“The waiter slapped me across the face with a baguette, and I didn’t know why.”

This opening line to a story is significantly better than the more commonly used, “my vacation to Paris was a disaster.”

But why?

They both induce curiosity and beg a follow-up question.

The problem with the second, more general one is that only someone who cares about the person speaking would bother to ask a follow up.

It’s simply too risky.

You might be about to receive a banal story about waiting in lines at the Eiffel Tower or a French person being rude to you for speaking English.

The first, however, puts you right into the action of a specific moment

Your brain instantly paints the scene:

• You see the cute French café
• You see the waiter’s outfit
• You see his funny mustache.
• You see him swing a baguette across the person’s face 

It’s tangible. It’s hilarious.

And then it leaves you with a mystery.

“What do you mean you didn’t know why he slapped you with a baguette? What happened?”

You’re hooked. You’re invested.

Better yet, you’ll be miserable if you don’t hear the conclusion.

This is what Matt Dick calls “Anchor in a specific moment” in his book Storyworthy.

And it’s precisely what you need to get people invested in your stories.

Why anchoring in a specific moment works

#1. Clarity for the listener/reader:

A specific moment helps your audience visualize what’s happening immediately. It gives them something tangible to latch onto rather than vague descriptions.

It also removes the risk of asking a follow-up question to a generic opener. They’re already hearing the story and know that they’re interested. 

#2. Eliminates rambling

When you anchor your story in a moment, you avoid rambling on about random details that matter to you but don’t matter to the story—starting with a clear "where and when" lets you get to the interesting bits faster.

This is what Wes Kao calls finding the “Minimum Viable Backstory” when she recommends, “Start right before you get eaten by the bear.

#3. Creates a sense of time and place: 

Anchoring helps orient the audience. They immediately know where they are, when this is happening, and often what’s at stake—pulling them into the story.

How to anchor effectively

1. Start in the middle of the action: Open your story by describing something happening right now rather than explaining what led up to it.
   1. Example (weak): "When I was in college, I used to do a lot of embarrassing things."
   2. Example (strong): "I was standing on a cafeteria table, pantsless, holding a loaf of bread over my head like a trophy."
2. Use the five senses: Use sensory details to help the audience see, hear, or feel what’s happening.
   1. "The cold metal of the handcuffs clicked shut around my wrists."
3. Avoid broad generalizations: Sentences like “It was a normal day, until....” or “Life was good” are too abstract (and cliché). Be specific and drop us into the moment that matters.
4. Don't make me wait: Every story is about a transformation. The opening anchors us as close to that moment of change as possible so we can follow the journey.

Let’s dissect a famous example

“Not for the first time, an argument had broken out over breakfast at number four, Privet Drive.”

Here's what's powerful about this opener to the Chamber of Secrets:

• Economical and direct: One sentence sets the scene, introduces conflict, hints about who’s involved and perhaps what it’s about, and establishes a pattern (this happens often).
• Immediacy: We’re thrown straight into the argument, bypassing unnecessary description.
• Colorful writing: Starting with “not for the first time” makes the sentence stand out and frames it in a negative (leaning into the Negativity Bias)
• Specificity: “Number four, Privet Drive” anchors the story in a precise location—that’s well known to fans, so they instantly know who might be wondering and start wondering what they’re arguing back this time.

 It’s a powerful opener that’s doing a lot of work in a short amount of time.

“But I’m a startup founder. What do I care about  telling stories!??”

Because humans are obsessed with stories and narratives:

• Christmas is a story.
• The concept of what “The United States” is is a story.
• The rising popularity of personal branding is a story.
• Bitcoin, gold, and money are shared narratives and concepts that have value because we believe that story.
• The US dollar goes up because people start believing a story that people start spreading because of Trump getting elected who got elected because of stories he and others told about him and the future that would unfold if he was elected. 
• Tesla’s stock shoots up because Elon tells a story of a future where people don’t need to own cars because there’s a fleet of autonomous cars driving everyone around for super cheap.
  • He first told this story back when the tech wasn't remotely close to doing that, but he sold the dream, which helped keep the company afloat long enough to the moment when we were getting close.

Stories are powerful.

Use stories to your advantage to:

• Sell your product
• Get investors
• Convinces people to invest years of their career at your startup

Linus Pauling, a two-time Nobel Prize winner, famously said

“The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas, and throw the bad ones away.”

Creativity is a process.

You generally need dedicated time to sit down and focus on generating a lot of ideas. Generally the first stuff you make will be kinda “meh.” Then you’ll have an idea. You’ll build on it. You’ll find ideas related to it. You find something else and build on that. 

This continues until you’ve found various interesting ideas.

At least that’s what happens whenever we’re making ad creatives for clients, or whenever I’m making carousels for LinkedIn.

But what if you don’t have that luxury of time. What if someone on the team comes to you and says:

“Hey, you’re a good copywriter, what’s a clever way of saying X?”

Because with time, you can make a gourmet meal. But what if you only have 15 minutes? Well, in that case you need to use a microwave.

And that’s what Dan calls a “Microwave Headline.”

Let’s dive into 6 techniques to get a decent headline in 15 minutes or less:

1. Ask them to write the bad “facts” version

Or as Dan says it, get them to “Say it straight, say it great.”

Ask the person (or yourself) to just state the facts.

This is useful for a few reasons:

1. It forces the requester to be more clear with the request by summarizing it in a sentence.
2. It gives you a backup. If you can’t find a more clever way to do it, then give it an edit and send it back with your approval.
3. As Harry Dry says it, all good writing and communication starts with a fact. Instead of saying: “Tiger Woods wasn’t very strong today,” say: “Tiger Woods normally averages X, and instead he’s Y today.”
   1. This forces the reader to think and completely removes subjectivity.

Sometimes the factual statement is actually pretty good.

2. Smile headlines

This is a concept that Dan also calls The Mullet.

• Business in front: Put the factual business message upfront.
  • “Follow me on LinkedIn.”
  • “People swear by it.”
  • “Please enjoy responsibly.”
• Party in the back: Make them smile with a joke on the business message.
  • “Or I’ll keep following you in person.”
  • “And at it.”
  • “The Internet never forgets”

Try that and see if you make something better than “just the facts.”

3. Common quotes/phrases

Here you want to dive into pop culture, common phrases, or quotes.

Try to think of anything remotely related to your product or market (or words that rhyme with things kind of sorta related).

The examples that Dan gives for a sporty deodorant are:

• “Don’t sweat the small stuff.” → “Don’t sweat the sweaty stuff.”
• “To be or not to be” → “To stink or not to stink.”
• “Be the change you want to see in the world” → “Be the scent you wish to smell in the world.”

I asked ChatGPT to write some ideas to pitch itself… a lot were terrible but after some prompting and editing, here’s what we came up with:

• "The pen is mightier than the sword." → "The prompt is mightier than the pen."
• "Houston, we have a problem." → "Houston, we have a solution—ChatGPT."
  • Alternatively it could be “Houston, we had a problem.”
• "Think outside the box." → "Think outside the brain."
• "Ask and you shall receive." → "Prompt and you shall receive."

4. Find some opposites

I’ll do exactly what Dan did here and share a quote from Thomas Kemeny’s book Junior, Writing Your Way Ahead in Advertising.

“Clients love this shit. It’s cheap, but it works. Find some parallel you cna make in the language between opposites. You can this with just about any brief, any client, any boffer. For exdample, a bank wants you to talk about their low interest rates on their platinum cards. You can be “Small rates. Big dela.” Or “Pay a little, get a lot.” If you’re working on a car you could say, “Roars like a lion, priced lime a lamb.” Or “Giant horsepower. Tiny price.”

Here’s some examples for major tech companies I just came up with (with help of ChatGPT):

1. Apple: "Powerful inside. Beautiful outside."
2. Tesla: "Fast as lightning. Quiet as a whisper."
3. Airbnb: "Unique stays. Familiar comfort."
4. Google: "Search less. Find more."
5. Amazon: "Big variety. Small wait."
6. Netflix: "Big binge. Tiny cost."

5. 100 MPH Writing

That’s 160kph for the non Americans and Brits in the audience.

Here you just set a timer for 15 minutes and just write down as many ideas as you possibly can.

Just let it flow. You can judge them at the end and hopefully you vomited something halfway decent out.

6. Fill a few buckets

This is a shortened version of the meat of Dan’s creative process that I outlined in newsletter #205.

Here’s the high-level overview (this uses an example directly from A Self Help Guide for Copywriters by Dan Nelken.

Step 1: Jot down a few very high-level value props/ideas. For example, for sporty deodorant:

1. You won’t stink
2. You’ll smell nice
3. It’s good for you skin.

Yes they’re very dumb and high-level.

Step 2: Fill 3 buckets with more flesh out ideas

For example for “you won’t stink”

1. You can go from the gym to a date
2. YOu can go from the gym to the bar
3. You can go from the gym back to work
4. You can go into an elevator without offending people
5. You won’t smell like you just had a workout.

