brand that catches my attention straight away because they do something shocking or edgy or something that feels out of the norm. Then we had character, which is the next thing, which we'll talk about in more detail. But generally, and there's a fair few ways to be characterful, but character, characterful brands are Those that felt like a character from a TV show or from a brand universe or a brand world, effectively, you could call that a mascot. But there's also lots of other ways that brands lean into doing that, which I can mention later on. And then the last one was, and apologies, I should have this to hand because I should know this intimately myself. But if you give me two seconds, the last one is humor. Of course. How can I forget humor? And again, there's been tons written about the power of humor within marketing. And I would like to make the point that not entertaining brands don't have to necessarily be funny, but of the emotions, humor definitely is the one that drives the most entertainment value. So those are brands that were inherently funny brand, you know, felt like comedy basically. So there's no surprise why you see brands like Liquid Death and Duolingo score highly as a result of that.

[Mike Linton]

Got it. Hey, can I go back to a little of the B2B stuff and also say there's some. How do you know if your brand's going to benefit from an entertainment boost? Specifically? Let's give a couple examples. I'm a B2B brand. I'm marketing to surgeons. I'm an investment bank selling to CFOs. So I got this target market. Do I always want to go down the entertainment route or is that dangerous? In some ways, yeah.

[Dan Sulke]

So of course I'm biased. But I would push back and say you cannot afford not to follow an entertainment first approach to marketing. So going back to something that I mentioned earlier. In the Last decade alone, CPMs on platforms have risen 222% is incredibly expensive to advertise solely through paid advertising, no matter what channel you're on. That's largely just because of the amount of brands that are trying to advertise today and the amount of people that you're trying to capture the attention of. The most successful platforms know that they kind of have brands by the proverbials, when. When they want to. When they want to effectively increase. Increase the price of using their platforms. Therefore, the only thing that you can do is own and earn people's attention and invest in trying to own and earn people's attention. We therefore believe, as we went back to that original definition, that we had the best way to do that is by being an entertaining brand. I would say though, that again, going back to that point around humor, whenever I say to people, you need to be an entertaining brand, the head immediately goes to Liquid Death. Duolingo to humor, to things that are inherently risky. I would Say and, and, and for a B2B brand, definitely make them feel like they're not to be taken seriously. But I've actually got a really brilliant example that isn't necessarily.

[Mike Linton]

All right, let's hear it. I'm going. Here's the new scalpel for surgeons, delivered with a lot of edge and humor.

[Dan Sulke]

Yeah, well, I still think that. I still think that would do brilliantly well because surgeons at the end of the day are just people. But I would like to make. Yeah. A point, as I said, that you don't necessarily need to lean into humor to be entertaining. And again, it's one of the things that we've learned as a. As a. Learning for entertain or die free when we. So do you know the brand netscout by any by any chance?

[Mike Linton]

I do not.

[Dan Sulke]

Okay, cool. Well, I'm good. I've got a definition actually here, so I can read it to you. So netscout is a provider of application performance management and network performance management solutions, as well as DDoS protection and cyber security solutions. So if I was to read out to you, inherently, probably one of the most boring brands in a list.

[Mike Linton]

Probably taking a little nap now.

[Dan Sulke]

Exactly. Exactly. So netscout and sorry, if anyone from netscouts out there, I'm about to say something really positive about you guys as a brand and as a business. Netscout in 2017 wanted to promote their brand. There were tons of things they could have done. They could have gone down the traditional B2B route and done a LinkedIn B2B campaign. Instead, they commissioned Werner Herzog to create a documentary called Lo and behold, the reveries of the Internet. All about the brilliant things of the Internet and how we interact with it and why it is so important to us to promote their cyber security service off the back of it. For those of you who don't know, I'm sure lots of people listen to famous director. He's one of the most famous documentaries directors of all time. Is not a funny documentary at all. It's very like, weird and like a bit absurdist, but it's just a fantastic piece of entertainment and filmmaking. It's got 92% score on rotten Tomatoes. It was released at the Sundance Film Festival to critical acclaim. It is a brilliant piece of entertainment marketing. Much better than lots of the things that were shown at Sundance that year that weren't tied to a brand whatsoever by netscout. Who is this incredibly boring brand? I don't. If someone from netscout wants to reach out and say what kind of impact they had on their brand metrics and full funnel metrics. Please, by all means do. But I'm 100% sure that that garnered a lot more owned and earned attention than running a LinkedIn B2B campaign would have done for me.

[Mike Linton]

They're happy to post the documentary in the comments if we get it. Let's talk about so you decide your brand needs an entertainment boost. Let's do the best and the worst ways to do that because obviously all entertainment is not equal. There's probably a good way to do it and a not so good way. Give our listeners your best practices and worst hall of fame examples.

