Good morning, gorgeous!
I'm writing to you this morning from San Francisco, where I've been sealed inside a hotel for the past week with my MarketingProfs family, hosting the extravaganza that was the 2018 B2B Marketing Forum!
We had just over 1,000 people join us for 4 days of learning, camaraderie, and a few heartfelt emotional moments—not *all* of which were liquor-fueled. 😉
Someone said to me yesterday afternoon, just after we shut down the event here at the Marriott Marquis: "I don't know what it is about this event... but it's something special. It feels completely different from any other marketing event out there."
We were standing in the hallway outside the grand ballroom. As he spoke, the Marriott maintenance crew was already firing up the carpet sweepers behind him, waiting to suck up and erase the event magic of the past few days.
I do know what it is, though, that makes a MarketingProfs event feel different (part summer camp, part reunion, and part your favorite class in college). It's GENEROSITY.
It's the spirit of generosity that everyone brings to this event. The attendees who trade time with their families and jobs to give themselves time to think, dream, reflect. The speakers who share their time and knowledge. The sponsors who share their creativity (and money!) to help us pull this event off.
And especially my MarketingProfs family, who generously sweat the thousands of crazily-minute details. Logistics details. Creative details. The perfect Miley Cyrus walk-on music. ("I came in like a wreeeecccking balllll...") All of it.
This year, the 4 days were Generosity mixed with Gratitude.
Striking Marriott workers walked the sidewalk outside the hotel, seeking better working conditions. Inside the hotel, management filled in to do the union jobs—cleaning rooms and replacing banquet chafing dishes. And, all around us, the smoky air a constant reminder of the implications and enormity of the raging wildfires.
We're the lucky ones. All around us in California are constant reminders of just how fortunate we are.
So, this morning, days before American Thanksgiving Day, I think it's worth remembering that generosity can spell the difference between ho-hum generic and HELL-YES special. (In events, in life.)
And it's also worth remembering this: It's easier to be generous when you acknowledge just how much you truly have.
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🚨 Head's up! 🚨 The format of this newsletter is a LOT different this week. Instead of dropping writing and marketing ideas and resources here, I'm sharing a single Thanksgiving story that stars Marketing itself! (Your regular programming resumes in the next issue.)
Should things get tense around the family table this week, or if the conversation lags...
"Hey fam! Did you know the origin of that green bean casserole?!"
CONTENT MARKETING CASSEROLE
In 1955, Dorcas Reilly invented Thanksgiving Green Bean Casserole.
Dorcas worked in the test kitchen at Campbell's Soup, where she wrote the recipe in response to a question from the Associated Press: What's a good Thanksgiving side dish that uses ingredients found in most American kitchens?
The dish she invented went viral.
Millions of Americans made Green Bean Casserole that year. And the next. And every year since.
And this week—more than 60 years later—it'll be served on an estimated 20 million Thanksgiving tables across the US, Campbell's says.
Today, Dorcas's casserole accounts for 40 percent of Cream of Mushroom soup sales.
You might be skimming here, so I want to be sure you caught that Marketing ROI stat again:
A. SINGLE. RECIPE. DRIVES. 40. PERCENT. OF. SALES.
That makes Dorcas’s 100-word recipe one of the most lasting and successful content marketing efforts of all time.
So why did Dorcas's Green Bean Casserole go viral in 1955?
Because it was easy. Fast. Cheap.
Her original recipe could not be more basic: Frozen green beans, an entire can of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup, milk... anointed with a tangle of fried onion strings. Here's the original 100-word recipe above—with its wonderful analog version-tracking! (Click image to enlarge.)
Dorcas died a few weeks ago, just shy of her 93rd Thanksgiving.
She wasn’t a marketer. But, still, her Green Bean Casserole followed a modern content marketing playbook—decades before its time:
It started with a question.
🦃 Doesn't all great content marketing start with a question?
It didn't launch until Dorcas tested the recipe and perfected the script in her test kitchen.
🦃 Doesn't all great marketing need testing?
🦃 Doesn't all great content have a backbone of carefully chosen words?
It really took off after Campbell's added Dorcas's recipe to its soup can label in 1960. (It’s still there.)
🦃 Doesn't all great content marketing have an ongoing distribution strategy?
And finally, what may be the most important play in the playbook...
Eating a bowl of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup straight up is about as appealing as eating a tub of schoolroom paste.
But maybe you like paste. Or maybe your paycheck is signed by the Cream of Mushroom Soup Lobby. (Is that a thing? Please please please be true.)
Whatever our differences, I hope we can still agree:
...the smartest marketing puts a product into context.
🦃 Doesn't all great content marketing place a product in the context and circumstances of its customer's lives?
Those 100 words perfected in Dorcas's test kitchen tapped into the zeitgeist of 1955. What she wrote was a prescription for ease, convenience, and make-ahead freedom for US housewives suffering from the tyranny of mealtime.
Because they embodied the spirit of the times, Dorcas's words mattered.
Then again, such words almost always do. We see that in today's charged political climate, too, where words have real-world consequences.
In marketing, your words can literally make a product: Where would Cream of Mushroom soup be today without Dorcas?
But marketing can take you only so far.
Campbell's is in trouble, like a lot of other big consumer brands struggling to stay relevant when we have greater access to better options.
Marketing can’t fix product or turn back time or address the kind of management mess that is Campbell's right now.
But other things are more lasting. Like the simple joy of green beans, canned soup, milk.
Like the legacy of a woman who changed Thanksgiving forever.
And like the ability of words to capture the spirit of a time.
For better. And for worse.
EVENTS