Step 3: Spend 5 minutes turning those into headlines

1. “From working out to working it.”
2. “From sweaty to ready.”
3. “From weight room to board room.”
4. “Do burpees. Don’t smell like burpees.”

Remember, writing is hard

Writing clearly is hard enough.

Writing cleverly is even harder.

Writing clearly and cleverly in a way that also increases someone’s desire to purchase your product is insanely difficult.

But use these techniques above to slam out some solid headlines in a short timeframe.

We’ve all bought something we shouldn’t have.

Especially during Black Friday & Cyber Monday 👀

Whether it was from an Instagram ad, a late-night infomercial, a BFCM promo email, a knee-jerk purchase at a store (possibly due to some sales pressure), or a major purchase we’ve spent weeks thinking about.

We’ve all dropped our hard-earned cash on dumb sh*t.

Here I analyze 6 ways that companies get you to buy sh*t you don't need.

(Or... 6 ways you can get people to buy legitimately good products.)

Painkillers and Vitamins

First, let's go over the two fundamental types of products:

1. Painkillers
2. Vitamins

If you have a splitting headache, and you're in the desert, and someone has a painkiller—you'd be willing to pay an irrational amount for it.

And you won't need convincing. You'll understand the benefits immediately. Because you’re actively feeling the pain it relieves.

“Get rid of my f*cking headache!”

You'll buy a painkiller when the time comes.

And you’ll curse the fact that you didn’t have any on hand for this moment.

The important thing for Advil and Tylenol is making sure they're the brand you reach for at the drug store. They do that through branding and lots of ads.

And through clever positioning.

"Back painkillers” have the same ingredients as "headache painkillers," but if your back hurts, guess which one you’re reaching for.

I wrote about this phenomenon back in Newsletter #133.

On the other hand, you don't NEED a vitamin.

You also can't feel the benefits (if there are any).

Instead, people have been convinced of a narrative that taking a vitamin will make them live a longer and healthier life. It may be true, but it’s still a narrative that needed to be sold to them—and needs to keep being sold to them.

Most products are vitamins.

You don’t NEED them to solve a horrible and debilitating pain right this second.

These 6 tactics apply mostly to vitamins.

Read my breakdown of the clever ways AG1 has convinced people to spend ungodly amounts on their vitamin.

1. Time pressure

This is one of the most effective and easiest to use.

It’s simple. If someone feels rushed, they'll more easily part with their money.

Hence the effectiveness of Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals.

There are plenty of products that people might need, but just not right now. Or they don’t need them, but they think they might.

Time pressure helps push them over the hump to buy.

This is why sales are for a "limited time only." This is why Ticketmaster adds a countdown clock and says how many other people are looking at the event.

You feel pressured into making the decision faster. 

And generally, a fast decision is in their favor, not yours.

2. FOMO or "Fear Of Missing Out"

Here they convince you to take action because doing so will cause you to miss something exciting or important.

Or at least they make it seem exciting or important.

"Be at the event, or you'll miss Bill Gates leaping over a chair. We won't be recording."

Who would want to miss that?

And yes, Bill Gates was knowing for jumping over desk chairs:

3. Social proof

If you love and respect someone, and you found out they use a product you're considering, you're a lot more likely to buy it.

Especially if you see them say how much they love it.

This works whether they

• Actually love the product.
• Are friends of the owners.
• Were paid for the endorsement.

Note: The risk for brands like Tim Horton’s is that when you do celebrity deals, you better make sure that celebrity is a saint. Otherwise, it may come out that they loved frequently P Diddy’s parties.

4. It’s been engineered to be a habit

In Nir Eyal's Hooked, he talks about how companies turn vitamins into painkillers by making their product a habit.

For example, nobody NEEDS to check TikTok or Instagram. But try taking a teenager's phone away for a weekend and see how they handle it.

Or remove a crypto trader’s ability to check the price of Bitcoin for a few hours (especially as it skirts with $100k).

They'll likely have a mental breakdown.

The companies have engineered their product to be the solution to a need. Often the need to relieve negative feelings of boredom or anxiety.

That’s how they turn a vitamin (entertainment) into a painkiller (make the anxiety go away).

5. Fear

If you don't take your daily vitamin, you will die earlier.

Or at least that's what the vitamin industry is getting at.

Another example:

Diamonds are not as rare as the price indicates. De Beers controlled the supply and pulled off the best marketing campaign in history.

"Diamonds are forever." Just like your marriage should be.

And the larger the diamond, the more you love them.

If the size and purity of your diamond are a reflection of the size and purity of your love, you better pay up, or you'll lose them forever.

This is how they created the convention of spending 2 months’ salary on a diamond ring that cost them a fraction to produce.

6. You’ve been sold a dream

A Rolex isn't 1,000x better at telling time than a Casio. But it costs that much more.

Rolex has positioned itself as the watch people wear when they've "made it." So when people earn a lot of money and want to signal it, they drop 5 figures on a Rolex.

Google "rolex famous people" and you'll see some of the top male celebrities.

Rolex has worked for decades to make sure the biggest (male) names are wearing Rolex to make people dream of one day owning one.

They want to make you feel like you can join an exclusive club with members like Tom Hanks, Brad Pitt, James Bond, and Jay-Z.

It’s not just manipulations

Yes, these tactics are used every day to get people like you to buy sh*t they do not need at either inflated or deflated prices (depending if it’s BFCM sale or not).

But they also work to convince people to buy or use legitimately useful products at fair prices.

Products that are good for humanity also need marketing. 

In fact, they generally need better marketing, because good is hard, and bad is easy.

So use these tactics for good.

And try to resist when someone is using them on you.

Note: I originally wrote this piece on my personal Substack.

You’ve all been shouted at that you must have a personal brand.

If not AI will replace you, and your business will fail.

But do you really though?

Or is that just something ghostwriters and personal branding experts say?

I want to give you my honest perspective after creating and growing both a company and a personal brand, and having helped over 1,000 people grow their audiences with UNIGNORABLE.

First, what am I talking about exactly?

Essentially, this all falls under the bucket of “content marketing.”

Whether for a newsletter, podcast, YouTube channel, or posting on channels like Instagram, LinkedIn, X, and TikTok.

It’s just creating content to grow a business.

The core question we’re tackling here is whether you post it personally or with your company.

Company brand content marketing was the standard for years. In the last few years, however, personal branding has exploded across all channels.

People now love to cherry pick examples like:

• Elon Musk: more people follow him than follow X, Tesla, SpaceX, and Neuralink combined.
• Donald Trump: used his notoriety as a businessman & TV host to become president twice.
• The Rock & George Clooney: both created billion-dollar Tequila brands.
• Ryan Reynolds: bought a Mint Mobile and used his fame to promote it.

People love to claim that company brands are dead and personal brands are the way of the future.

Of course, nothing is ever one-sided, and there is a lot of nuance.

Let’s dive into the pros and cons to help you decide which is right for you.

Personal brands

The pros of personal-branded content

• Increases your personal optionality
  • If one day you’d like to do something other than what you’re doing, you have a platform to assist you with what’s next. You can promote whatever you launch next.
• Increases your ability to network and meet people you want to meet
  • You’ll attract cool people to you, and people will be more likely to reply to your DMs
• Increases your “market value”
  • This could be for the job market (easier to get a job and increase your compensation for it)
  • This could be your ability to raise money
• Your opportunities increase
  • Since posting on LinkedIn I’ve had significantly more requests for consulting, advisory, and even podcast appearances and speaking engagements.
• You can increase your personal revenue
  • Speaking engagements, sponsorships, premium subs, and consulting
• Increases your company's visibility and hopefully attracts leads

The cons of personal-branded content:

• Exiting the business can be hard
  • If you want to sell your business, and its lead flow depends on you and your personal accounts, then:
    • You might not be able to sell,
    • It might be at a bad valuation, or
    • You gotta remain working there after you sell
• You have to worry about your personal image and any haters
• It’s hard to outsource given 👆. And it’s a lot of work.
• It can be challenging for the company to justify paying for something that benefits you.
• If you stop, then generally it stops. It’s hard to pass it off.
• The company has a risk if you ever leave

I love many of the benefits of growing my LinkedIn following to ~75k followers. It’s allowed me to meet some incredible entrepreneurs. And it’s helped generate more attention and customers for Demand Curve.

Company brands

The pros of company-branded content:

• The content more directly generates awareness and desire for the product/service.
• The content engine and notoriety can make it attractive in an acquisition.
• You can hire a team and outsource all aspects of it.
• You’re distanced from it, so you don’t take hate personally.
• If your company gets well known, you can still benefit in ways when you tell people you founded it or you worked there.

The cons of company-branded content:

• You don’t get the personal life benefits—unless your company gets really big and well known.
• Engagement rates can be lower since people generally prefer engaging with and following other people.
• If you leave the business, you lose the audience

I’m very thankful we built up the content and newsletter under DC. It's allowed for the brand to have its own reputation and get its own organic leads. And it's allowed for other people to work on the content. 

How to decide which one to do

Ultimately it could pay off to do both. Then you get the benefits of both. And you can also use both accounts to amplify each other:

• You grow as the company grows.
• The company grows as you grow.