[Dan Sulke]

Yeah, of course, I'll be happy to. Hopefully none of them will come from my company. What is really important to mention, I think first off the bat is this. If I were to again, none of this flies in the face of traditional marketing diagnosis. Knowing your customer strategy, building a plan of attack and then tactics putting that all into action. We would follow the same approach when we do Entertainment first brand building. It's just that the nuance of it is slightly different. So first of all we need to know who we're making entertainment for. Who are those people? We call them our fans, audience people, customers, whatever you want to call them. But in this case I think they are fans. You know, what, what are they going to be fans of and sharing as a result of who those people are and what they're interested in? What form is that going to take? Is it a documentary that we're releasing at Sundance or is it a TikTok, you know, TikTok content strategy effectively? And then which platforms are we going to be releasing that on? Again, is it something that we're doing as a big IP project because we're going for maximum eyeballs like the Barbie movie or Minecraft movie? Or is it something that's going to be a smaller bet experiment that we're starting off as like a YouTube content series for instance, or something on LinkedIn for instance, wherever that might be. So I would say it's all about the who, what and the which. That's the way that we kind of plan it out. And I would say the worst attempts that we see at Entertainment first brand building are those which are self obsessed. They inherently think that their product and their brand is going to be the most entertaining thing in the world.

[Mike Linton]

Want to throw an example out there? Can you throw an example out?

[Dan Sulke]

I don't really want to dig out any particular brands, but I think it just from a category first approach at least. You see this A lot from tech companies, and we work with a lot of tech companies to help them change that and remedy that. I would say it's something that you would. Yeah, you tend to see from a lot of SaaS companies. They tend to think that, you know, their invention, what they've come up with, their piece of technology is the most amazing thing in the world because they have.

[Mike Linton]

When I hang around with my friends, we talk about sass and middleware endlessly and how entertaining amazing it is. Hey, what about all the borrowed interest? You see where brands are trying to get entertaining by through particularly celebrities? I mean, the super bowl ads you saw, you know, Matthew McConaughey had, you know, selling a huge amount of stuff. Yeah, yeah, tell us about that.

[Dan Sulke]

Totally. I mean, I've got, yeah, again, I've got an anecdote I want to put at the end, which is all about the super bowl and maybe the, the, the effect, or lack of effect thereof, of necessarily investing in one of those traditional ads. But, yeah, ultimately, I would always rather own 100 or own 10,000 eyeballs than rent a hundred thousand eyeballs. I think that is the way that I, I always think about it. We can talk about that a little bit more in the measurement section. But effectively what you're doing when you're, you're, you know, buying a Super bowl, spare super bowl spot is that you are renting millions and millions of eyeballs with no guarantee that they were actually effectively paying or clicking or subscribing to watch what you want to say. And a lot of the time you can break through that. It's the same way when you partner of a celebrity to an extent, you know, you are renting the people who like that celebrity and you have a chance of maybe ingratiating yourself to the people that they know. And I still think it's important, you know, know celebrity spokespeople have a place. But the success of, you know, brand mascots, for instance, and there's tons of, you know, research and insight done into it, and I know we'll talk about it in a little bit more detail.

[Mike Linton]

Later on, are a lot cheaper than celebrities.

[Dan Sulke]

Exactly. They can be if that. Yeah, if they turn into a successful brand asset, I guess. But yeah, but yeah, there is both benefit. There's both benefit and negative to renting an audience and working with celebrity. My point of view would just be that, you know, it's a lot harder to do this, but I would always rather own 10,000 eyeballs than rent 100,000.

[Mike Linton]

Let's talk about measures you touched on it a little bit. But how do I understand how what entertainment is doing for me and then how do I separate entertainment from the other marketing, say the Werner Herzog film. I got a lot of salespeople running around. I've got like a probably I'm going to a lot of conventions. How do I measure this component of it and how do I isolate the variable?

[Dan Sulke]

Yeah, so first of all you do tend to see the impact of entertainment first strategies and tactics across the full funnel. So again there's some brilliant tracksuit data on Duolingo which I can give you, which we tracked over the last year to see. Okay, well Duolingo over committed to this sort of entertainment first approach. Are their funnel metrics improving at the same time? Yes, they are really positive Results up like 11%, 10%, 12% over the period of time when we, when we've been tracking them. So definitely get that from me and we can put it in the show notes to show how an entertainment first brand, a top rated entertainment first brand is actually growing across the full funnel. But we also understood, and us and Tracksuit understood that the day to day impact of entertainment first efforts are what you need to track. If we're in this world where we are consistently putting out entertaining content, you need clever ways of tracking whether it's being successful. And I don't think impressions and reach and views are necessarily the right way to do that. I think they're bullshit to be put, to be put blunt. They can also be suppressed by platforms to make you want to pay to put your content in a certain place. And an impression ultimately is three seconds of someone's time looking at something is intentionally an inflated metric which helps us show that we've had an impact from marketing on these platforms and ultimately gets more people to spend on.