But if you have to choose just one, it really depends on a few things:

• Are you planning to sell the business?
  • Then you probably want to build up the company’s own marketing engine since you don’t want to be tangled up in.
• Do you want the personal benefits above like the optionality, networkability, opportunities, and market value? Are you highly motivated to do it for those benefits alone?
  • Then you should build up your personal accounts—and you can post about stuff related to your company to get leads in the door.
• Are you the type of person who would be anxious about what people think of you and get upset if people said things mean in comments?
  • Then you should probably do it on company accounts.
• Do you want to be doing and overseeing the content yourself for an extended period? Or would you rather someone else do it?
  • If you want others to do it, it’s probably better to do it via company.

There’s no real right answer. It’s very personal.

I’m glad I’ve done both since I get the best of both worlds.

But I spent years building the company one before I started with the personal one—and I had a leg up due to both the notoriety of DC and the bank of content I could repurpose on my personal account. For example:

It’s easier to do one at a time than to boot both up simultaneously.

And if you need help building up your audience

Then join the best (and last) cohort of UNIGNORABLE starting on January 20th.

We’re doing a Cyber FUNday deal on December 2nd at 9 AM Pacific.

Be there if you want $300 off and access to a free masterclass on starting and growing newsletters. Join the waitlist.

When is the last time you ever talked or thought about Jaguar?

Unless you’re an old car nerd, maybe never.

And if you are a car nerd, you maybe talked about the 1960’s E-Type that Enzo Ferrari called “the most beautiful car ever made.”

Or the 90s XJ220, which was (briefly) the fastest production car in the world.

Since then?

Their sales have declined by about 70% in the last 3 years, primarily due to competition releasing much cooler and more modern electric SUVs.

Why get a $100k+ Jaguar SUV when you can get modern electric options like the Model Y (number 1 car in many markets), Model X, Rivian R1S, or Porsche Macan?

It’s generally accepted that their strategy to revive themselves is to go all in on being an electric luxury brand—like all the other luxury car brands currently are.

And then they released this tweet:

In conjunction with this, they:

• Deleted all previous tweets.
• Changed their website to remove all links or references to cars.
  • To be fair, they only did this for a day.

This meme summarizes the most common reaction to this move:

The other common reactions are… not appropriate for this newsletter. But let’s just say people are saying it doesn’t quite match the current culture moment with the clean sweep of Republicans.

I can only speculate the thought process behind this rebrand:

#1. “A new generation of Jaguar owners”

Jaguar mainly appealed to older generations.

So they ask themselves, how can we engage a younger audience?

But here’s the problem:

Is some crazy avant-garde fashionista video featuring meaningless combinations of words going to appeal to young, affluent people? Is that where we are at this cultural moment even?

Releasing this makes Jaguar seem tone-deaf to the current climate.

I think Tesla and Rivian have proven what that audience cares about is:

• Advanced new tech (FSD, auto-everything)
• Goofiness (whoopie cushions, light shows)
• Removal of things people thought were required (gear shifters, knobs, etc)
• Making it a “smart” vehicle (no keys, controllable remotely)
• It being “cool”

Nothing about this rebrand says any of this.

And in the process of desperately trying to appeal to a younger audience, they’ve entirely abandoned and humiliated their core audience of older white dudes who like British things.

Talk about lose-lose.

2. “We need to get people talking about us again”

And boy, have they.

At the time of writing, that tweet has been seen 50M+ times, with ~420k tweets about it in the first 24 hours:

Not to mention countless press mentions or internet creators like me writing newsletters to weigh in on it.

Perhaps they’re leaning into the adage: “No news is bad news.”

This is probably more views and mind share than they’ve ever had. Ever.

But it’s all negative. They’ve become a laughingstock.

Is that what you want when you sell $100k vehicles? For anyone who buys them in the future to be ridiculed by their friends?

And I feel like all the attention is a waste, considering there’s no product. Why not do this in conjunction with a release of a new car? Would that not make the whole thing make sense?

How long are we going to have to wait for an EV that looks sorta like every other luxury EV and in no way matches the weird promise they’ve made?

3. “Copy nothing.”

The saying is ironic.

If their future is to go all-electric, isn’t that what every other car company is scrambling to do right now?

This graph perfectly illustrates what’s going on:

Volvo and Genesis are the only luxury brands currently surviving the rapid shift. Every other brand’s market share is evaporating.

So Jaguar’s solution is to copy Tesla, which every other brand is already doing.

There’s no way they can release anything and not get ridiculed for joining the bandwagon—unless it’s so insane that it’s ridiculed for other reasons.

As Naval points out, this is likely just the beginning:

“Naval you’re crazy! Google? They aren’t even an automaker!”

What Naval is alluding to is the approaching revolution in the vehicle market. Where cars drive themselves better than the fallible human is able to.

Tesla is planning to release cars with no steering wheel in just a few years. And release an Uber-competitor where nearly every current and future Tesla is able to operate autonomously and earn the owner income when they’re not using it.

Google, which owns Waymo, already has a fleet of cars driving around like Ubers.

Why would you buy a Jaguar when you can buy a Model X or Y that can pay itself off by driving people around?

In the long run, why even spend $100k on a car if there’s a fleet of autonomous vehicles driving around that costs a fraction of an Uber to use?

What should they have done?

What Jaguar probably should have done is copy themselves, as Kevin Dahlstrom says here:

The old 60’s E-Type was a beautiful car.

If Jaguar had remade the old E-Type, it would have been “cool” based on its appearance and legacy alone.

And nostalgia is in more than ever.

Would this save them in the long run, given the impending future? Probably not.

But it would likely give them a spike in sales and make them “cool” again rather than being a bizarre and tone-deaf last attempt before filing for bankruptcy.

What’s the takeaway

If you’re going to rebrand:

• Do it without alienating your core audience.
• Make sure your product is at the heart of the story—not completely absent.
• Make sure it’s relevant to the current cultural climate.
• Make sure the slogan isn’t ironic and doesn’t set you up for failure.
• Find a way to make it interesting to people—which they did!

Last week, we discussed Adjacent User Theory—a powerful growth framework for identifying opportunities to expand into tangential markets.

As a quick recap:

• Core Users: People your product was built for and who “get it.”
• Adjacent Users: People who could use it, but it needs to be modified or communicated differently to them. The goal of Adjacent User Theory is to identify the right adjacent users to expand into.

One of the powerful parts of this theory (that I didn’t cover last week because I think it muddied the conversation) is what I like to call “tipping points.”

Think of them as moments or conditions when a user is on the cusp of becoming more engaged or converting into a paid customer.

Products (ecomm and software) have tipping points at various stages.

Let’s dive into some examples.

Slack example of tipping points

The primary thresholds that a Slack user has to cross through are:

• Not Signed Up → Signed Up
  • Ex: A friend invites them to Slack
• Signed Up → Casual (occasional free user)
  • Ex: They open Slack whenever they’re pinged
• Casual Free → Core Free (active free user)
  • Ex: They open Slack to speak regularly
  • Ex: Maybe they even start their own Slack channel
• Core Free → Monetized (active paid user)
  • Ex: They upgrade to a paid user on someone else’s or their own Slack.

A tipping point is when they’re on the line between one stage and the next.

For example, Slack determined that the tipping point between a “Casual Free” and a “Core Free” was their weekly active use. If they used Slack 3 out of the last 7 days, there was a 50/50 shot they’d either churn entirely or become an active user.

Armed with this information, they knew they had to do everything they could to push people to be active more than 3 days per week. Things like:

• Encouraging them to download the mobile app
• Encourage them to enable notifications (of any kind)
• If they don’t enable push notifications, send them emails
• Seamless onboarding that lets them discover the value of Slack quickly

They knew where to focus their efforts.

Instagram example of tipping points

Here are the thresholds for Instagram:

• Not Signed Up → Signed Up
• Signed Up → Activated
• Casual → Core Usage

They discovered that if a “Signed Up” user had more than 10 followers in the first 7 days, there was a >65% chance they became “Activated.”

This is the counterpoint to the famous Twitter example where if someone followed a certain number of people, they’d be more likely to stick. Here, Instagram users were more likely to be engaged the more followers they had.

If you’re an Instagram user, you’ve definitely received these notifications before:

These trigger in various scenarios, but a common one is when someone creates an account on Instagram. It can fire them out to:

• Facebook friends
• Contacts in your phone (or if you’re a contact on their phone)
• Mutual friends
• Shared educational background on Facebook

These were created so that new users would quickly gather followers so that people became activated users.

How to find and act upon tipping points

I’ll leave you with some tactical tips on how to take action here:

#1. Make sure you’re tracking everything.

You can’t make decisions if you don’t know what users/customers are doing. Every click should be recorded and associated with the user. Do that in GA4 and/or Mixpanel/Amplitude and/or your ESP.

#2. Identify the various stages that a user goes through from discovery to full converted.

A stage can be defined by either them taking action (signing up, subscribing, purchasing) or by a more complicated set of variables (daily active, does X things per month).

See the next step for examples of different variables.

#3. Analyze the behavior of people who blew through thresholds and those who did not.

Try to identify the variables of “things they did/didn’t do” that lead to someone significantly more likely progressing through the threshold.

For example, this could be things like:

• Purchased the consumable product X times
• Have used the product on X of the last days
• Have used X and Y features (either at all or a threshold amount)
• Have opened (or clicked) X of the last Y newsletters/product emails
• Have at least X team members
• Follow your account on social media
• Have downloaded the mobile/desktop app

There are a lot of variables to consider!

Since this comes from Adjacent User Theory, you’ll also want to try to learn who these people are. Are specific personas getting stuck while others are not? If so, that could be an opportunity to change the flow/messaging to convert them better.

#4. List strategies for how to get people to reach and exceed the tipping points.

For example, if you identify that customers who buy at least 6 of your consumable DTC products are X% more likely to become paid subscribers (or loyal repeat purchasers), then list strategies to increase the likelihood they order at least 6 of the product (either all at once or in separate orders):

• Bulk discounts (shipping or discount)
• Sell a starter bundle
• Send reminder emails or texts to stock up
• Inserts into product deliveries that encourage repeat purchases
• Surprise gift (like a sample of a new flavor)

Now, go put this into action!

There are infinite ways to adjust your marketing or product to increase conversions.

Identifying tipping points helps you learn exactly where to apply force to get the maximum leverage. They provide clarity and significantly increase the odds of success for a test.

Creating a headline for an ad is incredibly difficult. It has to:

• Hook them
• Highlight the problem
• Communicate the value
• Hint at who it’s for
• Be unique/novel
• Do it all as quickly and in as few words as possible

Luckily, the visual is there to help.

The text often sits on top of or adjacent to the visual. Something like this:

This tactic all about getting creative with where the headline is placed.

Ask yourself

“Where’s the most perfect or powerful or ironic place for your headline to appear?”

(Note the headline above is from A Self-Help Guide for Copywriters.)

For example, the perfect place for a NYC taxi ad is:

And if you run a chain of restaurants in Austria at highway rest stops:

And no, before you roll your eyes and go: “I run a startup, I can’t afford to start building 100 foot tall billboards!” 

I agree. 

You probably shouldn’t do that unless you’ve got a massive budget. But remember that with a combination of Photoshop and AI you can easily make anything look real.

Some more examples

Speaking of tunnels

This ad is extremely unignorable:

3M Security Glass

This ad has gone viral numerous times: 

What better way to make a point about your product than to than to put “$3M” in a public bus stop. Note: it was there for a day, and it was only $500 of real money and it was protected by security.

Interactive ads

This is a clever two part ad:

Perfect for a non-profit that helps find housing for those who need it.

For some reason benches are popular props for this:

Transforming the everyday

Use the environment to create an absurd scene your product can help with:

Using people as props

Build up to it

These two ads show that you can build up to the punchline:

Remember, it doesn’t need to be in the real world

Many of these ads have gone viral one or more times since they’ve been captured and thrown online.

I think that’s proof that you could them as real or photoshopped images and run them digitally.

Here’s an example of a clever ad that was intended as an image from the start:

So get creative and figure out ways to place integrate the headline with the visual—whether it’s real or digital.

And I recommend A Self-Help Guide for Copywriters by Dan Nelken for more great ad-making ideas.

We’ve never analyzed a “political” ad before—for many reasons.

But this one is just completely different than any other I’ve seen.

As a fair warning, the first 2 seconds are NSFW, as you can tell from the thumbnail below.

Click here to start after that point.

tl;dr is that a man tries to use the contraceptive drug Plan B, and a grumpy Republican senator appears and tells him it has been banned.Here’s what this ad does incredibly well:

#1. The Hook

The average person scrolls ~43.25 feet of content daily on their phone.

If you fail to hook someone in the first few seconds, they’re gone.

This ad’s opener is very hard to ignore, both visually and aurally.

#2. It cuts to the chase

Most stories are terrible because they meander endlessly with useless context.

The stories that captivate give you only what’s critical.

This is what Wes Kao calls the Minimum Viable Backstory:

It didn’t waste precious time showing how the couple got into this scenario.

Instead, it cuts to the critical moment where the main character’s problem begins with just enough context for you to understand what’s going on and be invested.

#3. It’s laden with suspense

They hook you.They introduce the problem.

They get you invested.

Suddenly, an old man in a suit appears in the man’s bathroom.

(And the scream the man emits is delightful 😂)

You have no idea what you’re really watching or why.

It’s only 2/3 into the video do they finally introduce the “why.” By then, you’re really invested, and the surprise is hilarious.

#4. It engages an audience that is otherwise checked out

Most men ignore topics related to women’s reproductive rights. Although it’s a problem that affects all of us, it doesn’t directly affect men.

This ad does an excellent job making it their issue too.

It made the guy the main character of the ad:

• He’s the one trying to grab the Plan B.
• He’s the one being confronted by the grumpy man in the suit.
• He’s the one who will have to break the news to her.
• He’s the one being called “daddy.”

This ad does a perfect job of making the target audience acutely feel the problem.

#5. It’s relatable

The minimal viable backstory doesn’t explain the status of these two people. They could have just met. They could have been dating for a year. They could be married.

It leaves you to fill in that blank.

On top of that, according to studies, condoms break 2-5% of the time. And at least 45% of women have had pregnancy scares in their lifetime with 25% of women having used Plan B at least once.

It’s a relatable problem the target audience has experienced first- or second-hand.

#6. Most importantly, it shows, not tells

Most ads of this type are just someone talking at the camera trying to either:

1. Shame you
2. Educate you
3. Convince you

This ad isn’t a man staring you down and bashing you over the head with their opinions about how the other side is evil/wrong.

Instead, it tells a relatable story designed to empathize with the problem.

A far more effective way to convince someone.

#7. It attempts to simplify the decision

Politics is extremely complicated. There are infinite possible combinations of opinions that someone can have about how a country should be run.

Unfortunately, in a lot of countries, we're given two options.

Given that, it can be extremely difficult for someone to weigh all the pros and cons of stuffing a round or a square peg into the amorphous blob of a hole that is your political opinion.

This ad attempts to simplify the problem by making you care first and foremost about a single issue.

And our brains love simplicity.A study showed that a single thing can heavily influence people's voting in the final days to hours before an election.

Politics aside, I hope you found this inspiring

I leave it up to you to decide whether you agree or disagree with the ad’s message.

Regardless, this ad is a masterclass in making someone care about something they might not be paying attention to.

Takeaway:

Make them painfully aware of a problem or danger through creative storytelling.

Charlie Munger died nearly one year ago at the age of 99.

His net worth was $2.6B then, thanks to his uncanny ability to identify companies to invest in and not get spooked by short-term volatility.

One of his mottos often rings through my head.

I think it does because it’s at odds with what we generally talk about here at DC.

The motto is:

It's not about the big picture. 
It’s about the work on your desk. 
Do the work in front of you and do it well.

And because this newsletter is all about growing startups, I feel it’d be a disservice to all of you if I didn’t occasionally pause from talking about the nitty-gritty marketing and growth tactics to truly focus on what matters:

Your product is by far the most important thing.

Let’s analyze the situation where you do lousy work/your product isn’t very good:

• People stop using you (churn is high)
• People talk about it
• You never get referrals
• You never have good reviews, testimonials, and case studies to use as social proof to close people
• Your reputation proceeds you, reducing the odds someone becomes a lead, signs up, or buys
• Your cost of acquisition increases across the board
• You have to invest more and more into marketing to make up for the poor organic growth

And in contrast, let’s say you have an exceptional product:

• People keep using you (churn is low)
• People talk about it
• Referrals drive a significant portion of your revenue
• You’re able to collect great social proof
• Your reputation proceeds you, making anything you launch convert better
• Your cost of acquisition decreases across the board
• You can invest in marketing to make things grow even faster rather than try to fight the tides. And when you do, it’s more effective.

Marketing should be about getting the word out about an amazing product—not making up for a bad one.

This is why our agency is selective with who we work with. It doesn’t matter how good our ads are if the product isn’t good. It’s setting ourselves up for failure, and our clients up for disappointment—ruining our own product in the process.

So really, the best growth tactic I can and will ever give is:

It’s about the work on your desk. 
Do the work in front of you and do it well.

Consider this your primary mission as a founder

So please please please, if you’re a founder, get deeply involved in your product/service. Know it better than anybody else. Be brutally honest about how good it is and where it falls short. Obsess over making it better.

Most people are terrified to look too closely and start asking hard questions. Be one of the brave few who do.

And remember, no one will ever care as much as you, the founder. You have to be the one to go the extra mile to make it exceptional.

So, in short, do everything you can to consistently increase the average satisfaction of your customers.

Do that, and you’ll see more organic growth.

Do that, and all of these growth tactics we have covered and will cover will work significantly better.

Thanks for reading, and back to the regularly scheduled growth tactics next week.