[Mike Linton]

A lot of times those are vanity metrics. So what metric should I be looking at exactly? It's the shares, it's the, it's the actual sales, it's what else?

[Dan Sulke]

Yeah, so I would say it says there's two things that I would, I would look at, I would look at. So people obviously talk about CPM cost per mil, cost per thousand. I would look at attentive cost per thousand, which is a metric that's been popping up that is kind of a view that is over well, 10 seconds. But up to 30 seconds in view, it depends on the length of whatever piece of content you're creating. But it goes beyond that three second count. Mr. Beast really loves that metric and he's super analytical with his team about where there's drop off within the content that's being watched and how engaged people are across that whole timeline of somebody watching a video. And they know that it's important to keep keep people engaged throughout and they're not just focused on getting an impression of three seconds at the beginning. And I think that counts for any platform. But then ultimately if you're looking at social, which is obviously one of the breeding grounds of entertainment first marketing because it's owned and earned, the metrics that matter for me I would say are likes and comments, which is engagement, but then more importantly shares and saves. And again, there's a really good ratio that lots of brands use. We use it with our brands as well. Liquid Death also use it quite a lot. There's again another post on I'll put from there founder Mike Cesario where he talks about this. But if your Post has a 2% or higher likes to comments or likes to views ratio, you know it's probably going to be a success and you know that it's probably not just like bot bot views.

[Mike Linton]

Effectively we're moving from impression to I'll just roll them on their depth and quality of impression.

[Dan Sulke]

Depth and quality of impression. Yeah. But then the shares and saves is the one that I'd really be looking at which is, as I said, has somebody gone out of their way to share this thing in their friend's group chat? And I think any if you're looking at anywhere between 1% to 3% of saves to kind of likes for instance, as someone who took the time to double tap on it compared to someone who actually took the time to share it, you know, that's a real winner in terms of a piece of content regardless of what the views are.

[Mike Linton]

Got it. Let's shift to. We talked about creating your own brand, you know, mascot or character like you know, Snap, Crackle and Pop or Tony the Tiger and how much easier it might be to have your own character. What's your recommendation on people that want to think about that?

[Dan Sulke]

Yeah, I mean again we talked about the power of brand mascots. I was actually just the other day and it's on my LinkedIn if anyone wants to go and look at it. Interviewed for a brilliant documentary on the re the the rebirth of brand mascots, effectively how they've gone away in marketing and how they're actually now coming back. It's from a guy called Steph Hammerlink and I think it's just called brand Mascots but it's again, I'll provide it as a link for the show. Notes. It's going to be a very long donuts at this, at this point in time. But effectively, you know, it's all about having characterfulness as, as an entertainment brand. As we said. That's one of the four main drivers for, for being an entertaining brand. It drives entertainment value. So, yes, that can take the form of a mascot, but it could also be a cast of characters. So Marc Jacobs, for instance, do this really well. They work with relatively unknown sort of Internet celebrities who have a little bit of fame but don't.

[Mike Linton]

So I go make my own. Own. I go make my own. Or I, I go and like when, when you, when they were. I'm gonna go find an influencer and build that influencer up for me.

[Dan Sulke]

Yeah, exactly. So you're gonna not, you're not gonna go for the big, big, big person, the macro celebrity. Yeah, yeah. There's no point going for Mr. Beast. He has his own brand. He has his own personality. You can't mold him in your image, but you definitely can if you go and find your own cast of creators, basically. So physical people, or if you don't use physical people, you can create your own mascot, as we talked about there. But it's all about. About brand characters, basically, building brand characters equally. You can build a brand world that feels like a character in itself. So Liquid Death do that really well. They've built this kind of Murderland, if you will, where all of these things happen within, within Liquid Death, and the individual characters are less important. But you know that when a celebrity, for instance, steps into that world, they're going to be doing something uniquely liquid Death. So like when Martha Stewart steps into the world of liquid Death, she sells severed hand candles, which is like a uniquely Liquid death, distinctly unique liquid, uniquely liquid Death thing to do.

[Mike Linton]

All right, let's talk about when your entertainment goes sideways. You have a celebrity who doesn't do it right, or you take a stand, that blows up some of your audience. The Budweise Bud Light case is an easy example. What do you do when your entertainment goes sideways?

[Dan Sulke]

Yeah, brilliant question. And I, I guess I would start by slightly challenging the, the Budweiser of it all and saying, you know, Budweiser, Budweiser's flip flopping decision in that case had a lot of elements of the Streisand effect to it. And that's to say that they attracted more derision and attention to it because of their handling of the situation when they probably could have, you know, swept under the rug so to speak.

[Mike Linton]

We did a whole show. They did like four mistakes in a row.

[Dan Sulke]

Yeah.

[Mike Linton]

And you know, the first mistake they didn't even know they had done, which was an interview where they, the VP of marketing or whoever it was, it basically trashed the current customer group on video.

[Dan Sulke]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, a comedy of errors, as they say. But I'd actually argue that that's less of a failure of brand entertainment and more of a failure of brand purpose. You know, it wasn't necessarily a piece of entertainment first marketing, but if they were trying to engage that core, that, that core, that partnership and execution is probably the one wrong, wrong way of going about it. But when we do see entertainment first brands or entertaining brands go wrong, what they always do, and I think this is again, what some of the best comedians do as well, is whatever that negativity is, they use it as fuel effectively. They use it for fuel to do more. They really lean into the risk, they commit to the bit and they get rewarded for doing so. So again, if we look at a brand like Liquid Death, they in their early days got loads of hate. Hate comments, as you can imagine, from a brand called Liquid Death. It's quite divisive. You have lots of kind, kind of evangelical Christians. You have lots of, I guess you'd say like quite goody two shoes laced up people who think that the brand is a disgrace and they comment about how ridiculous it is and how much they hate it. And instead of kind of hiding those comments, deleting those comments or replying to them in a very placid customer service type way, they turned all of those hate comments into entertainment. They turned it into. I think they've got four albums now of, of hate comments which they've turned into songs.

[Mike Linton]

That makes perfect sense. You gotta lean into your brand, but you have to be genuine about it.

[Dan Sulke]

Yeah, you have to commit to the bit, basically, which is where I think a lot of this starts from understanding who you are, who you are trying to entertain and equally who you aren't trying to entertain. Right. If I was trying to, as you said in that Budweiser example. Right. If my core is goody2shoes, goody2shoes Soccer moms effectively, who I know are going to be really offended by that, then that is completely the wrong strategy to take and to lean into that is to the detriment and the death of my brand effectively. But Liquid, I knew that, that that was the opposite of who they're trying to attract and actually the people that they are their heartland Audience effectively would find that very funny that they were annoying that audience. So it all goes back to. Again, starting.

[Mike Linton]

You got to take the stand and hold on to the stand. Let's go. We are. We're almost at time, so I want to go to our traditional last question to two parter. You have to take one or both, but you have to take at least one practical advice for our listeners we haven't discussed yet and. Or the funniest story you would like to share on the air or you can share on the air.

[Dan Sulke]

Yeah, I feel like a lot of my funny stories I can't share on the air, so I'm gonna have to go for practical advice. And hopefully this also reveals a ridiculously impressive statistic to everybody which is not just relevant to entertainment. First, brand. Brand. We talked about the super bowl right? Earlier.

[Mike Linton]

Yeah.

[Dan Sulke]

Do you know 24 hours after the super bowl happened, do you know what moment stole 84 of all the conversation around all of the brands at the Super Bowl a day after it happened?

[Mike Linton]

I do not.

[Dan Sulke]

Okay. And I don't blame you for not knowing that it was Duolingo killing their owl mascot, which I think sums up a lot of things that we've spoken about in this conversation.

[Mike Linton]

Feel like Liquid death was somehow involved with the severed hand candle, but yeah.

[Dan Sulke]

Perhaps, maybe Martha Stewart was. Was one of the suspects. But I think it just, it serves to show that in the world that we live in today, it is so hard to be remembered as a brand. So your only hope is to lean into this world of what we call a lot of lots of Littles. A lot of Littles. And Duolingo have been brilliant at understanding that. So they know that it's all about winning maximum minutes on the Internet every single day. All entertaining brands have found a way of building a system that allowed them to buy lots of tickets for the raffle every single time. So that's kind of what I would advise, advise you as an entertainment brand, entertaining brand. What you need to do is to think in this world of lots of Littles, you need to be entertaining every single day. And you need to build a kind of effectively a content system. And this is what we help lots of our clients do. But a content system that allows you to think of an idea and then within 72 hours, within three days, come up with something, put it out into the world, because nothing's ever as good or as bad as it seems. Equally something that is talked about all day, every day, one day on the Internet is then forgotten about the very next day. So the only way that you can hope to survive is by approaching, approaching marketing of this sort of writer's room style approach where you're, you know, effectively building more chances to go viral, more moments for success.

[Mike Linton]

I think that's a great way to end the show. Speed and depth of content all the time. So thank you, Dan, and thanks to everyone for listening to CMO Confidential. Look for all of our other shows on Spotify, Apple and YouTube, including marketing. The battle between believers and non believers. Parts one and two. It's a bird. It's a plane. Holy. It's AI Parts one and two. Your next best customer could be an AI bot and synthetic influencers. Should brands do it themselves? Hey, all you marketers, stay safe out there, there. This is Mike Linton signing off for CMO Confidential.