The Airbnb host onboarding experience is a bit magical.

You click the CTA in the top navbar that says “Airbnb your home,” and instantly, you see this:

Whoa, I could make an extra $2k per month?

To give me this estimate, they had to make a lot of assumptions:

• That my home is where I’m accessing their site from (safe assumption)
• That I can charge $289/night for my place (average based on their data)
• That is has two bedrooms (median number of bedrooms)
• That I’d get 7 booked nights per month (average based on their data?)
• That my home is somewhat “average” and not crazy good or crazy bad (little do they know!)
• That I wanted to rent out my entire place and not just a private room
• That I’m even eligible to Airbnb my home

Some of those things could be horribly horribly wrong.

But they committed to reasonable assumptions that allowed me to immediately experience the “magic moment” of seeing how much money I could make.

A bad experience would be making me do a long onboarding form, selecting all of these before seeing my estimate. It would be terrible if I had to enter my email to see my results or, worse yet, book a call with someone to discuss them.

This is the power of opinionated defaults.

Opinionated defaults loosely held

Opinionated defaults are pre-selected choices within your product that nudge users toward desired actions—or that simply make the experience that much easier or more delightful. For example, Airbnb made several opionated defaults to show me my estimated monthly income.

Defaults are powerful for two reason:

1. They anchor you. If $20 is the default on a donation field, that will be the most common donation.
2. They make it smoother for the most common use cases. If chosen properly it can make the experience more seamless for the average user.

“Loosely held” meaning the user can easily change them. For example, I could easily change my location, number of bedrooms, stay type, and number of booked nights to get a more accurate estimate.

You can assume a bunch of different variables:

• Location
• Pricing
• of users
• Preferred login method
• Preffered payment method
• Template
• Pricing/tier
• More nuanced, product specific things (ex: # of bedrooms)

Let’s dive into some more real-world examples:

Uber/Lyft example

Both Uber, Lyft, and Google assume that you’re booking a ride or getting directions from your current location:

You can, of course, change this, but it defaults to your current location because 99%+ of rides/navigating likely start there. They’ve made it more annoying to use 1% of the time to make it easier to use 99% of the time—great trade off.

Patreon example

According to Adam Fishman, Patreon had the problem of all their creators choosing $1 as their support membership price—it just became culturally normal to do it after the default was set to $1—which shows the impact a default can have.

To combat this, they changed the default text to say $1 to $5, which they eventually changed to:

This change significantly increased the average monthly price of tiers—increasing revenue for both them and their users.

Figma example

One thing we’ve covered previously is Figma’s invite and billing mechanism.

Most SaaS tools work like this:

1. A team member wants to invite someone to the tool so they can collaborate on a project
2. But they can’t, they need an admin to approve it
3. They get delayed waiting for the admin to approve it
4. The admin responds 2 days later, saying, “No, we don’t want to pay for them!"
5. The team member gets annoyed waiting and needs to find a workaround

Here’s what Figma does:

1. Anyone can invite someone to a Figma file
2. New people get added to the team but get the first month for free
3. The admin gets an email reminding them of next monthly payment and tells them to check the users
4. They go in (maybe) and see their team has added various people
5. They either leave them or remove them

Figma made inviting someone to the paid membership the opinionated default.

And I imagine that change alone has contributed a lot to their MRR over the years because it’s significantly harder for the admin to revoke someone’s existing access than denying it in the first place.

Canva example

Templates are a common thing these days.

Pushing templates onto people is Canva saying, “Hey, you’re probably trying to do something that most other users have already done before; why not use this thing and save hours of work?”

In many cases, it works wonderfully—assuming you make templates for the most common use cases and legitimately solve the problem for most people.

Framework for Opinionated Defaults

Adam Fishman made an actionable framework for you. I could reword it for you but this image has all the necessary info.

Just remember, by thoughtfully choosing opinionated defaults, you can guide user behavior to benefit both your customers and your startup, leading to sustainable growth and a more intuitive product.

But always, ALWAYS, make sure to let people adapt things how they actually want it in case the default is wrong.

Get going, folks!

Most startups fail because of bad ideas.

The rest?

Well, in startups, growth solves all problems.

• Low cash reserves? Growth means you get more revenue and can raise money easier.
• Hate your cofounder? Growth makes it easier to ignore. The real fights happen during the hard times.
• No systems or processes? Growth lets you throw more resources at it
• Struggling to hire top talent? Growth makes you more attractive to top-tier candidates

So, the rest fail because they either never crack a consistent growth channel or they run out of room to grow because they failed to adapt before they hit the ceiling on their current channel, market, or product.

That’s what happens when companies ride one growth curve too long:

• Markets get saturated
• The competition heats up and copies what their doing well
• Customer acquisition gets harder
• Momentum dies

Smart companies prevent this by mastering S-curve growth—a structured way to expand into new products, new growth channels, and new markets before hitting a ceiling.

Here’s how to do it.

First, what's an S-Curve

Most famously, the adoption of new technologies follows the S-Curve:

Notice that they all follow a similar S-shape (with some momentary dips). And how they're generally accelerating.

What's missing from that graph is AI, which was around for decades and was slowly, slowly getting increased adoption. Then ChatGPT came out, and suddenly, everyone was talking about and using AI.

So AI had a decades long ramp up, and then an extremely violent adoption.

How S-Curves work

Every product, channel, or market follows an S-curve:

1. Slow Start: Early traction is hard. You’re figuring out positioning, messaging, features, form factor, UX, etc.
2. Hypergrowth: You find a repeatable customer acquisition loop, and growth accelerates. In products, typically, it happens with some "killer app" moment like when ChatGPT was released.
3. Saturation: Channels become expensive, competitors catch up, there's fewer and fewer remaining "potential users," and growth slows.

The mistake many startups make?

Waiting until Stage 3 (Saturation) to launch a new growth curve.

At that point, it’s often too late.

How to sequence growth

The best startups layer new S-curves before the first one flattens.

Again there are three types of S-Curves a company is fighting with:

• Product
• Market
• Acquisition channel

The slightly confusing part is that Product and Market are a little muddied.

A new product can enter a new market (Mac vs iPhone), or it can be the same market just with a much better form factor (Netflix DVDs vs Streaming).

Let's dive into each.

In terms of products, think:

• Uber: UberX → Uber Pool → UberEats → Freight
• Amazon: Books → ecommerce → AWS/Prime Video/Music/Medical
• Telsa: Luxury (S and X) → Mid-range (3 and Y) → Solar → Trucks (Cybertruck) → Economy (upcoming) → Semis → Autonomous (Cybercab) → Home Robots (Optimus)
• Apple: Macs → Macbook → iPhone → iPad → Watch → Airpods → Airtags → Vision
• Airbnb: Homes → Experiences → ???

Note: Many of these expansions were larger (or more profitable) opportunities than their earlier products (iPhone, Macbook, AWS, Model Y), but some of them were expansions were smaller opportunities (Watch, Airpods, Experiences).

Sometimes it's obvious that it's a bigger or smaller opportunity, and other times it's a gamble. For example, things like Apple Vision, Uber Freight, and Tesla's upcoming products like Semi, Cybercab, and Optimus are either going to be big winners or not—time will tell.

Also note: Unless Airbnb can find its next S-Curve, it may lose its dominance and stop growing due to saturation, competition, and regulation. Experiences is a small portion of their revenue currently.

In terms of markets, think:

Expanding into new markets can be done by opening the same product to more people or creating a new product that targets a different market (for example, Amazon AWS was a totally different market than those buying books)

• Slack: Developers → Startups → Enterprises
• PayPal: eBay payments → Peer-to-peer payments → B2B  → Crypto
• Shopify: Small businesses → Enterprise → Retail POS (new product)
• Square: Small business payments → Enterprise solutions → Consumer banking (Cash App) → Crypto

In terms of growth channels, think:

• Dropbox: Paid ads → Referral program → B2B partnerships
• HubSpot: Content → Sales-led growth → Community-driven growth
• TikTok: Organic viral loops → Influencer partnerships → Paid advertising

For primary growth channels, reference Lenny's ​Racecar Growth Framework​'s "Growth Engine" section:

Everything else (Kickstarts, Fuel, Lubricants, Turbo boosts) help with conversions or to kickstart growth, but only the Growth Engines are likely to produce these S-Curves.

Note: For each new product and market a company creates, they also create separate S-Curves for growth channels.

For example, Square could saturate the market on Meta Ads for small business payments, then launch the Cash App, and massively open up Meta Ads again with the consumer market.

Here’s how to sequence your growth properly:

#1. Find your next S-Curve early

• Identify adjacent customer needs. What else do your existing users struggle with? Ex: Canva started with social media graphics, then expanded into presentations and video.
• Alternatively, look for new growth channels. Ex: Dropbox shifted from paid ads to referral-based growth to sales.
• Or explore new markets. Ex: Stripe expanded from startups to enterprise payments to government integrations to crypto payments.

#2. Expand through existing distribution

• Ideally, your new product, channel, or market can leverage your existing user base. Either through product-led growth or through broadcast marketing (email + social).
  • Slack grew through developers, to internal teams, then expanded into enterprise sales.
• You can also layer in new marketing channels—e.g., Facebook ads → influencer partnerships → outbound sales.

#3. Test without disrupting core growth

• Avoid derailing your primary revenue stream in case the expansion is unsuccessful.
• Start with small tests or pre-sales (MVPs, beta launches, new ad channels) to validate before scaling.

#4. Time it before growth slows

• If you wait until CAC rises or retention drops, you’re already behind.
• Launch your next S-curve during your peak growth period.

Takeaway

If your startup is still finding traction, again, use the Kickstarts, Turbo boosts, etc to help get your first Growth Engine going. Here they are again:

If your startup is growing fast, now is the time to plan your next move.

Spot your next S-curve—whether it’s a new product, growth channel, or market—validate it early, and launch before your current curve stalls.

Not sure what your next growth curve should be?

Ask: "What’s the biggest pain our current customers still have?"

Their answers might define your next expansion.

— If this was helpful, forward it to a founder who needs to hear it.

Read ​Casey Winter's full article​ to learn more.

The vast majority of homepages are incomprehensible—especially for SaaS.

Seriously, it can take a ton of brain power to figure out what they sell and to whom.

There’s a reason for this:

• Everyone on the team knows what the product is.
• They know what the internal jargon means.
• They don’t understand what it’s like to have zero context on the brand, the company, the competitive landscape, the industry, and the market as a whole.

Everyone on the team has intimate knowledge of 👆 those things.

Unfortunately, complicated jargon is often the most succinct way to describe a complex product.

“It’s the all-in-one AI hyper-personalization platform.”

I’m sure that perfectly describes it, but… HUH?

This same problem also exists for product decisions

You are a power user of your own product.

When you and your product team use your app (or product/service), you’re viewing it from a highly informed viewpoint:

• You’re very technically savvy.
• You know the product intimately.
• You know where everything is.
• You know everything it can and cannot do.

The vast majority of your current and potential users?

They don’t know any of that.

They’re fumbling around in the dark, trying to figure out what the tool does and how it can help them.

It’s not until they’ve reached some tipping point that they finally stick.

The Adjacent User Theory by Bangaly Kaba

What is an Adjacent User, you say?

Honestly, a lot of the explanations out there are confusing, so I’ll try to make it clear:

• Core Users are those for whom the product is initially built and who understand and engage with its core value without much modification or onboarding friction. These users align directly with the product's initial design and purpose.
• Adjacent Users are people interested in or could benefit from the product but don’t align perfectly with its current form or messaging. They may need a slight change in positioning, feature tweaks, or lower barriers to engage fully.

I’ll dive into examples next to help illustrate this.

Adjacent users are often accidentally ignored by teams that are too knowledgeable to understand their unique needs.

Instead, product teams focus on improving the experience for the already active and engaged core users—because they are core users.

If you want to unlock growth to a broader set of users (rather than just obsessed power users), you need to identify:

• Who these adjacent users are (user attributes and behavior)
• What exactly they’re getting hung up on
• What they are actively using and enjoying that you might not be prioritizing
• The thresholds/tipping points between inactive users and active users
  • We’ll cover tipping points in a future newsletter.

Examples of identifying adjacent user behavior

Here are some examples of companies identifying adjacent user behavior and expanding to make it more appealing to them:

• LinkedIn: LinkedIn started as a site for getting a job and hiring. Then, they noticed that a cohort of entrepreneurs and freelancers used it to build a personal brand. So, they added various features like Creator mode.
• Instagram: It started as a “check-in” app like Foursquare. They noticed people were more engaged with sharing photos of their outing—and using filters to make up for their terrible phone picture quality. So, they expanded that functionality.
• Slack: Initially marketed itself as a communication tool for developers. Then, they noticed people who worked tangentially with developers (designers, marketers, etc) were being invited in. So, they broadened the appeal.
• Airbnb: Started as a platform for renting air mattresses in people’s living rooms. People looking for affordable and unique accommodations beyond hotels were interested but hesitant about staying on air mattresses. So Airbnb expanded it to staying in people’s homes… regardless of mattress type.
• Dropbox: Dropbox initially focused on cloud storage for tech-savvy users who understood file synchronization. They found that people without technical expertise needed a simpler way to store and access files across devices. So they made it super simple.

If these companies had stuck with their initial set of core users and ignored all the adjacent users, they’d all be much smaller than they are today.

How Instacart identified potential adjacent users

To understand expansion opportunities, you first need to know exactly who your core users are.

Early on, Instagram knew that 75% of its core users were:

• Women
• Urban
• Located In Certain Cities
• Head of Household
• Had one or more kids
• Were more affluent and less price-sensitive
• Willing to spend an hour filling up their Instacart Order

Each one of these attributes has an opposite (or tangential) user attribute:

• Women → Men
• Urban → Suburban
• Cities → Other Cities
• Head of Household → Members of households
• >1 kid → Smaller Families, Couples, Singles
• More Affluent + Less Price Sensitive → More Price Sensitive
• Willingness to put effort into the cart → Less willingness to spend that time

Each of those is a potential adjacent user to your core user. Here is an excellent image from Reforge for the common attributes:

Actionable takeaways

Okay, so we know who adjacent users are and the importance of engaging them.

I'll leave you with some actionable takeaways on how to do something about it:

• Identify core attributes of core users and look at opposites/tangential: This will help you find potential adjacent user attributes.
• Look for use cases you didn’t initially design for: Are there users finding value in your product in unexpected ways or segments?
• Identify small barriers for similar users: What minor adjustments would allow these “near” users to engage fully? Is it messaging, ease of use, or feature tweaks?
• Talk to adjacent users: Identify and talk to people who are using the product in unexpected ways or who are outside the core audience.
• Expand incrementally: Experiment with language and features that address those near-miss users without alienating core users.
• Simplify onboarding: If the adjacent users are less savvy and engaged, simplify onboarding as much as possible.
• Speak clearly: Instead of your copy speaking just to tech-savvy nerds, make sure it speaks to less knowledgeable people.

Remember, your core user base is only so big. Ignoring the adjacent user could prevent you from unlocking the next stage of growth.

If you want to dive a lot deeper into the full nerdiness of Adjacent User Theory, check out Andrew Chen’s full article.

PS: Ads are also a great way to experiment with these new cohorts, as you can create lookalikes from your adjacent users or target people with attributes of the adjacent user.

This tactic is all about illustrating your value by picking a fight with a well-known competitor on a metric that you’re superior at.

Some quick warnings:

• Make sure it’s a fight you can win
• Don’t get sued. Get clever with how you mention them.

Here are the clever ways people do it:

Secret Wink

“You know what I’m talking about.”

Surreal did a great job using the notoriety of incumbent brands to get attention and call out how they’re better.

The not-so-secret slap to the face

There’s also the other strategy where instead of doing a wink, wink, nudge, you instead just come out and say it:

First, yes, that is true. Ask your AI of choice to verify.

Second, this is a classic X vs. Y ad, but it’s done through text instead of the typical visual format.

Start with a fact and build on it

Start with a fact:

• McDonald’s has way more drive-thrus than Burger King
• People put other brands of ketchup in Heinz bottles
• There are a lot of songs about Corvettes

Then build on it:

Use them against themselves

Here, you use a unique aspect of their branding or product to your advantage. For example, this classic Pepsi Max ad:

Note: This Pepsi ad is risky. We’ll cover why below.

Or how Huel takes a shot at Athletic Greens (their most hyped competitor) by removing the label from their distinctive package:

Make fun of the stereotype of your competitor

There’s no better example of an ad campaign where a brand made fun of who uses their competitor than the Mac vs PC campaign:

This ad was extremely successful in making Macs seem like the “cool” choice, a trend that has continued nearly twenty years later.

Just be careful

Remember, when you mention a competitor, you draw attention to them. Therefore, you run the risk of that competitor winning that fight.

So, as I said before, make sure it’s a fight you can win.

But also remember that this strategy works better if you are a challenger startup going after incumbents.

Surreal doesn’t need to worry about giving cornflakes a platform that it doesn’t already have. And they’re so differentiated that they don’t need to worry.

But McDonald’s needs to be incredibly careful mentioning Burger King. Pepsi when it mentions Coke. Or Audi when it mentions BMW or Mercedes.

There’s been a few misses:

Kahlua ran ads that looked way too similar to classic Guinness ads during their prime time of year—St Patrick’s Day—when everyone is thinking about Guinness and seeing Guinness ads.

Or Pepsi reacting to Coke’s sales being 4x more than theirs:

Is this ad creative? Definitely.

But, why draw attention to the fact that your competitor is more popular? That’s social proof working against you.

And if they hadn’t made an ad about it, maybe people wouldn’t have known that Coke sold 4 times more than them.

But, if you’re a startup, think of ways to you can take shots at the big guys.

Most people either focus on themselves:

• Their story
• Their product’s features, benefits, etc

Or they focus purely on delivering their opinion or facts:

• This thing is good
• This thing is bad

But here’s the problem:

Everybody loves conflict

Anything without conflict is typically extremely boring.

Think about the stuff that people binge-watch:

• Dating shows like Love Is Blind and Too Hot to Handle
• Reality TV shows like Selling Sunset
• Dramas like Game of Thrones

Conflict. Conflict. Conflict.

When’s the last time someone binged a textbook with its cold, hard facts and total lack of narrative or conflict?

Conflict is inherently interesting.

As a result, it’s one of the most powerful hooks.

How to make people care to take their vitamin

Educational content is an absolute vitamin.

None of you need to be reading this right now. But you are because you know it’s good for you, and I’ve made it interesting enough to keep you engaged.

Most people fail to do that.

As Harry Dry of Marketing Examples says, many people would say something like:

“Loom’s positioning is good because they do X, Y, and Z”

Whereas Harry does it by using storytelling and conflict:

If you’re paying attention, you noticed something

This is effectively what I’ve done with this very newsletter you’re reading.

I didn’t just say:

“Conflict makes for interesting content. Here’s how to do it.”

Instead, I:

• Started with what most people do wrong
• Moved on to why it’s wrong
• Then gave an example of a better way to do it
• Pointed out that’s what I’m doing and why
• Then finished with pointers on how to do it

In short:

You have to make people care enough to do the “hard” thing that’s good for them.

Often, the hard thing is just spending time to consider your product.

People are busy, and they don’t care.

You need to make them care.

Conflict can help.

Pointers on how to use conflict

As Harry says in this great interview:

“You want pickle juice and orange juice. 
The pickle juice makes the orange juice taste sweeter.
The orange juice makes the pickle juice sourer.”

The contrast of the two extremes makes both more intense.

The problem seems worse.

The solution seems better

Simple ways to introduce conflict:

• X vs Y (including before and after)
• Here’s the problem, here’s why it sucks, here’s the solution
  • This is the classic PAS copywriting framework.
• Here’s how they do it. Here’s how we do it
• Tell a story of someone experiencing a problem

The next time you write copy, ensure there’s an element of conflict.

It’s the only way to make people care.

And if you liked this, you’ll love Harry Dry’s Marketing Examples.

There’s a common mistake that new advertisers make.

They unknowingly assume that all traffic is equal.

They focus too much on CPMs (cost per 1,000 views) and CPCs (cost per click) and not enough on how much they make from their ads.

For example, say you have two ad campaigns:

1. Campaign 1: $10 CPM, $1 CPC.
2. Campaign 2: $30 CPM, $5 CPC.

In other words, Campaign 2 costs 3x more for impressions and 5x more for clicks!

Campaign 1 will surely make you five times as much money, right?

After all, if your conversion rate is 2%, shouldn’t a conversion cost $50 for one and $250 for the other?

Nope.

In many cases, the $5 clicks perform better.

Here’s why:

1. The ad channels know a lot about people. 

They know a lot about the apps you use, the sites you visit, and the ads/posts you read, click on, and share. They know what you find interesting. And they know when you’re on the cusp of a buying decision.

Imagine you’re Meta—a public company trying to maximize shareholder value and  let Zuck buy more of Hawaii and custom Porsches—and you determine that a user:

• Is a high-income earner or represents a business, 
• Is prone to buying products after seeing an ad,
• Is on the cusp of purchasing an expensive product, or
• Has a behavior and interests profile of a typical customer.

Wouldn’t you also charge as much as you possible can for their click?

The more confident they are that a click will lead to a conversion, the more confident they are to charge proportionally more for it.

2. Not all placements are created equal.

Meta has a ton of different places it can show ads.

Some placements are known to be the best:

• FB/IG feed
• Reels
• Stories
• Explore
• Marketplace (when appropriate)

And some are known to be lower quality:

• Audience Network
• Right Column
• Messenger
• Instant Articles

Meta will charge you a lot less for 1,000 views of a Right Column Ad then it will for an Instagram Reel or Story. 

But I bet conversion performance will be a lot worse.

In short, focus on CPAs and ROAS

If the CPMs or CPCs are cheap, there’s probably a good reason why.

Ad channels use an auction system to sell people’s attention to relevant advertisers. If their attention was worth a lot, they’d charge a lot.

Cheap traffic is likely:

• Not paying attention
• Not likely to click
• Not likely to buy
• Not actually interested

That being said, if you’re one of those rare founders who has something truly novel, exciting, and enticing to a broad range of people.

One of those rare products that immediately intrigues basically anyone.

Then you can probably go for bargain-bin traffic.

For the rest of us, the more expensive traffic is often the better option, sadly.

Just make sure you have great creatives, landing pages, and funnels to take advantage of the expensive traffic, or it’ll get very expensive, very quickly. Check out our free Growth Guide as a tactical overview of all things Growth.

Multivitamins have been on the market since 1916.

Greens powders the early 90s.

They are the definition of vitamin pain.

So they require a ton of fancy marketing to get you to buy them.

Athletic Greens is easily one of the top players in the market, with $112M in funding and a unicorn status valuation.

And it just so happens to be extraordinarily expensive compared to all its direct and indirect competitors—$80 per month.

In comparison, I got a greens powder from Costco for $40 with 100 days' worth of servings. This calculates out to be 6.67 times cheaper than AG1. A multivitamin from Centrum would be even cheaper still.

Athletic Greens is expensive—no doubt about it.

Therefore, their entire job as a marketing department is to convince you that their premium-priced product is worth paying for.

Consider this an analysis of how AG1 attempts to justify its price tag.

First, the vast majority of companies pitch multivitamins and greens power with (honestly, I just checked like ten brands):

• 40+ vitamins & minerals that are essential for health & normal bodily function
• Provide a safeguard to your diet.
• Great way to ensure you get enough of the right vitamins and minerals daily.
• Specially formulated for various niche groups (women, men, over 50, kids, etc)
• High-quality ingredients.

Or, to put it shortly:

• SNORE
• SNORE
• SNORE
• Okay, I’m interested. Niche targeting is powerful.
• SNORE

If you read our newsletter earlier this week, you'll notice they all appeal to reason, not interest—read the previous edition to find out why that's a bad idea.

Let's dive into eight clever tactics AG1 uses to justify its price:

High price justification #1: We replace a bunch of stuff

Here’s why this is smart:

• It leverages a famous saying from the movie jaws (”You're going to need a bigger boat”)
• It tells you what Athletic Greens replaces—an entire cupboard full of vitamins.

They aim to make people confident they can replace all the other vitamins they’re slamming back each day with one healthier and tasty drink.

The claim is: "You'll save money, and it works better than what you currently use."

Hence, this prominent part of their homepage:

High-price justification #2: It's totally different. We swear.

If you go to their website, you'll notice they do not call themselves a greenspowder or a multivitamin.

Of course not.

That'd put them in direct competition with cheaper alternatives.

Instead, they're a Foundational Nutrition supplement.

What is that you ask? Well, no one quite knows

But it sounds fancy.

Maybe AG1 is worth over six times more than a regular old greenspowder.

Right?

This is a concept from the field of category design.

Where you come up with some fancy new term for your product to help allow it to operate in a "category of its own."

High-price justification #3: Specific outcomes

As I said initially, their competitors almost all say the same boring things about general health and wellness.

Instead, AG1 focuses on specific outcomes that people care about most (even if the statements are not evaluated by the FDA):

Better yet when they're backed up with scientific research:

High-price justification #4: The highest quality possible

This is an age-old tactic. Particularly for something attached to someone's:

• Health
• Wealth
• Status

How can you make sure that yours appears like it's the best?

For health, make it appear like no one else is remotely close in terms of quality:

High-price justification #5: Trusted influencers

Their number one key to success is their influencer marketing.

The hashtag #athleticgreens has over 86.8 million views on TikTok.

Athletic Greens has recruited nearly all the top tech and health influencers to promote and recommend their product.

Not only do they pay for placements, but they also give them a cut of sales.

If you hang on to Huberman's every word, would you not be convinced that AG1 is worth the money?

High-price justification #6: Good ol' social proof

We're herd animals. We do what others do.

Therefore, they can build tons of trust simply by highlighting the nearly 50,000 verified 5-star reviews that they've done a great job collecting.

If you're putting something in your body every single day, are you going to trust the greens powder on the shelf at Walmart, or the one with 50,000 glowing reviews?

High-price justification #7: Pricing + quality hacks

Our brains are easily tricked.

If something is in a premium package, we value it more.

And if we get a bundle of things for free upfront with your monthly subscription, we feel we got a deal.

That's why their Welcome Kit is genius.

You get a premium, branded glass bottle, and tin to use with your Foundational Nutrition supplement—and to signal to everyone else that you're an AG1 user.

Is AG1 worth the money?

I have no idea. 

I'm not a doctor or nutritionist, nor do I make greens powders.

It could be. But I suspect it's all just clever marketing designed to turn a commodity product into a luxury good worthy of the elevated price tag.

Coincidentally, Bryan Johnson posted this AG1 hit piece as I wrote this newsletter. If you're interested, I suggest you check it out

This is a funny cautionary tale.

In most of the US, you’re likely to see accident lawyers, churches, McDonald’s, and realtors plastered on the countless billboards that fill major cities and highways.

In San Francisco, however, it’s almost all startups selling to other startups.

This is a funny, cautionary tale of one of those campaigns, with a few actionable nuggets—including an example of how they could have done it so much better.

Here’s the billboard in question:

Say you drove past and saw this.

(Although tbh I don’t think it’s particularly noticeable)

What would you likely remember to google when you get to your destination?

For many, it’s likely “ai sdr.”

Which funny enough, is actually the name of one of the advertiser’s competitors.

The advertiser is called Qualified. And Piper, is the product.

AiSDR got an uptick in traffic and closed at least 2 deals from their competitor’s ad.

Here are some actionable takeaways

#1. Considering being clever with naming:

Choosing a name and/or domain that matches the keyword the majority of people will search can pay dividends.

This reminds me of this famous Thai restaurant in New York:

#2. Use Google Ads to target essential keywords

If you are running ads where it’s likely people won’t act on it immediately (billboards, radio, podcasts, TV, or print), make sure you use Google Ads to bid on the keywords they’ll likely use to find it later.

For example, they probably won’t google “Qualified Piper AI SDR.”

Instead, they’re likely to google “ai sdr.”

People are remarkably good at forgetting everything but essential details.

And you don’t want a competitor with better SEO to get it instead.

#3. Make an ad that people can act on immediately

This ad is a FAR better version:

Here's why it's so good:

• It communicates so much in just six words
• People can immediately act (call the number)
• It’s incredibly intriguing to try out
• It leverages a familiar interface (iOS call notification) to shortcut understanding
• The phone number is simple to type in
• People can try the product within seconds of seeing the ad
• It’s absurdly simple and noticeable, with a ton of whitespace.

Here’s a snippet from Lenny’s Newsletter where he compiled a quote about this billboard:

I bet that’s infinitely more benefit than Qualified got from theirs.

Particularly since Qualified’s version increased the visibility of their competitor.

Stay creative folks.

In film, stage, and TV, there’s a concept of the “fourth wall”—the unseen wall that separates the audience and the performers. 

The separation between actor and audience makes for a more believable story.

“Breaking the fourth wall” is the intentional act of either:

1. Speaking directly to the audience: The performer makes eye contact with the audience and talks to them as co-conspirators in the action. If you’ve seen House of Cards, Frank’s monologues to the camera are a perfect example.
2. Breaking character: The performer talks about the performance—making reference to it being a movie, show, etc.

Breaking the fourth wall is a way to connect with the audience and build trust.

This is also a tactic used in a bunch of ads. 

Let’s talk about both styles:

Speaking to the audience

Traditional video ads create a scene where people are experiencing a problem and the product is presented as the solution to that problem. 

It’s a performance.

Other video ads are just showing the product in action and talking about its features.

Static ads try to do both with punchy copy or intriguing images.

Dollar Shave’s Club famous ad has the actor stare at the camera the entire time:

Old Spice’s famous ad takes it up a level by talking directly to the women watching and references their male partners:

Bonus points for the complicated production to make it absurd.

Lastly, this is basically every UGC ad out there

A creator or user speaks directly to the camera and talks about their experience. 

Breaking character

Here instead of just speaking directly to the audience, you call out the fact that you’re trying to sell something to them.

L’Oréal’s ad is one of my favorites

This ad is genius because the hook is intriguing when contrasted with the traditional feminine image of lipstick.

Surreal and Oatly do this a lot and weave in humor

RxBar does it to lean into their “No B.S. ingredients” mantra

The core idea behind it is that even their ads are “no B.S.”

Lastly, this amazing ad from Lewis Capaldi

I love this ad because it:

• Hooks you first with an insane visual
• Rehooks you with the credibility hook style 
• He leverages that credibility & social proof while also making fun of himself so it doesn’t come off as bragging
• It’s subtly breaking the fourth wall by saying “you” and “I” and is acknowledging that he’s created an ad begging for your attention.

It’s unignorable. It’s funny. And it’s quirky enough to go viral on social.

Go try it yourself

The next time you’re creating content or ads, try breaking the fourth wall:

1. When creating videos, try speaking directly to the audience.
2. When creating static or video content, try explicitly or subtly calling out the fact that it’s an ad.

Have fun with it!

Creativity is by far the number one way to impact the success of your marketing. 

Particularly for a boring product. For example, dietary fiber powder:

Unless you have a unicorn product that is so unique, compelling, and well timed that you can basically do anything (or even nothing) to sell it…

You’re going to have to get creative.

This tactic mostly relies on physical advertisements (billboards, signs, buses, cars, etc), but I find the creativity incredibly inspiring.

Let’s break down some examples.

Materials and elements

Tyrolit could just show a beautiful knife cutting some shoes or tin cans and say their slogan “Flawless forever.” 

That’s what almost all knife companies do.

Or they could show rather than tell like they do in this creative billboard that lets the materials and the elements make the point for them:

Incorporating people into the ad

The Economist could just say, “Our content sparks ideas.”

But instead, this ad incorporates people into the ad to make the point for them.

And the giant light bulb turning on and off also helps attract people’s attention.

Using materials to show the problem

Most breakfast cereals, like most companies, focus on the “features” or the “lifestyle.” Examples:

• Features: Magic Spoon has Xg protein and Yg of sugar per serving.
• Lifestyle: Vector is for athletes.

This ad from Surreal, however, focuses on the largest objection people have about “healthy cereals,” and they do it in a delightful and creative way that shows the problem.

Transforming the everyday

Again, most companies focus on the obvious uses of their product.

For LEGO, that would be distracting your kid for a few hours with building the Millenium Falcon.

This ad, however, leans into the idea that LEGO fuels your child's imagination.

What better way to illustrate that, than to use LEGO to completely reimagine the mundane everyday scene of a bus stop and an overpass:

Show the problem vividly

Think of the last time you saw an ad for a glasses company. 

It’s probably a bunch of attractive people’s faces wearing attractive pairs of glasses doing attractive people things, and the ad really doesn’t say anything at all.

Instead, Specsavers delightfully highlights the problem of not wearing glasses with the right prescription:

• It’s funny. 
• It’s noticeable. 
• And it takes a second to realize it’s not a mistake.

I’ll say it again:

Creativity is by far the number one way to impact the success of your marketing.

The next time you create a new campaign, email, post, or ad, take some extra time to think outside the (two-dimensional) box.

1. How can you show rather than tell?
2. How can you make it fun?
3. What are my competitors not doing?

People are profoundly illogical.

Our actions are predominately driven by emotion.

Then, we tell ourselves logical stories to rationalize our irrational behavior.

Savvy marketers and founders recognize this and leverage it.

Here’s an example from Poor Charlie’s Almanack:

In short, to convince, don’t appeal to reason.

Instead, appeal to their selfish interests. 

Let’s dive into tangible examples:

1. High-end electric car (ex: Tesla)

• Reason: 
  • Environmental benefits. 
  • Savings on gasoline.
  • Low maintenance costs compared to traditional gasoline vehicles.
• Interest:
  • Prestige from owning the newest Tesla.
  • Break-neck acceleration.
  • Quirky and novel features (whoopie cusions).
  • Futuristic Full-Self Driving that your friends will be wowed by.

2. Fitness mobile app

• Reason: 
  • Cost-effectiveness compared to a gym membership.
  • Convenience of working out at home.
  • Variety of workouts that can cater to different fitness goals.
• Interest: 
  • Desirable outcomes, such as getting into shape quickly for a wedding. 
  • Ability to workout at home and not feel like you’re being judged or creeped on.
  • Personalized training plans that make the user feel special and catered to.

3. Luxury skincare products

• Reason: 
  • The scientific research behind the products.
  • High-quality ingredients.
  • Benefits of using a scientifically formulated skincare regimen.
• Interest: 
  • Sell the dream of flawless skin.
  • The allure of using products loved by celebrities.
  • The exclusivity of having a luxurious skincare routine that not everyone can afford.

4. Educational children’s toys

• Reason: 
  • Explain how the toys enhance learning and development.
  • Discuss the safety of materials used.
  • Made from durable, high-quality materials.
• Interest: 
  • Promote how these toys can make their child smarter.
  • The free time parents will have because the child will be distracted.
  • How the toys will help their children succeed in the future.

5. Organic food products

• Reason: 
  • Detail the health benefits of organic eating.
  • Absence of harmful pesticides.
  • Positive environmental impact of organic farming.
• Interest: 
  • Emphasize the taste superiority of organic products
  • The lifestyle connotation of health and wellness that comes with organic eating, 
  • The social status associated with making environmentally-conscious decisions.

We all know that we shouldn’t eat sweets and fried foods.

They’re bad for our health after all.

Yet almost every single one of us does.

So clearly the logical argument is not compelling. 

The next time you’re writing copy, stop to notice whether you’re appealing to reason, or their selfish interests.